#Genre: Death Metal (early); Progressive Death Metal

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Death - Within The Mind

[toskarin]

slightly more in-depth thoughts on the new HEALTH album below the break. I also ramble a bit about how I think it connects to previous albums. you've been warned.

Death Magic was a very interesting album for being such a coherent blend of emo, industrial, and synthpop. it was lightning in a bottle and I don't really think anyone else could pull it off again by copying it. in a lot of ways, it felt like a less shallow approach to the impulse behind genres like "hyperpop" (insofar as it's the noise scene branching out into more accessible genres, as opposed to accessible genres branching out into noise influence)

Rat Wars feels like a continued exploration of those themes, but with renewed confidence after some time poking at nihilist disconnect on other projects (especially on Slaves of Fear). while it's easy enough to read the lyrics at face value, the consistent undertone of Death Magic is about caring too much, relapsing, and then resenting yourself for it

my first impression was that, if Death Magic is about a dying relationship that nobody can bear to put out of its misery even as they've already checked out, Rat Wars is working through that separation in earnest and just being passionately furious past the point where you even can relapse anymore

and then, almost immediately, coming to regret it

Demigods leading into Future of Hell into Hateful into Crack Metal into Unloved is one of the most bitter and spiteful strings of tracks the band's put out on any album, without exception. this includes Slaves of Fear, which could at least find comfort in distance and emptiness

even on their early albums (read: the noise rock psychedelia ones) the anger felt more aimless and entranced, less focused and bitter

a lot of the reason I had a hard time assessing the album before the full thing dropped was because of that progression. Ashamed would've been right at home on Death Magic, and given that it follows so much lashing out, I don't think that's entirely an accident

the word I'd use to describe Rat Wars, if you told me to come up with just one, is sinister

after all of that anger, after all of that spite, there's just a gradually-cooling regret left in its place. the regret starts as self-loathing, crescendos into a grim sort of acceptance with DSM-V, and then freezes solid with Don't Try, a funeral hymn for time wasted

the last section of DSM-V being an excerpt from Demigods, the inciting event of all this hate and mutual self-destruction, is hard not to read as a pang of catharsis

if Death Magic is excess and indulgence, deliberate ignorance and resignment, Rat Wars is the terminus of that. it's a manic episode that sparks just enough ego to well and truly fuck everything up beyond all denial, beyond all repair

spiritually, it's an album about murdering something that's already dead

[ghnosis]

here is my entire Contextual Review document if you'd like it - warning it is 40 pages.

Abstract  

“’Tis the Night of the Witch: Supporting Difference within Dark Fan Communities”  

Though attractive due to its counter-cultural nature, heavy metal can be sonically “challenging” (noise metal, thrash), and/or ideologically challenging, featuring grotesque and misogynistic lyrics and prioritizing a cisgender, heterosexual, male gaze. In contrast, the Swedish contemporary metal band Ghost embraces the queer/female gaze through lyrics explicitly referencing female empowerment and overt gestures toward leftist progressive politics.  

This thesis explores queer fan readings of Ghost and the online community surrounding the band. Many Ghost fans go beyond passive listening - they create extensive fanfiction surrounding the story and world of Ghost, actively writing themselves into a Satanic clergy absent of real-world connections to church burning, fascism, or violence associated with some extreme forms of metal. This fanfiction is often explicitly sexual in nature, and is winkingly acknowledged and encouraged by Tobias Forge, the band’s founder. The Satanic Ministry depicted in queer Ghost fanfiction is a Carnivalesque, topsy-turvy world in which Satan is good, God is bad, and anything “deviant” is to be celebrated.  

The project will employ an autoethnographic approach, drawing on and adding to feminist literature on identity, sexuality, and conceptions of the self as subject. The thesis is supported by data drawn from one-on-one interviews with Ghost fans on the microblogging site Tumblr, as well as data drawn from Ghost fans’ posts on the same site. 

REST OF THE THING UNDER THE CUT

Introduction 
 

Research Question  

How do “deviant” fans read the band Ghost? 
 

Subquestion 1: How are Ghost fans different from other heavy metal fans? 

Subquestion 2: How does this queer fandom intersect with the broader subcultures and genres of metal?

Subquestion 3: How is the Ghost fandom community different from other fandom communities? 

Subquestion 4: How do queered Tumblr fan practices impact Ghost fan practices? 

Research Question: How do “deviant” fans read the band Ghost? What informs this reading? 

This research investigates the contemporary metal band Ghost’s fan community on the microblogging site Tumblr, and the ways in which band founder Tobias Forge acknowledges, supports, and encourages queer readings of his work. The thesis defines “deviance” via Gloria Anzaldúa: “[d]eviance is whatever is condemned by the community.” (Anzaldúa 2021: 75) Though heavy metal is sometimes a celebration of deviance, with lyrics celebrating horror, death, and the macabre, there is a limit to the types of deviance that are “allowed.” Queer fans are often sidelined or made invisible: academic writing on metal began in the early 1990s (Weinstein 2000, Walser, 1993), contemporaneous with much queer theory (Butler 1990) - however, it was not until 2015 that a monograph examining queerness in heavy metal (Clifford-Napoleone 2015) was published. 

In her monograph on the history of queerness and heavy metal, Amber Clifford-Napoleone questions the way Judas Priest is remembered in metal history in the wake of singer Rob Halford’s coming out in 1998 (29 years after the band was founded). Does a musician have to identify personally as queer to be “read” as queer by their fans? Tobias Forge has not made a practice of discussing his own sexuality and is in a committed “straight” relationship, but early participant interviews posit Papa Emeritus IV, the latest incarnation of his on-stage character, as queer. Unlike Halford’s direct adoption of leather as a winking nod to the queer leather community, Forge does not directly refer to queer community portrayals in his characterization of Papa Emeritus. What, then, leads to fans’ queer reading of the character? 

This thesis investigates Ghost’s anonymized performance, and its potential for a new kind of fandom. Band members’ identities were not revealed for the first eight years of Ghost's existence (2010-2018); frontman Papa Emeritus and his backing band of Nameless Ghouls wear masks and elaborate costumes on stage and conducted interviews in character. Early interviews implied that the band had been commissioned by Satan himself, and that the identities of the band members were irrelevant to this unholy message (slavghoul 2020). 

Though the Ghouls are referred to as “nameless” en masse, and wear nearly identical costumes onstage, fans give each musician a unique nickname and characterization. The Ghouls do not speak onstage or in interviews – their characterization is entirely developed based on onstage presence/body language and existing “fanon:” “a series of details and characteristics that are shared by most...[fanfiction] stories, but that have no factual basis in the original media text.” (Stasi 2006: 121, Kaplan 2006: 136). Fans develop fanon as a community; one fic writer may interpret onstage behavior as evidence that a Ghoul is queer, which then provides evidence for a second fic writer to interrogate and expand that interpretation. 

How are Ghost fans different from other heavy metal fans? 

Historically, the metal community has lionized a wide variety of societal deviants, including murderers, domestic abusers, and Nazis. Further, metal aesthetics borrow heavily from the specific deviance of 1970s gay culture - Rob Halford of Judas Priest famously co-opted the leatherman look for his stage persona (Clifford-Napoleone 2015: 36). But queer identity does not seem welcome in metal space. Sociologist Deena Weinstein, one of the first scholarly researchers of metal, refers to an “attitude of extreme intolerance” towards specifically gay male identity (2000: 105), though she is careful not to label the entire subculture homophobic. Robert Walser, writing in 1993, briefly explored the divide between glam metal and other subgenres, citing an interview with Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante identifying the use of keyboards in metal as “gay.” (Walser 1993: 130). Anthologies like Black Metal Rainbows, conferences like ISMMS 2023 (“No Outsides”) or monographs like Queerness in Heavy Metal Music problematize this exclusive inclusivity: where is the space within metal for those “condemned” (Anzaldúa 2021: 75) within both societal and metal community? Why denigrate queerness in a genre that elevates other societal ills? 

While “traditional” metal fans often focus on the musicians’ virtuosity and technical prowess, Ghost fans are interested in the imagined inner lives of the musicians, and the differing versions of masculinity on display within their performances. This ties Ghost fandom less to metal fan practice and more towards queerer and more “female” modes of engagement with media: namely, women’s writing relationships: fanfiction. This type of musical fandom can be tracked back to Elvis (Hinerman 1992, Wise 1986) or the Beatles (Ehrenreich, Hess, and Jacobs 1992). Boy bands of the early 2000s such as *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys inspired fanfiction (Busse 2005, 2016). Halberstam questions their allure – “at least part of the appeal of the Backstreet Boys depends on the production of seemingly safe and almost unreal masculinities... a safe alternative to the misogyny and mistreatment” of real-life relationships. (Halberstam 2005: 178). 

The fanfiction Ghost fans write most closely resembles “bandom:” fanfiction about emo bands like My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy.  Bandom provided a “safe space” for teenagers of the 2000s to explore ideas of sexuality (queer and straight) and dating with men they would never really date, men they felt would “understand” them because of the constructed self-images band members presented online (Hagen 2015), and the lyrical content of songs. Billie Joe Armstrong, Gerard Way and others of their pantheon discussed anti-anxiety prescriptions, progressive politics, loneliness, and queer sexuality openly (in a way that A-list celebrities of the early aughts did not), creating space for deviant fans who had given up on fitting in to fit into a new space. Similarly, the masculinities on display did not reflect the predominant sociopolitical climates of their times. 

Bandom, like most slash (fanfiction describing the imagined relationships between two male characters) arguably springs from lack of female representation in media:  “...there’s nobody but the two men... to justify the sexual display, so the concept of slash arises.” (Green, Jenkins, Jenkins, 1998: 17) Musical fandom, in this sense, is no different. Erotic fanfiction about Ghost appeared almost immediately on the microblogging site Tumblr. The band plainly acknowledged and encouraged this highly sexual reading of their work as early as 2012, when the now-defunct “Ghoulish Perversions” Tumblr was linked directly on the official Ghost Facebook page. (https://www.facebook.com/thebandghost/posts/297668790339417). Ideas of sex as currency in music are not new to Ghost (Fast 1999, Roach 2018, Wise 1990, Frith and McRobbie 1990), but the sexuality represented by Papa and the Ghouls suggests a more equal exchange than historical “cock rock” (Frith and McRobbie 1990: 319) implied. Ghost’s lyrics directly reference female sexual pleasure, Forge’s in-character banter as Papa Emeritus, and the onstage relationships between male Ghouls and female Ghouls (indeed, perhaps the inclusion of female musicians at all) invites a different reading of this male musician/female “groupie” dichotomy (Frith and McRobbie 1990, Vasan 2010, Fast 1999, Savigny and Sleight 2015).  

“There is a void in my guts that can only be filled by songs,” Jessica Hopper writes in her introduction to The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic, (2021: xvi), then maligns the genre that spawned bandom in “Emo: Where the Girls Aren’t.” (ibid 257) Sonically heavy music with lyrics suggestive of teenage heartbreak and rage appeal to societal outsiders, but emo’s lyrics “proved this is a genre...made by and for boys.” (259) Emo is by no means the only genre to draw clear definitions of in- and out-groups; the 2017 collection Under My Thumb: Songs That Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them spans genre and music history, from doo-wop to Taylor Swift. Questions of gender exclusion often arise in metal studies; scholars like Rosemary Lucy Hill, Laina Dawes, Jasmine Hazel Shadrack,, and Sonia Vasan have made careers interrogating women’s participation in and engagement with metal. This thesis asks: Are Ghost fans, like media fans before them, using fanfiction to reclaim space within a genre that pushes deviance out? How is Ghost’s positive response to that fanfiction lending credence to queer readings? Centering the marginal, queer response to Ghost builds on feminist academic work on fanfiction and women’s participation in genre (Jenkins 2013, Busse and Hellekson 2006), filling a crucial gap: What does it mean for queer fans when the Satanic anti-pope onstage celebrates their queerness? What does it mean for young trans men to see a more relatable masculinity on display? Ghost is uniquely positioned to answer. 

How does this queer fandom intersect with the broader subcultures and genres of metal? 

Ghost faces “controversy regarding genre adherence” (Thomson 2021: 50) within the metal community. This is not in and of itself unusual; Robert Walser attempted to make sense of genre coherence in metal in 1993, using the band Rush as an example of metal-not-metal: Rush’s music “...meets the criteria of the definition of heavy metal held by most outsiders but fails the standards of most metal fans.” (1993: 7) Similarly, Ghost appears in publications that deal with hard rock and metal (Metal Hammer), routinely tours with bands that the metal community accepts and welcomes (Metallica, Amon Amarth), and plays metal-focused festivals (Hellfest). But detractors use words like “try-hard,” “corny as hell” and “thirsty” (Krovatin 2018) to describe the band, and even positive interviews sometimes question “whether Ghost belong in our world at all” (Alderslade 2019). This hostility raises several questions: Is Ghost’s primarily-female audience (slavghoul 2020) damning in a genre whose audience historically skews white, cisgender, and male (Walser 1993, Savigny and Sleight 2015, Vassan 2010, Dawes 2013)? Are the people who call Ghost “gay” (s_g 2022) simply following a tradition of linking anything of low social value to femininity and queer identity (Pascoe 2011, Halberstam 2005, Benshoff 2015)? A vocal subculture has sprung up on the social media site Tumblr who deliberately reads Ghost as queer in a positive light – a sort of metal “protest exegesis.” (Faxneld 2017: 12) It is this subculture, its participants, and related phenomena that this research explores. Through interviews with Ghost fans and autoethnographic exploration of the fan culture, I seek to understand which elements of Ghost’s backstory and stage performance read “queer (positive)” to queer fans. It is possible that Ghost is serving as a “gateway” to heavy music, a bridge between pop culture, Top 40, and extreme music, mirroring 2010s queer and female interest in pop punk. It is possible that Ghost fanfiction is a unique space of queer joy, a niche of rebellion in an otherwise hostile environment – a worthy rebellion in the contemporary era.  

