#i hope i’m not stepping on any toes here! i only finished the ep like half an hour ago so i’ve been avoiding discussion abt it until now

[killldeer]

I’d like to take a moment to appreciate the score behind the scene where Mat summons the Heroes of the Horn, because after rewatching it literally four times I finally realized why it hit me so hard – it’s scored like a modern movie or show of the genre usually would be.

This is the part where I admit that it took me most of the first season to warm up to Lorne Balfe’s compositions for Wheel of Time; I am an ardent enjoyer of the more classical, leitmotif-laden scores for things like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, and for a while I felt a twinge of disappointment that WoT wouldn’t be getting the same treatment. But! I eventually came to my senses and realized that Balfe’s compositions perfectly suit Wheel of Time’s setting. WoT’s world is post-apocalyptic, risen from the ashes of an unimaginably technologically advanced society to form its own unique landscape – that’s wild!! It’s different!! And Lorne Balfe recognized that it warranted a different musical style to match. He relies on compositions that lean into synthesized, eerie reverbs, and substitutes the classic leitmotifs seen elsewhere for rhythmic choral chanting in the Old Tongue to explain characters and their motivations – if you have the ear to understand it, of course. ;)

This brings me back around to our good friend Matrim. As he summons the Heroes, something happens to the score. The choral element is still present, but the slow music beneath it is… a regular orchestra. Slow, soaring strings, the kind of sound western audiences typically associate with decades of moments of glory and victory on screen – the music we typically hear for our heroes. As Mat calls these warriors from past Ages, and as he says “I… I remember”, the music steps back with him, connecting Mat to them all. This is a moment that straight up would not have worked if Wheel of Time was scored like the Lord of the Ringses or Game of Throneses it’s so often compared to – there wouldn’t have been any contrast between this section of the score and all the others. But because the score is usually on a completely different plane, doing weird, unique, “out-of-genre” stuff, it clicks PERFECTLY. Even if you don’t consciously register it, the music has momentarily stepped into a style that’s completely different – but completely familiar.

[thegladelf]

Breathing Is Easier Down Here

Ha! It’s finally finished. Feels like it’s been so long since I’ve written any fanfic. (Or at least finished one, I’ve started a few that are just sitting there atm.) Anyways, it’s a TV show, so I’m sure things will be much messier than this, but I wanted to get my thoughts down on how I think Bellamy should react. (I’ll get it up on Ao3 at some point, I’m just too lazy rn and I wanted to publish it somewhere before tomorrow’s ep completely invalidates it.)

Enjoy!

“Hey,” Bellamy said, his voice pitched low so no one else could hear. No one else needed to be a part of this. “We need to talk.”

He jerked his chin toward the cave entrance.

Echo paused, her whetstone halfway down the blade. For a second, she looked like she might run him through. He wouldn’t have blamed her. She knew. She had to know. To his relief, though, she set down the sword and stalked past him. He checked the gun at his hip — it felt good to have one there again — and resisted the urge to take a rifle too.

The overgrowth cracked and slapped as Echo cut through it deliberately, the leaves turned dark and waxy in the moonlight. It could have been romantic.

“This is good,” he said when a glance over his shoulder revealed that the cave mouth was out of sight, but not out of shouting range.

Echo didn’t say anything.

She knew, but that didn’t mean it shouldn’t be said.

“Echo, I’m so sorry.”

She barked one short laugh, muffled by the trees around them. “So much for nothing changing on the ground.”

“I didn’t want things to be this way,” Bellamy said, stepping closer, reaching. His hand brushed against her arm, but she whirled on him, her eyes spitting fire.

“Really?” She shook her head. “You really expect me to believe that you didn’t want her to be alive?” Her hands clenched into fists, the slight sheen of moonlight on her skin showing the muscles as they corded and then relaxed. She took a deep breath. “Don’t do this, Bellamy. You don’t even know if she feels the same way.”

Her fingers slid down his arm, twining with his. “I know I don’t say this often, but, please.”

“Would you rather I stayed with you, when I’m hoping for things to work out with someone else?”

“You promised,” she hissed.

