#just a funky little fucked up town and also I’m the mayor

[showrunnerihardlyknowher]

What if I made a little fucked up Stardew Valley esque AU with all my OCs. What then.

[nobodies-png]

HC: Xemnas and the other Xehanorts love playing Animal Crossing.

Just because ACNH has been such a fuckin BEACON OF JOY in my life since it came out (even though I have no means of playing lol) i’m adding some general animal crossing Nort headcanons 

Master Xenahort :

He’d be a snooty goat, pretty obvious. All of his letters sound vaguely threatening and pretty creepy, but he also sends super rare furniture so it’s not like you can complain that much.  Whenever he’s in your town, all of your flowers are bound to turn black for some weird fucking reason. - no one knows if this is a feature or a glitch You have more chances of getting him to show up if you have a heart shaped pond for him to lurk around.

As for Xenahort playing Animal Crossing, weLL. Good luck getting this old boomer figure out how the controls and everything else works. He seems to like Isabelle a lot because “she’s efficient and a cute dog” but he ALSO likes Apollo and his litte “PAH !” catchphrase.  Xenahort could have a pretty gothic and aesthetic world if it weren’t for the fact that he struggles with technology. Also also the guy who’d listen to all teh fun facts Blathers has.

Ansem (Heartless) :

A jock/cranky boar maybe. The kind of villager you wouldn’t really give much thought about, he looks a little funky and emo but eh, it’s not a big deal - until you get into his house and see that it’s pretty much chaos. There’s furniture you’ve never seen and are those fucking GLOWING EYES in the background ? You don’t think you wanna know. Exclusively comes out at night when there’s literally no other villager awake and he’s never present during holidays or events.

Ansem wouldn’t even play Animal Crossing, ngl. He has 0 interest in the game and would most likely drop it after 10 minutes. Also why can he only call like ONE person in the attic ? Fucking whack, that’s not how phones work. Spends the entire time complaining about little things he doesn’t understand. Like come on, man they’re just funky talking animals, let them live.

Xemnas : 

A lazy wolf. More quiet and lethargic than actually lazy. The guy is pretty quiet the first days UNTIL you start befriending them, then you’ll discover that he’s actually a fucking chatterbox. You can find Xemnas on the beach at sunset just vibing most of the time or at the museum. After having him around for a while, you notice that he’s the only fucking villager in your town that hasn’t celebrated nor told you when his birthday is. His house is pretty minimalist and monochrome.

Xemnas doesn’t exactly “play” the game - he mostly just roams around, doing absolutely nothing or just talking with people while going “Hmmm” Ohhh” “I see. . .” and other noises to himself. Couldn’t figure out how to give Isabelle a seashell on the first days so he just dropped that shit on the town hall pavement and it’s been there since then. Xemnas also never learns the real names of the villagers in his town, he just names them after people he knows and calls it a day.

Vanitas :

Definitely a jock cat, but like, the mean kind. He’s just too childish and energetic to be a cranky villager lol - his catchphrase is probably some shit like “idiot”. Not even a nickname, he just adds that at the end of sentences. Vanitas (or Catnitas :punch: :pensive) runs through the flowers but ONLY when you’re watching, orders the weirdest and most complex coffee just to see if you can make it - and then when you show him that you can, he’s impressed but also angry cause now he has to drink that shit. If you get Vanitas on your town, there’s a high chance that Ventus also moves in right next to him and viceversa.

Vanitas claims that he doesn’t give a shit about Animal Crossing, but his town is impeccable and he WILL kill for the villagers he loves - even if he’d also just try to straight up kill the ones he hates lol. The type of guy who carries around an axe 24/7 for no reason other than aesthetics and to make a Statement (tm). His house is pretty ugly though and he gets mad because he just doesn’t know how to properly decorate it to get a good grade.

Young Xenahort :

Smug goat. Smug goat. SMUG GOAT. The 100% definition of smug bastard - old Xenahort at least had the decency to SEND you rare furniture, but this guy just DISPLAYS it all on his house and MAKES SURE you know how pitiful it is that you can’t have the same things as he does. His house is chess themed and he has a picture of Eraqus somewhere. All of his letters sound condescending and he tries to use really long words to sound cooler, but we all know the truth. 

