#favourite passages of 2020

[atelierlili]

In-Panem/Not Reaped Everlark AUs

Got asked to give some fanfic recommendations for In-Panem/Not Reaped Everlark AUs so here we are. Most of them (if not all of them) are gonna be fluffy and happy tbh because i can't take my pookies being hurt ):

Completed:

A New Path (138k words) by Endlessnightlock

The day after aging out of the Reaping, Katniss crosses paths with Peeta. She thanks him for the bread and to her surprise, a tentative friendship begins.

One of my favourites. I love the direction the author took with this story. Always made me want more!

Go Slow, Peeta (20k words) by Oakfarmer

The era of the Hunger Games has come to an end. How Everlark slowly happened anyway.

This was the one that started it all for me. Short, simple and to the point! A classic in my opinion.

Nothing Owed for a Gift (10k words) by orphaned account

Lately, Merchants have taken to flirting with unwitting Seam folk as a joke, sometimes going so far as to ask them out on a date. I've even heard of a couple instances of a Merchant asking someone from the Seam to marry them, and then laughing hysterically when the poor recipient says 'yes'. So, when Peeta Mellark approaches me after the reaping, red with nerves and pushing his lips together as if he's trying very hard not to do something like laugh, I'm immediately wary. Peeta can't possibly be asking me to marry him for real. ... right?

Urgh. Literally one of my favourite one-shots.

Inevitability (44k words) by Xerxia

What if? What if Peeta and Prim hadn't been reaped?

Definitely not the fluffiest fics in the list, but Katniss absolutely SHINES here. And Peeta stays very true to his character as well. Absolutely worth the read.

It Takes A District (55k words) by MTK4FUN

Thinking her mother is dying, Katniss Everdeen marries Peeta Mellark to keep her sister out of the Community Home.

I love this fic. I don't know what it is, but there's something about it that makes it standout on its own.

Katniss Everdeen Is Not A Stalker (241k words) by MegaAuLover

Katniss as a little problem, she can't stop looking through Peeta's window, trying to find a way to pay her boy with the bread back but as time goes on she realizes she wants more. But there is a problem the District is flooded with Peacekeepers and everyone faces danger as the Capitol tightens its reigns on the district. Can love bloom in the middle of adversity? Or will it shrivel in the face of surmounting danger?

This is the one. Easily one of the bestest AUs imo. Very long read- but I will be naming my first born after the squirrel. The Everlark relationship here is A+++.

Incomplete/Ongoing:

( I know its weird to recommend incomplete fics, some these ones are legitimately my favourite fics and think are still worth the read.)

Cavedweller (79k words) by Jennajuicebox (last update: 2021-01-25)

Her mother once told her she was brave. A word Katniss wouldn't have chosen for herself. Brave implies that you run headlong into the scary unknown. Brave implies you face the things that want you dead. It dredges up thoughts of conquering armies and swords raised over head. Katniss isn't brave. As much as she would never admit it to herself she is scared out of her wits. She is staring into a gaping chasm, waiting for it to swallow her whole.

I love AUs that explore Katniss otherside of the family so much. As always, the Everlark development here is absolutely heartwarming and delicious. 10/10

On the Threshold ( 97k words) by ghtlovesthg (last update: 2020-06-26)

Nineteen and free from the Reapings forever, Katniss finds a token on her doorstep commemorating her passage over the threshold of adulthood. Discovering the identity of the sender will start Katniss on a road that leads toward life's other milestones.

This is exactly how I envisioned Everlark would get together had it not been for the Reapings. So so so so good. There is just enough here to be satisfied that the fic is unfinished ; w;

hope you find something you like! I always have more if you want more to sink your teeth into <3 Happy readings!

@heartforeyes @the-tiny-fangirl

[batsplat]

Chad reed on always the entourages creating the drama. I cannot believe that is what caused rosquez downfall but also given the level of Vale's celebrity and the way he carried himself, I can totally believe that it was the entourage (iPad stand I'm looking at you) that brought the end

(about reed's 2020 quotes in this) yeahhh I mean the downfall was caused by a whole bunch of factors, not just any one thing... like all great tragic narratives, it feels inevitable from a global perspective and yet thoroughly preventable in its specifics, with loads of points where you think, 'oh, if things had just gone a little bit differently'... there's this tension in how, in the end, maybe it would've always gone wrong, but a lot had to come together for it to go wrong in quite such a spectacular fashion

reed's definitely correctly identified one of the factors - the entourages, and valentino's entourage specifically. though fwiw, I did cut off the article before reed predicted the marc/fabio rivalry was headed a similar way (this was from 2020, obviously before the arm injury):

for better or for worse, fabio has skipped the villain arc to head straight to the depressed frenchie arc

regardless of whether this rift would have happened or not, the idea that marc would have gotten a new appreciation for the situation valentino found himself in is at least an interesting one. though if anything, the rivalry with fabio would have more closely paralleled valentino's with the other aliens (new talent coming through, but with the previously dominant rider still a regular winner). now is the time marc's learning what it feels like to come back from a prolonged absence from being competitive at the highest level - and of course with a new superstar simultaneously making his debut

so yeah, anyway, tragedy, you can point to all sorts of strains and pressures and tension inherent to professional sport that were exacerbated by the personalities involved and the influence of the media and the passage of time etc etc. but never mind all that, let's get back to entourages! I know you mention everybody's favourite b-list shakespeare villain, but I'm going to basically mostly ignore him because it's well-trodden ground. yeah, it does help to have one guy who's whispering poison into your ear for a prolonged stretch of time before showing up at your motorhome doorstep with a bunch of telemetry and a dream. and yeah, there were people in valentino's entourage definitely encouraging this path to doom. but what I'm also interested in is the flip side - why nobody stopped him

I would like to submit into evidence this passage detailing the thoughts of vale's mechanic alex briggs. now briggs in this excerpt blames two groups for how things went down in 2015:

the yamaha side (specifically the press group) for not talking him down from the ledge before the presser

the crew chief and other assorted italians on the team for being too "yessy" and not standing up to him

let's briefly (for a given value of the word) focus on the first one. if you're a random yamaha pr person and you see the valentino rossi run to a press conference (given he was late) with a bunch of papers in his hands (well, he's not actually holding the papers in those gifs, but presumably somebody's got them), it's probably a tough ask to expect you to hold up the valentino rossi and ask him what exactly he's intending to do with those papers. also, is he really going to back off because you, random yamaha pr person, have asked him to please not accuse the competition of sabotage? added context is that some at yamaha were aware of what valentino thought about the race at phillip island (which we'll get to in a sec), but god knows if the pr people did. unless he confided in anyone on the yamaha side what the plan was, a lot of them would have been blindsided too - which does come back to the problem of how big a deal valentino is and how maybe you're a little more cautious about questioning what he's about to do with those papers than you would be with somebody else. it does feel like perhaps a bit too much to expect for them to have launched some last-minute intervention, or to even know what kind of intervention they could have gone for beyond low-level comedy hijinks to stop him from even getting to that room. why did nobody from yamaha place a banana skin in his path

but we do know that at least some in yamaha were aware of valentino's great big phillip island sabotage theory, because lin jarvis has very helpfully told us as much (from the post-sepang media scrum):

Q: Do you think it was a mistake for Valentino to [provoke?] Marc so much on Thursday with a very personal and hard attack? Jarvis: There are always many different ways of addressing different problems - Valentino chose to do it in that way. Perhaps that is what provoked Marc into being quite aggressive on the track. I really don't know, you need to ask Marc not me about that. Every action has a consequence. That's life. Q: And did you know before that Valentino was going to be so aggressive with Marc in the press conference? Did you know before? Did you discuss with Valentino about this decision or you didn't know until it happened? Jarvis: Personally, I was not aware of that. I was aware of Valentino's opinion of the race in Australia, but I was not aware... but I was not aware that he would - Q: Don't you think because Valentino at the end of the day is an employee of Yamaha he should discuss before with you about such an important decision, to attack a rider of another factory in such a heavy way [...]? Jarvis: You can't control every incident, everything that happens and you know, generally we have a very good [...] relation, connection with our riders, we talk to them before about things before, but anyway I think this is something Valentino felt strongly about and it was his decision and that's it.

note the use of the word "personally", which does leave the door open to others within yamaha (outside of valentino's inner circle) knowing what was going to happen. jarvis, unsurprisingly, comes down pretty firmly on the side of 'well what were we supposed to do'. given that jarvis admits he knew valentino's theory and is hardly a stranger to valentino's modus operandi - after all, he was already team boss at the time of another tense press conference in sepang eleven years prior that took place in the wake of valentino accusing a competitor of messing with him - you do have to wonder whether yamaha could not have tried a little harder to stop valentino. but again, accounting for the power of valentino's status and the power of his character, I'm personally unconvinced yamaha could've done much to convince valentino to change his mind

so then: the italians. a little bit of context - briggs started working with crew chief jerry burgess in 1994 and both of them were on mick doohan's team for all of his five 500cc titles. when doohan's injuries forced his retirement, valentino inherited his championship-winning team upon moving up to 500cc. jb was vale's very first crew chief in the premier class, and him as well as briggs have been working with vale since december 1999. understandably, this is a very tightly-knit group. it is one that made the jump to yamaha with valentino - here's just a quick excerpt (also from oxley's valentino rossi: all his races) about briggs' thoughts on that move:

When Valentino decided to defect to Yamaha, he was determined to have his crew go with him. Only one stayed at HRC. "We first got to know about the Yamaha deal in Portugal, I think [September 2003]," Briggs continues. "I wanted to stay with JB, because I hadn't finished learning what I wanted to learn. "I remember a clandestine meeting in the car park at Phillip Island, about salaries and how everything was going to work. It was really exciting. When I very first started working with Honda the whole group was very much a team. Towards the end we felt like it started to become a bit us and them: the engineers and management, then the mechanics and the riders. They'd sort of got too big for their boots - they'd designed this wonderful bike, so it was like it had nothing to do with us. That made it easier to leave.

and also about the move to yamaha, from the 2020 barker biography of valentino:

But with his trusted crew chief Jerry Burgess and most of his other team members from the Honda garage agreeing to defect with him, Rossi had the crew he needed, not only to win but also to enjoy his racing. It was a heartening display of loyalty and something of a risk for all involved. ‘When I announced to the mechanics that I was going with Valentino they said, “I’m coming too,”’ Burgess later explained. ‘Some of those guys were leaving very secure jobs and taking a big gamble.’

the group also survived the move to ducati (obviously a deeply frustrating two years not just for the guy riding the bike) and the move back to yamaha. but then, valencia 2013, valentino announced his decision to fire jb in a press conference organised for the pair of them. his 2013 season had been deeply frustrating - yes, he had gotten a podium in his first race beating both marc and dani, but after that generally speaking he couldn't come close to matching the other aliens when healthy. he was comfortably the fourth best rider that year, scrapping and clawing his way through midfield battles and having to rely on misfortunes befalling the three title contenders to achieve his podiums and his sole victory at assen. he was considering retiring at the end of the 2014 season once his current contract expired, but wanted to try everything he could to see whether he could be competitive again against the world's very best. and so, he made the decision to roll the dice and get himself a new crew chief, the italian silvano galbusera

now I have to say, personally I have a lot of time for this decision (even if it was maybe not... uh, enacted in the most graceful of manners, given how sudden it was). I come from a sports background where a certain ruthlessness in personnel decisions is encouraged and generally praised - if something isn't working, you should have the courage to make a change, even if it's deeply uncomfortable (including on an interpersonal level). also, while it was a sudden departure, it's not like burgess was that keen on sticking around much longer (again from the same oxley book):

Valentino ended his collaboration very suddenly at the end of 2013. Burgess was shocked but not too much, because he already knew that he was coming to the end of his own career. "When it ended for me I'd already been doing it 30-odd years and I'd told Valentino a few weeks earlier that I wasn't going to sign any more multi-year contracts. I was 60 by then, so I'd go year by year. I'd already signed a contract for 2014, but I would've thought if we hadn't had any more success by then that there wasn't much point in continuing. I felt we would win more races but I was more doubtful about championships. "I'd read enough sporting biographies to know that sportsmen change their coaches towards the end of their careers. It can give them a spike in results but it doesn't change the overall story. Looking back, Valentino's career went on longer than I expected. He enjoyed some success but no more championships and that's what you race for. Of course he was in the unique position of being able to get a factory bike until he retired. He was very special and deserved everything he got."

which, look. again, personal bias, but to me it's reasonable to part ways with somebody who doesn't think any more titles are plausible, because at that point it's just somebody who has a very different view on your career than you do and may well not stick around for much longer anyway. also, at the end of the day, jb was wrong! valentino came extremely close to winning another title, and just because he didn't, doesn't change the fact he could have. if it had rained on the 8th of november 2015 in valencia, we might be having a very different conversation. (or if they hadn't changed the bloody qualifying format post-2012.) honestly, if the 2016 and to a lesser extent the 2017 season had gone just a little differently - a working bike in mugello here and an unbroken leg there - he could have been a genuine title threat in two more seasons. in any case, what it does show is that valentino even at the end of 2013 was still as determined as ever, was ready to engage in what was a huge gamble (given how almost all his success had come with the highly decorated jb) on the off chance he might find what it took to win again. this will not have been an easy decision for valentino. here's a write-up of the presser at valencia, that stresses how uncomfortable the occasion was, how surprising a decision it was to jb, but how publicly at least there was a lack of recriminations (which, to be fair, wouldn't be much fun to do in a shared presser):

(you'll note that the phrasing in the presser about athletes attempting to extend their carrers by changing things up is echoed in what he says in that book interview where he adds that it doesn't change the overall story, again suggesting he didn't really believe valentino would be competitive. he also uses the same phrasing in ANOTHER interview that confirms as much, but I think you get the point.) valentino said at the time, "it was a very difficult decision for me because I have a great history with jeremy. he is not just my chief mechanic. he is like part of my family. my father in racing". this is somebody he'd been working with since age 21, somebody who is not only revered within the paddock for his work with several of the sport's greats but is also a man who valentino obviously has a close personal connection to. meeting for the first time when vale snuck into the honda pit to check out the bike he might ride next season, hitting it off immediately, countless rowdy dinners together, parties, jb and another older colleague sitting back when food fights started, watching valentino grow up, working with him throughout all his big manufacturer switches, all his successes and all his failures... as much as anything else, it's evidence of how strong vale's desire to win was, how determined he continued to be, to make this choice at this stage of his career. and jb was open to the idea (at least publicly) that it might end up being a smart call:

the 'dirtiest' part of the whole affair is how it was actually carried out - it's not great form to tell your crew chief the day before you end up doing a press conference together to announce your choice. for whatever it's worth, this is how valentino justified the timeline:

and lastly, which I think is the most key part, is valentino's belief. because at the end of the day, the only reason why he's doing any of this, and the only reason why what was to come was possible at all, is that he himself still thought that he could challenge for another title - as much as that belief had come under strain:

now what this piece also goes on to say is that nobody believes this will work. nobody believes that firing jb will lead to better results. people expect that this is going to lead to his retirement, quite possibly at the end of 2014. it's worth just remembering sometimes how extraordinary valentino's return to the top of the game post-2013 really was, how it went against how we expect a rider's competitive lifecycle to work, went far beyond the longevity exhibited by any top rider before or since - all while going up against riders who are widely believed to be some of the best to ever do it. valentino beat jorge in both 2014 and 2016, and remains one of two people to outscore prime marc marquez over the course of a season. not to engage in too much rossi prop here, but sepang 2015 can't really be understood without all the frustration that led up to it, to this one golden chance, this miracle that everybody had believed to be impossible (sometimes even valentino). this wasn't supposed to be happening. it was happening. and then, so so close to the finish line, valentino could feel it slipping, slipping, slipping away

but of course, we still don't know whether changing crew chiefs is the key factor that made him competitive again. maybe he just needed a bit longer to get back into the swing of things post-ducati disaster. maybe the bikes just started to suit him better. hey, maybe it was that nifty exercise regime he'd engaged in a wee spot of espionage for so that he could pinch it off his teammate. what we can say, however, is that valentino's choice both tells us a lot about his mindset, as well as (to finally bring us back to the actual point of this post) representing a massive shift in his 'entourage'. this is what briggs is referring to in his quote - the italians. the new crew chief. the people who couldn't stand up to valentino. now obviously, as mentioned above briggs had worked with jb for the better part of twenty years and can hardly be considered a neutral party. here were briggs' feelings on the matter (yeah it's from the same oxley book again, I got it new for eighteen quid which is a very generous price, would recommend):

When JB was out at the end of 2013 it was like losing my mechanic dad. I remember being in the garage when we found out about it. Then they arranged a kind of farewell, a kind of hodgepodge farewell. It was terrible, I didn't like any of it. I was just hiding behind one of the bikes in the garage, crying, going, what's going on here? It didn't seem right to me. I think maybe Valentino thought he would get faster again sooner, but I think it took at least a year to get the taste of the Ducati out of his mouth. I think if he'd stayed with JB we would've won the championship in 2015.

which. look. we don't have time to unpack all that. but. the point is that obviously briggs wasn't exactly a massive fan of the change within valentino's team, and his comments about the 2015 season do have to be read with that in mind. as to whether vale really would have done better in 2015 with jb at his side, your guess is as good as mine. all that being said, a part of me wonders how much losing that grounding presence enabled valentino's late-2015 spiral. maybe not in terms of talking valentino out of the great big fluctuating lap times treachery theory - to state the obvious, valentino got himself involved in plenty of drama during jb's time as a crew chief. jb himself occasionally helped add fuel to the fire in those feuds, like his infamous comment about how he would be able to fix the ducati's issues in 80 seconds that casey still brings up every three business days (the comments were poorly phrased but also somewhat taken out of context, in that jb was talking about a specific set-up problem). he's generally been pretty happy to be forthright about valentino's rivals, for instance this about casey:

My feeling at the time was that Casey probably only had one game plan, and having watched Casey over the years, he doesn't have a plan B. If it doesn't go his way from the outset, it's probably one of the weaknesses that he had through the youth that he had, through the lack of experience that he had. That's not a criticism of him per se, he was still only 22 at the time.

