#first time ever posting any original music online kinda scary >.<

[werewolvesinthesouthwest]

band recording of my song ghost for uni :]

recorded on 28.3.24

[felassan]

Mass Effect development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

This is the Mass Effect version of this post.

[In case you can’t read it the subtitle in the bottom left logo above is “Guardians of the Citadel”]

Note: Drug use is mentioned.

Cut for length.

Mass Effect 1

ME began its life in a vision document in fall 2003

Codenamed “SFX”

Conceived of by Casey Hudson and a core team from KotOR. Its genesis was the intention to create an epic sci-fi RPG in an original setting that BioWare owned (so they could have full creative control), and in a setting that was conceived of first and foremost as a video game

Initially players could control any squadmate, but they wanted it to be about Shep and for players to be focused on Shep being a battlefield commander, rather than on switching bodies

By the start of 2004 its story was shaping up. Initially humans landed on Mars in 2250 and discovered evidence of an ancient alien race and a powerful substance, Black Sand, which rapidly advanced tech to the point that FTL travel was possible. (My note: obviously now the Prothean artifacts on Mars & associated mass effect force tech enabled this in the final canon, but I wonder if aspects of the ‘Black Sand’ naming-type & powerful substance stuff was rolled into red sand from final canon) Humans were suddenly capable of travel to multiple star systems and made contact with a multitude of other species. At the start of the first game, these species together with humans had a fragile peace, with focus placed on the political center of the galaxy, a hub known as Star City, later renamed the Citadel

Multiplayer was a vision for the series as far back as 2003. The plan was for ME1, an Xbox exclusive at launch, to take advantage of the platform’s online components. Early designs saw players meeting in one of the central hubs to interact and trade items in their otherwise SP adventures

By 2006 it had the name ME and the story was more specific, with the theme of conflict between organic and synthetic lifeforms. The story’s scope now stretched across 3 games and included scope for full co-op MP

They tried to do MP in every game, discussing it from the get-go, but it always just fell by the wayside. “When you’re trying to build something that is a new IP, on a new platform, with a new engine, you’ve got to really focus on the core elements of the game.” 

The conversation system prototype was made in Jade Empire, and some of ME’s earliest writing was done in an old JE build. At first there was no conversation wheel. Paragon was “Friendly” and Renegade “Hostile”. In the prototype Shep was a silent unnamed Spectre. Many conversations in the prototype about the player’s choice in smuggling a weapon through Noveria made it into the game

In said prototype a merchant referred to themselves as “this one”, though the word hanar never appeared. The PC in it also had the option to end a conversation with “I should go”. In the prototype also, Harkin was voiced by Mark Meer

An early version of the Mako got used as the krogan truck in ME2

Early concepts of the Citadel were drawn in pencil by CH. A piece of concept art of its final design was painted based on a photo of a sculpture near Aswan, Egypt

As with any new IP naming it was a struggle. They put out a call to all staff for ideas, did polls, made a name generator that combined words that they liked in random ways and made pretend logos of ones they liked in Photoshop to see if they could make themselves love the name or find visual potential in it. (Some of these names are in the pic at the top of this post.) CH liked “Unearthed” as it was a reference to Prothean ruins dug up on Mars and humanity’s ascendance going away from Earth. They knew the game would have a central space station featuring prominently so some of the ideas were based on that - “The Citadel”, “The Optigon”, “The Oculon”. “Element” was another one they had in mind due to the rare substance in the game 

CH: “I was a big fan of John Harris’ book Mass, which had epic-scaled sci-fi ideas, so that was a word that came up often. Many of the names came from the idea that the IP featured a fifth fundamental physical force (in addition to the known four of gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear) so the word ‘effect’ came up pretty often.” Ultimately none of the ideas really felt right. One Monday morning they were going over the names and Greg Zeschuk said he had an idea on the weekend: “Mass Effect!” CH: “I said, ‘I don’t hate it’, which in the naming process is a high compliment. And it stuck!”

CH on Shep’s Prothean vision from the beacon: “It was hard to imagine how we would do this. CG was - and is - really expensive. Instead I wanted to try doing it through photography and video editing. So I went to a local grocery store and bought a few packages of the weirdest looking meat that I could find. Then I set up a little photoshoot in my basement, complete with some electronics parts and some red wine for juicyness.” He used these props to create a video sequence where the photos were rapidly cycled and blurred, along with production paintings, to create the scary vision an organic/machine experiment on the Protheans. These mashups were also used as inspiration for concept artists and level designers who were working on these themes

Tali used to be called Talsi

On the licensing side they often joke that they’re licensing N7 not “Mass Effect” due to N7′s popularity

There was a confidential internal guide to the IP in 2007 to help devs along and summarize/synthesize the vision etc. Some excerpts from it are shown in the book and this is the first time the public have ever seen them

Early versions of Asari had hair

Asari were designed as a nod to classic TV sci-fi (with human actors wearing obvious makeup and prosthetics to play aliens)

The turian design guideline was “we want them to be birds of prey”. They also wanted a range of alien types, some close to human like Asari, while others were to be a lot further away, like turians

BioWare patented the conversation wheel, which was a first for them. CH had been frustrated with reviews of Jade Empire that said that the actioncentric game was too wordy [with its list dialogue]. “I’m like, story is words. [...] What is it about our games that is making people feel like they’re wordy?” Then he thought “In a game you kind of need to feel like you’re continuing to play it. Maybe you should continue feeling like you’re playing it actively into the dialogue.” “[The wheel] kind of gave a new experience with dialogue when you did start to react based on emotion, and that’s ultimately what we’re trying to bring out in our games”

The original krogan concept was based on a bat “with a really wide squidgy face. We just used its face on top of this weird body and it kinda worked”

Geth musculature was based on fiber-optic cables, with flexible plates of armor attached

The vision for the IP was 80s sci-fi inspired space opera

The concept art of Saren lifting Shep by the throat inspired a similar scene in-game. The staging wasn’t planned til designers saw that art

A squadmate with Shepard on the way to meet Ash in an old storyboard was called Carter. Early name of Kaidan or Jenkins?

Bono from U2 was kinda instrumental in bringing us ME lol

Finding the right cover art for ME1 was notably tricky

Matt Rhodes got his start drawing helmets for ME1, including one which would become Shep’s “second face”. He estimates he drew between 250-270 different ones

Some of the sounds in-game were people smashing watermelons with sledgehammers and sticking fists into various goos

The audio team had fun trying to slip the iconic main theme into unexpected places throughout the MET. “We were very aware of how powerful that track was for the fans and it was tempting to overuse it for any moment we wanted to make really emotional”.

The theme was creatively repurposed in ME3: slowed down and reworked as the ambient sound for the SR-2. “If you listen to it for a really long time, just stand in the Normandy and listen, you’ll actually hear the notes change slowly. It doesn’t sound like music, it sounds like a background ambiance, but it’s there.” (My note: Well no wonder the Normandy feels so much like home?? 😭 sneaky..)

Bug report: “Mako Tornado”. There wasn’t enough friction between the tires and the ground, causing testers to lose control of the vehicle and send it spinning into the air like a tornado. “As it turns, the front end comes up, and then it starts spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning faster and faster and faster until it just flies up in the sky” (My note: Sounds like a regular day in the Mako to me)

Cerberus originally had a bigger role in this game. It was cut but they had a whole explorable outpost. “I called it Misery,” says Mac Walters, “It was this planet with a little outpost that said ‘Welcome to Misery’”. Everything on the outpost was shit - dirty worn stuff, no windows, no kitchen, the vehicle bay was open to the elements etc

The Reaper sound is literal garbage. Some audio designers went on a recording trip to a national park. One of them got fixated on a garbage can, “a metal bear-proof receptacle with a heavy lid that creaked horribly when opened”. “It was like, ominous, spooky, tonal and almost musical. I decided to throw a mic into the garbage and record it moving. I didn’t know what it was going to be until later”

They were making lots of noises to record like throwing logs and rocks around. An old couple peered at them through the window of their camper van in the woods and must have called the cops because then the cops showed up, pulled them over and told them to stop. The cops towed their car (the driver’s plates were Cali plates and expired), drove them to Edmonton outskirts and then the audio producer Shauna got a call and had to go pick them up “like three little boys”. “We got a stern talking to”. Once back they were playing around with the garbage sound, editing it etc. Casey heard it and proclaimed “That’s the sound of the Reapers”

Preston Watamaniuk: “There are things I could have done to Mass 1 to make it an infinitely better game with better UIs” and some simple cuts and changes. “But when you’re living with it, it’s very hard to see those things”

BioWare Labs

As social media and smartphone games exploded, BioWare dedicated a small team dedicated to exploring opportunities here - BioWare Labs

Mass Effect: Galaxy used a unique graphic art style and static visual presentation common in visual novels. It has the distinction of being the only iOS game BW have made during their first 25 years

Scrapped ideas were a 3rd person space shooter called Mass Effect: Corsair and 2 DA titles - a strategy game and a top-down dungeon crawler starring young Wynne. (My note: Maybe the corsairs stuff was rolled into Jacob’s backstory in 2, the Alliance Corsairs)

Corsair was a very short-lived project that never got its feet under it. It was a spin-off on Nintendo DS featuring a behind-the-ship perspective and branching dialogue. At one point it had MP. The idea behind it was basically “ME: Freelancer” - fly your ship around, do missions, get credits. It had a limited branching story but was a gameplay-centered experience intended to fill the gap between ME1 and 2. That gap ended up being filled by Galaxy

Galaxy and Corsair’s smaller screen allowed concept artists to use bold colors and a simplistic character design style to help those games stand out from Shep’s story

Nick Thornborrow did some art for Corsair but was worried his art style didn’t fit ME. He moved to DA where he feels his art style fits better

Lots of BioWare VAs and even a lead writer and the VO director are drawn from Edmonton’s local community theater scene, which is vibrant. Think this is how Mark Meer got involved

Mass Effect 2

Player choices carrying over was a first for BW

Dirty Dozen-inspired plot

Its plot is a web of conditionals (see Suicide Mission)

Was more of a shooter than anything BW had made since Shattered Steel

There was 2 camps on the team, those who wanted to push combat and systems forward and redefine the ME experience and those who wanted to make a true sequel, with the same gameplay and systems but a new story. Karin Weekes: “I think it ended up being a good push-pull. It felt like a pretty healthy creative conflict”

“ME2 was a game you could hold up to someone who argues that games aren’t a serious medium and go ‘Oh yeah, then why is Martin Sheen in this?’” Sheen was their first pick for TIM

The idea for TIM came from a mash-up of concepts CH had collected over the years. The name “Illusive” originally came from his pitch for naming DAO’s Eclipse engine, a word inspired by Obi-Wan’s line “It’s not about the mission, Master. It’s something... elsewhere. Elusive”. “I thought, what if we called our next engine 'Elusive', but used an ‘I’, and then it’s like ‘Illusion’. [...] I still really like the word with an ‘I’ and what it conjures”

When ME1 DLC was in production, CH had been watching a lot of CNN, specifically Anderson Cooper. “How is one guy travelling to all these places and never looking tired and always being able to speak with clarity?” CH says it seemed almost superhuman. “What if there was someone who is the absolute maximum of the things you would aspire to be, but also the worst of humanity?” Cooper, though not evil, became an inspiration for TIM down to the gray hair and piercing blue eyes

Inspiration for TIM’s behind-the-scenes role pulling political strings came from Jack Bauer’s brother Graem in 24. Graem “can call up the president and tell him what to do and hang up, because he’s so connected and so influential”. Sheen had played a president and his performance brought gravitas and wisdom to the role. He had quit smoking, but the character smokes. He didn’t want to fake it, but he also didn’t want to smoke, “so he actually asked for a cigarette” to hold so he could stop his words to take drags with natural cadence

Writing was still pushing to write and revise lines hours before VO started. A series of problems like injury and some writers leaving for other opportunities left it so that Karin, Lukas Kristjanson and editor Cookie Everman hand to land the story safely, with PW helping where they could. Lukas: “We took over the writing bug and task list, and I can’t stress enough how much [Karin and Cookie] did to get ME2 out the door. There’s no part of that thing we didn’t touch”. Karin: “That was the most dramatic 2 weeks of my life”

Initial fan reaction when they started promo-ing ME2 was very negative because people didn’t want to know about new chars like Jack and Mordin. “[fans were like] ‘Get them out of here. We want our characters from the first game’. But then when they played them, those became some of the most popular chars [of the series]”

Concept art of Thane has an idea annotation saying “Face can shapeshift?”

At one point when designing Thane concept artists sent multiple variations of him to the team asking them to vote on which was the most attractive

Most of the Normandy crew was written by lead level designer Dusty Everman. Lukas gave him advice in the evenings between bugs

BioWare Montreal made ME2 and 3 cinematics

CC for Shep was based on tools used by char designers to create in-game chars. Under the hood similar tools existed to create aliens

Aliens were much easier to animate than humans. When something is human it’s very difficult to make it look realistic and you can see all the mistakes and everything

Over the holiday period in 2007 CH worked out a diagram on a single piece of paper that would define the entire scope and structure of the game. The diagram is included in the book

Bug report: “I shot a krogan so hard that his textures fell off”. At one point shotgun blast damage was applied to each of the pellets fired, and shot enemies ended up with just the default checkerboard Unreal texture on them after their textures got blown off

Blasto was meant to be 1 step above an Easter egg but his fan popularity prompted them to bring him back in ME3

They rewrote chunks of Jack 2 days before she went to VO. She was the only one they could change because all the other NPCs were recorded. They redesigned her mission by juggling locked NPC lines and changing Shep’s reactions by rewriting text paraphrases to change the context of the already-recorded VO

Lukas snuck obscure nods ito ME2′s distress calls. In the general distress call for the Hugo Gernsback, there’s BW’s initial’s and Edmonton’s phone number backwards. In a fault in a beacon protocol there’s the initials and backward phone number from Tommy Tutone’s “Jenny”. In 2 other general distress calls there’s initials and numbers from Glenn Miller Orchestra’s “Pennsylvania 6-5000″ and initials and numbers from Geddy Lee and Rush’s “2112″ respectively 

Mass Effect 3

“The end of an era marks the beginning of another”

ME3 “marked the end of Shep’s story”

Saying bye to Shep was as difficult for devs as it was for players

JHale’s final VO session included Anderson’s death and romanced Garrus’ goodbye. “We were in the session and we both just started crying”, Caroline says. “I couldn’t come on the line to give her notes because I was crying, and she was crying. And so there was just this minute-long pause of like, nothing, nothing, nothing - just silence through the airwaves. And then I came on and just told her that I was crying and she said ‘I’m crying!’” They talked about these anecdotes also here on the N7 Day reunion panel

The Microsoft Kinect voice support required devs to teach Kinect hundreds of commands in a variety of accents across multiple languages. The result was useful but made for some awkward moments. Numerous players accidentally said “geth” or “quarian” while making a particular decision and accidentally killed Tali

MP chars were voiced by cops and military people

The helmet on one of the MP chars was originally designed for cancelled project Revolver

The payload device at the end needed to attach to the Citadel while essentially serving as a giant trigger. “It ended up becoming quite the engineering feet just to visualize how this thing would move and connect to the Citadel”

Concept artists explored creating an anti-team, where Kai Leng was almost an anti-Shepard essentially, with an elite squad to counteract your team. This idea never went beyond concept phase

ME3 Special Edition was released on Nintendo Wii U exclusively. This exclusive version of the game includes Genesis 2 (a sequel to the original Genesis comic) and unique gameplay features that took advantage of the touchscreen GamePad. For years Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood had had the honor of being BW’s only game made for a Nintendo console

FemShep regrettably didn’t feature in major ME marketing til ME3. Later releases like DAI, MEA and Anthem have taken increasing care not to gender their protagonists in cover art

To capture combat sounds they took a trip to CFB Wainwright, a military base southeast of Edmonton. They got a big tour of it and were allowed to record anything they could find. The tour ended with them getting to drive and shoot tanks (real shells). The force of doing that sent waves through Joel Green, he felt his whole chest compress when it went off; the perfect sound for the Black Widow! After the trip the soldiers let him keep the shell he fired and it’s been passed on like a torch to various devs since

Kakliosaurs began life as a joke in the writers’ room after John Dombrow placed a Grunt figure on a t-rex toy he had on his desk. Lore was brainstormed to justify the mash-up before someone asked, “Why don’t we put this in the game?” They loved it so much Karin had custom coffee mugs made

Bug report: For a while Tali’s final romance scene would fire when she was supposed to be dead

“Balancing combat: how designers in ME3 entered an ‘arms race’” - the solution to players feeling OP vs players feeling frustrated by really strong enemies is to find a good middle ground, but for designers Corey Gaspur and Brenon Holmes, it was war. Brenon designed enemies, Corey designed guns. Corey “was obsessed with bigger, heavier guns. We had this sort of informal competition where he’d make this crazy overturned gun that would just murder all the enemies, and then I tuned some stuff up to compensate”

Brenon had to invent new ways to “stop Corey” and this led to the Phantoms. Corey had in turn designed consumable rockets that could wipe out entire waves of enemies. He must’ve figured this would make short work of Brenon’s space ninjas, but Brenon had other plans: “I had just added the ability for her to cut rockets [when Corey was playing MP and he was watching]. She cut the rocket in half... Corey just turns and looks at me and is like: ‘Really dude? I just shot a rocket at this Phantom and she’s fine? Not even damaged? Zero damage?’” 

This friendly rivalry helped elevate ME3′s gameplay. Corey had a knack for making a gun feel so good to fire it had his fellow designers scrambling to keep up. It was his version of balancing. Before Corey sadly passed away he mentored Boldwin Li in all things weapon design and the arms race continued

Corey designed the Arc Pistol. It was causing problems for enemies because it was too powerful. It seemed hell bent on staying that way, Boldwin would tune down all its stats and it was still doing 3x the damage it should have been doing. “I was like ‘What the hell?’, and then I looked closer. It secretly fired 3 bullets for every pull of the trigger! Corey, you sneaky jerk”

The day it launched there were midnight launch parties across North America including one near the BW building. Numerous devs sat at long tables greeting fans and signing autographs as the fans picked up preorders. When midnight struck the line was long enough that it took several hours for some fans to get their game. One particular fan is remembered: “It was 3am. Some guy drove up from Calgary with his friends. He was like one of the last people in line. I think he was sort of tired-drunk. He threw himself across the tables, pulled up his shirt and shouted ‘Guys, sign my abs!’ And like I did, because he waited so long. It felt impolite not to. So I hope he enjoyed his copy of ME3″

For designing Protheans concept artists had free reign to design something that read as ancient

Before the concept art team had the story of the game to work toward, they explored wild ideas of their own including an image of the crew stealing back the Normandy to go after the Reapers

Jen Cheverie was testing scenes and was initially excited to be testing Mordin scenes, til she saw she was testing the Renegade version of his death. “This is even before like all of the audio and everything was in, so you didn’t even have the sad music. I remember sitting at my desk and my hands just went to my face when I saw that the gun Shep pulls on Mordin is the gun he gives Shep in ME2. I burst into tears and was crying for the rest of the day. People are waving to me as they walk by and I’m like, ‘It’s ok, I’m just killing my best friend’” 

There’s a segment called “Shepard’s story ends”. Casey on the ending: “There’s a whole bunch of things that come together to make it incredibly tense and emotional for players. I think the biggest one was the sense of finality, that whatever it was that happened in that very last moment... was it.” 