Young Xenahort shares a switch with Young Eraqus so naturally they  share islands in ACNH. Eraqus didn’t really mind but Xenahort REALLY wanted to divide the island in half so that they could have their own territory. IRONICALLY, he spends most of the time on Eraqus’ side tidying shit up - because he just can’t help getting mad whenever he sees how messy everything is, with all the fucking fish just laying around because Blathers isn’t there yet. Young Xenahort also insists on only having white roses and is very hellbent on keeping a strict aesthetic.

Terranort : 

The snooty lion she tells you not to worry about. Also a bit smug, but not as bad as the actual Xenahort - he’s actually pretty tolerable, when he’s not giving you the cold shoulder. The villager that takes you 207456 years to actually befriend and who only likes super specific and rare items as gifts. It’s really funny to bully him around because he only gets angry and just stomps around all day after that.

Another sad lad who wouldn’t play AC BUT if he DID he’d have some intense lore and one man larping sessions with the villagers. Like, those people who get WAY too into it. And sadly that’s all I got on him because I wasted all of my juice on writing for the other guys who are all technically the same guy. 

Dark Riku : 

Stereotypical jock wolf - head empty no thoughts, only muscles, sports and a deep seated inferiority complex. If you send him fruit, he’ll send you garbage in return. The only villager who wil SMACK you back with a net if you hit him, but his letters are oddly ??? Pretty nice and normal too ??? Unlike all of his regular dialogue about beating you up at every single game and sport possible in this entire world. Like, calm down, bro. Calm down and have a caprisun. Brags a lot about his “friend Kairi” from another town, which is sad cause she doesn’t. Actually know him. At all.

 Like Vanitas, e-boy Riku says he “doesn’t give a shit about some animal AI from a kids game” but he actually does. Sable is BEST girl in his eyes and getting her to open up and share her story with him was a magical moment. The game is super soothing and it calms him down, he’d even listen to those Lo-Fi AC 24/7 streams on youtube whenever he needs to c h i l l.

Xigbar : 

Peppy panther, I don’t even have to tell y’all what his catchphrase is. Constantly breaks the fourth wall with little jokes, known to “teleport” - he kinda ends up showing up on every single store and building you enter, as if nothing happened. Sends you VERY specific letters describing shit he shouldn’t knowor stupid jokes and puns. LOVES to gossip about other villagers and gives you that Extra Lore and trivia about them - but whenever you ask others about him, they just Dont Know Anything About Xigbar. Are you SURE he’s in your town, mayor ? 

Xigbar would mostly play Pocket Camp because it’s easier than carrying around a fuckin ds or a switch. It’s also less work and it’s a nice distraction from all the drama going around in the real organization. To play ACNH or ACNL he probably leeches off someone else’s console and he’d exclusively visit others’ towns just to fuck with them or annoy them to death by surrounding their houses with pitfalls.

[wordsfromgrime]

One Night in Richmond

~Busted~

It never hurts to show up with a case of beer so I stop at Lombardy Kroger on my way to the Circle and pick up some Blue Moons and a box of popsicles -both alluding to the festive mood facing through the air. This morning the mayor announced the resignation of our only ten-day old police chief, and while many understood the dense socio-political tactics implied with the decision, most celebrated the occasion as well. A Friday night at the top of summer will always carry with it feelings of excitement and reward.

I pull my bike up to the normal spot at Marcus-David Peters Circle and recognize a few familiar faces in the soft afterglow of dusk’s light. The sun is just now setting, leaving only about 30 minutes until full darkness and the cover that comes with it. Now, the sun is still tightrope walking over the horizon, the sky shimmering with raspberry-lemonade tones and watermelon marshmallow clouds. Around the turn of the Circle a free concert is underway, made possible with just a microphone, a generator, and a few amps. We doodle with spray-paint, or attempt freestyle tricks on our fixed gears, as we sip beers and bust musings on the day.