“I know.” Bellamy closed his eyes. The night air felt hot and damp. That would take some getting used to. “But, Echo… if I had known…” If he had known, they wouldn’t even be having this conversation. His thumb brushed under her eye, wiping away a tear. “I am so sorry. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“And yet, you are.” Echo shoved his hands back.

He didn’t have anything to offer to that. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he waited for whatever she wanted to dish out. He deserved it. He could take it. Echo scoffed.

“I can’t believe it.” She crossed her arms, rocking back on her heels. “You know, I thought I at least had a chance. I thought the last six years would mean something, but here we are, less than twenty-four hours back home and you’re hers all over again.”

Bellamy shrugged. “I never stopped being hers, Echo. You knew that.”

“Yeah, well, that was easier to deal with when she was dead.” She turned away from him then, pressing her hands to her eyes. She sniffled a little. Her deep breath seemed loud enough to reach the bunker. Then she lifted her head, her hands falling slack at her sides. “Tell me something, Bellamy, did you ever love me?”

“Of course.”

Echo nodded, still not looking at him. “Just not as much as you love her.”

All he could say was, “I’m sorry.”

She didn’t respond, didn’t look at him as she stalked out into the forest. He didn’t try to stop her. She would be back when she was ready and anything that found her now? She’d probably rip it apart with her bare hands.

Running a hand through his hair, Bellamy took a breath. He needed a minute before he returned to the cave and the others. Something snapped in the trees and Bellamy braced himself, sure that it was Echo, back to say everything she hadn't before.

But two figures broke through the trees instead of one. Close together, the taller figure leaning in as the shorter figure giggled.

He used to dream about those first few minutes back on the ring, the feeling as the air grew thin, as breath grew precious. His lungs trying to fill when there was nothing to fill them. He used to wake gasping. He’d never forgotten that feeling.

And he hadn’t forgotten the relief when oxygen flooded his lungs again.

That was how he felt now whenever he saw Clarke.

“Bellamy!” Madi left Clarke behind, the rabbits on her line slapping against her leg. She looked at him like he’d hung the stars. “What’s wrong with Echo?”

“Madi,” Clarke warned as she caught up. She had a couple of rabbits hanging from her hand as well. With an apologetic smile at Bellamy, she whispered something into the girl’s ear and handed her the rest of the rabbits. “Sorry,” she said as Madi disappeared in the trees, “she’s not exactly versed in privacy. Hard to have much of it when you’re the only two people around.”

“It’s fine.”

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

She nodded, short and curt as she passed him.

Stop her. Tell her. Don’t wait, his mind screamed at him. Six years of wishing and grieving and regretting. And she was here. He could tell her. For the first time in six years, he could say it out loud and she would hear him. If he just stopped her now.

Clarke stopped, turning on her toes as she faced him again. Her lips pressed together as she looked up at him. “Bellamy…” Her voice was so soft the rustling breeze nearly drowned it out. “Whatever just happened, was it because of me?”

Bellamy swallowed. “Yes.”

“Oh.” Her gaze fell to the ground. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He took one step forward, unsure whether Clarke would stay or run. “It’s not your fault.”

Her inhale shook like a leaf. The moonlight caught her lower lashline as she looked back at him.

“Why, Bellamy?”

“Because I’ve wanted to say something to you for six years and I couldn’t do that if I was with her.” His stomach started doing backflips as he inched closer.

Clarke stayed still, watching him with wide eyes. And even though he can’t see their color, he knew they were the color of the ocean right before dawn. He knew that the hand he reached for would be calloused and chapped, a far cry from the pristine, princess’ hands that once killed a boy with such compassion. He knew her. Even with more years apart than together, he knew her. The one thing he didn’t know was what it would be like to lean down and press his lips to hers. He had imagined it, back when he couldn’t help himself, when her face tormented him every night. But he didn’t know.

“I didn’t even… I’d have said it sooner, but I didn’t realize it until I thought you were gone.” The words stuck, but he pushed through. Six years of regret was enough. Inhale. Exhale. “I love you.”

A minute passed. Two. Nothing but their breathing and the rustling trees.

