#So while I miss the aesthetics of the 2000s

[bizarrelittlemew]

okay. i just watched the movie Snakeskin (2001). i bought a physical dvd in the year of our lord 2024 because Taika has 6.5 minutes of screentime in it. and now i'm sitting here trying to process wtf i just watched asjdhfdjsk so here are the highlights (thank you Meow @blakbonnet for going through this experience with me)

first of all, enjoy these screenshots from the trailer (i'm still not sure if they're mandatory disclaimers?):

...but say yes to snake imagery, because there will be a lot of it

we are definitely in 2001. this is extremely apparent throughout the whole movie. but especially from this girl's hair

Taika's character (Nelson) and his girlfriend (Daisy, pictured above) drive around in a repurposed ice cream truck and sell drugs btw. it's called Mr. Trippy.

main character Alice (Melanie Lynskey) is a huge fan of ✨America✨. her best friend is in love with her but she only wants Bad Boys. also said friend's name is Johnny but it's actually Craig

ALSO Craig-slash-Johnny is played by Dean O'Gorman (Fili)??!?!?!?

their hobby is to drive around picking up hitchhikers but only those who look not boring

enter The American. this guy is the most American you have ever seen. americans wish they could be as American as this guy. no one else has ever Americaned harder.

as you can see, i'm not lying. he even says "howdy ma'am" so we're convinced he is a real American

three skinheads are after The American because he stole their drugs (i think). he also stole drugs from Nelson and Daisy, who now owe money and/or drugs to their boss, who also has beef with The American for reasons i'm still not totally sure of

The American not only steals drugs and money, he also has a real gun(!!!) and fucks pretty much everyone?

"darlin'. u gotta earn the raaaiht. ter wear snakeskins 😎"

oh my god the sunglasses emoji just reminded me of the fucking sunglasses oh no i'm not sure i can do this akjsdhjsk this will make sense later i promise

do not learn gun safety from this movie

at one point, there is a whole lotta sheep. we are, after all, in Aotearoa New Zealand. and ok this had the cutest moment of Taika yelling "SHEEPY" out of a car

there's a scene where uhm. uhhh no not gonna describe this i think but. yeah fair warning this movie has some period-typical homophobia let's just say 💀 this is the live reaction:

MOVING ON

if you enjoy the 2000s aesthetic of "look how edgy we are doing drugs" *colorful-haired people on couches in dark club* *echo-y laugh* *hallucinations* *it's mushrooms look it's mushrooms we're doing psychedelics* then this is the movie for you my friend

oh and Alice also did acid at some point while being very "i've totally done drugs before" about it (((doubt)))

GIRL GET UP FROM THAT DIRTY BATHROOM FLOOR

[New Zealand accent] "wow. six and acid." yes she is living all her american dreams as you can see

by nighttime, all three cars (main characters, mr. trippy, and the nazimobile) and the motorcycle (mr. drug boss) have made it pretty far up the mountain, it seems. cute moment between mr. drug boss and nelson. look how :D he is!

but you know a movie with Taika in it needs to have a father figure talk down to him so he gets very 🥺 right after this

lots of shit goes down (i won't spoil too much if by any chance you still want to watch this) and it turns out that the older skinhead guy is the best actor in the movie??

and NOW things get weird

Craig and The American have so much beef by now that they decide to solve it by russian roulette

Alice's reaction to this is something like "ugh, you guys are crazy, i can't watch this 🙄"

like she just walks away?? GIRL THEY'RE AIMING A REAL GUN AT EACH OTHER

she keeps COMPLETELY UNDERREACTING TO WHAT IS HAPPENING like (spoilers from now on) CRAIG IS SHOT AND KILLED and she doesn't even run over and she doesn't even say anything to The American?? WHO SHOT HIM???? he's just standing there??

and then. AND THEN.

ok this is where i fully lost it for several minutes and missed half the following scene. i was fucking HOWLING like actually crying with laughter, i couldn't see or breathe and my partner got worried ksjdhfdjsk ok so here's what happens

they're in the car. craig is obviously very dead. alice is kinda in denial i guess. The American tells her to shut his eyes and she's like why? BECAUSE HE DEAD GIRL!! but she doesn't, she doesn't shut his eyes, no, this is what she does instead

I COULD BARELY MAKE THIS GIF BECAUSE I KEPT LAUGHING TO THE POINT OF TEARS

NOT THE SUNGLASSES ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME. THE UNTAPPED MEME POTENTIAL HERE IS FUCKING RIDICULOUS

ANYWAY shortly after this we hear one of the funniest lines in the movie (and it's not even about the shooting and killing of Craig):

"fuck, Seth! this isn't fucking America, you can't just go around shooting everybody!"

oh yeah The American does have a name and it's Seth

i'll just post a few chat screenshots for the next part because i can't really describe it, i promise we're almost at the end

after some incredible visual effects™️, we end with Return of the Sunglasses (and me scaring my cats away because i was sobbing again)

i haven't even really talked about Taika's scenes much (the reason i watched this in the first place) because the ending took me OUT and honestly he is maybe the most normal person in this whole movie. one review (from the trailer) wrote this:

and yeah that may honestly be the best way to describe it. 10/10 movie watching experience, highly recommend. thank you for coming to my snek talk

[lavenderdreams205]

spn thoughts as requested

tw & spoiler warning

they should have kept the grungy filter and aesthetics from the early seasons

bring back the southern / midwest gothic vibes

dean would've listened to and loved 90's & 2000s grunge - I know that the whole "there's no good music past '79" is a key part of his personality but pre series/early seasons dean is soo nirvana / Weezer / smashing pumpkins coded

there is too much flannel in the later seasons - I miss the carhartt and leather jackets so bad

BRING BACK DEANS JEWELRY

there's so much about cas that we don't know. there's all the episodes where he just isn't there and they never tell the viewers what he's doing or where he went

on the same note, cas's personality isn't nearly as flushed out as sam's or dean's are. who is his favorite musician? what's his favorite place to travel to? why does he like the pimpmobile so much? does he actually like the trench coat or does he wear it just because it's there?

so many people characterize cas as a little guy, and while he is cute, it's important to remember that he's also an incredibly powerful eldritch horror who leads angelic armies and brands Michaels vessel just because

dean is bisexual and in love with cas - I won't take the time to list all of the reasons here, but you can definitely find those reasons somewhere

i would've loved for them to use the handprint as a physical manifestation of their bond instead of having it be just a scar that fades with time

i'm actually really ok with the way cas dies, I think it makes sense for his character and provides closure (for him, at least, not for dean)

the parallels of cas and dean meeting in a barn and then dean dying in a barn

cassie is deans first love, cas is his last

the imagery of the empty as cas's wings in 15x18

why do the subtitles spell cas as cass, its awful

there's a few lines in the early seasons that seemingly reference dean getting roofied / sa'd and are subsequently played for laughs, Jensen Ackles confirmed that dean would've done underage sw when John didn't leave them with enough money. I believe that this trauma is a major reason that dean never accepted his sexuality

the way deans alcoholism is overlooked and joked about is actually insane

having dean be completely ok after 15x18 is also insane, especially after the widower arc where the show specifically shows it's viewers how deeply dean grieves cas when he dies

deans death is literally so stupid. I get that the show is trying to make a really meta point about the characters not having plot armor anymore because chuck is gone, but dean deserved to find peace. if the events of the show had never happened and pre series dean had never gotten pre series Sam back into hunting it would've ended the exact same way - dean dead on a hunt and Sam dying from old age

dean spends as much time on earth as he did in hell, and while he would never be the same, I like to believe that if he had been allowed by the narrative to live longer he would've gotten back a little of the twinkle in his eyes that he had before hell

in 15x20 Bobby says that cas helped rebuild heaven but if he was there he would've gone to see dean. additionally, there's no way cas should have been able to escape the empty. this is such a glaringly obvious plot hole and it drives me nuts

