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interact-if · 3 years

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Day 2 of the interviews! The lovely Yulisa, everyone :chinhands:!!

Yulisa, author of The Nexus Trials: Trial One

Religious Diversity Month Featured Author

It’s been years since you last stepped foot inside the Silver Nexus, a large kingdom with mile high walls surrounding the bustling cities inside; each metropolis filled with magic and intrigue hidden around every corner.

Once a place you called home, you’ve long since given up that security to travel the world as a wandering mercenary alongside your two companions– though soon an opportunity too good to refuse arises in the form of a mysterious though promising summons from the Silver Queen herself. Having asked for your company’s assistance specifically, you begin the long trek from the Bronze District, ignoring the vague details in favour of anticipating your big break.

Returning to your old homeland fills you with an almost heavy sense of nostalgia as you walk the brick road leading to the capital, hopes high knowing this job could change the lives of both you and your companions for the better. However, unease quickly sets in as you come to realise nothing could have ever prepared you for the trials that await…

The Nexus Trials Demo TBA | Read more [here]

Tags: sci-fi, fantasy, horror

(INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT UNDER THE CUT!)

Q1: Tell us a little bit about your project(s)!

The Nexus Trials is an entirely text based interactive story with two parts currently planned. For Trial One, the player takes on the role of a mercenary down on their luck. Having spent years wandering the expansive lands of the Outside, taking on whatever odd jobs you could find, you tossed your moral compass aside long ago for any potential of extra coin; having debated more than once resorting to selling the clothes on your back to avoid total bankruptcy.

Things begin to look up, however, when you receive a summons requesting the aid of you and your companions from the illustrious Silver Queen herself. The promise of prestige and security is one too good to resist; the offer a gateway to turning over a new leaf and starting fresh. Escaping the lingering shadow of your past never comes so easy though.

Q2: Why did you settle for interactive fiction? What drew you to this format?

I think, more than anything, what drew me to create interactive fiction was the freedom it allowed. The ability to go down these different paths and witness how the world around you changes depending on the choices you’ve made, whether it be for better or worse. Not having to worry about being bound to any specific, hardset canon is nothing short of exciting to experiment with, especially because even with my other non-IF stories I’m constantly entertaining the possibilities of the what ifs? even if they aren’t always plausible. I remember reading a lot of R.L. Stine growing up.

For the most part, I actually wasn’t the biggest fan of the regular Goosebumps, but the spin off series Give Yourself Goosebumps had always intrigued me. Being as young as I was at the time when I first discovered them, the concept of CYOA books was foreign to me and opened my eyes to a new way of storytelling. I loved getting to dictate the course that the story would take, even if the consequences of my actions didn’t always lead to the greatest outcome. In a lot of ways, the little catchphrase has stuck with me throughout writing TNT, even if it’s been years now since I last read any of the books. Reader beware… you choose the scare!

Q3: How have your identity and beliefs influenced your work?

Everything about who I am has left traces in my work, though truthfully it’s often unintentional. With TNT taking place in a fantasy setting, I’ve done my best to instead let the world take on an identity of its own; though I do admit to projecting onto a few characters in particular. Really, just about the only time I ever go out of my way to bring my own bias into what I write is for really petty things, like my hate for all and anything mint. I don’t understand how people are so obsessed with that burning sensation… but then again, I’m allergic, so I’m probably not the greatest person to trust on that front.

Q4: What aspects would you like to be more explored or represented in media regarding your religion?

The norm these days in more mainstream media is for characters apart of minority religions to mention what they follow in passing, never to be brought up again, in some sort of half-hearted attempt at religious diversity. If nothing else, I want there to be a sense of pride from those token Jewish characters, unashamed in their identity, without the typical pressuring to partake in religious practises not their own from other characters. It’s as good a starting point as any.

Q5: What are you most excited about sharing related to your project?

Would it be cliche to say I’m excited just to be able to share my project in general? I’ve never had the confidence to release any of my other works before, and truthfully me putting TNT out there publicly was poorly controlled impulse on my part; then suddenly, next thing I know, it basically blows up overnight and I’ve got hundreds of people excited for it despite a demo not even being out yet. It’s a level of confidence I never thought I could achieve. If I had to choose, I can’t wait for everyone to meet the characters. Will you find a family in them, or make lifelong enemies?

Q6: A tiny bit unrelated, but what’s your favourite religious holiday?

A bit predictable, maybe, but I love Hanukkah. I have a rather large family, to put it mildly, so our schedules rarely line up which means most holidays tend to pass us by without much thought; Hanukkah, though, is something we’ve always managed to make time for, even if it’s not a consistent celebration. I value the time we all get to spend together more than anything.

Q7: Any other thoughts or advice you’d like to give to fellow authors or readers?

To my fellow authors or aspiring authors, go your own pace. You’ll find what works best for you even if it might seem hopeless at times. Remember that you’re building up these worlds brick by brick with your own two hands, breathing life into these characters you’ve birthed from ink. That in itself is something to be proud of.

To the readers, your support means more than you could ever know. I can never thank you all enough for the encouragement you’ve given me in the times I’ve wanted to give up.

#if: events #religious diversity month #religiously diverse authors #religious diversity #interactive fiction #cyoa #choose your own adventure #choose your story

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miraculouscontent · 4 years

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Ask Explo--

...you know what, you’re right. Name change effective immediately.

Askplosion #10:

(unrelated to everything by the way but I DEMAND THE ANON WHO MENTIONED “REMARRIED EMPRESS” A WHILE BACK COME FORTH AND ANSWER FOR THEIR CRIMES. IT’S SO GOOD BUT IT’S UNFINISHED AND I’M HOOKED, HOW DARE YOU)

Asks responding to previous posts:

It’s okay! I figured that was what it was but it’s been so loooong.

Ah, wow.

Um, that’s definitely not a part 2; I think that’s more like a four-parter/five-parter or something.

Sorry! No can do!

That’s totally fair!

I think the reason I so quickly agreed with it is like--

I’ve been watching the Inuyasha sequel and it’s not like I don’t think the narrative’s apparent punching bag Moroha (who is fourteen years old) shouldn’t be punished when she does something wrong/sneaky/manipulative, but they punish her as if she’s Miroku (who was eighteen years old).

Basically, I want the punishment to take the age into account, or at least only affect Marinette on a more personal level and not be “Heart Hunter” where they take totally understandable feelings of heartache (remember, it wouldn’t have mattered which miraculous she took because Hawk Moth got the Miracle Box and Fu regardless; even beyond her emotions, I feel like she chose the best option available to her considering which temps she knew the location of) and then punish her for them by memory wiping Fu and taking away all of her temps and giving Hawk Moth the grimoire translation.

Yes!! I really wanted to respond to this one, thank you! (It’s this one and then there was another one talking about Luka and Adrien, then talked to me about how I refer to Luka as “soft” but not in a bad way; I unfortunately don’t remember the whole thing.)

Ahaha, and yeah, I feel you. Anti-salters are a very strange conundrum I still haven’t figured out; like, I get not liking salt, but...

I mean, when I don’t like certain content, I just blacklist it. If I end up seeing it anyway due to cross-tagging or a lack of tagging, then I just blacklist the person themself. You won’t see me going after people for that very reason; I only see what people send/ask me if it’s content I don’t like.

I’m glad you’ve found some peace in this blog! Hopefully it continues to be that way for you in the future!

(and yay, a fellow INTJ!!)

New Asks:

There are female writers? ;P I just assumed they were all locked in a closet until the male ones were like, “okay, pretend to help us here, we need one female writer to claim girl power.”

As for Ladybug all like, “Cute, isn’t she?” I think it was rhetorical (she could also be messing with him but “Glaciator” tells us that she didn’t know he crushed on her so who knows). The writers do this thing where Marinette is all panic-y and occasionally self-conscious as herself, but then as Ladybug, she suddenly gets a bit of an ego. I think it’s meant to be there in order to make Chat Noir look less... idk, “obnoxious” when he starts boosting his own ego; trying to balance the two by giving them both big heads, so to speak.

Honestly, I feel like Adrien needs less screen time. :|

Even when he’s not on-screen, characters are usually talking about him, or you see his face in Marinette’s room/somewhere in Paris. I’m become so jaded by the guy that I don’t even think it’d matter if they remade the series and gave it a “totally good and interesting Adrien.” That’s how badly the show has made him out for me; “Adrien Agreste” the character is just... sigh, I’m so done with him.

And yeah, this whole idea about, “Marinette is [x], we need more AAAAAADRIEN!” comes off really bad, lol, especially when Adrien has very little going for him.

(this ask ends off like there should be a part 2 but there isn’t one in my inbox, so sorry if there’s meant to be something else!)

The exact lyrics according to the wiki:

My wish for a cat who's in love, with our own Ladybug. Is that he'll get what he's always wanted! She doesn't know she loves him, only sees Adrien, But Christmas miracles always happen!

Yeah, especially nowadays, those lines bothers me. Not only does it imply “true selves,” but that it’s Chat who should be getting what he always wanted and Ladybug is the one with a problem.

Like, excuse me?

Probably Stormy Weather, even in the first episode. Ladybug and Chat Noir couldn’t even touch her until they arrived on top of the TV station.

+ With all those effects and shots, it made it feel more action-y than typical episodes.

Marinette, Aurore, Luka, Anarka, Jagged...

basically any name that I haven’t really heard before (”Luka” makes me think of Vocaloid but the Luka there was female), or a name that relates a lot to the character (like “Aurore” for “aurora” since she loves weather things).

dfjbghfkdgfdgnjfdg this anon really like, “I NEED ANSWERS!!!”

It’s as if these characters hit 18 or something and just grow overnight, I swear. I’m hypothetically fine with some more variety in character height (it’s not like the show tries to be realistic, after all), but maybe don’t give us official heights if they’re gonna be this weird/inaccurate.

