#and the late 60s-70s aesthetics are in the show for a reason

[anxiouspotatorants]

“I wish this moment would last forever.” “It’s right there. Stored in your memory. Weren’t you the one to tell me that one’s whole reality is actually inside one’s mind?” 

1899: Maura Franklin and Daniel Solace

(Raw images: not mine)

[cpunkwitch]

Hey let's talk about the punk genre, what punk stands for, what the punk genre really is and what it actually means to be punk

Because so many people are completely misunderstanding the punk subcultures of to-yester-day that people are just simply considering them aesthetics and alternative life styles when it's so much more complicated then that and leads to people spreading misinformation like "cpunk is for ALL disabilities and not exclusive what so ever"

Note: I realize during my talk I mention punk subgenre when really I'm talking about punk subcultures, please keep this in mind while you read! Thank you!

For starters; the term punk, first used in the late 1500's at the earliest to refer to prostitutes, was popularized in the mid 1900's when in 1971 a rock journalist (Greg Shaw) used the term to describe The Guess Who's music.

What became as a synonym for "hoodlum" or "ruffian" got adopted in the 70's by rock bands like Sex Pistols as a form of rebelling against how "commercial" rock'n'roll music had become in the 60's and to continue the counterculture movements from that previous decade.

Overtime the word and therein punk culture gained the association of rebellion and community built on common ground against a certain thing or towards a common objective (such as being against record labels restricting musicians, wanting accessibility for certain people and fairness for people regardless of class and wealth status etc).

People who would attend the "punk rock" concerts would show up in the work out clothing they had and whatever they could afford at the time, second hand clothing, ripped jeans, worn out leather jackets, and thus earned themselves getting called "punks" or "punk rockers" for their "inappropriate/poor dress" and the controversial bands they would listen to

This carried over to that sort of dress becoming an alternative style commonly worn by those who liked rock and metal bands and this monopolized upon by capitalism (the exact thing punk rockers were against to begin with, as most rock bands at the time were literal garage bands)

And this evolved to the reason elderly would yell at teenagers calling them punks and what the punk genre has become today.

As for what it means to be punk, it can vary from person to person and subgenre to subgenre, more specifically it varies from person within subgenre to person within another subgenre.

Punk rockers might define being punk as in going against the dress codes and such that restrict you from self expression, allowing people to attend concerts without have to pay ridiculous amounts of money, being anti-capitalist etc

Whereas cpunk or as we call ourselves "cripple" punks (as is what the c in cpunk stands for) it is clearly defined by the coiner of our community who is no longer with us, taking back the slur cripple for ourselves, fighting for accessibility and having a sense of community at all for physically disabled folk. Some have even said the most punk thing we can do is survive the day living authentically in a world that's literally built against us deformed and physically disabled folk.

To be punk can mean plenty of different things but most commonly it's to fight for equality, to be ourselves, to be seen. It's to go against the rules and authority that want you to conform to their ideals, and plenty of other similar beliefs.

Punk folk have always been labeled as such because of how we are treated for how we look, act, what we listen to and believe, and in general for how we stand out.

Punk fashion started as a DIY, punk music was always about anti-authority and anti-capitalist views, punk as a genre has always been about individuality in community and things many corporations hated.

It's always been more complex than just wearing a leather jacket with an edgy patch and spiked or coloured hair while listening to a band with heavy guitar. It will always be more than an aesthetic or life style.

Why bring this up?

Because these past few years a lot of punk's history have gotten ignored, stepped under the rug and misunderstood.

There's been people forcing themselves into spaces like able bodied people trying to claim to be cpunk when the community isn't for them.

There's been people gatekeeping punk in completely misinformed ways, when to be punk is that you don't fit in a box at all (hence the non conformity)

And there's just been non stop misinformation all together.

Punk is pro-sex workers. Punk is anti conformity. Punk is pro equity. And punk is not for those who harass others and insult them for any reason, regardless of how much you disagree with them.

Regardless of how you define punk, the most important thing is that you listen to voices of others. Don't disregard them like people have done to us all this time.

Thank you so much for letting me ramble off I hope this post has been helpful!

I also apologize for the lack of ids.

[fountainpenguin]

Riddle watches New Wish - Post #16

Battle of the Dimmsonian

I want to highlight them specifically. Look at that FOP-style fairy boy! Baby's all grown up!

Jasmine and Winn are so ready to party at the museum sleepover.

Oh, they are SO ready for this (Also).

slifdj, Peri looking ahead, noticing Cosmo and Wanda in disguise, and screaming "MY PARENTS?!?"

What the heck, Fairywinkle-Cosmas? You left your son for 10k years? Why? Look at him; he's got anxiety!!!

Dev: I haven't talked to Hazel since our fight :'( I need to get to her. /apparently doesn't talk to her all day and now it's night and he's trying to scare people with ghosts for no reason

Removing the staff during the sleepover night (after a spooky presentation) seems like something a museum would totally do as a prank.

Peri has been onscreen for like 2 minutes and he's already sad inside.

-> Hey, I think he outgrew his fear of the dark!

Dev, I am begging you to make it clear to the audience what you're doing right now. This is not an apology. This is not close to what you said you were going to do earlier??

-> Confirmation Dev is Peri's first assignment, so my "high school trial run" lore hasn't been disproven yet. I can work with that in 'fic. We'll see if he says he's graduated.

-> I do have a fanfic set-up where he's going to do a trial program as Foop's partner when they're still in Spellementary, but I don't think this disproves that either since that's a very supervised experiment for him (It's their extracurricular).

I don't think I've said it, but I really enjoy the way this art style has been handling the hairstyles. These angles of Peri's swirl are really interesting.

Peri... Don't take this the wrong way, but if you can't handle Dev being mildly needy and pushy, you're not ready for the big leagues.

idk, Peri strikes me as WAY too overconfident. He showed up ready to go a couple episodes ago. This is the first time he's back onscreen, and this immediate crash on his end is just proof to me that his inexperienced little tail doesn't know what he's doing.

Peri is the guy who's super hype for kids because he thinks they'll be cute and fun, but he's unprepared for work and responsibility. I'm getting "Tries to avoid changing diapers and/or feels smug about how little housework he does" vibes.

-> What decade is he designed after? Cosmo was designed with 50s aesthetic and I feel like this is actually on-brand for attitudes during Peri's aesthetic parallel time period. lol.

-> It's not like Poof was doing the hard work of godparenting when he was a baby. This is new for him and probably different than he fondly remembers.

-> I looked it up and apparently suspenders made a comeback in the 1980s. I designed my teen Poof for the late 60s-early 70s (and he's my flower child), but it makes total sense that he'd be a little farther forward in time since Cosmo and Wanda weren't allowed to have kids for the first 10k years of their marriage.

- Yeah, I would look at this man and say he's giving me "macho 1980s breadwinner husband who has a fragile ego regarding his manliness and doesn't do his own laundry" energy. - Please tell me he started dating Goldie and she broke up with him because he's not good with stress and now he's clingy and wants her back; "He lost the pretty girl because he wouldn't pull his weight" would be the funniest possible direction to take their relationship - I might need to write a 'fic about Goldie showing up while Dev is out and she and Peri have a fight where he's groveling and begging and then Dev walks in and he's like "... Oh boy, I can't wait to have a business relationship with this guy."

Peri came to this party like "I grew up with Timmy Turner. My grandma teaches godparenting classes. I even did a trial run with Mrs. Crocker... I know the ropes! :)"

-> His crown did not know the ropes.

Diagnosed "would not take full custody in the divorce."

Peri, I cannot be any clearer that you can't behave this way around a neglected child right after establishing yourself as a trustworthy figure he can rely on. If this plot goes in the direction of Peri throwing in the towel (or snapping at Dev), I'm gonna crack up.

Like, at this point I am 100% expecting Peri to yell at Dev (maybe not this episode, but someday), and that's going to break this kid. I feel like Jorgen might get involved and separate them, unless Peri is desperate to "not have a failure on his record" or something (seeing as he seems embarrassed his parents know he's a godparent.

-> idk what's up with that yet. I'm genuinely confused. Peri, this is your first chance to see your parents since they dipped for 10k years. I can't get a read on your feelings. Are you angry? Did they invite you and you said No? How old were you? Did you grow up with Mama Cosma? Big Daddy? Boarding school? Inquiring minds need to know!

Maybe it's not been 10k years for him? Was he still existing in the slower-moving present day? Maybe Peri embarked on his own 10k-year trip? I'm puzzled.

-> I feeeeeeel like the time travel is a convenient plot device for the purpose of aging him up without jumping us forward to a more destroyed planet, and we're not going to get a straight answer about what happened with him, which is a shame.

Hmm. I suspect we're not going to delve into his backstory, but I'll hold out hope. Why throw that in there if you're not going to discuss it, though?

Did I miss something? Why does Dev think he doesn't need friends when earlier he wanted to talk to Hazel? Huh. I feel like there's a missing scene there. Hazel rejecting his attempt at an apology would've been helpful for me.

For some reason it's funny to me that the Tooth Fairy offered Peri a job, which he turned down. My brain immediately went Peri -> Cosmo is his dad -> Jorgen is Cosmo's distant relative but they refer to each other as cousins -> Tooth Fairy is Jorgen's wife. I wonder if they hung out together sometimes at like, extended family reunions or something.

-> von Strangles are big on family and Cosmo and Wanda kinda dipped out on theirs, so...

-> omfg, Mama Cosma is out there somewhere like that meme of the guy in the chair leaning over way far, head in her hands, because this is the 2nd time she lost her baby for 10k years. Left to get milk (Again).

He's so cute. I'm so glad to see him back in the series; I missed him so much. He's always been a favorite for me, which was largely based on my own 'fics, so it's really cool to see a character I love showing a wider range of personality onscreen.

HAZEL! If you weren't mad at Dev anymore, you should've told him! He's been miserable about you yelling at him without giving him a chance to share his side!!

His tushie cannot read minds!!

Dev is the kid that you want to get in a fight with because he's mean but then he looks at you like this and you're like " :| "

-> I hate that this is likely how Dale looked at Vicky once upon a time. Dev looks so much like his dad and now I'm like. "Yeah, she probably kicked him down the stairs."

Aww, reunion... <3

I really do like their color scheme and vibes. I've always thought Poof was a good blend of his parents (Good blend of smart, clean, and on top of things while also getting into trouble, holding petty grudges, and making bad or dumb decisions). I'm happy to see him and it's cool to see their hair designs and colors together.

I'm glad "Certifiable Super Sitter" wasn't his swan song from the franchise. It's nice to see a deeper take on his character <3

Patty Possums Party Playground

I'm glad they're making an effort to balance Hazel's Dev interactions with Jasmine and Winn. I keep wondering if they'll get sidelined. This episode seems to be about them, though.

Is the animatronic going to be run-down?

Winn is having the TIME of their life.

Cosmo: We're gonna do this without magic! Hazel: Isn't shrinking Wanda magic?

Immediate prediction: the possum mascot has been summoned to party with them and now she isn't going to let them leave. She'll get aggressive if they try.

Oh no, Cosmo just suggested Wanda use her wand to try getting his out of the claw machine. Is she about to blindly follow and stick it in there like when they were swallowed by a bear and Cosmo suggested dipping it in stomach acid to measure how deep it was and it dissolved? And she just... did it?

YES, sdlkfj. Never change, Wanda.

Nobody tell Gary and Betty there's a Smack-a-Mole game here.

The possum's singing a song about how the party never ends. Yeah, I think I called the plot.

-> Oh, I NAILED THAT!

They're so cute:

Hazel: Friendship isn't only about the moments you're together! It's also about holding each other in your hearts when you're apart! :) Dev, abandoned and confused since their fight: Hey. what.

Wanda dunking on friendship is very funny to me.

A Date to Remember

... Is this with Hazel's parents I assume?

-> Okay, maybe! That title card looks like it is. Also, waning crescent AGAIN? Y'know, the moons were so useful for my OG series episode timeline and I think some will have to be non-canon in New Wish.

I like how Cosmo and Wanda push their backs against each other the same way they used to dance. And I really appreciate how we seem to have a consistent floorplan for Hazel's apartment.

-> Okay, I treat "Cosmonopoly" as the first time they met so if I want to canonize New Wish, I have to un-canonize Cosmo's line about the diner being their first meeting spot, but I can't be mad since I pretty much never see anyone use "Cosmonopoly" for that.

Did Hazel just erase her parents' memories. Oh no, now they've never met! ... Are Cosmo and Wanda allowed to do that? It sounds like they just altered true love.

-> Hazel's parents look the same 11+ years ago as today. I'm a bit surprised by that.

CUPID! ... Oh, wow. His design's changed. I don't think I love it, but I guess it's cool they're doing unique shapes in this show since the OG had the same bodies all the time. I'm glad he's still a grump <3

-> Is he a lot older than Cosmo and Wanda? I'm surprised he aged(?) during normal time when they didn't during 10k years of travel? Is he old or just redesigned? Unclear.

I would make another "IS HE ALLOWED TO DO THAT?" joke here [Cupid trying to set Hazel's mom up with someone else] but... I mean, he's literally the only person who's allowed to do that.

egg baby.

It's hilarious that Hazel convinced her dad to listen to her by saying she's psychic. Of course the parascience scientist would go for that.

-> Note to self, he was interested in it at least 11 years ago.

Cosma confirmed to still be Cosmo's surname!

Cupid's bragging that he won because Brewster (sp?) is going to ask out Angela, but she's totally going to turn him down. Get wrecked, fool.

I am OBSESSED with the fact that Cupid knows all the humans' names. That is a man who does his job. Also I love how he keeps nipping at his bottom lip with his silly buck teeth.

-> I don't remember Cupid knowing people's names in the OG series (I don't think he has much opportunity to say them besides on the dating show in his debut) and now I want to see if that's always been his thing.

-> I'm pretty sure I remember Timmy was given an arrow with his name magically engraved on it at the end of "Love Struck Out," so... interesting.

[castlebyersafterdark]

genderplay of the late 60s early 70s in music resonated because I really think that's accurate to Will, that's something that he could escape into and explore. Men, but outside of society's norm. There's definitely different ways to depict gnc elements and queerness and it's not always about wanting to change gender, but sometimes to exist off center, leave gender roles behind.

i also think its important and special to acknowledge that all this can be happening without will quite knowing whats going on, as is so often in teenagehood. girls can be drawn to traditionally masculine clothing for reasons other than queerness, maybe even practical reasons, and for boys the other side of the coin which is allowing some exploration of that which is not considered practical, or trad femme. when people discuss gnc will, they often use they way he is perceived by others (a tricky one, as the town is already working off of stereotypes about what a boy should be like), and sometimes his behaviour (being the show's damsel, crying). but does he even cryb that much? is it unwarranted seeing what he's been through?

he was also stereotypically masculine in some ways during his introduction - he was honest with mike about the roll (gentleness, loyalty, honour - traits more related to the fantasy roleplay game than gender) and then he was trad masc with the gun and his escape to the shed. the layer beneath is, ofc, lonnie's influence and the fact that will didnt fire the gun in the end, breaking that trad masc mould, but i still think those behaviours are just as related to fear responses + cleverness and smarts rather as gender or gnc-ness.

will loves bowie and glam rock, but he dresses pretty 'normal' and conforming for the era - until s4, where he's a little cuter, but it's still very straightforward 80s garb, and hints that his family have come into money (he knows how to groom himself and can buy nicer clothes now). 80s fashion, after all, was much more 'femme' and exposing compared to whats considered masc these days. the androgyny of musicians in the era was often related to theatricality or performance in the eyes of the public, while queer folk (and music stans) may have known more about what bowie or bolan's experiments with style also meant. but these are still all surface aesthetics! look at the hyper-masculinity of long-haired metal bands from the time. short shorts in the 70s and 80s weren't only seen as gay, queer or gnc. even will's tight and small clothing in s3 is more indicative of his family's class and wealth (hand-me-downs from jon, or thrifted) than of his self-expression.

i love an idea of future will that experiments with makeup. + what it would mean for will to be gnc means something different through our modern lens than it would have back then. will is both in so many ways - he's of the real world and also of the Upside Down. He's sweet but also fierce. He's a victim and a warrior. He can be viewed both as gnc and not, depending on your lens: a modern sensibility, the overall narrative, ST as a piece of art, versus music, idols and fashion of the era. Mostly i think will works best because he isn't categorical as either one, but rather is both at once (impossibly, but life is philosophical like that and so is the best art!). So i would say he is both gnc and not gnc!

Very good read of everything!! Thank you for the insight! Not much to add from me, rather just sit with this because there are a lot of good points covered here to ponder. That's really what I like about Will and his place in the show and his place in the fandom - there's a lot to build on from canon but he's also a little mysterious, and depending on how you analyze and interpret him - multiple ways to go that make a lot of sense for his journey (as long as he's not some badass out of character action hero masc guy or overly aggressive - who's that? Not my Will haha). The thing I like most is that certain traits and ideas can often change a character, but leaning into a gnc aspect with Will doesn't change him, only builds on what's already there. I don't think it fits for everyone.

[orlissa]

March Reading Summary

Another end of the month, another summary of everything I read this month--which wasn’t too much this time. I only finished 4 books, although I have two which are 60-70% read, and I’m going to include one of this month, just to make it seem like it wasn’t a reading slum :’D (I mean, it wasn’t, only compared to the previous month.)

Stephanie Garber: Caraval - I read it because of two reasons: one, some months ago I put a book on my TBR list that I later learned takes place in this universe, and two, because a good friend of mine had just read it, and she loved it. Which I completely respect, but damn, this was one of the stupidest books I’ve ever read. I mean, the aesthetics of the whole thing is nice, but overall the entire plot was basically built on twists upon twists upon twists until nothing made sense anymore, and it was just the heroine being lied to by person after person, and she somehow still didn’t throw a fit. It was bad, and made about zero sense, and I just wanted to slap everyone. Definitely not reading the sequels.