I would've liked to see cas's wings in the show - not just the shadow of them

the only time I tolerate serious discussion of wincest is in the context of ethel cain

i am a Sam disliker - while he does have many positive qualities, I have a really hard time getting past him not looking for dean when he was in purgatory and him joking about deans alcoholism and other traumas

i like Sam the best when he's with Eileen, I think they're adorable together and I'm mad they killed her off

I am a chronic jack defender, that boy has done nothing wrong

it would be interesting to explore cas and jacks relationships with their respective genders

there's no way being forced to murder the dean clones didn't affect cas, we only saw him kill the last one but the first few he had to kill had to have been devastating

i'm really disappointed by 14x13 Lebanon, we get the scene with John and Sam but I would argue that dean has significantly more reasons to be upset with John and it's unfortunate that the episode just glossed over this - I believe a screaming match between the two would have cleared the air a bit and been at the very least cathartic for dean

i'm fairly sure that it's canonical that John sent dean away on his 17th birthday to kill lesbian ghosts. my personal hc is that John suspected that dean was bi and sent him to teach him a lesson

i saw a post on here comparing hunting culture to biker and cowboy culture and viewing those things through a queer lens and I thought it was fascinating - there's so much spn could've done if it cared about the show more than money and losing viewers

every time cas and dean beat the shit out of each other, it serves as further proof of their relationship rather than discrediting their relationship - ie demon dean and cas fighting in the library is used to parallel Cain and Collette. it could even be assumed that their love is stronger because Cain killed Collette but dean left cas alive

The purgatory love triangle was so silly

once dean worked through all of his trauma and toxic masculinity he would've been a swiftie

all of the main characters have old / vintage cars but in like season 13/14 dean sam and cas just collectively own and use this really ugly silver truck from the 2010s. its such a small detail but it absolutely ruins my viewing experience every time I see it

dean is actually really smart but most of the fandom overlooks it because Sam is characterized as the smart one. if you know anything about cars you know it takes an insane amount of brains to build a car from scratch (he did this with baby multiple times throughout the show) also he just makes an emf meter using basically nothing. if dean had been given the same opportunities he gave Sam, he would've been an engineer or something

i will always be a John hater, if this man has 0 haters, I am dead

[fleverian]

Mermay? Nah it's fairy time

Here's some close ups

Been thinking about Fairytopia. Gotta be one of my favorite Barbie movies. I've wanted to draw a young Laverna and Enchantress for a while.

I'm gonna rant about nearly 20 year old Barbie movies. Man, I wish we got some more lore for these movies. Instead we got Mariposa, which was ok and I liked it but I didn't really care for, idk what to call it, the aggressive girliness? Where they bring in fairies obsessed with fashion and everything had to be covered in glitter. But at least I could consider it as maybe just a story Elina was telling Bibble or somewhere far away from Fairytopia. But the the next one ruined it by having Mariposa just straight up fly through Fairytopia and now there's some crystal fairy kingdom right in the middle of the Magic Meadow and the aesthetics and fashion completely clash with the first three Fairytopia movies. I like how the outfits in Fairytopia look like they are made from flowers and natural things. But in Mariposa and The Fairy Princess the outfits look like generic glittery modern Barbie princess aesthetic. Absolutely hate it. To me, it is not canon.

The older Barbie movies are super dated looking probably were even when they just came out. But they all had such well designed outfits and environments. They kind of have a liminal feeling to them. I love the aesthetics of them. The modern Barbie movies improved a bit in the animation, but never to the point where it looked that great. To me they end up looking more uncanny than the older ones. Because the older ones at least had a style to them but the newer ones just look generic. The fashion the backgrounds everything is just so soulless to me. Idk, maybe I'm just old and miss my childhood lol.

Really wish Mattel would revisit some of the old Barbie movie characters though. With a movie, books, or picture books. I fear them making anything with them with the new animation though. I need them to dust off their old stuff and bring back the crappy mid 2000's Barbie cgi. I neeeed it. It would probably be cheaper for them too since it's outdated. I need to see a new Barbie movie in all it's old

glory.

I need to see my girl Elina again. I want some more Fairytopia and Mermaidia lore.

Would love to see some backstory of Laverna and The Enchantress. I feel like there's something there. It just needs to be expanded on. What's Laverna's deal and why is The Enchantress the most useless fairy in all Fairytopia. I have to know.

I designed some younger versions of them. I saw this and wanted to draw my own versions. Gave The Enchantress a name too, Elvina. Read it means "elf or magical friend or noble being" and thought it fits really well.

Decided to try a new coloring style with these. I think it works pretty well for fairy characters. I don't think I'll use it much with other things because it takes a while and I like to use a simpler style.

Here are some versions with no backgrounds since the wings are transparent

[bedofthistles]

what’s moonacre about ? :)

WELL LET ME TELL YA

without giving too much away, the basic plot is little orphan Annie Maria Merryweather along with her Governess Miss. Heliotrope, move from fashionable London Town to Moonacre to live with her Estranged, Broody, but Hot Uncle ™️ whose like super angry? Anyway we’ll figure that out later

While on the way to the countryside (which is full of the countryside) their carriage gets attacked by highway men! Known as the De Noir Clan, ruffians and thugs, Maria is warmed to stay out of the forest, but does she? Of course not.

Maria is a feisty, prideful, headstrong thirteen-year-old, she’s marvelous, but as more and more strange things keep happening, she cannot keep her curiosity at bay and must figure it out! She’s so sassy and mouthy

She’s learns of an old family grudge between the Merryweathers and the De Noirs that has festered and caused so much strife throughout the valley. Hundreds of years ago, the Moon blessed a woman with a pure and good heart with magical moon pearls that will grant any wish and reveal the truths of men’s hearts.

Both families vie for the pearls, and seeing their greed, the Moon Princess curses the Valley that if by the 5,000th full moon if they don’t get their shit together the Valley will be plunged into eternal darkness!!!!

There’s a big fluffy dog, a mystical white horse, and inaccurate, but beautiful costuming!!! (Like seriously it’s so historically inaccurate but I can forgive it because it’s fantasy and beautiful)

enemies to lovers!

TIM CURRY!!!??? Inexplicably???

I watched it when I was a teen and rewatched it in March and OBVIOUSLY I’ve been unhealthily obsessed!