Especially when they change it just for the sake of a shot anyway. If you watch “Simon Says” when Ladybug and Adrien stand next to each other while looking at the picture of Adrien’s mother, the very next close-up has an obvious difference in their heights from what you just saw.

They’re 3D models!!! This shouldn’t happen!

I... honestly never thought of the “less threatening” thing! Dang!

And yeah, Marinette isn’t helpless or incompetent, but because of the Adrien crush, it makes her that way at times since she’s always falling on him and--

...ugh, actually, yeah, don’t wanna think about those implications. Hard pass.

Gross.

I’m not familiar with that one, though Astruc deletes his tweets all the time (there was one tweet where he confirmed that Luka was poor and it only exists in screenshots now because it didn’t get archived and he deleted it almost like he realized that he was pointing out the blatant classism in the show, oops).

Yeah though, I haven’t seen anything like what you’re describing. Sorry!

It’s okay! Sorry for having you clarify but him choosing and Marinette deciding to never give it back are very different things.

I don’t recall Chat Noir having much purpose in the final fight (in terms of both contributing and actual fighting; I know Cataclysm broke the object to release the akuma but was it needed?) so Marinette might either go cat-less or get a temp. Plagg could also be helpful in his own right because he’s small and blends in with the night, so he could hypothetically sneak up on the bad guy.

Afterwards, there’d need to be a new cat, but Adrien would also have to reconsider his actions and really think about what happened. I could also see Plagg going to Adrien’s house, half to apologize for giving the idea to Adrien that Adrien leave without telling Ladybug, but also half to call him out for giving up without consulting anyone. Adrien is a lot of conflicting things (see Adrien’s passivity compared to Chat Noir’s recklessness) so he’d have to find a middle ground within himself.

Marinette might carry Plagg around in her purse for a while and let Plagg have a say in who he goes to. Plagg might grieve for a bit over not having Adrien around (even if Adrien was flawed, Plagg didn’t ask for any of this so Marinette is doing her best here).

O-oh.

That’s always the rough patch with “endgame ships.” Once it’s obvious to the audience that they’re endgame, no more effort needs to be put into them.

The other thing too is how Kagami, for example, is friends with Marinette. Even once Adrimi sinks, she’ll presumably stay friends with her. Luka, meanwhile, is Juleka’s brother.

They have lives outside of their love interests. Adrien is so into Ladybug that he doesn’t have that; I mean, Nino is Adrien’s best friend like once in a blue moon.

The entire class is just watching an episode and then calling on raised hands to answer what was wrong with what they just watched.

“Everything?”

“I mean, yes, but I’m sorry, you have to be more specific to get credit.”

I think Aeon herself is fine. It’s mostly just her transformed and that transformed name that I have a problem with (she doesn’t even look uncanny so I don’t get it). I heard there was something wrong with the name “Aeon” but searching the name doesn’t give me anything I would qualify as such so I have no idea. I just wish she was given a little less “I’m programmed to--” (makes her seem less sentient) and more “[anything that doesn’t have to do with pushing the love square]” because I feel like they might’ve done the latter to make her more “likable”? I think fans of anything usually like the “matchmaker” character provided it’s for a ship they like. Also strange that they make her a robot but Max and Markov don’t extensively interact with her, but that’s a nitpick and not a criticism of her character.

...I’m rambling, my bad lol.

(Ohhh, she was supposed to be a mummy? Like, foreshadowing her “dying”?? That went right over my head but I guess that’d be where the name Uncanny Valley came from? No clue.)

Best case scenario is probably the middle or the end of Season 4.

And yeah, it really doesn’t matter to me what they do with the love square. Marinette had gone through too much suffering and the show goes out of its way to show how much stress Marinette is being put under (and also keeping Luka away during episodes like “Gamer 2.0″ even when it makes sense for them to be there, as if trying to make sure Marinette doesn’t have enough moments with him to forget Adrien).

Like, ah, yes, I totally believe that Marinette is in a position where she can make reasonable decisions about her love life while all circles of her life are on fire.

If the Sonic movie of all things can have an interracial couple, there’s no reason why this show can’t, just saying.

And, even with Marinette, she’s white-passing (according to what basically everyone says, I’m really awful about recognizing race so this isn’t my field; I wasn’t aware that Ondine was Asian, for example).

Does Nadja count? Manon’s dark-skinned (I’m still not over the fact that all the kids in this show are dark-skinned; it’s not like it’s a problem from a representation standpoint - though all the kids are also all generically bratty/whiny so there’s that - but the percentages in this show are weird) while Nadja is really light-skinned, meaning either a dark-skinned husband or Manon is adopted.

Though I guess the problem then is that we don’t know, so there’s no established couple there.

Non-Miraculous Asks:

w-who gave you the right to say such things????

Uhhhh, that might be too broad of a question, I’m sorry!

I know this isn’t satisfactory, but I will say that my favorite genre is Fantasy/Romance (it’s why I adore Red Shoes so much; by the way, an anon asked for my opinion on that a while back and I will get to it! I’d need to watch it again to get screenshots) and my least favorite is probably Tragedy/Horror.

I don’t think I’ve watched enough to really be able to say? I’ve kind of been all over but I’ve never fully gone through any of them outside of Miraculous. I’ve seen bits of Sailor Moon, Tokyo Mew Mew, Star VS the Forces of Evil (don’t know if that counts), and I meant to watch Yuki Yuna is a Hero but never got around to it. I saw the entirety of Puella Magi Madoka Magica but you guys know how I feel about that one.

Maybe Cardcaptor Sakura by default then? It was definitely not perfect but I liked some of the character dynamics (I also have a clipcut of it - basically where I go through a series/movie and cut out parts I don’t like so it’s only good stuff - so I’m cheating a little) and the male love interest was a tsundere type that I actually ended up liking, which is really rare.

!!! That sounds sweet~ I know Sailor Moon is popular so I’ll definitely take your word for it on that one.

I would also accept a “reincarnated”/”destined lovers” trope if maybe the ship themselves are the one who set it up in the first place. I have a Lukanette AU, for example, where they basically got together and then prayed to the shrine of the renewal god that they’d “always be together,” which ended up allowing them to reincarnate over and over (as if they set up their own soulmate AU ;P) and continuously find each other.

Though I guess that’s not technically a “meant to be trope,” but still, it’s a form of it but where it was totally consensual on both sides.

Also, I finally thought of a show that ended with the ship I wanted: Gargoyles. I didn’t see the entire series, mind you, but I saw most of it and Goliath and Elisa were just... quality, I adored them.

+ With Beauty and the Beast being my favorite Disney movie, they fit right in with my tastes.

I forget that AangToph (I think the “official” name for the ship is Taang, but don’t quote me on that) exists sometimes, maybe because I’ve never shipped Aang with anyone; I’ve got no problems with the ship though.

Ugh, and this is what I mean when I talk about people who set up these reasons behind people shipping something based on what they saw a few people do. It’s like, “you only ship Adrimi/Lukanette to spite Adrienette!!”

Meanwhile, me having shipped all three at one point and then dropped off the love square.

Also, me shipping Zutara has nothing to do with it being dark/edgy because I’ve never seen it that way (intriguing, sure but dark and edgy? lol) and also avoid dark/edgy ships like the plague.

I still laugh at people who are like, “you can’t ship it because it’s not endgaaaaame!” as if shows can dictate how and why I enjoy something. Like sure, if you want to let a show/movie spoonfeed you how you’re supposed to feel, then by all means, go ahead.

I suppose people may be theoretically happier that way, but it doesn’t make for an analytic mind.

I legitimately thought that “AssClass” must’ve been the actual name for something until it registered with me what it actually meant.

And eh, I guess it depends on the comparison and how accurate the comparison actually is? Like, comparing Puella Magic Madoka Magica to Miraculous... they’re not really close at all, but comparing... idk, Bunnyx to Homura or the concept behind “backfiring wishes”... maybe?

(note that the rest of this post is more Puella Magi Madoka Magica salt so you can stop reading here if you’re not interested in that; I’m not sure if this is all the same anon but I don’t mind letting people vent so I let them go off~)

why can’t we just have nice things

I agree, and I give a little eyeroll every time it’s like, “oh, this person had [miraculous]”

+ even just in general, I feel weird about any show that mentions/implies that real world famous people are [x] or [y] in their show. It breaks my immersion; real world locations are one thing but when it’s specific people (unless they’re made up characters like Santa Claus) or games just--break me.

I also don’t know what to think when there aren’t magical boys but you have these magical girls in this frilly outfits/skirts. The demographic is girls so I presume the reason must be like, “you can look pretty and still beat people up” (;P) but having so many magical girl shows without a hint of a magical boy makes me suspicious that it’s for fanservice. Sailor Moon has Tuxedo Mask but I also don’t know what that guy did outside of the meme of him doing nothing so I’ve got no clue.

(edit: I should correct myself that I’m not talking about Sailor Moon specifically; I don’t know magical girls that well, though I do know there are ones clearly intended for fanservice (you could say that for anything, to be fair, but still). It’s just that I see things like super short skirts or very “questionable” shots and I’m just like, “hm”)

Hmmm, good question. I feel like there has to be a lot but I’m also the type who doesn’t watch a lot of TV lol. I’m just familiar with cliches and tropes and such.

The reason I try not to use “ism”s of any kind is mostly because it’s too broad. Like, you know how the English language only has one way of saying, “I love you,” but other languages like Spanish have multiple?

It’s like that, and sometimes I think it’s too easy to throw those words out there. A “small” (possibly completely unintentional/misunderstood) offense is sexism, and then a “large” offense is called the exact same thing. I’d rather go into why something is sexist than just call it that, y’know? The only exception I make is “classism” because I feel like that’s not as... I dunno, divisive?