Jennifer Worth: Call the Midwife - I’m a big fan of the show, so it really was time I read this one. Many of the storylines from series one and two were based on the stories in this book, so there wasn’t exactly much new to me in it, but it was lovely and heartwrenching and I really appreciated the bits about the history of midwifery. She wrote two more books on the topic, and I’ll probably read those as well in the future.

James Herriot: Cat Stories – I love James Herriot and I love cats and James Herriot loved cats, so it was just lovely (honestly, when he went on and on about how great cats in the introduction, I almost teared up). A heartwarming little collection of stories, definitely recommend.

Ali Hazelwood: Love on the Brain - Look. It was fun. I like the snippy-funny language AH uses. It was an entertaining, light romance. But overall it was just too similar to The Love Hypothesis. I mean both of them are “snarky woman in STEM enters an unconventional partnership with a tall, dark, muscular, intimidating man, whom she believes hates her, only to learn along the way that he has been simping for her in secret for years, while she also battles the injustices a woman has to face in STEM.” Still, I really appreciate this last bit, and at least this one had cats, which is a big plus. Although I saw the twist coming from like page 30.

Ruth Goodman: How to Be a Victorian - This is the one I haven’t finished yet, but I’m at nearly 70%, and it’s not like the last bit is going to mess it up, so XD Anyway, it’s basically an in-depth historical study about the everyday lives of Victorian people. The book is structured in a way that we basically go through a day, with chapters starting from getting up, morning wash-up, getting dressed, getting to work... It’s fascinating and very-well researched (it also does a great job making a distinction between the early and the late Victorian period), but very, very dense - you are just getting bombed by information!

[rappaccini]

tua season 1 rewatch, round two:

1x01:

last year's is more of a shot-for-shot rambling, if that's what you're into. this year's is gonna be a little different. stuff i mentioned before, i'll do my best not to repeat, unless it's to add context. this will largely be with an eye to the comics and how they were adapted or not.

and since tumblr only allows ten images per post (wtf), you're gonna have to bear with the timestamps here too.

0:00

"we only see each other at weddings and funerals" is a title of one of the comics, but it's the second issue, not the first. i get why it's been fronted to the first episode though: it's snappy, and the first issue of apocalypse suite is more of a prologue. that's how tua volumes are structured: the first issue is prologue for the plot that comes in afterwards.

for a pilot, you need to get the ball rolling. so you have to make the prologue the teaser, and then get to fifty minutes of plot.

this entire episode is really a combo of issues 1-2 of apocalypse suite. the buildup to, and the funeral itself.

0:03

so first off, we don't actually know if vanya was born in russia in the comics. it's more likely than not, but still not confirmed.

what is certain is that the '12pm, october 1 1989' birthday is a show-only construct. in the comics, we don't know their date of birth, but the time was 9:38pm

or even the year, though from context clues you can construe that the comics are set in the early 1980s, when the family are 30, rather than 29 as they are in the show. i'm guessing that this, in addition to plot convenience and aesthetic, is also the cause of tua's outdated technology: it's what they'd have had in the comics-verse.

(ex: a still-living kennedy meeting with hargreeves sometime after 1963, and 13-year-old allison watching kennedy's assassination as it happens). the children, in the comics, were born in the early-to-mid 1950s.

i think this change was to hammer home to the audience that the children were all born in the same instance. and the update in year was to keep things Relevant To Today.

which... might have been a net mistake in the long run. this series is ENTRENCHED in 20c popular culture and social movements. and taking those same characters and dropping them out of the context that defined them really made them lose their power.

ex: luther is an astronaut because he was influenced by the space race, which played out when he was a child. diego is a conservative crime-basher whose ideology is a reflection of the constant war on crime rhetoric, klaus's visual aesthetic is tied to the 60s and 70s alternative cultures that he'd have grown up in, vanya and diego were punks in the midst of the late 70s creation of the subculture, the comics are stuffed with five and diego hurling accusations of communism at each other because of the cold war breathing down everyone's necks-- and the cold war being the apocalypse everyone was worried about.

we lost all that.

and the show didn't even bother to update itself. they literally adopted the cars and phones of the 80s, the obama-era 'we live in a society where racism is solved!' trend tv tried to do and is in many cases still doing (yes that is exactly what they did, until they tried to switch gears in s2 for allison's godawful plotline; it was confirmed in interviews leading up to s2 that ~in our future, allison doesn't deal with racism and diversity is celebrated~) and stopped there.

2:20

as in the comics, we begin with the births of the children.

though in the show, we only see one birth, rather than 7+. which was probably done for efficiency/budget reasons. we don't see any babies die, because ratings.

also, in the comics, an unspecified number of mothers births 43 children, but in the show, it's 43 mothers who birth an unspecified number of children, which is an oversight that could lead to there being more-than-43 children if the twins are a thing, or a sign that five and luther in this iteration aren't twins. either way, oopsies.

this is also a scene that carries over from the pilot script, though there, the child is born in poland, and a boy and is heavily implied to be number five. (also to the vanya-and-five-are-twins stans... where's your boy. he floating in the pool? he teleport into the locker room?)

my guess is it was changed to vanya because she's the protagonist of this story (or was, @season 2), and we needed her as a viewpoint into the world-- note how we linger on her at the end of the teaser, and how her music ties it together, how her arrival at the mansion is also ours, and how we end with her as well.

vanya is the protagonist of this story. it's about the seven hargreeves siblings (luther, diego, allison, klaus, five, ben and vanya), but it's about five and vanya a little more than the rest of them. and it's about vanya most of all. it is about vanya finding her power, confronting her trauma, coming to forgive the family and returning to them to save and reform them by taking her place among them. it's hers, indisputably.

boy did season 2.... destroy that. for fucking fanservice.

2:47

(also, i love how 'extraordinary' is the first spoken word by one of our ensemble in the series, and it's used to describe baby vanya. some of this season was insanely well thought out.)

and i love the use of the narrator, here the voice of pogo-- i'm guessing was added after the title cards in the pilot didn't test well. i just wish it stuck around. why include it here and then never again?

3:18

this line of baby carriages is straight from the comics.

also, the fellow just behind reginald is abhijat, his bodyguard/driver and the children's trainer. he appears next in hotel oblivion, since he's been away in asia during the events of the first few volumes. i understand why he was cut from the show-- his role is easily assumed by pogo and grace, there are a LOT of characters to juggle, and we need to avoid confusing the audience.

still, miss him and his wonderful convos with diego and luther! hope he comes back in other versions of the story!

3:20

variable: the mansion in the show is a hollowed-out city block, instead of a gothic manor in the woods (which it is in the pilot script). i'm guessing this was just a shooting limitation.

i'm cool with it, because the mansion is still cool as fuck as this sprawling city block of hollowed-out buildings. there's more a quirky vibe than a gothic one.

though i also wonder at the implication of making the kids so close to the outside world, whereas in the comics they were truly isolated by high fences and an entire estate. sneaking out would've been a lot harder, yet they did it. which speaks to their desperation a lot more.

5:45

the teaser is largely the same as the pilot script, though it's re-ordered to a one-two-three-four introduction-- very clever, great way to help everyone get the numbers straight, as is the hiding of the numbers in the backgrounds of the shots [lunar station 01, love on loan 3...]).

though, allison and klaus's sections are different. my guess is the powers-that-be realized it wouldn't be entirely clear that allison is a celebrity or klaus is an addict from the jump, so they changed klaus's introduction from clubbing to rehab, and allison's from being in a nightclub (a shot from the og pilot, upper right) to being on the red carpet. i like the changes. more efficient. the teaser as a whole is a masterclass in visual storytelling.

also, allison being an actress is a massive change from her comic self. more on this in later installments.

and variable: allison's hair is dyed blonde in the show. it's naturally purple in the comics. i like that it's dyed more than it's naturally ultraviolet.

given that emmy also dyes her hair blonde irl, i'm guessing this was one of her inputs, and it does look gorgeous. i think it also works better for her character as a glamarous crowd-pleasing public figure, rather than a frumpy private citizen, to dye her hair a natural shade rather than a bright color.

(though i'm guessing the choice was made because either the purple hair didn't test well or they thought it was too goofy)

that being said i miss the purple hair and hope it comes back some other time.

9:50

everyone: look! the rain started when vanya noticed reginald died! even though it's clearly established that her powers Don't Do That and that the medication she is still clearly on shut her powers down, this is definitive proof that she controls the weather!

the writers, who definitely just meant that as a cool scene transition: uhhh....

10:40

constant: reginald always has a journal, in which he writes incriminating secrets about the children.

11:05

constant: ben always has a statue in the courtyard. and the family always breaks up after ben dies (though in the comics, it happens more gradually, with the family leaving one by one -- vanya first, then klaus-- and likely as adults).

variable: how the statue looks.

12:13

in hindsight, i feel like the 'bro/sis' aspect of television and film writing that we all love to dunk on is expository in nature. you have to tell your audience as efficiently as possible what peoples' relationships are and nothing's clearer than 'hey bro/sis'.

also, it's interesting in how in the show, they stress the 'family' aspect of the hargreeves dynamic, while in the comics it's 'academy' first-- even to the extent that they are forbidden from calling reginald 'dad.' i get the sense this was done to center the 'dysfunctional family' theming but i think it might've been a mistake, because this show's target audience of teens takes words more seriously than their context (see 'because they call each other brother and sister, the actual upbringing doesn't matter at all!' it's very post-voltron).

i think it was a mistake, in hindsight. or maybe there can be something to be said for combining both versions-- say, they start off by calling each other siblings, or reginald 'dad' and start to break away from that as they become disillusioned.

13:00

in hindsight, it's very clear that the 'how did dad die' plot is just padding to get us to ten episodes. it did the job fine here, but i feel like future versions of apocalypse suite could just zoom past it without a problem.

variable: in the comics, diego has one eye. in the show, he doesn't. i get that eyepatches are a pain for actors to wear but dang isn't it sexy how the disabilities get totally erased. allison's prosthetic arm, luther's mobility aids, vanya's wheelchair, and the guy who gets diego's prosthetic eye is a villain. woo. gross. i'd have been ok with it if there were some indication he'd get it later, but that's... not happening. so. hm.

+diego breaking into the coroner's office? straight from the comics.

i'm guessing the writers took this crumb and decided to spin it into a subplot to pad the runtime. clever, but not necessarily needed.

13:45

remember when s1 used characters digging at luther's weight to tell the audience that they were assholes. remember when s1 treated luther with dignity and didn't make fun of his deformity?

(,,, remember when the show actually let luther's deformity be sizable instead of shaving him and making his prosthetics smaller and smaller)

15:56

constant: vanya and pogo being exceptionally close when she was a child (but possible variable: them staying fond of each other when they're adults).

constant: vanya wrote an autobiography. variable: the content and intention behind it.

16:30

constant: five vanishes early on.

variable: how old five is (10 in the comics, 13 in the show) and whether he vanishes before or after the academy's debut (before in the comics, after in the show, probably so we can establish his power in the bank heist flashback)

variable: vanya and five being close as children. am i aware this is probably just to set up why five would approach her for help and nothing more? yes. am i declaring death of the author and sprinting with it? fuck YEAH. you dumbasses swapped viego with fiveya, and i'm keeping it.

17:25

on tua and the gothic... aside from the grandeur and the aesthetic of the mansion, the constant flashbacks really do solidify it-- the 'grand institution past its glory days, full of ghosts' vibe is so palpable.

tua is a gothic horror story. god the vibe was strong then.

18:40

the eiffel tower mission happened in the show -- note the picture frame behind allison-- it was just at a later date (they're ten in the comics, and it's their debut mission).

sigh. allison and klaus being close. one of the only things season 2 built on successfully.

+photos of reginald with henry kissinger. jeez.

+reginald is “not our real father” said by klaus right before luther and allison have their first interaction. the show trying to tell you What's Up but not going far enough. next time go for broke.

(also fuck you season 2 for making klaus the ~but its incest~ mouthpiece even though he clearly does not care and based on s1, does not see it that way)

19:30

the blocking really does say so much. klaus trampling all over reginald's space, while luther, the highest-ranked member of the group, clinging to one corner of the room because he's still nervous about respecting reg's boundaries. and allison, the one who got the special privileges because of her rumor, getting to creep behind the desk and hang out there.

also. allison and luther have chemistry, you crazies. even when i hated them as a couple i couldn't deny that. the eyefucking is intense. allison is fresh out of divorce court and ready to ride and i support her.

21:00

constant: luther and allison always have a romantic entanglement.

variable: in the comics, it seems more from allison's end until That Rumor, in the show it's mutual from day one. a good improvement and evolution that makes the relationship much stronger. keep it.

constant: allison always marries patrick and has claire with him. she always divorces him eight months before she arrives for the funeral. patrick always has custody.

constant: luther always knows about patrick.

variable: in the comics, he doesn't know about claire, or the divorce. and patrick also gets the house in the divorce (which is in the city, not hollywood).

and variable: allison is done with her rumor in the show, and not at all in the comics. this is probably just a plot contrivance to prevent her from ending things too early (and the writers absolving themselves of having to write a morally ambiguous female character) but it's a mistake that should hopefully die here with tua tv and not be carried over.

"i made a wish and it came true and i couldn't take it back" --- a cool line that in retrospect... kinda falls flat: allison made a wish for... her daughter to go to bed. oooh so scary.

oh and the alluther chimes/alluther theme is finished and released on the s2 soundtrack (track title: "luther and allison")! it's the only song from there i can stand to listen to because the rest are about fucking lila, harlan and sissy, and it's lovely! they also have the orchestral rearrangement of it!

22:00

constant: there's always a funeral.

variable: vanya actually shows up for it. this i think is an improvement on the comic, because in the show you have to extend the narrative to a full season of television, so you have to take this much slower. and, it lets us actually get to watch vanya become disillusioned, rather than jump out of the gate ready to blow shit up. the result is a much more empathetic take on her fall to villainy. (plus, we need to see her interact with the family to get how little they care for her)

the "old oak tree" line doesn't make much sense in the show, because there isn't one in the courtyard. but in the comics, that tree is part of the family estate, where they bury reginald. this is a holdover from the pilot script, where the house is a country mansion and where the tree is also present. i guess this line slipped through the edits.

variable: klaus's addiction in the comics is more subtle. even though we know right away that he's got a problem, it takes entire volumes before you really understand how bad it is. here it's so in your face that it keeps dancing a really unfortunate line of being played exclusively for comedy. s1 manages it successfully, s2 trips over it and breaks its teeth on the pavement.

variable: klaus's telekinesis/levitation, present in the comics and pilot script, are totally gone in the show. probably for budgetary reasons, which, fair. he has other powers, after all. he can afford to lose a few.

(.... well, then they suddenly become vanya's powers, which make NO goddamn sense and look ridiculous, so fuck you season 2)

and variable: the family isn't all white anymore. though there is a case that can be made for it in the comics, since a racially-integrated superpowered vigilante team operating in the 1960s would... not have been accepted by the public and especially not the government, i'm glad this change was made. the hargreeves children were adopted from around the world, so they should reflect that world.

if anything, we need to take it a step further. and by this i do mean, woc vanya.

24:27

constant: we always see the academy's debut mission.

variable: in the comics, it's saving the eiffel tower. in the show, it's this. in the pilot script, the robbery scene also exists. this being the academy's debut mission likely occurs for budgetary reasons.

variable: in the comics, ben is desperate to please. in the show, he's reluctant to use his powers at all.

and the overall dynamic of the family is affected. in the comics, it was allison-and-luther, ben chasing after them, klaus off on his own, and diego rebelling with vanya (with five being gone by that point). in the show, it's allison-and-luther, diego chasing after them, klaus-and-ben, and five rebelling with vanya. i love the change because it emphasizes vanya's loneliness, and diego's obsession with being the best (he literally robs his childhood of friendship and connection because of his ambition).

variable: diego's powers are projectile manipulation, not breath-holding. a change made probably bc holding-your-breath is a power that doesn't come in handy much, and people would probably just get it confused with the knives. i get it. though depending on how the comics shake out it might be a big mistake. we'll see.

constant: vanya always observes, and gets a moment of rejection by reginald

(+comics ref: the insignia on the skyscraper behind reg is the probably-villainous city media logo from the comics. said conglomerate controls the media, the papers, the cops, the taxis... god i'm excited to find out more about what's up there)

26:58

variable: reginald in the comics is simply buried in a coffin. in the show, he's cremated. this makes more sense seeing as he's a space alien who wants to keep his identity a secret, but the comics could have a use for his body being Right There ready to dig up, so we'll see how this turns out.

29:20

one thing that's sorely missed i think is the way the show knew how to just take a breather and let you live with the characters for a second.

man. it also makes the song moments more genuine because it's less a ~corporate mandated quirky dance montage~ and more an extension of character moment: it's a song that fits the scene in tone, context and lyric, not something added to be quirky.

+in the pilot script, the locket is vanya's. hm who knows who gave it to her.

33:32

constant: five falls back just in time for the funeral

variable: five falls into his 13-year-old body, being the age he was when he disappeared. five is 58 and not in his 60s, and five lands just hours before the funeral even starts, whereas in the comics, he shows up all alone days in advance and simply hangs around the house, waiting for someone to show up. i like this better. it's tighter.

+the kitchen scene seems to be a loose adaptation of the classroom scene in issue 2, where five chats with the family. albeit the content is totally different.

36:12

yes i know this is just exposition fuel to let us know what vanya's book said, and to set up five coming to vanya later, but boy if they don't show us they swapped the viego vibe out for the fiveya one.

but. tin hat on:

constant: vanya always has a pseudo-romantic bond with a rebellious pseudobrother who pushes back against reginald and the rules, and bonds with her as a way of doing so. feelings are caught, but the relationship is cut off before it can become anything, though the feelings are still there and bubbling under the surface and are about to boil over when they confront each other during the apocalypse plot.

variable: which brother vanya falls for.

