#the binary is the same one from their compendium description

[littleghostblogs]

I’m going insane

[kushielsmercy]

Shiel’s Witcher Fic Recs

I’ve been meaning to do this for awhile, because I want to be better about highlighting other awesome creators in this fandom! This is by no means anywhere near an exhaustive list, but I tried to select a few fics that I think are criminally underrated. Which means there are a lot (but not all) of rare pairs here.

I focused on long-fics for this first rec list, but I’ll probably do another with one-shots soon!

Your Mouth Is Poison (Your Mouth Is Wine) - @clydethistles

Let’s hear it for the girls! This fic is based on the canon premise that Rita and Tissaia author academic works together, which to be honest is a pairing I’d never considered before. But damn does it deliver. It packs more plot and character development in 37k than I’ve seen in some fics 100k+.

(There is canon-compliant MCD here, which you know from the start so it doesn’t hit as hard, but still. This isn’t the fic if you just need fluff. But it’s so worth the pain.)

Blood Ties - @andordean

Here’s a fic that I can’t even remember why I clicked on originally, because look - I get it - on paper Ciri/Regis not a pairing that makes any sense. But fucking hell am I glad I did. Just, trust me on this one. Please. They unfold naturally and it’s not heavy handed at all.

More importantly. Are you one of the many people who wasn’t too sold on any of Ciri’s TW3 endings? Dordean agrees with us and more than delivers on this fix-it fic. You know you need Ciri coming back to retake Cintra and claim her rightful throne.

Denial - @2nico

I had to debate long and hard about which of Tnico’s fics to include here, because they are all. so. good.

Forgive me if this is conceited but I’m going to make the assumption if you’re following me that you at least somewhat enjoy how I write Lambert/Aiden. Well, Tnico’s Lambert is probably the single biggest inspiration for my take on the neurotic bastard. And their wordplay is unparalleled.

A Good Few Verses - @reena-jenkins, sospes

Are you a Yennskier convert after season two? This is the Yenn/Jaskier fic. Technically it’s OT3 but it definitely focuses on Yenn and Jask’s relationship before they allow Geralt to get his shit together and join them later on. This fic is hot coco on a cold night. Or rather, spiked hot coco. Because in true form, it’s a love story - with a lot of alcohol.

Monstrum Volume III, or The Definitive Compendium of Witcher Physiologia - flirtygaybrit

This is a Dandelion/Geralt fic that sits in-between book canon spanning from Blood of Elves through Lady of the Lake. And I’m here to tell you: If you are a book lover this is your fic. The dialogue, the pacing, the descriptions. I have no idea how the author encapsulated Sapkowski’s tone this well but I felt like I was reading another piece of canon the whole time.

When Bear Stepped Clear of Bear - @crushcandles

The dom!Jaskier sub!Geralt fic. It’s somehow incredibly hot and a character study at the same time. Crushcandles continues to be the queen.

What Mages Are Like - @bomberqueen17

The Meet Death Sitting Series is not what I’d call underrated, but as a 700,000+ word behemoth I understand how it can be scary to jump into. Or, a lot of people seem to just read the works with fandom popular pairings. The Trust series, which is a stand-alone set of fics set within the broader Meet Dealth Sitting universe is my favorite and often overlooked. It’s got non-binary Lambert/non-binary Kiera/bemused Aiden. I have to fess up that I don’t even like Kiera normally, but bomberqueen handles her perfectly. This is the 0T3 trauma recovery fic you didn’t know you needed.

heart, lungs, soul, arteries and all - kaffas (hoopoe)

Geralt is a traumatized bastard who ends up hurting those around him because he’s unable to process his own shit. So, canon. There are multiple pairings but it’s endgame Jaskier/Geralt. I’m having trouble summarizing this one for some reason but trust me, it’s excellent.

I Came Here Without A Choice - @merulanoir

I’m a sucker for fics that slot within canon. This is just the softest sexiest Regis/Geralt fic that starts during Baptism of Fire and ends with Blood and Wine. Watch two idiots get together and Geralt get on his knees.

waiting for the wind to throw me down- @some-stars

A really fascinating character study of Geralt and Lambert that also happens to be very hot bdsm. Who could want more?

we could be married (and then we'd be happy) - @a-kind-of-merry-war

We’re all fake-engagement fluff whores here, right?