Are genre-specific elements like Ghost’s lighter sound (analogous to pop punk versus “true” punk) making the band (and by extension, the genre) attractive to newcomers? Or are deviant fans attracted to Ghost’s Satanic stylings, critique of organized religion, and critique of Protestant/Catholic social mores? How does existing scholarly work on genre, gender, and metal (Vasan 2010, Hutcherson and Haenfler 2010) engage with these ideas? This research explores Ghost fans’ experiences in fandom space, seeking to understand queer contemporary subculture and queer readings of metal. What do queer Ghost fans like about Ghost, and why? What can this tell us about fostering and supporting queer joy in the 2020s? 

How is the Ghost fandom community different from other fandom communities? 

Fanfiction, fan art, costume, and roleplay are methods to “inhabit and explore” (Jenkins 2013: 19) the world of a beloved media property, expanding its “archive” - fan texts are situated within the world of the original text, yet stand apart.  The online environment allows fans a greater level of access to media creators (and vice versa) than ever before, with mixed results: situations like Anne Rice’s attempts to litigate against fanfiction writers speak to a troubled historical relationship between fan and creator, one in which there are “correct” and “incorrect” interpretations of a piece of media. When authors, showrunners, or film directors keep strict hold of their material, there is less room for fans to interpret media on an individual or community level. 

Most fanfiction can be separated into two modes: fanfiction about fictional media (i.e. Star Trek) or “real person/people fic (RPF):” fanfiction about living celebrities (Arrow 2013). These two modes do not often converge: while it was possible to meet Leonard Nimoy at a convention, Spock exists only in the imagination. While it may be morally “appropriate” to write about salacious adventures between two fictional characters, writing fanfiction about two living men, with real lives (and access to the internet) raises questions of parasociality. But Papa Emeritus is at once tangible and intangible: fans can purchase meet and greet packages to take photos with and speak to Papa, but Tobias Forge now conducts interviews out of character, sharing his own interpretations of Papa as a person outside of Forge. The thesis follows Roach (2018) in delineating RPF fandoms as an “independent” (168) area of academic study, apart from fictional media fanfic. The research queries the liminal position of Ghost fic as at once RPF and not-RPF: is Ghost attractive to fic writers because of this liminality? Musician Brian Warner performs under the stage name Marilyn Manson, but Brian Warner and Marilyn Manson are not portrayed as two distinct people the way Forge and Papa Emeritus are; the abuse allegations by five women against Warner/Manson are reflections on both “people.” While it is possible for Tobias Forge to commit a crime, Papa Emeritus exists in fleeting moments, usually onstage, and is therefore unlikely to behave poorly. Does this make him “safer” for modern fans to relate to? Further, each Ghost album introduces fans to a “new” Papa Emeritus. Each Papa is played by Forge, but each Papa has different characterization and personality. Does Papa’s shifting identity support a varied fan reading? How is Ghost fanfiction at once similar to and different from band fanfiction that came before, and what does this mean for fanfiction as genre? 

Why is Tumblr the social media of choice for queer Ghost fans? 

One aim of the research is to question the role Tumblr itself plays in queer Ghost fan self-expression. Tumblr scholars Katrin Tiidenberg, Natalie Ann Hendry, and Crystal Abadin describe Tumblr as a “silosocial” (2021: 12) platform; a platform on which users cloister themselves within specific shared interests – in this case, the band Ghost. Each silo holds its own “shared practices, vernacular, and sensibility” (13). Tumblr advertises itself as a “welcome back to weird,” (Tumblr iOS App Store) a “beautiful hellsite” (Tiidenberg et al. 2021: 210) on which new users can find “fandom, art, [and] chaos.” (Tumblr iOS App Store) Tumblr, unlike most other modern social media, is not linked to users’ legal names, and the site’s features “welcome multifaceted self-presentation" (Tiidenberg et al. 2021: 13): users can create any number of “side blogs,” separate spaces to discuss one fandom or area of interest. In the below image, three of my blogs are listed: my main/personal blog (which has been redacted), my primary side blog, Ghnosis, and a third side blog for video game content. All three blogs share the same following list, but have different lists of followers based on which users are interested in which content. Users choose blogs to follow based on content, not on the identity of the blogger. (Tiidenberg et al. 2021: 13) In this way, users interested in a queer reading of Ghost can easily locate and follow others interpreting Ghost through a queer lens. 

The research queries the role specifically Tumblr-style silos play in offering a carnivalesque reading of the band’s Satanic messaging. The definition of carnival and carnivalesque I employ derives from Mikhail Bakhtin, writing on Rabelais’ oeuvre. (Bakhtin 1984: 7-17) Carnival is “of the people” and is rooted in “folk humor.” ( ibid. 4) Tumblr, with its language of social justice and meta-humor (Tiidenberg et al. 2021) is a carnivalesque space in contemporary internet, where real-name or video (real-face) content reigns supreme. Bakhtin’s carnival is not merely an event to attend and watch; the people “live in it, and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the people.” (Bakhtin 1984: 7) Ghost fans, by writing themselves communally into the Satanic clergy, choose to “live in” this world whose “very idea” makes room for them: Satan is good, God is bad, the deviant is a cause for celebration. Bakhtin further links Carnival to the Church and the Church calendar, as well as to “ancient pagan festivities” (ibid. 8) and the cycles of birth, death, and time. Ghost’s albums describe the rise and fall of civilizations and of Satan himself, while their short video “chapters” depict the rises and falls of previous Papas, up to and including their births and deaths. Bakhtin defines a “peculiar logic of the ‘inside out’... the ‘turnabout...’” (ibid. 11), a queer logic. “No dogma, no authoritarianism, no narrow-minded seriousness can coexist with Rabelaisian images...” (ibid, 3): the language of the carnival “mocks and insults the deity” (16) while dealing with the body, typically the belly or “lower stratum.” (18) Bakhtin argues that the folk humor of the carnival degrades: “lowering...all that is high, spiritual, ideal, abstract” to the “sphere of earth and body” (19). The carnival takes the highest element of medieval life (the Church) and lowers it to the earth, the belly, the bowels, and the sexual organs. So too can no dogma, authoritarianism, or seriousness coexist with Ghost’s silly Satanism, or Tobias Forge’s debasement of the Catholic Church in songs like “Idolatrine.” If fans are only “out” (as Ghost fans, as queer, etc.) on Tumblr, is this because Tumblr itself functions as carnivalesque space, a place to take one’s mask off, to revel in low culture?  

2b. Aims  

Investigate the social and creative values of Ghost Tumblr fan subculture using autoethnographic experience and textual/thematic analysis of Tumblr posts related to Ghost, as well as responses to semi-structured interviews with other Ghost fans.

Gain a deeper understanding of queer music fan identity by bringing together existing literature on queer identity/deviance (Anzaldúa 2021, hooks 2015, Benshoff 2015, Halberstam 2005), fanfiction (Busse 2005, 2006), and heavy metal fandom (Dawes 2013, Black Metal Rainbows, Vassan 2010, 2011).

2c. Objectives  

This research aims to view the band Ghost and the Tumblr community that has sprung up around them through a queer carnivalesque counter-reading, prioritizing deviant and “outsider” ideas of fan participation in heavy metal music. 

Feminist and gender studies explore the individual within the context of the social, investigating the marginalized without the frame of “wrongness” of the privileged. Peggy McIntosh, in her seminal 1990 text “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” describes whites (privileged members of society) as thinking of themselves as “morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal.” (ibid. 2) Gloria Anzaldua, Cathy Cohen, Jack Halberstam, and Judith Butler equate queerness with deviance, an oppositional position: “’Queer’ also provokes different assumptions and expectations. In the ‘60s and ‘70s it meant one was from a working-class background, that one was not from society...there is still more flexibility in the ‘queer’ mold, more room to maneuver.” (Anzaldúa 1991: 252). The Ghost fan embodies that which American society defines as other, that which even other heavy metal fans deem inappropriate and incorrect (Clifford-Napoleone 2015: 381). The Tumblr Ghost fan declares, via Tumblr posts, their queerness, their deviance, their intense interest in sex with the band’s demonic creatures. Ghost fans’ deviance strays from black metal church burning and goregrind shock value; the carnivalesque spirit of queer joy marks their fandom as unique. Tobias Forge looks out on his audience and sees “wiggling” and “dancing,” not moshing or fighting. (slavghoul 2020) 

Harry M. Benshoff, defining queerness in relation to horror films, calls queer “what opposes the binary definitions and proscriptions of a patriarchal heterosexism... queerness disrupts narrative equilibrium and sets in motion a questioning of the status quo and... the nature of reality itself.” (Benshoff 2015: 119) This carnivalesque approach is also exemplified in Cathy J. Cohen’s idea of queer politics including even “heterosexuals on the (out)side of heteronormativity,” (Cohen 1997: 452). Queer does not necessarily have as much to do with sexuality as it does an “unruly, defiant, and angry” (Benshoff 2015: 119) form of activism, which encompasses not only same-sex relationships but also addresses “issues of race, gender, disability, and class.” (ibid.) Queer, deviant identity “revels in the discourse of the loathsome, the outcast...” (Sue Ellen Case, “Tracking the Vampire,” cited in Benshoff 2015: 119) Are queer Ghost fans using Tumblr as the only place in which they can perform this revelry safely? 

Deviant identity is not merely reserved for those who are “actually” homosexual – Benshoff draws a lineage between the late 19th-century homosexual Decadents (Benshoff 2015: 132-133) and the “ostracized high-school student and loner” (Benshoff 2015: 133) of 1970s and 80s films. (ibid) The Breakfast Club’s John Bender (played by Judd Nelson) is certainly no homosexual, but he is a “long-hair” who is feminized as he is ostracized, much the way Marilyn Manson, Gerard Way, or other such deliberate deviants are. Though the masculinity embodied by 1980s stoners or 2000s emo icons certainly differs from Halberstam’s boy bands, they raise questions of queered/deviant masculinities.  Do Ghost fans read Tobias Forge, as a leather-clad metalhead, as deviant in the same ways they are, despite his apparent straight sexual identity? Or are they linking Forge’s open respect for Satan as figure with homosexuality in a positive light, as Per Faxneld connects the Decadents directly with Satan? Is “queerness” really an attempt to categorize another “unreal masculinity?” 

To exist within a body deemed non-normal by society – a raced body, a fat body, a female body, a disabled body, a queer or trans body –  is to understand on some level that your body, your very existence, is up for public discussion and invites public commentary at any time. (Young 1990) Discomfort regarding trans or intersex bodies is discomfort with a body that is difficult to incorporate into societal roles (Fausto-Sterling 1994). Does Ghost facilitate a reclamation of the trans body, the disabled body, or the fat body as a site of pleasure for the person within that body? Does this play into carnivalesque rules of what is valuable or beautiful in society? 

2d. Gap in existing research, original contribution to knowledge 

Do public (via the internet, or via signs at concerts) expressions of deviant, explicit, queer sexual desire for Papa Emeritus or the Nameless Ghouls function as a publicly-staked claim in one’s own sexual pleasure? Is out-loud expression of a sexual appetite that cannot be satisfied through chaste heterosexual sex a form of “protest exegesis,” (Faxneld 2017: 12), a king-for-a-day dichotomy flip of decades of music in which the sexual power is in straight men’s hands? The Ghouls and Papa caress the microphone, their guitars, gesture seductively at the audience, continuing a lineage of musicians symbolically making love to the audience (Fast); but how is this performance read by the audience? How do Ghost fans feel about the band’s outspoken appreciation for queer and trans identity?  

The texts to be examined belong both to the fans (Tumblr discussion, fanfiction) and to the band (music videos, official merchandise, YouTube skits). When the subject of Ghost fanfiction comes up in interviews, Forge uses words like “fantastic” (s_g 2022) that the band belongs to the fans as well as to him, and the “text” of the band itself seems to adapt to incorporate this view. Forge noticed that his fans were more female-presenting than expected (slavghoul 2020, ghost-band-aids 2020), and that they had a ravenous appetite for Papa and the Ghouls. Over the decade the band has been performing rituals, the stage show has become more and more explicitly sexual, with the band members swapping robes and hoods for sculpted masks and tight pants, “put[ting] more emphasis on carnality.” (ghost-band-aids 2019) Each Papa is more explicitly sexual than the last, though he has always been a sexual figure – an interview with Metal Hammer UK from 2012 features Papa Emeritus I referring to himself as John Holmes, “the 13-inch-cocked porn star,” in a mix that also includes Hitler, the Pope, and Dracula (Doran 2012). 

Are Tumblr posts about Ghost only about Ghost? Is it possible that they rely on and refer to Tumblr “subculture” (Tiidenberg et al. 2021: 117-128) itself? Through years of belonging to this community, I have noted certain patterns appearing in fan works. Some posts are about queer identity, some are about religion, some are about a sense of community and belonging, some address neurodiversity. Through a combination of autoethnographic examinations of my experience in fandom as an ADHD/OCD/queer woman, as well as through a grounded theory framework (consisting of interviews and categorization of naturally-occurring data (Tumblr posts)), I will investigate these patterns. The research aims to bring to academia what Tumblr users have been saying for years – that there is something queer and neurodiverse about Ghost, and it is useful to explore when contextualizing modern ideas of deviance and belonging. 

Theoretical Contexts 

This thesis draws on an interdisciplinary body of scholarship to interrogate an under-examined area of contemporary subculture: queer Ghost fans. Existing work examines ideas of deviancy/belonging and its relationship to queerness (Anzaldúa 2021, 1991, Benshoff 2015, Butler 1990, Cohen 1997, Halberstam 2005), queer methods of “reading” traditional media (Benshoff 2015, Petrocelli 2023, Halberstam 2005) or questions what is meant by “community” in extreme music. (Dawes 2015, Riches 2015) This research uses all three areas to ask: why Ghost, why now? 