(boy did the show Fuck Up by not doing anything with this. it's too important to vanya's character and her plotline. boy am i livid that they just spun up lila so diego could have this plotline without vanya and just left the fiveya vibe hanging unresolved. idiots.)

37:00

in the comics, diego hates mom (who has no name), and allison adores her. additionally, mom looks like... this.

i get why changes were made. since the viego vibe is gone, we need someone else for diego to be soft to to endear him to the audience. and there are limitations to live action in terms of how the characters look (see luther's deformity being downsized). mom might look too goofy in live-action if she were to be constructed like that.

variable: the funeral takes place during fall in the comics, spring in the show. because pilot season tends to be earlier in the year, and since filming takes months, you need things to look consistent (esp with tua, being a season that takes place over one week), it's easier to fake spring in summer than fall in winter.

(... is the 'they were born in october' thing because the comics were set in autumn?)

and ngl, i love the 'the apocalypse happens on april fools day' thing. it's so, so cruel and i love it. five's the fool. let's keep that.

and thematically of course, tua being about how the family begins to come together again, and setting it during spring... i like that. it wasn't intended at all, but i want to keep that.

variable: no fight breaks out at the funeral. the luego fight happens after the funeral. this was probably moved up to add spice, make the dysfunction apparent, and give us a hint of luther's deformity.

44:10

constant: vanya always takes medication

variable: in the comics, her meds have nothing to do with her powers. as far as we know she just takes them as an adult, and we don't even know what they're for (but given the context clues of her her popping a few right before heading into danger, probably anxiety).

in the show, they're the Big Bad Medication that is stifling everything vanya is, forced on her as a child to suppress her powers. i think this is a really smart evolution that helps us understand why her powers have been dormant, esp with klaus as foreshadowing when he uses to shut his powers down. however there are unfortunate implications surrounding the whole 'go off your meds and become your True Self!' thing. personally, i think the implications are worth the story point, but i get why other people disagree.

45:22

the guitar reminds me of the prime-8s, diego, vanya and body (a chimp detective friend of diego's)'s band from the comics. given there's no reference to it here, there's no viego vibe and klaus is the one playing with it, maybe he plays in it in the show.

honestly, i like that if it's the case. it's important to make vanya's isolation feel total, and as much as the viego vibe matters, it chips away at her being the constant outcast if she always had a companion and even had a whole band with him as a teen.

i like the compromise of giving diego his punk band but changing which sibling he plays with. i'd like to see that in another telling someday (plus, an idea for said evolution: what if it's vanya's idea but he uses it without her).

48:45

constant: five always murders a whole regiment of commission goons in a diner, with agnes bearing witness.

variable: this happens much later in the comics, at a place called costello's, not griddy's. no idea why the name was changed.

i support moving it up in the timeline, because with tv, you need to expand the amount of material you have. and honestly, the dallas arc being combined with apocalypse suite makes... a lot. of sense. and it ensures that diego, whose plotline consists of investigating that attack, has something to do for the season since his viego vibe was removed.

and variable: the family has a personal connection to griddy's, as a place where they used to sneak out together. in the comics, it's just some diner.

i like this change. it gives five a sentimental quality, bolsters the gothic theme, and tells you that the family could and did get along. and that while five was here, they included vanya.

and variable: the goons look much more generic here than they do later in the season, when they match their comics counterparts much more (the bright red gas masks). chalk it up to either budget or playing it safe. if the former, i get it. if the latter, get over it and go for it.

54:40

constant: ben's ghost is always following klaus around

variable: in the show, we learn this immediately. in the comics, it's not until klaus's overdose in hotel oblivion that we learn it

also ben looks totally different. a lot more nightmare fuelish.

maybe it's a budget thing. maybe it's that the show thought ben would look more down-to-earth in a hoodie and leather jacket than a shredded uniform.

either way the change is... okay. it's okay. it looks nice but it really does open a lot of plot holes regarding the mechanics of ghosts in this world. which are made worse in s2, so woo for never planning your worldbuilding out.

at least in s1 we can pretend they had a plan.

55:22

constant: five always approaches a trusted sibling for help with the apocalypse.

variable: who he approaches. in the comics, it's luther. in the show (and pilot), it's vanya.

in all odds, it's vanya here because she's our protagonist and therefore needs to be our viewpoint for all our big exposition moments, but in my heart (and almost certainly by accident in execution, assuming the COMPLETE scene-for-scene, beat-for-beat swap of the viego and fiveya vibes in the adaptation wasn't intentional after all), it's because fiveya.

and constant: we always end our first issue/episode with the revelation that the world will end in a matter of days.

variable: how many days we have left. in the comics, it's three. in the show, it's eight, because more filling. it works, bc we need more time for more episodes, but i'd like to see other versions of the story that shorten things up.

the comics, in their purest form, should honestly just be a series of movies. there's just not enough material to make a television show unless you're willing to pad. this. shit. out. which tuatv is, for better and worse.

so.

man. episode one still is absolutely fantastic. i love it to death. it's the smoothest and most well-written of all the series, and it does a phenomenal job introducing such a batshit world and cast in such an efficient way. jeremy slater built this house. steve blackman burned it down.

and for as many deviations as it takes with the source material... so much of it still rings true. if anything the changes thus far seem to have been made mostly for the sake of streamlining the adaptation, working with the medium constraints of live-action tv, and turning a six-issue comic series (plus its sequel) into ten hours of television.

that being said... you can see the cracks. for now, they're easy to ignore, but knowing where the show ultimately goes... yep.

x | 102 | 103 | 104 | 105 | 106 | 107 | 108 | 109 | 110 | overall

[quilloftheclouds]

100 OC Questions

Uh. I got bored again and made another ask game! Pick an oc, or I’ll pick randomly. This one has 100 questions so you can nice and neatly use a d100 to choose what numbers to send in, if you want~

And since writeblr is a community, I would truly appreciate it if you sent an ask to whoever you’re reblogging this from! (Even if you don’t know them very well---it’s really the polite thing to do.)

1. What common traits do you share with your oc? What about them is the least like you? 2. Do you think you would get along with your oc if you could meet them? What things would you talk about? 3. How competent would your oc be in a survival situation? Would they be better off on their own or in a group? 4. Is your oc a daredevil, or more of a scaredy cat? What is the most daring thing they’ve done in their life? 5. What is your oc’s patience like? When waiting for something, are they able to sit still or do they fidget? How do they fidget? 6. How much thought does your oc put into what they wear/look like? Any reason why? 7. Does your oc collect anything? What about of knowledge or facts? How big is their collection? 8. What kind of flavours does your oc like? How much spice can they handle? 9. How easily does your oc trust others? Any particular reason why? How trustworthy are they themselves? 10. What are some of your oc’s pet peeves? How do they handle it when the annoyance doesn’t stop? 11. Does your oc have a good sense of direction? Do they get lost easily? 12. How well would your oc handle being placed in a leadership position? 13. What is your oc’s confidence like? Are they self-confident to the point of being arrogant? Are they terribly self-deprecating? 14. What is your oc’s speech like? How loud are they usually? Do they have an accent or a stutter? 15. What is your oc’s memory like? Do they remember certain things better than others? Do they have any strategies to better remember things? 16. How affectionate is your oc? How do they convey their affection? By being touchy, or through more subtle ways? 17. How polite is your oc? Do they know how to act in a formal situation? How would they *actually* act in a formal situation? 18. How physically strong is your oc? Is their agility or endurance better? 19. What is your oc’s creative skillset? Music, drawing, writing, dancing, etc.? Or are they lacking creativity entirely? 20. Does your oc have any favourite games to pass the time? What other hobbies do they have? 21. Is your oc expressive, or would they rather conceal their emotions? What are their typical expressions like? 22. How easily does your oc fare in the sun? Do they tan or burn easily? Are they completely unaffected? 23. How graceful is your oc? Are they elegant in their movements, or more clumsy? 24. Is your oc a romantic, or are they grossed out by the simple mention of anything romantic? 25. How stubborn is your oc? Are they open to considering different options or opinions, or are they more closed off? 26. How does your oc sleep? Do they move around a lot? What position does your oc normally sleep in? What are their typical bedding arrangements like? 27. What is your oc’s sleep schedule like? Are they a night owl, an early morning riser, or do they get any sleep at all? 28. How organized is your oc? How important is organization to your oc? 29. If a perfume was to be made to represent your oc, what sorts of smells would be included in it? 30. How caring/empathetic is your oc? Are they the type to immediately adopt and protect others, or are they a true sadist? 31. What inspired the creation of your oc? Any specific things, a general aesthetic or idea, or something completely random? 32. How judgemental is your oc? Do they keep an open mind about people, or are they the type to judge a book by its cover? 33. What five objects or things could be expected to be found on your oc’s person at any time? Why? 34. Does your oc have a pet? If they could have another one or if they were to get one, what would it be? How well could they care for it? 35. Does your oc have any distinguishing markings? Scars, tattoos, birthmarks, freckles, etc? 36. What is your oc’s fight or flight response like? What sorts of things provoke it the most? 37. How does your oc handle heavy stress? Do they have any specific coping mechanisms? Are they healthy or not? 38. What does your oc do to relax? Any specific activities? Why? 39. Does your oc have any nicknames? What are the origins of them? If they don’t, can you come up with some possible ones? 40. What languages does your oc know? Are there any they want to learn but haven’t had the chance to? How good are they at picking up new ones? 41. What was the worst injury your oc ever suffered? Has it had any long lasting impact on them? 42. Is your oc an optimist or a pessimist? Any particular reason why? 43. How important are the rules to your oc? Do they follow them to a t, or do they enjoy breaking them? 44. How violent is your oc? Or are they more a pacifist? To what lengths will they go to start/avoid a conflict? 45. How is your oc around animals? What about children? 46. Does your oc lie a lot, or is the truth very important to them? What is their reaction to other people lying to them? 47. How much of a prankster is your oc? Are their pranks truly evil, or more harmless, positive ones? 48. What are your oc’s nervous tics? Are they aware of them? Do they attempt to hide them? 49. What would be the perfect gift for your oc? What would be their reaction to receiving it? 50. How attentive is your oc? How perceptive are they? How easily do they get distracted? 51. If your oc was to receive an award for something, what would it most likely be for? Have they received any awards in the past? 52. In what ways does your oc cope with anger? How easily angered are they? Do they lash out? 53. If your oc was to host a podcast or TV show, what would it be about? Would your oc actually be good at it? What sorts of guests would appear? 54. How would you describe your oc’s voice to sound like? Do you have any voice claims for them? 55. How sensitive to loud sound is your oc? Do they prefer constant high background noise, low background noise, or complete silence? 56. What is your oc’s favourite colour? If you had to choose one colour to represent your oc, what would it be and why? 57. How good is your oc’s sight? Do they wear glasses? Do they need glasses? Do they have some form of night vision? 58. How would you describe your oc’s appearance to someone who’s looking for them? What features would be most identifiable? 59. How good at cooking is your oc? What can they cook/what is their favourite thing to cook? 60. How good is your oc at keeping track of time? Are they always late, always early, or always right on time? 61. Is your oc more quick-thinking, or do they take longer to figure things out? 62. How quick is your oc? Do they have faster or slower reflexes? What things are they quickest at? 63. How self-disciplined is your oc? Do they often think before they act, or the other way around? 64. Which of the seven deadly sins does your oc fall under most? What about the seven heavenly virtues? 65. If you were to give your oc a new superpower, what would you choose and why? If *they* were to be able to choose, what would it be and why? 66. What sort of advice would people go to your oc for? What sort of advice is your oc actually good at giving? 67. How many people does your oc prefer to be around? A crowd, a few friends, or all on their own? 68. What sorts of things would cheer your oc up when they’re down? Is your oc sad often, or is it more rare? 69. How energetic is your oc? Are they constantly tired, or constantly bouncing off the walls? 70. What about your oc’s lifestyle would they change if they had the ability? Why? 71. What is your oc’s go-to for offense? What weapon, what style of fighting? Or are words more their weapon of choice? 72. What is your oc’s ideal environment like? Urban or natural? Fancy or rustic? What’s the weather like? 73. If your oc were to be arrested, what would it most likely be for? Is it justified? Have they actually been arrested before? 74. How would your oc act when drunk? What about when really, really tired? 75. What would your oc’s dream home be like? How big would it be? What sorts of rooms would be in it? Where would it be located? 76. What is/was your oc’s relationship with their family like? Was it happy, tense, or abusive? What living family does your oc currently have, if any? 77. Does your oc like to wear any particular accessories? Hats, jewelry, scarves, etc.? 78. How socially skilled is your oc? Are they good at understanding social cues? How charismatic are they? 79. For what reason would your oc turn into a villain? And if they’re already a villain, vice-versa? 80. What is your oc’s handwriting like? How easy to read is it? Can they write/read cursive? 81. How good is your oc at drawing? What is their preferred art medium, and what is their artstyle like? 82. What would be your oc’s ultimate dream vacation? Where would they go? Who would they take with them? What would they do? 83. What is your oc’s favourite trait about themselves? What about their least liked? What would others like and dislike the most about your oc? 84. Is your oc more masculine, feminine, androgynous, or something else entirely? 85. What would history remember your oc for? How would they become famous? Or are they the sort that would really only be appreciated long after their death? 86. What would someone assume about your oc based on their appearance? Would those assumptions be correct? 87. What are some of your oc’s physical weak spots? What about emotional/moral ones? 88. Does your oc hold grudges? For how long? Does your oc have any rivals? 89. What does your oc’s laugh sound like? How often do they laugh? Are they easily amused? 90. Does your oc have any objects they could never give up? Why is it so important to them? Do they have any family heirlooms? 91. What is your oc’s typical posture like? Do they slouch, or stand straight? How much space do they usually take up, both physically and figuratively? 92. What trait does your oc appreciate or admire the most in others? Why? 93. What is your oc’s preferred learning style? Observation, hands-on, instruction? Do they take notes or memorize? 94. Does your oc rely more on a logical or emotional mindset? What situations would this be the opposite? 95. How is your oc about keeping someone else’s secret? Are they the gossiping type, are do they hold true on their promise to keep things quiet? 96. Describe your oc in three words. What three words would they use to describe themselves? 97. How old is your oc physically? How old are they in mental maturity? When are they most mature, and when are they the least? 98. Is your oc the type to have a lot of fairly good friends, have a small group of close friends, have one or two best friends, or have no friends at all? Who are they closest to? 99. What is your oc’s morning routine usually like? What do they eat for breakfast (if they have breakfast)? What time do they usually get up in the morning? 100. Does your character ever swear? How often? How vulgar is their swearing?

[shardfated]

PEOPLE I'D LIKE TO KNOW BETTER

1. ALIAS/NAME: darks 2. BIRTHDAY: January 31  3. ZODIAC SIGN: aquarius 4. HEIGHT: 5'0″ 5. HOBBIES: Needlecrafts ( sewing, embroidery, and crochet),  restoring and customizing fashion dolls, and rping on here. I also collect Corningware (and will give you fifty thousands reasons why you should not used Pyrex) and dabble in console/handheld games. LoZ:OOT and FF6 are my favorites. 6. FAVOURITE COLOUR: I love the specific orange/yellow/greens that were used in everything made in the late 60s/ early 70s. if I could only pick one, I’d pick orange. 7. FAVOURITE BOOK: ho boy. I have so many! i couldn’t pick just one so have a few that I reread yearly: Dune by Frank Herbert, The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, and  Arthurian Women: A Casebook edited by Thelma Fenster 8. LAST PLAYED SONG: Nikki - forever the sickest kids, the wellerman - Nathan Evans , It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) - Bob Dylan. (I have a playlist going),  9. LAST FILM / SHOW: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City /  Kaguya-sama: Love Is War？ 10. RECENT READS: Dr Zhivago  by Boris Pasternak ( rereading cause its so good!) / Listening to Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery on Spotify. 11. INSPIRATION:  I added Evie to my multi in late 2015 and just basically did worldbuilding and headcanons for the guilty pleasure of it.  I didn’t have any promotions for her and @malevnt and @cecaelian /  @deifiedstars found me and the rest is history. I get a rush of muse whenever they pop up on the dash since,   i am very appreciating with them tolerating the constant  rated R view I have of the descendants franchise story and the excessive amounts of meta/headcanons that we come up with in our respective canons( and i love the shared ones as well!).  A lot of inspiration comes from welsh mythology and fairy tales. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner  by samuel taylor coleridge has been a major inspiration to Evie’s characterization as well as The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. the aesthetics, the themes, I love them all. but, tbh, the most recent burst of  inspiration that got Evie to her own space was me creeping through the promo tags and @tiderider  was relatively close to the top, and i was blown away with the world building.  12. STORY BEHIND URL:  @withinycu  directed me towards several very good tellings of snow white and i got sucked into their literary criticisms because of it.  the themes of water/the sea being the original mirror/gateway to the otherworld and being tied to nature/magic and the belief that the soul can be trapped inside a mirror, with Disney themselves confirming that its the Old King( among thousands of his ancestors)  inside Evil Queen’s Mirror and is his final resting place after he died really struck a chord with me since the mirror itself  was smashed in Descendants. so, shardfated. 13. FUN FACT ABOUT ME: My holy grail item is a 1940s General Electric Triple Whip Stand Mixer.

tagged  by :  @tiderider   tagging :    @songeurame ; @yoakkemae ; @cecaelian ; @withinycu ; @ircnwrought ; @severedleft @inmydrcams  @paintedragcn @evermxre  and whoever else wants to do it!