Wrapping up the story was a massive feat. In a way all of ME3 is an ending. Its final moments were the players’ last with a char they’d been with all the way from Eden Prime

“And while the critical reception of the game was extremely positive, many fans were unsatisfied with the ending, which became one of the most controversial in the history of games.” CH: “We were, on one hand, at the end of a marathon trying to finish the game and the series. But as devs we also knew that there would be more. We knew that we would continue to tell the story. In retrospect, we didn’t fully appreciate the tremendous sense of finality that it would have for people”. He envisioned an ending that posed new questions, something in the tradition of high sci-fi that left players dreaming about what that particular galaxy’s future could hold. “Frankly, there’s a lot more that we could have and should have done to honor the work players put in, to give them a stronger sense of reward and closure”

AAA games are massive undertakings with a million moving parts. Somehow they come together but even the best-planned projects don’t turn out quite like devs hope. From start to end video game production is a series of compromises. It’s rare if not impossible for devs to ship a game they’re entirely happy with. “I think that people imagine that when you finish a game, it’s exactly the way you wanted it to be. But whether people end up loving or hating the final result, we work hard to finish it the best we can, knowing that there’s a lot we would have wanted to do better. I think that’s true of any creative work”

As the dust settled after the initial reaction to the ending and later its epilogue, meant to show the wide-reaching ripple effects of Shep’s final choice, “players emerged mostly asking for one thing”. CH: “Now, most of what we hear, after both ME3 and MEA, is ‘Hey, just go make more Mass Effect’. And that to me is the most important thing. Knowing that players want to return to the ME universe is what inspires us to press on and imagine what comes next”

Mass Effect: Andromeda

By creating a new ME in a new galaxy the team was challenged to put their own visual stamp on the game while keeping it true to the franchise

Being the first ME game on a new gen of consoles meant for more detail

“Massive transport ships called arks populated with salarians, turians, humans, asari and quarians” made the risky jump to the Cluster

MEA was the first time BW had truly codeveloped across 3 studios: Edmonton, Montreal and Austin. The bulk of the work especially early on was done in Montreal, which was composed of a handful of Edmonton expats and heaps of experienced devs who joined from elsewhere specifically to bring a new ME experience to life. Series vets in Edmonton then came on to contribute writing, cinematics, design and QA, along with leadership from creative director Mac Walters and the core Production team. Austin writers and level designers also joined the fray

“It took a new team to take ME beyond the Milky Way”

Mac: “A lot of people in Montreal joined BW as fans of the franchise, so they just had this passion, and it felt like it was more like the days of Jade Empire, where a smaller younger team gets to do something for the first time. Even though it wasn’t necessarily a new IP for me, it felt fresh and new because of that. The team was just super excited to be working on it”

Early plans had the player exploring hundreds of worlds, procedurally generated, allowing for a nearly infinite variety of experiences. But as development wore on, it became clear that the game narrative required more specific, hand-touched level design on each world to keep the story focused and the experience engaging. “The plan was to give players numerous uncharted worlds to explore. Designers worked hard to come up with procedural elements that would make such planets special. Eventually the team made the difficult decision to abandon procedural planets in favor of more memorable hand-touched alien worlds, each with a specific story to tell”

One challenge was defining what ME meant without Shep. Care was given to include many of the MET’s key species. “Ryder recruited turian, asari, krogan and salarian followers”. Like Shep Ryder represents humanity’s hope for a peaceful coexistence among aliens who had long operated without human contact

Beginning with MEA the team decided that with few exceptions vehicles in ME have 6 wheels. Early Nomad concepts were bulkier. Later ones focused on its ability to move over its ability to protect itself from hostile fire, underlining the themes of exploration

German concept designer and auto-motive futurist Daniel Simon was contracted to create the Nomad and Tempest. The Tempest’s final design took inspo from the Concorde 

Concepts for angaran fighter ships have the following notes: “Two doors swing open, wings rotate down to function as landing struts, the landing struts split open. It has a spinning turbine engine 

Despite being set a galaxy away and some 600 years after Mordin’s death, there was a time when he had a cameo. It wasn’t cut due to running out of time however, it was cut due to drug references. John Dombrow explains: “One day I had to write a small quest for Kadara. I thought it’d be amusing if these 2 guys living way out on the fringes in a shack were growing plants for uh, medicinal purposes, and needed Ryder’s help with it. It occurred to me, wouldn’t it be amusing if Ryder had the option of actually trying ‘the medicine’ to see what would happen? And I thought, what if it turned into some hallucination that somehow involved SAM - like maybe SAM would sing? But why? How could I motivate that? Then it hit me. Who else in the ME game sings unexpectedly? MORDIN. As a nod to him I wrote SAM singing Modern Major-General. It got even better when our cine designer John Ebenger wanted to take it even further. Bless him, he came in on a Saturday to do a special hallucination showing Mordin himself. It was great. Til the fateful day we were told MEA had already been submitted to the ratings board. That’s when you declare things like drug references in your game. Mordin fell under that category which meant it was a no-go. We were too late”

Ryder’s white AI armor contrasts Shep’s iconic dark armor (intentional design)

Concept art for Ryder involved experiments with cloth (cloaks, ponchos, capes - “Pull here to release cloak”) and asymmetrical design elements

For alien design, there’s a few exceptions but humanoid figures are the ME standard and this persisted into MEA

Kett and angara concepts explored striking lines and textures 

– From Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

[sierrabinondo]

2020

damn my last tumblr post is the last day of woodland creatures, did i not do a 2019 wrap up?? i feel like i did. oh well lmao

so, arguably the most tumultuous year in modern history (at least, american history- all pandemic and political events considered) is about to come to a close. it was very not fun experiencing a pandemic as millions lost their loved ones to covid. i was part of the 20% of people that became unemployed as a result of the economy taking a huge dump. i would not want to experience this same year again if it meant that every life lost could be saved. with the year i was given, i made the best out of it that i could. 

like every other person on this earth (except for where the virus was already spreading), this year started out normal as hell for me. i was hating my job but chugging through each week, with the occasional show to worry about and then planning our band’s 2020 release plans. despite my salaried job, i was barely making enough to put anything away in savings, forthcoming disney trip aside. i really felt like i was putting in all this work at a full time job just to barely stay afloat and it grated at my soul. i don’t dream of labor, and i only take jobs like this because nothing i am passionate about truly makes money and the marketing jobs i would actually care about are never available to me/never come to fruition after submitting myself for consideration. 

disney was a huge highlight of my year despite being deathly sick. i keep wondering if i had covid (i never figured it out), but it sure as hell felt like it. i feel like if i did have it i would have passed it on to jeremiah and his family but i didn’t. i could still kinda taste, but not smell because i had the worst sinus infection i ever had in my entire fucking life. like i know i get them a lot but really, holy shit. i really had it bad. it started when we were in the studio the 2nd to last weekend of february on the last studio day. i had to go back to the studio several months later because i was that unsatisfied with how the vocals came out. i didn’t want to fuck up these releases and have my performance be mid so i was willing to pay to have to re-do everything. i assumed if this was like any other sinus infection, it would go away in a week.

lmao.

i had that infection for THREE WHOLE FUCKING WEEKS. i played a show with that monster sinus infection, and went to disney with it. i went two weeks without meds because i really was convinced it would go away on its own. before we left for disney i finally got antibiotics at urgent care and couldn’t drink most of the trip which sucked. but that finally did the job, and the infection waned when we returned from disney. despite being physically weak, in pain (there was one friday my body pains were so horrible that jeremiah contemplated taking me to the hospital), and leaking snot all over my sleeves the entire trip (LIKE IT WAS THAT UNCONTROLLABLE. I HAD NEVER GONE THROUGH THAT MANY PACKS OF TISSUES IN MY LIFE. I WAS LEAKING SO MUCH I HAD TO LOCATE THE BABY CHANGING STATION IN MAGIC KINGDOM. IT WAS LIKE A SECRET STERILIZED TROVE OF HAND SANITIZER, WIPES, TISSUES AND BABY OIL.) i had an amazing time at disney. and it was my first time going with a significant other so it was incredibly fun. it was also a wonderful opportunity to spend time with his family. the only very not fun part was missing our nephew in the main street parade because some bozos fucked up the info they gave my sister-in-law and we were out walking around when his high school band had actually marched earlier than we thought.

it’s funny, because that weekend after we returned was the last weekend of “freedom” everyone had before lockdown. we were weary of covid while in florida but still living it up on vacation. at that time, there had only been 3 cases in orlando. 3!!!! i had plans to go to a party once home but i cancelled only because i still wasn’t completely out of the woods and 100% well again. i felt so bad cancelling because it was for my friend’s party and she never really did parties usually :( and i thought it wouldn’t be a good idea considering i may or may not have had covid. 

then... the following week came. 

monday we got a weird email from our CEO saying there was going to be salary cuts and that it was essential for the company to survive a downturn. i pouted but my parents consoled me saying it was better than nothing; maybe look for a new job. and then- i got the nothing! a day or two later, i was let go. and i could tell my manager was absolutely not souped to be giving me this call at all. she literally prefaced it like, “this sucks, but-” and gave me the news. and i was utterly devastated, sobbing controllably, because i was just scraping by on this income to begin with. and i had JUST, finally, received health insurance through this job. i was asked to continue working through friday the 20th, which i would be paid for, and then i would have to return my laptop and any other work materials (like printouts and promo stuff) i had possession of. 

that day and the days following i had coworkers calling me or emailing me telling me they were so sorry. i was the first to be let go, and they were kind enough to extend words of encouragement to me. clients i worked closely with, a couple of them around my age, assured me that i could use them as a reference. many of my colleagues were my higher-ups, but were very down-to-earth people. one call that stuck out to me was from my colleague sarah. 

sarah was candid with me and said, “y’know how i was unemployed for 6 months?” i knew this well though we had only worked together for a year and a half; it was an important part of her path to where she was in her career now and why she chose it. she continued, “those were the best 6 months of my life.” 

and i would come to find out that yes, me too being unemployed was the best fucking time of my entire goddamn adult life.

when i posted i was officially unemployed i had an outpouring of support from my friends, and received enough animal crossing commissions to pay one month’s rent. the first day i finally felt peace was when i was sitting on my porch on an abnormally warm march day playing animal crossing following my last day at my company. it was like the universe was giving me a hug and telling me everything was going to be all right.

what would come was a pretty chaotic couple of months. jeremiah, my roommate and i would stay up until 3 am either watching anime or playing video games, subsequently sleeping until 11 am or noon. pair having fun, drinking (mostly me lmao) and lounging about with the scary realization that thousands of people every day were dying of covid and it could be my high-risk parents. i would cry at night and be so fucking scared. my sibling would tell me my family was being reckless, running unnecessary errands, and whenever my dad showed up to drop off food or necessities i would cry because i couldn’t hug him. i’m even getting choked up thinking about it now. and it was a fear that returned during the second spike around the holidays because it is the loss i fear the most.  

amidst this really horrible time, i would play games almost every other night online with my friends and it was so much fucking fun because all of us were either unemployed, furloughed or working from home. we’d laugh so goddamn hard our voices were hoarse. one of my favorite memories is playing quiplash with the creatureposting gang and then my big friends from college. and a really fun night in particular was SIIE release night, i popped a bottle of champagne and got absoluely zonked lmao. every few days i would have something to look forward to, some sort of virtual plans with my friends. this would continue until july when my friends were slowly starting to go back to work.

most of my early quarantine days were as follows: wake up, watch anime, work on commissions for most of the day, order extremely good food for delivery, play video games, and then bed. at one point commissions became so overwhelming i started to get slower at churning them out. though this became a daunting project, WOW it really forced me to become a better artist. and this year i got to spend so much more time drawing, which was fantastic. 

one thing i DID NOT spend a lot of time on at all? ugh. MUSIC. FUCKING MUSIC. i barely touched my guitar, stopped writing lyrics after july, and barely completed the instrumentals for about 3 songs. the only thing i consistently practiced was singing (because i would literally curl up and die if i didn’t). do you have any idea how much i blabbed to my therapist in 2019 about how much i would get done if i didn’t work full time and could just focus on my creative endeavors? and then life HANDED that shit to me on a silver platter the following year. i really did nothing insane musically with my time. and now i am really kicking myself for it. if i think about it, it was mostly because i was so exhausted from doing AC commissions, and partly because i was really intimidated about the prospect of struggling through songwriting. now i really wish that i had tried. 

one thing i started doing this year was streaming. i originally planned to just do it for fun, because i am horrible at video games and i really didn’t expect much out of it. i thought it would be cool if my friends could watch me play animal crossing. and then i unfortunately learned that this 3rd expensive pasttime is actually really, really, really fun. i started to spend half my week streaming and it led me to either getting closer to some online friends i only talked to a lil previously and making new friends. viewers would ask me if i continue to stream after the pandemic was over, and i enthusiastically assured them i would. and i meant it. even with the difficulties of returning to work and the band playing shows again considered, i really wanted to. i don’t get invited to things anymore anyway, so fuck it if that’s what i stand to lose lmao.

when the curve flattened in jersey i decided to become lenient again and start meeting with my bandmates. we spent the year trying to finish some new material and chip away at what work we have to do for the full length (yes, a full length). we had plans to tour this year and it sucks that fell through. we also had plans to do so much more content during the pandemic and we faltered under the stress of... well, existing in a pandemic. we did finally get to drop a new single though, and the difference in hype now vs when we dropped our last work was incredible. i am so thankful we were able to build an audience with nothing new for two years. i still often beat myself up because god every day i look around me, at our peers, and wonder where the fuck we’ve gone wrong to have such a slow build. and even daily just trying to stand out and prove that we have cut our teeth/deserve a chance is so demoralizing. i feel like it’s even worse than before. i literally have to talk to myself out loud, both alone and during interviews lmao, to remind myself that we truly have accomplished so much. and to take in and appreciate the little positive things. because this could all be over in a second. and this won’t be forever. the older we get the more we are risking for this, both time and resources, and it won’t do to let myself get bogged down over my inner competitive voice. but god it’s hard. like even with new music we still didn’t even TOUCH any of the goal numbers we set for ourselves in may. though we did put out less music than we had planned, and we really hope to change that in 2021 forreal. 

there was a single we were supposed to put out this year that’s on hold due to some pending assets but goddamn. if we really don’t break some sort of ceiling with this one i don’t know what will. i have the strongest gut feeling about the next single and in my opinion, it’s the best one we’ve had to date. when we play it at shows, the air in the room sometimes shifts. i’m eager to see what the response is and i’m so ready to push it with everything i have.

fuck this is getting so much longer than i planned i have to try to wrap this up lmao.

with our government stimmy money we turned around and got the dog of our dreams. we figured, i’d be home enough to watch him, and it was finally goddamn time. it’s why we moved into a house and not into another apartment. i was so scared meeting the puppy parents, and totally on edge the entire day. we went out to meet the breeder to test my allergies and see how i would react. samoyeds are not 100% perfectly hypoallergenic, but they were often lauded for being so. honestly? i still didn’t feel confident after two hours with the dogs because the pollen out there was bad (one of my WORST allergies) and i had mysterious hives on my arms i couldn’t figure out where they came from. for months jeremiah and my parents had to calm my nerves and remind me i lived with 3 cats before i moved out (i’m more allergic to cats) and that i would be fine. i had to do a lot of work on myself to get out of my own way about being excited about finally owning the dog of my dreams.  

this little fucking boy. i couldn’t believe he was real. neither in the pictures i often looked at about 20 times a day on the breeder’s facebook page nor when we went to meet him. and he was truly, truly perfect. our little shithead. when we went to go pick him out, he sat apart from his puppy pile of brothers, sniffing around the room and trying to rip off his ribbon collar. we locked eyes and he fuCKING APPROACHED ME. i could not fathom any other puppy in the room being brawly. this was the one. we could already tell he was a mischevious smartass, because once he untied his ribbon he proceeded to rip off the ribbons of all the other puppies. but he was the cutest, flopping over on his back when you were near to get belly rubs. 

ever since we have picked him up he has simultaneously been the biggest joy in our lives and the most source of stress lmao. that first week, and the next couple, werE FUCKING ROUGH.  i had a horrible anxiety attack when i couldn’t calm him for bedtime the first saturday he was home and i was loudly sobbing to jeremiah that i couldn’t handle this shit lmao. he was so scared i was having regrets but i am just a fucking anxious wreck and not used to having a DOG!! this is my first dog!!! but while i can remember what life was like before him i cannot imagine going back. the first time he got sick and we took him to the emergency vet i cried so hard. when he is wagging his tail happy to see me and he looks like a fuckin seal because his ears are folded back it is the best feeling. i’m so excited for when he gets older and we’re vaccinated for covid so that we can take him on so many adventures. he is truly the best.

there is so much more i want to say but this is long as shit. this is even painful for me to read lmao. it’s always been for me, a guy with dogshit memory, to remember everything, but so, so much happened. so i’m gonna wrap up the real descriptive stuff with this.

being unemployed allowed me to just experience life. to wake up each day, enjoy the sun in my backyard, have time to try new recipes, go for long walks, GET A DOG, get better at art, get better at singing, spend more time with friends (virtually), bond even harder with my amazing, beautiful boyfriend, create amazing work with my bandmates, improve at video games, connect with people all over the world, and so much more. all my life i let money dictate my every move. i am insanely privileged to have experienced this but when i had to just live within my means off unemployment i did just fine. i once believed i was perpetually indebted to my employer when i was discarded like it was nothing. i can get a job anywhere and be fine. it strengthened my class consciousness and while i have control over my own destiny it is our country that has so royally screwed us of living the lives we should be living. our lives do not revolve around labor. so until we win the fight and get what we deserve, i will be returning to work next month (full time... in commercial real estate.... again), but i will do whatever it takes to replicate the everlasting feeling of joy i felt this year for the rest of my godforsaken life. if that means struggling for 2021 to build up my twitch channel and the band, working 9 hour days and then streaming/writing music for another 4, so be it. i felt from a young age i was not destined to live a normal life and that feeling has stayed with me no matter how much i have tried to play the game of life as i have been told. i finally have the confidence to pave the life i want.

so, if you are here at this very spot because you read everything, thank you. if you are here because you scrolled to see how long this was, here’s the TLDR of my best parts of 2020:

- tapping out cover

- the 2 shows we played lmao, maybe 3 tops

- disneyworld

- ACNH outside on the porch on release day in warm weather

- making banana bread

- learning how to BRINE meats

- watching anime until 3 am, namely the time we watched pokemon journeys until 3 am 

-watching so. much. anime. 

-watching livestream concerts with my friends (the chon one was a real good time)

-playing jackbox with my creatureposting friends, the volcano saga (if u know u know)

-playing jackbox with my big friends

-the first time we ever had panchos and juanchos

-finally having sushi again after painful cravings and being grumpy

-the first time we had chinese food again after the lockdown began

-hitting the punching bag for the first time in forever (my dad bought me one)

-the first time we had ramen in forever

-surprising joe with cake at his doorstep for his birthday (we thought he would be the only one with a pandemic birthday lmao)

-playing monopoly and wheel of fortune on the switch, surprisingly having fun

-jeremiah’s birthday

-getting PAID for my ART

-writing + recording ONE (1) acoustic demo

-finally finishing the singles, fixing the vocals 

-shooting band promos

-unus annus

-meeting samoyeds

-meeting BRAWLY

-streaming except for the times 13 year olds cyberbullied me

-my birthday when my mom got me a terrifying singing birthday candle contraption and my sibling curbstomped the shit out of it (i was literally crying laughing like that kind of noiseless laugh cause you’re laughing that hard)

- getting the stamp of approval from andrew wells and anthony green 

-my friends having their first baby!!!

-dying from thanksgiving charceuterie board

-that week i binged ghibli movies on an hbo max trial and did nothing else

-filling the front porch with plants and most of them SURVIVING the fall, possibly winter but we’ll see in 2021 lmao

- (in general) nailing riffs i fucking sing over and over when practicing but prob won’t get down good enough to sing in front of others lmao

-solo inflatable pool hangs

-thursdays with sarah in the fall playing with the puppy

-the release of the first WSA single in two and a half years

-virtual movie night with sarah watching happiest season

-the music video shoots

-brawly experiencing CHRISTMAS

-receiving really thoughtful gifts from jerry and my parents

-deciding i would work towards being a full time streamer to supplement being a musician

[lilquill]

Are you doing okay what with all the VV stuff that happened? It seemed like you and Mina were close

Hey hey, thanks for the worries anon! Mina of mvcreates/Violet Vineyard and I were properly talking as friends for only a few months quite a long time ago. Emotionally I’m completely fine, but I do have stuff to say and I do want to help document things if any of it is useful in any way. A lot of it will be dry because it’s just documenting, but some of it will be “juicier” I guess, and I’d like to corroborate some of the things my friends are saying. I’ll put this under the cut for people who don’t want to scroll through all this and/or have no idea what I’m talking about and want to keep it that way!