(this is about laguna seca 2008 and how he helped valentino win that race, including in plotting out vale's rather ruthless tactics - which casey was of course not exactly a fan of.) or these. uh. harsh comments about dani from spring 2010:

Q: Is that atmosphere or track knowledge? Is it like the Spanish finding something extra at the racetracks in Spain? JB: Well, therein we show the weakness, don't we? If you can get up on that weekend, on the technical racetracks of Spain, why can't you get up on the technical racetracks like Australia, where the Italians do? Lorenzo is a guy who will and does. Stoner has been able to get up on tracks all over the world. Unfortunately, Dani Pedrosa's into his 6th year in MotoGP, and he's won 8 races, Jorge Lorenzo's two months into his 3rd and he's won 6. It's night and day between those two, is the way I see it. Dani's an extremely fast rider, but a shockingly poor racer. Q: Were you surprised at Jerez [2010] when Pedrosa fought back when Lorenzo passed him? JB: When did Dani fight back? With two laps to go, and he didn't even get close enough to try to come back. Dani has never been a fighter in races, he's a lovely kid, don't get me wrong, but you can see that Lorenzo, having Pedrosa in front of him, it was never going to be the way he was going to finish that race. He was going to finish on the ground or he was going to finish in front of Pedrosa. That's the sort of race that we want, we had that with Biaggi and Valentino, and from history with Schwantz and Rainey. All the good riders have always had somebody they have had to put the target on the back of. It was Doohan and Gardner, and Doohan won that battle hands down, and I think Jorge Lorenzo's going to win this battle [with Pedrosa] hands down.

kind of a dick! so his attitude to valentino being valentino has generally been a) well having enemies is good, actually, with an added slice of b) good luck to his enemies :) - see also this quote (from the barker biography) in the context of the gibernau rivalry:

And that made Rossi even more dangerous, as Jerry Burgess pointed out: ‘Valentino is the sort of rider I wouldn’t want to get angry. He can take you apart on the track.’

so yes, jb is also perfectly brutal in his own right, as you presumably have to be to work alongside valentino so closely for so long. he is, however, also somebody valentino has a massive amount of respect for, somebody who helped turn him into a legend and is responsible for a lot of vale's success - not least, of course, in the pivotal move to yamaha. he was replaced by a man of a far far lesser stature in the sport, one who presumably would have been grateful to valentino for the biggest job he was ever going to get. if briggs is right and there was a shift in valentino in 2015, surrounded as he was by italians (derogatory) who could not stand up to him, who allowed valentino to insist on war and peace on the pit boards, to focus more and more on things that had nothing to do with riding... it would be going a little too far to say that valentino was missing an adult in the room given he was, in fact, in his thirties and should have been capable of being that adult. and who knows what jb would have said or thought or done about the great big childhood hero deception theory. but sepang 2015 was the culmination of a lot of things, including a pressure cooker of a season that grew more and more tense and put more and more stress on everyone involved - perhaps for none more so than valentino. maybe, just maybe, if he'd had somebody around him with fifteen years of experience in handling him, who could have just occasionally told him to knock it off, to concentrate on the racing, to keep things simple (always jb's defining philosophy), to maybe not get so wrapped up in the great big spanish collusion theory...

or maybe it wouldn't have mattered! maybe we're getting cause and effect all wrong here; maybe valentino was deliberately fashioning his entourage into one that was only going to give him positive feedback. maybe he would have just stopped listening to jb, maybe the very decision to fire jb makes it clear he was no longer interested in what jb had to say. it's a tragedy, after all! maybe it was always going to go like this. maybe it was always going to end like this

speaking of entourages, marc's manager played a bit of a cameo role in fanning the flames just a little further (article from marca, 26/10/2015):

alzamora obviously will be somebody valentino is familiar with, having raced him in 125cc and also having just coexisted in the paddock over the years. valentino could of course be lying, but idk, why would he? he's already made his case by this point, and what if alzamora were to contradict him? if it's true and this conversation did happen, you do have to say it's a spectacularly unhelpful intervention from alzamora. even if marc was mad at valentino, why the hell are you telling valentino this AFTER sepang 2015? what's the plan here buddy

^ 1999 world champions: alzamora in 125cc, vale in 250cc and alex criville in 500cc. people think motogp lore is complicated but if you know like, five guys, you're set for about twenty years of drama

which does get to the heart of the matter - a lot of these people have big egos and their own agendas and they love to run their mouths. they like talking a big game and getting involved in things they really shouldn't be getting involved in. is reed right that these people in the riders' entourages 'created the drama'? well, no, I think the two men at the centre of this particular tragedy were plenty capable of doing that themselves. nevertheless, you can point to how professional sports (and motogp in particular) forces you to rely heavily on a small group of people to keep you sane at the centre of the storm, and the risks that can emerge when that small group collectively unmoors itself from reality. you can point to the perils of fame, both in making your reliance on your inner circle so unnegotiable as well as in providing you with the status and power and ego to ignore anyone who might wish to change your mind. you can point to specific figures in this story who managed to incite the conflict between the two of them, as well as how the pressure cooker competitive environment they were operating within helped set up the ultimate catastrophe. you can point to how valentino lacked anyone with the power to stop him - both in the direct sense of forcing him to reconsider and the indirect sense of commanding his respect enough to make him see sense. maybe, just like in 2004, valentino had simply been "looking for an excuse" and he was always headed down this path. or maybe if somebody had just held him back a little that year, kept him focused on his riding, maybe if the right person had intervened at the right time...

maybe, maybe, maybe. that's why it's a tragedy

[warningsine]

Old man yaoi this and old man yaoi that WHERE is my old yuri movies????

God forbid women get older and remain sexual beings.

Regardless of quality, the following films are about middle aged and elderly lesbian/bi/trans women (not all of these revolve around romance btw, many are documentaries):

Silent Pioneers (Short 1985), doc.

Nitrate Kisses (1992), doc.

Forbidden Love (1992), doc.

Last Call at Maud’s (1993), doc.

Not Just Passing Through (1994), doc

Tender Fictions (1996), Barbara Hammer's autobiography.

Murder and murder (1996), middle aged not elderly.

Late Bloomers (1996)

Between Two Women (2000)

Hand on the Pulse (2002), doc.

The Hours (2002)

My Mother Likes Women (2002)

Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House (2002), doc

Sunset Story (2003), doc

No Secret Anymore: The Times of Del Martin & Phyllis Lyon (2003), doc.

The Page Turner (2006)

Finn’s Girl (2007)

Ten More Good Years (2007), doc

Black./Womyn. (2008), doc

A Place to Live: The Story of Triangle Square (2008), doc

Hannah Free (2009)

A Horse Is Not a Metaphor (2009), doc

Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement (2009), doc

For 80 Days (2010)

The Owls (2010)

Gigola (2010)

Cloudbirst (2011)

Gen Silent (2011), doc

Out Late (2011), doc

Les Invisibles (2012), doc.

Mommy Is Coming (2012)

A Perfect Ending (2012)

Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (2013)

Tru love (2013)

The Passage of Time (2013), doc

Rebel Menopause (2014), doc

Before the Last Curtain Falls (2014), doc

Advanced Style (2014)

Female Masculinity Appreciation Society (2014), doc

Kate Bornstein Is a Queer & Pleasant Danger (2014), doc

Freeheld (2015)

Grandma (2015)

MAJOR! (2015), doc about Miss Major Griffin-Gracy

Stuff (2015)

Black Mirror: San Junipero (2016). Everyone has seen this one, I know.

The Pearl (2016), doc

Etage X (Short 2016)

The Personal Things (short 2016), animation about Miss Major Griffin-Gracy

Marguerite (2017)

Chavela (2017), a doc about Chavela Vargas.

Wild Nights With Emily (2018)

The Favourite (2018)

Happy Ending (2018)

The Heiresses (2018)

Love Letter Rescue Squad (2018), doc

A Great Ride (2018), doc

Obscuro Barroco (2018)

Monica – Loose on a Cruise (2018), doc

Two of Us (2019). A fave of mine. Deeply humanistic and touching.