Anyway, for that same reason, I can’t answer firmly that, “Madoka Magica is sexist.” I will however say that it makes me uncomfortable with how the show makes out the girls being emotional because they’re young and female and then proceeds to make their life a living hell before they’re old enough to properly answer to it (I know that’s the point but that kind of makes it worse?). It doesn’t help with how all the girls have different personalities, so it’s not like you have only “crybaby girls” who are being taken advantage of; it’s basically like... all girls.

Not helped is the fact that their soul gem not only deteriorates naturally, but it can also do so faster if the girl falls into despair, which then turns them into a monster (and I know it’s kind of like an akuma thing, but the fact that it’s only girls is... I dunno, it comes off wrong?). It seems cheap that the soul gem deteriorates no matter what so it constantly needs fed even if the girl is consistently happy.

I would probably opt for the show being centered more around Kyubey being new to this or something - like, magical girls are a new thing - and then have Kyubey being surprised because they presumed that the soul gem would deteriorate naturally since “emotions are powerful but destructive to the person having them,” but then all the girls team up and help each other work out their problems. Maybe the reason magical girls are usually alone isn’t even because of the grief seed (I think that’s what it’s called?) thing not being able to be shared, but because Kyubey intentionally separates magical girls so they can’t do what the main group is doing, but Madoka is so into the idea that, “We shouldn’t have to be alone,” and so she’s constantly pulling all the girls together, which keeps them healthy.

Maybe Homura’s backstory could be that Madoka originally was more sheepish and more afraid to put herself out there, especially since she was a magical girl (who are encouraged to go it alone), which is why their soul gems were both deteriorating; they were friends but kept more of a distance, or maybe they were a team but that’s all they were. Then Madoka gives Homura the last grief seed to save her and that’s what inspires Homura and makes her see Madoka as something more than a teammate, which is why Homura actively tries to save Madoka specifically (which then encourages Madoka to want to keep everyone together as friends).

In the case that Kyubey doesn’t separate them out of concern of fRiEnDsHiP, but for another reason altogether, and then it’s ultimately their own downfall when they allow the girls to hang out and realize that it’s doing a lot of good for them.

“cute and innocent”

That was exactly it. It’s on Kyubey’s trivia section on the Puella Magi Madoka Magica Wiki.

Before the anime's first dark plot twist aired, head writer Gen Urobuchi said on his Twitter account that the "Kyu" in Kyubey's name comes from the English word "cute". This was a lie meant to further mislead fans into thinking that Madoka Magica is an innocent happy show. In a later episode, it was revealed that "Kyubey" is, in fact, short for "incubator".

In my personal opinion, a spoiled plot can’t be “ruined” if it’s a good plot. If you told me that Kagome was trapped in the Modern era for three years and then decided to stay with Inuyasha at the end of Inuyasha, it wouldn’t/shouldn’t decrease the value when I finally see it for myself because it’s good. That’s not to say that everything should just be spoiled right out of the gate, but it’s saying that maybe your plot isn’t good if you have to rely on shock value to make it work??

I FEEL THAT “ASSIGNING IT TO THE WHOLE GENDER” THING SO BAD. It just adds to my “the girls all have varying personalities so it’s not like Kyubey’s only after emotional crybabies or anything” salt.

I have no idea about any of the stuff about the writers so I can’t confirm or deny them. I will very much agree on the target audience thing though, especially with the whole “keeping the dark plot a secret” because really? Who is this for then? Like, the first two and a half episodes are for one demographic and then the others are--???

I dunno. Me personally, I just like feel good stories. I do like some good conflict and drama (for context, Remarried Empress is basically a webtoon that gives you things to feel salty about and then makes its own salt fic as its plot, allowing for endless streams of feels and catharsis, so I’m definitely not against drama), but there are other times where I just want to feel good watching something.

I feel like the show expects the characters to be selfless/perfect and then punishes them even though it’s their writing that’s causing them to act out. I can’t really talking about “out-of-character” but sometimes it’s just obvious where “we did this because we needed a plot/conflict.”

Like, hello? We don’t need the main characters screwing up; why can’t we just have some feel good thing where they take the day for themselves (seriously, imagine a Miraculous episode where Chat Noir actually tells Ladybug to take a couple days for herself, like maybe someone else gets the earrings for a few days as a temp while Marinette gets to breathe; IMAGINE IT). Not everything needs to be high-stakes to be interesting and you need those calmer moments so that the action-packed ones feel more intense.

SAYAKA DESERVES BETTER.

I feel like the magical girl genre as a whole can be way more complex than it’s made out to be. I think people hear the word “magical girl” and think “cute girls in short skirts talk about girl problems and fight evil with the power of friendship and accessories.”

Ugh, just the mention of Rebellion makes me sigh internally.

Congrats on working on your own magical girl story! I hope it goes well for you!

I know it’s not technically a magical girl show, but there was also Totally Spies that Astruc worked on to some degree (I think there was some characters who were based on/a loose reference to the mains from that show but I don’t remember exactly).

The thing about the female characters suffering is that they could make for good lessons on positively directing one’s emotions (like Usagi from Sailor Moon, for example, maybe having a problem with taking her anger out on her friends, but learns that she can save that rage for the bad guys; “Gamer 2.0″ from Miraculous could’ve done that, honestly, by having Ladybug absolutely WRECK all of her gaming opponents in “violent” (cartoon violence obviously) fashion). It’s just a shame that it’s not taken advantage of.

Sayaka??? Selfish???????

*does not compute*

(Also, I wasn’t tired of them, don’t worry! It was a little overwhelming in my inbox but it’s me who’s allowing all the asks to flow in so the blame isn’t on you lol.)

I’m not sure where this obsession came from with, “you have to be selfless and you’re not allowed to use your powers for yourself.” It’s like the world’s going to end if a character leaves to go Self-Care or something. I think what happened is that shows got this idea that promoting only the giving of others is great and it’s not important to take time for yourself (even with “Gamer 2.0,” it was still Marinette playing games with everyone else, and they treated her dedication and seriousness like a bad thing when she literally did not have time to waste and they didn’t give a reason why it was good for her to take a break, only that she should).

This usually leads to the “demonization” of characters who sport a lot of self-confidence or any sort of ego. It works on both sides; Marinette is a punching bag because of her anxiety and occasional lack of confidence, but if she had an ego as Ladybug, there are parts of the fandom who deem her “obnoxious” (i.e: “Reflekdoll”). There’s a delicate balance between “be confident” and “be humble” and it’s a tightrope act.

#((Yes! This strategy works for not losing asks.))#((In other news--))#((I gotta test out this new microphone so I wanna do a ''Voiced Askplosion'' where I record my answers instead of writing them))#((Anyone who sends me a 🎤 alongside their asks will get a voiced response next time!))#((I probably can't answer everything but you know how it is~))#(((i swear that someone is going to do it just to see if they can get me to swear when I read out their asks)))#((or... like--))#((''ok i don't actually have a question''))#((''but plz say the words 'adrien and marinette are meant to be' because i want to hear how much u struggle to say it''))#category: salt #other: non ml talk #category: ramble #character: Marinette Dupain Cheng #category: fandom #episode: Evillustrator #character: Chat Noir #character: Ladybug #character: Adrien Agreste #character: Stormy Weather #category: me myself and i #category: staff #relationship: Adrien Agreste & Marinette Dupain Cheng #character: Aeon #character: Uncanny Valley #relationship: love square #MC's Renders #render: persona

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bigfan-fanfic · 5 years

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Grain Brain (Son of Demeter!Reader Headcanons)

Requested by @acoustickitten - another incredible requester - for a Son of Demeter with the relationship at my discretion.

Thanks for this one, I feel like there’s so little PJO reader-insert content for males! Anyway, I couldn’t decide, so the first part will be what life is like for a son of Demeter, and the second part will be the relationships, with Luke Castellan (for angst lovers), Will Solace (for the fluffy ones), and Percy Jackson (for a mixed bag). Hope you enjoy!

So, you’re a half-blood.

Children of Demeter are often have it the worst: theoretically, they are the only demigod grandchildren of Kronos hopping along out there: Hestia is an eternal maiden. Hera doesn’t cheat. The Big Three has only had a few slip-ups since their big oath after WWII. Demeter’s the only child of Rhea out there still... producing demigod children.

And your cabin might be the most ridiculed after Aphrodite and Dionysus in terms of combat usefulness.

The general insult for a Demeter kid is Grain Brain. Grain is such a rhymeable word that Cabin Four has been the result of many a scathing limerick from the Apollo Cabin.

But in the future, all those people will look at you as the counterexample.

Sure, Athena and Ares may have superiority in battle tactics and strength. Hermes might be sneaky and crafty and wordy. Apollo might have a huge number of seemingly-unrelated skills. Hephestus might have craftsmanship.

But you have... agriculture?

Woe betide anyone who underestimates the power of Demeter. Like Dionysus’ children, Cabin Four kids may develop some level of control over plants, specifically, anything cultivated.

The dryads are okay with you, but the dryads connected to fruit-bearing trees practically worship you, calling you my lord.

And especially powerful children of Demeter have some minor weather control ability. Demeter once stopped the entire world from getting any weather but scorching sun to hold it hostage for her daughter to be returned. Her children can access this power too.

Make a powerful child of Demeter angry? Clouds part, and the sun heats up like a thousand degrees, as concentrated rays of heat bake the opponent. It can even cross Camp Half-Blood’s magical weather shield.

Another thing Demeter kids have power over is food.

A Demeter kid can curse someone else with excessive hunger, or bless someone to be able to go without food indefinitely. They can also make anything taste like anything else.

They are also often enlisted, along with the Dionysus kids, to help boost the strawberry harvest.

The berries go crazy for Hilary Duff, but early Justin Bieber and Cheetah Girls makes them bananas. So you have to choose the lesser of all evils, because these songs do NOT sound good from a satyr’s pipes.