You guys can check @nuwuhorizons‘s blog to see what exactly is going on and I believe they’re also reblogging some things others who were members are saying. The case of people dogpiling a 19-year-old trans person and making fun of their name is on the blog (post here, wayback machined here).

I can corroborate a bunch of what @rrrawrf-writes (post here, wayback machined here) and @gingerly-writing (post here, wayback machined here) have said. I backread through the interaction that Ginger talks about in her post (of course not the DMs, but the interaction itself).

I know some people may be confused about why Ginger only has that one screenshot of what she said and may not see that as full evidence, but Violet Vineyard had a super strict “don’t screenshot and post anything” with lots of scary looking legal stuff attached to it policy and, well, Ginger can’t be sharing stuff without anyone’s permission if it’s just the message she herself sent, but they’d have grounds to take god knows what action with what backing against her if she posted something else. But, well, for what it’s worth, as someone who read through that conversation a little after it happened, it was certainly a case of dogpiling and left a bad taste in my mouth, and it strikes me as really odd that the mods would try to shut someone down like that.

I haven’t really been doing stuff in writeblr lately as you can probably tell from my blog, but yeah, Mina herself and a lot of people in that particular friend group of hers, as Lisa mentions, have just disappeared off Tumblr. I can also attest to the dogpiling tendencies and this Mina Is Always Right tendency, and the fervor with which people would defend her.

I was honestly never close enough to Mina to be in that friend group. She and I were only really talking to each other for a few months over a year ago. I don’t think I was “writeblr-y” enough to fit in with them. I was also not super active in that server. I didn’t post much about my wips because I in general don’t think I really post a lot about them. Therefore I didn’t get like, massive benefits off of the whole “network” thing, but  I’d reblog some stuff when I saw it. I was probably most known for posting pictures of my plants, lol. And I would occasionally hop in to talk briefly about kpop with like, one person? (They went by Kay and their url was like, lvcrezia? lvcrezias? Something like that.) In fact, probably the last thing I ever said in that server was a super quick conversation about Red Velvet’s “Monster” music video around the time it dropped.

In fact, for the sake of being super transparent/establishing credibility, and for documenting purposes, I’ll list all the non-plant-pictures and non-kpop conversations I can remember actually participating in. Some of these will lead off into bigger topics, and I’ll specify those. But first, a word.

TO ANY OF THE FORMER MODS WHO MIGHT COME AFTER ME FOR SAYING THINGS ABOUT THE SERVER, SINCE THIS HAS APPARENTLY HAPPENED TO OTHERS: The server is deleted, and so is the text of the whole “contract” (yes, really) that people had to agree to in order to join VV. I remember that the agreement made sure we didn’t post screenshots publicly, but other than that I genuinely do not remember the text and I have no way of referencing it to keep in line with it since the server is deleted. I do not remember if documenting things like this is against anything I have agreed to, I have no record of the agreement, and I have not been notified of any place to access a record of the agreement before the server was deleted. If my post is some sort of violation, you cannot hold me accountable for rules that I am unable to follow, and I would greatly appreciate not being targeted with empty threats shrouded in scary legal language. If you have any point of contention with what I have said, feel free to take it up either publicly or privately. Please do @ me if it’s specific to me; I’m not really the vagueposting kind. If any of you want me to delete this post, you will need to provide actual proof of the agreement that I made by joining Violet Vineyard, and you will also need to prove that the rules were not edited after I agreed to them. If any of them were follow-up rules not from the beginning of the server, it’s possible that I did not see them and therefore you need to provide proof that I agreed to those, too. In addition, since image editing is what set off this avalanche in the first place hence we’re all aware that there’s software that allows us to edit images and pass them off as an original thing, you’ll need to provide proof that any screenshots/images are undoctored. Furthermore, since the rules have been deleted with the server, as the method I used to agree to follow them, you must prove that my agreement is still valid, since it seems to me it’s been nullified since it’s, well, gone either through deletion or kicking me out alongside everyone else. Tl;dr you don’t scare me lol.

Anyways, back to a list of the non-kpop, non-plant-pics, non-my-wips-promo conversations I can actually remember:

On January 5, 2020, the server had a conversation about Roshani Chokshi’s book The Gilded Wolves. I can give the date because during/in the aftermath of the conversation, which I talked about the book in, Mina DMed me quickly. (This was also the last time Mina ever directly contacted me.) I’ll talk about this later.

In February 2020 I believe I quickly mentioned getting concert tickets.

Either early this year or late last year I think I posted some stuff about landscape photography, with some photos of the beach.

I believe I posted a couple fashion pics at some point?

Back in May 2019 I got some kinda weird asks about Violet Vineyard and I think people were talking about that, and I assume I participated since I was the one who received the asks. At that time VV was like a super new server and didn’t really have much as far as the issues we’ve been talking about go, so I defended it. (I’ll be talking about this later.)

Probably in June/July 2019 people in the server had a discussion about Black Muslim characters and representation, initiated by me for one of my WIPs.

I think we talked about South Asian sweets at some point???

I believe in April/May 2019, there was some stuff in that server reagarding “drama” with Castor who at that time went by the url pilipalea that I honestly don’t remember much of. Castor was never in VV, but I believe they were in a server with Mina at some other point. There was something about grammar and proofreading?? (I’ll be referencing this soon as well.)

I helped someone with their computer science homework at some point.

I asked for r&b music recs at some point either late 2019 or earlier 2020.

I’ve also talked about ethnic clothes I think.

We’ve talked about Hindu nationalism and how awful it is.

I think we’ve talked about tone policing and how woc are often portrayed as “aggressive.”

We’ve talked about health/fitness and exercise.

I recommended Jade City and some other books I’m a fan of in there.

Probably talked about Bollywood movies at some point.

The fact that I can remember probably most of my conversations that lasted more than like, one message in there is, I think, a pretty good testament to a) me having at least a kind of decent memory and b) I wasn’t participating in the server so regularly that the conversations kind of blend together. I know this is all kind of long and dry for anyone who’s here for drama purposes lol, but I did want to establish that I’ve been in that server for quite a while and that I wasn’t monitoring it heavily; in fact, I had it muted very soon after joining it.

I wasn’t super close to anyone that I’d met through VV. People who are friends that I still regularly contact who were in VV with me, I had met through other servers and other interactions on Tumblr. I’ll disclose right now that I have been longtime friends with Ginger, Lisa, and Eff (@time-to-write-and-suffer), who have all come out against VV, and that we are in our own servers with people from writeblr. Ginger and Lisa were both in VV, Eff has never been.

Okay, back to maybe “juicier” stuff.

Mina had always positioned herself almost as this “tumblr mom” type. She’d reference her age a lot, which would contrast a lot with how a significant portion of the members were much younger and, I think, set up the dynamic of people looking up a lot to her and always coming to her defense. After all, we’re talking a bunch of passionate kids who’d found a writeblr network. And the server definitely seemed “legit”; I myself was pretty impressed with just how tightly organized everything was, and like I mentioned, there was fancy legal language to ~protect their rights~ and whatnot. Mina herself seemed so accomplished with so many talents: she’d post her writing and artwork, I believe she’d made a couple pieces of music, she’d work out and keep in shape, she had a seemingly wonderful loving relationship with her husband, she was active in research fields professionally and as an outbreak responder, and she, of course, had a significant online presence as a “big writeblr.” I remember when she’d started blowing up, so soon after her blog had been created, because of her prolific content and friendly persona. People, especially younger ones who had no other writeblr support group, looked up to her and trusted her. And the nature of the server was to shower everyone in praise, so Mina found herself on the receiving end of quite a bit of it. Mina would also actively boost and review other writers’ content, genuinely engaging with it and providing feedback, support, and valuable resources.

Mina also had a tight-knit group of adult friends. Some of them I believe carried over from pre-VV times (incuding CJ of typewriter-jade if I’m remembering correctly, who made fun of the trans person’s name in the reblog chain in the link to nuwuhorizons’s blog), while some were made afterwards. They would act super friendly and familiar with each other, which I think contributed to a lot of people falling into this little “friendship” super fast. They were also authority figures and role models, and tended to agree with each other, so everyone just went along with that.

These factors, I think, heavily influenced the dogpiling tendencies. People were eager to defend their community, where they’d found so much love and support for their work. Minors would go along with adults in conversations. When someone said something, others would enthusiastically support them. And people were just so into each other that I really couldn’t keep up, which is probably why I didn’t participate too much. People became just super fast friends and the server was so large and so seemingly “professional” and structured in how it was made. I think people just kind of assumed everyone in there was great and their friend who could be trusted deeply, when in reality that’s just impossible if there are like, 100+ members. Meaning if something minorly negative happened (like on that literal eleven-year-old’s blog), everyone would come in to say something to demonstrate their emphatic loyalty, even when it became excessive for something as small as an ask game done wrong.

This happened with the Gilded Wolves discussion as well. Someone stepped in to say that the way Gilded Wolves coded its antagonists as this shady secret society of people was antisemitic, and everyone joined in to rip the book apart without having even read it. I joined in the conversation to state that I didn’t see it that way, since that shady antagonist group was very much coded as white Christians (their names are all French Christian names) and were colonizers (meaning making them this shadowy group of powerful and evil people was accurate) and one of the protagonists, who is Jewish, is opposing them and antisemitism is portrayed as horrible, and that the book had had (if I’m remembering correctly) Jewish sensitivity readers and multiple Jewish book reviewers really enjoyed and recommended it. Then Mina stepped in to say that multiple Jewish journals she followed rated the book highly and recommended it meaning the accusation of antisemitism clashed heavily with what a lot of other people thought, and that since me and the other person who was saying the book was antisemitic were the only ones who had read it or were familiar with it in any capacity, it wasn’t fair for everyone to be judging it like that. It was like she’d flipped a switch: people were suddenly much more “reasonable” and “fair” and willing to give the book a chance, just because she’d stepped in. (As a quick note, I don’t remember exactly whether Mina stepped in first or if I stated my opinion first. I also want to mention that Mina DMed me to state that the person who accused the book of antisemitism had expressed some Zionist sentiments in the past and to say that maybe their take on the book could have come from Islamophobia with them maybe assuming obviously ethnic name of the author was a Muslim name. The Zioinist stuff is something I can’t actually speak on since again, I have no access to the server anymore and I don’t remember that person’s url. This was the last time Mina DMed me or I her.)

I wrote all that out because I think it illustrates a few things. Firstly, a good example of the tendencies of people going with the flow of things even when it led to dogpiling/drastic conclusions. When I say they were really trashing that book, I mean it! Secondly, it demonstrates the willingness of everyone to go along with what Mina said. Third, it shows that Mina was capable of stepping in to prevent dogpiling (and, seemingly, she would, at least if her beliefs aligned with the opposite of whatever incited the dogpiling) and that people would listen to her and actually change their minds. 

Whether or not Mina supported something was pretty important. Of course, it was her server, so she was definitely allowed to run it how she saw fit, but she would very swiftly pass judgement on things and everyone would just comply. One time, I think there were more than one different threads of conversation happening in the general channel of the server. Jess suggested making a second general channel to allow for other conversations, as is common in a lot of servers, including ones I’m in and moderate/own/have some power in. I don’t remember if I supported that suggestion or if I only backread that conversation, but I know at least one other person agreed. Mina said that as an older person (she’d very frequently bring up her age) she thought people could just wait for their turn in a conversation and didn’t even consider trying it out. Other mods, I believe, backed her up and said no to the second general conversation channel. I remember being a little confused as to why nobody even considered trying a member’s suggestion to make the server more easy to participate it and help provide additional structure/support how big it was, and why it was shut down because people could just wait for their turn, when clearly the general channel was getting overloaded before our eyes. But Mina didn’t see the need, so therefore nobody else wanted to do anything about it, and nobody ever mentioned it again, I think. I know this is a super minor instance lol, but I do think it illustrates something about the behavior in the server and how it was run. It’s not like other channels weren’t added based on need; one was created for the 2018 elections, one was created for talking about race in June during the height of BLM protests having news coverage, I’m pretty sure one was created for talking about the coronavirus. So, the mods were watching conversations and responding as they saw fit, they just wouldn’t field this request, for some reason. Obviously conversations getting muddled in a general channel isn’t as significant as major political events, antiblack racism, or a pandemic, but these channels were made to improve the server experience and likely to prevent these topics from completely overloading other channels, so, well.

Okay, the Castor/pilipalea stuff and dogpiling. I’ll say this stuff now because Castor has opened up about it (here [wayback machined] and here [archived in a google doc]), so I see that as permission for others to comment on it. If I’m remembering correctly and looking back at the right things, there was something about Mina giving advice on a grammatical error to one of her mutuals, or something asking if her mutuals wanted grammatical advice? Castor vagueblogged, presumably about that, and talked about classism in expecting good grammar from people, which is a valid issue, but seemed misapplied to this instance of someone consenting to receive advice on grammar/syntax/mechanics, if that’s what the vagueblogging was about. I reached out to Mina to let her know that I thought someone was vagueblogging about her, and she told me about past conflicts with Castor. I also reached out to Castor over DMs to ask what the vagueblogging was about, because you genuinely never know; classist prescriptivism is harmful and bad, and so many people on Tumblr are in so many different circles that similar topics may come up coincidentally. Castor wasn’t clear with me either about what the post was targeting and skirted around naming names.  

At this point, looking back, it still seems to be that it was about Mina, especially considering that Castor had previous history with her and others in her circle. Mina was irritated by the vagueblogging (who likes being vagueblogged about?) and also informed me, all the way back in April 2019, about this past server drama that Castor mentioned. It seems to me that it stemmed from a misunderstanding: Mina and I believe other mods noticed another person using Castor’s PSDs without credit. Mina checked with Castor about whether people should be crediting them for PSDs and Castor said that, yes, they wanted credit; you can see this interaction in the screenshot Castor linked on their post. 

This is where the accounts of what happened diverge: Mina expressed to me that she and the other mods weren’t very harsh since they’d seen that Castor’s friend had credited Castor in the past, so they just wanted to remind Castor’s friend to give credit, without knowing that Castor’s friend had permission to use the PSDs without crediting. I was told that Mina and the team of mods were professional in their handling of this; Castor has stated in their post that the group was extremely harsh. Since I don’t have any screenshots or exact records of what they said before I was in contact with Mina, I can’t comment, so I’ll withhold judgement on that. According to Mina, she and the other mods had not been very vocal about this crediting/PSD stuff, and very few people knew about it, so it did seem like Castor had attacked Mina out of nowhere.

What I can say is that the VV members were certainly quick to respond to the grammar vagueblog, and that if I’m remembering correctly, readily jumped to Mina’s defense. I distinctly remember that one VV member specifically asked whether it was about Mina in a reblog. This happened pretty early on in VV’s existence and I believe was the first major “drama” that VV got embroiled in. Looking back, I do think it was fair to be critical of Castor’s post. But this was also the first look at the tendencies people had of getting embroiled in the fervor of any perceived slight against a member (in particular Mina).

I noticed this again when I received anons that were sort of bitter about VV’s existence in May 2019, way before VV had gained the reputation that it has now. People were very quick to respond with hostility and slightly amplify the anger expressed by other members, and little by little things got really out of hand. I can totally understand being upset and irritated, since the asks were kind of unwarranted and the sender did apologize if I remember correctly. But there was a huge outpouring of vicious language from a lot of the members, and this was, I think, the first instance of proper dogpiling in VV, especially since it was an easy antagonist; the sender was out of line, and they were totally anonymous.

These were the only two instances of going to bat for VV that I ever participated in. For the other things, I either only backread or missed them completely. While they don’t really paint VV in a super bad light, not like the dogpiling of an eleven-year-old that Jess mentions in her post, it did give me a pretty good idea of how VV handled controversies.

I’ve mentioned some of my theories of why this dogpiling/toxicity happened. I’d also like to add that Mina would often send concise, decisively-worded statements about things. I think this may have come across as final-word judgments to a lot of people, so they would take that as the last say on a certain matter and escalate in severity of their response from there. And like, you should trust your friends and take what they say in good faith. But you still need to be thinking critically and considering your response, especially when you haven’t known someone for very long. And this, I think, was a big source of toxicity in the server. There were just so many people responding to the same issues and aligning their beliefs, and they’d build off each other and create an environment where these kinds of responses were okay. Plus, VV was always portrayed as a tight-knit family when not everyone knew each other and not everyone was active (as is totally normal for a massive server), so this also contributed to people wanting to defend each other all the time. And I don’t think the mod team did an adequate job of shutting it down, despite the veneer of a structured, sort of more “professional” space.

Okay, now onto the art stuff.

Disclaimer, I don’t draw digital or physical art. I was always aware that Mina was certainly at least using references for her work. In some cases I could even pinpoint which pictures were used, like one where the faceclaim was Ranveer Singh. I also received fanart of one of my characters that, of course, looked very similar to the faceclaim. It certainly was clear some tracing had happened in that picture because of the level of detail in the chikankari embroidery, but like…..it’s free fanart, chikankari isn’t copyrighted, and that embroidery is super difficult to draw anyways. What I was not aware of was Mina apparently tracing images and using them to advertise for commissions, which is something I do not condone. I also know my photography and photo editing tools, so I was aware that there was some filtering/editing going on. I’m not sure if Mina traced and didn’t disclose it for commissioned art.

Okay, now the server shutting down stuff!

I was completely unaware of the dogpiling/transphobia stuff happening in the server because I had it on mute. I only found out about all this two days ago. I received the message where everyone was @’ed about VV’s “migration” off Tumblr and that the server would be shut down. I can confirm that the concern was about mirror sites and that the server did discuss these mirror sites as a big intellectual property issue. I didn’t know people wanted the server shutting down to be kept so secret, and I honestly cannot think of a reason why; I feel like if those mirror site concerns were serious, people would be trying to spread the word on writeblr? So I think that people are right to be a little suspicious of the exact reason for the server’s closing.

I think I should mention also that people were pretty much always friendly with me on VV. I met a bunch of cool people, and Mina was always kind and supportive with me. @radley-writes has echoed similar sentiments here (wayback machined here) and here (wayback machined here) while being critical of the environment in VV.

I know this post is like, wildly long and probably quite dry and rambly at points, but I hope it does provide some specific examples to back up some of the criticisms of VV and document it a bit better.

Thank you for reading! I’ll make sure to edit this to add stuff if I remember things/see the need.

I also want to state that my post is more a critique of the environment than anything. I’m not trying to attack anyone at all, I’m just giving an account of stuff that has happened, my level of involvement, and my own thoughts on all this.

I also want to say that I am completely open to hearing what any of you have to say. Feel free to critique/discuss anything I’ve said in this post with me. If you want to vent about your experiences in/with Violet Vineyard, my inbox and DMs are totally open. If you want to keep things confidential, I won’t break your trust or reveal your identity (unless you start idk, spouting racist stuff at me or something). If you want to anonymously tell people about an experience, feel free to shoot me an anon.

I hope you’re all having a wonderful day! I’m sending you lots of love. Take care! <3

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #107

“i love everything you do, when you call me fuckin’ dumb for the stupid shit i do.”

