#Forever Living Originals

[nofatclips]

Valley of the Ocean by Sault from the album Earth

[underachievers-please-try-harder]

Track of the day // Little Simz - Mood Swings

[luuurien]

Little Simz - NO THANK YOU

(UK Hip Hop, Neo-Soul, Jazz Rap)

Stripping her sound to its barest and centering the music around loss both personal and economic, Little Simz's surprise release is a confident - if intentionally understated - dive into the core of her artistry and what she wishes to embody.

☆☆☆☆

The detour NO THANK YOU takes Little Simz in the aftermath of her enchanting 2021 opus Sometimes I Might Be Introvert isn't a surprise, but what she decides to do in this quieter space surely is. Diving into these introspective spaces after bold and heavy statement albums isn't all too rare in the hip hip space - Kendrick Lamar's done it with untitled unmastered; De La Soul dropped the satirical and lowkey De La Soul Is Dead after the paradigm shift that was 3 Feet High and Rising - but it often comes with a shift in intention as well, something that is absolutely not the case for Simz, continuing down the road of industry exploitation and artistic freedom SIMBI's grandness had her defiantly rejecting but now with a darker, more intimate feel to it all. NO THANK YOU has her clinging onto independence even as the entire industry seems to continue pushing back against her - her AWAL distributor was just bought by Sony for 430 million dollars and the cost of touring has only become more and more destructive for musicians - but it's this clear and close-up view of all that stress and anger NO THANK YOU pushes forward with some of her most commanding and passionate songs to date. Again produced by close collaborator Inflo, NO THANK YOU pulls SImz into the stripped-back and soulful sound of her 2010's projects while tweaking it with hints of the orchestral and gospel sound Inflo's been refining the past few years under his SAULT moniker. There's her usual jazz rap fare with a punchier feel to it like Angel and Silhouette, but she brings back grime and trap with a surprise lushness on early highlights Gorilla and No Merci, Inflo sneaking bright horns and crisp orchestration into themrespectively while the core beat is thick and sturdy. It's this gray area between elegant songcraft and a defiant exposé of industry games NO THANK YOU adores, Heart on Fire's drama spurred on by both its dramatic choral backings and Simz's newfound opportunities and fears with wealth and fame while the watery back end cut Who Even Cares sees her in a warmer melodic space where anxiety is submerged in hopes for the future as well as Simz's acknowledgement of the fight for her artistry ahead. The album lacks the broad strokes of social and personal commentary SIMBI used for its expansive yet insular storytelling style, but the focused energy she brings to NO THANK YOU results in a tighter tracklist that leaves no chance for her message to be missed. It can, at times, lead to a strangely understated message that doesn't always land with the impact SIMBI was able to support, the seven-minute Broken a beautiful narrative tale of immigrant poverty and social struggles yet its grooveless, airy orchestration seems to never shape Simz's lyrics in a supportive fashion, and even strong cuts like No Merci and X can have their intricate production take away from Simz's rapping at points. Her disillusionment with the wider music world is found more in her words than the music itself, often complementing one another with the plush landing pad Inflo provides for her harsh stories of broken communities and mental crises of Angel or X, but the minimalist stylings of Gorilla and gospel finale Control hit higher highs with even less instrumentation surrounding Simz, NO THANK YOU a strong album where the extravagance isn't always the most beneficial. It's never a big enough issue to cause tears in the album's experience and she has more than enough memorable lines and beautiful performances to carry her to the end, but for an album where much of its weight is found in Simz's writing thanks to Inflo's slimmer production, a little less decoration could've helped keep the storytelling at the forefront. As exhausting as the past few years have been for Simz, NO THANK YOU is a reassurance that she's not straying from her mission a bit, as direct a response to the modern music industry and the troubles within the community she grew up in as any of her previous releases but dropping much of the embellishments for an even more direct route to those answers. You can hear her frustration through her words no matter how smoothly she's floating on the beat, able to mix cool-headed raps and the issues plaguing her most better than nearly anyone else around her, NO THANK YOU is quintessential Simz during one of the most important parts of her career, refusing to let the staggering peaks of her previous album startle her and instead release a project where intimacy and expression take center stage. She knows exactly what she wants, and nothing will get in the way of her pursuit.

[pigswithwings]

above all else a trans woman is a person. above all else a trans women is a woman who goes to the same grocery store as you and buys fruits in the same grocery cart as you and goes home and eats her dinner the same as you. above all else a trans woman is a woman who dresses like you do and talks the same way you do. above all else a trans woman is a woman who wants to be cared about the same way you want to be cared about and a trans woman is a woman who makes friends the same way you make friends. above all else you should care about trans women because they are people. treat her as such.

