#i remember back in the day being like aos makes sense compared to other tv scifi/fantasy serials!

[howtotrainyouragents]

So tonight I was like, let's rewatch AOS's "Inescapable" ep, which was a bad (read: hilarious) idea bc it's LITERALLY a speed-run of all the most absolute batshit insanity that's happened on this show

[pocketmouse18]

Thank you so much to @herosofmarvelanddc @cloudypaws and @mtab2260 for the tag! This was so much fun to think about :)

(fair warning, I wrote too much for many of these...)

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Just 2 :)

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

450,577 if I did my math right!

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Officially? Just 1 - Agents of Shield (two, I guess, if you count MCU as separate, since I use characters from both...). Off the record, many more than that! I have lots of bits and bobs from other fandoms that I tinkered with when I was younger, still getting the hang of writing, not brave enough to post things, etc. etc. Some of those include X-Men, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, the Fosters, Star Wars, the Hunger Games, the 39 Clues, and a few others I can’t remember. None of those will likely see the light of day, mostly because they’re unfinished, not very good, and just not reflective of who I am as a writer anymore, but they were fun to play around with at the time :)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

I just have the two, but The Important Thing is to Try wins, hands down, with 1227. Shoulder to Shoulder has 95, though, which I’m also very proud of! Important Thing has a definite advantage, being as long as it is, so I don’t know if that’s really a fair comparison between them.

5. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Yes! Or at least, I always try to! I just can’t believe someone would be kind enough to take the time to tell me what they thought of my story, so I always want to take the time to thank them and return the favor :) Plus, as I’ve learned, it’s a fantastic way to get to know some really lovely people!

6. What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Well... I technically only have one story that has an ending, at least on Ao3, and it’s not an especially angsty one, since it ends in Phil and Melinda getting married :) I have some angsty chapter endings in Important Thing, if that counts? I’m not even sure if any of my unpublished fiddlings have angsty endings (most don’t have endings at all lol)... I don’t mind writing angst, but I don’t know if I’m capable of making something without a happy (or at least hopeful) ending.

7. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you've ever written?

Not really, unless you count AoS/MCU crossovers (which I guess technically count, but also I would argue it’s not a true crossover since (and I will die on this hill) AoS is a part of MCU canon). When I was younger I was a fan of playing around with crossover AUs more so than the actual characters crossing paths (so like, what if these characters from XYZ were demigods or went to Hogwarts or what have you, and not so much what would happen if the X-Men met Luke, Leia, and Han on one of their space adventures). I started writing a crossover between AoS and the Marvel Rising cartoon once (which again, not sure if that’s a true crossover, since Daisy was in Marvel Rising, but I digress), where Coulson tasks Daisy to work with Kate Bishop and Rayshaun Lucas to collect and train a team of young Inhumans, starting with Kamala Khan, but I ran out of steam pretty quickly when it got too plot heavy.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I don’t think so. I’ve had some people not understand some choices that I made, but they asked it in a way that I thought was perfectly nice, and I was happy to talk about it with them. Sometimes people get “mad” at me when I cause pain and suffering, but I know that’s all in good fun :)

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Nope, not for me. I don’t read it or write it, personally. Writing a kiss is hard enough!

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge! Important Thing is probably too long and unwieldy to ever steal :P

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Someone once asked me on FFN if they could translate Important Thing to Russian, which was basically the coolest thing I’ve ever been asked!

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

A fic, no. I’d love to try sometime! I had a friend in college who I co-wrote with A LOT, though, so I know I enjoy that process, given the right partner. We wrote several short plays together (ranging from ~15-50 minutes in length, including one that we wrote in a single afternoon!), selected scenes from a larger (unfinished) play inspired by historical letters we found in an archive that were sent between a man from Massachusetts serving in the American Civil War, his wife, and his 8-year-old son, and several scripts for TV sitcoms (2 pilots for 2 different shows, plus additional eps for those pilots, and a couple of later eps for a different show that a classmate of ours wrote the pilot for - we were trying to practice what it would be like to be on a staff with a showrunner haha). The sitcom scripts in particular I’m very proud of, and could talk somebody’s ear off about if asked (one’s about ghost hunters and one’s about a DnD party!), but maybe that’s better saved for another post ;)

13. What's your all-time favorite ship?

That’s a very hard question for me! Mostly because shipping stuff is usually one of the last things to register for me when I’m thinking about shows/books/movies I like haha... I’m always a sucker for Philinda, and younger me was rather taken with Percabeth, I suppose.