[dustedmagazine]

IST — A More Attractive Way (Confront Recordings)

A More Attractive Way by IST

For whatever reason, we are still, and absolutely, unequipped to discuss timbre. Our homogenized Western European-based vocabulary seems relatively complete where all the rest of what we sloppily label “the musical elements” are concerned, so why the non-attention to what really differentiates one sound from another? In the most fruitful and inclusive senses, the trio IST is both precedent to and consequent of this lapse and the worlds it refuses to acknowledge. The group dances along the trajectories of timbre with the fluency of those still suffering tone tyranny, held prisoner by the note as accepted convention. From the first performances in 1996 to their last two decades later, it would be more than over general, but with a toe in truth and accuracy, to speak of distillation and concentration amidst an increase of space. These Protean characteristics are true but not the totality of what this five-disc set adds to the collaborative discography of the late bassist Simon H. Fell, cellist Mark Wastel and harpist Rhodhri Davies.  

For an overview of IST’s history and importance to the overlapping scenes the trio represents, there is Michael Rosenstein’s superb article on Confront’s site:

Rosenstein’s expert ability to encapsulate historical and musical developments is as comprehensive as his descriptions are rich. Given such context, it seems prudent only to examine moments in time, and through them to come to terms with the varying approaches, densities and totalities achieved by this unique string trio that embodied “chamber music” in its most inclusive guise. It is true, as Rosenstein observes, that the pivotal first performance involved much of the back and forth associated with what might be called Euro-Free improvisation of the atomistic variety. Just as important, however, are the sonic highways and byways, the trails blazed and pastoral paths trod by these intrepid explorers. One of the most fascinating and exciting elements is the way timbre impacts the rest of what we stodgily call musical parameters. In the first of the two miniatures from that formative 1996 concert, rhythm, timbre and pitch transcend their respective narrative boundaries. Like the characters in Joyce’s Nighttown episode from Ulysses, there is a blending of structure, form and purpose that enters the realms of magic, even of phantasmagoria. Melody is inextricably linked with the rhythmic sounds of the three string instruments, but, as with the Diamond Sutra, even to speak of melody, harmony and rhythm is both true and false, tearing away at the illusions on which those binaries are constructed. Be all that as it may, nearly two and a half minutes into the same piece, there is a lengthening of sounds, a decrease in density and an increase in relative space. There’s even some exquisite executed vibrato from Wastell, a harkening back to traditions this trio usually discards. As Wastell and Fell doff their hats toward the vocabulary of the “jazz” solo, Davies joins in, bending piquant pitches in the upper register as what I have no recourse but to call the tempo picks up again. In this way, in the space of a few brief minutes, the group presents its own history in astonishing distillation, dissolving boundaries in favor of new ones soon to be subjected to a similar fate.

At another extreme resides an extension of those flowing seed-moments of near-stasis in the trio’s powerful 1998 rendering of Intensitat, one of Stockhausen’s late 1960s text pieces. Obviously, via the rigors of recording, rehearsal and performance over the intervening two years, interaction is at an even higher level. It can happen in a moment, that communication that fosters elevation, and it’s palpable, as it is in this concert of compositions. Listen at 1:23 of the Stockhausen as Wastell microtonally alters his pitch, a shade separating tyranny from freedom. Similarly, at 2:46, Davies simply cuts off the ratcheting rhythms that had been bolstering the interaction, leaving a glorious bed of sustain and overtone in shifting dynamic planes. Here again and at other strategic points, vibrato is used but to an entirely different end. Is the trio employing it as a rhythmic device? Is Fell responsible for the emergent microtones at 2:22, whose gradual tempo increase eventually births the layering mini-cascades of vibrations in fluctuation we myopically call vibrato? The gorgeous miniature is rife with internal rhythms, imbuing the entire frequency spectrum with warmth, luminosity and, above all, a raw power, a vision of arising and somehow fastidious unity very rare in any chamber music. It is one of the most extraordinary occurrences in a set full of them, showing a group in the flux of development portended by that first concert and realized over the succeeding years. Yet, nothing anticipates, or can follow, the vast architectural drones, the huge swells as primal as ocean waves and as crystalline as spring water. The group’s atoms are elongated, saturated with the energy and life-blood only a shared performance experience affords. Again, pitch is only a consequence stemming from the timbres in vibration and mutation filling and elasticizing each moment. The applause is well deserved.