[nineteenfiftysix]

Little Simz - Gorilla (NO THANK YOU, 2022)

[kagoutiss]

pelican town, ‘72

[stormywinter42]

This idea randomly struck me and I HAD to make it so here’s a Killjoys poster I designed

[skaiind]

That big Lug

there's speedpaints of this and more for the grubs on patreon ;))))

[ruporas]

only human

[ID: Two page comic in color of Vash and Wolfwood from Trigun Maximum. The first page has a black background and the upper half, behind the panels, is splattered with stylized red blood, scattered bullets, and lifeless hands. In the first panel, it focuses on Vash's boots, showing him stepping through the panel and into the bloody scene. The second panel shows his bloody footprints and the third panel shows his face, his down-turned eyes looking downwards. It's a neutral, vague expression with confliction. At the bottom of the page, the back of Wolfwood's head and shoulder is seen, blood dirtying the white color of his shirt and side of his face. Vash's hand reaches out to him from the right side of the page.

The second page shows the entire scene in full, half the page in light and the other in solid black. At the center, Vash leans down onto his knees as he wraps his arms around Wolfwood's shoulders into a hug. Wolfwood's back is turned away from the viewer, his left arm holds onto his bloodied punisher and his right hand sits on his lap. Light casts from the left side of the page, showing the bloodied surrounding, but the held up punisher casts a shadow on the both of them, shielding them from the light. END ID]

[drathe]

Dragon Age Keep tiles for Jowan:

Circle - Warden - Levyn

[notaplaceofhonour]

I was raised in the People of Destiny cult (later renamed, and more well-known as, Sovereign Grace Ministries, now Sovereign Grace Churches).

The valorization of martyrdom and The End Times was so ubiquitous it was ambient noise. We stood in the church lobby theorizing about who the antichrist would be, we argued about whether Jesus would rapture us all before, after, or during the Tribulation Period where Satan would be given free reign over the earth. There was a strong Christian Zionist fixation on Israel as the final battleground and capital of the coming Messianic Age. But the one thing we were all certain of was is that we were in the End Times, that we were not of this world and couldn’t get too attached to our lives here.

We were raised to believe our sin nature made us undeserving of life, that we deserved death and eternal conscious torture.

My parents read us the Jesus Freaks books (a series by Christian Rap group DC Talk about martyrs). I spent “devotional time” reading Fox’s Book of Martyrs. We had guest speakers from Voice of the Martyrs, their pamphlets were often stocked in our church’s information center. We grew up with our dad listening to right wing talk radio and making us listen to songs about how the Godless atheists were outlawing Christianity in America, that we could all become martyrs soon.

The group’s theology was damaging & traumatic in a lot of other ways that contributed to the suicidality I have continued to struggle with for the rest of my life. For a long time I did not believe I would live past 20. There are times when the idea of giving my death meaning by using public suicide to make a political statement has appealed to me.

So now, seeing so many social media posts glorifying the suicide of a US Airman this week, I have been furious. Reading his social media posts, I recognize so much about the way I was raised in his all-or-nothing, black-or-white mindset, the valorization of death-seeking & martyrdom, and the apocalyptic fire-and-brimstone imagery of self-immolation. The moment I saw people I followed celebrating his self-immolation, I said to myself “this feels like a cult”

So when I learned he was raised in a cult too, nothing could have made more sense to me. His political orientation may have changed, but his mindset did not—it was no less extreme or cult-like.

I’ve talked about so many of the reasons this response from the broader left scares me, including how it’s laundering that airman’s antisemitic beliefs, but I cannot think of anything that would hit me in a more personal place than this specific response to this specific situation has.

When I see the images, I think: that could have been me. That scares me, and what scares me more is that so many prominent people are overwhelmingly sending the message to people like me that there is nothing else we can do that would have a more meaningful impact than killing ourselves for the cause.

I do not believe that. I will not even entertain it. And having to see his death over and over and over again, to argue against people who are treating this like an intellectual/moral exercise or a valid debate we all have to consider has been immensely triggering and fills me with a rage I rarely feel. It’s unconscionable that we are even putting self-harm on the table, and that pushing back against that is somehow controversial.

There is hope. Our lives do have meaning. There are far more effective means of fighting injustice. And the world is a better place for having you in it. Don’t fall into believing this is a way to give life purpose.

[nofatclips]

The Jungle by SAULT from the album Today & Tomorrow

[underachievers-please-try-harder]

Track of the day // Little Simz - Gorilla

From the album No Thank You.

[brighter-star]

Meet Kaede Honoko, an oc of mine from a dnd campaign primarily based on Madoka Magica who sold her soul to become a magical girl after a housefire killed her cat

[liyv]

rabbit hunt

[jasperthejester]

its joey its joey its acting he grabs the railing so he doesnt fall it doesnt mean anything owens dead owens dead owen dea-

*heavy breathing*