We’re all rocking on the obvious cookout vibe, but we’re tentative as well; We aren’t completely relaxed. We’ve seen things turn from lax to chaos before, in only a second, for no reason at all, and we know it can happen again.  When you’re facing an enemy that has full control over the definitions of combat, it’s forgiven to feel nervous.

For now though, it’s good vibes and sunshine. And while our conversations dance around the protests, the police, police brutality, human rights, the mistakes of the generations before us, and our determination to fix those mistakes, mostly we just talk about Richmond. It’s hard to explain Richmond to someone who hasn’t stayed there for any amount of time. Richmond is like an oasis that’s also a black hole. Richmond is the place you’re trying to get out of, and also the place you can’t wait to be back in. Richmond is the place you think you deserve. Richmond is where a lot of us feel most at home, but it’s a home that needs sweeping renovations.

As we expound freely on the failures and accomplishments of the capitol city, more and more of our friends arrive, skidding to stops at the periphery of our claimed area and slowly increasing our settlement size. It’s easy to dominate a space when everyone arrives with a bicycle, and in our group it’s pretty much a necessity to show up with some wheels of a sort. Besides a general interest in protesting the state, bicycles have been the strongest conjoining factor throughout the ragtag group of friends that I’ve been meeting with near-daily since the brutal murder of George Floyd at the end of March.

Some of these friends, like Salad (our stoic, de facto captain of the group who’s got friends in every part of town) and Funky (our resident artist and Big Wheel extraordinaire), I’ve known for a while and originally met just by biking in the same parts of town. But others, like Sophia (badass girl with a Wide Bars/Big Heart combo) or Johnny (no fixie yet [just a road bike], but is well-loved for his reputation of generosity and hilarious braggadociousness) I’ve only spent real time with since the protests began. All in all, there’s about 12 of us that have formed a little posse of itinerant protestors. Every summer brings with it something new, but something about the revolution marching down the streets had this summer already feeling particularly seismic. And something about all that “newness” in the air made me feel more like a kid again.

Soon, a few men in assault rifles and military vests approach us, seemingly threatened by their own lack of acceptance and comradery now reflected against our group of laughing friends.  

“Is this your tent? This tent’s gotta go!” the man begins the conversation, unaware or unwilling to exchange pleasantries.

“It’s not our tent but we don’t think it should go”, a few people begin to say at once. “That tent is covering a free community library.”

“Well, when the cops get here this is going to make them upset, and they’re going to come in here and destroy it anyway,” the man says. “So I’m just saying y’all should take it down before I come back with a few other guys with rifles and take it down myself….cuz we don’t want the cops to come!”

“You can do whatever you want, man, but we’re not going to take down some tent that isn’t ours just because you think the cops might come,” our friend Amin (always good for a giant smile and a fat joint) says. “And also, that whole theory doesn’t make a lot of sense to me” He punctuates this last part with a tip of his head and a swig of his beer.

The man grumbles to himself and walks away, returning ten minutes later with his aforementioned rifled goons, as well as a lady that doesn’t really seem to fit in with them.

“This lady owns the library so we’re getting her to take it down,” the man says, directing his speech towards our group for no apparent reason other than to start a conflict. He was obviously oblivious to how his aggressive, commandeering attitude was completely antithetical to the entire idea of the community space that is Marcus-David Peters Circle…or maybe he was just an asshole. Regardless, he was a blatant intimidator, and unless we’re talking about Number 3 (RIP) there’s just no room for that inside the Circle.

We ignored whatever the guy was trying to serve to us and kicked back, but soon the man was back again with an even larger group, now forcefully encouraging everyone to exit the interior of the Circle under the assurance that “the cops can’t touch us if we aren’t in the Circle”. As one tends to notice, it’s hard to say “no” to a group of men with large guns in their hands, so the group was having large amounts of success with their attempts to incentive people out of the area. Our group, though still not understanding completely or agreeing with the logic of the move, followed suit, packing up our blankets, beers, and popsicles.