“Clarke?”

Her hand tightened around his. “I want to show you something.”

His hand went to the gun at his hip again and she laughed.

“Some things never change. C’mon.” She tugged at a strap across her chest and shrugged her shoulder so he could see the glint of a muzzle flashing in the darkness.

He really, really loved her.

Clarke led him further into the forest, just north of the direction she and Madi had come from. The trees pressed close here, the tops allowing only slivers of starlight through. It felt close. Intimate. After so long on the ring, with nothing but metal, it felt like home. Cool leaves slapped against his face as they ducked around branches. Soon, the ground gained an incline that steepened gradually. It felt good, to work, to struggle as they climbed.

All the while, Clarke’s hand stayed warm in his.

One minute there were trees and the next there was only open sky.

Bellamy took in a breath as he took in the view. Stars. Everywhere.

On the ring, they seemed monotonous. A thousand pinpricks of light that never-ended. Worlds as unreachable to him as the one below.

But here, on the ground, they were beautiful.

“Wow.”

“I used to come up here,” Clarke said, her voice rough, “and look up. I’d try to figure out which one was the ring.”

Bellamy nodded.

“2,200 days. That’s how long you were gone.” She pulled away, shoving her hands in the pockets of her jeans. She meandered toward the edge of the plateau, looking down. Below them, little fires flickered on the valley floor. The Elegius crew settling in for the night. Honoring their boundaries for now. “I used to talk to you. It was pointless, I know, but I pulled out that stupid little radio and I’d just talk. Tell you about my day. About what I’d found. About Madi.”

“Clarke, I’m so — ”

She held up a hand. “And one time, Madi asked me, ‘Why is it always Bellamy?’ I didn’t have an answer. I hadn’t realized until that moment that even when I was talking to the others, I did it through you. I told her I didn’t know. And she told me she did.” She turned back to him, her eyes flicking away and back continually as she crept back over.

He didn’t move. He didn’t even dare to breathe as the toes of her boots met his.

Clarke stood a little straighter, holding his gaze now.

“So…” Bellamy rasped. “What did she say?”

“She said, ‘Bellamy is special’. She was right.” Her hands came up, cupping his face, her thumb rubbing over his chin, barely brushing his bottom lip. “You came for me. When I didn’t think I had anyone who could, you showed up.”

She was close. So close. One of her feet slid between his. The zipper of her jacket caught on his. There wasn’t even enough air between them for a good lungful. He could kiss her. He wanted to kiss her.

Clarke beat him to it.

In his mind, she jumped, though his brain knew she’d only risen onto her toes. He told his brain to shut up. It listened. Probably because her hands were in his hair and under his jacket and curling up across his back. He pulled her closer, careful to avoid the gash in her side. If he could make one moment last forever, it would be this one.

Too soon, she pulled away, looking far too shy considering what they’d just been doing.

“I love you, too.”

He changed his mind. This was the moment he wanted to last forever.

They stumbled backward as he kissed her again, mouths meeting messily as Clarke giggled.

“Careful,” she said, “if we tumble over that cliff we violate our new agreement.”

“I think we’d have worse things to worry about if we fell over a cliff,” Bellamy replied.

“Let’s not,” she said softly. “Let’s just stay here for another minute.”

Bellamy sighed, resting his cheek against her hair. “Whatever you want.”

[ninjagoat]

Notes on Supergirl 3x14

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

I've been annoyed with the show for a while now. Season three came out of the gate with four solid eps, and then draaaagged for another seven; before finally putting things back in order: slamming a season's worth of Lena's 'development' into reverse so she can actually have her own worldview and agenda once again; giving the Legion a hidden agenda so they actually have some narrative juice; giving Alex and Kara a genuine ideological conflict for the first time since... I can't remember, and actually having a plan for the World-killers because of it; and, important to me especially, the re-emergence of Winn as a recognised problem-solver.