It has similar vibes to Stardust, Narnia, the Last Unicorn that late 2000s children’s fantasy movie aesthetic 

🥰🥰🥰

[spoiledsummerdasies]

I experience girlhood in a very unique way. Being the only girl in an all androgynous-masc plural system. Every time I front I experience life as a trans-masc, because that’s the body I’m driving. Despite myself identifying on the feminine end of the spectrum I hold no contempt or hate for the trans-masc body I have to front in and the men/enbies of the system for transitioning the body in the first place. I understand completely why transitioning was the best option for us. I may miss our long red hair and girly voice but I am not dysphoric. Because girlhood to me isn’t about how you look or identify, it’s about how you build yourself.

Wearing frilly socks, carrying lipgloss in your pocket, decorating with cherries and lace. I’m a girl because that’s what I make myself out to be, and the rest of the system and the body don’t effect that at all. A boy can experience femininity, so can enby, as long as you seek out those experiences you will experience them.

Not only that, I hold the memories of growing up as a little girl. Even though I didn’t split until we were older, those memories were placed into me. So I have a deep comforting nostalgia for being a girl in the 2000s, looking up at the surfer chicks at the beach thinking they were so cool. Wearing heels too big for me and pretending to be a princess. All the nice parts of girlhood, before the host started to become wracked with dysphoria I remember and cherish.

So while coquette is definitely a feminine aesthetic and community, it’s not exclusive to only girls. Being coquette to me, is how I get to enjoy girlhood as the only girl in the system, and the nostalgia I get looking back on the memories of being raised a girl. It’s capturing the girlish joy and innocence of growing up a girl and living it despite your age, body or identity.

[motsimages]

The first drag queen show I ever saw in my life was in Russia. It was 2008. They hired a group of drag queens from Moscow and brought them to a local disco in some lost Ural city. It was an spectacular show and I only regret having a poor level of Russian because I missed many jokes. This does not mean that gay people were happily out in the open, but in 2009 there was a movie about drag queens in Moscow, so it was still better allowed to do these things.

That year, I also met a gay man in his 40s. He was friends with a group of 40-50 year-old swingers and one of them happened to be my student of French. This gay man was the most interesting one in this party and I always regretted not being able to get his contact details, we got along immediately.

4 years later, in that same city, a friend of mine who had a gay friend invited us all out to the gay bar. It was far from the city centre, in some building with no lights outside. Compared to the very decorated and aesthetic bars, cafes and discos I had been in Russia, this one felt temporary. It had almost no decoration and no light work. Chairs were swimming pool chairs. It was half empty, and amongst the small vibrant young community there, a couple of man and woman in their forties caught my eye. They were quiet, just having some drinks looking at the ambiance. They looked like neighbours who decided to take a drink before going home in the closest bar, and it happened to be this one, they probably had a shared story with the rest of the clientele.

That same year, I went to Kazan and people knew there was a gay bar near a very recognisable place in the city center. I could never find it on my own and I knew I could only enter with an invitation. I have visited friends in the area later on, in one of my last trips to Kazan, around 2017? I was surprised to see two young lesbians hugging and snuggling in a hipster bar of the city center. A Russian gay roommate I had in Madrid around that time, where I also shared a flat with a very out Spanish lesbian girl, took months to even mention he liked boys. In Madrid. He was surprised that men would just hold hands in the street with their boyfriends.

From what a friend of mine has shown me from music in her teenage years, there was some possible turning point in the early 2000s where some gay men and some lesbian women made music and were relatively out in the public eye. Outside of Russia, we know of T.a.t.u., but there were many others. Several of the men casually married to women around 2010 and said that they were only gay for marketing purposes, not really gay. I particularly think of Shura (after min 1:15).

I was in Russia for the elections in, I think it was 2012. There were demonstrations and the Dean of the university where I worked gathered many teachers and told us that we should forbid our students to go demonstrate (it took him a long while because he started of saying "we must look out for them, let them know it's dangerous and they could end up in prison" but professors wouldn't agree, students were old enough to make their own decisions).

Over the past ten-fifteen years, many things have been happening in Russia, little by little. I think the last drop has been the war. Up until that moment, it was tiny changes here and there, but the war has been a big distraction so no need to hide anything anymore.

I have interpreted for Russian asylum seekers who left the country because they oposed the war and didn't want to go to the front. They were in associations agains the war and so, they were deemed not only desertors but extremists.

This past year, every month we have received Russian asylum seekers who were gay and/or opposed to the war. Many are going to Kazakhstan, Turkey or any other countries where no visa is needed. Many need to go through Georgia to be able to open a bank account that they can use in Europe while not being tracked by Russia.

I worry about my friends too. A mother of three with a son who soon will be 18, of age to go to the army and probably not the means to stop it. I worry about the friends who don't know what it means that so many people are being labeled extremists, those who are doing things "right", but how right can you do them until they're not right anymore because they're single or divorced or childless or working or unemployed or too young or too old?

I may have noticed these changes more than my friends because I have not been living in Russia in the long term, I came back every couple of years and things were harder. Moscow looks like a modern city, every couple of years looks more and more like Europe. But some things were never open to begin with and the window where they could have changed was a very small one.

[moyokeansimblr]

Get to know you: Sims Style

Well I was patiently waiting to be tagged but it's not happened yet and @isimchi "tagged" anyone who hasn't so that means me 😁

What’s your favorite Sims death?

I mean, I have to say drowning. I have many a memory of my childhood best friend and I batch creating like 100 sims with the sole purpose to drown and make haunted lots... Surely we all did that though, right?

Alpha CC or Maxis Match?

These days I'm maxis match, and in particular my cc is 90-95% 4t2 stuff. Sometimes I miss non-clay hairs but not enough that I'd wanna switch back. I'm actually extremely happy with my game aesthetic at the moment. I see the appeal of alpha and I am alpha in sims 3 but I don't think I could go back to it in sims 2 anymore.

Do you cheat your sims weight?

Not directly... occasionally I've dragged needs up so a sim will exercise longer when they want/need a body skill because when it's not fall the body skill takes FOREVER to gain. So then they'll end up exercising so long that they get fit where they might not otherwise have. That's as close as I'd get to cheating their weight though.

Do you move objects?

I mean, yes. I both move objects and moveobjects. 😉 (although I've had the cheat alias "mon/mof" (yes, one f) for ages I don't even remember the proper way to type the cheat.

Favorite Mod?

Hmm that's tough. Some staples I couldn't live without are sim blender, ACR, monique's hacked computers, all the no regen mods, the auto saver, gussy up, and for some reason smonaff's period mod is the mod I've had in my game longer than anything else I have now. Been using that since the 2000s. Is it necessary? Probably not. Is it annoying? Yes but periods are annoying irl too. Would I miss it if I didn't have it in my game? Greatly.

First Expansion/Game Pack/Stuff Pack?

My parents bought the sims 1 on release when I was 3, and then at some point shortly thereafter I ended up entirely hijacking my mom's computer. But while they did buy every pack on release as well, the earliest pack that I still have solid memories of playing is Vacation. Is that all it was called? I think non-US versions had a cooler name like On Holiday or something.

Do you pronounce live mode like aLIVE or LIVing?