The beach or the pool?  The pool.  Cleaner, less risk, no sand. Do you have many internet friends?  Most of my friends are online. Do you think those friendships are on level with your real life ones?  Shit, I'm closer to some online friends more than I am "real" ones. Did you name all of your dolls and stuffed animals?  I think I might've...  I know I named the ones I really loved. Is your middle name plain?  Pretty sure it's one of the most common middle names. Do you like Resident Evil games?  RE4 is in my top 10 fave games.  I've played some of the original RE, but I didn't like it.  Controls were awful and I didn't find the story all that interesting.  I played like the first 30 minutes of RE6 with Jason, but for some reason we never finished it?  I'd love to play more, even though I've heard it was terrible.  Def wanna play the 7th too bc Leon is love.  Eeeeven though I heard that one was awful, too. What would you say is your WORST phobia?  I actually recently found out what pisanthrophobia (fear of trusting people due to negative, past relationships) is, and it is 100% that. Do you wish your last name was more interesting? Sure, I don't like my last name. If you wrote a novel, would you give the characters ordinary names?  Some would be, some wouldn't be. What’s your favorite leaf color?  Orange. Have you ever had a close friend get knocked up early?  I don't know why the term "knocked up" is annoying to me, but whatever.  Anyway, no. Have you yourself ever gotten close to getting pregnant? No. If you were to get pregnant as a teen, what would happen? Have the baby and give it up for adoption. Do you have any pictures of you kissing someone? A few exist, but I no longer have any. Are you afraid of needles?  No.  I mean the idea of getting a deep shot is unpleasant, but I'm not afraid of them. Do you find piercing attractive or unattractive? It really depends on the piercing and the person, but usually attractive. What's your most popular post? I actually made a gif of Chica and Mark almost two months ago (this isn't my main blog obvs.) that took way too long and Mark actually reblogged it (he controls his own social media) and????  A whale-like sob escaped from the very core of my soul?????  And I couldn't sleep for two days?????? Manga or anime?  Anime, I don't read.  I've never read manga, actually. A card game that you're good at? None. Favorite flavors of ice cream?  My favorite is vanilla with chocolate syrup, but I also like plain chocolate or moose tracks. Have you ever overcome a disease that was life-threatening and, if so, which one?  No. Have you ever sent a text to the wrong person? Yes, but thankfully nothing embarrassing.  I've come close, though. Do you like Subway?  Yes, but I always get the same thing there. Would you rather lose your best friend or your boyfriend? *girlfriend, but I'd rather lose my other best friend. Have you ever dated someone in secret?  My relationship now is secret to most people in my face-to-face life.  I mean I wouldn't lie if I was asked, but I'm not going to tell most people otherwise for a few reasons. Do you ever send people good morning texts?  Sara, sometimes. Do you kiss your pets? I kiss Teddy.  I would happily kiss Venus is it wasn't for salmonella. Would your parents approve of you dating someone of a different race? Yes. How old is the oldest person you know? Hm... I'm not sure.  Maybe this woman my mom used to watch; I met her once, and she was such a sweetie.  I think she was almost 90. Have you ever had to put your hand over someone’s mouth to keep them quiet?  Yes. Do you have an accent?  People tell me I don't really have one, even people from outside the state, but with some words, people can tell I'm from the south. Do you own any figurines? Of what? I have one of a small dragon. How long does it usually take you to get to sleep?  Now that I take Melatonin, like, 15-20 minutes I'd guess. What was the last picture you took with your phone?  My dog because he was being precious. Do you have trouble waking up in the morning? What gets you up and awake? I tend to lie there for a while, so kinda?  And I just get up once I'm not incredibly drowsy. What is one thing you and your best friend have in common physically? With Colleen, we both have blue eyes, with Sara, we both have brown hair. Now based on your interests, what is one thing you both have in common?  Sara, we both love reptiles, with Colleen... Jesus, like nothing. Where do your grandparents live? Florida (but she stays in New York a lot) and Michigan. When is the last time you went out to dinner with a friend? Where did you go? Who paid?  Earlier this month with Dad.  We went to a Mexican restaurant whose name I can't remember.  Aaaand I hate Mexican food. Do you get excited when you learn you have to dress up?  Not really.  Too much work. What’s your ideal first date?  Don't have one.  Plenty of things can be fun with different people with different interests. If you type for awhile, do your fingers start to hurt?  Boi step yo game up that's some amateur shit *doesn't mention how I have carpal tunnel so my wrist disagrees* Chinese or Mexican food?  Hate Mexican food and don't like much Chinese, but Chinese. Are you the type of person who would study for a test for hours?  No.  I'm not willing to invest THAT much time into studying. Do you hate when you’re in a good mood and one person ruins your mood?  Ha, yeah.  People can do that easily for me. What’s worse: Rude people, two faced people or fake people?  Rude or two-faced. Does your house have a doorbell?  Shit, does it? o_o  I don't think so... Do you know someone who has dropped out of high school?  A few. Has your Facebook ever been hacked?  I don't think so. Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook?  I love Tumblr so much help I didn't want this. Do you have any quotes on your bedroom walls?  The serenity prayer, yes. Do you wear earrings?  Ugh no because all of mine are silver, which I'm allergic to.  I want to get gold or surgical steel ones so I can actually wear them, I like earrings. Is your WiFi protected?  Yes. Does your phone have a cover on it?  No, but I'd like one. Would you ever lie about your past?  Already am about some things to people in my "real" life. Some say that high school is the best time of your life. Was that true for you? It was in some ways, others not. Is it good to have pride in your own race or does that separate people from each other because it makes them think of everyone else as ‘outsiders’?  It's perfectly fine to feel proud of your race as long as you don't look down on others. What’s the bravest or most daring thing you have ever done? Shit, probably speak my mind to my mom since she's scary as fuck when I disagree with her. Who owes you an apology? A number of people. Who deserves an apology from you? My dad deserves another, for one. Is a prenuptial agreement necessary or does it take the romance and trust out of marriage? Fucking destroys trust, imo. Know of any conspiracy theories you think might be credible?  Not off the top of my head.  I do find the theory of the moon landing being fake very interesting and there is some compelling evidence, but I still believe it was real.  It's my fave theory, though. How do you go about losing weight?  I don't eat nearly enough most days. What is the worst mistake you’ve ever made? Overdosing.  I mean it led to my recovery, but I could've achieved that in a different way. Are you patriotic?  Not especially, but I don't hate America either. When you ask people how they are doing you actually care about their answer or is it just polite?  Yes, I care. Would you consider yourself to be very polite?  In most ways, yes. Which group generally annoys you more, people older than you, or people younger than you?  Younger. What do you think of crop circles?  They're interesting, but I don't blame them on aliens. Have you ever written graffiti on anything?  Nope. Should birth control be taught in high school? How about in jr. high or elementary school?  Around 4th/5th grade. Some kids start having sex early, and it's about this time where a girl can get pregnant. Do you use bad grammar or hate bad grammar?  I only ever use it sarcastically or comedically. Last time you fed your pets? My mom always feeds all the dogs simultaneously, and Venus hasn't wanted to eat since I got her.  If she doesn't eat by mid-November, then I'll be concerned (already kinda am). Do you know/ have you met your significant other’s ex?  I know Sara's online but obviously never "met" him. What do you think about censorship in music?  I honestly think both versions should exist.  Some people don't like profanity and I don't believe children should hear it. Do you have any of your teachers on MySpace/Facebook?  I have a few. Have you seen your family tree? Someone made one, but I've never seen it. What are you most likely to do first in the morning; grab a cup of coffee, have a cigarette, or use the bathroom?  Use the bathroom.  I don't smoke and I hate coffee. What are you most likely to do when you are upset; talk to somebody you’re close to, cry yourself to sleep, or bottle it up inside?  I've finally learned how to talk to someone. What are you most likely to do if you get drunk; pick fights, hook up with people, or socialize with anybody & everybody? Never been drunk, but apparently I'm seriously giggly and social when I'm tipsy. What are you most likely to pick if you got to choose your topic on a research paper; drug abuse, mental illness, or the death penalty? Oh, I can write a damn novel on mental illness. What are you most likely to do if there are no good surveys floating around at the time; make some new surveys for yourself & everyone else to take, bitch & complain about how there are no good surveys then take a survey you don’t even feel like taking, or go find something else to do besides taking surveys?  Oh hun.  I get surveys from about a billion sources so I will never run out. *cackles* Do you hold grudges or forgive easily? If someone is truly sorry, I forgive easily. In a relationship, how important are looks? I don't care.  I care about your personality.  Sure, it's nice to be attracted physically to your s/o, but it's not a determining factor on whether I date you or not. Do you have to know someone for a while before you will date them?  I mean I won't date someone too quickly, no, but we don't have to have known each other for months or anything.  Jason and I started dating I don't even think two weeks after meeting, and we had a great relationship for almost four years 'til the end. What do you consider the greatest threat to mankind?  Hm, deep question... probably lack of compassion. Describe your music taste in one word:  Consistent. In the event of a zombie apocalypse, where would you go to hide?  Ideally a brick building or something likewise. Who’s your favorite character on That '70s Show? AHHHHH I LOVE THAT SHOW!!  Probably Hyde.  Maybe Kitty.  But I love them all omg <3  All the characters are SO memorable. Do you fangirl/fanboy over anyone?  hahahahahahahhHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH Have you ever said 'I love you’ and didn’t mean it?  I've said it back to Mom when I feel that I didn't, though I know I did. Use one word to describe your last kiss. Awkward. How much is gas where you live? Two-something.  Mid twos. What has caused you to reinvent yourself or reevaluate who you are? Absolutely Holly Hill.  It saved my life.  I looked at my situation in a totally different light. Short, knee, or ankle skirts?  I tend to aesthetically like those that are a little above the knee. What couldn’t you live your life without? My mom.  I don't think I'd survive.  She's the one who makes sure I keep myself on the right path. Would you be on that who wants to marry a millionaire show as a contestant?  1.) Why the fuck would I marry someone just for money and 2.) why the fuck would I want to go into a relationship with someone I just met. Is it easier to live when you’re evil? Sure, no remorse. <<< Yeah. Have you ever given blood?  Once. Are you a miracle? I consider every single life a miracle; it's the source of one tattoo I have.  This world being created and adapted as it has is miraculous enough, and then the odds of you exactly being conceived is SO fucking rare. Can musicians be held responsible for influencing people to behave badly?  No.  People make their own choices, lyrics don't change that. What annoys you the most about yourself?  I immediately assume the worst end result of any situation. Is it better for people to change and evolve their ideas or always be consistent?  It depends on the belief. Do you want a girl or a boy as your first born?  I don't want kids, but if I did, definitely a girl. Do you have any embarrassing usernames?  Eh, don't like some anymore, but no. Have you ever scratched yourself until your skin was raw?  I have six long scars on my left shin (one being the worst scar on my body) and four more mild ones on my right front scratching the fuck out of them after I shave and then shower.  I don't know why the fuck it happens, but it's awful.  Even lotion doesn't really help. What is the longest essay or research paper you have written?  Ten or so pages. Do you worry about being judged by other people?  I shouldn't be but I'm heavily concerned with it. If someone doesn’t like you, do you usually want to know the reason?  Duh.  I want to know if it's petty or something I can improve on. Can you do a flip on a trampoline?  I used to do front flips, but I was too scared to do back flips because I had this intense fear of breaking my neck or something.  Stopped entirely because of that fear. Does your doctor freak you out?  She doesn't freak me out, she's just unfriendly. Does it annoy you when people’s eyebrows are a different color than hair?  Don't care. Has your grandma ever cussed in front of you before?  More like at me.  But in front of me, too, once or twice. What primary color is your Christmas tree?  Green.  I want a black one, man, but since it's a family thing, it's obviously not just up to me. What’s the best camera brand?  I think it's technically Canon. Where do you go fishing at?  Dad and I haven't gone in forever, but it was pretty much always somewhere on the Tar River or Sapony Creek. How old were your parents when you were born?  Uhhh I don't have my parents' ages memorized, but Mom was around 35 and Dad's one year younger than her. Is there one song that you know all the lyrics to? A decent number, yeah. Has a cat/dog ever thrown up on your bed?  Omg no I'd never sleep on that bed again pretty much. Have you ever had a concussion? Ugh, yes.  Can't even explain how bad it was. Have you seen the movie "The Dark Knight?"  You can't date the world's biggest Joker fan and not at some point. Do you know anyone who has a pet gecko? Summer has a leopard gecko and he's super-duper cute. Is there an animal that you’re afraid of? Maggots and slugs are the worst, whale sharks, some spiders and bugs. Kissed someone who was a really bad kisser?  Tbh. Gotten in trouble for public displays of affection? OKAY SO.  Jason and I used to ride the bus home together and one day I was falling asleep in his lap, and he was too.  Our friends were joking around and yelled something along the lines of us being too affectionate, so the bus driver came back to see what was up, and she looked so confused when she saw we were just trying to sleep lmao.  But she still told us to just sit next to each other.  Looking back on it, it was funny. Do you get bad hangovers?  Never had one. Have you ever sent a friend request to someone who you thought was someone different? No but true shit the only reason I accepted Jason's friend request was because I thought he was a different Jason lmao. Have you ever chatted with someone on webcam?  No because it's awkward as fuck.  Wait.  I did once with Jason.  Never again.  Jeez, three questions I've mentioned him in the last four ones.  Ew. Have you ever solved a Rubik’s cube? I ain't got the patience for that shit. Are you embarrassed/uncomfortable dancing in front of other people? YUP.  One reason why I don't. Do you ever drink directly from beverage containers because you don’t want to dirty a cup? No, because I don't want other people drinking my backwash??  This is such a backwards question. If you carry a purse, roughly how big is it? What do you carry in it? It's small.  Phone, iPod, wallet, keys, hand sanitizer, a few other miscellaneous things I may need. Of all the pets you have had throughout your life, which one has meant the most to you? Is there a reason why?  My current dog Teddy.  He's an absolute angel that adores me probably even more than I adore him.  He's been an important part of my life for 11 years, and I could never love a literal child more. Imagine it is a dark night, you are alone, it is raining outside, you hear someone walking around outside your window. WHO do you wish was there with you? My mom 'cuz she'd kill a bitch. Is love a commitment to one person, or can you love more than one person at the same time?  I believe it's totally possible to be interested in more than one people, but love?  Only one.  I believe loving someone is about putting him/her above all others. What is your favorite kind of incense?  Omg I had this one, red incense that smelled fucking AMAZING, but I don't remember what it was called! D: Who is the most immature person you know?  *winks @ Sara* Do you read your friend’s surveys? Yes, because it's a cool way to learn usually miscellaneous things about them you wouldn't have known. If you had to get a tattoo tomorrow, what would you pick?  I wouldn't want to get one tomorrow, actually.  I want to get a Markiplier tattoo I designed for Christmas, and I'm going to estimate it'll be around $150-$200 (I'm not good at estimating tat prices, so take that with a grain of salt), so I want to be sure we have money for that first.  Literally the only thing I'm asking for for Christmas, I just don't ask for much anymore. How do you feel about band tattoos?  I'm not against them or anything, but I'm not sure I'll ever get one. What piercing do you like most on the opposite sex? Opposite or same, lip piercings. What brand of hair dye do you prefer to use? Splat is the only kind that's ever actually made the color stick for months.  Won't use anything but that anymore. Would you ever get your hips pierced?  No, seems painful as fuck and dangerous with pants and all, and I'm not skinny enough to look good with them. Have you ever gone to court? Not for a "real" trial, but I did have to give my reasoning as to why I felt I should be discharged from the hospital earlier (I think they wanted me there a month) to a judge, and it was one of the most nerve-wracking things ever.  I did win the case, though. Would you ever want to swim with the sharks?  No.  I'm not necessarily scared of sharks and even believe they're immensely misunderstood, but I don't trust a shark enough to swim with it. Do you like sushi? I can pretty much guarantee I'd absolutely loathe it.  Never trying. What is the worst thing that could possibly happen to you? Relapsing.  I will fucking not go through that again. Who is your favorite visual artist?  NukeRooster and Culpeo-Fox of dA.  Their styles are super recognizable and just wonderful.  I actually want a tattoo of one of NukeRooster's pieces ("Denialism") and actually got her permission, but it would be INCREDIBLY expensive with how intricate it is, so it's gonna be a looooong time 'til that happens. How old were you when you figured out what you wanted to do for a career?  Lmao last month, so 21. Is there anyone with whom you would like to be better friends? A LOT of people.  Mostly online friends, but some irl too. Who was the last person you cried in front of?  Mom. Do you like pretzels?  I have a massive preference for soft ones, but I'll eat either. Do any of your friends have children?  My best friend's pregnant and I have some friends I used to be closer to who have young kids. Would you rather cry in public or make someone else cry in public?  I'd rather cry, but either would suck. Would you rather re-live today forever or not live?  I have absolutely zero desire for immortality. Have you ever truly thought you knew who you were going to marry?  Yeah. Who was the last person of the opposite sex to be in your bedroom?  I actually don't think a guy has ever been in this bedroom...  Well, maybe save for when people were helping us move in, but I don't remember. Do you like kissing in public?  Only if it's just a simple peck. Is the male or female body closest to perfection?  I don't think either is "better" than the other. Four guys/girls whom you find attractive:  1.) Mark Fischfuck, 2.) Link Neal, 3.) Hannah Hart is like my biggest female celeb crush, 4.) uhhh... I'm not really sure.  Maybe Johnny Depp? What is your definition of cheating? As soon as you're flirting with someone else in an obviously non-playful way, you're cheating. Do you tend to go for older or younger when looking for someone to date? Older guys for maturity, no preference with girls. When do you want to get married?  I don't have a specific time in mind.  I don't want kids, so it's not like I'm racing the biological clock. Describe your personality in 3 words or less:  Really Fucking Awkward™ What size bed do you have?  Queen How many friends do you have?  Very few that I consider "friends," really.  Around like 10, and most I include are more like... a bit higher than acquaintances, but not really "friends?" What's the worst thing you have ever done?  It's something I don't talk about because it's humiliating to think I've done it. What is your skin type? (oily, dry, etc)  Dry as actual fuck. Are you going to change your last name when you get married?  If I marry a man, yes.  If I maybe a girl, depends on whose name sounds better with whose last name lol. What is your phone background?  Lock screen, Mark Fischbach, home screen, the magic sigil from "Shadow of the Colossus." Have you taken self-defense classes?  No, but I should.  Particularly with how much I distrust people. What are you known for among your friends? Being very quiet. The person you would never want to meet? A rapist.  For someone who's never even been harassed, I am fucking terrified of them and rape in general to the point my mother and therapist have asked multiple times if I've ever been molested. You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be? The divorce.  I would say the breakup, but that, in the end, had an amazing effect on me. Have you ever built a snowman?  Yeah. What is your favorite milkshake flavor?  Vanilla, but sometimes I'm in the mood for chocolate. What is the last thing you drew a picture of?  The picture I did of one of my RP OC's scars to demonstrate how it looked since it was hard to describe. What do you think about babies?  I'm very uncomfortable around them and feel like I can just touch them and they'll break.  And unlike, like, everyone, I don't find newborn/very young babies cute. What is the effect on you of having people physically nearby, if they’re not interacting with you? AWKWARD AS FUCK I GET SO UNCOMFORTABLE.  Like whenever my mom sits on the couch (it's directly outside my door), I have to close it because her being able to see me and me being able to see her is awkward to me.  If I'm sitting in the front seat of a car with someone, I need music on. Have you ever been extremely tired but refused to go to sleep?  I do that a LOT. Have you ever experienced something paranormal? I feel I have at least twice. What’s the longest amount of time you’ve been stuck in traffic?  I don't know.  You don't get AWFUL traffic jams in this part of NC, but we've definitely waited a while. Best field trip experience? The zoo in 5th grade!!  Saw meerkats for the first time and I was fucking ecstatic. How much time do you spend on Facebook, if you have one?  Sometimes I don't go on for days, and if I do, I go through my news feed once and am done. What is the worst thunderstorm you’ve experienced? Maybe this one time when we still lived in Sharpsburg...  Mom came to get us from our friend's house, which was maybe like 15 minutes away, and I was having an absolute panic attack. Favorite episode of Spongebob?  Hm.  Maybe the Slasher one.  Or the pizza one. What bug frightens you most?  Rhinoceros beetles and wasps. Do you hate your weight? Yup.  But it's getting better. What do you usually order on a pizza?  Jalapeno from Domino's, pepperoni from Little Caesar's because their jalapeno is too hot for even me. What is one thing that the Titanic has taught you?  Don't go on a ship in a fucking arctic ocean. What is one thing you dislike about sheep? Why? I'm going to assume they smell bad?  But otherwise, I love sheep, they're super cute. What do you think is an assumption that someone could make about you, just by looking at your Tumblr? Would this assumption be correct?  That I love Mark, Rhett, and Link more than I love myself & they're probably right lmao. Do you sleep with your door closed or open? It's usually open, but I sometimes close it because Bentley annoys the fuck out of me because he comes into my room just to scratch himself relentlessly and get more fur in my room than there already is.  Like he ALWAYS comes to my room just to do this shit.  It's most annoying just because he's obnoxiously loud when he does this and I'm trying to sleep. Do you sometimes need help opening water bottles, Gatorade bottles, etc.? YUP.  My hands are extremely soft, so it hurts easily. What would you say is your number one priority in life right now?  My mental health, 100%. Are you someone who has to hide the things you like around friends? I don't have to, no, but I ABSOLUTELY do.  I'm way too easily embarrassed about what I'm passionate about.  But for some reason I'm not online. Do you like word or picture tattoos better? It depends on the style, how well it is done, and the placement. <<< This. When will your driver’s license expire?  My permit expires in December. If you did, did you have to get a Tetanus shot?  I think?  Isn't that a required vaccination? What color lipstick do you think looks best on you?  Black.  I think me being so pale actually makes it look nice on me. Do you prefer pastel colors or dusty colors? Forests or beaches? Strawberries or bananas? Pastels, forests, strawberries. Do you prefer sunshine or moonlight? Gardening or baking? Flowers or succulents?  Moonlight, neither, uhhh flowers maybe.  Or maybe the latter.  Idk. Do you use emojis when you text or type online?  No, I use emoticons.  It's a fucking miracle if I ever use an emoji. Do you like playing games by yourself or with other people? If you're talking about video games, usually alone. Do you prefer honey or jam? Roses or sunflowers? Oatmeal or cereal?  Jame, roses, probably cereal. Give me a random word in another language. Tell me what it means.  "Erdmännchen" is German for "meerkat." A romantic meal, a trip to a theme park, or go to a concert? Concert, dude. When was the last time you had an alcoholic beverage?  Two months ago because Mom felt like getting Smirnoff's and apparently we have the same favorite (the Jamaican one) and she laughed "well you better drink it before me or Nicole do" so we shared two. Do you believe you'll find someone better than who you're with now?  Honest opinion, I think she's perfect for me.  So finding someone better would surprise me. Do you like pineapple?  YES Would you ever smoke?  No.  I don't fancy cancer, bad breath, and a likely addiction. What was the first thing you are/were excited to do upon turning 21?  Even when I got out of the hospital, I did nothing to celebrate.  There wasn't really anything I looked forward to besides just legally being an adult. You’re drunk and lost walking down the road; who is with you?  I don't ever want to be drunk considering I don't like the idea of not having a full grip on myself but if that was to ever hypothetically happen, it'd be Colleen, I'm sure. Do you like hickeys?  If they're not obvious. Do you always answer your texts?  If I have nothing to say, no. Do people ever call you by your last name?  No, I'd hate that.  I don't like my last name, plus it's masculine. What do you most like about making out?  It's just a passionate experience. When you kiss someone for the first time, is it usually you who initiates it or the other?  Huh.  Kinda split according to history. Are you too shy to ask someone out?  Apparently not. If an attractive person was pursuing you, but you knew he/she was in relationship, would you go for it? 1.) Looks are whatever and 2.) I'm not an ass, and even if they broke up, I wouldn't date a disloyal person. Is it hard for you to imagine life away from your hometown?  I don't live in my hometown already. Do you expect to move out in the next year?  That'd be pretty much miraculous. Name something you have always wanted and never got.  An iguana, for one. Do you want a small or big wedding?  I'm sure it'll be pretty small.  I'm not close to enough people to want them to come, but it obviously also depends on who my s/o wants to come. Do you actually participate in gym class, or just stand there? Participated considering you couldn't graduate without it.  Which was fucking stupid. Have you ever found yourself worrying about commitment?  I've never had that fear. Are you dressing up for Halloween this year? I'd like to, but I doubt it. Do you have unlimited texting? Yes. Have you ever slept a whole day away?  Accidentally and I had a massive panic attack because it totally screwed me up. Do you like those ramen noodles?  I actually really dislike ramen.  There was this one spicy kind, though, that I essentially survived off of in the apartment, and it was good.  Don't remember the name, though. What’s your favorite song by Daughtry? "No Surprise" Do you make good first impressions?  I honestly doubt I do because I'll just make it fucking awkward because I'll be uncomfortable. Are you ashamed of your past?  Many parts of it. Name all the social networking sites you use: Just Tumblr and Facebook. Do you watch "The Walking Dead"?  No. Are raisins good?  Omg no.  Disgusting. Do you get cold easily?  I get hot easier. Have either of your parents gone to jail?  No. Do you think homosexuality (anything beside heterosexual) is a choice? I personally believe it's a mutation considering it defies the biological plan, BUT a mutation does not equate to being wrong.  I fully support it.  I don't believe it's a choice either because you can't force yourself to be sexually attracted to a certain gender. Do you wax, pluck, or leave your eyebrows?  Leave them.  Mom takes Nicole and me to get ours waxed for only special occasions.  There's really just no point. Do you like guns? NO.  I'm not into extreme gun control and overall do support the 2nd Amendment (but with some degree of improved control), but I'm personally horrified of them and never want to touch one.  They hold way too much power. Do you sleep with all the lights out, or do you leave a lamp or even the television on? I keep Venus' light on. What do you think of mosh pits?  Seems pretty stupid, honestly.  I've never heard of someone not being in pain after a mosh pit. Do you wear hoop earrings or studs more?  Eh, kinda tied. Have you ever had stitches?  Twice. Does heat seem to drain you of your energy?  Completely. Who do you think has it harder in terms of expectations regarding physical appearance: men, or women?  Elaborate on your choice? Women, easily.  We have an absolute novel of societal expectations. Who is the most emotionally strong person that you know?  I have a number of people in mind, but I don't know about most. Do you feel comfortable staying over at other people's houses for the night? I have to know the person very well. Or would you rather they stayed over at yours?  No, my place is boring as fuck. Do you spend time online when your friends are over?  I'll twiddle on my phone if we're doing nothing, but I don't use my laptop. Do you spend [too much] time texting when you’re around others? No, I try to refrain from texting when I'm with friends. Who was the “bad guy” in the last book you read? That I finished, Ner'zhul was the "main" one if we're being technical, but Arthas was a villain as well. Are you an insomniac? I officially do have insomnia.  I now have to take Melatonin every night if I at all hope to sleep.