Contemporary Context: Metal Studies 

The work of metal studies scholars such as Jasmine Hazel Shadrack, Laina Dawes, Rosemary Lucy Hill and Sonia Vasan on gendered and raced participation in metal fandom forms one basis for this research. Metal studies’ intersections with religious studies (Metal and Religion Conference 2022, Unger 2019, Spracklen 2020) and specifically with Satanism (Thomson 2020, Swist 2019, Weinstein 1991) inform the culture in which Ghost exists. Amber Clifford-Napoleone's Queerness in Heavy Metal Music (2015) provides a queered history of the genre, including textual and subtextual analysis of the work of artists like Rob Halford (Judas Priest) and Joan Jett, and the “meanings” of their queered performances for fans. Robin Wood and Harry M. Benshoff’s work investigating queer readings of horror films and the monstrous homosexual lends support to my argument of heavy metal and queerness – an area Clifford-Napoleone did not broach in her text. Catherine Hoad investigated heavy metal fanfiction in a 2015 paper, but her research investigated RPF (real people fic), not character fic.  

Gloria Anzaldúa’s ideas of oppositional queer deviance and her work navigating “borderlands” forms a great deal of the vocabulary and specific definitions of queerness this work employs. Additionally, the work of queer and feminist theorists like Judith Butler, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Monique Wittig, and Luce Irigaray help define ideas of queerness without biology. Ghost fans define their queer identity as revolt: J Halberstam’s arguments for “low culture,” Harry M. Benshoff’s idea of disruptive queerness, and Cathy J. Cohen’s idea that queerness is a “fundamental challenge to... heteronormativity” (1995: 445) help flesh out these conceptions of joyous queer rebellion. In this vein, Per Faxneld’s discussion of Satanic feminism, particularly his definitions of counter-readings, and Mikhail Bakhtin's conception of the Carnivalesque as a low-culture parody “pressure release” form my ideas of Ghost as queer and trans joy.  

Historical Context: Fanfiction Studies 

Fanfiction studies, particularly the work of Henry Jenkins, Abigail Derecho, and Mafalda Stasi form some of the “language” of fandom this thesis takes. Outside of fanfiction studies, Anzaldúa’s ideas of queer reading and writing lend themselves neatly to fanfiction, as does Trinh’s (1989), Cixous’ (1976), and Irigaray’s (1985) ideas of marginalized/women’s writing. Henry Jenkins provides a tidy religious link via the origins of the word fanatic (the genesis of the term ‘fan’): “certain excessive forms of religious belief and worship.” (2013: 12) This is particularly apt in the case of Ghost fans; Ghost’s Satanic stylings and framing of their concerts as “rituals” seem to bring the older religious definitions back to the fore. This is not unusual in metal: Walser's 1993 text Running with the Devil addresses mysticism and the occult in early metal, while witches and Satan remain popular figures in metal song titles and theming. This research seeks to understand the religious, carnivalesque element of Ghost fan identity, a conception of Ghost and of self that I have begun to define as a Ghnosis. This is a portmanteau of Ghost and of the concept of Gnostic knowledge, as informed by Hans Jonas: “knowledge of God,” (Jonas 1958: 34) or in this case, of Ghost. This Ghnosis mirrors the Gnostic idea of a more personal experience of God, unmitigated by an authority figure within the Church. Further, it mirrors William’s interpretation of the Gnostics as working to investigate multiple meanings and contradictory elements of Christian texts (Williams cited in Faxneld 2017: 11), and Halberstam’s conception of queerness as “consciously cultivated multidisciplinarity.” (Halberstam 2003: 363) 

Tobias Forge is clearly making some Ghost lore up as he goes along, leaving the problem of a linear narrative to the fans – and specifically, the theorist fans – to solve. How do fans piece the Ghnostic puzzle together, given vague and contradictory “canonical” information? What informs their reading of the Satanic Abbey and its inhabitants as queer or queer-friendly? Is it formed from individual interpretation of songs, concert footage, and concert experience? Do Ghost fans recognize themselves in the fic they write and read, or in some of the band’s cast of characters? Do they feel seen or known by Tobias Forge, or more likely, by Papa Emeritus? How do fans make sense of the seemingly random (and sometimes contradictory) “story” Forge is telling about Ghost? What is Ghnosis, and how are fans developing it?  

Theoretical Context: Carnivalesque queer Ghnosis 

The Gnostics were labeled as heretical because they opposed the structural power of the Church. If any given person could find their own personal version of God, what use would most people have for religious officials? Per Faxneld argues that Satanic feminism is a “protest exegesis,” (Faxneld 2017: 11) a counter reading of common Christian mythology. Faxneld follows Kurt Rudolph, who traces this idea to the Gnostics. I read both Faxneld and Bakhtin, as well as Ghost fans themselves, through Jonas’ and Pagels’ ideas of Gnostic thought, and through a queer lens. Ian Barnard, writing on the work of Gloria Anzaldúa, articulates the ways she plays with language to “inver[t]... hierarchies (from queer/mestiza = degenerate to queer/mestiza = transcendent:” (Barnard 1997: 39) this is the way in which Ghost fans use the word “queer.” Queer is not a slur; it is a transcendent, freeing space. Anzaldúa writes of borderlands: physical, psychological, sexual, spiritual. For Anzaldúa, “the Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other..” (Anzaldúa cited in Barnard 1997: 39). The Ghnostic space, the Ghost Tumblr space, is such a borderland. Ghost fans bring together those raised on AC/DC and those who found sanctuary in musical theater, those who reject Christian teachings of taboo by deliberately celebrating them. The carnivalesque relates to the body, specifically the lower stratum, in opposition to holy sacredness. It revels in the taboo and the low culture. Carnivalesque space allows laughter; at the world, at prescribed doctrines, at those in power, forming a “pressure release” for an “oppressed, frightened, bound” community (1984, p.95). “In hell, Harlequin turns somersaults, leaps & skips, sticks out his tongue, and makes Charon & Pluto laugh.” Like queerness, the Bakhtinian grotesque “present[s] a contradictory and double-faced fullness of life.” (62) Carnival space is a pressure release. Ghnosis means being in on the joke. Metal detractors call Ghost’s music “gay,” mock the band’s use of corpse-paint-like makeup without obeying sonic rules of black metal, but Ghost fans recognize the topsy-turvy playfulness of the act. Bakhtin reiterates that the carnivalesque is “of the people” (141-160) - Ghost is not metal for metalheads, they are metal for queer weirdos. 

Bakhtin describes the carnivalesque as a “...brilliant parody of the medieval doctrine of faith, as well as of the methods of defending and teaching it: through quotations from the Scriptures, intimidation, threats, and accusations of heresy.” (227) Ghost parodies the Church in a similar manner; songs like “Con Clavi Con Dio” or “Year Zero” deliberately play on common Christian/Catholic prayers or liturgies, making them silly and demonic. Early interactions between Ghost/Tobias Forge and fans play on ideas of the threat of hell: early MySpace posts from the band were signed with variations on “burn in hell.” For those raised in the Church and who experienced it as punitive, Ghost’s lyrics offer a different kind of inverse salvation.  

Ghost’s music and album imagery (drawn by Polish artist Zbigniew M. Bielak with direct and extensive input from Tobias Forge) plays on the carnivalesque lower strata. Infestissumam’s album art features a Satanic pope leering over a child in utero, “a daughter to fall for a son.” Prequelle, the beginning of the story of Cardinal Copia, seems to flirt with Bakhtin’s ideas on the carnivalesque mouth: the cover (figure A, below) prominently features the gaping mouths of rats, themselves denizens of the “lower stratum” of society. From out of these gaping rodent mouths came Cardinal Copia (figure B), an “amusing and comic protagonist” in the Ghost canon. Unlike previous Papa(s) Emeritus, Copia (at the time of his debut) was not a full anti-pope. He is considerably sillier than previous Papas, depicted riding a tricycle through the halls of the Satanic abbey, performing balletic leaps, or spending time in his bedroom drinking juice boxes. Copia is an underdog, a nepotistic farcical mama’s boy. 

Methodology 

This thesis employs a feminist autoethnographic research design, drawing on models of enquiry developed within cultural and media studies. The core of the research is based in grounded theory ethnographic methods – grounded theory asks “What’s happening here?” (Glaser cited in Charmaz 2006: 20) Radical feminist work can only be achieved when it is done as a collective; when the margins are examined and moved towards the center, when it reframes the conversation to prioritize the lens of the excluded. My interest is to elevate the voices of those often maligned in heavy metal culture – the queer, the deviant – and prioritize their reading of Ghost. By examining my own experiences and those of the Ghost fans I interview, I am able to cross-reference my results and my own perspective, giving priority to the phenomenon (Charmaz 2006: 22) of Ghost fans themselves and letting the data collected lead the work. Ghost fans will help tell me “what’s happening here,” and the literature review places it within the academic conversation. This research is iterative and cyclical; as a grounded theory project, it returns to the data repeatedly to search for emerging themes. The narratives formed by the data guide the shape of the research; each one-hour interview I conduct is primarily a narrative of the Ghost fan’s experiences in life that led them to Ghost. Tumblr as a social media is based on narrative; users’ posts, small snippets of their lives or opinions, act as naturally-occurring data. Posts are artifacts, archival records, and written private records, which I will analyze narratively and thematically. By reblogging a post, I add it to my own archive while simultaneously spreading news or information to my followers (Tiidenberg et al. 2021: 116), establishing rapport with the rest of the community.  

 Data collection strategies function similarly to “natural” use of Tumblr as a social media. Users have two main functions upon viewing a post: “liking” it saves it to a hidden personal list of likes, while “reblogging” it allows users to add commentary, shares the post with a new group of followers, and creates a new web link to that post. Upon reblogging a post, users can add further narrative to the post, or classify the post under a “tag” (“user-generated, but machine-readable descriptive labels” (Tiidenberg et al. 2020: 27)). These tags are “uniquely multifunctional” (ibid): in my case, they are used for community outreach (tagging a post “#the band ghost” adds it to Tumblr’s collection of posts under that tag, possibly sharing my post with more people as well as providing a broad categorical framework for my research findings (via tags like #dissrelated, #fanart, or #tourvideos.)) The act of deliberate tagging transforms what would be casual scrolling into research: initial, thoughtful, coding and categorizing. There are three general categories of tags I use when coding a post: 

“Community” tags: tags that the Tumblr Ghost community uses. These expose my blog to more Ghost fans and help categorize otherwise miscellaneous posts (ex. #thebandghost, #shitghosting) 

Descriptive tags: tags describing what the post refers to (ex. #ghoulettes, #copia).  

Content tags: what form does the content in this post take? (ex. #tourvideos, #tourgifs, #fanart, #headcanons)  

“Research” tags: Posts that refer primarily to my research (conference appearances or publications, field notes, diaries). Posts like these help me hash out ideas while keeping myself and my research transparent to the Ghost community I am a part of. (ex. #dissrelated, #getting a PhD in Ghost) 

Tags shift and change as themes emerge in the research. Perhaps, as I talk to fans, post content (fan art versus tour videos) may not matter as much as the themes in the art (what are the tour videos depicting? Why is that a significant moment for fans?). I will return to tags periodically to assess their continued use. 

In the above image, the green arrow indicates that the post was reblogged from another blog (username redacted). The blue arrow indicates the first text added to the post (often the original poster’s narrative). The purple arrow indicates additional commentary added when another user reblogged the content. The orange arrows are my personal tags, coding these images under “terzo” (fan slang for the third Papa Emeritus, here an example of in vivo coding (Charmaz 2006: 55)). In vivo codes, per Charmaz, are “symbolic markers of participants’ speech and meanings.” (ibid). Fans use nicknames like Terzo to distinguish each Papa Emeritus from his predecessors and specify each Nameless Ghoul. Preserving the character names rather than the musicians seems, from early interviews, to create a dividing line between “actor” and character. In vivo coding often takes place during the interview – in order to understand participants in their own words, I need them to define concepts like “edgy” or “theatrical.”  

In keeping with grounded theory methods, I revisit my data frequently, re-examining it and the chosen tags/codes. I conduct 10 interviews per month, usually clustered towards the beginning of the month. I then move to initial, line-by-line coding of the interview transcripts. Charmaz calls line-by-line coding an “early corrective” (ibid 51) in grounded theory: paying close attention to line-by-line coding “forces [the researcher] to look at the data anew,” without tying participants’ ideas to the literature or forcing data into a preconceived idea. Initial coding also prepares me to adjust my interview strategy or return to previous interview participants for clarification, focusing the inquiry. 

This research takes an iterative, exploratory approach to data, following grounded theory guidelines for “probing beneath the surface and digging into the scene.” (ibid. 23) As more interviews are conducted, more categories, codes, and subcategories may emerge. Returning to data repeatedly throughout the process helps create rich, “thick” data (Geertz 1973 cited in Charmaz 2006: 14): conclusions arrived at through the research will be formed from my own field notes, interview participants’ personal accounts, and extant data: memes/narratives found by scrolling Tumblr. “Thickening” data requires working towards a “detailed and dense description” (Latzko-Toth, Bonneau and Millette 2017: 201) of participants’ experiences of the Ghost fandom: “What rewards do various actors gain from their participation?” (Charmaz and Mitchell 2001: 163) Why might Papa Emeritus III come across my Tumblr dashboard more times than other Papas? Are fans talking about Terzo in interviews? How? How do the posts I reblog and the ways fans talk about Terzo relate? What can we learn from these fan discussions? 