Time & Again (2019)

Madame (2019), doc

So My Grandma’s a Lesbian! (2019)

Uferfrauen - Lesbian Life and Love in the GDR (2019), doc.

The Archivettes (2019)

A Month of Single Frames (2019)

Forgotten Roads (2020), doc

Naomi Replansky at 100 (2020), doc

T11 Incomplete (2020)

The Aerialist (2020)

Mama Gloria (2020), doc, Gloria Allen's story.

Rebel Dykes (2021), doc.

The Affair (2021)

A Secret Love (2020), doc.

Surviving the Silence (2020), doc.

The Mistress (2020)

Your Mother’s Comfort (2020), doc about Indianara Siqueira.

A Wild Patience Has Taken Me Here (2021), middle aged not elderly.

Genderation (2021), doc.

Nelly & Nadine (2022), doc about two women that fell in love in a concentration camp.

Sweetling (2022), doc.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022), doc about Nan Goldin.

Nyad (2023)

[spinef0ryou]

Q and A interview with Will Ramos in Metal Hammer Magazine. Transcript under the cut.

ARE LORNA SHORE BRINGING DEATHCORE BACK?

Lorna Shore's growler-in-chief, Will Ramos, answers your questions on goblin screams, dream collabs and singing with a camera down his throat

SINCE WILL RAMOS joined Lorna Shore in 2021, the US deathcore band have been on a mission that's seen them leapfrog to the forefront of their scene. Will's mind-boggling vocal abilities have turbocharged them, and Hammer crowned last year's sprawling symphonic fourth record, Pain Remains, "the most essential deathcore album of the decade". Last summer, Will sang with a camera down his throat so we could all see what the hell was going on in there, but now, in his biggest challenge yet, he takes on your questions...

What's your favourite type of scream to do? - N4turalbornkll, Twitter

"They're called 'tunnel screams, like if you're going through a tunnel. But I like calling them 'goblin screams'. It's like two different tones going on at the same time. It sounds really cool."

What bands got you into metal? - Ben Ryan, Facebook

"Linkin Park was definitely one of them. Meteora... freaking Hybrid Theory! I listen to albums from my childhood all the time - I still love them and they still hold up; Bullet For My Valentine, Lamb Of God, AFI... I had a couple of friends that listened to metal that I used to play videogames with, and one of the bands they played me was AFI. One song, Affliction, was just straight-up screaming the entire song. I was like, This. Is. Crazy?' Then my friend said, 'Dude, here's a bunch of bands that you should check out?' It was Lamb Of God, Whitechapel, Linkin Park."

How long do you think you'll be able to maintain your iconic screaming voice? Ten years? Thirty? Forever - Nettels_, Twitter

"I haven't fallen off yet. I don't know. Hopefully forever, but every day I make a joke, I'm like, This is the one. This is going to be the last one, this is it!"

What other genres do you love? - Jordan Bonvicino, Facebook

"I don't listen to a lot of metal so much anymore. I was looking at my Spotify Wrapped from last year... It was ap, psychedelic rock, indie music, and metal was fourth. I love bands like [Japanese singer-songwriter] Joji. I love Mac Miller. I love Drake. And I love sad music, so stuff like (post-hardcore artist] Bilmuri. They're metal, but they're also very sing-y. And I like that because now that I've been doing so much screaming in my life, I want to get better at something that's not screaming - so, singing. That's the next tier for me right now."

Are Lorna Shore bringing deathcore back? - Ed Burns, email

“I don't know if we're 'bringing it back'. We're doing really good for ourselves, and I love that people are hopping onto the train. That's incredible. Ilove that it's inspiring other people to even do more metal music. I just do what I do and I can't think about what I'm doing. I still can't look at myself in the mirror and be like, 'That's one of the big guys."

Hammer: Who were 'the big guys' to you?

“The ones that inspired me were late Suicide Silence vocalist] Mitch Lucker, Phil Bozeman (Whitechapell and Trevor Strnad (late Black Dahlia Murder vocalist]."

Do you avoid certain foods before singing, and if so, which ones? - Matt Doherty, Facebook

"I'd say eat light foods - if you eat something crazy heavy, you're going to feel very tired. I have maybe a slice of pizza, but you won't see me eating five or six slices. Ilove ramen and ramen is something that I'd have all the time when I'm on tour just because it's spicy, so it clears your nasal passages and it's soup, so it's good for your stomach."

What's your favourite Lorna Shore breakdown? - Undeado8, Twitter

"I think it would be Hollow Sentence off Immortal (2020 album, featuring ex-vocalist C] McCreery]. If we're talking about the newer stuff, Sun//Eater is definitely my favourite breakdown. It's the hardest song in the set. We have a sample of a katana [samurai sword] coming out and slicing something open. This specific sound is the unsheathing of the sword. It's halfway in, where the breakdown gets even heavier, so I just imagine a moshpit of people with inflatable swords killing each other."

Would you ever re-record Immortal? - Corey Hunter, Facebook

"I have, and I'm doing it for myself. I made a Patreon, and I told myself, I'm going to start redoing all of the old Lorna Shore albums."

Hammer: Would the band ever re-release the older albums with you on vocals?

"As a band we wouldn't - we want to have forward momentum. Art is always going to get better as long as you don't go back and start fixing things. We're like, 'What's the next thing? I'll put out Immortal on my own, but that's it."

What is your favourite song on Pain Remains? - Alex Chiczewski, Facebook

"Pain Remains I: Dancing Like Flames. It's the saddest one. I told you, Ilove sad music! You get to a point where you listen to breakdowns so many times, you become a little numb to them. For me, the only thing that holds me onto music after the breakdowns, is how do I feel about it? It's not about the melody or the breakdown. It's hearing the lyrics and I feel what this person is feeling and that it feels real. That's why I love Pain Remains I - it's the most genuine."

What is your best advice for dealing with crippling depression? - Zare Ralf Karadzin, Facebook

"Distract myself. Everyone alwavs sees me as Labradoodle Will. That's great, but I'm just like everybody out there and everybody gets sad sometimes. I dealt with depression a lot when I was a little kid, and if there's anything that's helped me, it was trying to distract myself with things Ilike to do, whether it be screaming or my little RC (remote control] cars, or playing Minecraft. Take everything day by day... conquer this day. Then you know tomorrow is another day, and you beat that day. Eventually you start putting yourself in the cycle where you'll have more good days than you have bad days."

What bands would you like to collab with in the future? - Notabumbleb88, Twitter

"Id love to collaborate with Sleep Token. They're my favourite freaking band right now. They are so incredibly good; Vessel and I have very similar singing ranges, too. Also, I Declare War, because they're just so incredibly heavy... In Flames... and Ilove Oceano - their vocalist Adam Warren is so good."

Hammer: What do you think a Sleep Token/Lorna Shore collab would sound like?

"It’d be insane. I don't know if our fans would love it, but I would. Let's go!"

What does it mean to you to be the Latino/Hispanic representation of deathcore and heavy music in general? - Shaun Fontanez, Facebook

“It's incredibly stressful. I don't speak Spanish, so a lot of Hispanic people will come up to me just like, 'Yo, dude, I'm so happy that you're here; you're Hispanic, I'm Hispanic!' I'm like, 'Thanks, man, appreciate that. I'm going to tell you right now I don't speak Spanish' and see that shock on their face. I do wish to speak more Spanish. I am a bad Puerto Rican... Or maybe I am the perfect Puerto Rican, because if you know anything about Puerto Ricans, half of them also don't speak Spanish. So, shout out to Puerto Rico."

How does it feel to have such a sudden and rapid growth in notoriety? - Christopher Andrew Ryan, Facebook

"It has been very big. Honestly, it's an incredible thing to see. We're very happy that we're all able to live off the art that we're putting out, not a lot of people can sav that. We're so caught up in the race, though, we're focused on what's next so that we can stay up here. If we fall off, you can only get to this point once, and then you lose it. We're trying to ride it for as long as we can."

How difficult was it singing with a camera down your throat? - Andy Pierce, email

"I didn't think it was going to sound good at all because I was so numb and mucus-y. When you’re doing vocals, you don't want mucus because it gets in the way and you can't even feel anything down there. It's almost like if you sang out loud and you just covered your ears, and you couldn't hear what you're putting out. That's what it felt like! Hopefully it'll be better next time (now I know what to expect!)”

PAIN REMAINS IS OUT NOW VIA CENTURY MEDIA. LORNA SHORE PLAY DOWNLOAD IN JUNE

[adventure-showdown]

What is your favourite Doctor Who story?

Stranded and The Sonomancer tied. These are the 10 stories that were closest to making it through and so have been given a second chance

ROUND 2 MASTERPOST

synopses and propaganda under the cut

Stranded

Synopsis

The TARDIS is gone. Stranded in one time and place, the Doctor, Liv and Helen seek refuge in Baker Street. But the house has changed: they now have neighbours – not all of them welcoming. And someone has a dire warning for the future.