I feel like a Demeter kid shares some healing with Apollo kids, but can only mainly heal exhaustion, dehydration, anything relating to malnourishment.

Demeter kids can eat whatever they want.

Demeter Chrysaoros was the Lady of the Golden Sword, so don’t tell me Demeter kids can’t fight just as well as anyone else. Demeter’s sword was also made out of part of Kronos’ scythe, so she is powerful.

You are the most powerful son of Demeter in thousands of years. You might be the most powerful child of Demeter since Persephone.

You are the head counselor of Cabin Four, and you make sure everyone is hale and hearty.

Luke Castellan

Luke recognizes your power when he gets to Camp Half-Blood

And it strikes him as unfair that you might be just as powerful as Thalia, but since you weren’t a Big Three kid, you had to make your own way to camp - no seekers out looking for you.

So he and Annabeth adopt you into their little family.

Luke realizes he has fallen for you when he sees how much little Annabeth has taken a shine to you.

He’s known you for about a year when he sneaks out of Hermes cabin with a couple of smuggled Cokes and a Disney movie on cassette.

He asks you to sneak with him into the Big House. You watch the movie in the room usually reserved for the orientation video.

Your head leans on his shoulder because you are tired - it’s the middle of the night.

“Hey, uh, Y/N...”

“Mmm?”

“I really like - uh, this movie.” He can’t do it. He’s almost crying with frustration when he feels you kiss him on the cheek.

“I think I might love this movie.” You say hopefully.

Mr. D doesn’t sleep, and he’s right behind you. Shockingly, he doesn’t turn you both into dolphins, but instead ropes you into a late-night pinochle game with Chiron, who’s tail is in curlers for some reason.

It’s both the happiest and most embarrassing night in your life.

But from then on, you two are the “it” couple at camp.

You two become slightly distant after Luke’s quest, but you think it’s because he’s insecure over his new scar. There’s something missing when you two do seem to regain that lost ground.

When Percy comes to camp and beats Luke in a training duel, you congratulate him and boost his ego, telling him that everybody always ridiculed Demeter kids for not having any good talents, and that he can be good at whatever he chooses.

You are devastated when Luke betrays the gods.

He begs you to join him, but you refuse.

He kidnaps you aboard the Princess Andromeda, but you are rescued by Percy, Annabeth, and Tyson.

It was when you realized Luke was too far gone.

At the Battle of the Empire State Building, you yourself take on Kronos with all the might of your godly parent.

It’s not enough, and you are almost killed.

Luke takes back control for an instant, allowing you the chance to escape

Annabeth and you give the final blow together.

The last thing Luke sees is you.

And you know you will never meet again, not even in death, because Luke was always a pusher, and he’ll reincarnate to get to the Isles of the Blest.

Eventually you age out of Camp Half-Blood and travel the world, searching, hoping you can find happiness once more...

Will Solace

You two are the medicine couple

Feeling bad? Feeling blue? Visit Y/N and Will - odds are one of them will solve your problem.

You hang out with Will in the infirmary, handing out magical crackers that assist with healing.

During the Battle of the Labyrinth, your powers truly blossomed - you granted power to all the fruit-bearing dryads, allowing their trees to come to life and attack the opposing army. Will thought that was so cool - he brags about it every chance he gets.

You and Grover seal Hyperion into the tree during the Battle of the Empire State Building.

You and Will met during archery practice, because as an Apollo kid, he was booked to teach.

Among your numerous talents, archery is not.

You accidentally shoot him.

Although, the way you shot him was worthy of an Apollo kid - the arrow ricocheted off of like, thirteen different things before striking Will.

Not a good idea to have the best healer teach archery

But anyway, you felt so bad that you practically carried him to the Big House

And cried because you never wanted to hurt anyone

Especially not anyone as hot as Will

“Wait, what?”

“Oops.”

“Well, I think you might have to check for another wound.”

“What? Really?”

“Yup. I think you struck my heart with your arrow.”

They change the rule so that no two demigods from different cabins can be alone together because of you two.

You resolve this by camping in the woods overnight - the dryads have got your back.

Although a lot of them will try to steal Will from you, so I guess everything has its ups and downs.

Percy Jackson

At first, you were so annoyed by this sarcastic ball of insecurity.

He comes in here, insulting your godly heritage, making a mockery of all these camp activities, and then he met you

And his jaw drops open.

“Wow. Uh... who’s your godly parent?” he asks, almost in awe

“Demeter.”

He snickers. “The farming goddess?”

Yeah, that was pretty much one of the worst first impressions he could have made.

But he grew on you after a while.

And you... he was gone from the moment you saw he had blue Coke and changed yours to match.

He takes you to meet his mom as soon as possible

And she automatically knows he’s in love because Sally Jackson always knows.

She approves because she sees how much you love him back.

The two of you just started being together one day - neither of you can really pinpoint an exact moment.

Just, somehow, you two held hands and it felt right, so you kept doing it.

And just like that, you were a couple.

Aphrodite once promised to make Percy’s love life interesting.

Well, it doesn’t get much more interesting than you.

#male reader #pjo x male reader #percy jackson x male reader #pjo headcanons #luke castellan x male reader #will solace x male reader #headcanons

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correresmidestinoweb-blog · 5 years

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How to Write a Paper in One Night

Being in college is a chore. It takes a lot of work, carefully planned over the course of a week, or a month, or a quarter to make sure everything gets done with the full attention it deserves….are you laughing yet? No one puts in the time "required" to properly complete their college work. No, rather it's a rush at the end every week or two to complete a 10 page paper or learn 200 years of ancient Roman history overnight. You all do it, I did it. It's probably a better training skill than all the random stuff you "learn", because honestly in real life do you think you'll have the time to sit and schedule everything that pops into your life ahead of time. Yeah…thought not.

Anyways, for those of you just entering college from the snore inducing boredom and ease of High School, you're probably incredibly unprepared for the shear amount of work you'll have to pull out in the last second. I'm not saying it's easy just because you'll procrastinate. No, it's still hard. You really should take the time to do your work properly. You just won't, and so you need to learn how to procrastinate. It's a fine art, in which I feel I've become something of a Renoir.

First off, make sure you've got all your books and notes. If you don't go to class, which is entirely likely for those of the procrastinating ilk, make sure you get them from a classmate. Also, double check and make sure your professor doesn't have a website. They'll usually tell you, but more than once I've found a class's notes sitting in an archive online, especially now that 90% of them put everything they teach you into PowerPoint presentations and then just read it to you for an hour every day (yeah, lazy). It's usually only an extra 30 seconds out of their day to put the stuff online, and then when they receive twenty plus emails a week asking for the lecture notes, they only have to point you to the website. Well, some are a bit more facetious about their pupils not even bothering to come to class and don't openly offer said notes. However, for sick students and whatnot, they'll put them online to save paper and all it takes is a couple of quick Google searches or an email to a sick student and you've got your notes. Or…just ask a classmate. But then you're relying on them actually paying attention.

You should have your books too. If you never bothered buying them because you would just take notes or go to sparknotes, then you'd better go buy them, because BSing your way through a paper is going to take at least some resources. You can't magically ascertain the information from just being near smarter people. School would be much easier if that were the case.

So, sit down and start reading. Yup, you're going to be reading a lot the night before your work is due. But, this is better than doing all the assigned reading, because now you're searching for specific information. Instead of general learning (which would only stick around and clutter up your brain later) you're doing targeted research. An eighth the time, and none of that pesky remembering it. You should have your topic at least. If not, start surfing message boards and snag one from someone smarter than you. Don't ever take their work though. The last thing you need is to get kicked out of school for plagiarism. It's lazy and embarrassing. Steal concepts, but never words. And if you steal a concept from the middle of their work, cite them. Your university will not take kindly to cheating. You'll be so red taped and black listed, you might as well go and get an application at Jack in the Box, and trust me you don't want to work in fast food.

You can't procrastinate now. You've done that for three weeks, so I'm sorry (I know it hurts), but in terms of actual physical writing time, you'll need at least three hours to type your paper, which speaks nothing of writing it. And writing it involves finding quotations and that ever so pesky chore of thinking. Sit down, grab an energy drink and a bag of chips, close your door and put some headphones on. No television, and put your phone on the charger. Now open up the word processor and just start typing.

You probably think you have writer's block. But, writer's block is completely unrelated to having absolutely no idea what you're talking about. You're stuck with the second one right now, so just keep on reading on your topic and finding bits and pieces to put together.

The thing here that most people don't realize is that the standard writing process isn't in effect for you. You're not drafting, or brainstorming. That's the stuff you should have done two weeks ago. No, you're writing your paper, so make sure you've got your idea and just start writing and keep writing until you create a thesis somehow.

I usually start as broad as possible, and just start talking about something. If I'm writing about the Hero Quest of Pip in Great Expectations, I start by talking about Greek Mythology and the origin of the classical hero. Working my way down, I'll talk about the modern hero, then about the alterations made in the industrial age, and how Dickens rewrote archetypes for his comedy, and finally start talking about Pip. By now you should have a general idea about what you want to say. It might be general but you'll clarify in your next few paragraphs, and then come back and rewrite the first paragraph.

Paragraph one is almost always trash. Especially with this method, because your weary, angered professor after reading 30 of these lovely last minute essays will put a big red X through anything that doesn't have to do with your paper, and those first few grasping sentences are completely unrelated. But now you can start stealing from the text. Snag a quote and make a point. Snag another quote and make another point. If your thesis ends up as something incredibly broad and useless like "Pip's quest from anonymity and worthlessness into a position of wealth and power in London mirrors the classical hero quests, but works through Dickensian views of industrial England" you're still good. It sounds intelligent and has a lot of promise. Now just find specific quotes and build a narrative. Start at the beginning of his change, talk about his childhood, then go to when he changes, then compare to the Hero quests of old, then show how they're different.