Data and data gathering strategies  

I exist at multiple places on the participant-observer spectrum with each post. My own writing, my own fan art, and my sincere, excited responses to fandom “events” place me as a complete participant in the subculture. Other decisions I make, such as the decision to order a hand-sewn Ghost plush from a fan in Italy, place me in the role of participant-as-observer: the plush is a tangible example of my research, as well as a tangible example of fans’ devotion (someone wrote a sewing pattern, sewed plush, and sewed them of a sufficient quality to sell them for $30 USD). My blog also functions as advertisement for and information on my research: potential interview participants can scroll my blog and get a sense of “me:” what university I study with, what conferences I may attend, or snippets of my academic writing. I continually revise and update my posts asking for participants; the more interviews I conduct, the more I develop an idea of what Ghost fans need to hear in order to feel safe, as well as what information might be extraneous for them. Interview participants share my blog with their friends, potentially garnering new interviews for me and new perspectives on Ghost and queerness. 

Tumblr has a feature called "Asks,” through which users can (anonymously or otherwise) submit questions to bloggers. This feature allows me to exist fully as a researcher without requiring a potential participant to reveal their identity, as in the below example.  

When I am conducting interviews, the grounded theory focus may sometimes position me more towards compete observer: sometimes, participants may refer to ideas I understand as a Ghost fan, but in the interest of not speaking for Ghost fans, or not making speculative assumptions, I need to ask clarifying questions that place me somewhat outside of fan space. In the following interview excerpt, I ask a participant to explain what is meant by “Swiss Ghoul is good to the ladies.” Having seen Ghost live, as well as being immersed in the Ghost milieu, I can assume that the participant is referring to the way Swiss Ghoul interacts sweetly with the Ghoulettes. Asking for clarification feels a bit awkward, as though it is removing me from Ghost fandom. As I conduct more interviews, framing clarifying questions without removing myself from the fandom space becomes easier. 

NG19: Swiss first grew on me when I saw how he treated Aurora on stage! Aside from his antics it felt comforting to see how good he was to the ladies, again connected to my upbringing and the women around me not typically being treated well.  RJ: what does it mean to be good to the ladies?  NG19: He always has great chemistry with them on stage. I like how sweet and playful he is with them, given that female band members can be overlooked and ignored so often. I also liked the moments where he'd kneel down for her. It's unusual and exciting to see a woman shown that kind of respect and attention. 

During the interviews themselves, I move across the participant/observer spectrum. Some participants use a style of syntax that is more formal than is typical of Tumblr; they sometimes refer to the highest degree of education they’ve completed. Ghost fans interviewed to date seem extremely interested in being “helpful” to me, or making sure they are providing good data. Getting them to relax, to speak to me as just another Ghost fan, is a balancing act. In vivo codes formalize this process. 

Qualitative Interviewing 

My call for interviews asks for “queer Ghost fans” as a starting point. By advertising via tags like #thebandghost, I am seeking specifically fans who have a “hyperfixation” on this band. It takes a specific sort of fan to care enough about a property to create a sewing pattern for a plush toy. It takes a specific sort of fan community to care enough to purchase such a plush toy. Who are these devoted Ghost fans? Some content I reblog (such as the painting of Copia showing his top-surgery scars to the ghouls, itself a reference to Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of Saint Thomas (1601-1602)) is aesthetically pleasing, but also refers to my research: is there something worth investigating from a religious and queer perspective in the Ghost fandom? Is this type of art a one-off, or is it emblematic of a wider pattern?   

What forms does this research take? How does the research fit into the community of Tumblr? Is it disruptive? How do you balance existing within and without the Ghost community?  

“Data are produced from social interactions and are therefore constructions or interpretations... the significance of data depends on how material fits into the architecture of corroborating data.... In other words, qualitative data and information are always already interpretations made by participants as they answer questions or by researchers as they write up their observations. Neither research participants nor researchers can be neutral, because... they are always positioned culturally, historically, and theoretically.” (Freeman, de Marrais, Preissle, Roulston, and St. Pierre 2007: 27 cited in Teddlie & Tashakkori)  

Interviews begin with a question about identity markers (chosen by the participant, with clarification from the researcher if requested) and inviting participants to tell me about how they found Ghost. Questions dealing with thematic content (fanfiction, queer readings, the concert experience, perceptions of “heavy” music) stem from the conversation. A conversational, informal tone is more important to me than rigidly standardized responses; follow-up questions depend on the direction the participant takes the conversation. Ghost fans frequently self-identify as autistic or anxious; making them comfortable to share with me is paramount. 
Each time I conduct an interview, I finish by asking the participant to share my blog/my call for interviews with their followers, expanding my reach. Word-of-mouth (snowball sampling) is the primary way I gain new interview participants; the success of my research quite literally depends on the trust and rapport I earn from other Ghost fans. All interview participants are homogenous (they are all Ghost fans active on Tumblr). Pilot interviews included non-Tumblr Ghost fans and the data produced more noise/less consistent results. I attempt to place more emphasis on following the data than looking for “ideal” participants – I used words like “women” at the beginning of the research and quickly found that although many participants were assigned female at birth, they no longer identify as women. By keeping my parameters fairly open, I can continue to follow emergent trends I find through interviews, rather than assuming I know where the data will take me. Is being assigned female at birth part of the socialization process that leads one to be a devoted Ghost fan? Or will other, more important elements emerge as I continue to conduct interviews and return to the transcripts to categorize and code? 

Interviews are text-based.  While I may be missing some data by using this method (body language, tone, use of filler words), text-based interviewing allows me to perform more interviews (transcription is done for me, I can easily keyword search across transcripts), perform in vivo coding as the interview participant is typing a response to the next question, and allows me to, crucially, make Ghost fans comfortable. Tumblr is a heavily textual social media site; this is how Ghost fans are used to communicating. Text-based interviews also allow participants more anonymity. The only personal information I collect is an email address, solely for communication; I have no way of connecting information shared back to the individuals involved. Participants do not need to worry about the way their voice sounds, or their pronunciation in English. My participants can safely continue to occupy positions of liminality: “out online, closeted in real life.” In copying and pasting the text of the interview from Tumblr to a Word document, I conduct initial coding on the interviews, quickly skimming for emerging themes, and giving agency to the participants. Some participants choose to provide additional context or correct their typos in the transcript after the interview has concluded. As new themes emerge, I return to older interviews to re-code and re-examine the data. Trends in data move forward and backward in significance as they are reiterated or ignored in subsequent interviews. 

Autoethnography: diaries, field notes, analyses, theory applications 

An autoethnographic approach based in grounded theory methods makes my research largely feel “natural” to casual use of Tumblr, and helps me center my research in Ghost fandom and the cultural experience of each new Ghost fan I talk to. My observations are largely nonreactive and covert: If a user notices that my blog (titled ghnosis) reblogs their post, they will not necessarily navigate to my blog to look at it or see it as out of the ordinary. The name relates to Ghost, as most Ghost blogs do – many flavors of “ghoulette,” “ghoul,” or “sister of sin” appear in Ghost-related blog titles. If a user chooses to navigate to my blog, they will see my pinned post and recognize that I’m a researcher. The act of reblogging posts is a part of the Tumblr ecosystem, so even though it’s ostensibly a direct interaction, it’s well within the way the site works. Most posts exist to be reblogged. 
 

In general, I try to follow unspoken Tumblr rules – using descriptive tags rather than adding textual content directly to a reblog, not reblogging personal posts, keeping my Ghost blog focused on Ghost and relegating more “personal” content (including, usually, selfies) to a separate blog. The functions of Tumblr (adding narrative/field notes to a post, tagging/categorizing/coding) are complements to grounded theory practices, and joining the two makes my research much less disruptive to the Tumblr Ghost community. Reflexive journaling on myself as researcher (biases, methodological decisions, the PhD process in general) functions both as field notes and journal, but is also a transparent effort to build trust and rapport with the rest of the Ghost community. Interview participants will sometimes ask to be kept in the loop on my research process – they recognize that academic work has a much longer turnaround time than other online forms of writing, but they are excited by the idea that someone is writing their thesis on Ghost and are excited to be a part of that work. Some interview participants send links to posts related to neurodiversity/queer identity and Ghost fandom, or fan art they think I might be interested in. Sharing milestone achievements (such as passing ethics review or conference panels), “aha” moments, or preliminary data (the below example is tongue-in-cheek, though others are more serious) keeps interview participants informed on my work, and may help others feel comfortable conducting an interview with me. In the below screenshot, a user who conducted an early interview with me (and remains one of the strongest supporters of my work) responds to point 2 of my post.  

In the below diagram, the white circle with the black dot inside represents my original post asking for interview participants. Each black dot represents a reblog. As participants reblog my post, it moves further away from my direct circle (at time of writing, I have 171 followers), pushing the post outside of my followers to new groups of Ghost fans. Healthy rapport with previous interview participants makes my research more successful in that it literally spreads my call for participants to new Tumblr silos. 

Ethics and risk  

Engaging with autoethnography brings to bear my own experiences, though where necessary I will follow Choi’s ethical concerns with regard to her own autoethnography, cross-referencing my recollections through participant interviews and ensuring I have permission to share anecdotes or stories that are not my own, or where they intersect with my own. I have examined Tumblr’s Terms of Service, Community Guidelines, and Privacy Policy, and do not believe my research will violate these, nor will it violate meta-Tumblr notions of privacy and the sanctity of Tumblr space. Casey Fiesler (2019, 2016) has produced a great deal of writing on feminist ethics and online communities for academics, and Tiidenberg et al’s text on Tumblr itself (2021) is a wealth of information on sharing Tumblr content without violating users’ privacy or sense of Tumblr as protective, liminal space. Katrin Tiidenberg has produced ethics guidelines for the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) as well as an individual article (‘Research Ethics, Vulnerability and Trust on the Internet’ 2018) to found my understanding of an internet ethics of care. I am committed to ensuring the protection of a community I consider my own. Viviane Namaste’s “Guiding Principles for Critical Feminist Social Theory” (part of her piece ‘Undoing Theory,' 2009) are crucial to me when examining lenses that are beyond my experience. Namaste posits three areas of specific focus for theory when it relates to “everyday women [and]… their lives” (ibid 27): relevance, equity in partnership, and ownership.  

Although Tumblr users are open about their experiences of queer identity, neurodiversity, and other “protected characteristics,” and certainly have a sense of privacy on a maligned and “forgotten” social network, I am not interested in connecting specific sentiments to specific usernames. I am interested in giving credit and attribution to Tumblr users when they are interested in being attributed. Throughout the course of my research, I will, to the best of my ability, work with the Tumblr community to define us in our own words. My primary goal is to ensure that “the knowledge produced will be useful to the people and communities” (Namaste 2009) that I am studying; as a member of the Ghost fandom, and as someone seeking active participation from the rest of the community, I am writing as much for them as for myself.  

My ethical duty to the Ghost community is to attribute intellectual property where it was necessary and wanted by the original posters and to ensure that everyone knows, to the extent possible, what I am doing as a researcher, why, and how it might impact the community. I give back to this community by helping place various Ghost lyrics and lore within the wider occult/esoteric community, and I write and share my own Ghost fanfiction on the same blog I use to ask for research help. I am a member of this community, I am not ashamed of kink or the fic I write, and it is not my intent to shame or make a spectacle of anyone else’s fic.  

As of 6 April 2023, this project has received RIEC ethics approval.  

As of 4 October 2023, this project has received RIEC ethics approval on revisions.  

Bibliography  

ALDERSLADE, Merlin. 2019. 'How Ghost became the face of the new generation of heavy metal.’ Metal Hammer. May 29 [online] Available at: https://www.loudersound.com/features/how-ghost-became-the-face-of-the-new-generation-of-heavy-metal 

ANZALDÚA, Gloria. 2021. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Critical Edition.  Edited by Ricard F. VIVANCOS-PÉREZ and Norma Elia CANTÚ. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. 

ANZALDÚA, Gloria. 1991. 'To(o) Queer the Writer – Loca, escritora y chicana.’ In WARLAND, Betsy (ed.). Inversions: Writing by Dykes, Queers, and Lesbians. Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers, 249-264. 

ARROW, V. 2013 ‘Real person(a) fiction’. In JAMIESON, A.(ed.). Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World. Dallas: Smart Pop, 323–32.  

BAKHTIN, Mikhail. 1984. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 

BARNARD, Ian. 1997. ‘Gloria Anzaldúa’s Queer Mestisaje.’ MELUS. Spring 22(1), 35-53. 

BENNETT, J. 2013. 'Receive the Beast’. Decibel. Issue 100/February, 75-84. 

BENSHOFF, Harry M. 2015. 'The Monster and the Homosexual.' In GRANT, Barry Keith, The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Austin: University of Texas Press, 16-41. 

BIELAK, Zbigniew M. ‘Prequelle.’ [album art] 

BUSSE, Kristina. 2006. ‘My life is a WIP on my LJ: Slashing the slasher and the reality of celebrity and Internet performances.’ In HELLEKSON, Karen and BUSSE, Kristina (eds.). Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays. Jefferson: McFarland and Company, 207-224. 

BUSSE, Kristina. 2005. ‘Digital Get Down: Postmodern Boy Band Slash and the Queer Female Space.’ In MALCOLM, Cheryl Alexander and NYMAN, Jopi, eros.usa: essays on the culture and literature of desire. Gdańsk: Gdańsk University Press, 103-125. 

BUTLER, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge. 

CHANEY, Keidra and LIEBLER, Raizel. 2006. ‘Me, myself and I: Fan fiction and the art of self-insertion' Bitch. 31, 52-57. 

CHARMAZ, Kathy. 2006. Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis. (2011 reprint) London: SAGE Publications. 

CIXOUS, Hélène. 1976. ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’. Signs. 1(4), 875-893.  

CLIFFORD-NAPOLEONE, Amanda. 2015. 'Living in the margins: Metal’s self-in-reflection.’ Metal Music Studies. 1(3), 379-384. 

CLIFFORD-NAPOLEONE, Amanda. 2015. Queerness in Heavy Metal Music: Metal Bent. New York: Routledge. 