The Doctor and friends face their greatest challenge yet: living one day after another, in 2020 London.

Propaganda

The Doctor stranded on earth done right! First time I cried about a Big Finish story. Stellar Cast! Liv and Tania, Lovestory for the ages!   (anonymous)

The Sonomancer

Synopsis

On the other side of the galaxy a mining company is exploiting the already unstable planet of Syra for every precious mineral it contains. River Song is attempting to save the native people. She needs the Doctor's help, but she also knows he mustn't yet discover her true identity. The final confrontation sees the Doctor once again face his enemy the Eleven in an attempt to prevent the destruction of Syra and the genocide of its inhabitants.

Propaganda no propaganda submitted

Inside Every Warrior

Synopsis

The Great Detective, Madame Vastra, aided by her resourceful spouse, Jenny Flint, and loyal valet, Strax, is looking into a series of mysterious break-ins.

An eccentric scientist and his put-upon assistant are the latest victims. Evidence mounts, with animal footprints and a trail of destruction.

Propaganda

The first audio adventure for the Paternoster Gang that involves SO, SO much lesbian flirting??? And werewolves! First of all Jenny makes Vastra fluster at least twice in this thing, they fight werewolves together after Strax got kidnapped and try to get him back. A maid struggles with her rich employer's abusive behaviour and seeks revenge, and she wrongly assumes Jenny must be in a similar situation. In the final showdown, Vastra uses what she fears to be her last breaths on telling Jenny that she loves her. Also, Vastra actually gets to kill in this audio! Always fun! Overall jumps between the inherent humour that comes with Jenny, Vastra, and Strax, so much fluffy gay flirting, and intense, emotional action-packed scenes. 10000% recommend, I swear to god. (@jennyandvastraflint )

Blood of the Daleks

Synopsis

"People of Red Rocket Rising, my fellow citizens. Our long night is over. I've been contacted by a benevolent people. They too have known great trials, but they have overcome them and made it their mission to help others do the same. They have offered us refuge, and passage to the nearest human worlds. They have the resources, and the patience and compassion, to evacuate every one of us. My fellow citizens, my friends, rescue is at hand!"

Propaganda no propaganda submitted

The Side of the Angels

Synopsis

Cardinal Ollistra has plans for New York, plans which involve the Deputy Mayor and her sponsor, one 'Reverend Mortimer' – better known to the Doctor as the Meddling Monk. The Eleven arrives to stamp out the resistance, but that isn't the only danger the Doctor finds lurking in the shadows – for New York is a city of Weeping Angels.

Propaganda no propaganda submitted

Phobos

Synopsis

The TARDIS lands on Phobos, moon of Mars — where extreme sports nuts of the future indulge their passion for gravity-boarding and wormhole-jumping. But there's something lurking in the shadows, something infinitely old and infinitely dangerous. It's not for nothing that "Phobos" is the ancient word for "fear"...

Propaganda no propaganda submitted

The Love Vampires

Synopsis

Regret can follow people everywhere - even out into deep space, in the shadow of a dying star.

When the Doctor, Liv and Helen meet the terrified crew of a space station, all are haunted by faces from the past. But these lost loves are more than mere memories - and they want to feed...

Propaganda no propaganda submitted

The Widow’s Assassin

Synopsis

Once, long ago, in a land of monsters and corridors, a fair maiden was captured, and placed in a deep sleep.

She was used to being captured, and she had a hero who rescued her on just such occasions. But this time the hero never came.

And the fair maiden slept on.

Eventually, a King rescued the maiden, and made her his bride, which many wise old women might tell you is just another way of capturing fair maidens.

And still the fair maiden slept on.

Then, the hero had another stab at rescuing the maiden from her prison, but he was too late. And, more importantly, he had forgotten the rules of fairy tales.

He didn't slay the dragon.

Propaganda no propaganda submitted

Companion Piece

Synopsis

When the evil Time Lord known as the Nine comes across a rare and valuable item floating in the space-time vortex, his acquisitive nature means he can't resist the urge to complete the set.

Soon a wicked scheme is underway. Only the Doctor's friends – past, present and future – will be able to stop him.

But without the Doctor around will even the combined skills of Liv, Helen, River Song, Bliss and Charley be enough to save the day?

Propaganda no propaganda submitted

The Doomsday Chronometer

Synopsis

While River Song takes Helen on an archaeological expedition like no other, the Doctor finds himself enlisted by an alien Queen to save her people.

Trapped and alone, Liv stares death in the face as she meets the enemy who's been dogging the TARDIS travellers' footsteps throughout Earth's history.

The Doomsday Chronometer has been protected for five centuries: secret cults and societies jealously guarding its mystery. But what is their real purpose? The Doctor is about to discover the truth...

Propaganda no propaganda submitted

[partnersincrimesuau]

Before I saw Steven Universe future season 2 episode 17 Homeworld Bound I actually believed that Spinel was gonna be the one to help Steven

It could have been a lot better if that was the case... She was so well developed and awesome in the movie, and then completely crushed in the last season... and I agree, I remember back in 2020 when I believed she would at LEAST have a reprise of "True Kinda Love" with that passage that Steven sings when he's climbing the Injector, singing back to Steven when he was corrupted... how adorable would that be??? I know it's been three years but I'm still so disappointed there wasn't a song in the finale... (Don't get me wrong, 'Being Human' is still one of my favourite tracks in the series, but it would have been so cool to have a huge song during the final battle with Corrupted Steven where EVERYONE sings a part from like, every song in the show that has the most meaning to them)

But yeah, if only Spinel got more time in the finale, (or less time being forced to act like a baby for no gosh damn reason) she could have supported Steven WAY better than... ugh... Connie.

Thanks for the ask!!! And for letting me ramble... ;^^

[space-blue]

1, 5, 20 for the fandom of your choice

Hi anon… if you want a different fandom… please specify. But without indication, I'm going to go for BG3.

1 > OTP?

Actually forget it, my BG3 OTP would get me banned in some places haha… Across fandoms, I rarely ship people. It's usually more of a character focus. But OTPs that have haunted me through the years and never lose their polish would be Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham, Silco/Vander, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Cad Bane, Kim Kitsuragi/Harry du Bois…

So yeah… big fan of toxic/dysfunctional/old man yaoi.

5 > Out of all your fanworks that include [character], which is your favourite?

Let's go for Zevlor! And since i didn't know the name of the artist I spent THIRTY MINUTES scrolling my bloody twitter to find this art again! It's stunning. It's my phone and computer background, has been since the day I saw it.

Please click on the link and see the art in its entire glory!! I don't think I'll ever be good enough to do Zevlor justive like this, and I'm a touch sad this artist has not revisited him since. But hey, counting my blessing. Incidentally my discord background and phone lock screen are Gale arts of the same artist hahaha!

20 > When did you first join Tumblr? How long was it between that and finding [fandom]?

29th of November 2020! I opened a blog solely to host ALL of my short stories, like them or not, which I'd written and published on a forum. I'm very glad I did, because it has seen gone offline, and not everything is on wayback machine. Prescient… And I've since gone and rescued everything offline too. If you want a blast from the past of me as a baby writer, you can go explore these posts! Like this one, which is the first "love story" I ever wrote (it's like 1.4k words)

And I got into BG3 around November 2023 IIRC so here you go, I'm relatively new to tumblr as a place. Quite ingrained and addicted now though lol

Thanks for the ask! You can find them here.

[innitmarvellous]

Finished reading John Bercow's book 'Unspeakable' and there were quite a few fun or interesting passages, so...here's a little collection of my favourites. Although, 'little'...the last few chapters had way too many good parts, so this will be longer than intended, haha.

This is just really cute okay

About Jacob Rees-Mogg...frankly I didn't think this weirdo would have a sense of humour, still not sure if I believe it

Oh, a HIGNFY mention! :)

I don't know, but...I get the feeling he doesn't like David Cameron too much!

Theresa May fares a bit better (I like the coffee table comparison tho), but the thing about her being the supposedly worst PM at this point almost makes me feel nostalgic. Oh, the events that followed... (the book is from 2020 btw)

Savage lol

Bleating Boris made me laugh tbh

(Whoops, too many pictures in one post already...more in a reblog)

[tuoyu]

9/10

19.6.23 some more thoughts, almost a month since the release date:

initially i preferred PLMS, due to 「e o」’s anti-groove tendencies. my mind has changed though… nowadays i seem to enjoy 「e o」 a lot more. the atmosphere is overwhelming… the production is sublime, the music is out of this reality.

5.6.23 review (archive)

With each album release, Cero has undergone metamorphosis.