Almost any paper, if written quickly can boil down to something simple and incredibly easy to write, a compare and contrast paper. You choose a prominent theme from the book you just "read". Find a source that mirrors or better yet foils this theme and compare the two. Don't just list how they're different though. That's high school stuff right there. You'll want to write exactly how the outside source changes what you think of your book. It sounds hard but jus think about it. You've got Great Expectations. It has a main character who goes on a kind of quest. Now you have a classic archetype of which there are hundreds of sources to draw on. You take a basic outline of this archetype and apply it to Pip's quest and how he fits it, and when he doesn't fit it. Now you finish your paper by describing why he doesn't fit it sometimes. Which gets you back to the Dickensian views part. You've just pretty much written a paper that says, Pip's quest is classic but different because Dickens was writing about a different time in human history. Incredibly simple; you're not telling anyone anything new, but three things will guarantee a good grade.

If you write well at all. You've got to be a halfway decent writer, which if you're in college I'll assume you are.

Professors love outside references. It shows initiative and research and makes it seem like you did extra work (which you didn't). I've written papers overnight without drafts and without ever reading them back to myself and received comments that I must have spent hours working on it. Not quite.

Confidence in your assertions. Say everything with absolute certainty, and back it up with a quote. Do this enough and even if you're wrong, it'll seem like you've made a decent point, which gets you brownie points.

Writing a paper is a tumultuous task but it's also a scalable task that can be made incredibly quick and easy if you know how. My second to last quarter of college, I wrote three order thesis papers in two days; two of them 10 pages, and one 25 pages, and received a 3.8, and two 3.7s. It's a matter of confidence and above all else an unmitigated fearlessness to be incredibly lazy.

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technicolorfamiliar · 6 years

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Global Spirit Tour: 2017 - 2018

Prologue:

Something weird happened early in 2017.

I was looking for a song to lip synch to. In drag.

This was for a one-off performance with the improv group I was part of at the time. We had a string of a few LGBTQ events, and drag lip synchs were becoming a regular part of our season. I needed a song, and I needed to pick something I knew no one else in the group would choose. As someone who is secretly very competitive (and someone who knows I perform on stage better as a man anyway), finding the perfect song and perfect character to fit the song was stressing me out. So I turned to my beloved 80's New Wave station on Pandora for inspiration.

Eventually, the inspiration I desperately needed presented itself (this is the Weird Thing). It was, of all things, Depeche Mode's "Stories of Old" from Some Great Reward, a song I knew and loved deeply as a teenager but hadn't actually heard or really listened to in years. And with the inspiration from the song came the core inspiration for my character. Suddenly, everything locked into place - the look, the hair, the clothes, the physicality (read: how provocative I could get away with being at what was technically a family friendly event). And with that perfect vision for my character, all thing things I loved about Depeche Mode when I was in high school came flooding back to me. Wave after wave of nostalgia, the kind that makes you realize, "this is why I am the way I am."

And so I was forcibly dragged back into all things Depeche Mode by one song, one incredibly underrated song stuck somewhere in the middle of what isn't even my favorite DM album.

(I ended up using a different song by a different band for the drag improv thing, at the directors' request, they thought something more well-known would be more appropriate, and at the time I agreed. But my character mood board was still very much focused on DM in the mid-80s.)

Funnily enough, at that same time, DM were about to release a new album and announce dates for their Global Spirit Tour. So the timing on my part worked out perfectly. I have a habit of rediscovering the music I loved in high school just as a bunch of new content is about to hit the internet (one day I'll write about how Danny Elfman and Oingo Boingo saved my life more than once).

For a little background, when I say I loved DM in high school, I mean that's when I first heard of them. I didn't grow up on Depeche Mode, as my parents - who were my major source of music recs until I was 15 - absolutely hated anything that had to do with 1980s synthpop, post-punk, or any other new wave music. But someone much older and much cooler than me gave me a mix tape with "In Your Room" on it and I was intrigued. That wasn't the DM song that sealed my fate as a fan. That was 100% "Never Let Me Down Again", but a nudge in the right direction was all I needed, and for that honest to god actual mix tape cassette, I am eternally grateful.

I was a teenager during the era of Playing The Angel, and I was lucky enough to see them on that tour with my best friend at the time. The tickets were my high school graduation present. Our seats were at the very back of what used to be the Nissan Pavilion in VA. I hardly remember anything about the show itself, and any pictures I must have taken on my old pocket digital camera are sadly lost.

Washington, DC:

It was 2017 before I managed to see another DM tour. For whatever reason, whether it was my busy work schedule, being broke, or waiting until shows were already sold out to look for tickets, I missed both the Sounds of the Universe and Delta Machine tours. So when the Spirit tour was announced, I was poised and ready to make what some people might consider irrational financial choices in order to see three separate shows between September 2017 and June 2018.

The lead-up to the September 7th show in DC was a lot of fun. I was going with my two close friends, so we enjoyed some additional bonding as we eagerly anticipated the show together. This was the only gig on the tour I saw with people I knew, and I have nothing against going to concerts by myself -- and sometimes traveling great distances to do so. But getting to share the excitement leading up to the actual day and at the event itself with two of my very good friends was really special. I'm really glad I got to share that experience with them, and have their positive, enthusiastic energy to draw on.

This is the part of the post where I go on a brief tangent about superfan elitism, bear with me: The hardcore DM fans would say, "Three shows? That's nothing." And I would say they're right, but that doesn’t make me any less of a fan. I could have gone to more shows, probably, but my bank account, my job security, and my sanity required that three be the maximum amount of shows I got to see on this specific tour. There are numerous ways a person can express their love of a band, a tv show, a piece of immersive theatre, or whatever. The level of insane superfan I am or am not does not mean that their music is any less important to me as an artist and as person. HOWEVER, the people who I encountered at these three DM shows who were on their phones the entire concert, people who had better seats than me who sat down completely unengaged the whole time, and the people making disrespectful and unrelated comments about the audience and the band themselves can go fuck themselves. That negative, attention seeking, distracting bullshit has no place down in the floor seats in front of the stage, they can go be terrible up in the mezzanine levels.

Which is exactly where my first show was spent.

Second or third tier seats for big arena shows are 1000% not worth whatever money you spend on them. They're too far away, and you're surrounded by people who act like they've never heard of the band they paid actual money to see. The only reason my friends and I were up there in the first place was because of how absurd the US ticket queueing system was for the first North American leg of the GST. I, like many others, have a lot of issues with how that was handled and am glad they scrapped it for the second round of US shows.

I'm glad I had my two friends with me at the DC show, though. The three of us were maybe the only people having a genuinely fun time in our section. This first show for me was the only one where I cried. I wasn't expecting to, but hearing and seeing Martin sing "Home" struck something in me. And then "Heroes". I knew it was coming, but it still managed to really resonate on a deep emotional level. I love David Bowie as much as they do, but knowing that "Heroes" was how Dave was initially asked to be in the band, and my own personal feelings and connections to Bowie, hearing Dave sing it as well as he did was everything in that moment.

I have a number of issues with that show in DC, but none of them have anything to do with DM or the show itself. They played more songs from Spirit at this show than at any of the others I attended, but there was also "Corrupt" and "Wrong", "A Question of Lust" and "Somebody". It was also the longest set list of out of the three shows, with 22 songs total, which is rare for them, from what I understand, because of how intense their live shows are, especially for Dave (which I got to experience more closely at the other two shows). His presence on stage radiates to the rafters of huge venues like the Capital One Arena -- but more about Dave in a minute. I can talk about how good they sounded in DC, and how much hearing those songs live meant to me on that night during that time in my life, how I felt the synths and bass and percussion in my bone marrow and in my soul, but I can't really talk about the all-consuming, sweaty frenzy of experiencing a show like theirs from the floor. For that, I need to talk about Berlin and Philadelphia.

Berlin:

So DM announced more dates in Europe. And, because I'm insane I guess, was online at some ungodly hour when tickets went on sale for the two shows in Berlin, Germany in January. I was able to get an early entry ticket for the January 19th show in BERLIN where I would be surrounded by other people who were actually genuinely excited to be there, which would be a huge improvement after the lackluster crowds in DC.

Am I glad I did it? Yes. Would I do it exactly the same way ever again? Probably not. Because queueing overnight outside the arena was worth it for the concert experience itself, but it's not necessarily something I need to do again any time soon. I'm a weak, American fan, and I own that. The German DM fans go so fucking hard and I am absolutely terrified of them.

Somehow, I managed to get a spot on the barrier without any pushing or shoving. I wound up in the pocket where the main stage becomes turns into the catwalk, right in front of where Andy Fletcher has his set-up. On either side of me were two other women who also were there by themselves. They were nice enough to talk to me and keep me company while we waited.

The show, though.

My consciousness went… somewhere else. I can’t really compare the feeling to anything else I've experienced. I've been to some other really singularly wonderful concerts, to see bands and musicians that I have deep emotional ties to, but none of them have been like this. It's the combination of being part of the masses down on the floor, on the barrier, exhausted and sweating and euphoric, with the power and intensity of hearing and seeing Depeche Mode perform live. I was hyper-aware of everything happening in front of me. Time did something strange, it crawled by so slowly and yet it was over before I could register what happened. I was an outsider there, but I felt like I was part of this massive collective, all connected by our desire to be there, our love of the music, united for a few hours, and I was so aware that everything that was happening on stage and around us was happening to eary one of the people in that arena at once.

The sound of the ignition at the beginning of "Stripped" reverberating in your rib cage, the driving, head-banging riffs in "I Feel You," the cosmic outro of "Cover Me," the field of wheat arm-waving during "Never Let Me Down Again" -- having it all happen to you, at that volume, at that frequency and intensity, is like having your soul yanked from your body and cast into decadent oblivion.