Which brings us to 3x14, a MASSIVE episode for Winn, and, in terms of scale, a massive episode in general: the two major action sequences are of a kind you'd expect from a season finale; they've landed a *recent* Academy Award Nominee for a guest star; there's a frank discussion of later-life mental illness, and an insight into J'onn's specific attitude toward his adopted race; and a hilarious sequence of our heroes just... hanging out.

In short, in just a few episodes (which, by sheer coincidence, would all have finished being scripted *after* AK was suspended and fired for being a mediocre sex-pest)... they fixed the show.

THEY FIXED THE DAMN SHOW.

Notes below the cut (it’s a long post this week):

- "People being addressed as soldiers going into battle before actually just trying something fun and silly" is one of my favourite tropes, and that look Winn and Kara exchange is one of the best indicators of their long-standing friendship we've seen in a long time (Winn is, of course, Kara's best friend. You many have heard her give statements to the contrary. THESE ARE LIES).

- The choice to have the characters, all played by actors who can sing, do 'karaoke voice' instead of their actual voices is a good one. Having Kara do Beastie Boys side-steps the whole 'we've heard her sing' problem; J'onn and Mr. J are both wonderfully appalling; and Alex letting the lyrics of her ballad run on as she stops to drink is, as the kids say, a Mood (I'll come back to Mon-El and Winn at the end).

- THERE ARE *STILL* NO ALIENS AT THE ALIEN BAR. WHAT HAPPENED TO KEVIN? OR BRIAN?

- James's constant need for validation crashing against Lena's particular brand of emotional - and literal - unavailability is a good choice; we've not really seen James's interest in Lena manifest outside of her needs until now, and it's the first time he's had a relatable problem since 1x06. And pairing him up with Mon-El for this scene - who's having his own issues right now - is nice.

- Speaking of which, Imra's telepathy: is this the show telling us she definitely *doesn't* have mind-control powers, or that Mon-El - currently not the most reliable expert on the Legion - doesn't *know* she has mind-control powers?

- "FELLOW DRUNKS!"

- I'll admit, James was my least favourite option for who could be Winn's emotional support in this episode, given his long history of being really quite bad at it; but in this first scene, he's actually pretty good, providing Winn with the avenues he needs to avoid the old-school masculinity coping methods he's trying to use instead.

- Winn making ABSOLUTELY SURE that his Winslow's dead, even before they tried to put him in the ground, is on point.

- Mary. MARY. The writers knew they had Tony-award-winning Steppenwolf alum Laurie Metcalf on board, and it SHOWS. She's nervous and tentative, but she's also forthright; she takes over the space when she feels she ought to (a lot of her funnier asides could have been put in Cat Grant's mouth with no problem), and physically, tangibly awkward when she doesn't; and Metcalf runs through the gear changes as only a pro of her stature can. In her first scene, she's anxious, yes, and she's having difficulty separating Winn from the little boy she left behind; but it's also clear that THIS IS THE HAPPIEST DAY OF HER LIFE, even if it isn't her son's. Mary is a catalyst for Winn's pain, but has a whole existence outside of it. That's good writing, that is.

- Speaking of Winn's pain... DEAR. LORD. That story goes toe-to-toe with any crappy parent story you've ever heard (and blows all of Lena's solipsistic crap out of the water); and Jeremy Jordan, having done so much with so little every week, completely sells that this is a story he's been waiting two decades to tell, and how being left alone with no-one to be *except* his father's son absolutely broke him.

- The Flying Monkeys sequence is the best action scene this show's ever done. Better than Reign. Better than Crossfire. And again, Mary and Winn: every time they're not focused on the time they've spent apart, it's almost like they were never apart at all.

- Winn calling out James for suggesting he forgive Mary is absolutely on point; and James admitting that he was a selfish, sulky little brat after his Dad died as an argument of how it could have been just as bad if she'd stayed is interesting (James is making it up to her now, though, by... never going home for a single holiday. Ever. Still, baby steps). His argument will also end up applying, subtextually, to his relationship with Lena; stop being ungrateful for the time she's not there for you, and just be happy for the time that she is. It's what she needs you to do. She's got her own stuff going on.