The Japanese fusion band’s 2018 work – Poly Life Multi Soul (PLMS) was almost unrecognisable from their previous output. The album rendered the passage of time, from dusk till night, in dreamlike sequences. Energetic bossa-nova grooves, warm synths/guitars, and intricate jazz harmonies form a mellow and surreal soundscape underpinned by shibuya-kei aesthetics. PLMS explored a transitory state between worlds, dusk and evening, wakefulness and dreaming.

「e o」 is Cero’s follow-up to PLMS. With singles being trickled out since 2020, the 2023 album reflects a renewed artistic vision.

Fdf was the first single released in 2020, a cosmic-funk hit featuring lively horns and colourful cascading synths. The bright melody and whimsical percussion against a sonic void is an unexpected but welcome stylistic shift from plms’s synth-washed roots.

In August 2021, the single nemesis was revealed. It opens with glistening vocals from Shohei Takagi and muted, staccato keys. Sparse drums and synth arpeggios follow; the song blossoms with a radiant electric guitar solo from Tsubasa Hashimoto. Like fdf, nemesis features a brightly textured production – despite which, the presence of “negative space” is just as prominent, becoming akin to outer space as one roams amidst the funk-infused sonic cosmos.

For me fdf and nemesis were a mood reset. The upbeat funk influences and imagery of outer space was a total departure from the grounded, mellowness of PLMS. In particular, nemesis’s release truly affirmed Cero’s exploration of a new, celestial soundscape. Personally I found fdf so charming that it was and remains one of my favourite songs of all time.

In 2022 there were two singles, cupola and fuha. Sun-drenched guitar/synths and silky vocals from Takagi paint a familiar and earthy ambiance; they might be a more cerebral take on PLMS’ mellow grooves. The tracks are meticulously produced to the point of displaying a sterile quality, where the even mundane becomes extraterrestrial.

Finally,「e o」 was released on 24 May 2023 with 11 total tracks. Epigraph is a gentle opener. Takagi’s voice melts into nostalgic strings and warm guitar riffs, while drums splatter in the back. Nemesis follows, setting the scene with cosmic grandeur. Tableaux switches back to introspection with cool, jazzy keys; the horn “chirps” near its end brings life to the strange creatures of flight being pondered on in the lyrics. Hitode no umi builds on this atmosphere with flowing vocals and crisp percussion. The pair of singles then follow — fuha and cupola feel much more digestible within the context of the album, brimming with nostalgia and an otherworldly light. Evening news is soulful; its lullaby-like piano resembles a night sky, the sparkling synth notes that pop out later are like stars. For me it intensified the sense of isolation one feels when looking at the album cover.

The singles released previously have been marked as the (e o) version in the album, with minor changes made to each track so far. This was not the case for fdf (e o), a track that had undergone its own metamorphosis. It sounds different from the very first second. One might notice: glitched up toy-noise sample, funkier drum beat, and ethereal synth harmonies that took over the original percussion beat. The addition of those wind chime-y synths made fdf fit into the album sonically with much greater ease. The 2023 fdf is just as impactful as the 2020 version.

Sleepra and solon shift back to an introspective mood. Feathery, cloud-like vocals drift amidst calm synths and guitars. If fdf is an intergalactic cruise, the two tracks reflect the “cruise” inside the mind of the traveller – from nostalgia, cosmic euphoria, to alienation.

The last track, angelus novus references directly Paul Klee’s artwork and Walter Benjamin’s interpretation of it. The song seems to tie together various themes of the album, such as its abstract nature, the tensions between the past and future – nostalgia and concerns for an uncertain future (nemesis talks about “an obscured sun… a world with dead coral reefs…”), and an endless journeying through the cosmos (one can hear whirring extraterrestrial drafts after the first verse), much like the one the angel has undertaken after its owner’s passing. The song itself is sombre – mostly keys in minor, I still love the sparkly synths that appear throughout the album, including at the end of this track; the scarce drum splatters may be a callback to the first track, epigraph.

It must be said that without understanding the lyrics, I’m probably missing out on the majority of the storytelling. I also wondered about the sequencing – fdf being followed by sleepra felt jarring. Some tracks I wished were longer; evening news and angelus novus in particular would be even better if they were explored more deeply (I just miss PLMS’s eight-minute ending track...)

From pop-oriented fusion in earlier works, to PLMS’s jazz-infused hypnagogia, then to「e o」’s jazz - electronica - funk cosmos, Cero is once again unrecognisable. The atmosphere is overwhelming. The textured yet clean production evokes an otherworldly yet familiar soundscape, suspended between the grandeur of outer space and the depths of one’s internal world. While PLMS was dreamlike, it was still well-grounded in its mellow grooves. On the other hand, 「e o」 is no longer of this reality.

[kangaracha]

NEVERMORE: LOCATIONS

places you'll visit in the clé

Read the full version here!

Read NEVERMORE | Content List

THE CLÉ

Stuck between the borders of 'real' worlds, the Clé is a collection of halfway places, limbos and middle-of-the-roads. The rules of nature can't always be applied in these places; they aren't planets that revolve around a sun or stretches of land where you can walk from one to another, but flat planes and long infinities that loop back on themselves. Some of them think for themselves. Others won't speak at all.

The thing that connects them all is music - moving the air and stirring the waters, bringing rain or snow or night or day - and the music is found in Miroh, the centre to which every other world connects. The Clé itself is not a living thing; there are people who would claim to rule it, but the Miroh is the only thing that can really control the Clé; its people are only here to please it with music.

Once, the Clé was a wild place, its worlds and their doorways moving about with no warning or reason and the rules of each plane changing with the wind. In those days, you could go to sleep in one place and wake up somewhere entirely different with no way home.

It was Miroh who called the first group of singers to the Clé, seeking music that would tame the wild lands so that their people could live, and it was Miroh who fell in love with them and the tension that would always grow when two groups existed in the world together. For a long time, they traded places back and forth, never knowing that it was Miroh that was pitting them against each other in this eternal battle for fun - until one group discovered this hidden history, and sought more control than they had ever had before.

Their fear of time passing and their reign ending led them to freeze the world in the repetitive cycle of a single day. This is how it stands when the original SKZ arrive in Nevermore.

---

MIROH

as seen in: Miroh, Unveil Track: Victory Song, Victory Song Performance Video, Chronosaurus, Clé 2: Yellow Wood Trailer, Levanter, InLife Trailer, Back Door, Winter Falls, Oddinary (Main Trailer), Circus, Maxident Trailer, Give Me Your TMI, Ddu Du Ddu Du (Kingdom Stage), Victory Song (2020 MAMA), Venom + Maniac (2022 MAMA)

Miroh is an infinite city that grows and shrinks as the need for its buildings ebbs and flows. Being the nexus and the driving force of the Clé, it is a living thing that watches over all the worlds, not just itself, and is also the source of all music and voices in the Clé, the thing that draws people into the doorways between it and the real world, or sends them away. It is a neutral thing, generally kind and unconcerned with specific troubles within its walls, but it does love the creatures that make music for it to listen to and the games that it can play with them - sometimes at the cost of its favourite pieces.

For most of its history, the streets of Miroh have been unmappable, their layout changing with the wind and new structures always being squeezed in or taken away. Everything is out of order in the Miroh, inside the buildings and outside on the streets; to travel anywhere, people step out the front door and trust it to guide them where they want to go.

It is only while time is frozen, that the streets have settled into a permanent formation, only smaller sections of alleys maintaining that wild persistance of changing their layout regularly. Even new buildings have been curbed to a particular section of the city, while other sections lay empty.

There is no water or food to easily be found within Miroh without passage to Levanter and Injeon as there is no rain when every day is the same, cloudless passing of the sun.

---

BEISEU

as seen in: Hellevator, Levanter

The most common entrance into the Clé is Beiseu; a small, flat world consisting of a single plain where only deadnettle grows, pretty purple that stretches right out to the horizon. The field is surrounded by a forest, which is then ringed by mountains that loop back on themselves, and there is nothing else to be found except for the elevator from which people come and go.

The walls of the world are thin in Beiseu. Occasionally, a city can be seen in the sky - Miroh, usually, or sometimes Levanter - and mountains can be seen through the ground. Doors between worlds open easier in Beiseu than any other place in the Clé, and it is most closely connected to Injeon, meaning that on the right day, you could fall through the ground at any moment and find yourself in another place entirely. It's best to watch your step here, no matter how mesmerising the horizon.

---

INJEON

as seen in: I Am NOT Trailer, District 9, Voices Performance Video, I Am You, Scars

A desert world, Injeon is a flat plain of rock and dirt and not much else, ringed by tall mountains that will only swallow you in fog until you can't find your way through. In the past, Injeon was prone to long droughts and heavy, one-off rainfalls that caused flash flooding and very little plant growth, carving out an image of itself of dry rivers and long, dusty stretches of nothing, its plant life all dead and withering away on the ground before it even has a chance to grow.