Not five minutes after the entire populace of the Circle had been cleared out of the area that lay surrounded by graffitied barriers, officers in riot gear began to arrive, just as the man earlier had “predicted”. Predicted! *Hmpf*! Predicted, or imprecated? Or better yet, foretold? Because I reckon it’s a hell of a lot easier to predict the future when you’ve got a direct line to the chain of commands. I also reckon that about the only person who would come up and complain about the tent covering up a free library was some bootlicking wannabe-cop snitch who knew, without a doubt, that the cops were coming that night, whether they had a reason to or not.

And, of course, there was no reason that any amount of police officers, let alone 50+ outfitted in full riot gear, should have appeared that night. No reason for a city to sic a militarized pack of baton-wielding goons on its own people. No reason why the citizens of Richmond could not have just been left to be: listening to music, drinking beers, talking with friends. These were the crimes we committed before being attacked.

As police announced to the crowd that the surrounding area had been declared an “unlawful assembly” by the state, tempers began to flare on both sides. Rampant rubber bullets and flash bang grenades sliced through the air, as chants and screams rose up from the civilians. Suddenly, the space felt like a warzone, a battle with what seemed like completely lopsided enemies. On one side stood line after line of grown men adorned in battle armor, helmets, and shields. Some held Assault Rifles or guns meant for firing rubber bullets and smoke canisters; all wore heavy, polished, steel-toed boots. On the other side stood men, women, children, and pets equipped with nothing more than their wallets, sunglasses, tank tops, and shorts. Some held bottles of water for extinguishing smoke, others had gloves on for tossing tear gas canisters away; all wore a sense of fear, anger, confusion, and determination on their face. These Richmonders, who had done nothing more than to enjoy the public space of their city, would not be deterred so easily. A feeling had spread through the crowd that we would not be punished unjustly tonight. If we were going to have to face the consequences of merely existing in the street, then we weren’t going down without a fight.  

The ranks of G.I. Joe-pretenders slowly increased their perimeter, pushing citizens further and further from the reclaimed art space at the epicenter of the Circle. Soon, we stood in the middle of Park Avenue, a block from Monument Avenue, and still we were being told to “back up” and “get out of the street”, by both RPD and VSP. It seemed the boars with badges would not be content until they had claimed the whole neighborhood as their own Draconian hang-space.

When my friend Nick (The big love bully - The homie to ask you if you’re okay when you’ve got a down face) shines his flashlight toward a group of suspicious looking officers, he’s swarmed upon by a particularly dorky looking Virginia State officer who accosts him with a completely trivial question about the bike he’s riding.

“Whoah! Hey! You got lights for this bicycle here?” the officer asked, taking strides closer and closer to us, hand on his hip.

“Two, actually!” Came Nick’s response as we all flipped our bikes around to put some space between the officers and ourselves. “You’re not gunna get us on some shit like that!” He shouted over his shoulder as we pedaled up the street towards a safer space. “ya dumbass cop”

With some distance between the commotion and us, we regroup. Nick, Sophia, Salad, Ryan, Johnny, and I squad up at a park only a block away.

“Shit’s wild”

“What even started this?”

“Oh, they’re definitely mad about the chief resigning.”

“I saw someone get hit right in the face with a rubber bullet”

“Fuck!”

“I saw a couple kids with paint guns shooting at the cops, I think that’s what started it all”

“I mean, the cops started it all when they showed up…”

“AGREED!”

Looking behind him, Johnny says, “This car coming up is an unmarked cop car, anyone want to see where it’s going?”

“Let’s do it”, I say.

And we take off. The two of us darting after this beefy-looking tinted black SUV, keeping close but keeping our distance.

After a few blocks Johnny turns to me and says, “They aren’t going anywhere interesting, let’s head back.” and we reverse-course towards the way we came.

Coming back up towards the intersection where we left the rest of our friends, I can’t say that anything felt particularly off, though it did seem a little quiet, not a simple quiet but a stifled one.

As Johnny and I make our way through the shadow left in the space between two light posts, we hear a “GRAB HIM!” and a hidden mass springs from the darkness. I watch as Johnny’s bike finds the space between charging homunculus and a row of cards and skirts through it successfully, just as the same cop changes direction to tackle me off my bike (FUCK!). The goon leaps into the air as gracefully as an anemic hippopotamus, and tackles me off my bike with the ease of a drunken uncle at Thanksgiving.

