#Demi Subverse

[wombocombo4x3]

I Think I Installed The Wrong Atomic Heart...

[metalichotchoco]

This is the only time am’s outfit has pants and it’s on someone else lol

[da-ambivertartist]

Harper Callaghan 💔

"Haiiii! X3 waves rapidly I was in the middle of re-dying mai hair, why'd you have to barge in >:( !! Now I have to start all over you fukking moron stabs 300 times Oops XP Now I gotta hide da body in my taco-mobile X3c" -Harper

Pronouns & Gender: Trans Demi-Girl. She/They/It

BDay: April 11th (Aries)

Ethnicity: Irish/British

Weight & Height: 5'4 and 101 lbs

Age: 18

Many call Harper a human anomaly, Although she sees herself as the embodiment of the internet scene girl, she's pretty nihilistic towards everyone she meets. Sometimes her internet personality seeps into her real life and when the two mix; that's when she really becomes unpredictable.

At night, Harper plays a character called "Envy" in a band called "The Soul's Final Pulse". The band's music is an exploration of the 7 deadly sins and subversion of expectation of what you'd expect the band to be. 'Envy' plays the electric guitar and sings the main vocals.

Harper's band is not only a creative outlet for her, but it also serves a second purpose. Harper comes from a family of music producers. For a couple of years, they've been secretly buying out indie bands and muddying their vision the moment they hit studios. Harper's band is a calling for other stage artists to rebel against corporate conformity. Harper also believes this band could be a warning to her family's reign in the music industry.

Harper's hobbies:

💔 DJ-ing. At first, she picked up this hobby mainly for side money, but she started to become genuinely passionate about it.

💔 Painting. Harper picked up painting for her album covers. She does Finger-painting and Acrylic Pours.

💔 Ballet. Her childhood dream was to become a ballet dancer, to this day, she dances during her shows as 'Envy'.

💔 Nail Art. One of her favorite pass times is having Nail Nite while watching shitty soap opera's with Valerian.

MLP HARPER >:333333

[compacflt]

I was wondering if you had thoughts about how Ice and Mav's politics don't fully align with their actions? There was a post where you said Ice's politics are more socially liberal than Mav's but Mav is also the one who goes out to La Jolla to hit on guys before Ice, and later again when he's broken up with Ice, but Ice only goes out with women out of fear for his honor or whatever. Same with their respective thoughts on feminism, with Mav's mild respect for Charlie (telling Ice not all women fit the stereotype) but later Ice is the one who sends Juno to Mav's Top Gun class without telling him she's a woman and Ice has a respectful friendship with Juno. I think you said Ice is vaguely on the ace-aro spectrum (demi-homoromantic) which is a sort of fascinating irony that he doesn't have the words for it whereas Mav is the one with the theories about Ice's sexuality. Though with their hypocrisies and inconsistencies this all just feeds into their characterizations of the fact that they keep divorcing their actions from their spoken words from their identities.

okay going to take this point by point

1. yes i have addressed their politics in relation to their actions before, so maybe read this post and this post before you read this one, just to see where my other thoughts line up

2. gay republicans and conservatives do exist (at the very least certainly republicans and conservatives who have gay sex in secret)

3. before maverick is a political actor he is a human being, and the characterization that we are primarily given for him is that he is impulsive and reckless and doesn’t think through his actions. As ive written about many times before—from a story construction standpoint, his thoughtlessness is his number one most important character trait. He is both thoughtlessly dangerous (his hero’s “fatal flaw;” he can’t stop himself from making bad decisions) and thoughtlessly brilliant (the navy’s best and most daring and heroic pilot). He does what he wants without thinking about it; and he makes excuses and hollow promises whenever that plan doesn’t work out (“I know better than that. It will never ever happen again;” [it happens again] “I’m not gonna let you down. I promise.” [goose dies shortly thereafter]). His thoughtless impulsiveness overrides everything else. Maybe the act of having gay sex (to address your “he gets fucked in La Jolla before ice” point) is politically subversive, but for Maverick’s thoughtless character that we are shown in Top Gun, the most subversive possible thing would be to LABEL the gay sex and think through the consequences of it. To call a spade a spade and call himself gay or bi or queer or whatever. That would be the most subversive (and with mav, entirely unbelievable imo) possible thing. That takes conscious effort of thought, something maverick is near-incapable of doing. As long as he can get away with it without thinking about it, he’s politically in the clear, with regards to his character & character arc. If that makes sense. “Don’t think. Just do.” That’s literally his motto lmfao. He represents thoughtless action as an archetype; his politics come secondary to his desires

4. Their “respective thoughts on feminism” are divided into two camps: 1. “Professional as required by the law” and 2. “Sex pest mode.” They’re naval officers in the 1980s. Whether republican or democrat, that’s kind of par for the course. How men treat women can be a performance to other men. Any respect i made them show towards women had broader, more metatextual “need to move the conversation/story from A to B” reasoning behind it. See the first post I linked for much more on that.

5. i never said ice was on the ace/aro spectrum, or if i did i DEFINITELY meant it sarcastically. That could not be further from what i believe. This isn’t something I’ve ever discussed on this blog before, but a MASSIVE part of the philosophical discussion I’ve been trying to moderate within this project over the last year is the question— “do labels even work with characters under these very specific and extraordinarily extreme conditions and societal pressures?” It’s a question I took from my time studying early American history—the contexts of certain environments, and I would definitely count the elite officer ranks of the navy in the 90s and 2000s as one of these certain environments, simply Are Not Conducive to the easier (path of least resistance maybe) ways we civilians handle sexuality and friendship and trauma. There are so many variables and external and internal pressures within an environment like the upper ranks of career navy officers that sexual orientation labels lose all nuance and accuracy. I don’t think Ice (as i have written him) is gay. I don’t think he’s straight. I don’t think he’s bi. I think he’s an unlabelable product of too many variables for labels to have any effect on how he is perceived. Which, in our society built around labels and categories, is admittedly difficult to wrestle with. But doesn’t make it any less worth wrestling with.

6. Yes, ice and mav’s hypocrisy is the linchpin of the entire story.

They’re both trying to have their cake (“honor” and moral superiority based on the harmful traditional subjective morals arbitrated by elite navy officership) and eat it too (a fulfilling relationship with the love of their lives). & the point is that they cant. they have to settle for one.

[adarkrainbow]

So, I realized I made a BIG mistake in my previous post (thanks @gay-impressionist and @northwest-by-a-train for correcting my big mistake, I clearly wasn't well-informed Xp) - time to redo a new post!

As a result I'll go straight to the conclusion: there's something inherently queer about fairytale adaptations. There's something inherently queer about literary fairytales, for example, written by French lesbians of the Renaissance or sad Danish gay men. There's something even queer by the more "traditional" folktales (see the famous fairytale type which ends with the heroine undergoing magical gender transition - I posted a Greek version and reblogged a Romanian one). But when it comes to various fairytale adaptations, the queerness is even more present.

The most famous example is the Disney classics. Movies that are the epitome of fairytales in America, movies that are some of the huge symbols of heterosexuality and "conservation of traditional values" in America, movies owned and produced by a company still known today for not being queer-friendly... And yet movies that form a huge part of the queer aesthetic, and that fuel the cross-dressing/drag-art imagery, and that formed a certain gay audience. Charming princes, beautiful princesse, disturbingly sexy villains, Disney had all to please a queer person.

But it isn't just in America. In France the two major fairytale movies, the dominant pieces of fairy-tale cinema, were created by two prominent gay/bisexual artists of their time, and each had their own queerness in it. Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (he literaly had his boyfriend play the Beast), and Jacques Demy's Donkey Skin (his musical movies of the 60s form in themselves a sub-genre associated with gayness in France - we don't have the "Gays love musical theater" stereotype, but we do have the "Gays love Demy's musicals" stereotype).

(This isn't so much about "classics" but I have to point out how the motif of queerness as a joke or subversion of fairytales also is quite present in French media since the 90s-2000s onward. The sex-comedy "Blanche Neige la suite" has, obviously, a lot of gay jokes, the humoristic-fantasy book "Blanche-Neige et les lance-missiles" and its sequel have a lot of lesbianism, the recent "Robilard" comic book has a big gay element by the middle of its run, and even the recent Cinderella parody movie has an entire segment about a gay fairy godmother directly referencing Demy's Donkey-Skin ; while of various qualities and worth, I can't help but compare this prominence of the "lesbian joke" or "gay subversion" in fairytale comedies and parodies in France, compared to for example American fairytale parodies and comedies which seemed more shy about it? I don't know, again, I'm just scribbling down notes)

And from my old post other people pointed out similar phenomenon in old "classics".

@countesspetofi pointed out how in the UK you have the entire pantomime genre, and there is no need to explain why they're queer. And @maimoncat higlighted how a lot of fairytale productions of Europe like to use the "crossdressing princess" motif (Three Wishes for Cinderella/Fantaghiro) - plus how Roberto de Simone's adaptation of "Gatta Cenerentola" explored the motif of gender ambiguity by having femminielli (third gender people from Naples and Campania) be involved in specific scenes, and the wicked step-family played by crossdressing actors.

