Lets be honest with ourselves. Death Grips is pretty much only a meme band cus suburban white kids think black people are funny. Memes of MC Ride sitting and eating a fucking sandwich at Subway was soon as kooky whacky edgy stuff that you could post for a cheap laugh, photos of him painting with his cat were "surreal" for a lot of people. You never saw people circulating their interviews or sharing pictures and videos of him when he was younger and expressing really profound thoughts on art and music and politics, even though all of those things are very easily accessible online, cus that's not gonna get you clout.

I really don't get it. Like, yeah, Death Grip's sound is probably pretty jarring if you're not used to heavier music, but it wears off after a while. They're a Punk band with Industrial and Hip Hop elements, of course they scream and have politically charged messages and whatnot, so does every artist in each of those genres. Of course the guy has a fucking life outside of screaming on a stage, every artist does. You never see people making memes of Black Flag or Skinny Puppy for doing the same shit, you don't even really see memes of the other two members in the very same band doing the shit they do, despite being just as erratic and unorthodox as their frontman.

This is why I don't believe people when they tell me a song or band is a meme because people like the song / band in question, I think they are just making fun of people and treating art like a game solely because the art in question doesn't fit their scant little worldview. Shit's so lame.

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Author's Notes: Chapter 31 (Chicago IX)

Here it is, the start of the ever fabled beach episode! It took a bit to get here (I was kinda dead all February lol), but it's finally time to start this arc I've been hyping up so much in the Discord server

For as much as I've hyped up the Iron Touch beach episode, this was not at all how I originally envisioned this arc. Originally it was going to be much shorter and just take place in a generic marketplace or something. The beach aspect came about after some readers joked about an Iron Touch beach episode on Discord, and I thought "wait, that's actually not a bad idea." Of course, it's not a beach episode in the traditional sense of being tits out with beach volleyball and shit, but its an arc that takes place on the beach. It counts!
Another thing I didn't plan about this arc (and part of the reason this chapter took so long to come out); Chicago IX being this safe haven for Stand users wasn't part of the plan, either. That came about through reader feedback, specifically from JoJo's Bizarre Fanworks, one of the Discord servers Iron Touch is partnered with. Lots of people there are disappointed by the lack of original Stands in Iron Touch, so this is my tongue in cheek response to that. In this arc, literally everything is a Stand! Once I had the whole thing outlined, I looked at each event that happens and thought "how can I turn this into a Stand encounter? How can a car wash be a (maybe) Stand? How can valet parking be a Stand? How can buying a bathing suit be a Stand? Blah blah blah. It was challenging, but I think this line of thought really let me get my creative juices flowing on how to represent Chicago IX as a unique location similar to Tonio's restaurant from part 4, which I'm proud of.
This is the longest chapter of Iron Touch to date, and so one of two to be longer than 10,000 words (the other is Chapter 4). I really tried to edit it down more to at least get it under 10k, but I am complete dogshit at editing. I did ask readers on Discord whether they wanted to split the chapter, but the general consensus was that people wanted it to keep it as one big thing. So, here it is. You're not allowed to complain about it.
Believe it or not, that Pokémon scene at the beginning of the chapter was one of my biggest headaches while writing it. I just could not think of a good bit of casual banter between the group besides that. It bugged me because I thought it felt very not-Araki, which meant that it felt very not-JoJo. That's no good! All of my betas loved the scene, though, so it stuck. Seeing Jodio with a Nintendo Switch in chapter 2 of JoJoLands has given me newfound confidence in this scene.
So, Meatloaf. What the fuck is Meatloaf? I have no idea. I like the idea of keeping it open ended, kinda like Mikitaka's whole "is he an alien?" shtick. Originally Meatloaf was unambiguously a Stand, and the user was the car wash itself. But that felt boring and not very Standish. I liked the idea of making its true nature more ambiguous and up to reader interpretation, it makes Meatloaf feel more like some weird monster from Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan.
I'm very proud of the term "Lonely" for people who don't have Stands. Since Stands are named that way because they always stand by your side, I figured that someone without a Stand would be pretty lonely by comparison.
Random Access Memories is probably my favorite Stand of the batch here, even more that the Stands that will be debuting later in the arc.
I really want to establish the theme of Stand users that are reliant on their Stands in their day to day lives in this arc. We've kind of seen bits and pieces of this already through Depeche and Policy of Truth, but this is where I'm really starting to drive this theme home. Get used to it—this is going to be a prominent theme for the rest of the story.
While his personality and role in the story were obviously handled exclusively by me, Firework's design was made by AllShaftsFall, who you should recognize as "Ryan Shafterson" from the last chapter. I didn't know what I wanted Firework to look like, and Shaft expressed interest in helping design characters for Iron Touch, so I gave him a small list of criteria I was looking for in Firework's design and let him go crazy. This was his original sketch (as you can see, I didn't tell him the character's name lol):

The design of Michelle's bathing suit also came from Shaft via a piece of "beach episode" fanart.

Music references: I told you to prepare your anuses, didn't I?