14. What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

Hmm, several, really. The aforementioned AoS/Marvel Rising crossover I think could be really cool if I got it to work, but I don’t think that’ll ever happen. I also have a WIP that’s like an angstier version of a Hallmark Christmas movie AU where Daisy has to come home to her small town right before Christmas and figure out what she wants out of life, but I’m a little stalled out on that one, mostly because I’m waffling on who the charming love interest should be and because I don’t have enough of a plot, just lots of feelings about coming back home to a place you thought you had left behind lol.

I’d put Important Thing and it’s (as of yet) untitled sequel on here as things I want to finish, but I’m much more determined to see those through, so I don’t think they qualify for the “never will actually write” part of this question :)

15. What are your writing strengths?

I don’t know if other people agree with this, but I think I write pretty decent dialogue. My “training” (if you can call it that) is in, as you might have figured out by now, script and screenplay writing (those were the only creative writing classes I took in college). So having a sense of the rhythm a conversation needs to have and how to write dialogue that sounds mostly like how people really talk (but shined and tightened up enough so that it’s not actually like verbatim dialogue, which is far less interesting to read!) is something that I feel like comes pretty easily. I also think I do okay with similes and metaphors - my brain tends to work in that way. It’s easier for me to think of stuff (feelings, especially) in terms of comparing it to more familiar things than to just think of the thing directly, if that makes sense?

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

If I was being honest, this would be a very long section, but I know it’s not fun to read a big ol’ paragraph of someone self-criticizing, so I’ll keep it to one or two items ;) A big one for me is pacing, I think. I tend to write more than I need to and to over-explain things, so my chapters get very long and sometimes don’t really go anywhere? Until all of the sudden, they DO, because things need to HAPPEN! I’m a pretty rigorous self-editor, but I do have a really hard time cutting out sections (unless they’re really just not working), so even if it would help the pacing to leave out this conversation between character A and character B, I often can’t make myself cut it. I also think I struggle sometimes with balancing my ‘showing’ and my ‘telling,’ especially in the sense of me over-explaining certain things - like when it comes to feelings/facial expressions/etc, for example. I compensate for that in Important Thing by making it a part of a few people’s POV, but it’s not really a good habit to have in general. Also spelling! I’m really bad at spelling and run my stuff through robust spellchecks and text-to-speech before I post anything to make up for it :)

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I do it with some regularity, although I always get nervous about doing it wrong! It’s hard to avoid in AoS, where characters are spies and should (in theory, at least) have a working knowledge of multiple languages (”We’re spies, I thought we all learned languages?!”). Even in an AU, where characters aren’t spies, I like to try and pay homage to that, plus pay homage to certain characters’ native languages or just general multilingualism. I’ve spent a fair amount of time around people who speak more than one language, so I feel like it’s a natural part of groups of people to have more than one language spoken. I have a pretty good handle on written Spanish, a patchy idea of French, plus I know some Russian phrases from my dad and some German words from my grandfather, but I do rely on internet translation a lot. I usually run stuff through google, then run it backwards to see just how far off the initial translation was, then consult some actual, like, language learning sites to see if there’s particular idioms or common phrases that use different words than what google will give me, then run those words through backwards in the place of the original words to see if I can massage the whole thing to sound reasonably competent. Languages like Russian or Mandarin (which have their own alphabets/characters) are the hardest, since I have to also try and do a transliteration. I always try to put an apology/disclaimer in the notes any time I write in a language that isn’t English, because I’m sure I make lots of mistakes.

Also, I tend not to italicize words that are in other languages, because it looks weird on the page to me to set the other language apart like that (and because I italicize mainly for internal thoughts or emphasis, and usually what’s being said in another language isn’t internal or being emphasized). I put a rough translation at the end so we don’t have to pause the story for a parenthetical translation, but because the translation’s not right there, I try to either put in enough context clues that a person can still understand what’s going on, or I make sure that what’s written in another language isn’t critical to the overall understanding of the scene.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Officially, it’s AoS, since that’s the only fandom I’ve published for. I think the first true fandom I wrote fic for was probably either Harry Potter (entirely populated with OCs lol, I just liked using the world/setting), Percy Jackson (a mix of OCs and canon characters), or X-Men (all canon characters). I was a bit of a latecomer to fanfiction, though, like, I wrote a ton as a kid, but mostly original stuff, because I didn’t know that fanfiction in its current form was even allowed until I was in high school lol.

Oh! I almost forgot one! I’m not sure if this really counts as a fandom, but it’s definitely the earliest version of fanfic I wrote haha... I was like 12 and I wrote more than one story of an OC joining Robin Hood’s band of Merry Men, and then also one of that same OC becoming a knight of the Round Table, so like... do what you will with that information haha.