If you ever have other examples don't hesitate to share! (And let's hope this time I won't have to rewrite the post due to my own ignorance Xp)

[theoreticallysensible]

I didn’t think this would bother me much but I was really disappointed by the ending of Solitaire, which I otherwise loved.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

Tori and Michael’s relationship was something I related to a lot. I don’t think I’ve ever been in quite as dark a place as either of them are throughout the book, but my senior school experience was similar to Tori’s, and I’ve recently become more like Michael, and found friendships similar to what they build together. These meant a lot to me because I’ve struggled with emotional intimacy, and I think I’m somewhere on the graysexual spectrum, so to see characters like Tori and Michael, who are demi-and pansexual respectively, have friendships just as deep as romance but not coded that way, despite both being interested in romance in theory - it meant a lot both in terms of representation and validation. Relationship anarchy and all that - it speaks to the graysexual and the anarchist in me 😂 (the anarchist coding pf Solitaire was also fun).

But then at the end… they kiss. And everything previous to that becomes so easy to recontextualise. All that friendship becomes unrecognised romantic tension. Tori was sadly in denial about her romantic feelings for Michael, not just unsure about an unusually close friendship. Of course, it may be that the romantic feelings arose suddenly at the end and all that truly was friendship. And of course the boundaries between the two are hazy at best at that level of intensity anyway. And of course, I can just ignore the kiss and read the story without it - those earlier pages still exist and can be separated from the later ones in my mind, and I’m mature enough to be able to self-consciously read stories how I want to - l’auteur est mort. But it still smarts.

I know Loveless exists, and I’m excited to read it, but I saw Solitaire up until The Kiss as a triumph of friendship through ambiguity - a subversion of romance tropes. It still is that, in a way - a triumph of authentic love based in friendship over Lukas’s inauthentic love based in delusional jealousy and devotion. Ellie Anderson’s essay on phenomenology and the ethics of love has a great bit on this, and it is very important… but it just got so close to what I wanted before falling back into something more familiar. Loveless, being about an aro ace character, seems like it’ll be less in that space of ambiguity, and more about the confusion of being so radically outside of it - which is valuable in its own way, but less so for me. Radio Silence looks like it’ll hit the kind of spot I’m looking for better, so fingers crossed.🤞 I’m still sad though because the character of Tori meant a lot to me and I wanted hers to be the story I connected to with this. Ah well.

(As a side note, I listened to the audiobook and then read the physical copy afterwards, and though some of the updated cultural references were nice and Charlie and Nick being more consistent with Heartstopper was cool, the increased sensitivity in those two characters made Tori’s despair feel less tragically inescapable and her new moments of sensitivity felt very jarringly censorial and out of character - it didn’t sound like her voice; maybe it was beneficial for some readers, but I feel like it was done a bit clumsily).

[shimmerbeasts]

Characters that I believe you could play well:

Sascha Vykos (from VtM); Lissandra (LoL); Fiddlesticks (LoL); Pyke (LoL); Rengar (LoL)

Yes, this is a long list, but I think you could do an amazing job with all of them. They are very different between themselves, but you are much more capable of writing a wide range variety of characters than you think! Plus a lot of them go to horror side of things or or are hunt themed.

Based on my existing muses, whom else do you think could I play?

I am really flattered in your trust in me to portray a wide variety of muses. I think you are right. After all, even just looking at my cast, those are all very different characters and people. Sure, some of similar archetypes, yet all feel distinct and unique. And while most of my characters are antagonists, they are still very different.

I am not very familiar with Vampire the Masquerade, so I would have to familiarise myself with that tabletop RPG. Therefore, Sascha Vykos is the one, whom I have the least ties with. Though based on what I read, I can see why you think I can do her well. I am rather skilled with writing horror/torture characters. However, because I know nothing about VtM, they would probably be the hardest for me to pick up or write. But that is really the only thing, which would be blocking me: The unfamiliarity with the IP.

League on the other hand is a different story.

Let's start with Lissandra. From what I understand and read up on her biography, she is an ancient ice witch/demi-god, who basically made a deal with the Watchers, which just happened to be another word for the creatures from the Void. This deal ended in her sisters dying and her sealing the Watchers underneath True Ice to stall how swiftly they would emerge and destroy the world. At the same time, she did everything in her power to masquerade and hide what she had done. She sounds like not just an extremely powerful character, but also like someone who has gotten themselves into some serious moral and emotional trouble. Lissandra sounds like a very complex character due to what she did and how she justifies things to herself. These types of characters are ones, I really enjoy.

Fiddlesticks, by contrast, is less about story and more about his theme and horror. Given that this scarecrow represents primordial fear, he has a similar problem to Evelynn. Fiddlesticks functions best with other characters as an embodiment of their fear, not on his own. Hell, he does not even have voice lines of his own. Instead, his voice is repeated phrases by other people about him or to the specific champion, he encounters. Telling a story with him as the focal character would be challenging, though probably not impossible. Much like with Evelynn, I would need to think a lot about what I wanted to tell with his character.

Pyke, much like Lissandra, is that blend between an interesting story to tell and a horror archetype. Pyke, being a supernatural, ghost-like killer, who is out for the blood of those who wronged him and basically has beef with an entire industry in Bilgewater is a pretty interesting concept. Plus, much like Lissandra, he is in a completely different region than Zaun aka what I am used to exploring. Of course, both things would again require a lot of world-building, and to be honest, I am not very fond of pirates due to personal reasons. So while Pyke as a character is a really interesting concept, I am not that invested in Bilgewater.

On the surface, Rengar sounds like the perfect character for me. After all, in a way, he is a hunter and an animal. He is my current big themes - animalism and hunting - on steroids. But that is the problem. Unlike Jinx or Silco, he is only that. He is what you see is what you get. There is no subversion in him, there is no surprise in the fact that he is a hunter. Whereas with Jinx and Silco, being hunters says more about them than just that they hunt other people. It is a vehicle to express how they dehumanise others, their obsession for control, their rage and frustration given form. The balance between the light and dark comes from the animalism being a core of them, but also not just the foundation they stand on.

Rengar on the other side only has the hunt and the animalism going for him. He is basically the Predator and every trope of an uncivilised tribe and trophy hunter rolled into one. There is no interesting element in his story, which might counter or reshape him as a hunter. He is after Kha'Zix because he is the runt of the litter and wants to prove himself in a clan full of hunters. Unlike with Jinx, that is the simplest boring idea, you can do with this character. Hell, as far as we know, Rengar's hunting style does not differ in any substantial way from his peers. Unlike Jinx, Naafiri, Silco or even Lissandra and Pyke, who are in some ways in conflict with themselves, and who because of this reshape the tropes, they embody and make use of, Rengar is not in conflict with the self. He has the most by-the-number story, you can imagine for a predatory hunter character.

As obsessed as I am with animalism, hunting and mind control, I am also a storyteller and I live from surprising, if not myself, at least my audience. For that, I need to find some inner conflict or twist in a character or their archetype. If I cannot find a way to do something somewhat unexpected with the character, I am not interested. For me, my personal interests are a big part of character creation, but they are the shades that work with an unexpected core theme or twist.

[cyarsk52-20]

MENU

FEATURES

The 50 most evil songs ever

These 50 tracks – featuring the likes of Rammstein, Slipknot, Mayhem, Slayer and AC/DC – are pretty damn nasty.

November 24, 2020Words:Paul Brannigan, James Hickie, Sam Law, Nick Ruskell, Dan Slessor, Paul Travers, Ian Winwood, Simon YoungOriginally published:In an April 2017 issue of Kerrang! magazine

From serial killers to Satan, we pulled out the ouija board and summoned the 50 most evil songs of all time. Spoiler alert: this gets incrediblygrim…

Mötley CrüeShout At The Devil

The title-track from Crüe’s breakthrough second album caused the kind of controversy that would define the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band. Penned by bassist Nikki Sixx, its lyrical preoccupation with the horned one, coupled with the LA bad boys’ burgeoning mainstream success, meant Christian groups were up in arms. Despite their protestations, the most evil thing about this song was the misguided re-reworking on 1997’s sinfully bad Generation Swine album.

WatainDevil’s Blood

Nothing less than an open hymn to the Devil himself and doing his dirtiest deeds, Devil’s Blood boils with the fanatical delight of those caught in religious fervour. The sheer force of nature of the music is staggering, but it is nothing next to Erik Danielsson’s rabid, demonic vocals as he revels in Luciferian power and living, ‘In the glorious light of the five point star.’ Truly diabolic.

