Fuck Yeah Friday! [2019-12-27]

[thrillingdetectivetales]

Since I skipped last week because it was a pre-holiday clusterfuck, today you're getting a Fuck Yeah Friday! double feature to make up for it.

First up is another song. I love music and could probably go on about it week after week, ad infinitum. While I don't necessarily consider myself a musician proper—I could maybe claim the title of plucky, enthusiastic vocalist, at best—there has always been something about music that speaks to me on a level I'm not entirely certain I can accurately describe.

It goes beyond lyrics, which, when provided without actual instrumental accompaniment or melodic inflection, I generally find lackluster, but all the same a song that strikes me where I live is likelier to bring tears to my eyes than pretty much anything else. I want to get back into writing my own music someday, but until then I'm going to continue weeping openly over everything that Julien Baker has ever touched.

I appreciate so many things about her, not least of which is the unapologetic vulnerability she brings to her music. Stylistically I'd classify it as somewhere in the realm of "new folk," which I love just as much as I love traditional styles of folk music. She's also a lesbian and a person of faith, which is, in my personal experience, rare to find in professional entertainers. Maybe I just haven't been looking in the right places or something, but I remember that when a friend first introduced me to Julien Baker's music I felt seen and understood by an artist I admired for the first time in a very, very, very long time.

"Rejoice," shared below, is the first song of hers that I'd ever heard and it was sent to me in a text with the message, "If you want a song to get sad and cry to," which I think is a pretty solid lead-in. I find "Rejoice" to be inspirational in a gritty, almost desperate way, but it's also inarguably painful, so as a warning for anyone who may not be comfortable sobbing in public: you may want to save it for later.

There is nothing about this song that I don't like, from its instrumental to its lyrics to the way that Julien delivers them, but my favorite part, without a doubt is:

Somebody's listening at night, the ghosts of my friends, when I pray.
Asking, "Why did you let them leave and then make me stay?"
Knows my name and all of my hideous mistakes.

It's a song about a lot of things and I'd imagine it could mean many different things to many different people so I won't ramble on about what, specifically, I see in it. I just hope y'all like it even half as much as I do:

Watch on YouTube

It also doesn't hurt that Baker herself is functionally adorable, but I digress.

If you're into new folk, I'd definitely recommend checking out Julien Baker's solo albums: Sprained Ankle, which includes the song shared above, and Turn the Lights Out. The stuff she does as part of boygenius. with Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers is also excellent and worth a listen.

Up next is a video game! Specifically, Dragon Age: Inquisition, which is a 5-year-old Bioware fantasy RPG that I love with my entire being.

I'm not much of a gamer. I'm interested peripherally in video games but I'm a) bad at most of them and b) usually busy, so I don't have an abundance of time to sink into open world sandbox games, beautiful and engaging as they may be. I inherited an Xbox 360 from some friends when they moved away and one of the games that came with it was the original game in the Dragon Age oeuvre, Dragon Age: Origins. I played through about half of it, though the game was super old and, as an original copy, had not been remastered or updated, so I pretty quickly turned my attentions to its successor, creatively titled Dragon Age II. The game was likewise fun, and still holds a special place in my heart, but when I stumbled across the Game of the Year edition of the third installment in the series, my loyalties were sealed.

While all the Dragon Age games are fun—providing just enough of that sandbox feel, which I adore, while still guiding my player character through a narrative—DA:I is my favorite for a number of reasons. I feel like the creative team, by that point in their run, had largely pinned down the narrative style and aesthetic of the series in a way that really worked, first of all, and I'm in love with like every named character we meet. Most of them are available for romance, which is an option I like to have in my game, and there's a really solid spread of straight and queer characters. There are also canonically trans characters! Though you can't romance them, which is a bit of a bummer. (I live in hope for the sequel.)

Here's a sass reel of one of my favorite romantic companions, the esteemed Dorian Pavus:

Watch on YouTube

I really enjoy the world-building for the most part, even if it is a bit "fantasy religion based on Judeo-Christian practices" but I can forgive that considering the first game came out a decade ago and they were pretty much locked in from there. It's obvious that the creative team spent a tremendous amount of time developing the lore, which I appreciate not only for the actual fun of exploring it in-game but for the richness of the expanded universe, which features novels, graphic novels, and like, cell phone games. I've read several of the two former and never engaged with the latter, but I'm sure it's fun in its own pocket-sized way.

They're releasing a fourth installment in the Dragon Age series sometime in (possibly) spring of '22, so if pre-apocalyptic fantasy RPGs are your thing, you've got plenty of time to dabble in Inquisition before it comes out.

What's bringing y'all joy on this most festive of Fridays? Please, share your thoughts! Spread the love!