[kwanfairy]

Quarantine Asks: Questions You Usually Wouldn’t Think of Asking But You’re Bored AF

Here is the link to the original post in case you wanna do it too ! also: @stitchzmile i want you to do it too :D <3

Animated character that was your gay awakening? jesus.. i actually dont know. as a kid i thought jessie from pokemon and kim possible were super hot LOL but i dont think they were my gay awakening.. 

Grilled cheese or PB&J? grilled cheese

What show/YouTube video(s) do you put on in the background when you when you don’t have anything to watch but you want something on? i actually dont do that but i love to put on some “relaxing celtic music” in the BG whenever i write!

Your go-to bar order, if you drink? that depends as i dont really like alcohol. if its about enjoying it, probably baileys, if its about getting hammered, jägermeister or other shots.

What’s your favorite pair of shoes that you own? i dont own enough shoes plus i dont really care about them lol but the new ones i bought are really comfy so i guess it’s them?

Top three cuisines? i like heavy/greasy food so german/austrian, asian, italian

What was your first word as a child (that wasn’t a variation of “Mom” or “Dad”)? no fucking clue but im super curious now and will ask my mom later!

What’s a job that you’ve had that people might be surprised to find out you’ve had? working as a language assistant w/ american students as im super anti-social and introverted

Look up. What’s directly across from you? my black wall (that ive painted myself!!) lol

Do you own any signed books/memorabilia in general? eventho i cant think of any i should have some, right? doesnt everyone have something thats signed??

Preferred way to spend a rainy day? on my ps4 or writing with my balcony door open so i can hear the rain

What do you get on your bagels? What WOULD you get if you had access to anything you wanted? we dont do bagels here or sandwiches and ive only been to subway once, was totally lost, amde a fool out of myself and never went to one ever again lol

Brunch or midnight snacks? brunch! eventho i love eating midnight snacks, my tummy doesnt react well to them....

Favorite mug you own as a none-coffee drinker, i dont have one

What coffee drink would you describe yourself as? probably milk-coffee? im super white and most people dont like me ^^

Pick a song lyric to describe your current mood (and drop the name and artist!) ive been anxious for the past week cause we have to do a presentation for work and my anxiety riddled brain is freaking out. but ive been trying to remind myself that, while its a struggle, its also an opportunity to show myself what im capable of! “I will never ever know, if i quit now” - Mess by Jasmine Sokko

Fruity or herbal teas? i do like both but prefer fruity ones

What’s that one TV show that you’re a little bit embarrassed to watch but you still like nonetheless? motto ojamajo doremi - its just really cute!

That book you were forced to read for class but actually ended up enjoying? The wave

Do you match your socks? yas

Have you ever been horseback riding? yup during sports-week at school, but i was terrified all the time and had no idea what i was doing LOL

What was your “phase” when you were younger? (i.e., Mythology Nerd, Horse Girl, Space Geek, etc) if loner counts, then that ^^

Have you ever been to jail? nope, but i kinda really wanna see one from the inside smh

What’s your opinion on Lazy Susan’s (the spinning tray in the middle of tables)? i only know them from chinese restaurants and they are quite handy if ya do food sharing but otherwise i dont really see the use

Puzzles? need to be in the mood but haven done one in yeeeears

You can only have one juice for the rest of your life, what is it? orange juice for sure

What section do you immediately head for when you walk into a bookstore? i rarely go to a bookstore rip i know but when, i usually check their manga section first (rip x2 lol) and then the thriller one

What’s one thing you’re trying to learn/relearn in your downtime right now? im on day 382 on my duolingo japanese course! also, the fic im currently writing has taught me a lot about not over editing and paraphraph-ing (whetever that is actually called)

Who’s your go-to musical artist when you’re feeling upbeat? not into musicals

Where could someone find you in a museum? that depends which museum it is. but im usually trying to follow a path that brings me past everything

What’s that one outfit in your closet you never get the chance to wear but want to? the super duper emo-like red plaid pants a friend of mine gave me years back.

Rainbows, stars, or sunset colored clouds? pink louds!

If you could own any non-traditional pet (dogs, cats, fish, rodents, etc), what would it be? while im quite wary of birds, emus look kinda cool. oh or a wombat maybe? or an axolotl!

Do you have more art on your walls or more photographs? art that either i or my mom has drawn

You have to get one meme tattooed on your body, what meme is it and where does it go? as embarrassing as it is i LOVE memes so i cant choose just one.

Pick a superhero sidekick to hang out with im not really into superhero stuff so i dont really know any sidekicks.. if ron from kim possible counts then him id say lol

Lakes, rivers, or oceans? lakes for sure, oceans are just too wide and deep and scary

Favorite mid-2000s song im totally blanking now but the only 2 that came to my mind were britney - toxic and baby bash - suga suga

How do you dress when you’re home alone? pyjamas

Where do you sit in the living room (we all have a preferred spot, and you know it)? in front of my comupter lol

Knives or swords? knives

A song you didn’t think you’d enjoy but ended up loving bewhy - gottasadae

Pick an old-school Disney Channel Original Movie is camp rock one? i dunno we didnt have disney channel

Are you a “Quote that relates to the photos” caption-er, an “explanation of where I took the photos” caption-er, or a no caption kinda person when you post pictures online? i never post pics online lol but i guess id be more of an explanation kidna gal

Name a classic Vine god there are so many good ones but the first that came to my mind was “stop! i coulda dropped my croissant!” and the “ok :D” guy in the jungle

What’s the freezer food that you stock up on when you go to the grocery store? veggies! i love veggies so my freezer usually is full of it

How do you top your ice cream? ew, i dont!!

Do you like Jello? non-native english speaker here. wtf is jello. is is this clear wobbly shit? if so, then no, gross!

What’s something that you don’t have a picture of that you wish you did? well ok i do have pics, but like, actual photographs of my dog but i wish i had more and digital ones as well :( i really fucking miss him even after all this time and it would be so nice to have more quality pics of him...

How are you at climbing trees? as someone whos scared of heights and abso-fucking-lutely grossed out by bugs... take a guess :)

[erichofmann]

year 12

17,316 words in 26 videos

Hey you guys. It’s been awhile! It’s been a second. Um, this song, okay. For Now reimagined, I am imagining that a lot of you are a little confused and are like ‘what are you doing, this sounds totally different than anything you’ve ever done.’ Um that is true, um so For Now originally came out last June on my new album In the Waiting. I started feeling like it would be so cool to release some alt versions of some of the songs in another way that really moved me but that’s like totally different and gives some of these songs a second life. I approached my friend Christoph Andersson who is one of my favorite producers in the world, and one of my favorite people, he is so talented, I can’t believe it, um so I know him because he is one half of the band JOME, if you haven’t heard of JOME, J O M E, it’s kind of like the best music happening right now, you should definitely check it out, um but JOME is Jesse, also known as Imaginary Future, and Christoph, and they make insane music and I just started feeling like ‘man I would love to collaborate with Christoph’ because every sound he makes is like pure magic to me and- and his production just speaks to me so much, and so I approached him, and I asked if he would kind of try building new worlds around some of my songs, and so he agreed, and so this is the first one! And I’m gonna do it for a couple more, um I hope that you guys like it. I hope you give it a couple chances, it takes a second to readjust from the way you’ve hear the song in the past, but I promise it just gets more and more fun, um there are so many little sounds hidden away in there. You guys can listen to it wherever you listen to music, Spotify, Apple Music et cetera, um there’s just a squirrel with its mouth completely full of acorns staring at me right now, I’m just gonna let that go. We’re talking about music. Um, so yes, also, I’m sure there will be a comment of someone like’ oh my gosh she’s trying to change, she’s trying to be something else and it was blah blah blah. I’m not changing. I will always make the music that I make. There’s gonna be so much more acou- acoustic music like I always do in the future, but there will also be some of these, because I love them and I’m really excited about it, so I hope you guys can get excited about them too, so that’s- that’s that. So I am newly home from tour, um I spent the summer and fall touring in North America and Europe, um singing the new album everywhere and it was so special and so meaningful, um I got to meet or at least stare into the eyes of so many of you which is the coolest thing ever, and um I’m just very grateful that you guys came out, and- and that I got to do that again, so thank you and um- yeah so now I’m home and I’m really bad at transitions, and so I’m slowly trying to figure out how to do life again and how to be a- a person, um and some days it’s going really well, and some days I just start crying for no reason because I’m not always good at life, um but I’m getting there, and I’m excited. I’ve written a new song, out of nowhere! I’m so excited about that, hopefully I’ll start recording it soon, um what else? Oh last weekend I went to Patrecon, it’s the convention for Patreon, Patreon is a website that allows people to support other people who are making things that they love, um it’s where I host KGRecords, and I kind of have my whole online family living on there with me, and it was so cool just to be surrounded by all these creators making all sorts of different things, it was just really really um reinvigorating and made me extra extra grateful that I live in this time where not only I am able to do what I love because of people out there um but also that I get to have uh like this community, this family on the Internet, um of people who are doing this with me, who are coming along with me and are helping me think it through and are helping me when I get stuck and I’m struggling, and um I just love getting to have you guys around, and I’m so grateful for your support, um in all the many many ways that you support me, so thanks for that, um. KGRecords family, you guys are awesome. If anyone wants to join the family and be part of all this, you can always go to patreon dot com slash kina grannis and join, we would love to have you, it’s super super fun, um I love you guys. Thank you for listening, I’m sorry I’ve been gone for so long, I hope to figure out life soon and bring you more music uh along with that, so I guess that’s it. Thanks for being patient, I hope you’re well, sending lots of love your way, and um- and I’ll see you soon. Okay. Bye.

Hello friends! That was Colorblind by the Counting Crows, um I stumbled upon this song again about a month ago, this song is from some other time. The 90s? The things after the 90s? I don't know. One of those. But I heard it, and it was one of those things where immediately I was like ‘I need to sing this song,’ and so I did, and I love it so much and then I was like very intrigued about the song and I started looking it up, and I found out that the singer of Counting Crows, Adam Duritz, wrote this song about his struggle with depersonalization disorder, um which is a really really intense thing, so a year ago, I learned about the word depersonalization, little different than depersonalization disorder, but throughout my entire life I had these moments where I kind of lapsed into this feeling that felt like I was about to go crazy, and everything felt weird, and I felt like I wasn't connected to my eyes and I felt weird talking and everything felt strange, and I thought I was going crazy, and so I always had this thing in the back in my mind like ‘oh remember that feeling? Maybe I'm gonna go crazy someday.’ And then, a year ago, I had this thought that I was like ‘I wonder if that could be a symptom of anxiety,’ and then I googled it, and it was. And I started crying because this thing that was like this mysterious scary thing that I'd had throughout my life, um it wasn't me going crazy, it was a thing with a name called depersonalization, um and it was like a huge relief, and you're not going crazy when you get it, it's just your brain kinda freaking out, and for me it's when I'm really anxious sometimes, um so that was really weird, and if anyone else has experienced that feeling like maybe you're going crazy and everything feels weird, um google depersonalization and see if that's maybe something you go through, 'cuz it's not fun, but really good to know that it's not the beginning of you losing your mind. Anyways. When I found out this song was about that, and he struggles with depersonalization disorder which is like chronic depersonalization, which sounds so so hard, um it made this song kind of like mean even more to me, um. Anyways. Beautiful, beautiful, powerful song, I hope you guys enjoyed it. You can listen to it all the places where music exists: Spotify iTunes Google Play, you know the rest of them, um what else do I have to say. I have been writing songs- ooh yeah, okay. I've been writing songs and I just started doing something new on KGRecords for my patrons and I've never done this before, it's kind of nerve wracking, but I decided that I'm going to start sharing demos of brand new songs from like right after I write them, so I typically write a song in that second I record a version on my iPhone, and then I usually don't share that song with the world for like many months to many years after that fact, um but- after that point, but I decided I wanted to let kinda my club in on uh the beginning stages of a song, so um if any of you are in KGRecords and haven't heard my new song Enough yet you can go check it out, and if you still- if you wanna hear Enough, Enough is the name of my new song, and you're not a part of KGRecords, if you join at any point, you can go back and hear and see everything I've posted forever, so just know that if you join someday you can still go back and hear the song called Enough that I don't know if it'll ever be released publicly someday, but for the mean time it is there for my patrons as a little thank you for being my family. Um, okay. I think that is it. You guys are all wonderful. Um, I'm sending lots and lots of love to you, um. Say hi in the comments, I love to talk with you guys, and um I hope you have a great day night morning whatever. Okay. I’ll see you guys later. Bye.

Hey everybody! That was Stand By Me with me and him! We'll bring him back in a second but I'm just gonna make him sit alone for a second, um that was Stand By Me, I love that song, it's um so beautiful and then- and then we made it like kind of sad, ‘cuz we like to make things kind of sad 'cuz it feels so good, um but I hope you guys liked it, it's out on you know music places if you wanna listen to it again, um. It's- it's holiday timey, and um- and I'm sending lots and lots of love and warmth to you, and speaking of warmth, um I wasn't gonna do it, but a lot of people kept asking if I was bringing back the hedgehog sweaters this year, and so it's pretty late in the game, but I love you a lot and I don't wanna let you down, so we're bringing- we’re bringing ‘em back. Thank you Jesse, what a great model! Wait stay still so I can show them what it looks like. The hedgehogs, they're back, um the comfiest best guys around town. Um this year it's even more exciting because you can either get a sweater or a shirt, I know, it's crazy, um. So the bad news, there is some bad news, you cannot get it in time for Christmas, um but you can get it in time for winter. There's a bit of time left to order, after that point it's gonna shut down and you can never order them again until the next time I probably bring them back because I love you. Um, but get them now if you want one, and um you wanna talk to Jesse for a second? Let's talk to Jesse for a second. Hi Jesse! That's Jesse everyone, um Imaginary Future, um we like to sing together, we are married. Jesse’s also so uncomfortable right now, he does not like cameras, we are in fact- I'm holding up my arm with my other arm right now because it's very sore, my deltoid is very sore, um we're gonna make a second one of these outros on Jesse's channel that will be even more awkward, so if you're into some discomfort you can go head over to Imaginary Future's channel, and um- and then feel that. It'll be awesome. Um, okay I'm gonna- I'm gonna spare you from- bye Jesse. Happy holidays! I love you guys so much and um thank you as always to my patrons, also to Jesse's patrons. Sorry, sorry I know you weren't prepared for me to show you again, um to the KGRecords family and the Imaginary Family, thank you guys for supporting and keeping us company and being the very very best, um sending so much love, stay warm, I'll see you guys later. Bye. Say bye Jesse.