PossessedThe Exorcist

When The Exorcist hit cinemas in the early ’70s, reports of audience members vomiting and losing consciousness circulated. So it’s only right that a song of the same name evokes teeth-chattering terror in those exposed to it. Written from the point of view of the possessed individual, and welded to breakneck thrashing, it was a formative track in the soon-to-be-born death metal genre. Unfortunately, things don’t end so well for the song’s protagonist.

Sonic Youth (featuring Lydia Lunch)Death Valley ’69

The 1980s were the age of the music video, a time of glossy movie-budget promo blockbusters from the likes of Michael Jackson and Prince. Not so for Sonic Youth. As a standalone song, Death Valley ’69 is intriguingly ambiguous, a thing of darkness in which the narrator may or may not have murdered his girlfriend. In the accompanying video clip, never to be played on primetime MTV, the song’s inherent violence is given full expression in a series of explicit images of lifeless bodies covered in gore. A thrillingly subversive dose of yuk.

GhostRitual

If the Devil were real would he be banging his horned head to the brutal death metal of Deicide or sipping a cocktail and twirling an exquisite mustachio to the altogether slicker sounds of Ghost? On first listen this is just one beautiful wash of melodies, but that only makes the lyrics underneath all the more disturbing. ‘This chapel of ritual smells of dead human sacrifices,’ croons Papa Emeritus. The stench of decay has never been sweeter.

The BeatlesHelter Skelter

In August 1969, homicidal cult-leader Charles Manson (you’ll hear that name plenty down this list…) told his followers, known as ‘The Family’, “Now is the time for Helter Skelter,” an assertion that heralded the most infamous mass murders – the Tate-LaBianca murders – in American history. He had become obsessed with The Beatles’ White Album, and with Helter Skelter in particular, the lyrics of which he misinterpreted in bonkers and ultimately homicidal ways.

Aphrodite’s ChildThe Four Horsemen

Greek proggers Aphrodite’s Child – featuring crooner Demis Roussos and Blade Runner soundtrack genius Vangelis – had big ideas for their 666 album: the apocalypse itself. This account of The Four Horsemen’s arrival is amazing, but it could have been improved if surrealist artist Salvador Dalí had gotten his way with the album’s release. He wanted to declare martial law in Barcelona, where swans stuffed with dynamite would be unleashed, before elephants and “Archbishops carrying umbrellas” bombarded the city’s cathedral from the air. Oddly, this didn’t come to pass.

Electric WizardWe Hate You

Electric Wizard’s Dopethrone album bears the striking slogan ‘Legalise drugs and murder’. The Dorset doom misanthropes may have been grouped with the groovy vibes of the stoner rock scene, but lines like ‘So I’ll take my father’s gun and I’ll walk down to the street / I’ll have my vengeance now with everyone I meet’ were a long way away from songs about shagging and cars. It’s a truly nasty sentiment, but as an indiscriminate spray of bile against everyone, this is untouchable.

The Devil’s BloodThe Anti-Kosmik Magick

(The Time Of No Time Evermore, 2009)

“They warned me Satan would be attractive,” quoth Ned Flanders upon being offered legal marijuana. Indeed, at first listen, Dutch diabolists The Devil’s Blood sound like the coolest ’70s-revival band you’ve ever heard. But, covered in blood, treating gigs as rituals and with heavy occult lyrics, The Anti-Kosmik Magick finds them tricking you into loving Lucifer without realising it. Seductive, rather than aggressive, this is temptation and sin presented in all its decadent glory.

AC/DCNight Prowler

On the evening of March 17, 1985, 25-year-old Texan drifter Richard Ramirez broke into the California homes of Tsai-Lian Yu and Dayle Okazaki and murdered both women. Dayle’s roommate Maria Hernandez was also shot in the face by Ramirez, but survived, and provided police with a pen portrait of a young man wearing an AC/DC baseball cap. It would be a further five months, however, before Ramirez, dubbed the ‘Night Stalker’, was apprehended, bringing to an end a 14-month reign of terror in the Golden State during which a total of 13 people were murdered and 11 more sexually assaulted in their own homes.

Ramirez’s childhood friend Ray Garcia subsequently told the authorities that the killer was obsessed by AC/DC, and specifically the creepy, chilling, voyeuristic closing track on the band’s 1979 Highway To Hell album, Night Prowler, leading to sensationalist media headlines such as “‘AC/DC Music Made Me Kill At 16’, Night Stalker Admits.” The Australian band were understandably horrified at the implication, with vocalist Brian Johnson (who joined the band after the song’s recording) telling VH1 television, “It sickens you to have anything to do with that kind of thing.” In the same Behind The Music special, AC/DC guitarist Malcolm Young claimed that Night Prowler is actually about “things you used to do when you are a kid, like sneaking into a girlfriend’s bedroom when her parents were asleep”, but lyrics such as ‘No-one’s gonna warn you / And no-one’s gonna yell attack / And you don’t feel the steel / Till it’s hangin’ out your back’ rather undermined the idea that this was merely a paean to adolescent horniness.

In court, Ramirez played up to his monstrous image, greeting the courtroom with the words “Hail Satan” and telling the judge, “I am beyond good and evil. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells in us all.” After a four-year trial, Ramirez received 19 death sentences for his crimes, a punishment he shrugged off with the words, “Big deal… I’ll see you in Disneyland.” AC/DC naturally distanced themselves completely from the serial killer, but shaking off the association with what is undoubtedly their darkest, nastiest song would prove impossible.

HellhammerTriumph Of Death

Hellhammer mainman Tom G. Warrior has described his childhood in nightmarish terms. Living in a rural Swiss village with an unfit mother who was frequently absent smuggling jewellery, he started playing music to get away from it all. But imagine if this near-10 minute dirge of funereal guitar was what you did to escape. Every negative human emotion is vomited up in Tom’s strangled vocals, and when a couple of years later Tom asked the lyrical question of ‘Are you morbid?’, his answer was already a horrifying ‘yes’.

DissectionNight’s Blood

When thinking of ‘evil’ the words ‘Satan’ and ‘murder’ come quickly to mind. Put those two together and you stumble into territory Dissection inhabited in the mid-’90s, with band leader Jon Nödtveidt and an accomplice jailed for murdering a man who had allegedly expressed an interest in Satanism. Night’s Blood was given its unholy birth two years prior to that incident, and it’s hard not to feel unsettled by the gleeful bloodlust haunting it.

BehemothChristians To The Lions

Having released seminal albums titled Satanica and The Satanist, you can be fairly sure that everything Behemoth do is pretty damn evil, and mainman Nergal’s abuse of the Bible has landed him in Polish courts on more than one occasion. That being the case, it’s unlikely that this ditty went down overly well with churchgoers. Backed up with the band’s inimitable blackened death savagery, Nergal makes it clear which side of the God/Satan divide he falls on, viciously celebrating the death of the former and rise of the latter.

DarkthroneIn The Shadow Of The Horns

A Blaze In The Northern Sky marked a dark watershed for the black metal genre. Eerily pre-emptive of the spree of church-burnings that would go on to hallmark the genre it might’ve been. But Darkthrone’s second LP was, in actuality, fixated on the primal evils of the past. Its howling second track would prove definitive. Seven minutes of defiant lo-fi production, frostbitten purpose and blunt-force simplicity, In The Shadow Of The Horns still sounds like “abyssic hate” incarnate.

Cradle Of FilthDeath Magick For Adepts

Always ones for adding theatrics to their music, here Dani Filth paints a picture of a Sodom and Gomorrah scenario with no small amount of skill. But how to really bring out the hellish chaos erupting all around? You get one of Hell’s stewards to lend their terrifying voice to the track. That is to say, Hellraiser actor Doug Bradley, whose performance makes you worried to look out your window, lest you see Hell emptying itself onto the lawn.

Guns N’ RosesLook At Your Game, Girl

(The Spaghetti Incident?, 1993)

There aren’t many songs that have been released in order to help pay for the legal defence costs of its author who is facing a multiple murder rap. Originally written in 1967 and released on the album Lie: The Love And Terror Cult, Look At Your Game, Girl is the work of Charles Manson. Twenty-three years after its original 1970 release, the always provocative Guns N’ Roses placed the song as a hidden track on their covers album The Spaghetti Incident?. “People are trying to paint me like I worship Charles Manson,” said Axl Rose in 1994, “but it’s exactly the opposite of that.”

AkercockeOf Menstrual Blood And Semen

‘Blast For Satan’ ran the slogan on Akercocke’s shirts. It was a statement that summed up the intensity of both their music and their allegiance to Him downstairs. With their Savile Row suits and mysterious manner, they gave the air of men who actually dabbled in the black arts, something reinforced by their instruction to ‘drink of the chalice of ecstasy’ here. This furious concoction is as intense as metal gets, while also revelling in the decadence of the band’s beliefs.

BathoryCall From The Grave

Across their first trilogy of albums, Sweden’s Bathory redefined just how evil metal could sound. Crudely welding the darkness of Black Sabbath to the roar of Motörhead, the sound mainman Quorthon came up with could freeze blood, and nowhere more so than on Call From The Grave. With all the atmosphere of a freshly-dug burial site at midnight, the diabolic, two-chord riff and Quorthon’s demented vocals make this a haunting paean to all things evil and hellish.