- "He doesn't always get the credit, but he keeps us going around here." Kara's gentle tribute to her friend (her BEST friend) and the adaptive, outside-the-box thinking that's been keeping everyone alive for years is wonderful; not just for what she says, but for how comfortable a rapport she has with Mary, while never forgetting that being told how great her son is by *Supergirl* is as good, if not better, than hearing it from the President herself (and if Mary needs that... it could be arranged).

- On a downer note, anytime a show starts talking about a side character as the "heart of the team" or somesuch... it's usually not a good sign for that character.

- I'm not ready to go into Mr. J's illness yet. I have a personal relationship to stories like this, and I can't write about it in this format. But Carl Lumbly is still ABSOLUTELY the best.

- And I'm not the person to get into J'onn's opinion on his own blackness; except to say, in a week when David Harewood met with British MPs to discuss the 'accidental' deportations of the Windrush migrants, this is a BIG DEAL.

- Since I'm doing asides into side plots: Mon-El and Kara. His apology - agenda-free this time - is honest and heart-felt, and his full disclosure about *why* he's apologising now raises interesting questions: at what point is this honesty defined as over-sharing? Where is the line drawn between being 'open about your feelings' and 'demanding emotional labour from others'? Kara has a firm boundary - they are *not* going to talk about his marriage - and he respects that. But should he have told her about it in the first place, even if it does lead in to the new information about the World-killers? I've said before: Supergirl is the only show with a significant male audience that, whether you believe it should or not, actually tackles questions of what healthy masculinity *should* be (albeit with varying degrees of success), and it's good that they're keeping it up.

- Mary's story is not only an important reminder that the men who commit mass-murder often begin by terrorising the women in their own homes; but also, in the context of Childish Things, addresses Winn's misunderstanding of his own fears. Winn has always believed that his father was a good person, until one day, when he just wasn't; and Winn believed that any time he didn't keep a lid on his own anger, any time that he might use that part of himself to stand up and say 'no' against those that would hurt him, the same would happen to him. But Winslow Sr. wasn't a good person. It took a long time for his anger to consume him, a long time for his battles against perceived slights to affect anyone except Mary. Winn has little to worry about.

- And her decision to take the gun and take on Toywoman(?) alone is immediate, consistent, and believable. She's been without her son for twenty years to protect his life. He will NOT be taken from her now.

- Delightful stunt-casting for Toywoman, by the way (If you haven't watched The Silence Of The Lambs recently... go do that).

- The second action sequence: not as good as the flying monkeys, but still has some banging moments, as the 'heroes' drop out to handle various contraptions to leave Winn to rescue Mary.

- Speaking of contraptions: "Cloth Magic." Comics Mon-El fans, that's got to feel good.

- How many times did Mary have to sit through New Hope when Winn was a kid? I'm guessing 'more than ten'.

- Winn being offended at the idea that he's going to be killed with something as pedestrian as a *firearm* is the absolute business, and annoying because it's a beat I'd already gotten it noted down for my own fic series.

- "You haven't just survived, you have EXCELLED."

- Mon-El *butchering* a song now synonymous with a TV show that *LIVES* in the kind of masculinity he's been used to deconstruct (again, with varying degrees of success) is a solid piece of work. As is his apology.

- Okay, this episode isn't exactly what we all wanted for Winn. No-one has hugged him. No-one has told him they love him. Kara has not re-iterated that he is, in fact, her best friend (because he is). He's not designing the Valor suit. We didn't get to hear him sing. And his twenty-year-long trauma of being alone in the world is resolved a lot more speedily that it really ought to be. But that doesn't matter. Those are indulgences, and that's pretty much what fan-fiction and the Miscast performance videos are for.

    What this episode *does* do is reiterate the show's mission statement once again: We, as a people, are at our best when we depend on each other. Forgiving when we can. Understanding when we can't. And more than anything else, simply being there for each other. Whether it's supporting each other through a personal crisis, or through the decline of a loved one; teaching each other new skills, or helping to mend a beloved outfit; or even, sometimes, just having the courage or shamelessness to perform karaoke with your mum; the same truth remains:

    WE ARE STRONGER TOGETHER.