Is this an insane thing to do? I think it is, um this is way too close. This is way too close to shot an outro, but I don't feel like getting um- I don't feel like getting a tripod, and I don't feel like changing the lens, so here we are. Um, oh my gosh, I love that song so much. Um, somehow- I mean Billie Eilish is gigantic, somehow I didn't know who she was until um Spotify suggested I listen to that song and then I was like ‘what? She is amazing! And uh this song is amazing.’ This is one of those songs that I wish that I’d written, but I didn't, um so the closest thing I can do is pay tribute to it and cover it, um I love it so much, um oh! Happy holidays! Those happened, I hope you're all well, um sending so so so much love to you guys, and um oh there's like a couple days left of the month in which my fifteen percent off sale is happening on my webstore, so if you never got um my new CD In the Waiting or if you want T shirts or signed posters um you can get fifteen percent off everything until the end of December, with the code merryhappy. Um I hope you all are well, thank you to my lovely lovely patron family, you guys are the best, um okay. More from me soon. Sending love. Bye.

Oh it started. Hey you guys! Uh that was really fun. So you probably know these people, these are Nataly and Jack of Pomplamoose. They're some of my favorite humans and they let me do music with them, thank you guys! Go check them out, youtube dot com slash pomplamoose music, also Patreon! And obviously giant thank you to my KGRecords family. You guys are the best, thank you for supporting what we do. Thank you for letting me do that. Um I love you guys. Hug. Hug. Hug. Bye guys!

Hi! Happy Valentine's Day! Um, it is the ten year anniversary of my song Valentine, which is kind of insane, um but as such I wanted to throw back to Valentine and um- and I collected a bunch of peoples' Valentine messages from around the world and I wanted to share them in the video 'cuz that's what I did in the first video ten years ago, um so thank you everyone in KGRecords who sent messages my way, um I loved reading through them, in fact I am probably just going to put all the rest of them at the end of this video so all of you can have your little Valentine's Day shoutouts. Happy valentine’s day to everyone! And hey, it doesn’t have to be about couples, or any of that stuff, it can be about any type of love, it can be love for your puppy, or love for your best friend or love for yourself, um whatever you do I hope you do something nice for yourself today, or maybe something nice for someone you love, um but I love you and I am sending so much love your way, thank you KGRecords for keeping me company and making this music possible, you guys are splendid. Okay. That is it, have a great day. Okay. Bye.

Hello! Oh my god I almost- I'm sitting on the edge of a couch and I nearly fell to my death. Um, hi everyone, thank you for tuning in, that was The Luckiest by Ben Folds it is a song that both Jesse and I have loved for a very very very long time, um so so lovely to get to cover it, um it is now out in all the places you can listen to music if you wanna hear it again, and um yeah! So I had my eye surgery a few weeks ago, um it like looks like a normal eye doesn't it? Aren't you so excited for me? I had an eye patch for awhile there, I was not in a good way, but it's healing really well, and my eye works great, and the stitches are out of my eyeball and I am a happy camper. Um I don't think I have anything else to tell you guys, I'm kind of just in a groove right now, hopefully I'll be doing so more writing soon, um. How are you. Let me know down below if there’s anything notable going on for you. Um, hm. I think that's it. Thank you guys for watching, thank you to all of my patrons at KGRecords for supporting and being part of my little family online, uh you guys are so great. Sending lots and lots of love your way, I hope you're all doing really well, and I will talk to you later. Okay. Bye!

Hello friends! Um that was my song In the Waiting, reimagined by my dear dear friend Christoph Andersson, who you might remember reimagined For Now a few months back, if you haven’t heard it, uh check it out for sure, um but Christoph is one of the best producers in the world and he is one half of the band JOME, if you don't know JOME go listen because it's so good, um but it's meant so much to me to get to give these really important songs of mine like this second life and this second um way that they get to exist in the world so I hope that you like it, and um what's up with me. I wrote a new song recently that was really exciting, I'm getting excited to share new music with you guys though I feel like it might not happen for a long time. Oh I have spent like most of my time this week um on Discord, do you guys know Discord? It's like a chat server and I just started one for KGRecords, and I was not aware of how addicting it would be and so I am- I've been sucked in, and it has been amazing, but it's also hard to do other things, um but anyways, to all of my KGRecords family that has been uh hanging out with me in there thank you guys so much, it's been so fun getting to know you guys more, so thank you thank you thank you, and um yeah. If anyone else wants to join our family and also lose your life to Discord and chatting all the live long day, uh you can do that, check out patreon dot com slash kina grannis, and um there we shall be. I think that's it. I hope you guys are well. There's a crow overhead. Sending lots sand lots of love your way, and I will see you later. Okay. Bye.

Hi everyone! Welcome to my studio! Um, that was Oops! I Did It Again, I did do a video of this years and years ago, it was like in a hotel room in New York maybe? Straight into a laptop, it was pretty bad quality, um and I have had some people asking for a proper recording of this, so this is that. I love love love singing this song, I've played it at so many of my shows on tour throughout the years, so I did wanna do it justice and do it properly. It is out on Spotify and iTunes and all of the places, you can go listen to it again. In other news I have been writing a ton, um, I just feel like I've been learning a lot, just about life and myself. I have an album's worth of new songs and I- I might start recording soon. Thank you thank you thank you KGRecords folks for allowing me to write and uh learn and take time, and- and all that, you guys are so wonderful, and um if anyone is interested in joining our little family at KGRecords you can go to kgrecords dot com and check it out, and that is it. My arm is so tired, I'm gonna go. I haven't really said anything worthwhile, um, I hope you guys are well, thank you for watching, you're awesome. Okay, bye.

Hey everyone! That was a very very very old song of mine, it's called Never Never, um and I wrote this song fifteen years ago. It used to be one of my favorites to play at shows and I probably haven't played it at a show in like ten years or something, um but it's- it's such a special one to me and I love doing these Throwback Sessions because I get to introduce a lot of you to some of my old, old songs. This one was on an album called One More in the Attic, that I recorded in my garage before I understood how to record things, as a result it sounds pretty bad, um so it felt nice to give some love to this song, and bring it back, uh I wrote this song I think the first time Jesse and I broke up for a little bit, and it was really really sad, and I- yeah. And then this song happened. But uh it's nice to sing it now knowing that we end up together, it's very comforting. Um, do I have anything else to say? I- I recently went to Japan, it was incredibly beautiful and inspiring, um and- and now I'm home and I am gearing up to record new music for you guys which is exciting, and um I have something exciting coming next month. I'm not gonna tell you yet but I'll tell you guys soon, um thank you as always to my KGRecords family, thank you guys for supporting and keeping me company and being just the ultimate, you guys are so awesome, so I'm sending lots and lots of love to all of you guys, and I will talk to you soon. Okay, bye.

So I’ve tried shooting this like on four different days. I think I need to let go of it a little bit more. I need to just wear pajamas and just know I’m gonna say dumb things and- and that’s that. So um okay, here we are. Behind the Songs! Where I tell you so many more private things and feel like I’m gonna throw up. It- it’s a lot of things really, um specifically when I was writing this song I’ve always struggled with a kind of depressy thing in my life where it just- it’s there sometimes, and I just wake up and it’s like it’s- it’s hanging over me, and so this song, part of it is was a frustration being like ‘how have I not learned how to deal with these feelings,’ and then also this song is about my struggle with social anxiety which I’ve come so far in the past few years, but for the vast majority of my life I feel like I didn’t really know how to be myself around other humans, like my family, Jesse, few other people, I could sit around them and be myself, and then other than that, like if I go to a party, I was just like ‘I don’t know how to be me anymore, and I don’t know how to have conversations,’ again this is better now but for awhile I really didn’t, and I would leave every social interaction whether it was like a party or a small dinner with friends just crying, and being like ‘I don’t know how to do this, I- it’s’ and Jesse would be like ‘you know just be yourself,’ I’m like ‘I don’t know how to do that!’ It- it kind of just like would disappear and- and then I would just be sitting there stuck in my head like ‘please think of something to say, please think of one thing to say,’ and I couldn’t. Um, I have finally made some progress on that but it’s a really really hard one. I think the answer is we are just always learning, like we’re never just gonna have learned it and have life figured out, it’s like I learned it last year and I learned it a bit more yesterday and then I’m learning it today and I’ll probably learn it tomorrow and in ten years’ time, like hopefully we’re just always learning and always growing which can be frustrating, um but it’s part of being a human, and so I’m trying to embrace that more and be a little less hard on myself when I haven’t figured it all out. It was a huge learning- learning experience for me. I just wanted to do everything on this album by myself so it was the first one- like I’ve always written all my songs by myself but it was the first one that I produced and recorded by myself and had no idea what I was doing, um and then I wanted to direct and edit and color music videos and it felt exciting, and then you get there and you’re like ‘oh I have no idea what I’m doing.’ I actually got myself accidentally into a really bad head space, and I was like trying to find a way out of it, um which is kind of what the song is about, and so I’d like get to a location and I’d still be really bummed ‘cuz I felt like I had no idea what I was doing, and I was just like ‘I don’t know, I- I- maybe I’m supposed to like sit here, and- and I don’t know and I’ll pick up this thing ‘cuz I don’t know what I’m doing,’ um and it was rough, but then like as it went, it was this reminder like by the end we happened upon this insane field, it was like sunset in pastel and the mountains were beautiful and it was like quiet, there were birds and everything felt perfect, and it was this like duh moment where I was like ‘oh yeah, yep. I just needed to be present, I just needed to be living, and learning, and that’s okay,’ like I’ve never done this before, so yeah it was hard, and- and had I not resisted that so much maybe it would have felt a little bit better and maybe I could have enjoyed it. I’m really bad at favorites but if I can call out one that made me feel a thing, “oh the mountain is crumbling from all sides, frozen I could try to run or I could close my eyes,” and- so some of you have heard me talk about this, but when I write songs it’s not a very conscious process, like I am not sitting there being like ‘mm what’s a poetic way to say that,’ or like ‘what am I trying to say,’ that’d be cool, but my brain can’t do that. I just sit down and a song like just like tumbles out of me, it’s like I’m finding it in the air and it’s a very weird process, so I oftentimes don’t really get to see the lyrics until it’s done, and like really think about them, and so when I really thought about that lyric after it coming out of me, it felt so um- so intense. This is what I pictured, I pictured like being on the side of a mountain, and then just like a giant avalanche coming down. Like the kind you can’t escape, it’s- it’s gonna get you, and this feeling just like in my heart of like ‘so I could run, I could run and turn the other way and like pretend like I’m gonna escape this thing but like I know I’m not, or I could just close my eyes and brace myself to be like-’ you know. I don’t know, killed by an- by an avalanche? That’s so dark, I’m sorry, um but that’s what it made me feel, and in this- in this scenario it’s like the avalanche was my emotion or what we’re struggling with in life and I spent a lot of life like looking the other way and- and running from it and pushing those things down, and more and more I find that like you cannot work them, you can’t move past them or learn from them if you’re not willing to like have them fully fully take you over, um and so I guess that’s what this was about, just like facing it, I guess I was a little chicken because I’m closing my eyes, um but yeah, letting it fully take you and letting myself feel these emotions, um which is intense. Feeling emotions is really intense but I think it’s important work. I don’t know how I’m supposed to end these. I haven’t really thought this through, um but obviously there’s ten songs in the album and this is the first song and I’ve already spoken way too long, so I’m gonna get you back to your lives, go on, um but yeah! It is In the Waiting anniversary month and I just wanted to do this to celebrate, um if you haven’t listened to the album In the Waiting, it came out one year ago. It is like so important to me. You can listen on Spotify iTunes Deezer, like anywhere music exists, this album exists, and you can also pre order a vinyl. If you go to kina grannis dot com you can order yourself a vinyl. More songs coming at you guys soon, thank you for watching. That’s it. Bye!

Hello, and welcome to the second installment of Behind the Songs. Today we’ll be diving into my song History. Basically this song is just like nostalgia and memories and all the feelings from my past, just smashed into a little song. I try to live my life in the present, but I’m a human, and so I- I do spiral off in the future and I do spiral off sometimes in the past, and the past stuff I think is particularly difficult. You can think about all the good times in the past and then get so broken hearted that they’re gone, like sometimes I’ll watch home videos which are so sweet and I’m like a baby and my sisters are all little and my parents are so young and we’re all just like a little family unit and it’s like so sweet, and then I’m like heartbroken, because that part’s over and it will never be again. Or I think about friendships that have lost or mistakes that I’ve made or people that have passed away, and you can just live your life in those past moments and like replay all of those hurts and all of the regret and all of the pain- I said hurts and pain, they’re the same thing but you get it. And this song was trying to talk some sense into myself. This is life right here, and I cannot keep spending my time just spinning off in past land. That’s kind of what I meant by falling off the pages of history. What I need to say also in all of these Behind the Songs, that when I talk about lyrics you have to know that they mean a million things to me, their meaning changes to me, and most importantly, I feel that song lyrics are made for each person individually, so I don’t ever want what I say to make you be like ‘oh shoot, it doesn’t resonate with me, ‘cuz that’s not what I thought it meant.’ The lyrics mean what you need them to mean, and what I need them to mean in any given day. I think songs are magic and they will evolve for us to mean whatever we need them to mean. Anyways. For me, the thing that this most I guess calls back to in my life is that growing up, my sisters and I, we spent every single New Year’s Eve at home. We’d have noodles at midnight, maybe like bang a pot, it was- it was great, it was very low key, it was what- exactly what I wanted to do, I didn’t wanna be anywhere else, I wanted to be at home with my family. And then kind of as I’ve gotten older and I would look back on that I was like ‘was I supposed to be being a kid? Like is there some part of youth that I missed out on?’ I- I wasn’t going to parties, I wasn’t drinking, I was hanging out with my family, and a couple friends, and it was great, and that was so much a part of my identity and I- I do think that it was all important in getting me to where I am today, but there is this little part of me that’s like ‘you only live once, was I supposed to do some dumb things and make some mistakes so that I- so that I really learned things from experience instead of fear?’ That is what that refers to. This verse in particular, it starts with another reference that someone asked about, which is ‘what is Newhart.’ Newhart was my middle school! Um, and middle school was a very odd time for me, as it is for many people, but I was really struggling to figure out who I was. I was pretty shy, I felt like weird, I was like ‘I’m not normal, and cool like them,’ and I found myself a group of kind of self proclaimed weird people, and we’re like ‘yeah we’re- we’re the weird ones together!’ The thing is, even with having that group of friends, I didn’t- I didn’t talk to them. I talked to them on Instant Messenger, but in real life I was like mute, I didn’t know how to talk, I never shared my feelings, it was all just super bottled in, and it didn’t feel good, um so what I did spend a lot of time doing in middle school was sitting alone in a dark closet, listening to my favorite band K’s Choice, it’s a Belgian band that was incredibly formative for me, um and I would just sit in closets and cry, and sing K’s Choice, ‘cuz singing was the only way at this point in my life that I was getting- getting things out. I didn’t know how to talk yet, but I knew how to sing in private, and that is how I stayed sane. So this music video, for those of you that haven’t seen it, I’m actually- I’m writing out all the lyrics to the song behind a window, so you’re on that side, and you can read it, but I’m writing it backwards, which is another super nostalgic thing for me because in high school when I was getting sleepy in classes, I would take my notes written backwards to engage my brain more, and then I would give secret notes to my friends that I would write backwards, so that was a big part of me as a forming human. As I was writing out the lyrics I was really trying to inhabit all those different parts of my life, like childhood and all the stuff that is gone from that, and early times with Jesse and then friendships that I’ve lost and things that were really painful and mistakes, and I was like just thinking about all of it, and it was so intense, and then as the music video is coming to an end, I realized there was a lot of space at the end of the video, and I didn’t know how I was gonna fill it, I was like ‘there are no more lyrics,’ and I just started writing, but this time I was writing forwards for me, so for you it’s backwards. I just started writing things that were coming up: grandad, cancer, friends, no friends, can’t talk, social anxiety, confusion, jealousy, lost, growing, love, so it was like all these things I was feeling, I was thinking about losing my grandfather, and about death, and remembering when my mom was diagnosed with a blood disease when I was in high school, and learning how to be myself, and learning how to maneuver emotions and how to communicate, and generally feeling confused and lost all the time in life because we’ve never done life before and it’s so hard, that last moment was just kind of this final catharsis of everything else that I was super feeling in that moment and I felt needed to be honored in this video somehow. If you guys don’t know my song History, go listen, it means so much to me, it’s out on all the places you can listen to music, and also a reminder that I do have a presale for vinyls for In the Waiting, so if you wanted a ph- an actual record, um they are in the making, you can go to kina grannis dot com and order yours. Thank you guys for listening. If you’re still here, you’re incredible, I just can’t even believe it. Okay. I’ll talk to you guys later. Bye.