DeicideOnce Upon The Cross

As you would expect from a man who once branded an inverted cross into his forehead, Deicide’s Glen Benton has no problem with blasphemy. Here, he mocks Jesus Christ’s struggle as he dies on the cross, which tied in really well with album Once Upon The Cross’ original artwork, which features Jesus with his insides on the outside. Oddly, this was considered too salty for the public.

Jimmy PageLucifer Rising

So obsessed was Jimmy Page with occultist and ‘Wickedest Man In The World’ Aleister Crowley that he bought the Scottish residence, Boleskine House, where the magician had attempted (and failed) to perform a six-month long magic ritual. The Zeppelin guitarist was therefore the perfect choice to soundtrack Lucifer Rising, a Crowley-inspired film by occult director Kenneth Anger. When after years, Jimmy’s contribution was still incomplete, he was acrimoniously removed from the project. Regardless, this bizarre music remains the most unsettling the man has ever created.

Big BlackJordan, Minnesota

Tiny Midwestern town Jordan, Minnesota entered the national consciousness in the U.S. in the mid-’80s when a number of school children claimed to have been ritually abused and to have witnessed multiple murders perpetrated by more than 20 townsfolk. The hysterical media coverage prompted Big Black’s Steve Albini to write this disturbing, pitch-black indictment of small-town corruption and perversion, complete with heavy breathing and lyrics such as, ‘This is Jordan, we do what we like.’ Ultimately, the accusations were dismissed as pure fabrication, but the song remains a horrifying and sickening dissection of humanity’s darkest impulses.

Robert JohnsonCross Road Blues

Legend has it that Cross Road Blues is about a highway intersection in the city of Rosedale, where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his musical talent. While this classic song’s lyrics make no mention of this shady Faustian pact, the song – most likely about making the choice between good and evil – fuelled the myth of the Delta blues legend, who made references to the Devil during many of his songs. Plot twist: Robert died under mysterious circumstances aged just 27 years old.

Alkaline TrioThis Could Be Love

While many other popular punk bands of the time were singing songs about farting and penises, the always cut-above Alkaline Trio cast their gaze on darker matters. This Could Be Love is a tale of murder, the twist in which lies in the fact that it is told from the victim’s point of view. It’s grizzly stuff, too, with soiled beds, scenes of torture, delirious joy at acts of violence and the arresting image of a crazed lover washing blood from her hands in the waters of Lake Michigan. As audio-nasties go, this is a superior offering.

CarcassCadaveric Incubator Of Endoparasites

Dying sucks, but Carcass have done a bang-up job of making you hope to be vaporised at your moment of death by luridly detailing the process of decomposition. It’s hard to compute just how unsettling the Liverpudlian’s lyrics were, and it’s safe to presume that someone with delicate sensibilities raised on a diet of Madonna could well be revisited by the contents of their stomach after exposure to this belch of aural horror.

Nine Inch NailsPiggy

Despite appearing on The Downward Spiral, an album chronicling the destruction of man, Piggy isn’t necessarily evil in and of itself. It’s the context in which the song was created that makes it truly unsettling.

In 1992, Trent Reznor scrapped his original plan to record the follow-up to Nine Inch Nails’ debut Pretty Hate Machine in New Orleans, decamping instead to 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles’ Benedict Canyon. It was here in 1969 that actress Sharon Tate (the pregnant wife of director Roman Polanski) and four others were brutally murdered by the Charles Manson ‘family’. Although Trent suggests he only discovered the address’ grisly history after he’d decided to record there – claiming it was chosen for the suitability of the space – he subsequently read up on the incident, suggesting ‘The Tate House’ “didn’t feel terrifying as much as sad.” Despite the sense of melancholy, Trent would use it to record 1992’s Broken EP, The Downward Spiral and Marilyn Manson’s debut album, Portrait Of An American Family, which Trent produced.

The song’s title has been the subject of speculation. Former live guitarist Richard Patrick, who would later form the band Filter, has suggested he was once given the nickname ‘Piggy’, while The Beatles’ song Piggies was said to have had considerable influence on Charles Manson. Despite Trent redubbing the address ‘Le Pig’, a reference to the word that was written in blood on the front door by the murderers – and The Downward Spiral also featuring a song called March Of The Pigs – Trent denies either was directly related to what had taken place at the site of their makeshift studio.

In a sobering postscript, Trent ended up meeting Sharon Tate’s sister. She asked him about whether he thought he was exploiting her sister’s death – an encounter Trent admits caused him to breakdown, having suddenly seen things from her perspective.

Cannibal CorpseFrantic Disembowelment

No-one pens gleeful murder and mayhem anti-anthems like Cannibal Corpse, and those taking the time to read the lyric sheet often wish they hadn’t eaten beforehand. Famously stirring up controversy with both their lyrics and artwork in the late-’80s and early-’90s, CC have never once modulated their approach to making horrifying music, and Frantic Disembowelment has to stand as the pinnacle of their nastiness. What’s it about? The title makes it pretty clear, and nowhere will you find a more graphic description of innards becoming ‘outtards’.

Jane’s AddictionTed, Just Admit It

The track opens with a quote from American serial killer Ted Bundy (a man who kept severed heads as trophies), recorded shortly before his 1989 execution and wrapped up in off-kilter jazzy beats. “There’s gonna be people turning up in canyons, there are gonna be people being shot in Salt Lake City. Because the police there aren’t willing to accept, what I think they know. And they know I didn’t do these things,” he claims. The rest of it is hardly easy listening with frontman Perry Farrellintoning ‘Sex is violent’ over and over again like a man possessed.

SlipknotIowa

How do you end one of the most bleak albums in history? By recording a 15-minute doom jam that hints at necrophilia. Corey Taylor – who describes the Iowa album as the “darkest fucking period” of his life – explores the mind of a man who finds himself alone with a corpse: ‘You are mine / You will always be mine / I can tear you apart / I can recombine you.’ And to really get into that fucked-up mindset, he sang naked and cut himself with broken glass. The screams you hear on the song are quite real.

BlasphemyRitual

There are many rumours about Canada’s Blasphemy, none greater than the ones concerning their activities in Alberta’s Ross Bay cemetery. A place with a long history of satanic goings on, legend has it that the band carried out satanic rituals, desecrations and headstone theft on the site (supposedly the stone was returned after guitarist Black Priest Of The 7 Satanic Blood Rituals suffered demonic attacks). It would certainly explain Ritual’s suffocating darkness.

AbruptumObscuritatem Advoco Amplecetere Me Part 1

Euronymous from Mayhem once described Sweden’s Abruptum as “the audial essence of pure black evil”. As 20-ish minutes of raw, evil noise rather than a song, Obscuritatem… is certainly dark. Especially considering that the screaming sounds you hear are apparently band members IT and Evil violently torturing one another. True or not, this is diabolic stuff.

Alice CooperI Love The Dead

In his time, Alice Cooper caused outrage with the theatrics of his live show and songs like this tender track about stiffs. ‘I love the dead before they rise / No farewells, no goodbyes / I never even knew your now-rotting face,’ he crooned, prompting calls for a UK tour to be banned. MP Leo Abse accused the singer of “peddling the culture of the concentration camp”, adding, “Pop is one thing, anthems of necrophilia are quite another.”

Mercyful FateMelissa

The character of Melissa was a witch who was burned at the stake. She appeared a number of times throughout Mercyful Fate’s career, but here, on the metallers’ debut, it was to inspire her lover to seek out satanic revenge. The initial inspiration for the song came from a skull that frontman King Diamond (more on him soon) ‘acquired’ from a medical school. It had suffered a brutal injury, and the name Melissa came to the singer as he stared at it. Melissa also formed part of the stage set until she was stolen at a gig.

Video not playing? View on YouTube

Morbid AngelBleed For The Devil

If that title doesn’t tell you what side death metal legends Morbid Angel’s bread was buttered, how about the photo in the Altars Of Madness album sleeve of guitar wizard Trey Azagthoth shredding while bleeding profusely, looking as though he’s playing for the Great Horned One himself. Or you could just listen to the demented musical maze with lyrics literally attempting to summon Lucifer, and realise that whatever Morbid Angel were doing in the studio, they did not learn it at Sunday school.

Ozzy OsbourneMr Crowley

When Ozzy Osbourne was fired from Black Sabbath in 1979, many wondered whether he’d be able to muster the same dark magic again. Just a year later, people got their answer in the form of debut solo album Blizzard Of Ozz. Mr Crowley, its second single, refers to legendary occultist Aleister Crowley, who founded the religion of Thelema and considered himself a prophet. Dramatic stuff; so it’s a good thing it’s got a grandiose organ intro – and guitarist Randy Rhoads on monumental form.