Honestly, it was a blur. But as far as I can remember, highlights included:

The additional songs from Ultra! Unexpected, but very much appreciated.

Experiencing Andy Fletcher's ridiculous awkward dad dancing up close and in person. There's a lot of hype about Fletch's moves, but let me tell you, they exceed any expectation.

Martin. Martin sang "Sister of Night" AND "Judas". I was overcome. People talk about singers sounding like an angel, but Martin L. Gore is the only person in the history of music that saying actually applies to in full.

And Dave. If he was anything like he was at this show when they were at the DC show, I missed the fuck out. Because yes, he performs to the whole arena, even to the people in the very back, but it's altogether something else to watch someone that animated up close. He's tapping into some energy and fire to fuel his work that I've only rarely seen in other artists. Dave Gahan never phones it in, he always performs like he's got jet fuel for blood and like every show really means something. He is outrageous on stage, in every sense of the word. He is endlessly inspiring, and deserves so much recognition and respect.

Philadelphia:

That said… to me, it seemed like the band as a whole was having way more fun at the Philly show than they did in Berlin. I can't put my finger on the specific differences, but they seemed lighter, more pleased with their work, and maybe genuinely surprised at the warmth of their audience in Philly. Martin smiled a lot more at the Philadelphia show, and Dave seemed looser, maybe less tired after a double in Germany.

The Philly gig on June 3rd was the best, by far, out of the three. The second US leg of the GST was announced and I, of course, being the way that I am, thought, "FUCK IT WHY NOT" and magically got a floor seat ticket right in front of Martin's side of the stage after the general tickets went on sale. And it was worth every penny and a short train ride from Baltimore.

I met a few more very nice people, a couple from Florida (whose first show had been cancelled due to the major hurricane last year) and a solo lady sitting behind me who let me join their conversation. And the man sitting to my left was British? European? So he also knew all the things the audience is supposed to do during specific songs that I learned when I was in Berlin. There were definitely some bastard people in the crowd, even down on the floor, terrible people who clearly weren't enjoying themselves, but the high energy of everyone else made it easy to shift focus to the band.

The set list was very similar to the one I heard in Germany, with the exception of two of Martin's songs from Music For The Masses and "A Question of Time" right before their closer -- "Personal Jesus." But again, the performances and mood behind most of the songs at the Philly show seemed lighter, more playful and mischievous (on Dave's part). And the time really flew by. I missed "I Feel You" in the set list, but that's a very minor criticism of what was, over all, a miraculous third show out of three very powerful concerts.

Epilogue:

The general consensus among fans is that this may have been the last big tour Depeche Mode have. They may keep recording together and separately, but another tour on this massive scale is unlikely. If that's the case, I'm so glad I found a way to see three very different shows on the Global Spirit Tour. I can’t imagine experiencing the same exact feeling these shows gave me; I certainly didn't feel the same at David Byrne's awesome American Utopia tour show this summer, and I don't expect the feel the same when I see Nick Cave in October.

Depeche Mode, especially now, at this stage in their careers, during this time in American and world history, and for me personally at this specific point in my life as I age out of my 20s, have been a source of sanity and compassion, of deep feeling and social commentary. Their music touches maybe the parts of myself I'm too scared to look at head on. After going through some of the things that have happened to me as an adult, and as I figure out the kind of person I want to be in the coming decade, obviously there are certain themes resonate with me more than they did when I first discovered DM as a teen. I am grateful to have had circumstances happen the way they did to lead me back to Depeche Mode, to delve deep into their music and history.

Those three shows changed the my standards for seeing live music. After being front row for the Berlin concert, how could I ever go back to being content sitting up in the second or third tier for any arena show? I've been spoiled.

And after a few months have passed, when I think about my experiences over the course of the Global Spirit Tour, it doesn't quite feel real. There are a few other concerts I've been to where when I think about it, I think, "Did that actually happen??" (Namely seeing Danny Elfman in Los Angeles on Halloween, 2014. Absolutely bonkers.) Seeing DM in Berlin is definitely one of those moments already, not even a year later.

I look forward to the future of their music. If Depeche Mode tour again, and that's a big if, the furthest I would travel to see them is maybe the UK, but hopefully that won’t be necessary! However, I absolutely would go see a solo show, if Martin or Dave ever had shows anywhere even remotely close by. I would absolutely travel to New York or LA to see a solo Martin show or Dave with Soulsavers. From what I can tell those venues are usually smaller, so it would be easier to have a more enjoyable, intimate experience.

But that's all there is. Nothing more than you can feel now, that's all there is.

Until next time.

Photo by me, Jan 19, 2018

#depeche mode #global spirit tour #live music #long post

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webgeekist · 7 years

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Holiday Karma Pie

I paid for someone’s groceries today.

I didn’t do it for the karma. I didn’t even do it for the charity. I did it because the lady in front of me was having technical issues, and the less-than-$30 bill was worth sparing my sanity and getting out of that line. I played it off as a Christmas thing, asked the lady to pay it forward, and assured her that, yes, I was serious when I said it was no big deal. It wasn’t. I was happy to pay to get out of there.

I have a habit of picking the worst grocery lines. I thought, for a while, it was just this new place I’m in, but then I went home for Thanksgiving and went through 20 minutes of hell waiting for the family in front of me to finish arguing with the cashier about the $20 in savings they weren’t getting because their coupons weren’t scanning, or whatever other nonsense was preventing them from scanning an entire conveyor belt full of items, $200 and two carts into the bill. We moved to another line, finally, when one seemed available nearby. When we left with our own hefty bill in the cart, they were still there, slowly scanning the rest of their items.

I am also the person who will pick up the one item out of 100 without a bar code, and take three of them to the checkout lane.

It’s funny, this idea that you can buy karma with good deeds, as if your motivations don’t count. I’ve seen The Good Place. I know better than that. My motivation today was entirely self-serving, as is most charity in this country. We overwhelmingly donate our time or our money because it makes us feel better about ourselves, not because we genuinely care about giving. We’re scared into doing the “right thing” by a book that has been mistranslated and misinterpreted for centuries, and somehow have this warped idea that doing the right thing will buy us grace. Good Karma. A spot in heaven. Optimal reincarnation. At the end, there’s always something in it for us.

I’m no better than others in that regard. I do good deeds infrequently, and when I do, it’s almost always born of convenience. “Would you like to pay an extra 63 cents to round up your bill and donate to the Children’s hospital?” Sure. “Would you like to donate a dollar to aid in wildfire relief for Sonoma County?” Whatever. “Give a dollar to homeless pets?” Okay. “Save free information!” Click.

The result is positive for the recipient. That doesn’t make the motive for donation genuine.

And it doesn’t make the universe less likely to balance out your good luck with misfortune.

I think about that a lot. I’m always grateful for the positive experiences in my life, but I’m hyper aware of the fact that they often come at a premium. There’s a trade owed the universe, and you will pay it in painful ways. Maybe it’s a hard lesson you need to learn after you land your dream job. Maybe it’s illness, recovery, and loss after you find a few years of companionship. Maybe it’s your family turning their back on you a month before your wedding to the love of your life. And oh, by the way, she’s a girl and you are, too.

I’ve enjoyed two years with my fiancée. I marry her in 23 days. How many of my family will actually show up? At this point, I’m not sure.

I took a job in the Bay Area in July. It wasn’t so sudden that my fiancée didn’t have input. She absolutely did, and though we didn’t expect to be able to afford Northern California, we’re happy we could make this work. Or, at least, that we will make this work after June, which is when her teacher’s contract runs out in Texas. I’ve raked up so many frequent flyer miles, going back and forth every spare moment, and in the airspace between SFO and DAL, I’ve uncovered an anxiety I never expected to have: a fear of flying.

I have flown a Cessna. I have logged hours in a genuine full-scale 737-700 simulator. My dad was a professional pilot at one point in his life, my uncle still is, and all his kids can fly. My grandfather flew for the Thunderbirds. My brother is on his way to being a commercial pilot. I am not afraid of planes.

I started crying and choking before walking through security. I panicked when I booked tickets. If not for some of them being booked immediately after I got the job, I would not have gotten on a plane after September, but I’ve been on five trips since, fifteen total, and for most of them the what-ifs and potential loss has consumed me to the point of paralysis. Every bump and adjustment on takeoff freaks me the fuck out. The changing sounds of the engines at different altitudes and powers freaks me the fuck out. It’s taken every moment of every one of those harrowing trips to learn how to manage the anxiety, to rationalize the noises I hear from the engines, to normalize the dips and turns out of each Bay Area airport, but come Thanksgiving, when I climbed on a plane for the first long break I’d gotten at the new company, when I was so over the project I was working on that I was relieved to be standing at another fucking gate and boarding another fucking plane, all the stress management techniques I’d gathered in my anxiety did nothing to stop me from experiencing sheer terror flying out of SJC, meeting some bumpy air, banking to head south down the coast to catch a connecting flight out of LAX and bouncing around in the turn. I landed at SAT five hours later, cried in relief when the plane touched down (I always do, and I thank the plane for getting me there. That plane’s name was Tank. I gave it that name.), and stumbled into the terminal as fast as my eighth row seat would allow.

And then, I went to my family’s Thanksgiving.

I should precede this with the statement that the nine days my fiancée and I spent at my mom’s house started fairly early on with some culture shock. My fiancée is in grad school, and one of her class assignments was a “cultural plunge.” That’s a hilarious concept, because her entire life is a cultural plunge. She was born in Houston, but raised completely in India, went to college in Singapore, and came back to the states after. Living here has been one awkward learning experience after another, and with her brown skin, it’s also often been an experience of racism, of profiling, of assumptions made by ignorant people. She can’t go through an airport without getting her bag inspected and a pat-down (that happened once with my mother, and after we told her that no, my brown fiancée really does get profiled, and my mom damn near got herself arrested chewing the TSA agents out because how dare you treat her daughter like that. Yes, my mom is privileged. But, go Mom). Her background in science has often made living in Texas not unlike living on an alien world where logic and reason are outlawed. And oh, she’s a lesbian too. Discrimination trifecta.