Being such a flat, empty space made Injeon the perfect space for innovation from the Six, expansion away from the fickle nature of the Miroh to a more stable, sleeping world where they could build life as they wanted. A city was purpose-built here, and a prison in the form of District 9.

Now,frozen in time, its city stands as a ruin on its eastern end and an empty city inhabited by the remnants of its citizen's souls further inside its borders. It is caught on the day that a storm breaks over a drought, rain washing it away every evening, and yet still nothing will grow - like the ground can't forget that it was barren, no matter how many days it lives.

---

GEOMIJUL

as seen in: Venom, Red Lights, 5 Star Dome Tour VCR 3

A liminal space that most often dresses itself in endless hallways, Geomijul, the Spiderweb, draws people in like flies to a trap, and doesn't easily let them go. Like Miroh, it's a maze - unlike Miroh, it doesn't want you to make your way through its hallways, but takes the most joy in seeing you lost and scared; especially if you happen to run into one of the monsters hiding in its halls.

Under the control of the Six, Geomijul has become a halfway house for undesirable characters that cannot be trapped within District 9. While Geomijul cannot be sealed off completely from the rest of the Clé, possessing the power to open its own doors wherever it sees fit, it is clever enough a prison to know when it should hold an individual for as long as it can, and who it will not hurt to allow to slip through the cracks.

---

LEVANTER

as seen in: Double Knot, Astronaut, Clé: Levanter Trailer, GoLive Trailer, God's Menu, Levanter, NoEasy Thunderous Trailer, Maniac, Lonely St, Freeze , Hey Monster! + Thunderous (2021 MAMA), DLC

Miroh's sister, the open land to match its endless urban sprawl, Levanter is a utopia of rolling fields, sprawling lakes, and tidy forests dotting the landscape. Homes don't come as easily here as they do in Miroh, needing to be built themselves and cared for so that the land doesn't swallow them, but crops are given in abundance, far from the modest effort of greenhouses in other cities.

Levanter has always been an even-tempered place, its weather and its temper consistent and its tolerance with the small city built upon its surface by the Six stretching long. This doesn't mean that it cannot be cruel though - where Miroh is gentle in its playfulness, Levanter is fickle and severe in its punishment to those who don't respect it. Many times, upstarts have found the ground ripped into chasms beneath their feet or the wind strong enough to toss them over the mountains in Levanter.

---

YELLOW WOOD

as seen in: Clé 2: Yellow Wood Trailer, Side Effects, TOP, Miroh (Kingdom Stage), I'll Be Your Man (Kingdom Stage), Side Effects/God's Menu (Kingdom Stage)

The rules of Yellow Wood are hard to understand to those stepping into its weird dreamscape for the first time. The lines here are blurred, between individual souls and creatures and magic and science - it's easy to leave part of yourself behind in Yellow Wood without realising, and easier again to get lost altogether.

As the name suggests, a great deal of the flora found in Yellow Wood is yellow; rolling hills and autumnal forests make up its majority. It seems to be an infinite space, as no one has reached its edge before and returned to tell the tale, though there are plenty who have tried. While Yellow Wood isn't a thinking world like Miroh, it is prone to being wispy and whimsical, coming and going from the Clé as it pleases, the opening and closing of its doorways hard to predict.

---

ASADAL

as seen in: TOP, 5-Star Trailer, S-Class, Back Door Opening Video, Topline, Get Lit, 3rd Fanmeeting: For 5-Star Teaser, Social Path

A sliver of land in the corner of the Clé, Asadal is the least accessible of all the worlds - and the hardest to leave once you arrive there. Everything in Asadal moves in circles; the city, the rivers, and the black wasteland beyond it. The sun comes up rarely, cloaking the world in cloud and darkness. No one knows where the borders of the world are, or what lurks out there in the darkness, because no one has ever returned from a trip to Asadal.

---

MEORI

as seen in: Levanter, Easy, Thunderous, The Sound

An ever-changing landscape, Meori is the most unstable of the three city-states of the Clé. You never know, stepping through the door, if it will be a desert or a mountain range, grasslands or swamp. Storms rage across its surface and the ocean often rises to swallow its land.

Now, it is caught in an endless storm, the land ravaged - like Injeon, Meori is a ghost town now, impossible to access and uninhabitable by even the bravest souls.

[l3tterk]

NEW MUSIC: Carmen Caska ~ To Be Plugged

NOTE: I originally posted this to AOTY, but thought I'd drop here as well

I have been really excited for this project, ever since it was first mentioned all the way back in 2019/2020.

Over the last few years, it has been relatively quiet on Caska’s front regarding their musical output; a couple demos here and there but otherwise not so much.

In 2020 there was “WHACK” - a more classically hip-hop styled track complete with chipmunk vocals and a real sense of Spaß (to appropriate a Brechtian term) in both Caska’s vocal delivery and lyrics as we learn about the artist’s personal convictions and how they navigate through the world.

In 2021 there was “220 - 2” an interesting listen that with hindsight, due to its pitch shifting and glitchy, yet serene drops, could be viewed as a forecast for the musical direction Caska was headed.

These aside, the last substantial offering Caska was the 2019 mixtape, “ARI”- a project that saw the artist take a dramatic leap forward from their early days of Acoustic-y Lofi Hip-hop (under the alias Toph, or Topshiba) into a world of more industrial/Alternative hip-hop. On “To Be Plugged” however, we see Caska take yet another step - this time incorporating flavours of hyper-pop and electronic music into the mix, yielding a more ambitious, confident and engaging listen.

Over this span we’ve also seen several artist name changes for this project, starting with Ari Mori, moving to Aari Mori finally arriving at Carmen Caska - a fact that is useful to note as they are the literal stages of Caska's devopment.

Context aside, the review begins below

The album opens with “through me” an electronic, shoegaze-y number that sets the sonic stage for what we are about to listen to. Lyrically, Caska establishes a recurring theme of snow - something that is referred to again later on the project. As a listener, you very much “descend” into the world of this project during it’s runtime and it definitely feels so beginning with this track.

“You will drop everything” is an uptempo track that could have fit in on “Ari” - not that this is a bad thing. Instrumentally, this song feels like you’re travelling in a race car, with bending synths, glitchy drums, and a roaring bass.

“Lil Hoe” - is an alternate version of what was the lead single titled “Gutted” released with an accompanying mv in 2020. Due to this song, or at least the idea for it being in the ether for so long relative to the rest of the tracks, I feel most attached to this one. Though I miss the clearer original’s lyrics, in particular section in the original with the lyrics “Made into an addict but I loved her” I appreciate this track for what it is, which at the end of the day is still a hyper-pop banger.

“Have Mercy” is probably one of my favourite songs off this album, there is a fantastic sense of progression throughout its run, the “This is like this many rings” part just goes HARD and I also love the line “all the angels have fallen”

“Last Dance” is an apocalypse party anthem, with fluttering/growling arpeggios - which echo Portishead’s “the rip”

On “Heart Ate Whole” Caska flexes their fantastic production talents - its just a marvel to listen to.

“Tear” is a powerful, yet serene stroll down memory lane, as Caska manages to express the feeling of growing up - I have already written a review for this so I won’t go on much longer- but I wanted to note that it is my thinking that the reference to snow on this record could be a symbol of purity, or innocence, which becomes more powerful considering its use on this particular song

“Kill Me now” - feels Jpegmafia influenced in the best way, especially with the gang vocal chops - there’s a great sense of balance between braggadocio and vulnerability, which reminds me specifically of Peggy’s song “Kenan vs Kel”.

“Valhalla” is another banger - nuff said.

The project ends on “East River”, which I think is one of Caska’s best penned songs. I LOVED the passage “What did he think about?/In those very last breaths before the air ran out/Was it someone/Who gave meaning to every bubble/Who made his heart more than a muscle”. Instrumentally, I liked the distorted guitars and the way the whole composition builds is immaculate. - A truly epic closer.

All in all, I believe that this project is very well conceptualised/executed. Fantastic production, Unique vocals, some decent to brilliant lyrics as well. Would highly recommend. My only critique is that the lyrics are still buried in the mix, of course this is in no small part a stylistic choice, however I still feel that it obfuscates what could otherwise make for a more engaging listen.

This also happened to release on my birthday, so thank you for the amazing gift and keep up the great work, Caska!

[villainsandvictimsalliance]

Where would say BNHA is placed on your scale of favourite manga?

I was just discussing that with my sister. I think it's on the top 10 and maybe on the top 5, tbh.

There are mangas like Katekyo Hitman Reborn, Naruto and Kaichou Wa Maid-Sama that are higher because they marked my childhood and the way I read manga, then there are newer mangas like Akane Banashi that I know I'll go back to constantly for comfort and for the quality of the story. **In fact, khr and kwms are the only two mangas I have completely download on my laptop lol.