MisfitsMommy, Can I Go Out And Kill Tonight?

We’d love to hear Freud’s take on Glenn Danzig’s colourful relationship with his mother. Before the diminutive behemoth’s maternally-titled solo smash he penned this ditty for the Misfits about a student driven to homicidal mania by his playground tormentors. But only if ‘Mommy’ says he’s allowed, obviously. Captured raw, the serrated tape-deck live recording only adds to the unhinged bloodlust. And packed like a meat locker with lurid promises to ‘rip the veins from human necks’ we can’t see how Glenn’s old lady could’ve possibly refused…

CovenSatanic Mass

Released in 1969, the same year U.S. occultist Anton LaVey published The Satanic Bible, Coven’s Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls album was the perfect soundtrack to the hippie movement taking a step down the left-hand path. Following nine tracks of Satan-themed psych, it closes with this, an actual satanic mass, conducted by the band. Even if you think it’s hokum, it’s hard to get to the end without feeling weird.

VenomBlack Metal

These days somewhat overlooked, more than any other band Newcastle upon Tyne’s Venom were the chief progenitors of metal’s most bloodthirsty subgenre, thrash metal. Couplets such as ‘Freaking so wild / Nobody’s mild’ may suggest the aid of a rhyming dictionary, but either way Black Metal would prove to be wildly influential on a range of young American musicians with a taste for the extreme. The track has been covered by no fewer than 11 different bands, and is loved by musicians as disparate as Dave Grohl and Kerry King.

Judas PriestBetter By You, Better Than Me

Can a cover of a bouncy ’60s pop song really be evil? According to a couple of grieving parents and their lawyers it can, and in 1990 Rob Halford and the boys were hauled into court over it. With hidden, subliminal messages allegedly buried in the song, which supposedly inspired two fans to shoot themselves, the trial itself was quickly sensationalised by the media. Though the charges were ultimately dismissed, the judge insisted there were such messages on there, though not necessarily powerful enough to incite suicidal actions. Stealth evil, maybe?

Celtic FrostProcreation (Of The Wicked)

Easily one of the most evil bands of their time – and essential to the evolution of extreme metal – Celtic Frost could conjure images of the Devil with a single chord. However, never did they sound more monstrous than on this brutish tune. Lurching along on a hulking riff and with twisted lyrics that scare Christians and excite all those who reject religion (‘If God raised the abyss, you’d procreate your own / Abolism of death is abolism of life’), this is music gloriously devoid of anything that could be considered ‘good’. Sepultura’s take on the track also stands amongst the best metal covers ever.

Killing JokeExorcism

This is a piece of ritualistic industrial-metal primal force that was recorded in the Great Pyramid Of Giza after Killing Joke allegedly bribed the Egyptian Minister For Antiquities for access. “Our engineer fell asleep in the King’s Chamber,” frontman Jaz Coleman told Kerrang! of the sessions. “He suddenly had some vision, sprang up, banged his head and ran out screaming. After this he said he’d never go back in again. He said there were thousands of alien eyes staring at him, and after that he had a stroke. It affected him, the place…”

King DiamondThe Family Ghost

King Diamond is no stranger to strangeness.

“I’ve had a ton of supernatural experiences. I feel like I brought something back with me from the operation [a triple heart bypass in which he nearly died] but I was having supernatural experiences long before that,” he says.

Many of these real-life experiences have been channelled into his music, both with Mercyful Fate and his self-named outfit. The Family Ghost might just be the only song to have incorporated an element of the supernatural into its very recording, however.

The song is a crucial part of King Diamond’s classic horror concept album, Abigail. The story for the album, which involves murder, possession and dark family secrets, came to King in a dream on a suitably stormy night.

“I woke up during a thunderstorm in my haunted apartment in Copenhagen and I had this story in my head. It was also influenced by my own family history. My mom told me how she was left on someone’s doorstep and she later found out she was the child of a professor’s son. He got my grandmother pregnant and she was sent away to have this child. That was all sort of wound into this story,” the singer explains.

On The Family Ghost, protagonist Jonathan La’Fey is warned by the ghost of his ancestor that his wife is carrying the vengeful spirit of the stillborn Abigail and that he must kill her in order to stop the rebirth.

Even spookier than the story is an unexpected and unexplained addition to the recording that may or may not have originated from somewhere beyond the grave.

“There’s a vocal part on The Family Ghost that I never recorded,” explains King. “It’s a part that goes, (adopts bestial growl) ‘Ohhhh damn,’ and we couldn’t find it on any of the tracks anywhere. I have no clue what it was, but it’s certainly not the only weird or even seemingly impossible thing to happen to us.”

Sunn O)))Báthory Erzsébet

What could be more evil than a song jointly inspired by black metal progenitors Bathory and the 16th century serial killer Elizabeth Báthory – who reputedly bathed in the blood of virgins – from whom they took their name? Perhaps one that also consisted of 16 minutes of tortuous drone and bleak lyrics like, ‘Decompose forever, aware and unholy, encased in marble and honey from the swarm.’ Oh, and legend has it the band locked claustrophobic guest vocalist Malefic from occult metal act Xasthur in a casket to make his performance more anguished.

DanzigMother

‘Mother…’ Don’t warble it, we dare you. Glenn Danzig’s post-Misfits mega-hit has gained such ubiquity, it’s easy to overlook its evil underpinnings. Peel away a million hoarse-throated rock club sing-alongs, however, and it’s still devilishly apparent. A tongue-in-cheek cautionary tale targeted squarely at Tipper Gore, the (parental advisory committee) PMRC and 1988’s other moral crusaders, its promise of a scene ‘not about to see your light’ pierced the mainstream like a sacrificial dagger. Chuck in the MTV-banned music video (animal sacrifice and inverted-crosses smeared bloodily onto nubile torsos = bad press, apparently) and we’ve got probably the most subversive song of its era.

SlayerAngel Of Death

Given that their entire oeuvre revolves around war, murder and general unspeakable wickedness, finding evil Slayer songs is hardly difficult: in fact, it’d be significantly more of a challenge to identify songs by the LA thrash metal pioneers that aren’t rooted in despicable, debased acts of inhumanity. That said, while the likes of Dead Skin Mask (based on the exploits of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein), Jihad (‘Fuck your God!’) and Necrophiliac (erm…) are gruesome and terrifying in equal measure, it’s the notorious opening track of the masterfully malevolent Reign In Blood album which will forever remain the Californian band’s most noxious and black-hearted artistic statement.

Perhaps the most chilling aspect of Jeff Hanneman’s lyrics detailing Nazi physician Josef Mengele’s abhorrent experiments on patients at the Auschwitz concentration camp (‘Burning flesh drips away / Test of heat burns your skin / Your mind starts to boil / Frigid cold, cracks your limbs / How long can you last in this frozen water burial?’) is the fact that they’re so clinical, unemotional and detached, leading to accusations that the band were glorifying the horrors. The controversy actually led to Columbia Records, the distributors for producer Rick Rubin’s Def Jam label, to insist that the track be removed from the album, a demand which both the band and their label boss flatly refused. Ultimately, the label washed their hands of the release, leading Rick to take it to Geffen Records instead.

Jeff always denied accusations that the song exhibited Nazi sympathies, calling it “a history lesson”. “There’s nothing I put in the lyrics that says necessarily he was a bad man, because to me – well, isn’t that obvious?” he stated, not unreasonably. His guitar partner Kerry King was even more brusque, saying, “Read the lyrics and tell me what’s offensive about it?” The band’s lack of repentance is understandable, but it’d be a dead soul indeed who can listen without flinching at the visceral horror.

Diamond HeadAm I Evil?

‘My mother was a witch,’ barked Diamond Head frontman Sean Harris in 1980, lighting a fire under the fledgeling NWOBHM genre, ‘She was burned alive!’ Fusing the occult themes of Black Sabbath to the ragged energy of early punk, the Midlands metallers laid a proto-thrash template that’d be picked up by Metallica (who famously covered the song as a B-side for Creeping Death), Megadeth and Slayer. For all those bands’ stadium-packing pedigree, though, there’s still something untouchably (im)pure about the original. ‘Am I evil?’ came Sean’s immortal question. ‘Yes I am!’

Iron MaidenThe Number Of The Beast

It seems strange to recall, but in the U.S. in the 1980s heavy metal often found itself under assault from religious groups convinced that the genre served as a Trojan Horse for the enslavement of the nation’s youth in the name of Satan. Few songs fostered this misbelief as resoundingly as The Number Of The Beast. Iron Maiden helped fan the flames of the song’s reputation by reporting various strange goings-on in the recording studio, while protests and album burnings greeted them when they headed Stateside for a 1982 tour.

RammsteinWeiner Blut

Rammstein have always courted controversy, and 2009 album Liebe Ist Für Alle Da proved to be no exception. It was initially added to Germany’s Federal Department For Media Harmful To Young Persons index, partly for the sadomasochistic song Ich Tu Dir Weh. The real darkness, however, can be found in Wiener Blut. The song is a first-person retelling of the evil perpetrated by Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned and abused his daughter in the basement of their home for 24 years. That’s all you need to know.