[pattonsperfectfamily-asks]

100 Questions!

1. What common traits do you share with your oc? What about them is the least like you? 

2. Do you think you would get along with your oc if you could meet them? What things would you talk about? 

3. How competent would your oc be in a survival situation? Would they be better off on their own or in a group? 

4. Is your oc a daredevil, or more of a scaredy cat? What is the most daring thing they’ve done in their life? 

5. What is your oc’s patience like? When waiting for something, are they able to sit still or do they fidget? How do they fidget? 

6. How much thought does your oc put into what they wear/look like? Any reason why? 

7. Does your oc collect anything? What about of knowledge or facts? How big is their collection? 

8. What kind of flavours does your oc like? How much spice can they handle? 

9. How easily does your oc trust others? Any particular reason why? How trustworthy are they themselves? 

10. What are some of your oc’s pet peeves? How do they handle it when the annoyance doesn’t stop? 

11. Does your oc have a good sense of direction? Do they get lost easily? 

12. How well would your oc handle being placed in a leadership position? 

13. What is your oc’s confidence like? Are they self-confident to the point of being arrogant? Are they terribly self-deprecating? 

14. What is your oc’s speech like? How loud are they usually? Do they have an accent or a stutter? 

15. What is your oc’s memory like? Do they remember certain things better than others? Do they have any strategies to better remember things? 

16. How affectionate is your oc? How do they convey their affection? By being touchy, or through more subtle ways? 

17. How polite is your oc? Do they know how to act in a formal situation? How would they *actually* act in a formal situation? 

18. How physically strong is your oc? Is their agility or endurance better? 

19. What is your oc’s creative skillset? Music, drawing, writing, dancing, etc.? Or are they lacking creativity entirely? 

20. Does your oc have any favourite games to pass the time? What other hobbies do they have? 

21. Is your oc expressive, or would they rather conceal their emotions? What are their typical expressions like? 

22. How easily does your oc fare in the sun? Do they tan or burn easily? Are they completely unaffected? 

23. How graceful is your oc? Are they elegant in their movements, or more clumsy? 

24. Is your oc a romantic, or are they grossed out by the simple mention of anything romantic? 

25. How stubborn is your oc? Are they open to considering different options or opinions, or are they more closed off? 

26. How does your oc sleep? Do they move around a lot? What position does your oc normally sleep in? What are their typical bedding arrangements like? 

27. What is your oc’s sleep schedule like? Are they a night owl, an early morning riser, or do they get any sleep at all? 

28. How organized is your oc? How important is organization to your oc? 

29. If a perfume was to be made to represent your oc, what sorts of smells would be included in it? 

30. How caring/empathetic is your oc? Are they the type to immediately adopt and protect others, or are they a true sadist? 

31. What inspired the creation of your oc? Any specific things, a general aesthetic or idea, or something completely random? 

32. How judgemental is your oc? Do they keep an open mind about people, or are they the type to judge a book by its cover? 

33. What five objects or things could be expected to be found on your oc’s person at any time? Why? 

34. Does your oc have a pet? If they could have another one or if they were to get one, what would it be? How well could they care for it? 

35. Does your oc have any distinguishing markings? Scars, tattoos, birthmarks, freckles, etc? 

36. What is your oc’s fight or flight response like? What sorts of things provoke it the most? 

37. How does your oc handle heavy stress? Do they have any specific coping mechanisms? Are they healthy or not? 

38. What does your oc do to relax? Any specific activities? Why? 

39. Does your oc have any nicknames? What are the origins of them? If they don’t, can you come up with some possible ones? 

40. What languages does your oc know? Are there any they want to learn but haven’t had the chance to? How good are they at picking up new ones? 

41. What was the worst injury your oc ever suffered? Has it had any long lasting impact on them? 

42. Is your oc an optimist or a pessimist? Any particular reason why? 

43. How important are the rules to your oc? Do they follow them to a t, or do they enjoy breaking them? 

44. How violent is your oc? Or are they more a pacifist? To what lengths will they go to start/avoid a conflict? 

45. How is your oc around animals? What about children? 

46. Does your oc lie a lot, or is the truth very important to them? What is their reaction to other people lying to them? 

47. How much of a prankster is your oc? Are their pranks truly evil, or more harmless, positive ones? 

48. What are your oc’s nervous tics? Are they aware of them? Do they attempt to hide them? 

49. What would be the perfect gift for your oc? What would be their reaction to receiving it? 

50. How attentive is your oc? How perceptive are they? How easily do they get distracted? 

51. If your oc was to receive an award for something, what would it most likely be for? Have they received any awards in the past? 

52. In what ways does your oc cope with anger? How easily angered are they? Do they lash out? 

53. If your oc was to host a podcast or TV show, what would it be about? Would your oc actually be good at it? What sorts of guests would appear? 

54. How would you describe your oc’s voice to sound like? Do you have any voice claims for them? 

55. How sensitive to loud sound is your oc? Do they prefer constant high background noise, low background noise, or complete silence? 

56. What is your oc’s favourite colour? If you had to choose one colour to represent your oc, what would it be and why?

57. How good is your oc’s sight? Do they wear glasses? Do they need glasses? Do they have some form of night vision?

58. How would you describe your oc’s appearance to someone who’s looking for them? What features would be most identifiable?

59. How good at cooking is your oc? What can they cook/what is their favourite thing to cook?

60. How good is your oc at keeping track of time? Are they always late, always early, or always right on time?

61. Is your oc more quick-thinking, or do they take longer to figure things out? 

62. How quick is your oc? Do they have faster or slower reflexes? What things are they quickest at? 

63. How self-disciplined is your oc? Do they often think before they act, or the other way around? 

64. Which of the seven deadly sins does your oc fall under most? What about the seven heavenly virtues?

65. If you were to give your oc a new superpower, what would you choose and why? If *they* were to be able to choose, what would it be and why?

66. What sort of advice would people go to your oc for? What sort of advice is your oc actually good at giving?

67. How many people does your oc prefer to be around? A crowd, a few friends, or all on their own?

68. What sorts of things would cheer your oc up when they’re down? Is your oc sad often, or is it more rare?

69. How energetic is your oc? Are they constantly tired, or constantly bouncing off the walls?

70. What about your oc’s lifestyle would they change if they had the ability? Why?

71. What is your oc’s go-to for offense? What weapon, what style of fighting? Or are words more their weapon of choice?

72. What is your oc’s ideal environment like? Urban or natural? Fancy or rustic? What’s the weather like?

73. If your oc were to be arrested, what would it most likely be for? Is it justified? Have they actually been arrested before?

74. How would your oc act when drunk? What about when really, really tired?

75. What would your oc’s dream home be like? How big would it be? What sorts of rooms would be in it? Where would it be located? 

76. What is/was your oc’s relationship with their family like? Was it happy, tense, or abusive? What living family does your oc currently have, if any? 

77. Does your oc like to wear any particular accessories? Hats, jewelry, scarves, etc.? 

78. How socially skilled is your oc? Are they good at understanding social cues? How charismatic are they? 

79. For what reason would your oc turn into a villain? And if they’re already a villain, vice-versa? 

80. What is your oc’s handwriting like? How easy to read is it? Can they write/read cursive? 

81. How good is your oc at drawing? What is their preferred art medium, and what is their artstyle like? 

82. What would be your oc’s ultimate dream vacation? Where would they go? Who would they take with them? What would they do? 

83. What is your oc’s favourite trait about themselves? What about their least liked? What would others like and dislike the most about your oc?

84. Is your oc more masculine, feminine, androgynous, or something else entirely?

85. What would history remember your oc for? How would they become famous? Or are they the sort that would really only be appreciated long after their death?

86. What would someone assume about your oc based on their appearance? Would those assumptions be correct?

87. What are some of your oc’s physical weak spots? What about emotional/moral ones?

88. Does your oc hold grudges? For how long? Does your oc have any rivals? 

89. What does your oc’s laugh sound like? How often do they laugh? Are they easily amused?

90. Does your oc have any objects they could never give up? Why is it so important to them? Do they have any family heirlooms?

91. What is your oc’s typical posture like? Do they slouch, or stand straight? How much space do they usually take up, both physically and figuratively?

92. What trait does your oc appreciate or admire the most in others? Why?

93. What is your oc’s preferred learning style? Observation, hands-on, instruction? Do they take notes or memorize?

94. Does your oc rely more on a logical or emotional mindset? What situations would this be the opposite?

95. How is your oc about keeping someone else’s secret? Are they the gossiping type, are do they hold true on their promise to keep things quiet?

96. Describe your oc in three words. What three words would they use to describe themselves?

97. How old is your oc physically? How old are they in mental maturity? When are they most mature, and when are they the least?

98. Is your oc the type to have a lot of fairly good friends, have a small group of close friends, have one or two best friends, or have no friends at all? Who are they closest to?

99. What is your oc’s morning routine usually like? What do they eat for breakfast (if they have breakfast)? What time do they usually get up in the morning?

100. Does your character ever swear? How often? How vulgar is their swearing?

[alanlicht]

Alan Licht’s Minimal Top Ten List #4

A few weeks ago, near the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, my friend Mats Gustafsson sent out a mass email encouraging people to send him record lists to post on the “Discaholics” section of his website--top tens, favorite covers, anything. I immediately thought of the first 3 Minimal Top Ten lists I did (now found online here) back in 1995, 1997, and 2007 respectively, for the fanzine Halana (the first two) and Volcanic Tongue’s website (the third), and sent them to him. Those articles have sort of taken on a life of their own, and I still see them referenced as the albums get reissued and so on. Occasionally people ask me if I’d ever do another one, and looking at all three again made me think now is the hour. I started writing this in the midst of the lockdown, and the drastic reductions in people’s way of life—the restriction of any activity outside the home to the bare essentials, the relative stasis of life in quarantine, even the visual stasis of a Zoom meeting—make revisiting Minimal music, with its aesthetic of working within limitations and hallmarks of repetition and drones, somehow timely as well.

The original lists were never meant to represent “the best” Minimal albums: they were ones that were rare and in some cases surpass, in my opinion, more widely available releases by the same artist and/or better known examples of the genre. Some were records that hadn’t been classified as Minimalist but warranted consideration through that lens. Likewise, the lists aren’t meant to be ranked within themselves, or in comparison to each other; the first record on any of the lists isn’t necessarily vastly preferable to the last, and this fourth list is not the bottom of the barrel, by any stretch. In some cases the present list has records I’ve discovered since 2007; others are records I’ve known for quite a while but haven’t included before for one reason or another. I’ve also made an addendum to selected entries on the first three lists, which have become fairly dated in terms of what is currently available by many of the artists, and to account for some of the significant archival releases in the 25 years since I first compiled them.

Unlike the mid-90s, most if not all of these records can be heard and/or purchased online, whether they’re up on YouTube or available for sale on Discogs. So finding them will be easier than before (although I haven’t included links to any of the titles as a small tribute to the legwork involved in tracking records down in olden tymes), but hopefully the spirit of sharing knowledge and passions that drove my previous efforts, forged in the pre-internet fanzine world, hasn’t been rendered totally redundant by the 24/7 onslaught of virtual note-comparing in social media.

1. Simeon ten Holt Canto Ostinato (various recordings): This was the most significant discovery for me in the last decade, a piece with over one hundred modules to be played on any instrument but mostly realized over the years with two to four pianos. I first encountered a YouTube live video of four pianists tackling it over the course of 90 minutes or so, then bought a double CD on Brilliant Classics from 2005, also for four pianos, that runs about 2 and half hours. The original 3LP recording on Donemus, from 1984, lasts close to 3 hours. It’s addictively listenable, very hypnotic in that pulsed, Steve Reich “Piano Phase”/”Six Pianos” kind of way, with lots of recurring themes (which differentiates it from Terry Riley’s “In C,” its most obvious structural antecedent). Composed over the span of the 70s, as with Roberto Cacciapaglia’s Sei Note in Logica, it’s an  example of someone contemporaneously taking the ball from Reich or Riley and running with it. Every recording I’ve heard has been enjoyable, I’ve yet to pick a favorite.

2. David Borden Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments (Red Music, 1981) 3. Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Co. Like a Duck to Water (Earthquack, 1976): These were some of my most cherished Minimal recordings when I was a teenager in the mid-80s, and are still not particularly well-known; they’re probably the biggest omission in the previous lists (at least from my perspective). Borden formed Mother Mallard, supposedly the first all-synthesizer ensemble, as a trio in the late 60s, although there’s electric piano on the records too. He went on to do music under his own name that hinged on the multi-keyboard Minimalism-meets-Renaissance classical concept he first explored with Mother Mallard, as exemplified by his 12-part series “The Continuing Story of Counterpoint” (a title inspired by both Philip Glass’ “Music in Twelve Parts” and the Beatles’ “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”). I first heard Parts 6 & 9 of “Continuing Story” (from Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments) on Tim Page’s 1980s afternoon radio show on WNYC, and bought the Mother Mallard LPs (Like A Duck is the second, the first is self-titled) from New Music Distribution Service soon after. I mail-ordered the Borden album  from Wayside Music, which had cut-out copies, maybe a year later (c. 1986). I wasn’t much of a synth guy, but I loved the propulsive, rapid-fire counterpoint and fast-changing, lyrical melodies found on these records. “C-A-G-E Part 2,” which occupies side 2 of the Mother Mallard album and utilizes only those pitches, has to be a pinnacle of the Minimal genre. Interestingly, Borden claims to not really be able to “hear” harmony and composes each part of these (generally) three-part inventions individually, all the way through. The two-piano “Continuing Story of Counterpoint Part Two” on the 1985 album Anatidae is also beloved by me, and there was an archival Mother Mallard CD called Music by David Borden (Arbiter, 2003) that’s worth hearing.

4. Charles Curtis/Charles Curtis Trio: Ultra White Violet Light/Sleep (Beau Rivage, 1997): Full disclosure: Charles is a long-time friend, but this record seems forgotten and deserves another look, especially in light of the long-overdue 3CD survey of his performances of other composers’ material that Saltern released last year. This was a double album of four side-long tracks, conceived with the intent that two sides could be played simultaneously, in several different configurations; two of them are Charles solo on cello and sine tones, the others are with a trio and have spoken vocals and rock instrumentation, with cello and the sine tones also thrown into the mix. (I’ve never heard any of the sides combined, although now it would probably be easily achieved with digital mixing software.) The instrumental stuff is the closest you can come to hearing Charles’ beautiful arrangement of Terry Jennings’ legendary “Piece for Cello and Saxophone,” at least until his own recording of it sees the light of day; the same deeply felt cello playing against a sine tone drone. And it would be interesting to see what Slint fans thought of the trio material. Originally packaged in a nifty all-white uni-pak sleeve with a photo print pasted into the gatefold, it was reissued with a different cover on the now-defunct Squealer label on LP and CD but has disappeared since then. Stellar.

5. Arthur Russell Instrumentals 1974 Vol. 2 (Another Side/Crepuscule, 1984) 6. Peter Zummo Zummo with an X (Loris, 1985):  Arthur Russell has posthumously developed a somewhat surprising indie rock audience, mostly for his unique songs and singing as well as his outré disco tracks. But he was also a modern classical composer, with serious Minimal cred—he’s on Jon Gibson’s Songs & Melodies 1973-1977 (see addendum), and played with Henry Flynt and Christer Hennix at one point; his indelible album of vocal and cello sparseness, World of Echo, was partially recorded at Phill Niblock’s loft and of course his Tower of Meaning LP was released on Glass’s Chatham Square label. He’s the one guy in the 70s and 80s (or after, for that matter) who connected the dots between Ali Akbar Khan, the Modern Lovers, Minimalism, and disco as different forms of trance music (taken together, both sides of his disco 12” “In the Light of the Miracle,” which total nearly a half-hour, could arguably be considered one of his Minimalist compositions). Recorded in 1977 & 1978, Instrumentals is an important signpost of the incipient Pop Minimalism impulse, and the first track is a pre-punk precursor to Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca’s appropriations of the rock band format to pursue Minimal pathways (Chatham is one of the performers in that first piece). The rest, culled from a concert at the Kitchen, features long held tones from horns and strings and is quite graceful, if slightly undercut by Arthur’s own slightly jarring, apparently random edits. [Audika’s 2006 reissue, as part of the double CD First Thought Best Thought, includes a 1975 concert that was slated to be Instrumentals Vol. 1, which shows an even more specific pop/rock/Minimal intersection]. Zummo was a long-term collaborator of Russell’s and his album, which Arthur plays on, is a must for Russell aficionados. The first side is made up of short, plain pieces that repeat various simple intervals and are fairly hard-core Minimalism, but “Song IV,” which occupies all of side two, is like an extended, jammy take on Russell’s disco 12” “Treehouse” and has Bill Ruyle on bongos, who also played on Instrumentals as well as with Steve Reich and Jon Gibson. A recently unearthed concert at Roulette from 1985 is a further, and especially intriguing, example of Russell’s blending of Minimalism and song form. (That same year Arthur played on Elodie Lauten’s The Death of Don Juan--another record I first encountered via Tim Page’s radio show--which I included on Top Ten #3; Lauten as well as Zummo played on the Russell Roulette concert, as their website alleges).

7. Horacio Vaggione La Maquina de Cantar (Cramps, 1978): Another one-off from the late 70s, and yet more evidence of how Minimalism had really caught on as a trend among European composers of the time. Vaggione had a previous duo album with Eduardo Polonio under the name It called Viaje that was noisier electronics, and he went on to do computer music that was likewise more traditionally abstract. But on this sole effort for the Italian label Cramps, as part of their legendary Nova Musicha series, he went for full-on tonality. The title track is like the synth part of “Who Are You” extended for more than fifteen minutes and made a bit squishier; but side 2, “Ending”--already mentioned in the entry on David Rosenboom’s Brainwave Music in Top Ten #3--is my favorite. Kind of a bridge between Minimalism and prog, and a little reminiscent of David Borden’s multiple-synth counterpoint pieces, for the first ten minutes he lingers on one vaguely foreboding arpeggiated chord, then introduces a fanfare melody that repeats and builds in harmonies and countermelodies for the remainder of the piece. Great stuff, as Johnny Carson used to say.