Ya know... I've never really thought about it until now but both. Sometimes I say LIVE and sometimes LIV. I don't know what goes on in my brain to decide which one I'm gonna say at any given point but I know for fact I say both.

Who’s your favorite sim that you’ve made?

I've had many favorite sims over the years, most long lost into the void. But one sim I think about a lot is one of my old ts3 sims Levi Engle. He was one of my first truly evil sims and really one of my last proper edgy sims as well and I've not had anyone quite like him since. This was like 2016 I think? I'm still waiting to have a sim like him again, in either 3 or 2. "Made" is not quite accurate, he was born. But he's one of my own, not a premade.

Have you made a simself?

Oh have I.

Which is your favorite EA hair color?

Red. Specifically since I prefer 4t2 clay hairs in EA's colors these days the red that's swatch 9. This one.

Favorite EA hair?

Hmmm... In ts2

And in ts3

Favorite life stage?

Young Adult, in all versions of the game. University is my favorite EP across the board.

Are you a builder or are you in it for the gameplay?

Gameplay. Every so often I feel build-y, and I have made entire custom worlds in ts3 and hoods in ts2 where I've build everything myself but mostly I prefer to just use other people's or the game's builds and just enjoy playing.

Are you a CC creator?

I sometimes feel kind of weird using the word "creator" since all I do is convert stuff but yes. I share cc.

Do you have any Simblr friends or a Sim Squad?

I don't know? I have some mutuals that I go like 😁 whenever I see in my notifs or messages from. But I don't really exactly talk to anybody.

Do you have any sims merch?

I've got a blanket with plumbbobs on it and my brother's girlfriend got me a sheet of ts4 stickers I've not used yet. Otherwise, do all the old discs and prima guides count? My discs are the most important things I own.

Do you have a YouTube for sims?

Not really. I have a youtube channel that's a hodgepodge for both my eurovision ranking videos and the occasional sims thing. But I'm not a sims youtuber at all.

How has your “Sims style” changed throughout your years of playing?

Oh boy, it has a lot. When I was a kid I destroyed pleasantview with fairy and mermaid cc from "UserDeb" on the Exchange and SapphireSims2 I think it was called? Mad emo cc and like households where it'd be two families living together so the teen girl and teen boy could secretly meet together in the dead of night in the bathroom. Back then lots of one-off totally unrelated families in an otherwise empty custom hood that I'd play for the duration of a random idea I had then drop. Then in the 2010s I had a long stint of this like making 8 YA girls and 8 YA boys and pairing them up and then graduate and marry and kid and then create 8 more YAs in CAS and repeat and that got like 15 generations once. I did that kind of not really playing but more just like breeding for years. Whereas whenever I'd stop playing 2 and play 3 instead I would "properly play" and have long ass legacies. I never touched the premade sims until I tried to play Pleasantview in 2020. I did have a few failed megahoods then. Now I am wants-based and I prefer to have as little control as possible over my sims. I could say a lot more here but I'm tired.

Who’s your favorite CC creator?

Talk about a hard question! For times sake I'm going to say @deedee-sims because when I deleted my 48+ GB folder of alpha CC to start anew maxis match-y the first new CC I had was everything of DeeDee's.

What expansion/gamepack is your favorite?

ts2 University. I just love it.

-------

I don't know who has and hasn't done this since I feel like I'm late as I never got the tag. But since I really wanted to do it, I'm sure someone else who hasn't been tagged wants to too. So if you've not done it, go for it!!

[prettyflyshyguy]

Anyway, thoughts on Being Human UK so far, under the cut for anyone who's interested in my TV ramblings. Shoutout to the people who suggested I watch it! It's been fun, misses the mark a little at times (for me) but overall; good! Done with Season 1 now. It's been fantastic background TV while I've been drawing/editing.

First of all, of course, the music is fantastic. Iconic British bangers left right and center. Aesthetically this show pops off. Set design, costumes, it screams 2000s so bad and also has the iconic British tv DNA. Particularly like this ghost who died in the 80s (because of course. He wears a casio and uses a walkman and listens to weird music)

The fact that they use prosthetics and a full animatronic suit for the werewolf bits has me swooning every time. It's beautiful. Visceral. Really really nice stuff. Huge props.

Writing wise, and I'm not sure if this is a british thing or a Being Human thing but the humor is great (of course!) but I find the juxtaposition of the humor with the at times, intensely dark themes and topics this show tackles, can be a bit rough. Like I really like that this show tackles some heavy stuff and the emotion of the three main characters, but it gives me a bit of whiplash at times and that lets it down a bit I feel. Its frustrating cause the humor is great, and the tackling of heavy topics is great, but sometimes they are too close together without a buffer and its a bit like OH slow down buddy! I need breathing room!

Anyway scenes like this keep me coming back because Ugh. The colour, the clutter, Joy Division playing. It's fun! The three of them are really fun!!

S1's finale had me by the throat when George hit me with the "This doesn't rob me of my humanity... It proves it." like FUCK OFF FUCK OFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF\

with the EYES AND THE TEETH TOO C'MON

Good shit good shit they know what's up. They know.

I'm not going to pay $17 for S2 on youtube right now because fuck off. Will come back to it when I have the dosh to chuck and when I don't feel bad about youtube robbing me.

[extasiswings]

As someone who never watched bones, the bones blueprint???

What is the Bones blueprint? WELL, LET ME TELL YOU. So Bones is the show with one of, if not THE hetero slow burn ship of classic Fox procedural shows in the mid-2000s-early 2010s. (Pretty much every main network had at least one major procedural slow burn at a time. Fox had X-files, then Bones. ABC had Castle. CBS had NCIS and The Mentalist…you get it). So, let me set the stage with our characters:

Seeley Booth, played by David Boreanaz. Booth is an FBI Agent and former Army Ranger (with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart and a certain amount of PTSD that he doesn’t like to discuss). Catholic. Complicated relationship with his family. More than a little repressed. Definitely needs therapy (and gets it eventually—at first when he’s required to go, and voluntarily in later seasons). Good at and devoted to his job. Single Dad who feels like he missed out on a lot of the early years of his son’s life and worries about being a good father (he asked his ex to marry him when she got pregnant, but she turned him down even though she loved him—at least early on in the series even though they aren’t together it’s discussed that they have a tendency to fall into bed not infrequently) [I swear I’m not making this up]. Anyway, you get the picture.

And behind Curtain No. 2, we have:

Temperance Brennan (Bones), played by Emily Deschanel. Brennan is a forensic anthropologist. Super smart, super scientific, doesn’t have great social skills, but definitely has the whole “perceived as cold but actually feels things very deeply” thing going on. Tragic backstory. She’s also a novelist.

So! Booth and Brennan. They work together, they’re partners, they solve murders. And, naturally, they have the whole opposites thing that works for them—she’s very book smart, he’s very street smart, she believes in facts and science and logic, he believes in intuition and gut feelings and faith, etc. etc. As is often the case with the aesthetic of the crime procedural slowburn ship, they start out sort of reluctantly working together, but eventually develop a real partnership built on trust and friendship (and love!).