COHEN, Cathy J. 1997. 'Punks, Bulldaggers and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?’ GLQ. 3, 437-465. 

DAWES, Laina. 2013. What Are You Doing Here? A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal. Brooklyn: Bazillion Points. 

DAWES Laina. 2015. ‘Challenging an "Imagined Community:” Discussions (or lack thereof) of black and queer experiences within heavy metal culture. Metal Music Studies. 1(3), 385-393. 

DERECHO, Abigail. 'Archontic Literature: A Definition, a History, and Several Theories of Fan Fiction’. In HELLEKSON, Karen and BUSSE, Kristina (eds.). Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays. Jefferson: McFarland and Company, 61-78. 

DORAN, John. 2012. ‘Mass is in Session.’ Metal Hammer UK. April 2012, 38-47. 

DRISCOLL, Catherine. ‘One True Pairing: the Romance of Pornography and the Pornography of Romance.’ In HELLEKSON, Karen and BUSSE, Kristina (eds.). Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays. Jefferson: McFarland and Company, 79-96. 

EHRENREICH, Barbara, HESS, Elizabeth, and JACOBS, Gloria. 1992. ‘Beatlemania: Girls Just Want to Have Fun.’ In LEWIS, Lisa A. (ed.). The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media. London: Routledge, 84-106. 

FABBRI, Franco. ‘A Theory of Musical Genres: Two Applications.’ 

FAST, Susan. 1999. ‘Rethinking Issues of Gender and Sexuality in Led Zeppelin: A Woman’s View of Pleasure and Power in Hard Rock’. American Music. Fall 1999, 17(3), 245-299. 

FAUSTO-STERLING, Anne. 1993. ‘The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female are Not Enough’. The Sciences. March/April 1993, 20-25. 

FAXNELD, Per. 2017. Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

FIESLER, Casey, MORRISON, Shannon, and BRUCKMAN, Amy S. 2016. ‘An Archive of Their Own: A Case Study of Feminist HCI and Values in Design.’ CHI ‘16 Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 

FIESLER, Casey. 2019. ‘Ethical Considerations for Research Involving (Speculative) Public Data’. Proc. ACM Hum-Comput. Interact. 3, GROUP, Article 249 (December 2019), 249-249:13. 

FRITH, Simon. 1996. Performing Rites: on the Value of Popular Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

FRITH, Simon, and MCROBBIE, Angela. 1990. 'Rock and Sexuality’. In FRITH, Simon and GOODWIN, Andrew (eds.). On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word. London: Routledge, 317-332. 

GARLAND-THOMSON, Rosemarie. 2002. ‘Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory’. NWSA Journal. Fall 2002, 14(3), 1-32. 

GHOST. 2012. ‘Children! In the wait for some news from the ghoul front, devour some graphics that we applaud here within the ministry...’ October 30, 2012 [Facebook post]. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/thebandghost/posts/297668790339417 

GHOST. 2019. ‘Chapter Seven: New World Redro’. June 13 2019 [YouTube video] Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/ryuzatodraws-archive/672367379880312832/i-remembered-the-jesus-showing-off-his-top?source=share [accessed 30 May 2024] 

GHOST-BAND-AIDS. 2020. ‘Interview with GHOST and TRIBULATION.’ [Tumblr post] Translated from DELASTIK, Anja. 2020. ‘Schlagabtaush: Ghost vs. Tribulation.’ Metal Hammer Germany. March 2020. Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/ghost-band-aids/190811297796/interview-with-ghost-and-tribulation  https://www.metal-hammer.de/schlagabtausch-ghost-vs-tribulation-1424295/ 

GREEN, Shoshanna, JENKINS, Cynthia, and JENKINS, Henry. 1998. ‘Normal Female Interest in Men Bonking: Selections from The Terra Nostra Underground and Strange Bedfellows’. In HARRIS, Cheryl and ALEXANDER, Alison (eds.). Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture, and Identity. Cresskill: Hampton Press. 

HAGEN, Ross. 2015. 'Bandom Ate My Face: The Collapse of the Fourth Wall in Online Fan Fiction’. Popular Music and Society. 38(1), 44-58. 

HALBERSTAM, Judith. 2003. ‘Reflections on Queer Studies and Queer Pedagogy’. In YEP, Gust A, LOVAAS, Karen E., and ELIA, John P. (eds.). Queer Theory and Communication: From Disciplining Queers to Queering the Discipline(s). Binghamton: Harrington Park Press, 361-364. 

HALBERSTAM, Judith. 2005. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: New York University Press. 

HICKMAN, Langdon. 2023. ‘The Dialectical Satan’. In LUKES, Daniel and PANAYOTOV, Stanimir (eds.). Black Metal Rainbows. Oakland: PM Press, 335-350. 

HILL, Rosemary Lucy. 2016. ‘”Power has a penis”: Cost reduction, social exchange and sexism in metal – reviewing the work of Sonia Vasan’. Metal Music Studies. 2(3), 263-271. 

HILLS, Matt. 2002. Fan Cultures. London: Routledge. 

HINERMAN, Stephen. 1992. '”I’ll Be Here With You”: Fans, Fantasy and the Figure of Elvis’. In LEWIS, Lisa A. (ed.). The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media. London: Routledge, 107-134. 

HOAD, Catherine. 2017. 'Slashing through the boundaries: Heavy metal fandom, fan fiction and girl cultures’. Metal Music Studies. 3(1), 5-22. 

HOOKS, bell. 2015. Feminism: From Margin to Center. New York: Routledge. (third edition) 

HOPPER, Jessica. 2021. The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. First MCD x FSG Originals Edition. 

HUTCHERSON, Ben and HAENFLER, Ross. 2010. ‘Musical Genre as a Gendered Process: Authenticity in Extreme Metal’. Studies in Symbolic Interactions. Vol 35, 101-121. 

IRIGARAY, Luce. 1989. This Sex Which is Not One. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 

ISMMS. 2023. No Outsides. Concordia University, Montreal, CA, June 3-6, 2023. 

JENKINS, Henry. 2013. Textual Poachers. New York: Routledge. The Classic Edition. 

JONAS, Hans. 1958. The Gnostic Religion. Boston: Beacon Press.  

JONES, Rhian E. and DAVIES, Eli (eds.). 2017. Under My Thumb: Songs That Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them. London: Repeater Books. 

KAPLAN, Deborah. 2006. ‘Construction of Fan Fiction Character Through Narrative.’ In HELLEKSON, Karen and BUSSE, Kristina (eds.). Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays. Jefferson: McFarland and Company, 134-152. 

KROVATIN, Christopher. 2018. 'Ghost is the Most Try-Hard Satanic Rock Band on Earth’. Vice. 31 May [online]. Available at: https://www.vice.com/en/article/9k8qbe/ghost-is-the-most-try-hard-satanic-rock-band-on-earth [accessed 29 May 2024]. 

LATZKO-TOTH, Guillaume, BONNEAU, Claudine, and MILLETTE, Mélanie. 2017. ‘Small Data, Thick Data: Thickening Strategies for Trace-Based Social Media Research’. In SLOAN, Luke and QUAN-HAASE, Anabel (eds). The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Research Methods. London: SAGE Publications, 199-214. 

LUKES, Daniel and PANAYOTOV, Stanimir. 2023. Black Metal Rainbows. Oakland: PM Press. 

MCINTOSH, Peggy and CLEVELAND, Caitlin. 1990. ‘White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack’. JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.30714426. Accessed 3 June 2024. 

Department for the Study of Religions at Masaryk University. 2022. Metal and Religion. Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia. 7-8 September, 2022. https://religionistika.phil.muni.cz/metalandreligion 

NAMASTE, Viviane. 2009. 'Undoing Theory: The “Transgender Question” and the Epistemic Violence of Anglo-American Feminist Theory.’ Hypatia. 24(3), 11-32. 

PAGELS, Elaine. 1989. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Random House. (Vintage Books Edition, September 1989.) 

PARR, George. 2023. ‘Rape Culture’. In LUKES, Daniel and PANAYOTOV, Stanimir (eds.). Black Metal Rainbows. Oakland: PM Press, 353-361. 

PASCOE, C.J.. 2011. Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School. Berkeley: University of California Press.  

PETROCELLI, Heather Oriana. 2023. Queer for Fear: Horror Film and the Queer Spectator. University of Wales Press. 

REED-DANAHAY, Deborah. 1997. Auto/ethnography: rewriting the self and the social. New York: Berg. 

RICHES, Gabby. 2015. ‘Re-conceptualizing women’s marginalization in heavy metal: a feminist post-structuralist perspective’. Metal Music Studies. 1(2), 263-270. 

RICHES, Gabrielle, LASHUA, Brett, and SPRACKLEN, Karl. 2014. ‘Female, Mosher, Transgressor: A “Moshography” of Transgressive Practices within the Leeds Extreme Metal Scene’. IASPM Journal, 4(1), 87-100.  

ROACH, Emily E. 2018. ‘The homoerotics of the boyband, queerbaiting and RPF in pop music fandoms’, Journal of Fandom Studies. 6(2), 167-186.  

RYUZATODRAWS. 2022. ‘I remembered the “jesus showing off his top surgery scar to the homies" post so heres Trans Copia showing his off!’ [Tumblr post] Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/ryuzatodraws-archive/672367379880312832/i-remembered-the-jesus-showing-off-his-top?source=share 

S_G. 2022. ‘Ghost/Tobias Forge - Hård rock på export, 2022, (English subtitles) [YouTube user-generated content]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPwiFdYJc20 [Accessed Jul. 31 2022] 

SAVIGNY, Heather and SLEIGHT, Sam. 2015. ‘Postfeminism and heavy metal in the United Kingdom: Sexy or sexist?’ Metal Music Studies. 1(3), 341-357. 

SHADRACK, Jasmine Hazel. 2021. Black Metal, Trauma, Subjectivity and Sound : Screaming the Abyss. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing. 

SLAVGHOUL. 2019. ‘Tobias on being the sexy face of Satanism.’ Translated from CZARTORYSKI, Bartosz. 2019. ‘Seksowne oblicze satanizmu. Rozmawiamy z liderem zespołu Ghost.’ Available at: https://slavghoul.tumblr.com/post/189496141322/tobias-on-being-the-sexy-face-of-satanism [accessed 29 May 2024]. 

SLAVGHOUL. 2020. Into the Fog. Translated from LAGERGREN, Richard. 2010. ‘In i dimman’. Sweden Rock Magazine. 76. Available at: https://slavghoul.tumblr.com/post/619019726477213697/heres-an-interview-with-papa-from-2010-that-i [accessed 29 May 2024]. 

SLAVGHOUL. 2022. ‘Ghost MySpace, 2010’. [Tumblr post]. Available at: https://slavghoul.tumblr.com/post/695852845125238784/ghost-myspace-2010 [accessed 30 May 2024] 

SLOAN, Luke and QUAN-HAASE, Anabel. 2017. The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Research Methods. London: SAGE Publications. 

SMOKE-AND-SILVER. 2024. [Tumblr post] Available at: https://smoke-and-silver.tumblr.com/post/741475063435542528 

SPRACKLEN, Karl. 2020. ‘From The Wicker Man (1973) to Atlantean Kodex: Extreme music, alternative identities and the invention of paganism.’ Metal Music Studies. 6(1), 71-86. 

STASI, Mafalda. 2006. ‘The Toy Soldiers from Leeds: The Slash Palimpsest.’ In HELLEKSON, Karen and BUSSE, Kristina (eds.). Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays. Jefferson: McFarland and Company, 115-133. 

SWIST, Jeremy J. 2019. ‘Satan’s Empire: Ancient Rome’s anti-Christian appeal in extreme metal.’ Metal Music Studies. 5(1), 35-51. 

TEDDLIE, Charles, and TASHAKKORI, Abbas. 2009. Foundations of mixed methods research: integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches in the social and behavioral sciences. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications. 

TIIDENBERG, Katrin, HENDRY, Natalie Ann, ABIDIN, Crystal. 2021. tumblr. Polity Press. 

TIIDENBERG, Katrin. 2018. ‘Research Ethics, Vulnerability, and Trust on the Internet.’ In HUNSINGER, J., ALLEN, Matthew M., and KLASTRUP, Lisbeth (eds). Second International Handbook of Internet Research, Springer. 569-585. 

THOMSON, Andrew. 2021. ‘Right hand up, left hand down: The New Satanists of Rock n’ Roll, Evil and the Underground War on the Abject.’ Metal Music Studies. 7(1), 43-60. 

TRANARCHYREIGNS. 2024 [tumblr post] ‘I made a diagram that represents myself perfectly.’ March 26th, 2024 Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/tranarchyreigns/746022566448316416/i-made-a-diagram-that-represents-myself-perfectly [accessed 30 May 2024] 

TRINH, T. Minh-Ha. 1989. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 

UNGER, Matthew P. 2019. ‘Ode to a dying God: Debasement of Christian symbols in extreme metal.’ Metal Music Studies. 5(2), 243-262. 

VASAN, Sonia. 2010. ‘”Den mothers and band whores”: Gender, sex, and power in the death metal scene’, in HILL, R.L. and SPRACKLEN, Karl (eds.), Heavy Fundamentalisms: Music, Metal and Politics. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 69-78. 

VASAN, Sonia. 2011. ‘The Price of Rebellion: Gender Boundaries in the Death Metal Scene,’ Journal for Cultural Research. 15(3). 333-349. 

WALSER, Robert. 1993. Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. London: Wesleyan University Press. 

WEINSTEIN, Deena. 2000. Heavy Metal: the Music and Its Culture. Da Capo Press. First Da Capo Press Edition 2000. 

WISE, Sue. 1990. ‘Sexing Elvis’. In FRITH, Simon and GOODWIN, Andrew (eds.). On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word. London: Routledge, 333-340. 

YOUNG, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.  