“All right, big guy, you got me! You can chill out.” I say to the panting officer now shoving my arms in positions not familiar to them, restraining my non-resisting body with the help of 3 or 4 buddies. “I appreciate all the attention but it’s really not necessary”

“It’s for both of our safeties”, the stormtrooper says to me without looking at my face, instead holding his nose high with eyes darting around the perimeter like some cracked-out hound-dog.

“Oh yeah, I bet”, I say, laughing a little. “Hey man, you having any fun?”

The officer just grunts.

“Aw, c’mon man, what’s your name?”

“Officer Harris” Still no eye contact.

“Hey, officer Harris, you having any fun out here? It’s ok to have fun, I’m having some fun, are you having fun?”

Officer Harris shifts his weight from one foot to the other, rolls his tongue across his upper teeth, and says out of the side of his mouth, “Yeah, I’m having a little fun…but you guys are making it hard for us out here.”

“GROSSSSSSS!” I say laughing from the pit of my stomach, “Oh, Officer Harris, we’ve got real problems” And I continue to laugh as this confused cop looks down on me, still zip-tied at his feet. I was beyond affable at this point from the adrenaline and alcohol coursing through my bloodstream, and while the fear of this cop and his gang of buddies assaulting me crossed through my mind, I figured if I was in for a penny I was in for a pound. Being arrested for protesting the police force already put me in a vulnerable position, and I figured the policeman’s image of me couldn’t be altered much in the short time we were interacting with each other, but I wanted to say one more thing before Officer Harris cast me aside as some wanton rioter.

“I hope you don’t think I’m just some white punk, some revolutionary with no cause. I’m fighting for what I believe in, and I sleep well every night, Officer Harris, do you?”

“I try,” Khaleed Harris said with a sigh as he put me in a cage in the back of a van.

“Now, watch your head.”

[chpinthestacks]

In the Stacks with Lara Mimosa Montes: Wild Style

A few years ago, I attended a screening of Charlie Ahearn’s hip-hop film Wild Style (1983) as part of the Walker Art Center’s Downtown New York: 1970s and 1980s Art and Film series. The film, “a hybrid of a narrative musical and documentary,” follows Zoro, played by graffiti legend Lee Quinones, as he weaves his way through the various hip hop, break dancing, and Bronx DJ scenes in early 1980s New York.

Wild Style captures some of the funky tensions of the time period. For instance, if you were a “successful” graffiti artist in the 1980s, you were, like your peers, probably working your ass off to get your name out there, but not necessarily your face because anonymity back then was definitely an asset. However, if you worked hard and were good at what you did, then you were also probably a hot commodity, sought after by the vultures of the art world, journalists, toys fucking with your shit, the cops, and the MTA. My favorite scene in the film is when Zoro and his friends arrive at a party in Manhattan populated by rich art patrons and the like; one character, Neil, says he runs a museum called “the Whitley” while Blondie’s Rapture is playing in the background; another guy in a suit misunderstands rap music as “rat” and asks Zoro if he works in the dark, how can he see what he’s painting? While this scene is more fiction than documentary, I love the way it posits everyone as a potential insider or outsider, depending on who wants what from whom in any given exchange.

Wild Style, directed by John Ahearn, 1983. Japanese chirashi movie mini poster, 2015. Wild Style mural by ZEPHYR, Revolt, and Sharp.

Following the Q and A with Ahearn that night, I got the impression that there were still a lot of positive feelings and happy memories surrounding the project. The affective glow that emanated from the collective viewing and discussion of the film, coupled with a revived general interest in that particular cultural moment (ie. the short-lived Netflix original flop of a show The Get Down), stayed with me. I mean, to what extent is wildstyle —the term given to describe a particularly complex and difficult to decipher style of graffiti writing—part of my inheritance, my culture, its art history? Given graffiti’s ephemeral nature, I felt intrigued by the possibility of researching this form in its early years from the 1970s-80s. What I came to know and appreciate was, yes, the many works given to us by a generation of gifted writers, but also the work done by artists like Charlie Ahearn, Martha Cooper, Henry Chalfant, Martin Wong, among others. Without them, I’m not sure how we would remember those early days of the graffiti movement. So, for those wishing to go a little deeper down the rabbit hole, below is a brief survey of some of the landmark texts that document this vibrant period in Bronx history; it is by no means comprehensive—these just happen to be some of my current personal favorites . . . 