- Which is why it's perfect that the show end on Lena. Alone. Keeping the truth from the people she's closest to. She hasn't told James. She won't tell Kara. She's just there, trapped inside the box in which she's imprisoned her oldest friend, with no-one else there to help or to guide her. For all her claims that Kara Danvers is her hero... ultimately, the only person she will ever truly depend on is herself.

   And it's all going to go horribly, horribly wrong.

-LyraWatch: I'm bringing it to a close. It's now been eighteen episodes, and nary a mention of if they're still together or where she's gone. It's so very unlikely that she'll be brought up again.

-LenaWatch: 14 episodes (record high: 16). Most likely at this point, Winn and Lena will have a scene at some point after it's been revealed she's been working on Sam (and has probably made things worse); and Winn will, for the third time, have to help bail her out of the war-zone-like situation she'll have created through her own hubris.

[toddmichaelrogers]

Letter to You

At an abandoned lot Meagen pulled out a picture, which she had glued onto a card. In the picture it was the two of us looking six years younger; though her face is covered in a raggedy cloth elephant mask, and mine is wearing a home-cut eye mask with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth. In the picture (though it is hard to tell) it is also two nights before Halloween, and we are spending our last night just as friends.

Inside the card it said happy anniversary.

*

Zach and I spent the last month mixing the EFFORTS EP. We kind of have an unspoken rule that the weirder the idea, the more we should pursue it. That’s kind of how the EP started as 3 songs and ended up being just 1 long track. If we a have a genre, I would have to call it ‘Spook Punk’.

It should be debilitating working on so many different music projects, but at this point, they're all feeding into one another. It’s taken the pressure off of my so-called perfectionism; something that has nearly threatened to destroy me at all times. (I wasn’t even meant to be writing a blog today. I came to the library to ‘fix’ the next Spell Saga deck--and was surprised to find nothing wrong with the thing. I’m getting better at catching myself.)

I can’t tell you how many times Zach has had to put up with me asking if we can “redo” a vocal. Our most this is a single song, May You Absorb All Evil took almost two years to get finished because I am a fucking idiot. But it’s done now, because Zach spent weeks fixing and mixing it through a giant board.

It’s on the EP, along with some other songs that I felt worked well as a warning. And that’s really how I’m choosing to think about the whole thing--our EP is a warning to those who are not prepared to hear 33 years of pent-up frustration. It was not fun growing up in a musical family without knowing I could do it. (A reverse Potter/Dursleys scenario, I can assure you).

I am the muggle. That’s a good song title.

But it was equally horrendous spending two decades in a city known to the rest of the world as “Music City”. Every person here looks and sounds the same. Everyone born here thinks they are chosen/deserving/special, or they just showed up from the midwest hoping some other band would find them (and their talent) like a black hole pulls in light.

Making art to get fucked or get attention makes me feel like I’ve just witnessed an assault in some parking lot. I want to break windows and arms and scream at people. “Don’t ever come back to my wal-mart!” but this is music city, and everyone around me is assaulting each other in a circle jerk while I just stand there wondering if someone’s going to help me carry these groceries. “You are ruining Black Friday!” I might scream, or “you are ruining the basis of the very institution you are attempting to crawl down into.”

I mean, make that money. But fuck.

Anyway the EFFORTS EP “May You Absorb All Evil” will be released in the (season to be determined) of next year. The full length album “I Bought You a Coffin” is already recorded and will follow shortly thereafter.

*

One of my other projects, Beset., is nearly finished with the DEMOS for our first LP “There Are Places They Can Get You.” You can actually listen to some of those HERE.

The Weapon and I try to get to these every Monday, so by year’s end we should be ready to start recording the actual tracks. We just need to fix this latest one--we did that thing where you start recording ideas before ever playing a finished song, and you end up with a mess--but hopefully “We Brought Weapons” will shine as bright as the others once we crack it.

And I’m really excited about the only song we haven’t recorded, “Make Peace With The Promise of Failure”. Not only is this the first thing he has brought to me first on guitar without me showing him lyric, but the chorus is fucking amazing (he thinks it’s a bridge, but I got a reallllll good feelin’ on this one).