Anyway, she submitted the idea of going to a Catholic Church on Sunday and staying for a mass as a cultural plunge, because unlike her white middle-class native Texan classmates, this was something she’d never done before.

I mean, what are the odds that they’d pick a gospel that would somehow relate to one of the many hot-button issues that any church in a red state could pick? The Pope is fairly liberal for a Catholic, and neither my mother nor I really remembered the sermons being terribly political.

Clearly, it’s been a while since we attended church.

My mother was horrified. Here was an opportunity for her to show her daughter-in-law a bit of her culture, and her upbringing, and therefore a bit of where my own morals and morality comes from. Here’s a chance for her to prove to me that the church of her childhood might have had these tenants but the sermons didn’t get into specifics, and people mostly just tried to Love Thy Neighbor.

I was pissed. I glared hard at the deacon as he climbed off the dais and walked back to his seat, and I’m certain he saw me. I’m certain he paused for a half-step because he saw my face, which I’ve been told can be really menacing when I’m angry. I don’t keep my emotions to myself very often. I don’t have a poker face like my fiancée.

She couldn’t muster that face. She was openly crying and trying not to show it. This church – this remarkably diverse church where she didn’t stick out like a sore thumb, which had epistles in three languages, which was holding a bake sale as we walked in had on its staff a white conservative deacon who took an unrelated Gospel and warped it into a hateful political rant that didn’t hit one button. Oh no. That sermon was an IED array and it hit every single freaking target on the list.

We left during the Eucharist, and we didn’t buy a pie on the way out.

Five days after this experience that left us all in a drinking mood, and which after several bottles of wine was still a little painful, we went to the Thanksgiving party with my dad’s side of the family.

A lot of my aunts, uncles, and cousins seemed genuinely excited about the wedding. There was a bit of a shadow over one of my aunts because her father is really, really ill. Dad and my stepmother told a story about my grandmother, the escape artist, who is probably a lot more together than they think but who was put in an old folk’s home for people with memory problems about two months ago. I dread going to see her because the last time I saw her in a rehab facility, after she knocked her head and suffered the brain trauma that probably drove a lot of the symptoms she still has, it was a little difficult. It’s not going to be easy to see her in a home that isn’t actually her house. She apparently agrees, because she treats visitors to a tour of the place and asks a lot of pointed questions, like how many nurses are at the front station and whether or not you think someone can get to the parking lot from any given set of doors. She’s an inmate in a place she doesn’t feel comfortable staying, and she’s already made it to her car with an overnight bag once. But they have the keys locked up. I think she’s trying to figure out where they are.

She recognizes me. Remembers my name. Knows the wedding is soon. Asks about California. Hugs my future wife. And maybe goes through a few names before she gets some of my cousins’ and uncles’ names right, but she’s been doing that since I was four. We’re a big family. She always gets it right in under six tries.

My aunt looks hesitant to talk about her father, but she does. Both of us listen as she expresses her fears about being away, even for a day or two, because the doctors haven’t been very precise in telling the family to “spend time with him while you can.” It could be days, or maybe months, but probably not through winter because winter seems to be when so many people go, like the warmth-starved land sucks them dry. Which is weird, because we’re all from South Texas, and winter there is like 80 degrees.

We sympathize, and a pang of something I have only been able to define recently shoots through me. It feels like mortality, and reminds me of my fear of flying. It reminds me that I have this thing, this person, this state of being that I found and eventually will lose, that the loss won’t come when I’m ready for it (because that is never. I will never be ready for it). My heart hurts for her and my cousins, because the man is in his 80s like my two surviving grandparents, and that is a long and accomplished life, but it is still too soon for all of them. We have fought for my grandmother often enough and recent enough that I understand that position, too.

Hours later, before the annual turkey bowl, that aunt and my uncle, plus their oldest son come find my fiancée and I in the upstairs game room where most of the cousins retreat after lunch and before football. They ask us both to come out onto the balcony with them for a few minutes. Their younger son, recently married, follows shortly after with his new bride.

And my cousin starts….with a prayer.

“Heavenly Father, please guide our conversation today in your wisdom and light.”

I have my fiancée’s hand in my own. I hold it tighter. I know where this is about to go.

My cousin is a stalwart, honest guy. He’s the eldest son of two people who have always given where they could. They drop what they’re doing to help people, simply because they need help. They give within their means, which are better means than most. Their big and open hearts were passed to two of their three sons, both of whom were standing on that balcony with them. But they are sinners, my cousin says, all of them. And he is no better than anyone. He cannot cast judgment upon sinners as one of them, as someone who has been addicted to pornography, and has crossed lines with women. He loves us both, they all do, but surely we’ve read what the Bible says and it’s wrong, wrong, wrong.

My uncle says to us, we love you. We will not change how we treat you…but we’ve prayed about this for a while, and we can’t go to the wedding.

“We can’t celebrate the sin,” my cousin says.

And I know they love us, the best way they know how. I told them that I understood their perspective, though I disagreed, and respected their decision. We hugged, my aunt called me big-hearted, someone mentioned chocolate (it might have been me), and they started filing off the balcony.

I stayed behind and broke down in my fiancee’s arms.

See, my family had been outwardly accepting until that moment, when something finally broke enough for the first people to say something about it. And my fiancée – my tall, brown, “foreign” fiancée who has tried so hard to get my family to like her – felt instantly like all that effort had been for absolutely nothing. And I? I felt guilty for putting her in that position, for forcing us into a position where my family may never truly be okay with any of this, where a lifetime of loving and supporting each other so demonstratively may yet be lost on so many people I love, because somehow our relationship all boils down to sex to some people. Theirs is about love, but ours is about sex, and lust, and sin, and how the context of the Bible may be all about polyamorous lustful activities but a committed, loving, monogamous relationship between two women is just the same as sexually abusing guests and having orgies in front of idols and a really vague Greek word which in context probably means “men who sleep with boy prostitutes” but magically includes all people who engage in the act of sodomy and well never mind that you’re not actually doing that you’re just the same as the literal “man bed” who will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.

Maybe karma can keep that paradise, because I don’t want to spend eternity in a place where loving companionship is the same as assault. I get enough of that in the news.

It took me a while to come out of the bathroom I found to hide in, because there was no amount of water that could bring the redness down, and eventually my fiancée brought my closest cousin to find me. She saw us walk out, she counted the time, and she knew something had gone wrong. We told her what had happened.

This is the brewing rift. There are some people in our family who sit in Catholic services every Sunday and are not only going to the wedding but are genuinely excited for it. And there are some who might yet show up, but will be at the bar a lot.

Those excited for it will probably not enjoy learning why so many of us are absent. What happens then is probably not high drama, but probably won’t be business as usual either. Said my closest cousin, “I don’t know what to do with them now. You have a bigger heart than me for walking out of that situation without coming downstairs and telling everyone about it immediately.”

Twice in one day, in different contexts, two people I care about made reference to my perfectly normal sized, potentially smaller than average heart. Karma revealed the consequences of my good fortune that night, and they continue to unfold by the minute. For the first time in my life, I may miss Christmas with that side of the family this year. I suspect it won’t be the last thing we miss.

I climbed on the plane to come back to California two days later, and cried over the root of the problem with all these flights: the separation has been torture, and after the emotional week we had, it was going to be hard for us to heal apart. I put on my noice-canceling earphones and turned on Radiolab just before takeoff. It was a podcast about a girl without an identity, whose family kept her sheltered and off the grid, who didn’t have any kind of paper trail because her parents didn’t believe in social security numbers, and so never let her have one. I flew over Kerrville, where she had lived most of her life, while listening to the story. Takeoff was smooth. So was most of the trip back to SJC. And except for a really rough patch of air over New Mexico on the way to Dallas on Friday, my flights this weekend were just as painless.

I landed at SFO on Sunday and thanked the plane, as usual.

My eyes were dry.

#look it's been a while and this is really personal but there you have it #lgbtq+#marriage #personal essay

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thisisheavynews · 5 years

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The Big Read – Sheer Mag “So much rock music is so bad and meaningless”

Five years in the past, Sheer Mag had been the buzziest DIY band on the planet. Now, they’re a full-throttle unbiased rock ‘n’ roll machine who sort out home abuse, prejudice, loss of life and anxiousness on ferocious new album ‘A Distant Call’. Singer Tina Halladay tells Ben Homewood why the world wants the Philadelphians…

On November threerd 2015, Sheer Mag began a seven-week European tour with a present at Bologna’s Freakout Club. Its title was an ideal match.

Back then, Sheer Mag had been the 12 months’s most hyped band, freaking individuals out with their buzzing, big-hearted rock‘n’roll, and exploding out of south Philadelphia’s DIY circuit. Accentuating the perfect bits of the basic rock they beloved and subverting its macho stereotypes, that they had an excellent, scratchy emblem and appeared like a bar band excavated from the 1970s. They lived, and recorded, in a spot referred to as The Nuthouse, its compact areas the right incubator for his or her greasy noise. They had launched two self-made four-track EPs, ‘I’ and ‘II’, and their songs gave the impression of they had been on fireplace. The likes of ‘What You Want’, ‘Point Breeze’ and ‘Fan The Flames’ had been white sizzling, insanely good. Sheer Mag had been unsigned and they weren’t doing interviews. Word was spreading, and tickets had been scarce.