Rereading the above affirms that it cannot constitute anything close to a comprehensive review. For one thing, so many of this compendium’s wonderful performances are simply neglected. There is the occasion, the only one, of Simon Fell and violinist Phil Durrant performing together in a small group, caught in the Red Rose in February 1998. That beloved venue had a wonderful acoustic, especially evident on the two IST pieces opening the fourth disc. The initially sparse concluding track offers a precis of just how well the improvisers’ aesthetics meshed, matched only by John Butcher’s contributions to another Red Rose performance several months earlier. How one trills multiphonics in microtone I’ll never know, yet another nod to timbral intrigue, but you can hear Butcher doing just that as the combined portion of the concert begins, the trio supporting and leading in turn.  

Ultimately, when confronting music plumbing such sonic depths, nothing can replace first-hand observation. How, after all, does one review the musical equivalent of a thunderstorm, a birth, something as nebulous and inconclusive as a conclusion, especially when the language to discuss it has yet to be invented? It is the substance of those unfolding events as much as their attendant statistics that generate the power and lead toward reflection, and this box rewards that sort of listening. More than that, it pays tribute to a time of exploration, of interactive moments caught in the simple but precious and fleeting acts of presaging others, however distant, and to the environments bearing witness as sound travels between mind, heart and body. Beyond even these relationships, the set honors Fell. Only weeks before his death, a 25th anniversary IST concert was being planned. The box is dedicated to Fell, and his mentorship helped Wastell and Davies to enter the musical scene the trio would go a long way toward defining. The music here somewhat mitigates the harsh reality that they will not perform again, as do the accompanying booklet’s reminiscences, from those involved in the music and from those observing. Insightful, touching and sometimes humorous, they mirror the music’s multifaceted approach in a way many such endeavors fail to do. With mixed emotions channeled through a quiet but definite comprehension of the extraordinary nature of what transpired and is documented, the various accounts celebrate the music and the musicians responsible for it. No more can be asked than that we do the same.

Marc Medwin

[gabbiwenyiayane-art]

10 March 2020

I’ve made a few pop-up cards, but I’m losing interest in my subject matter. I love it when that happens, because it feels like some of the questions that make up my headspace are fading away to make way for new ones. I guess that’s growth. Or maybe it’s boredom. I think being bored is often the same thing as growing. But anyway.

For my Professional Practice work, I’ve been looking at people’s lost loves, and it’s been quite sobering to see that everyone goes through the worst pain, and everyone is on a journey to heal from it. It got me thinking about my own pain, and my own healing, and the various journeys I’m on at any one point of time. I think there are a couple of things I’m yearning to address in my work, that I’ve shied away from in favour of bigger, more political work (which I think is fine, but if my soul is now tired of it, why am I still pushing it to create loud work?).

The first one is my relationship with my mother - I recently stumbled upon a piece of writing I made about my mother, and about coming back into a relationship with her after years of her religion colliding with my sexuality. I earmarked that piece of short prose, and dug through my personal archives to find other writings I’d done about my mother. I’ve collected a trilogy (ha) of short prose about my mother, each about two years apart, and they’re a kind of absentminded ethnography of our relationship over the years. I’m interested in turning that into a zine, possibly coupling the writing with comics, photography or illustration.

On that note - I’ve recently realised that a lot of my work incorporates verbatim text, and it’s not a recent phenomenon - I’ve always kept jotter books or phone notes of things people say, things I overhear, and so on. They used to get integrated into comics and zines, but now I see them seeping into my larger artwork as well. I think that’s quite interesting, because my art has subconsciously morphed into a kind of ethnography report of my personal experience of the universe. It’s a combination of my love for sociology, and my love for art. 

Anyway.

The other thing I really want to explore again is screenprinting - and I’ve approached Owen about how I can turn my screenprints into a zine by perfect binding them. The idea I have now is to collect self-portraits, make prints associated with each of them, and separate them with a transparency of a description of my gender. Then the whole thing turns into a chunky compendium of the people I’ve been. If it sounds self-indulgent, it’s because it is. But you know what? I’ve spent my whole life learning I wasn’t allowed to take up space - first it was because I was a girl, then because I was mixed race, then because I was gay, then because I was non-binary, then because I was foreign... I think it’s alright if I inhabit the entirety of an 81-page A5 zine.

Anyway. I think my next step is to collect those self-portraits, and start responding to them with illustrations.