*

Geoffrey W. Osborne and I are trying to finish and release the first ever DAMNSEL & THE EUTH GROUP EP for a New Year’s Day release. Which is a fitting day actually, as the last song on the album is called “Baby New Year”, something I wrote while listening to an old keyboard piece of his.

when I conquer death

when I have nothing left

I was Baby New Year

I was Baby New Year

so drink and be of cheer

good times were never here

middle of the road

new teeth and broken bones

I’ve known every fear

the end is almost near

when I mend my bones

they will call me home

I was Baby New Year

I was Baby New Year

That’s something about Geoffrey’s playing that I like, it’s easy for me to write lyrics to it. We did the same thing on the EFFORTS EP with a little interstitial song called Ringtone Money.

How we gonna leave

When we don’t know where to go

I got that ringtone money

And it sounds like solid gold

When you look at me

You look like you saw a ghost

How we gonna leave

When we don’t know where to go

For me, writing lyrics or changing something at the last minute is one of the best parts about making things. It’s like pushing a piece into a puzzle quickly while the puzzle is being framed. We did it again for a weird hidden track on the May You Absorb All Evil EP

wait another minute

I’ll get my revolver

you can be a skeleton

just give me a holler

*

I have one more musical project now. So far it’s just a name, an album title, and some demos. Also I made a cover because that’s how I do ma shit.

*

Meagen’s out of town for Thanksgiving. I spent the entire day playing Spell Saga and it meant something to me. Four years ago I was lost and sore; I had just failed to get the game funded on Kickstarter. I felt a sense of real shame about the whole thing. Like I had returned from a war I had single handedly lost. Maybe that’s insensitive. But after a year of planning the thing it was a real blow. So to be holding the prototypes four years later and playing through it one final time before it goes to print was really special.

But wait--you ask. Didn’t the Kickstarter succeed a year later, in the year of our lord 2014--and haven’t the cards been printed and are even now waiting in a Hong Kong warehouse?!

Yes.

But it’s been three years, so I took my own money and printed the next Deck so everyone could have it for free (Spell Saga is a game of multiple decks, like chapters in a book). Also I redid the packaging, because I am, in the end, a perfectionist.

So I spent all day playing through Deck 2: The Forest, making sure no problems could be seen upon them cards. And next week I tell the good people of Panda Game Manufacturing to go for it, set that shit to print. Here is a lot of pics I took of the play through.

*

Making things often means you are filled to the tips-of-your-toes with a sort of psychic horror--the unending logic that you are doing your best to prove on a chalkboard in front of the entire world that only you can solve an equation that proves you yourself are a fucking hack.

I often stare off into the distance like a farmer hearing a gunshot in a world where only he and his daughter were left alive.

The other day I was struck by the sort of thinking that makes all those bad thoughts go away.

My deepest concern was that while playing through Deck Two, I had a problem. Most of the cards I drew were of no use to me. Now, if you design a game, and while playing it, you DON’T use most of the pieces, that is a fucking issue. Except...because I am ME...and by that I mean WEIRD (see any paragraph above) this is not useful play test information. 

I don’t play games well. In fact, if someone plays against me in a game--even one that I MADE, I am bound to lose. The one exception I can even remember is winning a round of dat classic Mario Party at Cousin Lauren’s apartment, three years ago, while she was busy illustrating the very cards I was now concerned about.

Anyway, I stepped out of the shower the other morning and finally pinpointed what was causing the astral sand to be pulled out from beneath my feet--what the current was that I was stuck thinking about:

In Deck One: The Highlands the cards are meant to each do a specific thing, almost on their own. Some are necessary and some are fun, but they each sort of help you in their own weird way. In Deck Two: The Forest, this is different. There are several cards that need to be combined for the rules or effect of them to take place. That means a lot of time you’re left with a bunch of random pieces you don’t care about<-----my concern. Now, if I was GOOD at games, I would play with the cards I was dealt, instead of stubbornly waiting for the ones that I want. I know that. I understand it. And though that knowledge does not help me play any better (for I am indeed stubborn) It does help me tremendously while designing. Because I can imagine how other people will play, and how they will react to the pieces I have given them. In this instance, with us about to go to print and there being NOTHING I can change too drastically (the game is, after all, designed, and the deck itself was already redesigned almost entirely from the digital PnP version we released three years ago), I was definitely feeling a bit shaky. Until I stepped out of that shower, and realized the solution lay in how I treated the next part of the game, Deck Three: The Caves.