8. Costin Miereanu Derives (Poly-Art, 1984): Miereanu is French composer coming out of musique concrete. Unlike some of the albums on these lists, both sides/pieces on Derives are superb, comprised of long drones with flurries of skittering electronic activity popping up here and there. Also notable is the presence of engineers Philip Besomes and Jean-Louis Rizet, responsible for Pôle, the great mid-70s prog double album that formed the basis of Graham Lambkin’s meta-meisterwork Amateur Doubles. I discovered this record via the old Continuo blog; Miereanu has lots of albums out, most of which I haven’t heard, but his 1975 debut Luna Cinese, another Cramps Nova Musicha item, is also estimable, although less Minimal.

9. Mikel Rouse Broken Consort Jade Tiger (Les Disques du Crepuscule, 1984): Rouse was a major New Music name in the 80s, as was Microscopic Septet saxist Philip Johnston, who plays here. Dominated by Reichian repeated fills that accentuate the odd time signatures as opposed to an underlying pulse, this will sound very familiar to anyone acquainted with Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin albums on ECM, which use the same general idea but brand it “zen funk” and cater more to the progressive jazz crowd rather than New Music fans, if we can be that anachronistic in our terminology. Jade Tiger also contrasts nicely with Wim Mertens’ more neo-Romantic contemporaneous excursions on Crepuscule. Rouse later performed the admirable (and daunting) task of cataloging Arthur Russell’s extensive tape archive for the preparation of Another Thought (Point Music, 1994)

10. Michael Nyman Decay Music (Obscure, 1976): Known for his soundtracks to Peter Greenaway films, and his still-peerless 1974 book Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (where I, Jim O’Rourke, and doubtless many other intrepid teenage library goers learned of the Minimalists, Fluxus, AMM, and lots of other eternal avant heroes), Nyman is sometimes credited with coining the term “Minimal music” as well, in an early 70s article in The Spectator. Decay Music was produced by Brian Eno for his short-lived but wonderful Obscure label. The first side, “1-100,” was also composed for a Greenaway film, and has one hundred chords played one after another on piano, each advancing to the next once the sound has decayed from the previous chord (hence the album title). For all its delicacy and silences, you’re actually hearing three renditions superimposed on one another, which occasionally makes for some charming chordal collisions (reminiscent of the cheerfully clumsy, subversive “variations” of Pachelbel’s “Canon in D major” on Eno’s own Discreet Music, the most celebrated Obscure release). This is process music at its most fragile and incandescent. In hindsight it may have also been an unconscious influence on the structure of my piece “A New York Minute,” which lines up a month’s worth of weather reports from news radio, edited so that one day’s forecast follows its prediction from the previous day. I’ve never found the album’s other piece, “Bell Set No. 1,” to be quite as compelling, and Nyman’s other soundtrack work doesn’t hold much interest for me, but I’ve often returned to this album.

11. J Dilla Donuts (Stones Throw, 2006): One more for the road. Rightfully acclaimed as a masterpiece of instrumental hip hop, I have to confess I only discovered Donuts while reading Questlove’s 2013 book Mo’ Meta Blues, where he compared it to Terry Riley. The brevity of the tracks (31of ‘em in 44 minutes) and the lack of single-mindedness make categorizing Donuts as a Minimal album a bit of a stretch, but Questlove’s namecheck makes a whole lot of sense if you play “Don’t Cry” back to back with Riley’s proto-Plunderphonic “You’re Nogood,” and “Glazed” is the only hip hop track to ever remind me of Philip Glass. Plus the infinite-loop sequencing of the opening “Outro” and concluding “Intro” make this a statement of Eternal Music that outstrips La Monte Young and leaves any locked groove release in the proverbial dust. There isn’t the space here to really explore how extended mixes, all night disco DJ sets, etc. could be encountered in alignment with Minimalism, although I would steer the curious towards Pete Rock’s Petestrumentals (BBE, 2001), Larry Levan’s Live at the Paradise Garage (Strut, 2000), and, at the risk of being immodest, my own “The Old Victrola” from Plays Well (Crank Automotive, 2001). On a (somewhat) related note I’d also point out Rupie Edwards’ Ire Feelings Chapter and Version (Trojan, 1990) which collects 16 of the producer/performer’s 70s dub reggae tracks, all built from the exact same same rhythm track--mesmerizing, even by dub’s trippy standards. 

Addendum:

Tony Conrad: “Maybe someday Tony’s blistering late 80s piece ‘Early Minimalism’ will be released, or his fabulous harmonium soundtrack to Piero Heliczer’s early 60s film The New Jerusalem.” That was the last line of my entry on Tony’s Outside the Dream Syndicate in the first Top Ten list in 1995, and sure enough, Table of the Elements issued “Early Minimalism” as a monumental CD box set in 1997 and released that soundtrack as Joan of Arc in 2006 (it’s the same film; I saw it screened c. 1990 under the name The New Jerusalem but it’s more commonly known as Joan of Arc).  Tony releases proliferated in the last twenty years of his life, which was heartening to see; I’d particularly single out Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain (Superior Viaduct, 2017), which rescues a 1972 live recording of what is essentially a prototype for Outside played by Tony, Rhys Chatham, and Laurie Spiegel (Rhys has mentioned his initial disgruntlement upon hearing Outside, as it was the same piece that he had played with Tony, i.e. “Ten Years Alive,” but he found himself and Laurie replaced by Faust!) and an obscure compilation track, “DAGADAG for La Monte” (on Avanto 2006, Avanto, 2006), where he plays the pitches d, a, and g on violin, loops them over and over , and continually re-harmonizes them electronically--really one of his best pieces.

Terry Riley: The archival Riley CDs that Cortical Foundation issued in the 90s and early 00s don’t seem to be in print, but I feel they eclipse Reed Streams (reissued by Cortical as part of that series) and are crucial for fans of his early work, especially the live Poppy Nogood’s Phantom Band All Night Flight Vol. 1, an important variant on the studio take, and You’re Nogood (see Dilla entry above). These days I would also recommend Descending Moonshine Dervishes (Kuckuck, 1982/recorded 1975) over  Persian Surgery Dervishes (Shandar, 1975), which I mentioned in the original entry on Reed Streams in the first Top Ten; a lot of the harmonic material in Descending can also be heard in Terry’s dream-team 1975 meeting with Don Cherry in Köln, which has been bootlegged several times in the last few years. Finally, Steffen Schleiermacher recorded the elusive “Keyboard Study #1” (as well as “#2,” which had already seen release in a version by Germ on the BYG label and as “Untitled Organ” on Reed Streams), albeit on a programmed electronic keyboard, on the CD Keyboard Studies (MDG, 2002). As you might expect it’s a little synthetic-sounding, but it also has a weird kinetic edge (imagine the “Baba O’Riley” intro being played on a Conlon Nancarrow player piano) that’s lacking in later acoustic piano renditions recorded by Gregor Schwellenbach and Fabrizio Ottaviucci. But any of these versions is rewarding for those interested in Riley’s early output.

Henry Flynt, Charlemagne Palestine: A few of the artists on that first Top Ten list went from being sorely under-documented to having a plethora of material on the market, and Henry and Charlemagne are at the top of the heap. I stand by You Are My Everlovin, finally reissued on CD by Recorded in 2001, as Henry’s peak achievement, but I’m also partial to “Glissando,” a tense, feverish raga drone from 1979 that Recorded put out on the Glissando No. 1 CD in 2011. Charlemagne’s Four Manifestations On Six Elements double album still holds up well, as does an album of material initially recorded for it, Arpeggiated Bösendorfer and Falsetto Voice (Algha Marghen, 2017). The Strumming Music LP on Shandar is a definitive performance, and best heard as an unbroken piece on the New Tone CD reissue from 1995. Godbear (CD on Barooni, vinyl on Black Truffle), originally recorded for Glenn Branca’s Neutral label (which had also scheduled a Phill Niblock release before going belly-up), has 1987 takes of “Strumming Music” and two other massive pieces that date from the late 70s, “Timbral Assault” and “The Lower Depths”; Algha Marghen released a vintage full-length concert of the latter as a triple CD.

Steve Reich: Not a particularly rare record, but his “Variations on Winds, Strings and Keyboards,” a 1979 piece for orchestra on a 1984 LP issued by Phillips (paired with an orchestral arrangement of John Adams’ “Shaker Loops”), is often overlooked among the works from his “golden era” and I’d frankly rate it as his best orchestral piece.

Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue: As with Henry and Charlemagne, after a slow start as “recording artists” loads of CDs by these two have appeared over the last twenty years. Phill and Eliane’s music was never best served by the vinyl format anyway—you won’t find a lackluster release by either composer, go to it.

Jon Gibson: I called “Cycles,” from Gibson’s Two Solo Pieces, “one of the ultimate organ drones on record” in the first Top Ten list, and it remains so, but Phill Niblock’s”Unmounted/Muted Noun” from 2019′s Music for Organ ought to sit right beside it. Meanwhile, Superior Viaduct’s recent Gibson double album Songs & Melodies 1973-1977 collects some great pieces from the same era as Two Solo Pieces, with players including Arthur Russell, Peter Zummo, Barbara Benary, and Julius Eastman. 

John Stevens: In Top Ten #2 I mentioned John Stevens’ presence on the first side of John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Life With the Lions; the Stevens-led Spontaneous Music Orchestra’s For You To Share (1973) documents his performance pieces “Sustained Piece” and “If You Want to See A Vision,” where musicians and vocalists sustain tones until they run out of breath and then begin again, which result in a highly meditative and organic drone/sound environment. In my early 00′s Digger Choir performances at Issue Project Room  we did “Sustained Piece,” and Stevens’ work was a big influence on conceptualizing those concerts, where the only performers were the audience themselves. The CD reissue on Emanem from 1998 added “Peace Music,” an unreleased studio half-hour studio cut with a similar Gagaku--meets--free/modal jazz vibe. I also mentioned “Sustained Piece” in my liner notes to Natural Information Society’s Mandatory Reality too, if that helps as a point of reference.

Anthony Moore: Back in ’97 I wondered “How and why Polydor was convinced to release these albums [Pieces from the Cloudland Ballroom and Scenes from the Blue Bag] is beyond me (anyone know the story)?” That mystery was ultimately solved by Benjamin Piekut in his fascinating-even-if-you-never-listen-to-these-guys book Henry Cow: The World is A Problem (Duke University Press, 2019)—it turns out it was all Deutsche Gramophone’s idea!

Terry Jennings, Maryanne Amacher, Julius Eastman--“Three Great Minimalists With No Commercially Available Recordings” (sidebar from Minimal Top Ten list #2): Happily this no longer applies to these three, although Terry and Maryanne are still under-represented. One archival recording of Jennings and Charlotte Moorman playing a short version of “Piece for Cello and Saxophone” appeared on Moorman’s 2006 Cello Anthology CD box set on Alga Marghen, and he’s on “Terry’s Cha Cha” on that 2004 John Cale New York in the 60s Table of the Elements box too. John Tilbury recorded five of his piano pieces on Lost Daylight (Another Timbre, 2010) and Charles Curtis’ version of “Song” appears on the aforementioned Performances and Recordings 1998-2018 triple CD.

Whether or not Maryanne should really be considered a Minimalist (or a sound artist, for that matter) is, I guess, debatable, but I primarily see her as the unqualified genius of the generation of composers who emerged in the post-Cage era, and the classifications ultimately don’t matter—remember she was on those Swarm of Drones/ Throne of Drones/ Storm of Drones ambient techno comps in the 90s, and I’d call her music Gothic Industrial if it would get more people to check it out (and that might be fun to try, come to think of it). She made a belated debut with the release of the Sound Characters CD on Tzadik in 1998, an event I found significant enough to warrant pitching an interview with her to the WIRE, who agreed—it was my first piece for them. Her music was/is best experienced live (the Amacher concert I saw at the Performing Garage in 1993 is still, almost three decades later, the greatest concert I’ve ever witnessed) but that Tzadik CD is reasonably representative, and there was a sequel CD on Tzadik in 2008. More recently Blank Forms issued a live recording of her two-piano piece “Petra” (a concert I also attended, realizing when I got there that it was in the same Chelsea church where Connie Burg, Melissa Weaver and I recorded with Keiji Haino for the Gerry Miles with Keiji Haino CD).  While it’s somewhat anomalous in Amacher’s canon, making a piece for acoustic instruments available for home consumption would doubtless have been more palatable to the composer herself, who rightly felt that CDs and LPs didn’t do justice to the extraordinary psychoacoustic phenomena intrinsic to her electronic music. “Petra” is more reminiscent of Morton Feldman than anything else, with a few passages that could be deemed “minimal.” Some joker posted a 26-minute, ancient lo-fi “bootleg” (their term) recording of her “Living Sound, Patent Pending” piece from her Music for Sound-Joined Rooms installation/performance series on SoundCloud, which is a little like looking at a Xerox of a Xerox of a photo of the Taj Mahal; but you can still visit the Taj Mahal more easily than hearing this or any of Maryanne’s work in concert or in situ, so sadly, it’s better than nothing (and longer than the 7 minute edit of the piece on the Ohm: Early Gurus of Electronic Music CD from 2000).

A few years after Top Ten #2 I was on the phone with an acquaintance at New World Records, who told me he was listening to a Julius Eastman tape that they were releasing as part of a 3CD set. Say what?!?!? Unjust Malaise appeared shortly thereafter and was a revelation. Arnold Dreyblatt had sent me a live tape some time before then of an Eastman piece labeled “Gangrila”—that turned out to be “Gay Guerrilla,” and is surely one of my five favorite pieces of music in existence (the tape Arnold sent was from the 1980 Kitchen European tour and I consider it to be a more moving performance than the Chicago concert that appears on the CD, although it’s an inferior recording). The other multiple piano pieces on Unjust Malaise more than lived up to the descriptions of Eastman performances that I’d read. The somewhat berserk piano concert I mentioned in that entry seems similar to another live tape issued as The Zurich Concert (New World, 2017), and “Femenine,” a piece performed by the S.E.M. Ensemble, came out on Frozen Reeds in 2016. Eastman’s rediscovery is among the most vital and gratifying developments of recent music history--kudos must be given to Mary Jane Leach, herself a Minimalist composer, for diligently and doggedly tracking down Eastman’s recordings and archival materials and bringing them to the light of day.

The Lost Jockey—I was unaware of any releases by this group besides their Crepuscule LP until I stumbled onto a self-titled cassette from 1983 on YouTube. Like the album, the highlight is a piece by Orlando Gaugh--an all-time great Philip Glass rip-off, “Buzz Buzz Buzz Went the Honeybee,” which has the amusing added bonus of having the singers intoning the rather bizarre title phrase as opposed to Glassian solfège. Also like the album, he rest of the cassette is so-so Pop Minimalism.

Earth: Dylan Carlson keeps on keepin’ on, and while I can’t say I’ve kept up with him every step of the way, usually when I check in I’m glad I did. However I’d like to take this opportunity to humbly disavow the snarky comments about Sunn 0))) I made in this entry in Top Ten list #3. Those were a reflection of my general aversion to hype, which was surrounding them at the time, and of seeing two shows that in retrospect were unrepresentative (I was thunderstruck by a later show I saw in Mexico City in 2009). Stephen O’Malley has proven to be as genuinely curious, dedicated and passionate about drone and other experimental music as they come, and the reissue of the mind-blowing Sacred Flute Music from New Guinea on his Ideologic Organ label is a good reminder of how rooted Minimalism is in ethnic music, and how almost interchangeable certain examples of both can be. 

And while we’re in revisionist mode, let’s go full circle all the way back to the very first sentence of the introduction to the first Minimal Top Ten: “I know what you’re thinking: ECM Records, New Age, Eno ambients, NPR, Tangerine Dream. Well forget all that shit.” Hey, that stuff’s not so bad! I was probably directing that more at the experimental-phobic indie rock folks I encountered at the time, and expressing a lingering resentment towards the genre-confusion of the 80s (i.e. having dig through a bunch of Kitaro records in the New Age bins in hopes of finding Reich, Riley, or Glass; even Loren Mazzacane got tagged New Age once in a while back then, believe it or not), which probably hindered my own discovery of Minimalism. What can I say, I’m over it!

Copyright © 2020 Alan Licht. All rights reserved. Do not repost without permission.

[vergilboyfriend]

You should do all of them questions and 90 is true

I love you!!!!

1. Favorite instrument?

I work at a music store u can’t just ask me this. When my coworkers play it’s the saxophone or the flute, when the boys in the repair shop are testing repairs and they harmonize with each other or try to outplay one another it’s the bassoon or the trombone or whatever they’re fixing at the moment. When I hear 🎺 give his lesson on Wednesday afternoons it’s the trumpet, and when I think about middle school it’s the clarinet, the flute, the French horn. When I hear the nutcracker pas des deux is the oboe and when I hear edith piaf l’accordeoniste it’s the remarkable human voice. Really my favorite instrument is all of them, it just depends.