Chicago IX, the name of the chapter and the hidden resort the gang stays at, gets its name from the ninth studio album by the band Chicago. From what I can tell, this is their bestselling album, which is why I chose to use it.
Chicago IX's beta name was Bourbon Street, after a song by Jeff Tuohy. I changed it because I learned that Bourbon Street is actually a very famous part of New Orleans and I didn't want to mix up irl locations.
The car wash is called "ROYCE," after American R&B group Rose Royce.
Meatloaf gets its name from Michael Lee Aday, better known by his stage name Meat Loaf, an American rock singer.
Funnily enough, Meatloaf's beta name was Firework lol. Back when it was a Stand it was named Bottle Up and Explode, after an Elliot Smith song.
Random Access Memories is named after a Daft Punk album of the same name.
Firework gets his name from the Katy Perry song of the same name, which I'm sure needs no introduction.
Firework actually had quite a few beta names. Originally it was Jimmy, after the band Jimmy Eat World, but meh. "Jimmy." So basic. Then it was Taco, after a singer who famously covered Puttin' on the Ritz, but that swung the pendulum the complete opposite direction. Naming a character Taco felt like I was writing some racist caricature of a Mexican person, even if that's not his character at all. I settled on using Meatloaf's beta name instead—it fits him much better, anyways.
Puttin' on the Ritz is named after a song written by Irving Berlin in 1927. It's been covered god knows how many times, but these days, the version by Taco is probably the most well known, so that's the version I'm using on all of the reference playlists.

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Author’s Notes: Chapter 27 (All Broken Down Inside, part 2)

Sorry for the gap in chapter releases! Seems I just can’t get anything out in November, huh?

So, this chapter was supposed to release alongside the next chapter, but in classic Ella fashion, the ending ended up being way longer than I thought it would be. I actually did poll readers both in the Iron Touch Discord server and Fanworks if they wanted it to be cut or whole, and the majority of people in both servers voted for it to be whole. However, the betas and I agreed that this chapter is better off in halves, so I cut it. But, the second half of this chapter will be dropping tomorrow. Yay!
I was hesitant to add the short conversation between Cab and Michelle at the start of this chapter both because I thought it messed with the pacing and wondered if it was really all that relevant. The betas all loved it though (specifically Michelle’s “it really doesn’t” line), so I kept it.
One thing that I’m really looking forward to with the returning canon Stand users in Iron Touch is thinking of alternative ways to defeat/outsmart them. Yuya is known for his acute sense of smell, which isn’t ever used against him in any way in canon. So, I wanted to turn it into a weakness and use it against him. That’s what I was talking about in the last author’s notes about taking advantage of Highway Star not being able to see; clogging up Highway Star’s sense of smell is as good as gauging out its eyes.
This chapter was basically just me showing off all of the cool ways that you could use Out of Touch. Using the gloves to be able to touch (or rather, throw) other Stands, using the cannons to misdirect their targets with sound, stealth attacks with the cannons, etc. It was a lot of fun to do, especially since Out of Touch is probably my favorite Stand that I’ve made!
Another thing that was fun to write: shit. Piss and shit and everything else in between. If I don’t make at least one person gag while they read the descriptions of the cast covered in raw sewage, then I’ve failed as an author.
One thing that was really annoying about this chapter was Highway Star’s pronouns. Stands don’t really have genders, but I kept on instinctively referring to Highway Star as a “he” since its user is a guy. If I missed any instances of that in editing, my apologies.

Music references:

The three cops mentioned in this chapter—Moretti, Valensi, and Casablancas—are the founding members of the rock band The Strokes.

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one of the funniest images made with these things in the past 3 years at least

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WHAT TOP 5 ARE YOU SMOKING ON KENDRICK

#splatoon

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if people actually start coming over from twitter maybe some of my mutuals will come here and ill get a reason to use this website consistently

#ramblings

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gayboi sharti

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Author’s Notes: Chapter 26 (All Broken Down Inside, part 1)

Happy spooky month! Here’s a chase scene.

This was another action chapter that was difficult for me to write. Not the same way Aces High was where I didn’t know what I was doing, but more how to convey this motorcycle chase throughout Central Park. I’m still not sure how well I pulled it off; one of my beta readers said that it felt a little nebulous, and though I tried to make some adjustments to remedy that, I just didn’t know what to add or change to fix that.
That said, the focus of this chapter is supposed to be less on the action itself and more about Hol Horse’s character at this point in the story. This is him at his lowest point, where he considers directly tossing Sara aside (after having ditched her in the last chapter). If Sara was a boy, she’d be dead here. He does end up helping her, but reluctantly, and he just ends up doing what she tells him to rather than actually taking charge himself. In order to start his character arc, I need to build him up from here.
“Highway Star’s top speed is 60 kmh,” Yes, kmh, not mph. 60 kmh is a little under 40 mph.
In case you didn’t know, yes, horse carriage rides are a thing in Central Park. I wanted to incorporate elements specifically to the location in the chase scene, and that’s what I came up with.
I think we always tend to assume that every Stand user can see out of their Stand’s eyes if they have them, but that’s clearly not the case with Highway Star. I wanted to take advantage in that in some way. What exactly do I mean by that? All will be revealed in the next chapter.

Music references:

The name of the chapter comes from a repeated lyric in the Hall and Oates song Is It A Star. I knew I wanted a Hall and Oates song for this chapter name and I chose this one specifically because “Star” brings to mind Highway Star. Also, if you’re neurotic, the lyrics may pertain to a certain meme in this Discord server.
Hush Hotel, where Yuya is staying, was named after a Deep Purple song of the same name.