Early on, she has some things in her past with her family that she asks for his help investigating so that she can get answers. There’s also a time in the second season where Brennan gets kidnapped by a serial killer and buried alive while Booth is stuck trying to find her, which in addition to still being just An Episode(™) remains one of the great, classic, early-in-the-slowburn “I almost lost you and it made me feel Some Kinda Way, but no no we’re just friends really, nothing to see here” defining arcs, especially since Brennan starts dating someone not too long after. The same serial killer returns in season four and snatches Booth that time, and then it’s Brennan’s turn to find him (with the help of Booth’s younger brother). Anyway, classic slow burn—there’s a lot of Implication that you could read into if you wanted throughout the first several seasons, but not necessarily super concrete (although they get caught under the mistletoe once), and there are several rounds of saving each other in various ways as over the years they just become closer and closer until they’re Partners(™) in every way (even when they’re dating other people).

What’s making me yell and scream today though, is: the S4 finale and S5. In the S4 finale, Booth is in a coma after having brain surgery. He has a wild coma dream where he and Brennan are married and they run a nightclub, but there still ends up being a murder—ANYWAY, irl Brennan basically spends the whole time he’s in a coma at his bedside, but then he wakes up and he has no memory of who she is. Pivot to S5, Booth remembers her again, and also feels like he might have romantic feelings for her, but (in part because of some third party commentary) questions whether they’re real or just a side-effect of the surgery. He sort of tells her anyway, but flubs it massively. Later in the season, we get Booth’s son being concerned that his dad doesn’t have a girlfriend, both Booth and Brennan separately getting relationship advice from third parties, and Brennan getting asked out by a new guy. And then! The 100th episode.

The 100th episode, which reveals the start of the series wasn’t their first case, they worked together once before and kissed and almost slept together, but hadn’t ended up going all the way. And after they’re done telling their story, Booth finally stops and kisses her and gets to give his big damn love confession, lays it all on the line, tells her he’s always known she was the one and wants to really try…and she freaks out and cries and turns him down, and he accepts it but says he has to move on. And then they both date other people before fully running away from each other for many months (Brennan on an anthropological dig, Booth back to Afghanistan for the military). (And then, when they come back, she’s ready to put on her big girl pants and give it a shot, except that he went and got a girlfriend who he seems happy with so we all get to suffer through a season of angst and pining while he proposes to someone who isn’t Brennan etc while everyone else is like “you’re still in love with her though” but they do sleep together by the end of S6 and ultimately get married and have two more kids (not in that order)).

So, yeah—the blueprint! Making me especially crazy because here we are with Buddie on a Fox procedural, 4 seasons since they really started trying it seems to make Buddie something potentially real, and Buck is heading into a coma where he's about to hallucinate another life, and the 100th episode is coming up near the beginning of next season (and I really hope Fox learned from Bones that there's such a thing as dragging out the slow burn too much and just lets them be happy after the big damn feelings reveal but XD).

[nelliesnellie]

Hit by a Tegan And Sara Shaped Brick

Have you ever heard a song for the first time in over a decade, completely forgotten about? It hits you like a fucking brick. Or that's how it works for me anyway.

This is basically a journal-y musing about Tegan And Sara, growing up kinda repressed, and mowing lawns while listening to college radio.

｡☆✼★━━━━━━━━━━━━★✼☆｡

I'm having a pretty angsty day as it is — something that listening to Tegan And Sara was never bound to help. But I have a 12ish-year-old mental note rattling around my brain that says "listen to Tegan and Sara" and I needed to clear some clutter. Besides, apparently I'm a dyke in Canada. To not give them a go would be simply irresponsible.

So picking an album somewhat at random, I put on The Con. Immediately good shit. I can get pretty nostalgic about 2000s indie music, even though I only got into it in like 2010. Maybe missing out on the heyday is part of that nostalgia — after all, nostalgia is based missing an experience more than it is living one. I got through two-thirds of the album. It's a great experience. This is no surprise. I am, in fact, the demographic. Every time one of their songs has come up in the past its made me want to do this dive and it was not disappointing.

And then the song "Nineteen" starts playing. I'm hit by a peculiar wave of emotion and I stop playing Tetris mid-game. THIS WAS IT. I had heard it once before, about 12 years ago, and was immediately smacked upside the head with a clear memory.

｡☆✼★━━━━━━━━━━━━★✼☆｡

In my mid-teens I had a summer job mowing lawns. Yeah that's right. I'm intimately familiar with the blended smell of fresh cut grass, gasoline, and occasionally hot dog shit. The sound of the mower engine masking a chorus of bugs. This was in Northern New York — a largely rural place which comes with most of the expectations one might have of the American countryside.

It was an awkward place to grow up as a queer indie kid. Hell, I didn't have the resources to even begin to understand that I was a transfeminine lesbian. I just knew I was different, that something was off.

I did not take for granted any accessible source of "cool music." This included the local college radio station. It went to shit by the time I attended that school, but in my mid-teens it was exactly what one wants of a college radio station, playing its delightful indie nonsense. And when I mowed lawns, I would often tune in on the radio built into my chunky, noise-protective headset I wore to protect me from the wretched sound of the combustion engine.

And that's how I heard "Nineteen" by Tegan And Sara for the first time. And the song HIT. It's full of this longing passion. To me it evoked a deep yearning for something I couldn't even articulate. "I felt you in my legs before I even met you." It was aesthetically and thematically evocative of something I was missing without being able to articulate. Something so deep I don't think I could've spoken about it, to quote an entirely separate artist. And their sound has this undeniable "cool girl" energy that was deeply aspirational to me in a way I didn't even understand at the time (classic trans girl egg situation).

In spite of all that, I never followed up on looking them up though. Probably because this was the iTunes days when I only got music from sharing mp3s with friends, the weekly free iTunes downloads, and the occasional iTunes giftcards. But it was one of those memorable first-listen experiences, like the time I first heard Regina Spektor laying in my bed one night listening to the same station on a shitty handmedown mp3 player that had a built in radio. Ugh. Why does Spektor have to be a Zionist?

｡☆✼★━━━━━━━━━━━━★✼☆｡

I think this aesthetic of cool-girl longing is why it hit me so hard back then, and hearing it for the second time at nearly 30. By this point I've found myself, I've found my people, I've found my life. I've made it across that enigmatic chasm I felt the first time I heard it. It's not really a journey I think about that often, it just is what it is. But this time it just swept me down like an undertow.

I don't even know that its an amazing song. Like its a GOOD song. But I feel like my subjective experience is what makes it really hit.

Time travel is a heavy drug. Maybe next time I'll talk about hearing Tubthumping for the first time as an adult lmao.

[thewardenofwinter]

Writeblr Introduction | Morana Warrin

I have finally created a Tumblr for my writing. I haven't been on here since I just got internet access (around 2013 so you can probably guess the things I saw) but I need a place to throw all my ideas at a wall and watch as they trickle down into a puddle of lost nights of sleep and aesthetic pinterest boards.

▸ About

▸My name is Morana, I would prefer they/them pronouns but, to be frank, I do not care what you refer to me as. I have been writing for a long time (too long if you ask some people) but in the past three years, I have been taking the profession much more seriously in hopes of starting a career. Besides being a writer and a threat to modern society, I also dabble in drawing/graphic design and character design.