2. Favorite fic trope? Mutual pining 🥺

3. Sport you played for the longest amount of time? LMAO I wasn’t a sporty kid but I did ballet

4. Shoe size? 10-11

5. Most recent (good) dream? Uhh I had a dream last night about my coworker 🎹 it wasn’t bad though I can’t really remember what it was about

6. Last person in your DMs? smugg

7. Can you do a handstand? Nooo nooo lmaoo nooooo

8. Unpopular food opinion I don’t like oranges or red meat

9. Conspiracy you believe in? There’s some kind of weird weather dome in my hometown around the military base that makes most storms pass around us

10. Is your hair its natural color/style? Most of it is I dyed the bottom layer of my hair tho so it’s blonde rn

11. state a useless fact all that’s coming to mind is outright lies rn hold on. The inventor of pringles is buried in a pringles can that’s so fucking nasty omg

12. most interesting gossip you’ve heard? Idk I don’t really care for gossip uhhhh have u heard tho rin dippindogs is a huge gay hah she uhh she like men AND women lmao gaaay gaaaay

13. Middle name? Carolyn

14. Sexuality? Bisexual

15. Amount of sleep you got last night? Idk actually I think like 9-10 hrs tho I slept in until 11

16. Opinion on ice cream cake? Tasty!!!

17. Opinion on (cup)cake frosting? It’s depends buttercream is usually too sweet for me in large amounts so I prefer whipped cream frosting

18. Last board game you played? Idk??? We played hunt a killer tho last Thursday me n my family I guess that counts kinda

19. Project you want to start? I need ideas first baby

20. Project you’re working on right now? HAHAHAHAHAHA

21. TV show you’re watching? nothing rn I just rewatch bojack a lot if I watch anything

22. Last movie you watched? Lego batman I think

23. Ever left anon hate? Not legit hate

24. Ever left anon love? Yes all the time. Sometimes to strangers it’s my favorite thing to do

25. Best Disney movie? The princess and the frog

26. Best Pixar movie? Soul or Up I can’t decide

27. Best Star Wars? Um. Empire strikes back

28. Last thing you consumed? Fuit gumy

29. NoTP? Idk I don’t really hate ships unless they’re gross like pedophilic gross

30. story behind your (nick)name? When I was a fetus my great grandfather had a dream that my name should be Carolyn Marie but my parents were huge dweebs so they named me Marina after the actress of Deanna Troi in Star Trek. Idk about my nickname ive just always been Rina/Rin as long as I can remember

31. ice cream order? Lately it’s lemon sorbetto I know it’s SO high in sugar but I love it

32. describe your blog in <5 words I love you

33. how many blogs do you follow? 436

34. Describe your voice it depends usually I sound like a sick child but my customer service voice is really pleasant

35. Describe your smile it’s cute :)

36. What is the place you live known for? LMAOOO LMAO we have a military base nearby and like. I could go on abt that one but also like. There’s a lot of gang violence and a lot of the other consequences of poverty. People from the cities around us see us as “””ghetto””” or violent but it’s just. It’s more than that it’s always more than that. And idk what else there’s nothing really particularly special about this town except that we’re all here and not anywhere else

37. What is the place you’re originally from known for? (if they’re different)

38. pronouns? she/any idc

39. Languages you speak? English

40. first friend you made through tumblr? Idk. I probably don’t talk to them anymore :(

41. Person on tumblr you know in real life? my brother

42. First dog breed you think of shih tzu I have 2 next to me rn

43. room wall color? Purble!!!! The paint color is called grape juice that’s why I picked it!!!

44. Song that’s stuck in your head right now? It’s tricky to rock a rhyme to rock a rhyme that’s right on time it’s trickyyyyy

45. Favorite number? 5, 34

46. Color you associate with your name? Red

47. Favorite jolly rancher flavor?watermelon

48. Pets? 2 dogs rocket and groot and 4 cats loki danni who r from the same litter and we raised from kittens, miss kitty who we adopted from a shelter after my boy blue moon passed away and ben (his real name is Kylo Ren thanks to my mom but I refuse to call him that) he is my little baby and he has 7 toes on his front paws

49. Collections? Hot wheels

50. Character outside of your fandom you’d marry? Girl what lmaooo idk

51. Character outside of your fandom you’d kill? That’s mean :(

52. Have you met any celebrities? NO thank god id have to kill on sight

53. Favorite time period in history? Itslian Renaissance & Romantic Era

54. What time is it right now? 2:35 am oops

55. History or future? Future but like . A good one. Or prehistory

56. Space or ocean? Space

57. Fears? Abandonment

58. Command + v and post. It’s this list of questions u don’t want that

59. Favorite season? Spring

60. Describe your aesthetic. Messy just a mess, neon and old buildings and things, antiques, countryside if there weren’t so many trump pence flags still lmaoo give uppp give up, nature just al of nature and space and places humans can’t touch and places they used to touch but can’t anymore

61. MBTI? Infp but I haven’t taken it in a few years

62. What’s your relationship with your family like? Normal.

63. “Biggest fan” in your tumblr activity? I’m in mobile hold on acc to tumblr it’s akky

64. Favorite musical? Sweeney todd

65. Comfort book? Idk how to read 💔💔💔 wuthering heights tho

66. Comfort movie? Whisper of the heart

67. OTP? Girl idk

68. BroTP? Joey and Tristan yugioh

69. AUs or canon compliant? Canon ig idk

70. Opinion on the person who’s sending the ask? It’s an anon!! But I love them

71. FMK + 3 characters anon didnt leave any characters and I was going to say something very bad but I won’t

72. Dream date? I’ve wanted to do this for a while but ideally it would be after we’d been together a while maybe even engaged or whatever, I wanna go to like a Home Depot or a furniture store and pretend to be married and looking for house paints and furniture and plan what our home is going to look like I wanna do that so bad. But idk for a first/early relationship date i really want to go to the zilker botanical garden it’s one of my favorite places, we could also go to the natural gardener which is a plant nursery in Austin I really love it there too and it’s not that far from zilker.

73. Relationship status? Single

74. Ever dyed your hair? Do you plan to? Yes and perhaps. Maybe

75. Dream job/career? Idk anymore I used to have big girl goals and I haven’t had any in a while. But when I was younger I wanted to be a game warden

76. Favorite band/singer? Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

77. Something that makes you soft/that you find adorable? My cats

78. The first thing you would do if you won the lottery? Buy a house

79. Are you superstitious? Yes

80. Character you project onto? Shizuku tsukishima

81. Fictional character you’ve had a crush on? Vergil devil may cry. Forever husband

82. Celebrity crush? LMAO

83. Person on here you’d date? my mutuals

84. Person on here you’d marry? 🥺 my mutuals

85. Person on here you’d throw into the void? Smugg

86. Other social media you have? I’ve got a photography insta that I barely use and a Twitter that’s just nintendo switch screenies that’s it

87. Finish the sentence: Due to personal reasons, ___________i will be passing away

88. Bad habit? I find it rlly hard to say no or like to say when and why I’m upset I don’t feel like for the latter I don’t feel like I should bring something that’s upsetting me up because I know I’ll get over it on my own and I don’t really trust myself to be upset about rational things. Idk I’m working on it

89. Three things you like about yourself? I’m hot, I’m kind, I’m resilient

90. Ily and you deserve the world I love you!!!!! YOU deserve it too!!!

[tisthenightofthewitch]

KISS THE GO-GHOST: AN INTERVIEW WITH TOBIAS FORGE

Ghost, formerly known as Ghost B.C have cultivated a cult following within the metal community since their debut almost 10 years ago. Known for their dark persona and eerily catchy soundscapes, they not only have a sound that’s unmistakable, but a stage presence so involved that there are backstories to each Papa(the name used by each rotating front person) that has taken rein thus far.

I remember when I first discovered their 2010 release, Opus Eponymous, and how enthralled I was with their sound. Granted, I was late to the party, as they had already toured through Utah before. By the time I had completely immersed myself in their music, it was 2014—a year after their second full length album, Infestissumam had released. I was hypnotized by their macabre charm from the get-go, and I’ve eagerly anticipated every release since then. I’ve always loved how frontman Tobias Forge’s vocals shine against the instrumentals, as well as how grim the lyrics truly can be.

With the surprise “re-release” of their single Seven Inches of Satanic Panic, which originally had debuted in the ’60s (according to the Ghost timeline), this magic touch is exceptionally present. As 2018’s LP Prequelle had hints of disco and other nostalgic influences from the 70s and 80s, Seven Inches is laced with the catchy, punchy sweetness of the 1960s—inspiring sounds reminiscent of The Zombies and The Monkees with a sinister twist.

As their grandiose tour, The Ultimate Tour Named Death, conquers North America for the remainder of the month, Forge and I spoke about the band’s origins, song influences and meanings, and life on tour.

SLUG: What inspires you to make songs based around dark themes, such as Satan? Where does this aesthetic come from, and how does it exist in your full-length releases?

Forge: It wasn’t just an epiphany that I had. I grew up, as many others, in the metal underground community. Ever since I was a child, I’ve been a fan of hard rock, metal and all kinds of rock music. My main tool of expression and what I sympathized most with was heavy metal—especially the bands that were big around the time that I was very little. Around 1984, when I was three years old, all of the new, big bands were shock-rock bands like Twisted Sister, Motley Crue, Wasp and Kiss. These, among others, were the first bands that I really, really liked. My older brother, who was significantly older than I was, gave me those records and it just went from there.

I’ve come to expand my liking of music a lot. I loved a lot of 60s music and 70s pop-rock and all kinds of musical styles. When it comes to expressing myself, there’s always been some sort of shock-rock value to whatever I’ve done—a little bit more explicit when it comes to lyrics and a little bit more explosive with image.

My first band that I ever formed was a death metal band and I spent my whole adolescence playing death and black metal where obviously satanic themes are omnipresent. So, when Ghost happened, it wasn’t like I was coming up with a new image—it was so natural. Then, it expanded over the years because I felt like if I’m going to keep things fresh and keep being inspired, I need to expand the lyrics going forward. I’ve always drawn parallel lines, and my ways of expression are always leaning towards darkness and goth in the same way Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen do. I feel more kindled with them when it comes to song writing than I would with Venom—even though I love them, too. The lyrics that I try to write nowadays are more focused on symbols for something real. Satanism is a very good symbol for turmoil or conflict, but most of the lyrics from albums two, three and four have more parallels to real life and the world. It’s just explained with satanic parallels.

SLUG: What are some of your favorite songs from your discography and why? What makes these songs special to you?

Forge: You have the “cream-of-the-crops” in a way—like, the immediate songs. I think “Dance Macabre” is an immediate song and is a song that I will be playing for the rest of my life. I think “Square Hammer” is like that. “From the Pinnacle to the Pit” is a song that is very immediate. I think “Cirice” is one of the best songs I’ve ever written and probably will ever write, but for different reasons. Sometimes I really enjoy songs that are simple. Sometimes it’s harder to write a simple song. You have all of the ingredients that you need in order to make a song, and a risk that the song will be considered premeditated. But, yes, it is. Every song that has ever been written was done so with some sort of intent. Even the songs that people think are made with no commercial interest whatsoever are usually written to feel or taste a certain way.

So, you’re always happy when you manage to say the things that you wanted to say and have the moods in the song that you wanted in there without making it complicated. It’s so easy to get stuck in a complicated arrangement that’s hard to get out of. Where “Square Hammer” is so simple, “Cirice” is a little bit more complicated. It has a long intro that has nothing to do with the rest of the song. It has more of a classic metal arrangement, whereas “Square Hammer” is way more punk. So, I like those songs for completely different reasons, but they both do the trick and they’re songs that will come to embody Ghost. That’s how it feels right now, at least.

SLUG: Your live shows and stage presence are always so elaborate and beautiful. How has your stage show changed with the introduction of Cardinal Copia in comparison to Papa(s) one, two and three? Where did the idea of having a masked band to this intricate extent come from? Why Papa and why Cardinal Copia?

Forge: Early on in the creation of Ghost, I was just reviewing what I had heard. When we recorded the first demo, when I heard my songs, my first impression was that it sounds like a heavily imaged band. If I were a fan of this record that I hear, I would be disappointed if it turned out to just be four or five dudes just standing in jackets and t-shirts. It doesn’t sound like that. It sounds more like an experience and that’s where it originated.

The aesthetics and the ideas are a mash-up of everything that I grew up watching and listening to. It’s black metal mixed with horror films and showmen. I’ve always been a fan of every single character that balances genius, charisma and being pathetic. That’s where Papa comes from.  He’s supposed to be cool, but he’s also slightly out of touch and pathetic—and funny, I think!

SLUG: The last time I saw you in Salt Lake City, you opened for Iron Maiden. Now, you’re touring North America after touring Europe with Metallica. What is it like to tour with these big names in metal? How have these bands influenced you in the past and what does it feel like to work with them now?

Forge: I am still as much of a fan of these groups as I was before, which is a very nice feeling knowing that I can completely separate my ideas, my dreams and my fantasies about both of these bands. But I think that has to do with the fact that for most of my life, I’ve idolized those bands while still always also knowing that what I wanted to do with my life was very similar to what they did—meaning record albums, go out and tour the world and change the world and have a deep impact on people in the same way that they had an impact on me.

On a very professional level, from the get-go, both Iron Maiden and Metallica have been very informative to their fan-base. Iron Maiden started that with their album Life After Death. All of their tour dates were in there, there was a lot of info about their touring life and the technicalities of playing live. I used to sit down with a map book and circle everywhere they played. I would try to figure out their days off and where they were playing next. Very early on, as a kid, I sort of approached it from a professional point of view. Not only did I want to stand on stage like I saw in the pictures, but I wanted to tour like they do. That’s the school of rock that I went to. Metallica would be even more informative later when they released their box set Binge and Purge. You could see old faxes between management and them, and I read everything I could see. I already knew 20 years later that that was a part of the program. I’ve learned so much from studying Iron Maiden and Metallica that when the day came when I started touring with them, I was like “I know this!” It was something I had done before. Now, I have the luxury of learning so much more firsthand.

SLUGMAG.COM

[shes-soparticular]

I adore you for all of the music references in your fics. Do you have a playlist?

I adore you for noticing and asking this question! Like mostwriters, I rely on music BIG TIME for inspiration. I don’t have any playlistscreated, but here’s a little masterlist of songs I’ve referred to in my writingthat usually play some kind of role. Warning, it ended up way longer than Irealized lol

Darling, So it Goes“Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis Presley – Okay, don’t we ALL fantasizeabout Shawn singing this song to us acapella? That old clip of him singing it?Kill me. The title of this one-shot comes from that song as well, of course.

Take Me Back to theStart“The Scientist” by Coldplay – I think this would be Shawn’s go-to breakup song,the one he’d play on repeat to try to process his feelings. Which is exactly whatI had him do when he and Alex hit the rocks. Naturally, that’s where the titlecomes from as well.

Every Little Part ofMe is Holding on to Every Little Piece of You

“End of the Road” by Boyz II Men – Just as The Scientist isShawn’s go-to heartache song, Alex’s is End of the Road. Her mantra is “if thelove don’t feel like 90s R&B, I don’t want it”. Also, I have to admit I kindof stole this from my OG crush Seth Cohen, as that was his “play on repeat”breakup song.

“Water Runs Dry” by Boyz II Men – Alex’s backup song to cryto, which is playing when Shawn shows up.

“I’ll Make Love to You” by Boyz II Men – Sensing a theme? Luckily,Boyz II Men is there for you both in times of sadness and times of makeup sex. Andas Shawn knows, Alex cannot resist a slow jam.

“Tough” by Lewis Capaldi – I took the title from the lyricsof this song. Lewis Capaldi is one of my favorite artists to listen to forangst/fluff inspiration.

Wouldn’t Fall forSomeone I Thought Couldn’t Misbehave

“Nobody” by Hozier – This one-shot is all about Shawn’sjealousy over her fangirling for Hozier. So it was a no-brainer to choose aHozier lyric as the title, which comes from this song.

“Movement” by Hozier – I don’t call this song out by name,but it’s the one I imagine her teasing him to in the car. It’s just a hell of asultry song and would have definitely driven Shawn even further up the wall.

Put in Work

“All Mine” by Kanye West – As we ALL know by this point, Kanyeis Shawn’s go-to gym music. When it comes to a one-shot that’s literallyuncalled for fantasy gym smut, what song would have been more fitting? Yeah, you supermodel thick, damn, that assbustin’ out the bottom, I'ma lose my mind in it. Definitely the wordspounding through Shawn’s airpods while watching Alex on the stair climber.

Bonus: “Skin” by Rihanna – Alex is a freak too, let’s bereal. Although I didn’t mention it in the fic, her gym play list is 100% heavyon Rihanna. This is the song that ends up on repeat anytime she watches Shawnlifting.

Might Just Be MyEverything and Beyond

“What’s Your Fantasy” by Ludacris ft Shawna – If you’re alate 90s baby and don’t know this song? You won’t understand how ridiculous itis that it’s Alex’s go-to karaoke song.

“Beyond” by Leon Bridges – For one, this is an altogetherbeautiful song. I listened to the acoustic version non-stop while writing thisone-shot and thus it’s where the title comes from. Just the kind of fluffyboyfriend vibes I imagined Shawn feeling waiting for his girl to come home.

“Lost in Japan – Remix” – Okay, ya’ll know this one. But I’mmentioning it anyways since it pops up in the insta story of Alex jamming outto it pool side, a proud girlfriend hyped for her man.

Slow Burn

“There’s No Way” by Lauv ft Julia Michaels – This songinspired the entire fic, tbh. It’s the definition of a Slow Burn song.

“American Girl” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Only mentionedin passing, but Shawn and co realize at some point early in the European legthat if you play this song? Alex loses her fucking shit. Even if she’s having abad time, cranky, pissy, argumentative, what have you – this song gets her to shoutalong and dance like the happiest little bean on earth. So it becomes a runninggag for them to play it whenever possible, just to watch the only American chickin the bar go nuts.

“Free Fallin’” by Top Petty and the Heartbreakers (but alsohave the live John Mayer cover in mind) – As slightly established in the firstchapter, Alex is a huge Petty fan. In chapter six, this is the song Shawn isattempting to teach her on the guitar. The one she’s too impatient to learn andmakes him just play for her instead.