Hi again, and welcome to Behind the Songs. Today I’m gonna talk about In the Waiting. I wasn’t sure if I was gonna talk about it, and I’m still not sure if I’m gonna talk about it. Let’s see what happens. Yeah. Okay. We’ll just do it. What inspired me to write this song is that Jesse and I have been trying to create another human, for a long time, um. We’ve been trying for two and a half years to no avail, and um- and it’s hard. It’s really difficult. We didn’t wanna talk about it publicly for a long time and- and as time has gone on it’s more of a just giant part of our existence right now, and- and it also dawned on me that by not talking about it I am maybe not helping other people that are going through this or that might go through this someday, and that maybe me sharing my struggle might be helpful to some of you. Um. Yeah it’s a really hard thing, when you’re like ‘oh let’s start a family, let’s have a baby,’ and then- and then it’s just not possible, or it seems. We’re still being hopeful but now that we are you know two and half years in we’ve done so much growing, and we’ve learned so much, and so we’re in a much better place with it now but most of this album- most of the album was written during this period of time, the early- the early hard time which was much much harder than it is now because we hadn’t done as much growing. It was like such a devastating hard thing, once a month just like full on breakdown and feeling so sad about it, and I found myself pretty often just wanting to skip ahead to like someday when it works, which granted like I don’t even know if that will happen someday, um but I just kept having this thought of like ‘I just- I want this part to be done, like I just wanna skip ahead,’ and I also- I had moments like this with my album too, my album was like so so meaningful to make and it was also so important that it scared me and it was kind of terrifying and really hard to make, um and I had moments too of being like ‘I just want the album to be done, I know I have to record like seven more songs but I just want the album to be done,’ and I found myself wishing this a lot when I was in these very hard moments, and then one day I was sitting at home and I had this like ‘bing!’ where I was like ‘if I’m in the headspace of wanting to wish away right now and skip ahead to some future day which may or may not ever even exist, what a sad thing that these are the seconds I definitely have, like these are the seconds I’m still alive for and I’m healthy and I have loved ones and the world is beautiful, and I could be out enjoying it and instead I’m started living my life based around some imaginary thing in the future,’ and- and I was wishing away the life that I had which was still beautiful and still wonderful, and so over these two and a half years it has been this huge huge learning. Another lyric from the song is um to “trust in the timing of my tiny existence,” and you know we often think we know what’s supposed to happen or we know the best way for things to go, um but life is so mysterious and magical, and things go wrong and then they end up being the best thing that ever happened to you, like I think about Jakarta for me and that was the hardest thing that’s ever happened to me and I’m so grateful for it, because I wouldn’t be who I am without it. I’m trying more and more to trust in the timing, whatever it is, because I look at my life now and- and every time it didn’t work, every time we still weren’t making a human, it would be really sad and then we would both step back and we’d say like ‘what are we grateful for, what- what have we been able to do that we would have not been able to do had this come to us yet,’ and- and I would think back and I’d be like ‘wow we had that dinner with our parents, and I wrote this song, and we played this show,’ and like all these life experiences that I wouldn’t have had had things worked out differently, and so while it has been incredibly painful, and can be hard to sit with sometimes, um I do feel like um- I do feel like I’ve grown so much, because of it, and I am really grateful that it’s happening the way it is, and um yeah. So, that’s kind of why the album was named after this too, it was kind of just this whole period in my life, it felt like I was just waiting, that life was just waiting for something until I realized like ‘oh no, you can’t- you can’t live life waiting, you have to live now,’ um. “Life is in the waiting,” as I once said in this very song, um. So yeah. And to- to any of you who have gone through this, or are going through this, or might go through this someday, I’m just sending you lots and lots of love because it’s really hard, um. But we’re stronger for it, and someday if it happens we’ll be even more grateful, and if it doesn’t happen, we will find other things to do. But we don’t have to get there yet. The reason why I felt called to shoot it there is there is this quote that I heard once and resonates with me so much, and “it’s nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” And when I think of that, I think of trees, especially giant ancient trees that have been there for thousands of years. When you look at a tree, it’s just being patient. Trees aren’t fretting about the timeline, they’re not like running here and there, and comparing themselves to other people, and needing to accomplish so much or like be something. They’re there, and they are just leaning towards the light that they can receive, and they’re growing when they can, and they’re braving the weather, and there’s such a peace and stillness to the way that trees live versus uh humans that is very inspiring to me. It felt fitting for me to do this song which is about not wishing the present away in these redwoods that have just sat there in the present for so so long. I don’t know if I did talking about that justice. I wanted to talk about it right, but talking about things right just makes it too scary, so that was imperfect and I probably didn’t say a lot that I wanted to say. If you guys haven’t listened to my song In the Waiting, you can listen wherever you listen to music. Another reminder that if you want this album in vinyl form, I’m making a new batch for you guys, so you can go to my website and order one of these, so it can live in your home with you. Okay, thank you guys so much for listening. I’m sorry if that was a lot. Sending you lots of love. Thank you guys for listening. Bye.

Okay, today we are diving into Birdsong! Which is such a special song to me. This song actually came to me in a very different way than normal. I was on a walk in my neighborhood, and I saw these birds flying in the sky. It was like a raven and then like a tiny little starling or something. They were flying around together, and then I was like ‘maybe I’ll just try singing about these birds.’ To be honest, the first part was probably uh really stupid and bad. Probably about crows talking to each other. That is not what the song is about, but I was singing and then I started singing the part- which part was it. “Tell me tell me what you see,” and then I heard in my head piano, which if you know this song you know is not like an impressive feat because the piano I heard was like basically two notes, it was just. I was like ‘oh gosh I have to get home,’ so I went home and I sat down at the piano, and then the normal thing happened where the song just started coming out of me, and so when I was writing it, what I was pulling on, some of you know, I have rescued several baby birds in my life, um. It’s all been incredibly magical and incredibly emotional. While I called on the feelings of all the little birds I had, there was one in particular that wrecked me the hardest. Jesse and I and- and a big group of people, we were on this river rafting trip down the Grand Canyon, and every day we would raft down the river and then do some camping alongside the bottom of the Grand Canyon and it was crazy. And one day they found this little bird in the river, it’s like an ice cold river. It probably was trying to learn how to fly. They pulled it out. We got it warm and then I was trying to feed it, and it was so magical. We named it Clancy. If I put it down in the sand a few feet in front of me, it would just slowly walk its way back to me and then start crawling up me and then just like nuzzle in my neck. And then I started teaching it how to fly. I was not trained in this and I’m sorry if I’m breaking all the birds. I have them on my hand, I’m like doing this little lowering motion, and when they feel the drop they start to flap their wings, and they get stronger and stronger and then they start to you know go off your finger and they’ll just kind of go diagonally to the ground while flapping, and then that gets further and further as their wings get stronger. We had a lunch break on the side of the river one day and I was doing this practice with it pretty far from the river. We’re doing it and it’s going five feet, six feet, and then it takes off in the direction of the river, so so long before I’m confident this bird knew how to fly, and just heads towards the river. The river is so far across. There were rapids, it’s crazy. So I’m chasing it, and I run out into the river like as deep as I can go, and the bird’s going out over the river, and then I can’t see it anymore, and I don’t know if it kept flying, or if it fell into the river and drowned, but I lost it in a way I have maybe never lost it quite like this. I was here with this group of twenty people who are all kind of watching this scene, they’ve been watching me care for this bird, and then they watch the bird fly inches over the river and me running after it. I couldn’t face everyone. In my mind at that moment I was basically like ‘I killed this bird that I love so much. I shouldn’t have let it fly, I should have been further from the river, I should have pointed it in another direction,’ and- and I had no idea if it would be okay. I just stood there, just bawling. This went for like an hour. It was such a deep deep ache. This is a side thing. There was a woman on our rafting trip whose name was Raine, and she was older and she came alone, and she was just beautiful and so wise. Jesse was talking to her, and she was like ‘you know I’ve been watching Kina and it’s so sweet how she is with this bird, and I- I see she’s so devastated’ and she was like ‘you know the thing is with parenting, we’re all gonna make mistakes, and bad things might happen but if we were doing it with love, from a place of love, that’s all you can ask of yourself,’ which was really sweet and was helpful to me. Sometimes you use a device to help you write a song, so in this case it was my bird Clancy or in the case of Winter, a song off Elements, my tool was this vase of dead flowers which helped me pull out a song that was about loss. Jesse came home and I was like ‘I wrote a song’ and I played it for him, and in my mind I’m like ‘oh it’s about birds,’ and then I’m singing the song and I just started crying, and it hit me in that moment- again I’ve said this before, I think songs are for everyone and every meaning that they need them to be, and I don’t usually think through all the different meanings they can be for people, but in this instant I had like a huge one hit me. One of the things this song is for is for all of the people who have lost children or babies very very early on, whether it was like a miscarriage or losing them when they were like so tiny and so young, which is- I cannot imagine how devastating, and I was like ‘oh my gosh I think this feels like what the song is about to me, this tiny fragile thing coming into your life and then being gone before- before you could have ever possibly been ready,’ and the really crazy thing is I’ve heard from so many women who have been through that, and then listened to Birdsong and it connected to that part of them. Ah! And you guys are so strong and amazing, these messages were really really beautiful and so inspiring, and just- yeah. Really, really incredibly powerful and meaningful. If you listen carefully, there are probably birds in every single song off of In the Waiting because we live kind of surrounded by trees, and there are so many birds, and our studio is not soundproofed at all, and so there are birds in the background of all of my songs pretty much if you’re listening hard enough, but for this one instead of trying to hide it, I actually just sat in the studio and I opened the door and I just pressed record for like three minutes, and I just let the birds be recorded, and it felt really right. Thank you for going on that journey with me, it means so much to me to get to share a little bit more. Thank you guys for watching, as always if you don’t know Birdsong you can go listen to it on Spotify or iTunes or all of the places, and um- and I hope that you enjoy it, okay but thank you guys and I will see you later. Bye.

Okay. Hi everybody! That was my song Make Me, which I wrote over eleven years ago, and I released it on YouTube ten years ago, and it did come out as a bonus track on Stairwells, way back in the day, so some of you have heard this song. Probably a lot of you have not, um but it’s a very special song for me so I wanted to do a Throwback Session and give it some new life, and- and get it out. Prior to this I had never officially released the song, so you could only listen to my old old version on YouTube, so as of now it is out on all the places you listen, on Spotify or iTunes or Amazon or Google Play or eighty billion of the other ones, it is there, for you. Some of you have probably seen I have been releasing my behind the Songs, celebrating my In the Waiting anniversary which was back in June. Stretching it out a little bit. But it’s been so meaningful to me and so special so thank you guys for watching these, I’ve basically been diving into each of the songs, talking about what I was going through, what they mean to me, um little bit about the music videos and stuff like that, so it’s been really fun, I know they’re really long, um but thank you guys for doing this with me. Also, reminder that I am doing a second run of my vinyls because the In the Waiting vinyls sold out so quickly, so I’ll put the link below if you would like a vinyl, um they are being printed now, so hopefully they will be getting shipped to you in the near future. Um, as always, giant giant thank you to all of my family in KGRecords, all of my patrons, thank you guys for supporting my music, um you are so wonderful, it means so much to have you in my corner, so thank you guys, I’m sending all of you so much love, and um yes. More from me soon. Hope you guys are well, bye.

It's Behind the Songs again and today we're diving into California, and I think I'm even at a place in life where I don't cry when I talk about it. A few years ago, almost four years ago now, my band and I went on tour to southeast Asia. It was the last tour of my Elements album and I was super super excited, and we played the first show in Indonesia and then immigration people showed up and they took our passports and they didn’t tell us why. I’m trying to do this super fast ‘cuz if I don’t this could be like a thirty minute long video. The boiled down version is that there had been a mishap with our visas, unbeknownst to us, and therefore we had broken the law, and they’re like ‘so uh this is the crime you committed, the punishment is five years in jail.’ The thing is when it happened I was like ‘oh there’s been a terrible misunderstanding, we have the right visas, it was in the contract, it was all signed, and it’s- I think this is a misunderstanding.’ Long story short, none of that matters, and therefore we were looking at potential jail time, and it was terrifying. We lived in a hotel. We were there for a hundred days, we ended up moving near the end, but it was this strange time in life where there was absolutely no certainty, and so much fear. We didn’t know if or when we would ever go home. I didn’t know if I would ever see my family again, like if I went to jail, like who knows what happens as you go to jail. I might not go home, I might go to jail, meanwhile I couldn’t talk about any of this on the Internet, because everyone that was advising us was like ‘if you go public and this becomes a big bad thing ,you’ll probably just go to jail right now, so just don’t talk about it, cancel your tour,’ so I cancelled the tour and I couldn’t say why, and then we spent the next hundred days trying to find out how to get home, and we’re bringing in all these different lawyers and talking to different people back home like ‘is there anything anyone can do’ and there was nothing to do except wait and just see what happened. Mental health was a struggle. I already struggle with mental health, and then being put in a situation like this where everything is stripped from you, days were very difficult. I’m gonna talk about this again for For Now also, so I won’t go too crazy into it, but it was a very crazy time that was very very difficult, and then I had this magic little two weeks that I’ll talk about more in For Now but there was this blip in the middle where I felt like I could write, and I wrote two songs, and it was California and For Now. I wrote it in a stairwell in the hotel where we lived, and then I remember Jesse coming in and playing it for him and both of us kind of just losing it, ‘cuz it was way too real. I probably just told the story the worst I’ve ever done it. I wrote a blog post about it, if you Google kina grannis 100 days in jakarta, I did like a written account of the things that happened and everything I learned and- and all of that stuff, so if you wanna know more about it you can read it ‘cuz I think that was a bad job. Craziest experience of my life, learned eighty billion things, cried so much and also I’m so grateful for it. That’s that. So for the first half of being stuck there I couldn’t even bear to think about touching my guitar. So then by the time I could- and I’ll talk more about how I got there in the next episode, by the time I could, I think the thing that was so powerful- it was one of the first times in this whole experience that I was able to really process some emotion outside of crying, which don’t worry I did a lot of that too. Getting to take all of this pain and fear and longing and getting to put it into a song was like just really helpful. Songs have always been really therapeutic for me and- and this one was definitely one of them. So yeah it was hard, it was also really helpful for me. It’s about missing home and missing my family, and longing for things so badly that I have no control over happening again, and at the same time trying to be okay with that fully, ‘cuz if I wasn’t okay with that I would break. So I had to somehow hold all of this longing and sadness and fear and then also hold that it’s okay, that I can hurt this much, and it’s okay, and I can miss you this much, and it’s okay, and I might never see you again, and I will be okay, like I had to go that deep with it because I was mentally preparing for if I go to jail, and I live there for who knows how long, I need to be able to protect my mind and so I was like ‘if that happens I just have to meditate all day long and become enlightened and it’s gonna be okay,’ like I had to be really optimistic and holding all my pain, ‘cuz I wasn’t gonna deny myself the pain. It was so sad to miss my family and not know when I would ever go home. So this song starts with the lyrics “hey there California, I can hear you when I wake up, in the distance like the ocean calling me back to your side, holding my breath in the night, I listen again for your song,” and that’s just like this cycle that I was in, every moment I’m thinking about home and every moment I’m thinking about when I’m gonna get home. I felt the giant ocean between us, I felt almost like I could look out and know there’d be an ocean, and then somewhere on the way way way way way other side of that ocean was home, and every night I went to bed thinking like ‘is tomorrow the day? could tomorrow be the day? I shouldn’t think that, that’s gonna hurt, it’s probably not gonna be tomorrow,’ and it was this thing and then you wake up and you’re like ‘I’m here, I’m still here, oo I wanna go home, oo I wonder if I’m ever gonna go home.’ It felt like it was impossible that it would actually ever happen. So when I shot it I was like ‘I don’t feel it’s even right to make a fancy music video for this song, ‘cuz this song is just raw and not fancy and it’s not trying to do anything, it was just this emotional dump,’ and I just was like ‘I think I just need to go sit on the coast, I need to touch California, by the ocean that I was longing to go across and just sing this song.’ Thank you guys again for watching and listening and um you can go listen to California wherever you listen to music and um there will be more of these soon. You guys are so awesome if you’re actually watching these, I know it’s a huge time investment but um it means a lot to get to dive into these and continue celebrating In the Waiting before we move on to new song babies, so thank you guys so much, and I hope you’re well, and I’m sending you lots and lots of love and I’ll talk to you later. Okay. Bye.

Welcome back to Behind the Songs, again! This time I’m diving into my song For Now. If you don’t know about my time in Jakarta maybe start with the California Behind the Songs, or start with googling kina grannis 100 days in Jakarta, and then read the blog post that I wrote about the whole thing because first you have to put your mind in uh that world that I was living in. I was in this bad way where we had no control over what was happening to us, there was zero certainty, a lot of fear, a lot of confusion, a lot of sadness. When you resist those emotions, it is very bad. I was there was my band, and they are like my family, I love them so much and- and we all kind of dealt with it in our own ways. For me it hit me in like waves of just deep, deep sadness. Throughout the whole thing we had some family and friends back home saying ‘you should be documenting this, you should take videos and you know write music and create while you can,’ and that was so beyond me at that point, ‘I was like I can’t even get out of bed. I can’t possibly turn a camera on or try to write music.’ I was in survival mode, and those things, they didn’t even feel like options. But then at some point it dawned on us that we really might be here for a long time. Early on we were told it might be nine months before we even have the trial that decides if we go to jail or not, and those nine months would be really rough, and then we could end up in jail. So I was thinking ‘I need to take better care of myself. If this is life, I need to start respecting this time and taking care of this time like it is my real life, not like my life is happening without me back home,’ and so I started doing a gratitude journal every day, so every day I would write maybe like ten things that I was grateful for, and sometimes it- I just felt like I was making it up, like I didn’t feel it, but I just went through the motions, so I did a gratitude journal, I was meditating every day, sometimes twice a day, I was exercising for at least an hour a day, I was just like ‘how do I take care of this vessel that I’m living in.’ Eating vegetables, meditating, exercising, reading inspiring content, doing gratitude journals, and I made it my full time job to take care of myself, and it started working, so there was actually a part halfway through our time there, we were there for a hundred days, where I felt so at peace with things, I actually felt how grateful I was to be there in the middle of all of this. I was like okay being really not okay, and in this little blip I felt like ‘maybe I’ll pick up my guitar’ and so I did, I wrote two songs when I was over there and For Now was the first one, and I was alone in my hotel room, Jesse was downstairs with the band, all of a sudden I was like ‘oh my gosh a song, I remember this.’ I remember being really excited about it and it felt so good and it felt helpful to get emotion out of me, and at the same time I was kind of hitting a wall, and I was like ‘I don’t know what this song is about, I can’t write it, I don’t have it in me to write it,’ and so Jesse came up at one point, he was like ‘oh you wanna come to dinner?’ And I was like ‘yeah I’m like- I’m writing a song but I’ll come to dinner,’ and he’s like ‘wait what? You’re writing? You can’t come to dinner. You don’t get to come to dinner.’ And I was like ‘I I wanna come to dinner!’ And he was like ‘you have to stay, you can’t leave your song.’ We have this thing where if a song starts you cannot leave it until it’s as complete as it can be in that moment, because if you leave before it’s done pouring out of you you can lose it. So Jesse’s like ‘you should stay’ and I was kind of begging him ’can you please write all of the lyrics to this song for me,’ and that’s a crazy ask because I never cowrite. A few times in my life I’ve done this, but mostly, like ninety nine point nine nine percent of my songs I’ve written alone. I really don’t know how to write with other people and it also weirds me out ‘cuz I’m like ‘if this is my song certainly you shouldn’t have written the words, that doesn’t make sense to me.’ So I never ever have people involved in my songs, and in this moment because I was so weak and so fragile I was like ‘Jesse can you please please write all of the lyrics for me, just make it a good song,’ and he was like ‘I won’t, I can’t, I’m sorry, it’s yours, you have to do it.’ And I was like. And so he left and I kind of kept trudging through it and slowly the words started finding me, and it felt so good. Okay so the chorus is “maybe it’s enough that we’ve laid here, maybe it’s enough that I’ve known inside my head, and maybe it’s enough to know that we were here together and that we are the ones for now.” What this song is about for me, it’s about a lot of things, one of which was the thing that I really learned in my time in Jakarta which was when everything is stripped away, things get put into perspective so clearly, and all the things that used to stupidly matter just didn’t matter at all, it was like I woke up and that’s amazing, and I am still breathing and that’s amazing, and I have hands and maybe I can’t be with my family but they’re back home and I have people that I love. Everything was stripped away and it was so clear that I had everything, like I had all the most beautiful things. I was getting to experience life, and I was getting to experience emotions and I was experiencing love and pain and like all of that as beautiful, and I felt really grateful just to get to be part of this whole human experience. It’s a lot about gratitude and it’s about how cool it is to be here in this moment with everyone else that’s here in this moment, which takes me to the last question for this song. The music video For Now was compiled from a bunch of footage from my In the Waiting tour. It’s kind of intense, I do some crying in it. This tour was really intense for me. It was my first tour since Jakarta so I think I had a lot of trauma living in me and that made it scary. I was struggling with a lot of things. Why I wanted to make this song about life on the road is because part of the song is about how crazy it is- human history has been so vast. We’re in like this tiny little part and it’s been huge and we, if you’re hearing this- well I guess that’s not true, you could be hearing this in the future when I’m long gone, but let’s assume you’re listening right now. We get to exist on the planet at the same exact time in this tiny little blip that so many people never knew, so many other people in the future are never gonna know and we get to be in it together, and we get to have our lives cross, and we get to inspire each other and connect and share our struggles and share our stories, and I feel so grateful for that and so grateful for all the people that have come through my life, and I feel that so viscerally when I am on tour, because I look out every night- I spend most of my life behind a computer, like right now, but on tour there are all these real people from all over the world that are coming and sharing an evening with me, just sitting in a room with me, and we’re all feeling these all feelings together and thinking about these things together, and to take it a step further, all these people, yourself included, are the reason why I get to do what I love every day, are the reason I get to making music, and so it’s like even more gratitude for getting to be here with these people right now. Every night I would play this song and look out on stage and see all these people, and just be like ‘this is amazing. We don’t get to be here very long, and I’m so very grateful that in my little blip here I got to interact with all of you.’ If you’re listening and I know probably that’s like three people, ‘cuz these videos are very long, but if you’re listening, that’s so cool! Our lives are like this, and um that’s really important to me, so thank you guys for listening. I think with that I will wrap it up on this song. You can go listen to these songs, you can go listen to For Now wherever you listen to music. That is it. Thank you guys so much and I will see you very soon with another Behind the Songs. Okay. Bye.