▸I adore 19th-century Russian literature (Mikhail Bulgakov is my personal favourite) and absurdist texts. There isn't a moment of my day when I'm not listening to some sort of music, I do not discriminate genres in the slightest but I am partial to rock and its many subgenres. I love any 90s and early 2000s movies, early Hollywood horror flicks, and Soviet films from the 80s.

▸ Current Projects

(I am horrible at summaries so please take pity on me. also check TWs)

The Resurrectioners

You only live twice.

(TW: Mentions of s*icide)

After the deaths of her two sisters in a car crash, twenty-seven-year-old Samara Dombroski decides that her life is no longer worth living and makes a successful attempt at her own life. Only there's one problem:

She doesn’t stay dead for very long.

An indeterminate amount of time later, Samara wakes up in a strange, vast estate plagued by visions of the past that she can’t control. She learns that this place is run by a man known only as The Resurrectionist, a necromancer armed with a group of assassins possessing strange abilities called Resurrectioners, an eclectic group of individuals who all share her story: people who found death by their own hand or by some other tragic means.

Now a resurrectioner herself, Samara must repay the debt of her second chance at life to The Resurrectionist by disposing of cadavers for him: violent, ghoulish beings that result from misused necromancy who feast on flesh and bone. Once she has killed enough to satisfy The Resurrectionist, she will be released from the estate she is trapped in and free to live the rest of her life.

genre: dark fantasy, thriller

What We Undertake

Some things are better left undead.

Guillermo Del Toro's Crimson Peak meets Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow in this paranormal mystery and gothic romance set in the late 19th century.

Our tale follows one Dolores Clive, resident medium and the daughter of the late Warren Clive, Boston's most beloved undertaker. After her father's death and subsequent take over of the family business, Dolores has become a recluse haunted by ghosts of her past and near future which all comes to head when her step-sister arrives in town with her newly acquired fiancé and his rather strange but beautiful brother in tow following a string of murders.

Genre: horror/supernatural fiction, gothic fiction

The Stray Girls

It's not drugs that are killing these teens.

(TW: Mentions of drugs and alcohol)

Set in the fictional city of Maynard, The Stray Girls is a retelling of The Lost Boys centred around a cast of troubled teen girls set 10 years later in 1997'.

After once again deciding to move across the country with her daughters, Magdelena's mother decides that cheap rent is worth more than her daughter's lives when she moves to Maynard, Washington— which currently boasts the largest missing girl population in the country. While settling into their new home, Magda notices her elder sister Roxanne is beginning to act strange: leaving the house in the middle of the night, wearing sunglasses indoors, and sleeping all day. First suspecting it to be drugs, Magda thinks nothing of it, but as time goes on and her sister's personality makes a sudden shift in the wrong direction, she can no longer pretend like everything is alright. Meeting the group of troubled girls that her sister now calls 'friends' slowly leads her down a path of crime, thrill and peer pressure. But it's not booze that these girls are drinking: it's blood.

Genre: Teen Adventure/Horror

▸ LINKS

pinterest // spotify // instagram

Though my aesthetic and writing style may scream morbid academic pretentiousness, I assure you my online presence and writing greatly contrast with my personality (and looks for that matter) so please do not be alarmed by my frequent buffoonery, general bastardness, and bombastic vulgarity.

Thank you for reading! (or skipping to the end)

— M. Warrin

[diorgirl444]

hi flo!! 💗 could i get a matchup for newsies please? thank you <333

neige, female • she/her, straight.

i have long brown hair, i usually wear it down or in a high ponytail. i have brown eyes, freckles hmm and i’m also like 5’4. my aesthetic is pretty casual? i like wearing flare jeans and simple tops and lots of jewellery. like feminine, casual + ‘90s-2000s. i wear lots of brown but i love bright colours (esp red, pink & blue). sundresses in the summer >>

i’m really shy, quiet, and reserved. it takes me a while to open up to people, but once i do i’m definitely more talkative and expressive. i love to read. i’d say my love language is physical touch and words of affirmation! i can be pretty stubborn and pessimistic sometimes, but i always try my best to be kind and have an open heart. i’m normally really anxious or nervous. i love to bake, listen to music, watch films and learn about mythology and folklore! i rlly like researching about random stuff, i love information lol.

i love the arts, even thought i’m not the best at them. i’m a homebody 100%, but i do enjoy going on small adventures, especially with someone i’m close too. i love nature!!

likes: baby pink. nature. jazz. animals. poetry. paintings. obscure history. science. museums. chocolate cheesecake. laying in bed all day. jellycats. cooking. adventure parks. quiet libraries. dusty blue skies. old hollywood films. collaging.

dislikes: people with no manners. people who are arrogant and talk down to others. bigots. anyone who hates on someone else for their interests. lasagna. melted cheese. white chocolate.

hi neige i’m so happy that your one of my first requests! and newsies no less!!! i hope i can make this as lovely and historically accurate as you deserve it to be.

your perfect matchup is 𝐚𝐥𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐝𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐯𝐚 💌

𝐢 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐥𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐧 <3

𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝟐 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐦𝐞𝐞𝐭 <3

so i literally had to show your my request to my irl friend who also likes newsies in order to choose your newsies bf because you literally could of had so many of them. but the minute she mentioned albert it dawned on me. like he would literally be so perfect for you.

i’m obsessed with the “she fell first but he fell harder” trope and i cannot explain it but i just know it’d be how your relationship would develop. i think you’d probably be working in a bakery and come rain or shine he’d always be outside hawking his newspapers so naturally you start to develop a little crush on him. nothing serious you just think he’s cute that’s all.

but that all changes on one day when it’s bitterly cold and you see him outside shivering, his pretty cheeks flushed from the cold and even his voice as he hollers out lacks it’s normal confident charamisa. because of the weather your business is slow too so you are sure your mother won’t mind if you hand out one simple steaming hot bagel fresh from the oven just to warm him up. and when he sees you he’s drawling out in that thick manhattan accent of his “you’re real sweet miss but i couldn’t take that from you” though he’s eyeing the bagel hungrily and you know full well he survives on a diet of very little so you shake your head and gently force it into his hand. your fingers brushing as you do, making your face smile shyly at him your cheeks turning pink and are you imaging it or his cold cheeks suddenly more red then they were a minute ago? but then your disappointment your mother calls you in before you can say anything else and the moment’s over. :(

the next time you see him out there you’re a bit more confident. the sun’s shining and though your palms are sweating from nerves you smile brightly at him and pass him another bagel this time filled with cream cheese and wrapped in brown parchment as maybe you prepared it with the hope that he’d come back not that you’d ever admit that. either way it’s worth it because his whole face lights up as he takes it and he calls you “his angel”. not just “an” angel but “his” which sends an immediate excited stream of butterflies in your tummy that you do your best to repress.