19. What's you're favorite fic you've written?

I can’t choose between my two darlings :( I mean, okay, technically it’s probably Important Thing. That story’s my baby. It’s huge and I’ve been working on it for almost 2 years, and I’ve poured a lot of my heart and soul into it. I’ve fallen in love with the universe I built in it, so much so that I wrote an entire prequel and have very concrete plans for a lengthy sequel. But I can’t not crow about Shoulder to Shoulder (the aforementioned prequel!), too... I’m just really proud of that one - it has a lot of firsts for me. First completed story. First romance-focused story. First foray into expanding the Important Thing universe. But yes, if I have to choose, then Important Thing wins. That’s a story that I started writing exclusively for myself - to give myself characters I could relate to and to explore a style of AoS fic that I loved reading - and that’s a story I will always and forever be proud of.

I think most people have probably answered this tag game at this point, so I don’t want to accidentally retag anyone! If you haven’t yet, and would like to join in, please do! This is your invitation <3

[kinetic-elaboration]

February 13: Star Trek Beyond

Some attempted thoughts on Star Trek Beyond.

So first it was bad lol. It is the worst. I thought maybe it would be less the worst than I had previously thought but it really, really is just irredeemably bad.

Trying to keep up with what was actually happening and talk in the group chat was too difficult and I now feel very exhausted lol. And I’m not even sure what I watched.

I liked Jaylah a lot, including her back story, characterization, “house,” traps, and cool mirror tricks.

I also like Kirk in that emergency uniform with the jacket unzipped.

That’s it! That’s all I liked.

In the past I’ve also said I liked the Spock and Bones parts but I honestly wasn’t a fan of them either this time around!

None of the characters felt IC and none of the relationships felt true or were compelling. Which is particularly egregious given that the alleged theme was strength in unity.

The movie was especially lacking in K/S content or even K & S interaction, which obviously didn’t please me. And it’s definitely the worst Kirk characterization I’ve ever seen. There’s no excuse for that either because it’s halfway through the 5YM, which means he should be pretty close to TOS Kirk--yes, he has a different set of experiences, so there’s going to be some variation, but there’s comparatively less excuse for a radically different characterization than in STXI and STID. They should have had Shatner read the script and make notes lol because whatever else you might say about him he KNOWS Captain Kirk.

Like, he (Kirk) lacked humor and charm and, often, confidence. He had moments when he was very smart and moments when he had a commanding presence. But he had just as many moments when he was whiny or bored and his Captain’s log??? I deserve financial compensation for every time I’ve listened to that. Bored of space?? No, this man is bored when he’s stuck on Earth. He stagnates in desk jobs. He is an adventurer and explorer before he’s ANYTHING else; if you don’t get that, you don’t need to be writing Star Trek.

Also, as I have frequently complained, I’m tired of him having no internal conflict or emotional complexity past his father issues. First reboot movie: dealing with his dead father’s memory and his step-father’s abuse. Fine, that makes sense for how they set up the AU. Second reboot movie: entirely motivated by the need for Manly Vengeance upon the person who killed his father figure. And for this redundant story line (in many sense) we had to lose Pike? Third reboot movie: you’d think he’d finally be ready to move on to other conflicts but actually no this time he’s sad about his birthday and having a longer life span than his...you guessed it!! father!! Yet again.

What else has ever motivated him? Legitimate question.

The destruction of the Enterprise was truly horrific. Long, boring, unwarranted, and without any emotional punch. As if it were just any ship! No, she’s a character in her own right and she’s not to be sacrificed like that but please tell me again how Simon Pegg is a true fan who brought the franchise back to its roots?

B said he did like that they split up the crew into unusual units but I have mixed feelings about it. I don’t entirely disagree, but I don’t think they did a lot that was interesting with any of those separated units. Uhura and Sulu are a cool pair (but this would have been a good opportunity to include Sulu’s semi-canonical crush on Uhura but whatever... a different rant) and they almost did some interesting stuff with them. There were glimmers of a caper in that story line and times when I could tell they were straining especially hard to make Uhura, their Sole Female Main--now that they cut out Rand, Chapel, and even Carol Marcus--into something Feminist and Interesting. But it didn’t quite gel for me. Like, Uhura would be having almost interesting dialogue with the villain and holding her own...and then she loses track of her colleague and has to watch that person die, thus undercutting everything she just said about unity and seeming to prove the villain’s point. Is she competent or not?