Hi. I’m sorry for the car noise in the background. So that was Dream a Little Dream of Me, it’s a great song, uh it’s out everywhere you listen to music! Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, you know. You know where to go. Um, what did I have to tell you. Oh a couple things: one, for those of you that preordered vinyls for In the Waiting, they’re nearly there, um I just got an update from the manufacturer and I think that they should be going out mid to late September, so they are coming, we had to get them just right, I didn’t wanna send you guys weird vinyls, I’m so sorry, and thank you guys for the wait, um in other news, I am uh still on my quest to find out how to be a functioning human, um, and I’m learning a lot, and I’m struggling a lot, and I’m learning that you don’t have to struggle all the time, and um in any case, it’s brought up lots of songs, so I wrote three songs in the last week, um which I’m pretty excited about, and I think they’re gonna make the album. Once the Behind the Songs are complete I’m gonna get in the studio and- and really dive into that a bit more, but I’m still- I still can’t let go of In the Waiting fully, so we’re gonna live in that for a little bit longer, probably finish these next four episodes and then- and then onto new territory. Um, but I hope you guys are well, I hope that you are happy and learning and growing. I am certainly trying to do those things but it’s hard sometimes, life is confusing and hard, and- man. You just never quite figure it out, but I’m trying. I wanted to thank all of my patrons, all of you in KGRecords, thank you thank you so much, um you’re wonderful, thanks for supporting my music and everything I’m doing. Sending you lots and lots of love, and strength and courage- a dove! That was nice. Okay. I hope you guys are well. I will see you later. Thanks for watching. Bye.

It’s that time again. Today we are diving into Lonesome. Here we go. I think Lonesome is a song about depression or sad times. This is something that I have sometimes. I’ve never had like terrible terrible long depression but throughout most of my adult life it’s just like a thing that I deal with. Sometimes it’s there a little bit, sometimes it’s there in a big way, sometimes it’s there for an hour, sometimes it’s there for like a month. This song was written when I was kind of stuck in one of those places. Sometimes I will wake up and it’s just there, like it’s a cloud sitting on me. Or it’s like I wake up and there’s this pit in my chest. And it’s like ‘shoot. Well, I have to deal with this.’ That’s what a lot of Lonesome is referring to in terms of it lingering in my day and lurking in the backyard. No matter how I might try to pretend I’m fine and go about life like it’s great, it’s like sneaking behind me and it’s like ‘you’re not okay, I know you’re smiling and you’re pretending but you’re not okay.’ And I used to try to pretend I was okay, that was just what I did, I was like ‘ah I’m so happy, it’s fine!’ Then it felt really bad. There was like a- maybe a yearlong period where I woke up every single day with like a weight in my chest, like- felt like something was terribly wrong, and I think what that was was feelings and things that I needed to acknowledge and feel and say out loud. Yeah so the ‘it’ would be sadness, but you start to feel it too, just underneath the surface, whispers from the left side of the bed. That lyrics also refers to unfortunately no matter how hard I tried to pretend I wasn’t sad, um, Jesse has always- he can just tell, and so you know I would do that stupid thing where he’s like ‘what’s wrong’ and I’m like ‘nothing! That’s- I’m fine, nothing’s wrong!’ and he’s like ‘no.’ Um and I feel bad because he’s a very empathic person, as am I, but you know Jesse’s just someone that most of the time he feels great so that’s the stuff I get to feel from him, what he has to feel from me all the time- I am sad and I’m anxious and I am questioning and I am comparing and not helpful things, and I’m working aggressively on all of them, I don’t want to just be that way, and I’ve made huge progress but it’s unfortunate for Jesse because I think you have to be very strong to hold space for another human to feel all of those things and not take on all of their emotion. I think I was going through this time where I was so in this hole and you know sometimes when it’s like that you don’t even know why, sometimes it’s just chemical, and sometimes it feed into other things but I think at this point I didn’t even know why I was feeling this way, I couldn’t really imagine having to be around people and to be on or to do anything for that matter, and I think as I was singing this lyric it was this feeling of ‘do other people feel this way?’ Even knowing someone else is in this state with me alone somewhere else, makes me feel so much better and so much less broken which of course is the truth! So many of us go through this. This is part of why I wanted to do these Behind the Songs because I want to share what I go through so that hopefully some of you can be like ‘I’m not crazy because she feels it too!’ Or maybe we’re crazy but at least that’s better than being crazy alone. It feels better to know that you’re going through a shared experience, even if it’s really hard. I was trying to think of what I wanted this music video to be, and I wasn’t sure, and then I said out of nowhere to Jesse ‘ha ha ha what if I was just singing the whole song to a tortoise,’ and then he was like ‘do you want a tortoise, we can find a tortoise.’ And I was like ‘wait can I- can I really have a tortoise?’ We did find a place that had a tortoise and we brought it out to the desert in Joshua Tree and we did this one with our friend Yoni Goldberg, so this is why Lonesome’s a step above all the other music videos, because Yoni was behind the camera and he has an amazing camera and an amazing eye, and it’s so stunning. So we had the tortoise and I didn’t really know what the plan was, at first I really thought I was just gonna lie down in front of it and sing the whole song to it, and then I realized that’s kind of a weird shot. Like with most of the videos in this album, I didn’t have a solid plan, they just unfolded as I went, and I just went on an adventure in the desert with a tortoise. What it came to symbolize to me was a few things, one I was in this sad depression desert world, and then I came across another- I don’t wanna say person ‘cuz um tortoises aren’t people, but another being on its own journey, maybe struggling in its own ways. But it was this feeling of we weren’t talking and we weren’t doing much but I felt less alone because I was in it with this tortoise. Am I making any sense? There was something in this that really connected to a real thing to me, suffering and doing it with people separately. In other ways it also felt like the tortoise was a steadiness and the wisdom and this thing that I latched onto in my suffering, like ‘can you show me the way?’ and going through it and then at the end of it kind of being okay, and then ultimately having to go our own ways at the end, and at the end of the day we’re the only ones that can take care of ourselves, but it was kind of like this little bringer of wisdom to kind of help me out and then send me back on my way. So that’s Lonesome! If you haven’t watched the music video this is the one to watch. I’m really proud of this one, the tortoise is such a star, he’s just the greatest, and Yoni shot it so beautifully, so I hope you enjoyed it, and you can go listen to Lonesome wherever you listen to music, and thank you guys for tuning into Behind the Song again. I’m sending lots and lots and lots of love your way, and I will see you at the next Behind the Songs! Okay. Bye.

Hello everyone! Welcome back to Behind the Songs. We’re on episode eight! We’re like nearly there, you’ve almost done it. Today we are talking about my song Beth. I always wonder this when there are songs with names in it, like ‘is that a real person, is it a real person but they just changed the name to a random name, or is this whole story made up and none of this is real?’ In this instance, it is a real person, and that real person name’s is Beth! Beth is my cousin, and she is just one of the most wonderful special magical humans, she’s just like a glowing ball of light and wherever she goes she just like brings joy to everyone around her. You might know Beth because she was actually my tour manager for my Elements tour some years back, so if you came on the Elements tour and you came to a meet and greet or you just saw this like awesome girl going around running the show, that was my cousin Beth. I feel uncomfortable because I know that Beth might be watching this and I’m gonna do it all wrong, so I’m just gonna do what I can and we’re gonna have to make do with that. One of the main things was just this feeling of loving someone so much and just wanting to be there for them and know them and be close to them like as much as possible, wanting that so bad and then also feeling that there’s maybe like a gap that you’re unable to cross, and I think all of us can have protections up, walls and barriers and stuff that we’ve built up throughout life to get by and survive, and they’ve all served us. So it’s just about really wanting to cross those barriers and for the other person to know ‘I’m here, I see you, I love you, and I want in as much as you’ll have me, I’ll take whatever I can get.’ I have certainly been on the other side of this too, definitely I’ve been a person that someone is trying to see and- and I’m like boop boop boop boop boop. I mean I used to have crazy walls up, I didn’t even know who I was around other people, um I just kind of like lost my identity a lot of the time. This is not that sort of situation but I think it’s so common for us to have some walls up and it can be hard or scary or dangerous feeling to let people in all the way, and let people see you fully. Yes, so I wrote this song, and then I never told her about it, and then I was working on the album and I finally recorded this song and I was coming up to its release and it dawned on me that she didn’t know about it, and so I sent her a pretty awkward email being like ‘hi so um I wrote a song, it’s kind of like your song, and I’ve been calling it Beth but that might seem really weird so if you think that’s bad then just tell me, and I won’t do it, and I hope this song doesn’t make you feel weird, and I love you okay bye,’ and I sent it, and then I was just like ‘oh no, this is terrible.’ I don’t know, I just felt so scared. Writing a song is already such a vulnerable thing, but I guess I’m used to writing it about myself. I feel okay putting my own private things out there, but to put a thing out there that is my thing in regards to another human, I felt like I needed permission, so I sent that, and then it was actually really really beautiful. Okay here is the lesson that I get from this. So often we have that feeling, seeing someone or loving them or wanting to tell them something or wanting to be closer but we’re afraid to say it, because we’re afraid of what might happen, and so you just accept where you are, and then in writing this song and having to put it out there it kind of forced me to say all this in front of Beth in the form of a song, and so we then had a Facetime call that was really really beautiful, and I guess the takeaway was don’t be so afraid to say things especially when those things are things like ‘I really really love you, and I see you, and I’m here for you.’ Jesse and I were driving one day and I said ‘I want to shoot Beth in a meadow.’ To which he was very confused because he heard I want to shoot my cousin in a meadow, not what I had in mind. I wanted to film a music video for my song Beth in a meadow, and so that’s what we did. We went up to Yosemite, which if you’ve never been to Yosemite, if you ever get to come to California, it’s like one of the most breathtaking beautiful places in the world, I love it so much, so we drove up to Yosemite, we found a meadow, got out started shooting, and I just hear this strange sound, it was like, and I was like ‘what is happening,’ and I look. Poor Jesse is holding the camera and trying to walk as steadily as possible while he’s in a swarm of mosquitos, and they were just everywhere. For some reason they weren’t near me which is weird because I’m usually that person that the mosquitos are like all- all up over. So know that when you watch this video Jesse made a huge sacrifice in filming it for us, so thank you Jesse! Takeaways are Beth I love you so so much, and also to everyone else, talk to the people you love, open up as much as you can, communication is good, and let people in. I did wanna let you guys know that the new In the Waiting vinyls are finally finally here, so if you preordered one they are going out to you right now, and if you didn’t get a vinyl and you want one you can go order one from my website. Thank you guys for watching and listening, you are so so wonderful, I hope you guys are well, I will see you later, thank you for hanging out with me bye. Mwah!

I just got so sleepy. Okay. Behind the Songs. What are we on. Souvenirs. So I wrote this song about one year after I got back from Jakarta. That was a super weird year. When you are trapped somewhere for a hundred days and the only thing you’re ever wishing for is to go home, you kind of think that when that finally happens that the rest of life is just gonna be like ahh like skipping through fields and feeling grateful and happy forever. And what happened was the opposite. I came home and it felt so good and we cried and there was hugging, and then life set in, and I was like ‘whoa, I don’t know who I am.’ I fell into a bit of a depression, and I was really shaken because when I was in Jakarta things became so clear about what was important, it was just being alive and showing people that you love them and that’s it, and then coming back I was like ‘wait, we’re all spending our lives mostly doing stuff that’s not that. And worrying about stuff that’s not that, and what is career and what- what is any of this stuff,’ and I was so confused and part of me felt like ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever do music again.’ It felt really unsettling. I just wanted to hug people I loved, and that be my life for the rest of time. So I had a really difficult year of trying to kind of put the pieces back together, and I did a lot of different types of therapy and just worked on myself a lot and I finally started to get to an okay place, and then I was doing a writing retreat day with my drummer Darla who was also in Jakarta with us. She was writing upstairs, I was writing downstairs, and she had asked me ‘do you think you’ll ever write about Jakarta again?’ and I was like ‘ah, I don’t know if I have anything left to say,’ which is silly, and she was like ‘maybe- maybe there’s more,’ and I was like ‘yeah maybe,’ and then I sat down at the piano and this song Souvenirs kind of poured out. The first thing about this music video is that it’s flipping between Jakarta and my home, and Jakarta, my experience of Jakarta is inside a hotel room because that’s where I spent 99% of my time there. I really really wanted it to feel correct, and Jesse and I spent an entire day looking up pictures of hotel rooms in Los Angeles, trying to find one that felt like our home in Jakarta, and so we search and search and search and then I finally found one that was pretty close, like the color scheme was right, the placement of the bed and the window was right, we even moved stuff around in the hotel room to be as close as it could to ours except it’s the mirror image. What I wanted to do for this video was just recreate my life there, so everything you see me doing in this video, it’s exactly what I did. So the outfit that I’m wearing is the outfit that I lived in. The mug that the video starts on that has Indonesia and then a plane flying over the ocean, and then California and it says how many miles is between these two places, was actually a gift given to me the night of that show before all of this went down, which is so weird. One of the only gifts I got that night was a mug that told me how far away I was from home, and I did love it and I still use it now. Someone also at the show, they gave me a journal, so I did all this gratitude journaling in this journal that someone gave to me at the show, and just real journaling about my time there. That was not actually my original journal, I found another one that looked like it, and then I copied out actual pages from my diary when I was in Jakarta. The crocheting, Darla and I, again my drummer who’s like my Jakarta sister, at one point we were like ‘we should learn how to crochet granny squares,’ and I had this idea that I would make this blanket, and so we spent all of our time- like we’d be at dinner crocheting, when we’re with the band we’re crocheting, when I’m really depressed I’m crocheting, and then, a hundred days in, we get word we’re going home. I never finished the blanket. I tied them up in this little bag and then I put them away and I never looked at them again, and so when I shot this video was the first time I actually brought out all of these squares that I had been working on the whole time I was in Jakarta, and it was the first time I had crocheted since. I finished the last square. I didn’t even finish the last square I was working on, which is so weird, so it felt like this nice closure to get to finish the final granny square. I still haven’t made it a blanket, but that’s okay. The video was also a lot about the weird weird transition coming home. There’s a part in the video where it flickers in between me being at home and me being in Jakarta. The whole time I was in Jakarta I was thinking about home, and then I get home and I just kept thinking about Jakarta, it was like this weird alt universe and I was always going between them. This is really the whole point of the song. All of the hardest things, like the saddest memories and the most difficult conversations or moments, those feel like gifts to me now. They’re like badges of something. They’re the moments where I learned the most, they’re the moments that I felt the most. Things were important and I’m grateful that I got to feel so deeply, and now being this far out from Jakarta, I am only grateful for the experience, and it’s all like a souvenir to me, it’s all like this special gift that taught me so much, and that I have a do lot of oddly warm memories of, of course I have all the like terrifying memories too. Seeing how much community meant, or how much family meant, how much friendship meant, strengthening my relationship with Jesse, so so many- so many souvenirs coming out of this really hard thing, and I try to look at all of life like this now, when a really hard thing is happening, I’m pretty sure something really beautiful’s gonna come out of it somehow someday, I will look back and be like ‘thank goodness that happened, because blah blah blah.’ That’s not true. I’m never gonna be like ‘thank goodness someone died,’ but even the hardest things there is beauty to be found and lessons to be found, and I think that’s kind of what this is about, to stay open to that stuff so that the bad stuff isn’t just bad. That’s Souvenirs you guys! Um, there’s only one left and then we will have completed the Behind the Songs series for In the Waiting. Thank you guys for coming along on this journey with me. I hope you are very well and I’m sending you so much love and I’ll see you soon. Okay bye.

It’s the last Behind the Songs! Thank you so much for letting me ramble. This was really scary and uncomfortable for me to do but also something that felt really important to me, and I know it’s not for everyone, and so I am very grateful to those of you that this resonates with. Thank you guys for keeping me company. So I asked you guys to think of limiting beliefs that you have, stories that you tell yourself that might be holding yourself back, like ‘I’m broken’ or ‘I’ll never be good enough’ or ‘I’m x y and z’. We all do this in our heads, it’s not nice. So I challenged a bunch of you to go find those limiting beliefs and then start changing the narrative and write a new belief that you wanna start believing and living in, and I was so blown away by the response. That’s a really scary prompt, to have to look at yourself like that. It’s like a lot of work, and so the fact that anyone at all did this was amazing, but the messages that were sent in, people holding up their new belief or the new thing they wanna work on believing, it was so moving. Throughout making the whole video I was just crying and even to this day I recently watched this music video, and I am just covered in goosebumps the entire time and just tearing up because the strength and beauty of these humans- just one of the most beautiful things to me ever is just to watch all these humans be so vulnerable and challenge a belief about themselves. We’re all going through such different lives, we’re all struggling in such different and similar ways, and it’s just really beautiful to get to see that rawness. I feel like this song kind of tied together this whole album and this whole chapter for me, and is something that I really really have to remember in life. This idea that you have everything you need. I think a lot of us go through life feeling like we are incomplete or broken and we’re waiting for some person to save us, or we’re waiting for some job to make us the person we thought we’d be, or to have some great change, but I think we’re- we’re all whole, and we’ll keep growing forever, and the more we can stop beating ourselves up and- and judging everything about ourselves the more we can settle in to ‘oh everything is actually already fine,’ and of course we can grow and strive, and try to be better and do better for the world, but I like the idea that we all already have everything we need, and so this idea, “all along I had it all,” when I’m anxious or when I’m depressed and when I’m struggling, when I really step back in those moments, it kind of goes back to the song For Now which is like I got to live. I get to be here, and I get to breathe and I get to eat, and I get to meet people, and grow, and experience love, and experience nature, and laugh. Those are the things that matter, not the external things, not what we look like, not achieving some status, or making a certain amount of money, or having other people think you’re cool. The real real happiness and fulfillment comes from those moments of just being here, connecting with someone, learning, looking at a tree, listening to a good song. I might be making absolutely no sense. This was the most asked question for any song on the whole album. So if you have listened to carefully to this song, you might have noticed that in the second half of the song there’s like some whispering. There’s like maybe someone talking but you’re not sure if you’re going crazy. Okay so the first part is the part that is just repeating all along I had it all, and then there’s this pause and then it turns into this other part. I just started feeling like there’s- there has to be some message buried under this. I pressed record and I just started saying things, and in this weird way this was like a culmination of the whole album to me, it’s like what have I learned over this whole album, of all these songs this whole chapter of life like what I thinking about what am I feeling and I just started rambling all this stuff. I think it’s fair, I made you suffer for a year, I’m gonna read you my little poem now. Okay. Here we go, you ready? “Here’s to the many things that make life so sweet: to the air, and the birds, and the stars, and the trees, to the people around that help me be me, to the pain to the waiting, to the tears, to the sea, and learning all along I’ve had everything I need. You have everything you need.” We have gone through the entire album, um thank you so much for coming on this journey with me and revisiting all these songs and getting to spend a little bit more time with them, um this was really like the most special album I’ve ever made, and it’s the first album that I got to release because of so many of you that have joined KG Records. You are my record label now and it’s- it’s amazing, so it was such a special time and it is- it’s a little sad for me to move on from it, but I know these songs will always be out there in the world living their own lives and- and now I feel at peace to move forward to some new ones. If you haven’t heard this song or the whole album you can go listen to it, you can go order the vinyl from my website, um if you want a physical thing, there’s also CDs. Thank you guys so much, you’re so wonderful, um I hope that you know that, I hope that you continue to feel more and more whole and happy, and um I’m sending lots and lots of love your way, and yeah. I think that’s it. Okay. Thank you guys. You’re the best. Bye.