I won’t go into it further. But playing that DECK is going to feel REAL GOOD.

*

I will not talk about my day job--which is a night job. But the hours are horrendous, and I see myself now as a chain anchored to my home and swinging in a circle until I can destroy everything or fly off into space.

My childhood was not as bad as some, and it was worse than others. I chose then to believe I was suffering, so what difference is it if I’m now working hard to make art generated by those younger woes? Life continues.

*

The Novel.

I didn’t start playing music until i was 30 years old. But The Novel I started even years before that continues to surprise me more than anything else.

It is a terrible cost, a novel.

I fear it will continue to consume me, like a star going supernova in my head and eating up all the time I could spend on other ideas. And I fear that I would let it.

I have been sober for about eight months now. And I often feel okay about it, but the desire is there; a nasty trick of the mind that makes me feel like I was never an addict, and that it would really be something, almost a performance piece really, if I drank now in front of those that know me as a ‘survivor of The Thirst’. I wake up from dreams where I drink and can’t stop, and that disappointment I feel upon waking is pretty much the battery of my unexpected willpower. But I feel that desire, and I feel it with the novel as well. Destroy Everything and let it wither in ruin, so i might survive. And most days I kneel down and say “yes. Of course.” and “nothing matters but the ten year slow motion orgasm of making you.”

I had decided after years of start-stopping a second draft to just Do The God Damn Thing. I started on New Year’s Day 2016 and rewrote from the beginning to what I hoped was the end. But I got lost. A lot. I got stuck redoing the same things over and over again. Parts of the story changed. Good. Now it was a 2.5 draft, right? That’s fine. It’s for the best.

But I continued in my toil. And time passed. After a year I resigned myself to whatever life the novel would let me live; often sneaking away for just an hour a day before or between some grueling job or errand of adulthood.

This past Summer something clicked. It was that thing that always happens, where I’m worried about something until I realize only I can fix it, and the worry was only me being smart. Less a warning and more like a ...pre...answer?

I wrote a new beginning to the story that night I think. Clicking in the dim light of the living room like someone who had just discovered words. This led to other unexpected turns in the story...a brand new sixty page interlude in the middle of the thing...a whole section of plot points and chapters was also added--things and moments I had culled from a side story written years ago that I felt sort of circled the novel. Now it was part of it. Everything began to take shape into something that...I started writing this story in some form or another a decade ago, and the shape it became was something Unknown.

Then I kept getting stuck again--still moving forward I became unable to push through the white snow of blank expanse before me.

The whisper that was not a warning was there again. I would have to break the entire rule of the rewrite, and go back to the beginning and start over (madness) and not only this, I would have to change the entire tyle I was writing in (horror).

But I did it.

I looked at my life and it’s work and realized I was not writing the way I wanted to--the way I was meant to. I was living and dying in the predefined alignments of those who had come before me. Nothing I make is normal, why should my writing be any different.

I went back to the beginning and began a process which has led to work I truly feel terrified and sure of. What more could I ask?

Now the cards are going to print somewhere in Hong Kong.

I will have four separate recording projects throughout December.

The novel continues and will be finished sometime next year.

And I don’t think Meagen and I have ever been better.

I cannot enjoy any of it. Not the way I believe someone should. I am not normal. My enjoyment comes from everything spinning, and the sound of myself whispering a thousand little would-be-warnings as I navigate through it all.

And I have become good at it, maybe. I have done this a long time. I have mastered the act of handling some shit. And now it’s time for a new sort of thing. The plates and whispers are starting to combine into something else, and there is a something Unknown on the horizon...

Unknown but for a name: SUB(URBAN)HEATHEN.

-mE.