Bones and Spock are a pair I care about and like but again I think their canonical relationship in TOS is more interesting than STB showed. I personally read them as like...reluctant best friends who originally just had one person in common, and then realized they also like each other too, but they’ll never really say it. They understand each other but pretend not to. They have fun with the barbs they throw at each other. They both deeply love Jim but in different ways. They enjoy their intellectual debates. (That’s one thing that was definitely missing from them here! The intellectual debates!) So again, there was something there but not enough.

And Kirk and Chekov just happened to land near each other; nothing was done with that relationship per se. They really aren’t people who have much of a relationship in TOS so there’s not a lot to work off of but then on the other hand there IS an opportunity to create something new. Maybe I’m being too harsh and too vague but it just didn’t gel for me. The only specific K and C moment I remember was that supremely un-funny joke about Kirk’s aim as he sets off the “wery large bomb.”

But like there are possibilities.. they’re both pretty horny and Chekov is a whiz kid and Kirk is also very smart and has always been smart... Like in other words people Chekov’s age don’t end up on the bridge crew, in either ‘verse, without the Captain’s say, so even though he’s TOS!Spock’s and AOS!Scotty’s protege, Kirk is important to his life. Something with that maybe??

I’m upset that Spock’s individual story line was about whether or not he should go off and make baby Vulcans because, again as I have complained many times before, that was a conflict he faced and resolved in ten minutes two movies ago, and it doesn’t make sense to me for him to bring it up again now just because the Ambassador is dead. Like... the Ambassador told him to stay in Starfleet!! “Ah, yes, I will honor him by doing precisely the opposite of what he wanted me to do.”

Also--if they had made his motivation different or gone into it more, I would have been more into it. Make it about New Vulcan! Say there’s news from New Vulcan that it’s not doing well. Or what if T’Pring got in contact with him? Or what if we used this as an excuse to bring in Sarek?

This is part of a larger point for me which is that STXI set up a really cool AU and STID tried to do something with it--a little hit or miss, but it tried--and instead of pushing even more at the AU and developing it more and doing more with it... STB just ignored it! Was that part of what Paramount was warning about with making it “not too Star Trek-y?” Was it SUPPOSED to be a movie you could watch without having seen the last two? If so they did succeed but like.. .why? They made the supremely ballsy move of blowing up a founding Federation planet two movies ago and now they’ve just forgotten about that and all the reverberations that would necessarily have?

But of course we got a call back to Kirk being a Beastie Boys fan so.... Guess it was Deep all along.

We all three agreed that the core story of this film was potentially interesting but could have been done as a 50-some minute episode of a TV series rather than a whole-ass 2 hour movie. First off, cutting or cutting down the action sequences would have shaved off half an hour easily.

I’m frustrated in large part because there are certain things that are interesting here. I do like the concept of the crew being pulled on to an alien planet by a ship of former Federation crew, from the early days of the Federation/deep space flight, who were presumed missing but are somehow still alive because they have turned into aliens/used alien tech to prolong life, and who have also captured other aliens, like Jaylah, for the main crew to interact with. All of that was cool.

I would even be okay with these old Federation crew being villains but I don’t think that’s necessary or even the most interesting take.

But...first of all, as my mom pointed out, Krall was basically Nero in his illogical motivations: feeling aggrieved because someone who couldn’t help him didn’t help him and then just maniacally wanting revenge. It made more sense to me with Nero in a way. Maybe that was because he was better characterized, maybe it was because his anger was more personal (the loss of his wife), maybe--probably--it was because he was angry at Spock and Spock had actually promised to help, so there was some kernel of logic in his sense of betrayal, even if it was out of proportion etc. Also, Nero’s mania was portrayed as mania--we were all supposed to recognize that the strength of his emotion was warranted but his logic was deeply flawed. I think we were supposed to think Krall had some kinda... real criticism of the Federation, but in fact he doesn’t! He’s wrong! So like if he’d been angry with the Federation for abandoning him but the narrative and the other characters explicitly recognize that he’s wrong--the Federation tried but he was just doing something very dangerous and he recognized that danger on signing on--that might have been more palatable to me.

I’m not sure I’m making sense here entirely or explaining myself as well as I could.

I just don’t entirely get Krall’s beef with the Federation. I don’t get that whole “being a soldier and having conflict makes you strong and having people you can rely on and connections and community makes you weak.” That seems pretty obviously false. It also doesn’t really seem, not that I’m an expert, but particularly in line with military ethos either.