YOUNG, Iris Marion. 1990. Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 

[kae-luna]

//WIP Intro Post: Ultra Drive//

Art by Computerizer

//Title: Ultra Drive

//Progress: Writing early chapters, planning for whole (hopefully) series out of order

//Genres: Sci-fi, cyberpunk, dystopian, biopunk, post-apocalyptic, action, LGBTQIA2S+, drama, psychological

//Links: Wattpad | Tapas (Coming Soon)

//Rating: 16+ for violence, blood, possible gore, swearing, and suggestive content

//Content warnings: death, pandemic, sickness, bigotry in general???, war, fascism

//POV: Third person First person. AlexiKa's POV.

//Setting: In the city of Venicula on the island of Arasai and surrounding areas. Takes place in the future.

//Premise: AlexiKa's world was changed forever the day her family was forced to immigrate to the imperial city of Venicula after the Ebony Plague - caused by mysterious spores - infected her home town.

~(Continued under the cut)~

Now a young adult, she works as a courier (and secretly an anti-corporation activist). When going on a delivery for the all powerful Gaia Corporation, she accidentally uncovers dark secrets and ends up infected with the same Ebony Plague that haunted her hometown as a child. But when she survives the illness and instead develops superhuman abilities, she joins a mutant resistance group - who call themselves Ultras - to fight against the Veniculan Empire, the Gaia Corporation, and other mutants with immoral goals.

//Aesthetic: neon and pastel architecture, holograms, dyed hair, tech gear, infrastructure in derelict conditions, overgrown plants, eco-friendly technology

//Tropes + themes: anti-capitalism, equality, probably found family, female empowerment, globalization, super powers, POC characters, LGBTQIA2S+ characters

//Inspiration: Nausicaa of The Valley of The Wind, Ultraviolet (2006), Aeon Flux (show + movie), Alita: Battle Angel (movie, OVA, + manga), Ghost in The Shell (anime), Fallout (games), 86 (anime), The Last Of Us (games), Blade Runner, The Matrix, 1980s, 90s, and early 2000s in general, vaporwave art, the United States of 'Merica, Sims 4 eco lifestyle

//Characters:

AlexiKa: A young woman with fiery passion and an even more fiery temper, AlexiKa - AKA Lexi - fights for her family's survival in the rough city of Venicula. She hates authority and will gladly fight for you, despite the odds.

Yuki Raiden: Lexi's mom. Japanese. Super sweet and tries to keep the mood positive, even in dark times.

Alessandro: Lexi's dad. An Italian himbo who loves to tinker.

Ellie: Lexi's childhood friend. Super sweet, but a bit cheeky as well. Pacifist. They might have some gay tension.

Empress Vox: Rules the city of Venicula. Politician who does weird parasocial crap over VR/AR. Definitely a good person.

Donovan Vox: Brother of the Veniculan president. CEO of Gaia Corporation.

LaKellan Ramirez: Leader of the Ultra Resistance. Calm and may seem cold, but is actually just a bit awkward and emotionally constipated.

(More coming soon probably-)

//Tags: Ultra Drive, aesthetic, xxx, xxx, xxx...

//Tag list: @digital-chance

//Pinterest boards: Aesthetic inspo | Character inspo

//Playlists: Scenic/Chill - Used for imagining scenery and for calmer scenes.| Edgy - Lots of industrial, trip-hop, metal, and rock beats for angsty, intense, action scenes. Some songs may include explicit content.

//Changelogs:

1.0: Initial Post.

1.2: Added more tags. Added playlist. Added Pinterest board links.

[loverseon]

SOUL SWAP .ᐟ teaser one

pairing female reader x ???

genre royal au, fantasy, kinda mystery ish

synopsis you wake up in a bedroom thats not your own. curtains that arent your own, bed thats not your own. a life thats not your own. no one around you seems to take you very seriously when you try and explain that youre… not exactly who they think you are. but hey, who are you to complain when everywhere you look theres a handsome man who wants you?

word count around 3k for this teaser, full fic tbd (around 20k+)

warnings none for this teaser angst, fluff, themes of death, suggestive (tbz being sexy what can i say) cursing, slow burn, gradual pairing reveal, will add more tags as we progress

part i. the dream of the golden bedroom

You woke with a startling gasp.

The bedsheets clenched tightly in your grasp; a lick of sweat travelling down your temple as you heave against the headboard. You could see the sliver of sunlight against the curtains through your closed eyes, could hear the gentle song of birds tittering outside – could feel a slow breeze snaking around your ankles and feet as they hung out of the blanket. 

The dream had felt so vivid, so alive, that you swore you could still feel the biting wind against your neck and the sea in your hair. You counted your breathing as it tumbled off your tongue, one… two…

You were quite often purged with such coloured dreams, so waking with a start was not too uncommon a feeling, but there was something so gripping about this one that it had the room spinning beneath your eyelids as you grounded yourself. 

Water. 

Water was the best call for your dried throat, as it felt as though you had been screaming and it was raw and punished. The quilt caught on the mattress as you kicked it off your feet, placing them on the ground and hauling your body up and off the bed. The wooden grit of the floorboards rubbed against your cold toes and, when you searched to no avail for your slippers, you walked to the door, eyes still closed and head rattling. 

The birds were louder now, singing and wailing as the breeze began to pick up and the sun climbed higher into the morning sky. You rubbed your eyes, opening them blindly and feeling along the wall for the light switch next to the bedroom door. The handle hit you suddenly and you winced, getting more agitated at your blindness against the sun and at the fact that you still could not find that goddamn switch.

A sound other than the birds caught your attention; a high, snivelling noise that sounded like metal shearing against metal and you stopped in your tracks. You willed your eyes open wide and forced them to adjust to your surroundings, ignoring the trickling pain in the back of your head at the sudden brightness.

Your foot caught the bed frame as you stumbled backwards.

The first thing you noticed was the gold.

Strips and beams of it everywhere, shining and glowing under the early sun, casting echoes of light all around the room so much that you wondered how your eyes hadn’t shut again already.

Everything so bright everywhere: the furniture, the windowsills, the nails in the gritty wooden floorboards all dipped in gold.

Then it was the height; windows that stretched across high walls, touching the ceilings and bending around the front of the room. Drapes twenty feet high spilled from the peak of the glass, billowing down and curling like white fire against the floor.

You could feel your heart pricking, could hear it pounding as you stood, unmoving, amidst it all. The metal noise was further away now, but you could still make out its presence. Were those… scissors?

Surely you were still dreaming – a lucid dream. Far greater than any you’d had before, but not an uncommon occurrence.

With trepidation, you took a few steps closer to the behemoth windows, a shaky hand reaching out in front of you to pull back the curtain that seemed almost alive as it greeted you and tangled your arm in its fabric. 

The wind hit your hair, brushing it off your face as the birdsong appeared louder the closer you got to the window, before you finally peered out from behind the fabric and opened your eyes.

You couldn’t even feel yourself breathe.

Everywhere, as far as you could see, was green. Luscious grass and trees and meadows waved back at you, flowers of varying colours danced in the wind as you stood in silent awe. The metal shearing from before had returned to your ears and, as you looked down, you recognised them to be bush trimmers, and there, at their handle, was an arm attached, which led to a body – to a head, and you realised that there was an actual person you could see amongst all the foliage. 

He cut the bushes slowly, intricately, creating little swirling curls in the pattern of the leaves, humming gently as he wiped the sweat from his wrinkled brow. You threw yourself back away from the curtain before he had the chance to look up and see you, breath catching in your throat. 

This was definitely one of the more extravagant dreams you’d had in a while. 

With nothing else to do but gawk at the bedroom, you crept back onto the bed, burying yourself in the plushness and staring up at the ceiling. You then realised that even there had a mural – nature paintings with a little pathway running all the way through the artwork. 

There was a person painted on too, a little girl in a pink dress skipping her way through the pink roses with her pink shoes and, if you turned your head just enough, you could make out a large castle at the end of the pathway, all the way on the other side of the room. Like everything else, this palace was the epitome of nature: with green vines climbing its walls and those same pink flowers blooming at the foot of the castle entrance. 

Feeling yourself becoming lost in the detail of the artwork, your eyes began to droop once again, all thoughts being forgotten as the softness of the pillows created a cradle for your head, your breathing becoming lighter as –

A knock comes upon the door and you startle yourself awake.

“Your Highness?” A voice called from beyond the gold, “Are you awake?” 

At least the bedroom belonging to royalty explained the gold. 

You didn’t answer, instead letting the person on the other side dwell in your silence. This was your dream after all, you could let it go however you willed it to.

So you sunk your head further down into the sheets, enjoying the birdsong and the thick blankets that shielded you from the chill in the air, assuming the voice would leave you alone again. 

“Young mistress?” Your eyes opened again. Usually you had control over your maladaptive dreams, so why wasn’t this person going away?

“Your Highness, your breakfast is waiting.” They called softly with another rap at the door. 

A beat of silence.

“Your Highness?”

This time you got out of the bed, skulking over to the door and hesitating before opening it a peep to finally see who was disturbing your dream.

A fresh-faced, pale girl, not that much older than you, stared back at you with doe eyes. A small smile fell onto her lips as you looked at her, pushing slightly against the door to usher you out. “Cook has prepared your breakfast for you, Your Highness! Earlier than usual, as you requested.”

Her voice was softer without the wooden barrier of the door and, as she leaned in, you realised she smelled like freshly picked berries.

“E-earlier than usual?” Was what you managed to say in response.

Your throat was raw and you were surprised to hear your own voice – you talking wasn’t something that happened often in dreams.

The girl paused, confusion flickering across her features for a second before her smile reappeared against her lips.

“After your lesson yesterday you complained the whole way back!” she giggles, “you said something about food never being ready when you want it, so I asked Cook if he could prepare it before you woke up so you wouldn’t have to wait!”

Now things were getting weird.

A lesson yesterday?

You’d never once had a dream that referenced something that had previously happened.

Everything was always happening in the present as you were dreaming it. They never had any kind of backstory or dimension to them before, just scenarios where you were living out a scene as it happened.

Before you get the chance to speak, another voice cuts through the silence.

“Y/N.” It calls, and you immediately feel the hair prick up at the back of your neck.

The girl in front of you lowers her head slightly at the voice just beyond the hall, just beyond your line of sight, and begins to retreat away from the door.

“I’ll see you at breakfast,” she squeaks, and then she’s gone.

“Y/N!” The voice says again, louder and closer. You’re about to place a hand on the door, to close your eyes and try to wake up when a much older woman steps into the bedroom.

Her shoes are tall and pointed, the body leading up and disappearing under the trim and lace of her green dress as she stands with one hand pointing at your chest.

Her hair dark and ebbing, pin-straight against the broad of her shoulder, save for a singular piece curled in a little ringlet at the base of her neck.

Her stark beauty pierces you in your spot.

“Darling,” she begins again, “whatever happened to you waking up early to catch breakfast?”

The petname eases your paralysis, but you don’t quite let your stiffness go yet and the tall woman sighs, almost floating as she moves around you to sit on the unmade bed.

“The physician told you that it would be good for your heart to stop getting up so late. I thought you promised me you’d start listening to him?”

Compared to her, you had not a single ounce of grace as you croaked back a small ‘what?’, continuously unmoving in your place by the door, a tired hand still holding the handle.

She sighs and runs deft fingers through her hair with a smile. Honestly, her beauty was unlike anything you’d seen before, and if you continued to gape at her you feel like your heart would start to become nervous.

“Come on,” she begins again, “make haste and get dressed. I’ll send in your ladies to prep you for the day.”

The woman goes to leave for the door, her hair trailing behind her as she walks back past you. With a soft hand against your cheek, she says, “I hope you haven’t forgotten about what today will mean for you.”

And then she’s gone. The door closes swiftly behind her, leaving you alone once more, with only the birdsong and the drifting sound of metal snipping in your ears.

What on earth is going on?

This dream has already gone on for longer than you’re used to, and the sensations are so intense you definitely could have mistaken them for reality, especially when a moment later, half a dozen women come piling into the room with dresses and jewellery and little ornate containers in their busying hands.

You don’t even get the chance to say anything before they’re all over you — fingers tangling in your hair, pulling and tugging against your clothes.

“What are you doing!” you say, feeling awfully bare in your new state. Without the warmth of your clothes, you can feel the biting chill of the air, the early sun doing nothing to fight against the new coldness in the room. “Stop it!”

Two of these new girls look at each other with a knowing glance and you can’t help but feel confused when they continue to pull at your hair, scraping it up and high off your face.

“What’s going on?” you cry, but it goes ignored as the swarm still continues to decorate you.

One of them walks over slowly, stopping behind you, just at the base of your feet, and you can feel cold fingers grazing against your neck. You shiver at the feeling.

Are your dreams usually this real? Can you normally feel the temperature of someone’s hand in them?

After a while of fussing, it all stops.

Your eyes had closed at some point during this, and all you can hear is their little shocked gasps and whispers and giggles as you assume they marvel at their creation.

You hear the floorboards creaking, and then the sound of something scraping across the wood before a small, “Open your eyes, Your majesty,” sounds across the room, “look in this mirror.”

When you do, it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

There’s a dress slipping gently off the slope of your shoulders, high in the body before it waterfalls and tumbles all the way down until meeting the floor in swirling waves. It’s pink — the same ballerina hue you saw on the little girl in the ceiling mural, save for the white lace trim and pearl details that swan up and disappear in the fabric of the dress. The shoulders are puffed ever so slightly and curled underneath to taper against your waist, which is tucked in tightly by a pearled pink bodice.

In the mirror, you see half of your hair has been pinned back in gentle strands, with a few loose curls framing the edge of your face.

Speaking of, your cheeks are much softer than usual as you look into the mirror; your skin brighter and your eyes more lifelike than you’ve seen in a while.

The dark circles that usually pierced under your eyes have completely vanished, replaced instead with tiny layers of glitter that shine when you catch them in a ray of sunlight.