“That first European tour was insane,” says the group’s singer Tina Halladay. “Our tour manager messaged me beforehand and said, ‘You will probably break up!’ I was like, ‘Yeah whatever, I guess we’ll see…’”

Photo: Angela Owens

Sheer Mag simply needed to play, so they flew to Europe, employed a van and proceeded to spend infinite hours inside it, freezing. Halladay first met guitarist Matt Palmer and the Seely brothers, lead guitarist Kyle and bassist Hart, who grew up in Syracuse, at Purchase College, New York. Their pal Ian Dykstra was on drums in these days, certainly, Sheer Mag have by no means actually had a everlasting drummer (present touring member Giacomo Zatti is their fourth). Clearly, the shut confinement was intense.

“We only had one day without a show and it was spent travelling on an overnight boat to Finland, so we really didn’t have a day off,” Halladay remembers. “It was freezing cold, I don’t think any of us had headphones, mobile phone data or any distractions. It was a pretty torturous seven weeks, but every single venue and every single person was amazing. Every promoter was like, ‘This is the most people we’ve ever had and the most money we’ve ever made.’ The fans were the only reason we survived.”

Photo: Angela Owens

Four years later, Halladay can snort on the recollections. NME finds the singer recent from a go to to the publish workplace, at residence along with her brother in Philly. She’s getting ready to place her life in a bag as soon as once more to hit the street this week till early November, in assist of recent album ‘A Distant Call’. Another pulverising few months beckon, however Sheer Mag are nicely accustomed by now.

They accomplished their EP sequence with the blistering ‘III’ in 2016, and debut album ‘Need To Feel Your Love’ adopted in 2017, including disco, plus touches of Abba and Fleetwood Mac to the combination. If their debut confirmed their vary, ‘A Distant Call’ stands tall as their most full work up to now, 10 tracks of straight up rock‘n’roll, pressing and unruly. Mixing from Arthur Rizk provides heat and gloss to recordings first tracked within the freezing snow of DeRuyter, New York.

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It’s additionally their most private launch, ruthlessly exposing Halladay’s experiences (by a fictional protagonist, it offers with physique picture points and particulars a whirlwind interval during which she was fired, damaged up with and misplaced her abusive father) in a means that simply wasn’t potential till now. Sheer Mag wanted to develop into inseparable to make this report, and Halladay says freezing collectively of their van 4 years in the past was the primary main step in getting there.

“We’re all incredibly close, we’re like siblings at this point,” she says. “We struggle, we go on [laughs] and annoy one another and yell at one another. We’ve been by so much.”

Photo: Angela Owens

Halladay has come to cherish her relationship with Palmer specifically, after the group’s artistic course of thrust them collectively. Sheer Mag songs are made in a manufacturing line: first, the Seely brothers conjure groove, snap and corkscrew solos, then Halladay and Palmer summon melody and lyrics. On ‘A Distant Call’, Palmer got here to inhabit the singer’s thoughts like by no means earlier than.

“In the writing relationship we have, Matt ends up doing the final arrangements of the melody and lyrics, he writes most of them,” Halladay explains. “Our relationship had to get to this point for him to be able to do justice to my experiences, like my father and our relationship and his death and how that affected me, and body image and just going through the world as a fat woman. It took 24 other songs [on the EPs and ‘Need To Feel Your Love’] to get to the point where he could do it justice and make it really meaningful.”

Photo: Marie Lin

What they got here up with grabs you and doesn’t let go.

“How may I be taught to like from someone so abusive?” asks ‘Cold Sword’. “I pulled again and went away, to nurse my coronary heart’s bruises”. On ‘The Right Stuff’, Halladay sings, “Eyes stare and individuals flip, my coronary heart begins to race and my face burns.”

Looking again, she says, the recording course of was taxing within the excessive.

“The conversation around body image is a lot more open now, so that wasn’t too difficult, but the stuff with my father made me confront some things I’d maybe been ignoring or hadn’t been able to articulate,” Halladay explains. “That was really therapeutic and really hard, I think it was hard for Matt to even attempt it. You don’t want to mess something like that up.”

Perhaps the perfect instance of what she means could be discovered inside ‘Cold Sword’, the album’s motoring centerpiece. You’ll need to dance to its thrusting rhythm, however its message is altogether extra severe.

“It’s about my father and it’s the one that was the most difficult to write, record and deal with,” she says. “I’ve told Matt a lot about mine and my father’s relationship and his actions towards me and the rest of my family. I wrote it all down. I wrote everything I could remember, every experience, like being terrified and upset, just every moment that he terrorised mine and my family’s life. I wrote pages and pages of what I could remember in order and gave it to him to work with.”

Photo: Angela Owens

Elsewhere, in amongst the anxiousness and ache of Halladay’s revelations are bursts of Sheer Mag’s customary imagery: picket traces, crooks, dodgy offers, bombs, jail cells and the mayhem of conflict and politics. These songs are a blur of private candour and common truths, set to unrelenting groove and whole guitar hedonism, providing wonderful distinction to their blackened content material. Bass traces pulsate, guitars shimmy and shake, drums thwack. As at all times, it capabilities as one large rallying name, and Halladay is proud to say so. Sheer Mag are right here to say that the private and political aren’t divisible.

“What a lot of people in the world don’t realise is that politics is in everything,” the singer says. “The life that you live, the food you eat, the people you meet, it all has to do with politics and the way our systems are built and created. The people you’re attracted to, the people you see every day, all those things have to do with politics, so there’s no way to not be political. To say something like, ‘I’m not political’, is just showing your ignorance or your privilege.”

Photo: Angela Owens

Avoiding politics can be “a cop out” for Sheer Mag, and Halladay regales us with some latest drama round planning their tour merchandise for instance the purpose.

“We’re planning to sell a poster that will benefit some Planned Parenthood [sexual healthcare organisation] schemes in Wisconsin and they said, ‘Are there certain places you don’t want to sell it because maybe people will be upset and not agree with it?’” she says.

“Hell no! Anyone opposed to Planned Parenthood is not someone I want to be my fan or be at my shows, so no thank you. I just don’t see how someone who could feel that way would like our music.”

Photo: Angela Owens

Halladay spits out the tip of her sentence, completely mystified. Her confusion is no shock: Sheer Mag’s bond with their followers is apparent. People wait patiently to speak to the band after reveals, forming snaking traces for the merch desk, desperate to get nearer.

“It’s always very overwhelming and awesome, especially women coming up to me and telling me things like, ‘I started a band because of you.’ I’d never expected for people to care so much and be so excited, especially so early on,” says Halladay.

The singer has a idea to clarify the devotion and love, too.

“It’s a lot of [reasons], but the one I feel the most is that I don’t look like every other person in a band and I don’t sing about the same things every other person sings about,” she says. “It’s important for people to see themselves, people can relate to me because I’m other and I’m different and that is important to people.”

Photo: Marie Lin

Halladay noticed the identical in Judas Priest singer Rob Halford and Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott, who she describes as her “favourite” (she has Lynott inked on her proper thigh and named her canine The Rocker after him). But whereas she says “this band and me being in it wouldn’t have existed 30 or 40 years ago,” she notes there’s nonetheless “a lot of bullshit to deal with”.

“It’s like, bouncers automatically stopping me and no one else, if I don’t have my [backstage] pass or something,” she explains. “Even promoters who haven’t done their research saying, ‘Oh are you the tour manager? Or are you doing merch?’ I’m just like, ‘No, my picture is on the wall right behind me.’ It’s just ignorance, it’s silly. It makes them look stupid.”

Halladay has acquired used to setting such individuals straight in no unsure phrases. When NME first interviewed the singer at SXSW in 2015, it was after a present at which she shoved a person again into the gang as he came upon stage fumbling on the crotch of his denims. “Get your dick back in your pants dude,” she advised him.

Ever since their earliest days, there’s been a way of necessity about Sheer Mag; they’re a band the world wants and they understand it.

“There are a lot of people who want to see themselves. There are young girls out there who’ve never seen a person who looks like me leading a band like this, that representation and seeing yourself is really important for people to realise their potential and what kind of a person they want to be,” says Halladay. “White men have all of these different role models in the world being shown to them, it’s not the same for everyone.”

Photo: Angela Owens

Sheer Mag, then, current an exciting various. Two albums in, they’re thriving.

“So much rock music in popular culture is so bad and meaningless in my eyes,” Halladay continues. “I love rock‘n’roll, so for people to have to dig so deep to find music that is meaningful sucks.”

Thankfully, it’s not essential to dig to seek out Sheer Mag. They’re nonetheless placing music out by their very own Wilsuns RC imprint, ordering vinyl and dealing with merch, however their stance on the music press has softened and they’re extra seen than ever.

“At the beginning we were just trying to figure out what kind of a band we were, so we didn’t want to just latch onto these ideas or anyone that could take advantage of us or control us,” Halladay says of their preliminary reticence. “At this point we know who we are as a band, we know what we want and we have the confidence and power to say, ‘Ok, people want to hear this, so let’s see what’s important for us to say.’”

As for the mechanics behind constructing their empire, the band now have a supervisor and have simply taken on “people to help us with money and business stuff”. Halladay paints a easy, contented image.

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So, is the label chase over?

“If we are being chased then they’re not contacting me!”

The singer laughs, clearly blissful Sheer Mag are doing this on their very own. Really, it’s the one means it is sensible. Their music comes from a primal place, mixing our most instinctive emotions into hopeful, important rock‘n’roll, stuffed with motion.

“This band, it’s not a want, it’s a need. Every day,” Halladay sums up. “It’s so important and good for me to be able to perform and let out all that aggression, anger and energy inside of me that needs to come out. When I’m not on tour for a long time I lose my shit. I need that release, that feeling, to not feel totally crazy and restless.”

Tina Halladay can’t cover the thrill in her voice and no marvel. Sheer Mag are on the street once more.

A Distant Call

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from Heavy News https://thisisheavynews.com/the-big-read-sheer-mag-so-much-rock-music-is-so-bad-and-meaningless/

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