BUT the idea that he had a life that was comfortable to him as a soldier and then the Federation comes in and forms Starfleet and says, actually, we’re going to pull back on the soldiering and up the diplomacy and the exploration and the science--yeah, I could see that. I DO think Starfleet is military but even if you must insist it’s not, it’s clearly based on and formed from the military, and it has certain military functions. So obviously the first people to join or be folded into Starfleet probably were more explicitly military.

So he’s one of those people. Now he’s supposed to be a scientist and a diplomat and an explorer and he doesn’t like that. He’s given this very prestigious and interesting mission and jumps at it. Starfleet warns him, you might go beyond where we can reach, we might not be able to help you. That’s fine. But then when his ship is stranded and he is lost, he gets angry--maybe somewhat irrationally, but understandably--why?? Why did the Federation do this to him? What was even the point? When he put himself in danger before, at least he knew why. But just flying around space for the hell of it, and this is the cost? So that’s what creates his anger.

I thin this could be tied into Kirk’s diplomacy at the beginning--if the scene were written to not be a comedy bit where Kirk looks like an incompetent buffoon and is completely disrespectful the whole time. He’s good at this job and we should say it. But we could emphasize that this IS a diplomatic mission often, just as often as it’s a military or scientific mission. Maybe we could include other bits of their missions, too, to play up the variety of things they do and roles they play.

Another thing I think could be interesting, going back to my point about Spock, Vulcan, and using the first two movies and expanding on the world building... what if Spock wanted to leave Starfleet for better, more well-defined reasons, and we used that? Paralleled the two? Connected the two?

Because I think Vulcan in the AOS verse is very interesting and the movies didn’t do nearly enough with it. First, we have the Romulans showing up way earlier, at least visibly: in TOS, no one knew what they looked like or their connection to Vulcans until Spock is in his late 30s. In AOS, it happens not long after he’s born. So he’s growing up probably with more anti-Vulcan racism floating around the Federation. THEN Vulcan is destroyed. Now it has nothing and it needs to rely on the rest of the Federation, which must be both humbling and frustrating to many Vulcans, on top of the extreme tragedy of losing everything. Most of their population, a lot of their history, their manufacturing, their scientific facilities, their resources, their animals, literally whatever else you can think of that a planet has--all gone. Now all of the survivors have lived some period on an alien planet, by definition, and they’re probably very dependent on the Federation not just to set up the new colony, but to replace all of the resources--natural and Vulcan-made--that they lost. And they’re a founding Federation member, Earth’s first contact. They’re especially important. And now they’re weak, and reliant on others.

So maybe Spock, early on, hears from New Vulcan and they’re not doing well. Maybe we hear from Sarek or T’Pring (...I’d just like to see reboot T’Pring). Maybe it’s not about, or just about, having children, but about being from an important and ancient family, and being seen as a hero for his part in the Narada mission, that makes him want to go and help rebuild their government (taking his mother’s place perhaps? she was on the High Council) or their scientific facilities, or the VSA, or their space travel capabilities--you know Vulcan had space ships of their own, outside of Federation ships. This would be the perfect place to showcase that tension between wanting to be independent--out of pride, out of fear, even--and needing help, because Vulcan could not survive without the Federation, probably less than 10 years out from the original planet’s destruction.

And then you feed it back into Krall.

So I could see like... well the tension, and then Krall comes in, and he's angry that the Federation "abandoned" him, but we actually explicitly address this. Maybe Spock gets to interact with him and say "I get it. You had a life and a mission and a purpose that was comfortable for you. Then the Federation came in and changed everything. A lot of my people are also feeling upset for similar reasons. But here's why actually you're wrong."

So anyway as you can see I’m smarter and more interesting than Simon Pegg.

I also hated, speaking of writers of this movie, the gay Sulu thing and HEAR ME OUT on this. It’s homophobic. His husband doesn’t have a name? Might not be his husband at all? Looks like he could be his nanny or his brother? As B said “at least grab his butt or something.” That was the most sanitized, no-homo depiction of a gay person I’ve ever seen. He’s gay (see, progressives and queers! gay! you like that right!) but DON’T WORRY STRAIGHTS--he’s in a monogamous relationship and has a child, he’ll show nothing but the most platonic physical affection with his male significant other, and the plot point will be so minuscule you’ll need a microscope to detect it. Also, we’ll throw in a no homo joke about two male characters not wanting to hug and we’ll make sure Kirk and Spock interact as little as possible, because we know they give off Big Queer Vibes every time they’re together.

Yes the last point is a little unfair but can you blame me for being angry about all the “look how hip to the times we are” back-patting that went on in 2016 when canonical bisexual Kirk is RIGHT THERE and we could have had ex-boyfriend Gary Mitchell instead of Unnamed Nanny??