and after he’s long left and you’re packing up shop he returns with a beautiful posy of little flowers as a gift for you. he tells you that he can’t afford to pay you for the food but he hopes to repay you in pretty trinkets and items that he finds on his walks. you of course insist that he doesn’t have to but he tells you that it’s the least he can do - that he only wishes he could bring you more expensive things. this quickly becomes your pattern - you bring him treats, strawberry tarts, lavender cream puffs and lemon meringues, various sweet experiments that you’ve tested and he in turn gifts posies of flowers, pretty ribbons and shiny pebbles. you teasingly call him a magpie and he just retorts with calling you his angel again.

albert is easy to love - he’s kind and charming and funny and a bit of troublmaker so it doesn’t surprise you when you realise that silly little crush has blossomed into a deep rooted affection for him. it hurts though, feeling so deeply for him and convinced he doesn’t feel the same, hurts so much that sometimes you think it would be better to push him away but you know you couldn’t one glance at that lopsided grin and you’re stuck like glue. so you suppose it’ll be this way forever, this endless dance of hopeless adoration - you can live with that you tell yourself. it pains you but you can live with that. if only you knew it hurts him even more.

he tells you when the two of you are out at coney island, the two of you had saved up your wages, you had packed lunches, he had paid for the train tickets - just like a real couple would of done. and you spend the day eating so much candy floss that you feel queasy, childish laughter spilling from your lips on daring rides and eagerly trying to beat each other in western themed shooting games. it’s so close to be a perfect day and honestly you feel horribly selfish for wanting more. you ought to be satisfied but oh god you’re not.

it’s dark when he tells you, the two of you sat in the compact third class carriage of the train, not the most romantic setting but you hardly mind. nor particularly do you mind the undignified way that he tells you, there’s no fancy words or flowery gestures, just good honest affection when he turns to you and quietly asks “you don’t know i love you do you neige?” tearfully you shake your head. you can’t manage anything more and matter of factly he says “well i do. i ain’t never loved anybody in my whole life the way i love you. won’t you be my girl, angel?” and god you’re a mess after that. sobbing as you feverishly nod and he’s gently kissing your tears away before kissing you softly on the lips. and the rest as they say is history.

𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 <3

ok i actually think it’s not that different from when your friends because both of you were just friends with repressed feelings anyways so like it’s a very similar vibe as how you two got together just now you have the added bonus of being able to kiss or hug each other whenever you want.

he loves watching you bake, not in a creepy way he just thinks you look so cute when your eyebrows furrow and your lips part in concentration - god how he loves you. tried to do it with you once but the pair of you just ended up covered in flour and the cookies got burn so it’s better for you to bake and him to watch. sometimes as you wait for the desserts to cool, he’ll slow dance with you to sweet love songs on the gramophone.

he also knows how to braid your hair. this is because i feel that he taught himself how so that originally he could look after the little girl newsies but now he has you he uses them to learn complex braids and then does them on you which of course you adore.

i feel like albert, because he grew up with only brothers and his father, he’s incredibly touchstarved so he’s constantly lavishing you with physical affection but the minute you give him any he’s absolutely melting at your touch it’s so sweet.:( the first time you kiss him i bet he literally tears up a little bit.

he’s soo nervous for you to meet the other newsies at first as he’s convinced when you do they’ll tell you all the stupid things he’s done in the past and you won’t wanna be with him anymore but actually it’s the opposite. of course racetrack regales you with a few embarrassing stories but mainly they just tell you how happy they are that you walked into albert’s life they also want to know if you’ll bake them anything as they’ve heard a lot about your baking.

also don’t worry the little gifts that he used to bring you don’t stop it’s just that now their more clearly romantic like oh it’s not just a pretty stone- it’s now a pretty stone thats heart shaped because you’re his heart or something sweet like that.

and now his wages are going towards saving up to buy an apartment for the two of you. he hopes that one day the pair of you can live together with the laughter of children, smells of sweet treats and filled to the very brim with love. whenever he’s feeling down working on his feet all day he just has to remind himself of this and then he’s fine. all he has to find now is a ring!

𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐚𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 <3

hope you like it! xoxo, flo <3

[vixivulpixel]

Oh I'm like really interested in the liminal space interest that flared up a while ago and how it relates to precursor trends like vaporwave and how it also expanded into trends like weirdcore, dreamcore, and traumacore. There's a pervasive sense of like decay and nostalgia with the liminal space trend, focusing on a lot of places that were busy and full of people and are now empty. Also places that like elicit nostalgia, pictures of places from the '90s and early 2000's. I've seen a lot of people try talking about "liminal spaces" and focus way hard on what text book liminal is. I think there's something to be said about liminal spaces, the decay and removal of public spaces and community, and the alienation of capitalism. Like that specifically is the underlying feeling that took liminal spaces into weirdcore and stuff, like it's more of a reaction and natural expansion of that feeling, just not one I think a lot of people are conscious of.

Yeah, this really nails it on the head. It might just be a generational difference because I grew up in spaces that are now "liminal", I was a child during the age of shopping malls and funky multicolored patterned carpets in theaters and what have you. So many in that regard it's difficult for people younger to fully understand the complex emotions those images can trigger in someone who was a kid in the 90s and early 2000s.

Nostalgia is a very muddy feeling. As cozy as it can feel, it's inherently a feeling of loss. As much as it can be "Ah, the good ol' days", it can also be "I miss those days." It's a yearning for something that no longer is, or at least is isn't what it used to be. That's the sorta feelings liminal space images shoot off in me. An awful, nostalgic reminder that something that was a huge part of your life (and culture at large) is just gone. Nothing really reinforces that feeling more than seeing a sad, empty shopping mall or the hollowed out inside of what was once a Blockbuster.

I'm not super well-versed in Vaporwave beyond its aesthetic, but if this right here being one of my favorite pieces of music ever is anything to go off of, yeah. This is what liminal spaces sounds like to me.

I think some of it is also thanks to how The Backrooms took off as a meme where it got dumbed down into just another sandbox for creepypastas. Which is a shame cause in that regard it's also turned liminal spaces into something to ironically enjoy rather than genuinely think about.

[musclesandhammering]

aside from anderson cooper do you mind giving us your Thoughts on other pundits/journalists?

Oooh boy. I love you for indulging my 2 decade-old hyperfixation.

Well first off, I don’t actually watch much legacy media for news purposes. They all have the same corporate slant and, while I don’t hold it against the individual pundits/journalists, I’m aware that the info they’re presenting is highly cherry-picked and biased toward the establishment and teaming with false neutrality bs so.. you know.

I got started watching cnn because I remembered being a little kid and seeing Anderson Cooper on tv when my parents were watching Katrina coverage or whatever. So I started watching him and then went back and watched some older stuff etc so… he was the initial deal. I just sort of started following other pundits for fun because of their proximity to him.

Also, disclaimer that I strongly prefer his older tv persona (war reports, snarkiness, grunge aesthetic, etc) and most of the PRT fandom content I’ve found has been from like 2005-2010 anyway so… most of these opinions are based on an outdated media sphere lol.

With all that being said…

When it comes to semi-modern stuff, I love the whole cnn crew. I think they’d be hilarious in a mocumentary a la The Office or something. John Berman is the funniest guy on the network and Jake Tapper has the best deadpan. Don Lemon was annoying and endearing at the same time. I never liked Chris Cuomo. He seemed pretension and way too dudebro-ish.