Black SabbathBlack Sabbath

Bassist Geezer Butler once painted his home black and hung inverted crosses and pictures of the Devil on the walls and claims that he saw a “black shape” by his bed after reading a book about witchcraft. The incident inspired one of metal’s most potently evil songs, which opens with a thunderstorm and ominous church bell and is propelled by that tritone riff – a collection of notes named diabolus in musica – which guitarist Tony Iommi describes as “really evil and very doomy”. Indeed, this six-minute song birthed an entire genre. Thanks, mysterious intruder.

MayhemFreezing Moon

By the time Freezing Moon was released on the De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas album, Mayhem’s legacy was already the darkest of any group in history. Two people were dead, one by his own hand, while a third person was serving a 21-year jail sentence for the murder of the other. Late Mayhem guitarist Øystein ‘Euronymous’ Aarseth had often spoken about the need for greater extremity and more evil in black metal. At great expense, he got it.

Two versions of Freezing Moon exist. The first remained unreleased for years, and was one of only two recordings of vocalist Dead (Per Yngve Ohlin), a young Swede who had moved to Norway to join Mayhem. A depressive boy who often spoke of a near-death experience as a child, he would talk about suicide in disarmingly casual tones. For early gigs, he would bury his stage clothes underground and smell dead birds in plastic bags. His lyrics for Freezing Moon were unsurprisingly morbid – ‘Everything here is so cold / Everything here is so dark… I remember it was here I died’ – while his vocal performance was unhinged and chilling.

He would never see it released, however. On April 8, 1991, aged just 22, Dead took his own life in the house he shared with the rest of the band. Euronymous, discovering the body, took photos and collected skull fragments to send to friends as necklaces, before calling the police.

Work continued on what would be Mayhem’s debut full-length, with Burzum’s Varg Vikernes enlisted to play bass, and a Hungarian singer, Attila Csihar, drafted in to replace Dead. Following the recording in early ’93, Attila returned to Hungary. What he would next hear from Norway was unthinkable: in the early hours of August 10, 1993, Varg stabbed Euronymous to death in his apartment. He was arrested and sentenced to 21 years.

The song itself, with its chilling, minor-chord intro where icy notes hang like corpses in the gallows, its scything main riff and demonic atmosphere, already showcased perfectly black metal’s musical abyss. But with so much genuine darkness behind it – killer and victim playing together, despite Euronymous’ parents’ request that Varg’s parts be wiped – it now stands as a chilling document of perhaps the most horrifying time in the history of music.

Read this next: 

The 13 greatest black metal albums of the 21st century

13 bands who wouldn't be here without Slipknot

The 20 greatest Nine Inch Nails songs – ranked

Check out more:

Nine Inch NailsSlipknotGuns N' RosesIron MaidenRammsteinGhostBlack SabbathMisfitsSlayerBehemothMötley CrüeAC/DCElectric WizardThe MisfitsMayhemWatainHellhammerDanzigPossessedDiamond Head

NOW READ THESE

Sent from my iPhone

[j-moze]

Demi from Subverse.

[gorgeousgalatea]

Can you just like do everyone in the fellowship of the ring for the character thing XD

Oh...boy. Lord of the Rings was a fandom where I deeply appreciated the canon more than did a lot of coming up with headcanons or personal takes and also that’s nine characters oh my god but I'll do my best XD

Frodo

Sexuality Headcanon: Hmm, demi bordering on aspec

Gender Headcanon: I admit I’ve never put much thought into the Fellowship but trans Frodo would be interesting

A ship I have with said character: Sam

A BROTP I have with said character: The hobbit quartet

A NOTP I have with said character: A dark part of me knows that Frodo/Gollum must exist and I respect those people and their right to get weird but I think reading it would break me

A random headcanon: Not even my headcanon but I am deeply tickled by the ‘Frodo doesn’t even know Legolas’s name’ theory from the movies

General Opinion over said character: I grew up with Tolkein and I love his protagonists. And I’m very into the subversive element of the Ring wearing even him down despite how long he endured it for. And he still gets a happy end despite of it!

Sam

Sexuality Headcanon: Demi and deeply devoted to Rosie and Frodo

Gender Headcanon: Cis

A ship I have with said character: Frodo but I respect the canon

A BROTP I have with said character:Bill the pony

A NOTP I have with said character: I’m just gonna reiterate the Gollum thing

A random headcanon: I want him to publish a gardening book that’s a breakout hit throughout Middle Earth but that is a bit indulgent

General Opinion over said character: Such a sweetheart really. Stalwart, loyal, and very badass about it.

Merry

Sexuality Headcanon: Bi

Gender Headcanon: cis

A ship I have with said character: None come to mind

A BROTP I have with said character: Eowyn. Okay also Pippin

A NOTP I have with said character: None come to mind

A random headcanon: He doesn’t enjoy the fireworks the way he used to anymore :(

General Opinion over said character: Dude helped kill the Witch King. He rocks.

Pippin

Sexuality Headcanon: pan

Gender Headcanon: trans

A ship I have with said character: None come to mind

A BROTP I have with said character: Merry

A NOTP I have with said character: None come to mind

A random headcanon: He and Merry visit Faramir and Eowyn a lot. This could even be in the book epilogue it’s been so long @_@

General Opinion over said character: Deeply chaotic little dude who grows a lot with the help of consequences and world saving trauma. He’s great.

Aragorn

Sexuality Headcanon: Arwen

Gender Headcanon: cis

A ship I have with said character: I’m fine with Arwen. The bb crush was cute

A BROTP I have with said character: Legolas and Gimli

A NOTP I have with said character: I never got into Aragorn/Legolas...

A random headcanon: Nothing specific but bb crush shenanigans is a cute concept

General Opinion over said character: Any time the guy with the most Chosen One traits is a supporting character and mentor is a good choice to me. Aragorn has his doubts and flaws and own narrative arc, but what he’s got going on doesn’t consume the narrative. It’s just a part of it!

Boromir

Sexuality Headcanon: just gonna slam my aroace emotions into this sad man

Gender Headcanon: cis

A ship I have with said character: Boromir/life ;_;

A BROTP I have with said character: I mean. He has a brother. Who misses him terribly. But admittedly also him and the hobbits.

A NOTP I have with said character: None comes to mind

A random headcanon: When he was able, he would delegate the delivery of good news to Faramir and he would deliver the bad, hoping to turn his father’s favor

General Opinion over said character: Heck yeah, give me all the tragic and doomed characters destroyed by their own nobility. Am I sad he is dead? Yes. Do I respect and appreciate the path his arc took? Also yes.

Gimli

Sexuality Headcanon: bi

Gender Headcanon: [insert a long and rambling discussion on how formative Discworld was and its relationship with dwarf gender and politics without ever actually answering the question]

A ship I have with said character: Legolas. What can I say, I like rivalry and contrast

A BROTP I have with said character: Aragorn

A NOTP I have with said character: None comes to mind

A random headcanon: All of the Discworld dwarf traits I can get away with

General Opinion over said character: How can you not like Gimli? Gruff but soft and swinging at every enemy kneecap in sight

Legolas

Sexuality Headcanon: pan

Gender Headcanon: gender neutral no matter what the Hobbit trilogy tried to pull

A ship I have with said character: Gimli

A BROTP I have with said character: Aragorn

A NOTP I have with said character: I guess also Aragorn

A random headcanon: All of the cat coded traits I can get away with

General Opinion over said character: I admit of the races I’ve always found elves less interesting but the woodland background and fratboy vibes are endearing

Gandalf

Sexuality Headcanon:Gandalf

Gender Headcanon: Gandalf

A ship I have with said character: Ga--he and Saruman have some of the narrative foil dynamic I would later deeply enjoy in a lot of my ships but I never got there with them in actuality

A BROTP I have with said character: Bilbo

A NOTP I have with said character:The flirtation with Galadriel in The Hobbit trilogy deeply weirded me out

A random headcanon: He came back in white to dunk on Saruman about the many colors thing. This might just be canon expressed in a really dumb way, it’s been a while

General Opinion over said character: He’s a cranky goodtimes cheerfully cryptic wizard, what’s not to like?

[faketokufan]

Welp... Geats is done, it's over and we can all go on with our lives. It was all in all a pretty good season! Nothing near top tier but hey it's miles ahead of whatever the hell Revice was... A solid season with some real stand out characters! Buffa was a fantastic rival and anti-hero. Nago's story of self discovery and self actualization was really interesting to watch and went in directions that I DID NOT see coming at all. A great subversion of the "I just want a boy friend" girl.

And Tycoon...

Sakurai Keiwa is the best Rider we've had in a long... LONG time. Not just Secondary, but RIDER Period.... He and his story brought this season up from being completely box standard and made it really worth watching.