Also Sulu is a hella random choice because again, like... he may not have had an s.o. in TOS but nor was there any indication he was gay. So it seems a LITTLE like they picked him because (1) his original actor is gay and gay people can’t play straight people duh so probably Sulu was Gay All Along I mean did you not get vibes???; and/or (2) asexual Asian stereotypes preclude giving Sulu any kind of love interest, male or female, that is actually... sexual, outright romantic, anything.

Anyway I can’t remember if I had any other thoughts, but I’ve said quite enough I think.

I miss Kirk so much... real Kirk... even my version of AOS Kirk who is probably not even characterized that well but at least I worked with love!!!

[jezfletcher]

1000 Albums, 2020: Albums #10-1

Here they are, my Top 10 albums of the year. As always, these are the top 1% of all the albums I heard this year which means, at least statistically speaking, they must be pretty good. The other thing that means they’re good is the fact that, well, they’re all just very good.

#10. Joe Wong - Nite Creatures (baroque pop)

This is one of the albums I heard as part of the period this year where I was up a lot in the middle of the night with a hungry, cranky baby. And it’s a hauntingly good soundtrack for the wee hours of the morning. It has a psychedelic wash to a lot of it, and orchestral-sounding arrangements that blur the line between strings and guitar, plus harp from Mary Lattimore. It has a rich slate of moving harmonic progressions, in the way that I like in the best dreampop. Wong’s voice is a pleasingly melted-chocolate baritone, which works well with the atmospheric swirl. Wong has a history as a composer for TV and film, and you can definitely see the influences of that in this work.

My top track (I have several) is Day After Day, elevated as it is by the presence of an oboe—an underutilised instrument. But other tracks are excellent as well, for example, the title track Nite Creatures, which almost sounds like what The Go! Team would write if they took a lot of LSD in the 70s. Other standouts are Dreams Wash Away, Nuclear Rainbow and Sleeping.

Recommended Track: Day After Day

#9. Luis Pestana - Rosa Pano (experimental electronica)

A fantastic sonic journey, Rosa Pano sounds atmospheric and theatrical from the very first moments, starting with a low drone, before bringing in tuned gongs, atonal synth scrawls and heavily processed vocals. This is never an album that feels weird-for-the-sake-of-weird though—it uses the more challenging elements as dramatic devices. For every moment of atonal noise, there’s a plunge into the cool clear waters of restrained melody. And yet at every moment, I feel like I’m leaning forward in anticipation of that next unexpected element. Pestana does an amazing job at drawing things out just longer than you expect, or giving you exquisite moments of crashing relief. I’ve not felt this level of control over experimental electronica since Roly Porter’s 2016 album Third Law, which also ended up near the top of my end-of-year list.

In some senses this almost feels like the 2020 equivalent of a classic album like Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. It’s experimental, but has the feeling of narrative to it—elusive though the story might be, something is developing across the scope of the album. As such, it’s difficult, honestly to pick out individual elements—even though Sangra, for instance, contains some of the best bits in the album, it’s even better when it seamlessly moves into Arde Asa. Ao Romper da Bela Aurora brings in choral elements that shock you back into a remembrance of humanity, and Asa Machina provides an engine-like consistency moving you towards the finale. At 31 minutes, it absolutely packs a punch for its short running time, and is absolutely the kind of thing that you can (and perhaps should) consume at once, whole. It’s also the kind of thing I would love to see performed live one day. Hearing this boom over you in a dark room, sharing the experience with other audience members, would be a pretty incredible thing.

Recommended Track: Sangra

#8. Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension (art pop)

It has been a long time since we’ve had a proper solo release from Sufjan Stevens. In fact, his last album, Carrie & Lowell was actually the year before we started listening to 1000 albums a year. So The Ascension felt like a moment that was long coming for the music project. Better yet was the fact that unlike the subdued folk of his 2015 effort, this one feels more like the spiritual successor to his second-to-last album The Age of Adz. That was an album I adored (and saw him perform twice in concert), so I jumped into The Ascension with a great deal of joy. It has Stevens’ trademark ethereal but strident vocals, and layers upon layers of drifting synths. But there’s still a sense that there’s pure folk at its heart. The presentation might change, but so many of these songs you feel would survive either this level of heavy production, or Sufjan singing them with a guitar and no backup.