Thanks to existing in a struggling 21st century, your face has never looked as radiant as the one peeking back at you now.

It’s definitely your face, but you certainly wouldn’t recognise this woman if you saw her somewhere else.

The girl with the cold hands from before returns behind you again, and this time you’re able to catch a glimpse of her face in the glass — small, frail and beautiful, much like everything else you’ve seen in this dream so far.

She pulls something from one of the little boxes brought in before and, when you look back at yourself in the mirror, you see her placing the most beautiful golden necklace softly against your skin, clasping it closed before straightening it out in your reflection. Like the dress, the train of the necklace is created entirely of glowing pearls, shining in the sunlight and almost dripping onto your skin.

Right in the centre lies a small diamond, dainty and beautiful and matching the ones clipped into your ears.

Your eyes connect with the girl in the mirror, but it’s only a second before she’s looking away, head down and avoiding as she moves back to her spot with the other women.

“Now,” one of them says, clearly much older than the rest, “shall we take you down to breakfast?”

Your shoes echo as the ladies tunnel you down a drawn out hallway. Every step you feel as though you’re spiralling, tumbling down and down and away as you’re pushed through the manor.

Even out here everything is stained gold, the light fixtures, the tables, the flowers. Towering portraits hung on every wall, their frames dripping and glittering in the candle lights.

Men and women of luxury stared back at you in their watercolours, eyes strong, powerful, and seemingly alive. 

The girls who accompanied you down this way hadn’t said a word throughout your journey, instead just holding the train of your dress as it floated behind you.

Honestly, the lace was starting to burn, and the bodice was getting too heavy against your waist but you felt like a princess, so you decided to humour the dream a little longer. 

You must have walked for at least ten minutes before you arrived at anything other than gold and prying watercolour eyes.

When the ladies come to a stop, your breath catches.

Before you stood two huge doors, pretty little lines carved into wood and stone and gold. These doors are huge, towering twin oaks that make your neck creak as you look all the way up, the tops of them barely visible before they disappear into the ceiling.

You had no idea it possible for two inanimate objects to make you feel this unimportant, this small, especially in your own dream, but you didn’t have very long to think about it before the eldest woman in the group is giving the handle a firm push and encouraging you inside with a hurried whisper.

The doors swallow you up and your eyes are assaulted by a flush of bright sunlight. Quiet chatter blooms in your ears, but it silences when you fall into the room. With a less than graceful stumble, you hunch your dress and flatten your skirts, straighten your back because you think it’s the right thing to do in this scenario, and open your eyes.

A mistake.

There, before you, is a small audience. Two of them you don’t recognise, but one is the unnerving beauty from before, the one who had fussed over your health and pulled you from bed.

A few seats to her left is a round little man, his jaw square and eyes downturned as they set on you. The hair on his head is tufting, and it takes all you have not to laugh a little at the crumbs lining the collar of his tunic as he looks so seriously at you.

As you turn your attention to the other side of the table, however, all pretence leaves your mind and you let your jaw drop comically.

That’s…

the most beautiful man you think you’ve ever seen.

a/n DUN DUN DUNN hehe

thats it for the teaser! chapter one is still in the works so it doesnt have an estimated wc yet but bear with me!

thank u sm for all the support so far ><

until next time

[thisaintascenereviews]

I Was Wrong About Deathcore

Deathcore as a genre has gone through quite a transformation over the last 20 years, especially in its early years. Bands like Bring Me The Horizon, Veil Of Maya, All Shall Perish, Suicide Silence, Whitechapel, and Job For A Cowboy brought forth a style of metalcore that took death metal elements into the fold, creating a heavier and more menacing sound. Unfortunately, the metal community hated it, and deathcore was mocked incessantly by the metal community. I remember countless metal publications crapping all over the genre, like it was nothing, and many elitists would say it’s not “real metal,” which you also heard with metalcore, but look at how big both genres are now. In retrospect, those people that doubted the genre and mocked it, their comments haven’t aged well, because both of these genres are insanely huge. Deathcore, in particular, is doing well for itself, but it wasn’t always like that. You can say the same for metalcore as well, and I’ve got a piece in the works about that, but for now, let’s talk about deathcore, and where it’s been for the past decade and where it may potentially go in the future.

I’ve expressed before that I’m just not into the genre anymore, but I’ve recently spent some time with a handful of albums, both from bands I know and bands I don’t, and I’ve come to the realization that I was wrong about the quality of the genre over the last few years. That’s not to say I’m a diehard fan now, but I wanted to write this piece to explain how I went from loving the genre as a teenager to not being much of a fan in my late 20s, only to enjoy it more now at 30. It seems like things like this go full circle, because I was the same way with metalcore as well, and only up until about five or six years ago, I didn’t really listen to a lot for the longest time. I loved deathcore in high school, partially because it was the “heaviest” music I had ever heard, at least at the time. I had already been a fan of metalcore, but deathcore was even heavier. The genre reached its peak in the early 2010s with the second coming of the genre, and that included Carnifex, Whitechapel, Thy Art Is Murder, and a lot of other bands. Those bands were already around, but they only ended up getting bigger. After a certain point, however, I saw the genre start to turn to how heavy and “brutal” a band could get, instead of writing good songs.

One of my biggest issues with heavier music that I run into a lot, depending on the genre, is that bands never know how to write a cohesive song, and instead, they want to be as heavy and brutal as possible, as well as cram as many riffs and breakdowns as possible. Bonus points if the vocalist sounds like a garbage disposal as well. I see this in progressive metal a lot, too, where the bands play as intricately and technical as possible, but they can’t make a catchy or accessible song worth a damn. There was a point where I thought musicianship was more important, but I don’t think so these days. These days, I’m more into listening to catchy and accessible stuff that has something to go back to, versus something that sounds impressive. Sure, you can play your instruments well, but why should I care if I don’t have anything to go back to? Deathcore has been going in that direction recently, being that bands are starting to be more accessible and memorable, versus trying to be as heavy and brutal as possible.

Lorna Shore’s latest record, Pain Remains, is a good example of that, but at the same time, that album is a good example of being over the top and overblown. Pain Remains is at an 11 constantly with its brand of symphonic and blackened deathcore, and while the album does try to get heavy and brutal, there is a lot of variety in both the musicianship and vocals. I reviewed that album a couple of years ago, and my biggest issue with it was how intense and over the top it was, but I don’t think it bothers me as much now, because I just needed to sink my teeth more into it. I didn’t spend enough time with it, and I see the album’s importance now, but I will admit that it’s a very overwhelming album at times, because it throws a lot at you. It throws a lot of different things, though, and that’s a good thing. Relistening to that album recently made me dive back into the genre for a bit, including the new Carnifex album from last year, Necromanteum. I liked that album a lot when it came out, despite it being pretty similar to what they’ve been doing, but Carnifex is a good example of a deathcore band that has more going for them than just being brutal and heavy. They utilize symphonics as well, and black metal riffery, so there’s more or less a good amount of variety on the album.

I’ve listened to a handful of other things, including the new Drown In Sulphur album, Dark Secrets Of The Soul, and I will say that blackened deathcore has become the new trend of the genre, aside from being brutal and heavy, but it all depends on the band’s ability to execute it. Like with all trends, it’ll fade, and the next new thing will come, but it looks like bands trying to be as brutal as possible is the thing of the past and the blackened deathcore sound is what’s big, so I’m looking at the genre with some optimism again, and I’m enjoying some of what I’m hearing. Another great album I’ve been into is the debut Ov Sulfur album, The Burden Ov Faith, in which the band tackles symphonic and blackened deathcore, along with some metalcore and hard rock influence by including clean vocals on the majority of the record.

It’s not that I don’t like bands being really heavy and brutal, it’s that I don’t care for it when that itself is the gimmick. There’s nothing with merely doing that, and sounding like that, but I want there to be more at this point in time. Maybe 20 years ago, it was new and fresh, but now it’s boring and played out, so I’m happy to see a band like Lorna Shore really do something with that. Other bands are following suit, and who knows where the genre will go in the next few years, especially when this trend dies down, but if this is where the the genre is now, I could get into this. Deathcore may not reach the same heights it did ten years ago, but times change, and it’s great to see some newer bands carrying the torch for any certain style of music.

[human-antithesis]

Tool Country: United States Genre: Alternative Metal (Early); Progressive Metal (Later) Formed in: 1990

Lineup (From Left to Right): Maynard James Keenan - Vocals (1990 - Present) Justin Chancellor - Bass (1995 - Present) Daniel Carey - Drums, Percussion (1990 - Present) Adam Jones - Guitars (1990 - Present)

Albums:

1991 - 72826 (Demo) 1992 - Opiate (EP) 1993 - Undertow 1996 - Ænima 2000 - Salival 2001 - Lateralus 2006 - 10,000 Days 2019 - Fear Inoculum 2023 - Lollapalooza in Texas (Unofficial Release)

[dross-the-fish]

It’s funny that someone brought up Alice Cooper and your AU Adam & Hyde, because I’d been wondering what your characters’ taste in modern/more contemporary music would be. Like if they each turned on something from mid/late 20th century - now, what music artists would they like?

Erik will love Opera above all else, no matter what time period he's in. His tastes will not change with the times.

I can see Adam enjoying progressive rock, particularly from the 70's or early 80s, things that maybe touched on unpleasant topics and use weird imagery akin to Pink Floyd's "The Wall" he'd be that guy that prefers Genesis with Peter Gabriel over Phil Collins.

Hyde strikes me as a metal guy. I see his tastes being pretty eclectic, Probably even likes heavier stuff like death metal but then randomly in his play list you'd see something more fun. Sandwiched between bands like Cannibal Corpse and Behemoth you'd suddenly find something like Creature Feature.

Watson strikes me as the type to enjoy the Beetles and other rock bands that came out of the 60s.

Quincey would be into pop music, something bright and fun and catchy that he can dance too. Anything catchy on the billboard hot 100 would suit him

Larry strikes me as a Hip Hop or RnB type though he'd probably like a broad variety of artists and genres.

Theo is another one who doesn't really strike me as sticking to one particular genre, she'd love showtunes though, her favorite musical would probably be Wicked.

Selma would like country, especially sadder songs, the kind you hear playing in a bar down south late at night when you're trying to drown your sorrows.

[turtlemagnum]

INTERESTS: writing, music, art in general, anime, games (both video and tabletop), animals, linguistics, mythology/theology, philosophical bullshit, making fun of philosophical bullshit, politics, guns (and other varieties of weapon), tech, vulgarity and misanthropy

writing: i'm a writer!! that's like, what i'm best at at the moment. my Main Project is a fantasy setting that i generally either refer to as Winds of Change (for the whole deal) or Arana (the main continent that i've developed so far). i'm currently developing a game to show it off and make other people as feral about it as i am, so i'm also learning how to make music and draw and such. but, at the moment the only skill i'd consider myself competent in is writing, so i primarily just call myself a writer!!

music: my taste is simultaneously deeply eclectic but also tends towards high amounts of specificity. i would say that my "main" genre is progressive rock and some of its derivatives, but i also love a lot of stuff like funk, soul, a small amount of metal, some IDM, whatever the hell death grips is, some early rap (mostly just NWA since that was what i grew up on), occasional jazz, like 2 indie bands, oldies, and on occasion normal people rock. artists i like include but are not limited to: yes, david bowie, king crimson, jimi hendrix, danny elfman, symphony x, dio, death grips, aphex twin, nwa, nat king cole, marty robbins, lemon demon, tally hall, jethro tull, midas, and masayoshi takanaka. i'm also told i have a nice singing voice, but i'm personally biased against such suppositions.

i like art, if you were to look through my likes (which are NOT VISIBLE ON THE TUMBR) it'd have a good amount of art. what that art is of, i'll leave to your imagination. i'm not great at drawing but i'm getting better!!

i like some varieties of anime and anime adjacent things. i'm not like, one of those anime fans though, y'know. in terms of series i like, i'd say i'm a fan of fist of the north star (i need to pick it up again), cowboy bebop (very controversial, i know(also need to pick it up again)), fullmetal alchemist (good series, one of the few i have finished), jojo (i haven't watched part 6 yet but i read the manga all the way into the end of part 7 just after part 4 had finished airing), early gen pokemon is something i come back to on occasion for mostly nostalgic reasons, i'm getting back into dragon ball (kill me), i liked gunsmith cats (the anime was only 3 episodes, you can watch it on youtube, i need to read the manga though), i somewhat recently read thru the entire original yu-gi-oh manga and was surprised at how good it was, and i read a lot of doujins!

i'm a gamer!!!!!!! i mostly love nintendo shit and PC games, and some series i'm into include zelda (arguably my first game series i was Way Into), fallout (mostly new vegas), elder scrolls (deeply love hate relationship), early pokemon, mario, the first deus ex game, portal, kotor, half life, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., a smattering of indie shit (primarily UTDR stuff), a bit of GTA, thief, pathologic, disco elysium, and MGS. i also like TTRPGs but being Extremely Alone, i'm basically screwed!!

i like animals of basically all varieties. definitely a dog person, though i also love cats.

linguistics is cool but i'm also Fucking Stupid so i haven't really gained much past a fairly surface level knowledge. doesn't stop me from trying!

mythology is cool! philosophy is cool too! to be clear i view the vast majority of it as bullshit and not to be taken seriously, but it's still interesting to think about at least!

like most human beings living in the modern age, i have a lot of very strong political views. however, i don't like to ascribe labels to myself since people generally hear the label and just fill in the blanks of what they already believe and go deaf to everything else you have to say. i feel like my stances should be fairly obvious if you listen to what i have to say, but here's my main deal in regards to this: i like freedom, not in the typical american way that's basically glorified grandstanding with deeply authoritarian tendencies, but in more of a way where i like the idea of people being able to live how they want without a threat of starving and such. i abhor bigotry, though it's very easy to say that i suppose. i try to be open minded and tend towards a live and let live attitude, y'know. i also oppose imperialism and authoritarianism, but i feel as though that should be considered the baseline

huge gun nerd. i've got Gun Autism, babey!!! don't worry, i'm not One Of Those gun people, i mostly just appreciate them from a technical level. i post a lot about guns, so if you don't like that you can either block the tag #turtlegunrant or just not follow!!!!!!!

tech, much like linguistics, is something i like quite a bit but aren't smart enough to Actually Understand. i'm also the variety of tech enthusiast who's a paranoid shithead, so i'm definitely more of a PC guy. i actually fucking hate touch screens, so i hate phones (which i know is rare for somebody born in this century). i love torrenting, piracy, and just generally downloading and archiving shit

[autumnalvariety]

.: Emails From Your Fictional Fave :.