“Feels Great” – Cheat Codes ft Fetty Wap & CVBZ – I couldn’tthink of a better song for the “young crew” to be listening to during a heated pre-showping pong game in the green room. It’s just a fun fucking song about beingyoung. That’s all.

“Outta My Head” by Khalid ft John Mayer – This is the songAlex is mumbling in the elevator before everything…intensifies. No deep reason here, I just bet they’ve all beenlistening to Khalid’s new album a ton and that song is a bop. Oh, and I GUESSthe lyrics are kind of fitting…. Can youfeel the tension? You’ve got my attention, I know we’re just friends but I’drather be together.

“Power Over Me” by Dermot Kennedy – These are the lyrics Iuse in the opening of the second chapter and a song that definitely inspired my interms of Shawn’s feelings for Alex. Especially early on, when everything isstill completely unspoken. Honestly, Dermot’s music has inspired me A LOT whilewriting this fic, so check him out if you’re not familiar.

“Uh Huh” by Julia Michaels – First off, Julia is a QUEEN. Hervibe is something I picture for Alex so I listen to Julia a lot particularlywhen writing more deeply from Alex’s point of view. Hence using it as theopening lyrics for chapter three. This is definitely a song that demonstrateshow Alex’s mind and body are at odds over her feelings for Shawn.

“Lost” by Dermot Kennedy – Again, on a constant Dermot kick.His lyrics are so poetic and it’s impossible not to take inspiration from him.I used his lyrics to open chapter four and I think they perfectly describe theatmosphere of that night in Krakow. I particularly love the lyric “since thatnight the moon has never looked the same” which I think perfectly puts the wayShawn and Alex both feel after that turning point of a night, dancing oncobblestone streets in the moonlight. Yep. Lost in feels again.

“Can I Be Him” by James Arthur – The perfect song about aguy falling for a girl that’s already attached. Because using TYB would havebeen to on the nose, haha.

“Peer Pressure” by James Bay ft Julia Michaels – If you’veread chapter six, it’s pretty obvious why I used these lyrics to start itoff. Generally, it’s another song I’ve listened to a lot while writing Slow Burn.It seems fitting for two people that are used to being in control of themselvesand their emotions but losing that control and giving into one another.

Look How They ShineFor You (Slow Burn Bonus)

“Yellow” by Coldplay – This song is a HUGE part of this littleblurb and I highly recommend listening to it while you read that one. It’sbeautiful as a piano cover and if you’ve ever heard the Vitamin String Quartetversion??? Jesus. Let’s just say that’s going to be the song Alex walks downthe aisle to someday. Now I’m all in my feels.

BONUS: Current Songson Repeat While I Write

Pretty much all of Lizzo’s “Cuz I Love You” album. It puts me in a kickass mood. That’s all.

“Falling like the Stars” by James Arthur – It’s just a sweetsong that makes me want to write Shawn and Alex all loved up.

“Wilderness” by Jon Bryant – See above. A song that makes mea soft little puddle of inspo.

“Can I be Honest?” by Anatu ft Zubi – I don’t know how Istumbled across this song but it’s fucking fantastic and you should listen toit.

“Night Moves” by Bob Seger – Alex is a classic rock junkie,if she could time travel she’d head straight back to the 70s (possibly the 60sso she could live through both decades). That’s her entire aesthetic, honestly.This is the type of song she puts on to dance around her hotel room while Shawnbegs her to hurry up and get ready to leave.

“Drive” by The Cars – Honestly, this is just a personalfavorite of mine because there’s something so 80s RomCom about being drivenhome by a guy you have romantical tension with. Maybe it just very, veryspecifically relates to my high school experience. A song that puts me in a starry-eyed,butterflies in the stomach type of writing mood.

[thirdmagic]

giant rambly walls of text post of headcanons and theories and general thoughts on david, roman and solomon ft lots of extrapolation

first of all, i basically think of archer david as like... if 'lazy cheerful mcdonlads loving manchild in a yukata dad' kerry got summoned into the body of his child self and went 'oh wow this is before Everything in my life went horribly wrong it almost feels like all that never happened!!' and got into it enough to try to recreate what he was like as a child. which i realize is a hilariously weird mental image but a close enough comparison. it's just in this case the difference isn't '30 year old and 10 year old (at most)' but '60-70 something very old man and late teens/early twenties'. on the surface level this david is much more David The Humble Nobody Shepherd Boy Who Beat A Giant then David The Anointed Powerful King, because most of the stuff this version draws on in his NP and skills are from this aspect of him. but it's also clearly very much not the same case as other younger/child servants. most younger versions are aware of their older selves and what happens to them in the future but aren't those people and haven't personally experienced these futures. but nearly everything david does talk about, experiences he calls back to, people he talks about, is stuff from his time on the throne. he talks about this time as something that happened to him personally. so this isn't really baby shepherd david even though his servant container draws on these aspects of him, it's David The King in the body of baby shepherd david.

but what i find most interesting, is that he seems to really play into this image/role... like it's a deliberate choice/preference on his part or something consciously cultivated. there's what he says is tamacat's interlude, but also his my room line that outright has him saying 'sure i used to be a king, but don't worry about it, it's whatever, i'm just a shepherd now and i want to take this chance as a servant to be just that'. the impression is that he's very much trying to distance himself from his king-self and that entire part of his life which is... in its own way a lost cause and he probably does this knowing it's a lost cause, given that's what he spent the majority of his life doing and how everything he calls back to is from that life. that shepherd boy is just not the person he is anymore and hasn't been for a long time, but i think that's why he prefers to be summoned in this specific physical form and in this specific class that draws on this part of his life- the servant container/class makes it easier to act the part, to put that undesirable aspect of himself aside. so long as he's not summoned as a king he doesn't need to act like one nor feel like he has the responsibilities of one. and being a king clearly kind of sucked as far as he’s concerned.

now i mentioned before that biblical david is super kerrycore so while i don't know how much fate would even want to incorporate this side of the original version... idk, i'm really into the idea and think it's just potentially super interesting to take this parallel full circle and for david the king to be the figurative equivalent to cold blooded assassin magus killer kerry. it gives extra weight to why he'd want to just put aside this part of his life and lean in fully into a whole other role/identity that has nothing to do with kingship and why he acts Extra carefree and frivolous: because he spent most of his life as everything but that. because he couldn't be this way so long as he acted as king, because the responsibility and the role demanded that he had to suppress this aspect of himself and also that he act in ways he might not have really wanted to even as he understood that it was needed. he was good at doing the dirty and unpleasant stuff and he understood the necessity of it; he had a talent for it, in a sense, even if it wasn't a talent for something he liked or enjoyed. it goes well with him talking about how he dislikes battle in conjunction to how he was a very military focused leader-- something he never wanted to engage in or do, but that the role of the king demanded of him.

because his biblical depiction is from the very start, from the first goliath story, more of a cunning politician and warrior than anything else. he's subtle, sly and calculating, not afraid to get his hands dirty and do undignified things to get where he needs to, and very conscious and aware of all that goes around him, including how he's seen by other people and how he needs to act as if he were in front of an audience. he finds creative and subtle ways to get around most problems, but he also knows when a problem is best solved violently and doesn't hesitate to commit to that solution. (most unlike fate david though, he's also super hot-tempered and fairly quick to Stabbity Stab if someone pissed him off lmao and has to be talked down at least once from Doing A Murder)

this is compounded by how, in general, the narrative very very often leaves us in the dark about what he's really feeling or thinking in a lot of pivotal moments and leaves us often to wonder about his sincerity and true motivations. his story in the bible is essentially the unraveling of this kind of hyper competent and skilled person as he gets more and more exposed to the reader emotionally and personally, as we see more and more of his weakness and vulnerability and his real flawed and imperfect core is revealed. the narrative is at once both critical of him while still remaining firmly on his side and sympathetic towards him, and the main thing that keeps him sympathetic as a character in this way, through his darkest moments and most questionable behavior, is that he's 1) unquestionably devoted to God and nearly flawlessly pious, which is for obvious reasons a significant virtue for both the original writer and the original audience the narrative was meant for, and 2) very good at handling criticism, accepting that he made mistakes, and making amends/fixing things when he needs to. which he does a lot of.

so basically, yeah: ruthless stabby killer who's a clever and sly pragmatist, but also a Sad and vulnerable dad. that's what i meant lmao that's the exact same aesthetic as kerry.

and something you'll find pointed out very, very often by any literary analysis or any analysis at all, is his humanity; it's something that can be ascribed to many, many biblical characters but is applied to him as a defining trait in particular. and that's.... even better and gets even more interesting for fate david specifically when pitted against solomon, the perfect, flawless inhuman king. there's a consistent thematic thread in fate of being an ideal vs being a human being, especially for kings and other types of leaders, and in this context i think you can do a lot with david as someone who, instead of giving in/fully committing to one at the expense of the other, went for a balance between the two-- and struggled with that balance. he succeeded in many ways as a king and was good at it, but in some ways he lost that struggle because he failed to find that balance and gave in to humanity at the worst of times, and it's those moments which led to both his biggest mistakes and his biggest tragedies. it's interesting to me because it's different from the patterns that characters like kerry and saber establish, and it offers a perspective on this dilemma that also explains why people like them commit to this all-or-nothing approach to it.

and it's also interesting to me to compare to solomon, but especially the fact that when put in context-- that god sees david and decides to make solomon the way he is seemingly in response-- the implication is one of a background 'story' that's very consistent to an interesting pattern about god in genesis: that he's always trying out new ways to interact with this world he created through humanity and having to retry after each one attempt doesn’t quite go well. he started with adam and eve and they disobeyed him, when he tried to with all of humanity and when they turned away from him and degenerated morally he had to destroy them all with the flood. then he tried to create this connection/interaction through just one person and then just one nation from this person, and that's how he came to form the covenant with us. humans are constantly ruining his plans and he's constantly having to adjust and try or test new things. and i like the idea that he's also trying to do something similar with the kings and leaders he appointed to this chosen nation; he tried with the judges who were all scattered leaders that couldn't unite the tribes, then tried with saul who was just kind of a weak leader and king in general and couldn't handle it, tried with david, and then looked at him and went, okay, i did pretty well with this one, he's served me well but it's still not what i need. so, god reasons, if his problem is that his humanity was what got in the way then clearly the problem is that i look to humans as my representatives in the world. so clearly i need someone who can interact with humans and the human world as one of them but won't have their flaws. and so that gives us some background to and explains solomon's circumstances.

now in fgo itself the exact circumstances of solomon's birth and why he was born as he was are kind of vague, and i haven't seen anything in materials or other canon sources to elaborate (Dark Nasu, Show Me The Forbidden Solomon Backstory) but the one, somewhat cryptic line we're given to explain is that he was offered by david to god to make him into a greater king than he was. that's not exactly what happened in the original story but not really wrong either. it's a fairly legit and logical take on what happened there imo. what we're told is that god looked at baby solomon and went 'oh yeah, this kid seems pretty legit, i like this one' (when he was already born, not before that), and through a prophet, gives him a second name that literally means 'friend to god'. then, many, many chapters later, when david is old as balls and senile and slowly dying and there's a succession crisis blooming, nathan (who was the one that gave solomon his second name, as this part of the story’s acting prophet) has bathsheba resolve it by, ahem, 'reminding' him that he promised her that solomon will succeed him. and it's kind of Highly Conspicuous that we have never seen nor been told that this promise happened in the one part of the narration where it would have been most relevant to include so it's not out of the question that nathan had her persuade him of something that never happened because he was kind of very malleable at that point and with shit going down in court they needed a fast solution.

with that in mind i think fate goes under the assumption that this promise was actually real, and that the only major difference here outside of the magic/nasuverse specific elements is that solomon being chosen this way was something that happened before he was actually born, so it connected the two and combined them with how he's characterized in the chapters afterwards as the Good Flawless King and then with all sort of external sources that i can't really speak of since they’re not my area. the other main difference is the implication that david actually played a part in solomon's divine kingly destiny and planned on him being king from the start and specifically offered for god to raise him as such. and there's precedent for something like that with samuel who basically got offered by his mother to be raised as a divine prophet/judge, and the circumstances are more or less similar. samuel was offered by his mother to be in service to god and was raised by priests, which is close enough to being raised by god i guess? but he was totally separated from his parents, and he was definitely absolutely not inhumanly flawless lmao. so i think what david offered is roughly to the extent of 'i will give you my son to raise as his father instead of me, so you could raise him into the kind of king i couldn't be, while i'll stay out of his life so you can do your thing with him as you need'. and with samuel as an example for a similair offer/deal, i think he was expecting a normal human child, just one who'd grow up into a very skilled, competent king and without david's own flaws. and i imagine he was not planning on how it actually turned out for everyone involved.

and as for the reason why he even made the offer in the first place, i chose to look to the promise as the hint to the answer: at least part of it should likely be piousness and sincerely wanting to provide god with the kind of person he couldn't be, but it also means bathsheba, who became his wife under less then ideal circumstances and who lost both her husband and the first child she ever had and that should have been her husband's to his actions and his punishment, has guaranteed protection under her status as the king's mother and isn't thrown to the wolves when he dies, which is the issue she appeals to when she asks him to officially appoint solomon as his successor. being the king's mother gives her control and power in a world where she'd otherwise be in a very precarious position. theeeeeeeeennnn there's also some tradition-- i don’t remember much but i know it exists-- that claims she was his Favorite of his wives, probably for shallow reasons, though i don't think there's much internal textual evidence of that, but that's also A Thought. (i'm just saying, if they ended up developing an actually good connection and ended up loving each other for real that'd be a fascinating and very nasu twist but idk if i'm officially adopting that as my hc yet)

then there's the question of david's relationship to solomon.... there's different takes on it, from what i've seen in fancomics and stuff that does have transltions, and what i managed to understand from untranslated stuff. one interesting one is that david emotionally distanced himself as a result of the trauma of losing the baby from his initial affair with bathsheba, so he kept this distance from the second son he had with her so as to avoid something like that again-- -out of fear he'll lose him again if he allows himself to get emotionally attached. it's a trauma that would certainly be compounded after he lost tamar, amnon and then absalom and how that entire incident really broke him. i don't know if i totally subscribe to that but i think it's on to something.

in general i think of david as not a cruel or abusive father but definitely an emotionally distant one and not very actively present in his children's lives. the struggle of balancing being a king and being a human being had a wrench thrown in it when among all the roles he had to play came up the role of a father, which he just had zero understanding of how to approach or how it fits in with that balance-- the inhuman role of a king and the very human role of father are far more difficult to separate in the world of politics and the court, for him. drawing in from the source text, even in the bible you get the strong sense that he's not very attentive at the best of times, but the moment he loses any of his children, his grief is almost always overwhelming and unsubtle, even if it always manifests differently. in fgo materials their relationship is described as an indifferent one, which is to say, it's not a bad relationship because there's not much of a relationship at all to be good or bad, and i think it was sort of the case with most of his relationships with his children. of course, i also doubt there were absolutely no feelings or affection involved and that it was a totally apathetic one-- on david's part at least. solomon would have been given no room for human attachments such as family or the involved feelings, which means he'd also not feel the pain of the absence of such a thing or the need to have it. if he was given room to feel any sort of familial affection, it's likely a very shallow, vague one.

roman, i think, probably just has a lot of very complicated feelings on it that he's not sure what to do with and doesn't himself really understand. i also think this distance also means he never really understood david or was given the chance to, or, due to his own nature, been given any reason to want to. the absence of this relationship is something he feels in this new human life and understands that it was there and that it was not a good thing, but in a very vague way he's doesn't have the words for; he feels disconnected from it all because even as solomon he was very emotionally disconnected from his family and all that happened in it. and now there's the amount of time has passed and how long ago it would have been for him and how overall irrelevant it all ended up being for him... that david wasn't much of a father to him ends up not mattering much in practice because everything would have turned out the same even if he was, and it's hard to miss something he never felt he ever actually had. he knows there's an absence but doesn't feel it because solomon didn't feel it, and roman never got to experience any of it as roman.

and then he actually gets to meet david again thanks to chaldea. which is completely different as a human being with, like, Feelings, when you have all this knowledge in mind, and to look at a real breathing living human (figuratively speaking) right in front of you and for that person to register as Father in your head is a completely different experience then. it goes from a sort of vague, disconnected regret to a real, emotional understanding of what it is to have a father you never managed to connect to and who kept a distance from you for reasons you don’t understand, and then having the chance to form a connection, all while trying to figure out what the heck is going on with him because he's nothing like what you remember in life.

basically i think the first thing roman thought when he saw david was roughly something like 'whomst the fuckest is [waves hands vaguely] this guy because that is so not my dad', and it slowly segued into 'okay no now i see it, that's closer to the sort of things he'd say or do, but still, what the fuck'. he starts seeing david in an entirely new way on one hand after being exposed to this completely different side to him, but it's also confusing to re-contextualize with all his memories of him and how different he is. the last time they talked, david was on his deathbed giving him a list of people he wants him to murder the shit out of, and another list of people he absolutely does not want him to murder, and his last words were basically 'i leave it up to you how you'll do it legally but i need you to kill that motherfucker dead'. his last moments on the earth he still spent not as a father speaking to a son, but as a king to his successor. ... which suddenly he can also bring himself to feel actual strong feelings about when all of this begin to feel much more personal and much less distant, and also makes the absence of this relationship actually feel tangible, including the feelings of vague regret, maybe a desire to reconnect and to really develop this relationship now that he has the chance to actually know his dad, maybe even some kind of affection for the man-- and when it starts going there that's when he panics because he was not asking for this and does not want these feelings they're really bad and horribly inconvenient this is literally the worst time to be awakening to them!!!!!!

it's all a moot point, of course, because he can't even if he admitted to himself that he wanted to; he can't afford the risk of anyone that's not da vinci knowing, much less someone like this person who he doesn't really know or understand and wouldn't have his trust even under normal circumstances. but and in between all these considerations, he looks at david and wonders about him, wonders how to talk to him-- he  knows how to talk, as solomon, to His Majesty The King or to his father the king, but he doesn't know how to talk as a human being to someone he knows to be his father, person to person. he's both familiar and a complete stranger, and talking to him is just a source of headaches not just because of his general personality but because of this particular dissonance. and it's worse because he's also completely undecipherable and he can't tell what he's thinking at least half the time. as easy it might be to dismiss him and think there's nothing beyond what's going on on the surface, he still knows his dad well enough to understand that this is just not the case. and there's a lot of hindsight reflection over his childhood memories and of everything he does remember and in some way putting these things in a new context.

in practice how this manifests is really mostly that he just sort of hovers just outside his orbit, wanting to approach but avoiding at the last second, thinking all these things but not really doing anything beyond that, at one avoiding him and still being unable to resist the urge to engage with him anyway.