There are many tracks I love in here, including Make Me An Offer I Cannot Refuse, Tell Me You Love Me, and the harmonically challenging Ursa Major, which feels like the vocals and backing track are in constant tension with each other. I’m going to single out Lamentations though, which adds a surprising rhythmic element to what would otherwise be an extremely subdued, downtempo track.

Recommended Track: Lamentations

#7. MisterWives - Superbloom (indie pop)

In some ways, MisterWives is a victim of its own success with me. For a start, after so loving their 2017 album Connect the Dots, this was labouring under extremely high expectations. Moreover, while I generally try to hold out on listening to singles if I know that an album is imminent, I couldn’t stop myself from picking up the first trickles that came from this album, and then the half-album EP release that preceded it. Which meant that by the time it actually came around to listening to Superbloom, I’d heard approximately 50% of it already. I had missed that moment when all the goodness crashed on me at once. Of course, it’s still an extremely good album—but if the world were a fair and equal place, you feel like this should be a pure lock for my Album of the Year. 

There’s still plenty of great, thoughtful but mostly upbeat pop in this album. Danceable tracks like It’s My Turn and Love Me True are tempered by more atmospheric numbers like Valentine’s Day and Decide to Be Happy, the latter of which feels like it’s channeling a lot of 90s RnB, in the best possible way. Another thing, which made me realise this wasn’t the standout album of 2020, is that it’s an extremely long album (it’s 19 tracks, and over an hour in length), and the quality isn’t entirely consistent. This almost certainly means that tightening up the album would improve the overall quality. As a whole album, it suffers, even though as a collection of great tracks it packs more of a punch, perhaps, than some albums above it in this list.

Recommended Track: It’s My Turn

#6. Lola Marsh - Someday Tomorrow Maybe (Israeli noir pop)

For a long time this year, this was considered the front-runner for me. Coming out as it did in February, and being a clearly great album, everything released later was always compared to it: “is this as good as Lola Marsh’s album?” was a tacit question whenever a new great album came up. This survived most of the challenges, and winds up still in my top ten after what’s been a great year of music. This has excellent moments of songwriting, delivered with a sense of ennui, very appropriate for 2020, even though it was released before the pandemic truly took hold.

There are moments of exceptionally subdued folk songwriting, and elements which expand into rich dramatic presentations. Tracks like Like in the Movies start out with a beautifully simple melody and then build in a series of vast smash cuts to an ecstatic conclusion. The best track, however, is the opening track Echoes, which is melodically beautiful and develops in a number of unexpected but harmonious ways. They seem to know it’s the best track too, because they rework it into the more melodic, less rock-driven closing track Where Are You Tonight?. In some senses it feels like cheating to use the same song twice, but a) it’s such a great song that you don’t mind hearing it again, and b) the reworking is so skillfully done that it feels like both are worthy inclusions on their own merits. But it’s a great album, and one that still feels, 10 months later, like one of the very best of the year.

Recommended Track: Echoes

#5. Dyble Longdon - Between a Breath and a Breath (chamber folk)

This is a bittersweet album, a collaboration between vocalist Judy Dyble of Fairport Convention, and David Longdon, a multi-instrumentalist from the group Big Big Train. Shortly before its release, Dyble died, meaning that this was and is always going to be the only release we get from this duo. And that’s a damn tragedy, because this is a phenomenal album. It is even better as a collaboration, because there’s an inspired synergy between Dyble’s sweet trad-folk vocals and the sumptuous and rich arrangements from Longdon. There’s always a connection between the two, so it never feels like the simple folk qualities are being overwhelmed by post-rock ostentatiousness—often there will be interplay between the vocals and Longdon on flute, for instance, which connects the two elements beautifully.

Best though is the fact that they can use these elements to balance each other, or provide contrasts that generate immensely moving moments of drama. There’s the epic 11-minute France for instance, which feels symphonic in scope, or there’s my personal favourite, Obedience, which ties a beautifully sweet and simple folk tune with an immense prog-rock crescendo. But the album overall is a journey in itself. It’s incredibly sad that this is only perfect moment of collaboration we get from these two.

Recommended Track: Obedience

#4. Hugo Kant - Far From Home (downtempo nu-jazz)

I’m genuinely surprised with how well this held up, but I also remember how much I immediately fell in love with this album when I first heard it (in brief snippets when screening the week’s new releases, and then again when I listened through in full). This is a fabulous set of music, building rich soundscapes around punching downtempo breakbeats. You will notice jazz flute a lot in some of my top picks this year, and here’s another one which uses it extensively. But there’s a rich instrumentation overall here—woodwinds are part, but there’s more of the orchestra utilised at various points where it’s required to provide drama, or an upsurge in emotion from swelling strings.