Subway Art by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, featuring Dondi, first published in 1984.

“The bible of the street-art movement,” Subway Art was the first published book of its kind to document graffitti. Featuring full-color photographs by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, the book contains many masterpieces by artists such as Blade, Lee, Seen, and more. A beautiful print collaboration between the two foremost photographers of the movement, you can really appreciate Cooper’s and Chalfant’s distinct approaches to shooting the trains. Also, if you’re as excited as I am for Chalfant’s upcoming exhibition at the Bronx Museum, Henry Chalfant: Art vs. Transit, 1977-1987 which opens later this year, now is as good a time as any to revisit this seminal work.

Style Wars, graffiti by NOC 167,1981. Photo by Martha Cooper. 

Style Wars, directed by Tony Silver and co-produced by Silver and photographer Henry Chalfant, released in 1983, is a classic—the documentary features many a baby-faced graffiti artist such as Dondi, Skeme, Kase 2, interviews with MTA officials, Mayor Ed Koch, various masterpieces, and more. If you want to know what these young writers were up against in terms of public opinion and the MTA, definitely start here. Plus . . . Skeme’s mom: God bless her, wow.

City as Canvas: New York City Graffiti from the Martin Wong Collection, edited by Sean Corcoran and Carlo McCormick, New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2013.

I had no idea that the artist Martin Wong was a known collector of graffiti art until I had come across this book, published in tandem with the Museum of the City of New York’s exhibition City as Canvas, and yes, I am very sorry I had not seen this show back in 2014 before I left New York. For those skeptical of graffiti’s transition from subway to canvas, this book really made me rethink my assumption that graffiti is graffiti because it lives on in the streets and on the trains but never in a gallery. In addition to color images of works on canvas, archival exhibition shots, and some recollections contextualizing Wong’s relationship to the graffiti community by artists Lee, Daze, and Charlie Ahearn, also featured are images of drawings from various artists’ blackbooks: gold.

Tag Town: The Evolution of New York Graffiti Writing by Martha Cooper, Poland: Dokument Press, 2007.

Before there was wildstyle, there was tagging. Some cool shots of tags by Taki 168, Julio 204, Barbara 62, and even Basquiat, among others. Another great monograph by Martha Cooper, who in an interview said, “I shot tags because I wanted a record of them. . . mostly I just wanted to study what they looked like and to allow others to study them in the future. I was using my camera as a very efficient tool to make a record of something that would otherwise be lost.”

Classic Hits: New York’s Pioneering Subway Graffiti Writers by Alan Fleisher & Paul Iovino, Poland: Dokument Press, 2012.

Classic Hits features photographs by Alan Fleisher, Robert Browning, and Jack Stewart. Filled with an assortment of early masterpieces by writers such as Stay High 149, Blade, Super Kool 223, and others, alongside artists’ recollections. I like this book because it showcases an earlier generation of graffiti writers from the 1970s before things really got wild. Similar to Cooper’s Tag Town, I was able to gather from this one a more expanded appreciation for the evolution of the form.

Dondi White Style Master General: The Life of Graffiti Artist Dondi White, by Andrew “ZEPHYR” Witten and Michael White, New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

OK, so graffiti legend Dondi wasn’t born in the Bronx—he was definitely a Brooklyn writer. Nevertheless, his influence on the larger writing community was so profound, his relevance cannot be understated—it went to the Bronx and beyond. Includes black-and-white and color photographs, early sketches, never before seen collage works as well as works on canvas, and reminiscences by the artist’s friends. Unlike some of the other texts on this list, this one is unique insofar as it’s a book assembled by another well-known graffiti artist, ZEPHYR, alongside Dondi’s brother, Michael, so the insights and anecdotes presented here, especially those from Dondi’s closest friends, really provide a window onto the world of the artist. RIP Dondi, you gave us so much.