.... anyway this post got way way too big and i'm not sure how to end it, but these are almost all the thoughts/hcs i’ve developed for the past year or so. maybe a few minor things i missed or forgot.

[thisbibliomaniac]

Been a while since I’ve done this so all the asks please and thank

You’re lucky I love you 🙄 1: How tall or short do you wish you were? I’m perfectly average, and I’m good with that

2: What’s your dream pet? (Real or not) A tiger 🐅

3: Do you have a favorite clothing style? Classic 50’s / 60’s

4: What was your favorite video game growing up? Mario kart

5: What three things/people do you think of most each day: My religion, my work, and whatever fiction (book, show, etc) I’m into at the time

6: If you had a warning label, what would yours say? WARNING: DON’T ASK ABOUT HER CATS

7: What is your opinion on [insert person/thing here]? Need a person/thing dude

8: What is your Greek personality type? [Sanguine, Phlegmatic, Choleric, or Melancholic] Uhhhhhh idk it’s in my bio

9: Are you ticklish? No

10: Are you allergic to anything? Maybe??¿?

11: What’s your sexuality? Straight

12: Do you prefer tea, coffee, or cocoa? TEA

13: Are you a cat or dog person? Cats

14: Would you rather be a vampire, elf, or merperson? Elf

15: Do you have a favorite Youtuber? Crowder

16: How tall are you? 5'5"

17: If you had to change your name, what would you change it to? Anything, I hate my name. I’d ever prefer if it were the French spelling

18: How much do you weigh? [Only ask this if you know the user doesn’t mind!] No idea tbh

19: Do you believe in ghosts/spirits? In the biblical sense 😂

20: Do you like space or the ocean more? Space

21: Are you religious? Very much so

22: Pet peeves? Audible chewing / breathing / snoring

23: Would you rather be nocturnal or diurnal [opposite of nocturnal]? Diurnal

24: Favorite constellation? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

25: Favorite star? How?

26: Do you like ball-jointed dolls? I guess

27: Any phobias or fears? Oh yes

28: Do you think global warming is real? Nope

29: Do you believe in reincarnation? No

30: Favorite movie? Sabrina 1995

31: Do you get scared easily? No

32: How many pets have you own in your lifetime? Family pets? Many. Mine own? Snuggles, and technically part of Stitch

33: Blog rate? [You’ll rate the blog of the one who’s asking.] 23/30

34: What is a color that calms you? Pink

35: Where would you like to travel and/or live? Paris

36: Where were you born? Ohio

37: What is your eye color? Brown

38: Introvert or extrovert? Introvert

39: Do you believe in horoscopes and zodiacs? No

40: Hugs or kisses? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

41: Who is someone you would like to see/visit right now? You. Come visit me.

42: Who is someone you love deeply? Obi

43: Any piercings you want? I’d like my second ear piercings back :/

44: Do you like tattoos and piercings? Depends

45: Do you smoke or have you eiver done so? Noooooo

46: Talk about your crush, if you have one! Indians #22 😍

47: What is a sound you really hate? 21 pilots

48: A sound you really love? When Loki sits in the hall and yells

49: Can you do a backflip? Lol no

50: Can you do the splits? LOL no

51: Favorite actor and/or actress? Errol Flynn and Judy Garland

52: Favorite movie? Didn’t I just answer this?

53: How are you feeling right now? Good

54: What color would you like your hair to be right now? I like the color it is

55: When did you feel happiest? Reading

56: Something that calms you down? Crochet

57: Have any mental disorders? [Only ask this if you know the user doesn’t mind!] LOL probably

58: What does your URL mean? I like books

59: What three words describe you the most? Uh idk you tell me

60: Do you believe in evolution? Noooooooooooo

61: What makes you unfollow a blog? The sight of their url fills me with annoyance

62: What makes you follow a blog? A real person who posts like a real person

63: Favorite kind of person: Lots of people

64: Favorite animal(s): Cats

65: Name three of your favorite blogs. No, too many

66: Favorite emoticon: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

67: Favorite meme: Cow poetry

68: What is your MBTI personality type? Istj

69: What is your star sign? 🌟

70: Can your dog roll over on command, if you have a dog? No, it’s a constant source of amusement

71: What outfit out of all your clothes do you like to wear the most? None

72: Post a selfie or two? No

73: Do you have platform shoes? No

74: What is one random but interesting fact about yourself? I need another MRI!

75: Can you do a front flip? No

76: Do you like birds? No

77: Do you like to swim? Yes

78: Is swimming or ice skating more fun to you? I used to like both!

79: Something you wish didn’t exist: Taxes. Insurance.

80: Some thing you wish did exist: More space

81: Piercings you have? Ears

82: Something you really enjoy doing: Crochet

83: Favorite person to talk to: Stell

84: What was your first impression of Tumblr? Funny

85: How many followers do you have? I’ve been hovering around 1200 for months

86: Can you run a mile within ten minutes? Idk probably not

87: Do your socks always match? Never

88: Can you touch your toes and keep your legs straight completely? Uhhh idr? Maybe

89: What are your birthstones? I think Pearl?

90: If you were an animal, which one would you be? Cat

91: If a flower could aesthetically represent you, what kind would it be? Plumeria

92: A store you hate? Menards and I’ve never even been there

93: How many cups of coffee can you drink in one day? None!!!!

94: Would you rather be able to fly or read minds? For

95: Do you like to wear camo? No

96: Winter or summer? Winter

97: How long can you hold your breath for? No idea

98: Least favorite person? Rory

99: Someone you look up to: Elinor dashwood

100: A store you love? Earth fare

101: Favorite type of shoes D:

102: Where do you live? Ohio

103: Are you a vegetarian or vegan? If so, why? Nope! 104: What is your favorite mineral or gem? Turquoise? 105: Do you drink milk? Sometimes. A2 low temp 106: Do you like bugs? NO 107: Do you like spiders? NOO 108: Something you get paranoid about? SPIDERS 109: Can you draw: No :( 110: Nosiest question you have ever been asked? “Can you draw?” Oh also, “Why no ring?” By a patient I did not like. 111: A question you hate being asked? “How do you feel?” Hate it a lot. 112: Ever been bitten by a spider? Yes :/ 113: Do you like the sound of waves at the beach? Yes 114: Do you prefer cloudy or sunny days? Cloudy 115: Someone you’d like to kiss or cuddle right now: Obi, my puppy 116: Favorite cloud type: Uh. White? 117: What color do you wish the sky was? Pink 118: Do you have freckles? Some. Not as many as id like 119: Favorite thing about a person: Sense of humor 120: Fruits or vegetables? Both!!!! 121: Something you want to do right now: Get some work done, but SOMEONE needed every question answered 122: Is the ocean or sky prettier? Sky 123: Sweet or sour foods? Both 124: Bright or dim lights? Both 125: Do you believe in a certain magical creature? Dragons 126: Something you hate about Tumblr: The users 127: Something you love about Tumblr: The users 128: What do you think about the least? I think about most things a lot 129: What would you want written on your tombstone? That’s one to think about. Suggestions? 130: Who would you like to punch in the face right now? Me. No, whoever invented insurance. 131: What is something you love but also hate about yourself? Everything, but mostly hate 132: Do you smile with your teeth showing for pictures? Yes, because as bad as that is, the alternative is unthinkable 133: Computer or TV? Computer 134: Do you like roller coasters? No 135: Do you get motion sickness or seasickness? No 136: Are your ears lobed or attached? ?? 137: Do you believe in karma? No 138: On a scale of 1-10, how attractive would you say you are? -6 139: What nicknames do you have/have had? N/A 140: Did you have any pretend or imaginary friends? Yes 141: Have you ever seen a therapist/shrink? No 142: Would you say you are a good or bad influence to others? Good I hope 143: Do you prefer giving or receiving gifts/help? Giving 144: What makes you angry Politics, and people who insist on talking about them when you’re really not in the mood 145: How many languages do you speak fluently? None 146: Do you prefer boys, girls, and/or non-binaries? What 😂😂😂😂 147: Are you androgynous? Hahahahhaahhaha 148: Favorite physical thing about yourself: None 149: Favorite thing about your personality: Definitely none 150: Name three people you would like to talk to right now in person. There’s so many questions here 151: If you could go back into time and live in one era, which would you choose? 1890 152: Do you like BuzzFeed? No 153: How did you meet your spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend/partner? [If you have one.] I didn’t 154: Do you like to kiss others’ foreheads or hands for platonic reasons? No idea 155: Do you like to play with others’ hair? No 156: What embarrasses you? Second hand embarrassment 157: Something that makes you nervous/anxious: Being late 158: Biggest lie you have ever told: Idk 159: How many people are you following? A lot 160: How many posts do you have on your blog(s)? Lots 161: How many drafts do you have on your blog(s)? So many 162: How many likes do you have on your blog(s)? Uhhh 163: Last time you cried and why: No 164: Do you have long or short hair? In between 165: Longest your hair has ever been: Very long 166: Why do you like, dislike, or have neutral feelings about religon? Depends on the religion 167: Do you really care how the universe and world was created? Extremely 168: Do you like to wear makeup? Yes 169: Can you stand on your hands or head for more than thirty seconds? No 170: Did you answer the questions you were asked truthfully? Yes Happy?

[dhaturainnoxia]

Do all of them from angel to wobbly :D :D

Omg here we go

angel; do you have a nickname?

Already answered 🖤

awe; how old are you?

A couple centuries

baby; favorite color?

Black and white. dark red. silver. rose pink.

bloop; spirit animal?

Snake or maybe chameleon

blossom; favorite book/movie/song?

I’m not sure about book or song but my favorite movie is The Shining.

blush; what was your stuffed animal as a child?

A kitty named Sam and one named George

breeze; most precious childhood memory?

Oh god I don’t have many of those lol

bright; mermaids or fairies?

Not too into either of them really

bubbles; do you have a best friend?

I think so

buttercup; showers or baths?

Showers but baths are nice too when I want to relax

butterfly; dream destination?

England, always has been.

buttons; are you religious or spiritual?

I consider myself very spiritual.

calm; favorite scent?

Midnight.

candlelight; what did you dream about last night?

I’m not sure something weird and unsettling probably ):

charming; have you ever been in love?

Yeah :/

cozy; eye/hair color?

Grayish blue eyes. My natural is hair light brown but my coloured hair is black n white

cuddly; what’s your favorite time period?

The 1980’s. But I have a love for different eras like the late 60’s and the 70’s too.

cupcake; favorite flower/plant?

I don’t know if I can choose just one, I love flowers and plants they make me so happy.

cute; what did you get on your last birthday?

High & depressed on the floor lol

cutie pie; most precious item you own?

Maybe like my Saint Laurent sunglasses my good friend bought me in NY or lipstick Marilyn Manson gave me

cutsie; what makes you happy?

Plants, psychedelics, the people in my life, concerts, dressing up, clarity, beauty of all things, music, seeing goths in public lol

daisies; describe a moment when you felt free.

Every time I take psychedelics I am pure and free.

daydream; how do you want to be remembered?

As someone eccentric and loving.. beautiful and accomplished and dark... understanding and passionate and interesting...

daylight; favorite album of all time?

Fuck umm... I literally can’t answer this, i have favorite albums but it just depends on what mood I’m in.

dear; zodiac sign?

Virgo sun, Taurus moon, Aqua ascending.

delightful; concerts or museums?

I love both.

dimples; have you ever written a letter?

I believe so.

dobby; dream job?

House wife. Rockstar or artist. Lol

doll; how do you like to dress?

It depends. Goth shit like trad or newer in varying forms, vampire, 1800’s ghost, snake woman, or angel babydoll. I take on different forms.

dovey; any paranormal/magical experiences?

Both. And I believe in them heavily.

dreams; do you want or have any tattoos?

I have two, a double headed snake and a cross. And I do want more, most if not all religiously themed.

drizzle; do you believe in aliens?

Already answered 🖤

euphoric; talk about someone you love.

Already answered 🖤

fairy; do you have a pet?

Not mine but a cat and a dog live here.

fluffy; ocean or mountain?

Already answered 🖤

forever; where do you feel time stop?

I don’t really feel time at all..

froglet; are you a good plant owner?

I used to be 😭😭

garden; how many languages do you know?

Only one ):

gem; who are your favorite tumblrs?

I don’t know anymore lol

giggles; what is your aesthetic of choice?

Dark and sexy and kinda fucked up I guess.

glittery; do you like anons? why/why not?

Yes cause I get bored loll

glow; list the top 5 things you like about yourself

Everything I see could be better.

heart; silk or lace?

Already answered 🖤

honey; coffee or tea? how do you take it?

Love both but drink tea more. I like both with sugar.

hugsy; do you enjoy people watching or bird watching more? why?

Hmmm... I’m not sure I guess I don’t do much of either.

hunnybunch; what sounds help you sleep?

My fluffy blanket 👼🏻

jewel; what’s your favorite kind of weather?

Not too hot, not too cold, light breeze, autumn kind of weather.

jiggly; what do you usually like to do on weekends?

Go out with my friends!

joy; do you laugh loudly or giggle more?

I do both.

kinky; do you blush easily?

I’m not suree.

kisses; what romantic cliché do you wish for most?

Ugh god.. just all of it...

kitty; what’s your favorite time of the day?

Afternoon when it’s more relaxed

ladybug; what’s your favorite artist to listen to when you’re sad?

Fuck um.. again it depends on what type of sad I am...

love; what is your favorite season and why?

Autumn 😍 chilled weather and crunchy leaves and I can wear most of my wardrobe and actually be okay outside

lovey; what is your favorite flavor of macaron and ice cream?

I’m not sure but I like dulce de leche and peanut butter and cookie dough and cheese cake flavors and moree

magic; what are five flaws you have?

Oh god I have more than that

moonlight; do you prefer soft pastels, warm neutrals, or cool darks?

Cool darks

munchkin; what do you look for in your significant other?

Passionate, romantic, understanding, patient, creative, dark, thrives on touch, sex fiend, kinda into some fucked up shit, likes to dress up with me, dominant, makes me laugh, intellectual.

paddywack; how would you describe a perfect date?

Getting picked up with a flower and a hand kiss, we both stuntin LOOKS, maybe go out some place cute to eat, maybe walk along the river and talk for hours.

pebbles; how do you spend free time by yourself?

Self care, cooking, listening to music, cleaning.

precious; what is something valuable that you learned in your life?

Almost everything happens for a reason even when it feels like tragedy at first.

pretty; do you like to cook or bake more?

Cook but I could bake too. ((:

prince; how would you describe your handwriting?

strung together

princess; do you play any instruments? if not, are there any you wish you could play?

Already answered 🖤

prinky; how do you relieve stress?

Inotoxication or getting off really.

pumpkin; what is your favourite kind of fruit/vegetable?

Strawberries or watermelon for fruit and my fav vegetable is probably broccoli.

rainbow; what was the last line of the last book you read?

The grace of the lord Jesus be with all. Amen.

roses; what is the most significant event in your life so far?

Omg I’m not sure

smile; what is one thing that has greatly affected you?

Perception

shine; art or music?

Always both.

shimmer; do animals tend to like you?

They do! Which is weird because they kinda annoy me lmao

smitten; do you collect anything?

I collect CDs, vinyls, art, and all things I can wear.

smoochies; how many pillows do you sleep with?

Five lol

snuggle; what is your favourite candy?

Lollipops!

snuggly; do you have a camera? if so, what kind?

No just on my phone ): I’d like to get a Polaroid camera tho

sparkle; do you wear jewelry?

Always!

spooky; sunrise or sunset?

Both are beautiful.

sprinkles; do you like to listen to music with headphones or no headphones?

Rather listen to it with no headphones

starlight; what was your favourite show as a child?

Courage the cowardly dog or spongebob lol

soft; describe your favourite spot in your house.

MY BED 😂

soothe; digital or vinyl?

Vinyl babyyy

squeezed; who do you miss right now?

My angel

sugary; what traits do you value most in friends?

Funny, understanding, spontaneous friends

sunshine; do you prefer for things to be practical or aesthetically pleasing?

They can be both tho right

sweet; do you find it easy to open up?

Ehhh

sweetie; do you like kids? if so, do you ever want to have any?

Not really and noo

thimble; is there somebody you look up to? who are they?

I look up to Marilyn Manson lol

toot; what is something you find unique about yourself?

My outlook

tootsie; what kind of friend are you?

A good one I hope

treasure; what was something that made you smile today?

Ghostlyy

velvet; are you an early bird or a night owl?

Night owl ):

whiffle; if you could have a magical power, what would it be?

To shapeshift or bend people’s will

whimsical; do you prefer doing stuff at home or going out?

Either really but probably staying at home, it depends on my mood

whiskers; do you usually wear makeup?

Hell ya

wiggly; are you a messy or tidy person?

Ugh.. I’m both if that makes any sense.

wispy; do you like the place where you grew up? do you think you will live there when you get older?

It’s okay but hopefully not lol

wobbly; have you ever wished upon a star?

Of course I have