As far as PRT people specifically, Stephen Colbert is an absolute treasure. He’s ridiculously smart and quick witted but he’s never needlessly harsh like some late night hosts. I like him now better than when he was on The Colbert Report because he doesn’t have to play a character all the time and can just outright say what he feels.

Jon Stewart is probably the most progressive host on mainstream tv, which of course makes him delightful. He also has a way of calling out mainstream journalists without making it personal. And I still remember the time he went on Crossfire and humiliated Tucker Carlson <3.

Rachel Maddow seems like the coolest person in the room at all times and she’s so incredibly smart. But she has this thing where she seems to recognise (and call out) the conservative tendencies of other networks like cnn without realising that msnbc is no better when it comes to corporatism, upholding the status quo, and being anti-progressive. In fact, that’s something everybody on msnbc does, not just her. But I still have a soft spot for her though.

Keith Olbermann is the guy that used to be outspoken leftist champion in the very early 2000s- getting righteously angry when other dems were obsessed with decorum, clapping back at Fox pundits who tried to smear him, and saying things the dem establishment didn’t always want said. But somewhere between then and now he revealed himself to be a weird, immature, somewhat narcissistic asshole who can’t take any criticism and has somehow morphed into a centrist defender. It’s one of the most disappointing downfalls of the fandom. But despite all that, I still think of the day msnbc fired him as a national tragedy.

And I’m glad he got what was coming to him, but from a rpf perspective, I miss when Bill O’Reilly was the main villain 😂.

[garden-ghoul]

Okay here finally is the music meme @blotthis tagged me in. I don't know what Spotify likes are so I tried to approximate them by listening to a bunch of Bandcamp albums someone on cohost recced a while ago. I chose my favorite song from each album, in order I have them bookmarked. It's been a fun exercise in reshaping my mind to a diverse set of aesthetic paradigms so I can try to understand what each musician sees in their own music. That said. Some of these I'd be reccing anyway.

Points At Head from This Year I Lose My Mind by 2 Mello. Music that makes me wish I had more genre vocabulary. Energetic, funky, hiphoppy I guess?? Jazzy. Has kind of a C2C/Destroid vibe. We're grooving. I like this album.

Oh My God from Shabrang by Sevdaliza. Dark, breathy, synthy. Sevdaliza does fun stuff with autotune and other vocal mods as well as having a lot of great beats. Honestly I'd love to hear more of her unmodified voice in this track because she's a great vocalist. This is a good album if you want to get kind of chill and introspective and weird.

Owens from Little Robert Hutton by Curly Castro. One of the slower starts on a very maximalist album. Curly Castro is doing some fantastic collage here; I like how he plays with samples, clearly pulling from classic DJing on vinyl. I don't know enough about modern rap to compare the vocals to anything but Doomtree, RIP.

Withering Fire from Still as the Night, Cold as the Wind by Vital Spirit. Okay, I will confess I'm not enough of a metalhead to be able to distinguish any of these songs from each other. But as far as I can tell it's a good example of the genre, and if you need some big dramatic texturey noises this album is here for you.

Rock from Ez Minzoku by Foodman. I was having a hard time picking a song from this album, because a lot of it kind of sounds like someone mashing a midifighter loaded with the Earthbound soundfont. The album is hit or miss for me but as soon as I heard Rock I had to put it on this list. An exuberant electric guitar chiptune that's just weird enough for me.

The Mystery (Dilla's Still Here) from Beat Konducta Vol. 5-6 by Madlib. This album only has two songs you can listen to without buying it but on hearing this one I immediately started digging for his first album so I could listen to more of his music. More fun with samples; this is what I might call chillhop if I weren't so aware how boring most chillhop is. From Wikipedia's page on him, no-one's really sure how to categorize him because he's fusing so many genres.

The Great Mist Within from The Great Mist Within by Auriferous Flame. See I said I wasn't enough of a metalhead for Vital Spirit but actually I am a metalhead now. I really like Auriferous Flame's chords and I am gaining appreciation for the textural nature of black metal. I didn't make it all the way through any of these songs but I would if I were just leaving the album playing while I draw.

Son of Man from Rice Field Silently Riping in the Night by Reiko Kudo. I feel like this is one of the best tracks to show off how Kudo thinks about sound, with the different instruments kind of detuned from each other. This whole album is sort of like a distorted reflection of "normal music." Despite occasional loud honking noises it's pretty chill. I enjoyed the description of the recording process at the bottom of the page.

Dance Now from The Forever Story by JID. If you listen to one hiphop album this year, it should be this one. Every single track is a flawless gem with no missing pieces and nothing unnecessary, so the specific song I picked is just the first one I really started jamming out to. Very slick but not overproduced, fantastic beats, fantastic rhymes, wonderful vocals, great instrumentation. I can't coherently talk about the vibe of this album, just listen to it.

Cruise Control from 2000 by Joey Badass. As you may have noticed, I tend to be into chill wavey hiphop, which is why I chose this song off 2000. I really like the outro, it has a classic jazz piano thing going on. This is a hard album to review because I think I'd be more into it if I hadn't just listened to THE PERFECT ALBUM. Ah well. It's good.

[echthr0s]

tagged by @softtidesworld (ty for always tagging me in these lol I love tag games and yapping about stuff)

—six random songs from my “on repeat” playlist 🔂🎧🎵

editor's note: the "On Repeat" playlist is always an exercise in frustration to me because I listen to my Likes on shuffle 95% of the time. so what's "on repeat" is basically just whatever songs Spotify's shuffle algo constantly throws at me. turning off Automix (bc the app stealthily turned it back on, fecking rude app) did improve this a bit, but it's still a thorn in my side. also, some of these songs I've listened to literally like... twice. Heaven's Gate by SKYND is the first song on this playlist. it came out last month and I listened to it when it dropped and then added it to Likes and haven't heard it again since. I genuinely do not understand this list. regardless! I picked six songs from the list that I definitely would listen to that often, like, on purpose. tried to vary up genres too, just for funsies.

Kitchen Fork, Jack Conte I found this on a "weirdcore" playlist a while ago and I just think it's so lovely. the rest of the album does nothing for me, but this one has such a vibe.

Singularity, Anaal Nathrakh I love metal, I fucking love metal AAAAAA

Veneficium, Lacuna Coil been listening to LC since high school and they really just never miss. btw remember when female-fronted rock bands in the 2000s had to have a male vocalist to yell random shit in the chorus because god forbid there wasn't a man's voice in there somewhere.

Mist, Protest the Hero okay, I'm quite obviously failing at the genre variance attempt here but I was listening to this last night and I just think it's so cool when bands make songs about places they love. "yes I be a Newfoundlander b'y, not by birth but in my heart" !!!!! I get it! I know what you mean!

Demon (Failure Machine remix), Hypofixx slightly different genre, although I honestly do lump industrial in with metal vibes-wise. Hypofixx was a guy that clocked my "obvious VampireFreaks user" aesthetic when I was out chillin by a Morton Williams once and walked up and offered me a CD. this is a particular form of self-promotion that I miss dearly, I made so many friends and discovered so many cool local artists this way.