Even better is when non-Western influences are incorporated to broaden the scope of the sound, or when there’s a deep groove to the bassline that drives a track forward despite anything else going on, such is the excellent Everything Is Transformed. My personal pick is personally High Gravity, which is probably more motif-based, and driven more by its percussion. It’s a high point for me, but others will probably consider tracks like Melancholia, or The Second Sun as more representative of the album overall. But whatever you pick from this album, you’re likely to find something good. It’s an eclectic but extremely enjoyable outing.

Recommended Track: High Gravity

#3. The Lemon Twigs - Songs For The General Public (alt rock)

This is a genuinely fabulous collection of tracks. It’s less of a thematically linked album than some of the others on this list, but the hit rate is quite phenomenal, especially given it’s quite a long album. There’s a genuinely beautiful throwback quality to a lot of these tracks—they feel often enough like they’re unstuck from time. Is this a long lost track from the late 60s psychedelia? Perhaps it’s pop rock from the 80s? Maybe, just maybe, it’s an ultra-hip interpretation of the last 70 years of music from the year of our lord 2020? Whatever it is, it’s exceptional songwriting for the most part, delivered with almost a kind of glam swagger that evokes the early albums of music project darling Kyle Craft.

Singling out tracks is both easy and hard to do, because I love so much of this album. The lead single The One is a particular favourite, but I grew to especially love the meter-shifting Only a Fool the more I heard it. Plus you can’t deny that it starts strongly with the one-two punch of rock driven sing-along Hell On Wheels followed by sunny pop Live in Favour of Tomorrow. But you have to also consider the cabaret charm of organ-or-maybe-calliope heavy Why Do Lovers Own Each Other?. You can see the bind I’m in. It was, to some extent a bit of a surprise to find this as high as it is on this list, but when I look back on the smorgasbord of goodness available from it, it absolutely feels like a correct choice for a Top 3 Album of the Year. 

Recommended Track (aw jeez… let’s go with): Only a Fool

#2. King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - K.G. (microtonal psychedelic rock)

The first time I really got into King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard was in 2017, which was happily the year where they set out to record 5 albums in 12 months. What struck me then was that this was a technically brilliant band that managed to maintain a stunning level of quality when you’d expect them to be prioritising quantity. The standout from 2017 for me was Flying Microtonal Banana, their first experiment with non-Western microtonal tunings for their instruments.

Their successor to this, K.G., also done with microtonal tunings, is even better, and it’s perhaps the moment when my generalised love for King Giz turned into something genuinely special. This is a remarkably fine collection of music, played as a zero-gap set and running the gamut from heavy prog rock to swirling psychedelia, 90s electropop and metal. Everything is tinged with the alien from the unexpected xenharmonics, but everything is also bolstered by the technicality of the performers. It’s very easy for this kind of thing to become a mess—to lack structure or to get caught up itself too much. This does none of that, and stays crisp and polished right through to the slamming finale, The Hungry Wolf of Fate.

Recommended track: Intrasport

#1. Ada Rook - 2,020 Knives (electropop concrète)

In my mind, there’s no better album to summarise the year we’ve just had than this sprawling, angry and claustrophobically intimate album from Ada Rook. Rook has been prolific this year, releasing an album as part of the duo rook&nomie towards the very end of 2019, producing and mastering albums for an array of artists whom I’ve also enjoyed, and even turning her hand to industrial grindcore under the name crisis sigil. But nothing is better than 2,020 Knives. There’s a wrenching sense of trauma at the core of these songs—lyrically they can be by turns devastating, heart-breaking or strangely life-affirming. But they’re placed in a strong, aggressive punch of industrial electropop, laced with guttural screams of existence that seem to perfectly match the state of the world in 2020.

It’s not a satirical album though, and it’s not obviously trying to make some sweeping statements on the state of the world. Instead, it’s clearly a deeply personal album—but there’s such quality in the songwriting, the beautifully polished production, the complexity of the rhythms, that something connects and then we start to see our own reflection in Rook’s. And if it connects and hits as often as it does for me—well, it ends up your #1 album of the year. It’s a perfectly fitting album for the year that was 2020.

Recommended track: Reverie (JH Ligation Experiment 1)

And there we have my top albums for 2020. Stay tuned for my top 50 (!) tracks of the year, which I’ll post over the next couple of days. After the Christmas break, I’ll also post my longer list of albums #31-100, and my list of tracks #51-100.

I’m also in the process of collating a playlist of my top tracks of the year, which I’ll post after all is revealed.