But unfortunately the one character that never really managed to hook me at all...

Was Geats. Like... Like don't get me wrong his design is FIRE as hell and a rider wins or losses me on design alone like 90% of the time. But Ace as a character was just Tendo at home. And Tendo only worked because he was such an unbelievable asshole all the fucking time. Ace was just kinda Smarmy and a little dickish some times? Most of the time he was basically just nothing with a hint of "Ooooh I'm a schemen! I'm a little schemer!"

Don't get me wrong I don't dislike him or anything... He was just basically nothing. Especially when standing next to Michinaga and Keiwa.

All in all Geats was good! Super looking forward to Gotchard...

...yup...

Oh and also before yall start blaspheming in my treehouse.

I shall have none before Gaim sir thank you very much, you take your broke ass back to the demi god bargain bin here you belong.

My Gaaaaaaaim is an awesome Gaim he is! A funny little guy!!!

[krikeymate]

I know Sam and Tara are IT for you but I’m curious on how you think Chad and Tara’s relationship is going to develop. Like how do you think she will act with him and if they realistically would last and how she’ll manage her relationship with Sam while having a BF.

I've spoken about this a bit here and in here.

Realistically I think Radio Silence are going to try and make Tara/Chad an 'it' couple, to rival Gale/Dewey. I don't actually think Gale/Dewey were a great couple, so, it's no surprise that I don't have much faith in Tara/Chad. I think they're going to keep them pushed together even when their characters don't really work, and I fear they're going to do that at the expense of Tara's character. I hope I'm wrong.

I know how I want their relationship to go.

Chad (and Mindy) are very underdeveloped as characters. What do we know about them? I would argue we actually know more about Mindy than we know about Chad. Chad is a jock, he's strong, he's a nice guy. He's just there to be a 'Chad' character except, subversion! He's not a dick! That's not a personality, and it's boring.

I think Tara managing her relationship with Sam would have a few awkward moments as they readjust boundaries, but ultimately Sam is the one likely to take the important steps: stepping back and letting Tara have some freedom, and trusting her to be safe. The risk with that is it falls very into a patriarchal handing over the woman trope, a she's yours to protect now thing.

It's hard to say how Tara/Chad would be longer term, because we just haven't seen enough. From what I have seen from the characters: Chad would be overprotective, Tara would hate that - she just went through that with Sam, she doesn't want to have to go through it again. From the 3 'romantic' interactions Tara had with Chad, one struck me as going from an unsafe coping mechanism (Frankie) to a safe one (Chad); the second was Chad kissing her when she was trying to talk; the third was her kissing him when she realised he wasn't actually dead. I'm getting major he likes her, she's going along with it because why not vibes. Their relationship just feels so much more platonic than romantic to me. Although to be fair, I do headcanon Tara is Demi, so maybe she just needs more time and less near-death experiences to consider Chad in a romantic light.

[theinaccurateone]

Chara or Noelle for the ask game!

Okay, here it goes (I think I got the right ask game):

Chara

Sexuality Headcanon: pansexual

Gender Headcanon: non-binary

A ship I have with said character: Chara x MK. I always like the idea of ghost Chara following frisk around, and upon meeting monster kid Chara (after crushing so hard) is just “….okay, that was certainly a reaction. I hope we don’t see him again” and then they see him again and Chara is annoyed about this new crush.

Frisk is not annoyed at this new crush

A BROTP I have with said character: who better than Chara and asriel? They’re literally siblings. What better Protp is there?

A NOTP I have with said character: again, asriel. They’re adopted siblings. However, I am fine with it being a joked about topic in universe. It can be fun having ignorant people jokingly suggest the idea, with asriel cringing and Chara going “what, jealous?”

A random headcanon: Chara thinks very highly of frisk. They only insult them on genocide runs

General Opinion over said character: Chara is quite cool. I like their back story and how they get the name you put, it’s great subversion if expectations

Noelle

Sexuality Headcanon: lesbian (however she is quite closeted)

Gender Headcanon: Demi Girl

A ship I have with said character: Noelle x Susie….for obvious reasons

A BROTP I have with said character: Noelle and birdly. I can see them becoming best friends after chapater 2

A NOTP I have with said character: Noelle x kris. This comes more from a kris thing than a Noelle thing. I head cannon that kris actively tries to stay out of relationships, due to them not wanting the soul to have any input on said potential relationships

A random headcanon: Noelle has written a 100 character long fan-fiction about the different ghosts from Charles dickens “A Christmas carol”, with highly homoerotic undertones

General Opinion over said character:

Noelle is cool and very fun. Her arc in snow grave is sad, and I wonder how that route will lead to the same ending as non-snow grave runs

[ccthewriter]

CC’s Top 100 New Watch Ranking 2022 - Highlights

Each year on Letterboxd, I make a list of the 100 best films I’ve seen for the first time. It’s a fun way to compare movies separated in time, genre, and country of origin, and helps me keep track of what I’m watching! Over the next few days I’m going to release separate posts for each film in the Top 10, but for now, I wanted to highlight some incredible selections from the rest of the list. 

2021 was my cinematic awakening. I watched classics, pursued filmographies, and generally took a survey of the greats. I continued that exploration into this year, and if I’ve learned anything from this quest, it’s that there are A LOT of movies out there. I still have so much to see. When the Sight and Sound list dropped I wasn’t surprised that I had seen less than half of them. I’ve watched several since then, and it’s completely shaken up my rankings! There are films out there than can rattle your perception of the world. That’s something I adore about movies that I rarely find in other mediums. A few hours spent with a great movie can change you to your core. Like a dream that stays with you your entire life. How lucky we are to be able to enjoy and revisit such dreams whenever we want. 

The following films are all remarkable dreams. There’s something to say about everything in my Top 100, but these selections really stand out. They give feelings of desolation, or zaniness, or romance, or something stranger than anything I could put to words. Their ranking is subjective and liable to change - you have no idea how hard it was to assemble them in ANY coherent way. If you watch any of them, please feel free to reach out and tell me your thoughts! I am always interested in hearing the things people have discovered in these works. 

The full Top 100 list is on Letterboxd HERE. Click below to see ten selections chosen from #100 - #11

#96 - A Slightly Pregnant Man (1973), Dir. Jacques Demy

This is a list for Tumblr, so I had to highlight the m-preg film first. Gotta cater to my audience.

This was one of the most surprising comedies I watched this year. In a time when discourse about comedy is strong, and there’s an insistence that comedians are somehow obligated to be cruel and provocative, this film stands out as an example of the contrary. Often the best humor comes from unexpected empathy, not predictable cruelty. Marcello Mastroianni, my favorite biscotti (long Italian snack), is a driver’s ed instructor who discovers that he is pregnant. Hijinks ensue. There’s no hand-wringing explanation as to how it happens, no bug-eyed screaming at the camera, no cross-dressing or homophobic accusations. It’s all taken in stride. The humor is born out of the fact that at every turn, when you expect someone to act outlandish or cruel, they never are. Marcello’s wife accepts it; the doctors take interest in the case, but are respectful. A corporation invents a new line of male pregnancy clothes. It’s remarkable to see a film from 1973 that is kinder to a situation like this than something we’d get today. You can easily imagine the comedians of the 90’s and early aughts turning this premise into 120 minutes of gay jokes, slurs, and transphobia. There are dated jokes and dynamics to be found here, to be sure, but the blasé attitude towards this gender subversion makes this a really special watch.

#90 - Crimewave (1985), Dir. Sam Raimi

Perhaps the most controversial thing on this list! Crimewave is an early Sam Raimi film that is widely disliked, but I watched it with some friends this year and loved it. It’s a bonkers farce about a guy on death row recounting how he ended up there, starting as a meek nerd and getting wrapped up in murderous hijinks. On Letterboxd, I describe the aesthetics of the film as Looney Tunes Gotham City. It captures the griminess of mid-eighties cities and amplifies it, embodying the paranoia a certain American class felt going near urban centers at that time. This is what my parents thought would happen to me if I stayed in the city past dark. There are some really spectacular shots in this film - that one with the main goon charging through the doors and fighting away plates is a highlight. You can see Sam Raimi’s bag of tricks on full display, the visual genius that makes the Evil Dead movies hilarious and horrifying. His favorite punching bag Bruce Campbell makes an appearance in what might be his sexiest role - look at this gif, look at how FUCKING HOT he is. Blow smoke down my throat daddy. This film’s a great argument for Raimi being more than a blood-and-guts director. His kinetic scenes, his rubbery cartoon energy, has a place in any genre or story.