The actual top 8 would look like this:

*Note: there most be others, but I can't remember them right now lol

Katekyo Hitman Reborn (re-read annually / since 2010's)

Naruto (I'm constantly re-reading passages / since 2000's)

Kaichou Wa Maid-Sama (re-read every few of years / since 2010's)

Pandora Hearts (never finished reading, still it lives in my mind rent free like a parasite / since 2010's)

Akane Banashi (I started reading it this month)

Boku No Hero Academia (up to date / since 2020's)

Ron Kamonohashi Deranged Detective (up to date / since the very beginning of the manga)

Vanitas No Carte (up to date / I've rewatch the anime like then times since it came out)

[noanunoparty]

18/01/2023 ~ NTS Radio ~ Ryuichi Sakamoto Special ~ Further listening/viewing/reading

For Sakamoto's 70th birthday, his friends, peers and collaborators select 10 of their favourite tracks from his discography.

Featuring selections from Haruomi Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi, Taeko Onuki, Ryoji Ikeda, Banana Yoshimoto and more!

Documentary filmed during the recording of Ongaku Zukan (1984)

Notes for further reading on the creation of Ongaku Zukan

Heartbeat Tour - Japan 1992

Sakamoto plays Sakamoto

Sakamoto Trio World Tour - 1996 - Japan

One of the first ever concerts to be live-streamed!

Plankton - 2016

A collaboration between visual artist Shiro Takatani and Sakamoto. Part of an art installation at Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, showcasing Sardet’s images of microscopic plankton. The photos were paired with a video installation by Takatani and music composed by Sakamoto.

1995 - Music for Yohji Yamamoto Collection

This live performance would then be released as Garden of Shadows and Light - the first collaboration between Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Toop.

"The album’s title takes inspiration from the aesthetics of Japanese gardening. The spatial metaphor this suggests is apt, as listeners can imagine themselves wandering through a subtly changing environment, chancing on beautiful details and admiring them before moving on. We are led through a series of discrete moments, each uniquely shaded, whether by highly amplified small percussive sounds, austere electronic tones, or the mournful tones of Toop’s bass recorder. The course of the music follows a non-teleological drift, in which Sakamoto and Toop seem less concerned with establishing an overarching structure than in allowing each moment the space it needs to develop and breathe.

When Sakamoto eventually turns to the piano’s keyboard in the performance’s second half, the music becomes lushly enveloping as his jaggedly lyrical lines float against a backdrop of prepared guitar and field recordings. The music takes a radical, unexpected turn when Sakamoto picks up an electric guitar, with both players turning up the volume for a passage of distorted roar and shuddering feedback – bracing evidence of the unfettered, exploratory approach shared by these two uncategorisable musicians, beautifully documented here."

2000 - Lack of Love

L.O.L: Lack Of Love is a life simulation game developed created for Sega Dreamcast. The game was released only in Japan and was never exported to the West but it received a fan translation in 2020.

Sakamoto created the score for the game and he was also the game's scenario writer.

The musical score for L.O.L.: Lack of Love was created by film composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, who was also the game's scenario writer.

"The game's creator, Nishi and Sakamoto met at Club Eden via a mutual friend and, through a series of e-mails, began discussing James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis. This theory states that the earth's living organisms function in harmony and respond to ecological changes in order for the planet to sustain life. Nishi explained about the game's message: "We should care for other people, life, the environment and nature. Sakamoto came up with the title. We wanted to question the way in which our lifestyle lacks love"."

Recommended tracks: Artificial Paradise / Decision 

In 1994, Japan Football Association asked Ryuichi Sakamoto to compose the instrumental song - "Japanese Soccer Anthem". The song played at the beginning of Japan Football Association-sponsored events.

Sakamoto appearing in Madonna's Rain music video!

[gohoubi]

Hmmm. 001 Snowpiercer. 002 let's do Wilford/Javi for chaos. 003 Kevin.

Brace yourself bestie.

001 | Snowpiercer:

Favorite character: Wilford <3

Least Favorite character: LJ <3

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): Melaudrey, Melanie/Ben, Wilford/Ben, Wilford/Javi, Alex/Carly

Character I find most attractive: Wilford

Character I would marry: Wilford

Character I would be best friends with: Ben

A random thought: I’ve been around here since 2020…it’s almost 2023…the passage of time…

An unpopular opinion: I don’t like Brakenight and I hope one of them dies next season.

My Canon OTP: Melanie/Ben

My Non-canon OTP: Wilford/Ben

Most Badass Character: Boki. Come on.

Most Epic Villain: LOL ok. Lilah was pretty cool. She had stuff going on.

Pairing I am not a fan of: Mel/Ruth, Brakenight

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Till, Audrey, Melanie-

Favourite Friendship: Melanie/Ruth…I LIKE these two. Just not romantically.

Character I most identify with: Javi, honestly.

Character I wish I could be: Melanie cuz then I’d have the run of the whole train lol.

002 | Wilford/Javi:

When I started shipping them: I thought it would be nice to put sweet little Javi with Nice!Wilford and I also wanted another man to preggify that was not Ben.

My thoughts: Literally way too enthusiastic Javi and indulgent Wilford. Love that!

What makes me happy about them: They’re very cute together <3

What makes me sad about them: They’re the only engineers on Big Alice <3

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: Those bitches aren’t writing enough fics of them. (It’s me. I’m bitches.) 

Things I look for in fanfic: Lots of crying and comfort and general patheticness. Love that.

My wishlist: I mean they are never going to end up together but I hope they meet again in the show <3

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: LOL. Ben for Javi AND Wilford both <3

My happily ever after for them: Living in Big Alice with their baby <3

003 | Kevin

How I feel about this character: LOL he’s funny. Little scrappy gay man <3

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: I don’t ship him with anyone because I can’t think of any gay guys that are alive. So there’s that.

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: I love how he and Ruth keep sniping at each other. Love that.

My unpopular opinion about this character: He should not have died when he did.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: It would have been funnier had he lived longer than he did. He was funny.

Favorite friendship for this character: He’s just so obsequious to Wilford :)

My crossover ship: I don’t do crossovers!

[rainbow-0bsidian]

Ao3 wrapped: 16,20,29 👀

HYPE! My first ask! Look mum, I’m winning at tumblr!

@captain-aralias thanks for the requests 😍

From the ao3 wrapped [writers edition] prompt list

16- my most common ‘additional tags’ tag this year….

Out of five works written/completed this year I have exactly ZERO duplicate additional tags. There are two tags for body waste content warnings, though, so I guess there’s a bit of a theme there.

Bonus slightly related answer, my fave ‘additional tags’ tags are:

“Kevin really does have very excellent thighs” and “who doesn’t want to be bitten by ronan lynch tho”

20 - work of mine that I have reread the most?

Definitely (if you’re feeling small) i’ll love your shadow - because I started it so long ago and needed to go back to the beginning a few times to be able to bring it to a close.

My most reread of mine in general though is The Dry Cleaner (2020). It tickles all of my best buttons.

29 - my favourite line/passage that I wrote this year comes from Transformed by the Changing Light. I’ve embraced a very ‘done is better than perfect’ approach to writing this year, and celebrated the mere act of getting words down. Still, I like this little nugget.

He thought about how easy it had all been. About how Adam didn’t need him to talk, but how eventually he’d wanted to. About how Adam didn’t need him to explain what it was like to feel unmoored, unreal, other. About how not even an impromptu sleepover could keep Adam from studying and how even as Ronan’s fantasies threatened to riot at the closeness of their transition to reality, he’d genuinely enjoyed working through their Latin homework together. About how long after the formal element of their study was completed, they shared secrets and insults in a dead language, in a tiny apartment, above a holy church. 

[tracybirds]

3, 17 and 29 for the ao3 wrapped game?

Thank you :DD And thank you for picking questions that doesn't require my spreadsheet or AO3 being up to date lolol

3. What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?

I think I will pick Consequences :D I started it a while back (like 2020) and it lived a nice happy, ambiguous ending life before I figured I should go and write Gordon out of the mess he was in :P I'm both proud of the writing, proud of the story and proud that I finished it!!

17. Your favourite character to write this year?

Oh that's a hard one!! I love exploring the different characters so much :D I think I'll pick Alan because I did get to write lots with him and for him that I'm proud of :) And my current big project has lots of Alan so I'm especially affectionate towards him right now :D

29. Favourite line/passage you wrote this year?

Ooh just one? I'll be honest I love rereading my fic, but I'm also crap at remembering bits ahaha

Let's go with this from one of the fics I wrote inspired by the prompt generator I made :)

A permanent black thundercloud rested on Scott’s shoulders and John spun solar flares of righteous fury around him, their crackling electricity sparking new flames in each commcall.

Nobody liked it when the Scott and John fought; stubborn pig-headedness facing off against infuriating certainty. It was all the same to Gordon in any case, and he made sure to stay out of their way.

Is it a bit over-dramatic? yeah, but I love it :D