#81 - Trouble in Paradise (1932), Dir. Ernst Lubitsch

A psychological thriller, but fun, and sexy, and romantic, and not scary in the least. Hmm. Maybe there’s another term I should use… I evoke the psychology of this movie because it centers on a pair of professional double-crossers. A pair of thieves - partners in love and crime - decide to fleece a perfume heiress, one of whom seduces her and ends up really falling in love. Or maybe not! At every moment he confesses his love to the heiress, he’s turning to his partner and insisting he’s lying. And every time this partner acts to betray him and get revenge, she seems to reveal that that itself is part of the heist. Does the heiress know? Is she humoring them, or getting them framed? Every scene surprised me with who knew what and who was telling the truth when. I have a feeling I would have to rewatch this a few more times to get a real grip on that, and I would do so with pleasure. This plays like a light steamy comedy - and it is! - but within that easygoing charm there are actorly games that are fascinating to witness. I haven’t seen a shipping tree this complicated since the last time I watched Miraculous Ladybug…

#72 - The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz

A premise built for a paperback romance novel. A young widow moves into a house by the sea, only to discover the ghost of an old captain is haunting her new home. He’s very mean and very handsome. Over the course of the film they transform from antagonistic cohabitants to gothic romantics, separated by the veil of death from consummating their attraction. She’s trying to write a novel, despite her grief and the ghost’s patronizing attitude. He is still coping with, y’know, not being alive. I am enchanted by the power of this premise. It evokes so many oil-paint scenes of lighthouses and sea-battered cliffs, so many stories of strong-jawed men being made soft by the poise of an unshakeable woman. I don’t want to give the ending away because it is spectacular. I will say that it is amazing when a movie finds a route for a character's fulfilment without changing her at the last minute. Especially from this time, to see a woman’s journey end without her sacrificing something of herself… it’s a wonderful thing.

#69 nice - Too Cool To Kill (2022), Dir. Xing Wenxiong

One of this year’s biggest surprises! A Chinese remake of a Japanese film, something a friend recommended out of the blue. I don’t think any of us knew what this was going to be when we put it on. But this is a deeply, deeply hilarious farce with just enough romance to have this stand with some of the classic Hollywood greats I’ve seen this year. A gangster threatens to shut down a director's movie over the debts he owes. The lead actress averts this by claiming she’s dating the one man the gangster fears, a legendary assassin named Killer Karl (lmao). She’s not, of course, but she convinces a foolish stuntman to play the part. He thinks he’s in a cinéma vérité production, he method-acts the role entirely, and a wild series of hijinks ensue as they try to pass this wannabee Daniel Day Lewis as a real assassin. It’s just so thoroughly comedic. I haven’t seen the original, so I can’t comment on what this film invents with the material, but the lead actor, Wei Xiang, gives one of the best slapstick performances I’ve ever seen. An endless series of twists and hilarious turns. I saw this on a low-quality stream, I hope this gets a good blu-ray release with better subtitles.

#62 - Poitín (1978), Dir. Bob Quinn

You’ve heard of the Banshees of Inisherin - get ready for the Bastards of Inishtupid! Alright, sweaty introduction, but Martin McDonagh’s oeuvre is the best touchstone for the mood of this 50-minute crime story. The first feature film performed entirely in Irish, shot on location in Connemara. Two idiots bully the local moonshiner and try to get rich quick. Violence and misery emerges from their half-thought plans. I love this film because it is such a pleasure to hear Irish spoken - it’s a language I’m still struggling to learn, but hearing it in its own context, spoken by native speakers, is remarkable. The filmmaker turns Connemara into a sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland, where your house stands alone in this sea of fog that monsters might emerge from. Connemara does feel that way. I went on a bus tour through there once, and stretches of it feel like an alien world. My grandmother was from Tuam, right outside that stony expanse. She passed before I was born, and what little I know indicates she had a hard life. Films like this help me understand what she might have been leaving when she came over to the States.

#53 - Sweetie (1989), Dir. Jane Campion

A film that makes me squirm to recall its details. There’s a lot of pain, a lot of discomfort, in so many of its moments… and just like the titular character, we want to shun them and forget the truths they expose. Sweetie is a bizarre exploration of a woman’s life. The first twenty minutes or so you see her get into a horribly ill-informed marriage with someone she barely knows, and you can’t understand why she’s acting the way she is - and then you meet her family. You meet Sweetie. You see that she comes from an impossibly broken home, and the way they cling to ‘normalcy’ is by turning Sweetie into a sacrificial lamb, a black sheep they can always scream at. Without oversharing, I really empathized with what Sweetie was put through. It’s clear that she isn’t ‘born bad,’ or some manipulative genius like her family is making her out to be. She’s deeply ill and needs help. Her family perpetuates her illness - do they cause it? Exacerbate it? Could anything at this point save her? The film’s characters don’t know, and they won’t ask. I admire Campion greatly, but many of her films don’t entirely work for me. The worlds they capture seem so specific that without knowing them first-hand they can seem outlandish. There are things in this film that I’ve seen, heard through friends, or seen the scarred aftermath of, and can confirm this film touches something deeply real. Powerful stuff - though make sure you’re emotionally prepared to watch it.

#52 - The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001), Dir. Takashi Miike

Boy, if you thought Sweetie was going to make you squirm!! This is a really fucking weird movie. It’s a campy horror-comedy, sometimes-stop-motion musical that ends in a blisteringly sincere and dramatic commentary about living despite it all. Its multi-hyphenate genres somehow make sense when it’s all put together. A family, the Katakuris, run a remote bed-and-breakfast, and through a series of misfortunes keep winding up with dead guests that they have to hide from new ones. They’re never entirely innocent in what befalls their visitors, but you end up rooting for them through all their poor decisions. The movie stands out for being truly unpredictable. I couldn’t remotely guess where any moment would lead. There are some utterly disgusting things depicted here - *highly* recommend looking at a content warning before viewing - but that is paired with some incredible moments of comedy. Blending such different tones is very difficult, and I always admire when a work somehow manages to make opposing elements harmonize.

#40 - Paisan (1946), Dir. Roberto Rossellini

Last year, I fell in love with the films of Federico Fellini. His works made me the passionate film nerd I am now. I started a series of video essays exploring his filmography (which you can view here!), and as part of that quest, I decided to watch all the films he had worked on too. He described Paisan as his baptism into true cinema. He traveled around Italy just after World War 2 with a crew of amateur actors and little money, adapting to the conditions around them as they found it. What emerged from that journey is this remarkable film. Six separate episodes about the liberation of Italy, united by a theme of miscommunication. Between people speaking different languages, and between people unable to express themselves. In a year like this one, I am moved by films made by anti-fascists, made explicitly to confront and address cultural memory in a period of reckoning. Paisan is the filmmaker holding a mirror up to what Italy had become, how fascism changed them, what they lost in abandoning themselves to such a horrible ideology. It is just a fascinating document of a specific period of history. We are lucky to be able to step through time via this movie and witness such a landscape. It’s shot beautifully, it’s made by people who lived through the things they’re depicting. Each little episode would be its own award-winning short film if you took them apart… what more can I say? This is a true classic for a reason.

#19 - A Piece of Phantasmagoria (1999), Dir. Shigeru Tamura

A criminally underwatched, pristine gem of a film. A series of vignettes on a dreamlike, simple world. Anything I could say is best described by the speech that concludes each segment: “While traveling the realm of dreams I discovered a small planet called Phantasmagoria. This has been a short tale from that planet. The memories from this trip will be something to always cherish. Till Next Time - Sayonara!” This is so gentle, so happy, so whimsical. A man walks through a desert filled with giant lightbulbs and clocks. A cactus-person goes on a trip to the big city. The Bakers of Baker County have a tough life. You know those segments of Adventure Time or Steven Universe where they linger in some absurd visual, while a simple little melody plays that transports you into a space of simple enjoyment? Smile fixed and heart calm? This entire movie is like that. It contains light dreams, shining aspirations. I can’t wait to revisit it. If there’s anything from this list you should watch, it should be this one. It only has about 300 views on Letterboxd, an insanely low number given how spectacular this is. There’s no easily accessible blu-ray or physical copy of this, though you can view it on Vimeo here. Spend the 90 minutes doing so, you won’t regret it. I hope the director, Shigeru Tamura, gets to release a thousand things in English. It seems like most of his work has been for small Japanese publications. But I have to imagine he is widely known in the CalArts and animation circles - some spark of his influence seems to proliferate the best cartoons being made right now. Utterly gorgeous. A pinnacle of animation. Simplicity and style refined.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you for reading! If you made it this far why don't you give me a follow on Letterboxd, where I post reviews and keep obsessive track of all the movies I watch. Again, feel free to drop a line if you checked out anything from this list!

[macabremomo]

Subverse Progress Demi L0/D20 Lily L10/D14 Killi L10/D14 Elaisha L11/D13 Taron L11/D11 Sova L11/D8 Fortune L12/D9 Huntress L18/D21

Mantics Bulgetto L11 Chodestool L8 Dromstik L21 Napholeon L21 Jawz L19 (Unlock 8 more) Need Catalysts for Trisha, Equicox, Rekall, Pervedillo Complete Anomalies for Lamarse, Flickenstein, Itchy, Cicalo

F3N1X Upgrades: 1 Left