    We love interacting with our favorite fictional characters. Whether that’s imagining scenarios with them or creating something to make us feel closer to them! Well, I’ve decided to join the business of writing F/O letters!

    For those who haven’t heard of this before, the concept’s pretty simple:

I’ll ask for some information about you/your self insert, the character you want, your relationship to them, what the tone of the letter is…and you will later receive an email from your fave!

    As someone who’s looked around quite a bit, I can safely say I offer one of the biggest option pools in this genre of commissions… So if you want a letter of affection, a reminder that you’re awesome, or even a bit of guidance from a character you admire… Let me help you out!

   Rules:

Currently only writing for series that I know and am confident in. Some exceptions can be made; talk to me if your fandom isn’t on my list.

Not writing NSFW at the moment, but it’s definitely something I’m considering. I will not be writing NSFW for canon minors. (If they’re not 18+, I won’t do it. End of.)

Please, be as specific as possible; don’t worry about rambling! The more details you give me, the more accurate your letter will be.

I will also admit upfront: my prices are high compared to others. I’m confident it will be worth it to you, and know that it all goes towards my livelihood. (Paying for food, housing items for a future apartment, etc.)

Writing is my job right now. I cannot stress this enough.

Please be patient with me. Though I will only be sticking to series I know, I am also under a lot of stress right now. You may check up on progress, but badgering me for replies or demanding your letter faster will likely make me not want to work with you after our transaction is done.

   Now, for the little details!

»»———————— ♡ ————————««

Letter Pricing

$20 - per letter

$15 - per reply (referencing a previously sent letter to you)

$55+ - per penpal (have a back and forth letter conversation with your fave! the price is per month & may have a price hike in the future; get it while it’s cheap!)

   .: Current queue of letters: 0 :.

   Information to send me:

Name: (SI or your own!) Pronouns: Relationship: (romantic, platonic, familial) Information: (what your ship is like, any details I should know, etc etc) Tone/Topic: (confession, romantic, comfort, etc) Email to send to: (your email address)

   If this is your first time getting an email from me, I’ll also send you the email address I use for this service, so you can keep an eye out for your letter!

»»———————— ♡ ————————««

   For those who like real letters more, I do want to eventually move on to those! They would be like your more popular creators; physical, handwritten (or printed/typed) letter with little treats inside. Maybe even mystery boxes, if this ends up doing really well!

   However, my biggest priority is having an apartment for myself. So if you can support me now, I will most certainly promise returning customers a discount if or when I make the move to physical items. (But that requires this to go well in the first place… So here’s to hoping!)

   The fandom/series I cover for this early-round are below.

Ace Attorney

Animal Crossing

Batman

Beastars

Ben 10

BnHA

Borderlands

Castlevania

Critical Role’s Mighty Nien (I don’t yet feel ready to do C1 or any current campaign)

Dangan Ronpa

Death Note

Devil May Cry

Final Fantasy (7 + 14 + 15 only, for the time being)

Full Metal Alchemist

Harvest Moon / Story of Seasons

Hetalia

Homestuck (Hiveswap content pending)

Inuyasha

Kingdom Hearts

Legend of Zelda

Lore Olympus

MCU

Mass Effect

Mystery Skulls Animated

Naruto

Okami

Pokemon

Portal

Sally Face

SGT. Frog

She-Ra

Star Wars

Stardew Valley

Steven Universe

Undertale

Watch_Dogs (2 is my best known game, but I can give the OG a shot)

Yu Yu Hakusho

[poeoliverwood]

Brutal Death Metal - Why it influences my taste in media and how you get into it.

Brutal Death Metal is a sub-genre of death metal that focuses on percussive heaviness and rhythmic complexity above other aspects such as melody and timbre. For a lack of a better term, it’s Deathened Death Metal, but that’s a dumb name, so they named after one of death metals characteristics, it’s brutality.

Death Metal by itself is most well known for its tremelo picking, blast beats, and growled vocals, but some other aspects like the use of odd time signatures and abrupt tempo changes, chromatic chord progressions and palm-muted guitar riffage makes death metal stand out in comparison to other extreme metal sub-genres like Black Metal and Metalcore.

Brutal Death Metal is Death Metal’s continuation on its most controversial aspects, such as the gory, violent album covers and lyrical themes, as well as doubling down on all of its aspects, creating something entirely new in the process. The growls have turned into Gutturals, which are deep, bassy and inhuman. The Palm-Muted riffs are way more common, with a new variant of riffs called “Slams”. Blast Beats become Triggered Blast Beats, which are faster, now hitting the snare every quarter of a note. And songwriting has become maze-like in just how far it stems away from the conventional verse-chorus song structures we’re so used to hearing on the radio.

In ways, if Death Metal was a rebellion against authority, Brutal Death Metal is a rebellion against our conventions and beliefs, which in itself is a form of authority deep inside of people’s minds. It portrays to the world the darkest of realities, both deep in our psyche and what’s happening in our world, and whether we choose to accept them for what they are as a normal part of life or not determines the maturity of the mind. If you aren’t shocked by it’s immature distasteful offensive lyrical themes, you are far more likely to be a happier person than those who are, for those who are aren’t willing to let go and accept the fact that these things very much exist.

Okay, I may be looking too deep into the themes, which BDM doesn’t question in the slightest in it’s own primitive thrill-seeking nature, but it is somewhat of a barrier to those who want to listen to it. Think of it the same way people like to watch murder documentaries and play gory/sexual video games.

To start off, I recommend you check out:

Suffocation - Effigy Of The Forgotten/Pierced From Within

Cryptopsy - Blasphemy Made Flesh/None So Vile

Skinless - Foreshadowing Our Demise/Trample The Weak, Hurdle The Dead

Dying Fetus - Destroy The Opposition/Reign Supreme

and Nile - In their Darkened Shrines/Annihilation Of The Wicked

Once you’ve gone through all of them to get the basics of the genre(the bridge if you will), then you’ll need to listen to these bands to determine whether you’ll love the genre or not(the gate). Let’s start:

Devourment - 1.3.8. Compilation

Containing their debut album Molesting The Decapitated, as well as the Babykiller single and Impaled 1997 demo, this compilation is responsible for inspiring many of the bands today, especially the ones under the umbrella of Slam, a subgenre of BDM that focuses on Mid-Tempo grooves and Slam Riffs. While it could be argued that the New York bands like Internal Bleeding created the sub-genre, it wasn’t fully released until Devourment came by and redefined the genre again in the late 90s. Whilst most of Internal Bleeding’s New York Hardcore influences such as Hip-Hop and Beatdown remain somewhat intact, Devourment’s style of Slam is made way heavier by its muddy production and ping snares, as well as the vocalists’ extra gurgly vocals and absence of traditional songwriting.

Devourment is an essential band for any Death Metal enthusiasts, and their early material is a worthy listen for anyone who wants to experience the absolute best the genre has to offer.

Cephalotripsy - Uterovaginal Insertion Of Extirpated Anomalies

If Internal Bleeding were the Ingredients and Devourment was the catalyst, Cephalotripsy was the final outcome. This band is the absolute best in just how primitive, knuckle-dragging and barbaric Slam can be. Cephalotripsy make no attempt to deviate from their 2-3 riffs, simply making small variations, adjusting the beat and the tempo to give it variety. This album is completely absent of Death Metal’s characteristics, there’s no tremelo-picking, blast beats are very rare and are often replaced by drum rolls more often than not and the vocals can barely even be considered such by just how far Angel Ochoa pushes his reverberating gurgling noises. With all that being said, Cephalotripsy are surprisingly smart in how they approach their rhythms, using odd time signatures and bizarre shifts in tempo and song directions to give the tracks their own flares.

They might sound like a dumb band for dumb people, but the small details this album has is enough to push the genre’s boundaries enough to leave a huge impact in it, and that’s why it’s so highly regarded. If I’m forced to listen to one Slam album for the rest of my life, I would pick this album.

Gorevent - Abnormal Exaggeration

Despite the fact it’s one of the only Slam bands to once star an attractive young woman, and for as cool as that is(anyone into Slam would think the same as me), it’s not the reason I included it, no. I included them because I feel like they do the genre justice with their fresh take on the genre, sure there are some parts where it sounds boring like the very first riff of the album, but once you get past that, you begin to understand what makes them special. This is a Slam band that has a very distinct discography of riffs, I never feel like their style drags on or gets repetitive as they always have something new to offer the time you get bored of a section of the song. I don’t really have much else to say, but just like Devourment and Cephalotripsy, they’re not shy of using a bit of technicality in their music, and use it to enhance the memorability of the sound. Also they have a gorgeous ping snare that sounds more like a tin can than a snare, adds to the primitive sound this album has. One thing I should note too about all these bands is that they have a very unique style of production, and that being one focused on actual heaviness rather than just being ear-piercingly loud.

You don’t have to be a weeb to like this band, I say they are worthy of being talked about alongside the two pioneers.

Defeated Sanity - The Sanguinary Impetus

The only entry I’m adding to this list that isn’t Slam. I’m not the biggest fan of traditional Brutal Death Metal bands unless they have a technical edge to them. Too many times I find the bands to be rather boring in their repetitive ways, and I always wish that bands would step up their dedication to the sound and put something new to it. Thankfully, Defeated Sanity proves that you can be super jazzy and technical without sacrificing the substance or the brutality of the music. If technicality is done well, it can actually enhance the memorability of the music, because it sounds completely different from all of the other bands, and Defeated Sanity’s discography shows the development of the band and its lead drummer Lille Gruber. The Sanguinary Impetus was the next album he’d work on after doing drums for the two-man DissoDeath band, Ingurgitating Oblivion, and while Defeated Sanity already had a technical sound from the early Prog-Death bands, it only got more technical and surprisingly dissonant from their last album, Passages Into Deformity. This is the logical conclusion to Defeated Sanity’s line-up of classics, this is the album that got me from just liking the band into loving them to bits. This album is criminally underrated! The way I can best describe this album is a the musical equivalent of a panic attack, as the lyrics chime about an over-worldly life-form consuming it’s prey, and it’s endless search to quench its thirst for blood. Death Metal is typically very authoritative and wants to come off as tough, but this album genuinely sounds like the ramblings of a distressed person who’s seen a genocide play in his head as he saw a lovecraftian horror waling from its slumber, only for the beast to wreck havoc across the streets of New York. The composition is so noodley and intricate that I’m convinced I was written by a free jazz composer or a classically trained musician, not a metal band.

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Death - Flesh And The Power It Holds

[90363462]

I would love for act iii to be a rock album. I love rock and roll music in fact I love alternative and metal music (not the death or black metal kind)

Oh and btw to all those who are up in arms about black folks being popular in rock music black folks created music and that includes rock and roll

Rock is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles from the mid-1960s, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the blues and rhythm and blues genres of African-American music and from country music. Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock has centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar, drums, and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a 44 time signature using a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political.

Rock was the most popular genre of music in the U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s to the 2010s.

Rock musicians in the mid-1960s began to advance the album ahead of the single as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, with the Beatles at the forefront of this development. Their contributions lent the genre a cultural legitimacy in the mainstream and initiated a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades.

By the late 1960s "classic rock" period, a number of distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, southern rock, raga rock, and jazz rock, which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock, influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene.

New genres that emerged included progressive rock with extended artistic elements, glam rock, highlighting showmanship and visual style. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques.

Punk was an influence in the 1980s on new wave, post-punk and eventually alternative rock.

From the 1990s, alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop, and indie rock. Further fusion subgenres have since emerged, including pop-punk, electronic rock, rap rock, and rap metal. Some movements were conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including the garage rock/post-punk revival in the 2000s. Since the 2010s, rock has lost its position as the pre-eminent popular music genre in world culture, but remains commercially successful.

Btw there’s plenty of examples of black artists from the past and present who are successful in rock and roll genre some of them you might have known about some you might have not know about

[columnistfromtheabyss]

Review: A Hill To Die Upon – The Black Nativity (Rottweiler)

My review of A Hill To Die Upon's The Black Nativity, written for Heavy Music HQ:

The path A Hill to Die Upon have taken on The Black Nativity is more independent and different compared to their previous works in such a way that the album has separated its spirit from the sound of the early years of the band. On The Black Nativity, which is more of a conceptual piece, there are a few signs of blasting blackened death metal roar that was unabashedly overturning everything.

Instead, folk, psychedelic and progressive strains show themselves in a clear way in many moments; but in a general perspective, this multi-genre intervention has fueled several splits in AHTDU’s sonic nature and seems to have undermined the cohesion in the overall shape of the band’s recent musical journey. However, it has paved the way for AHTDU to conquer new horizons in creating albums with multi-genre, multilayered music, with avant-garde/progressive metal approach. The Black Nativity has the potential to receive a big no from the band’s fans, while it also surprises many others.

Rating: 3/5

[arg-machine]

machine HQ June 2023 playlist

Contrary to what the apparent lack of blog posts here at the machine HQ blog may suggest, the month of May has been a busy and productive one, as far as arg and machine HQ are concerned.

Not lazy… but busy! Interested readers – who don’t already know what arg and machine HQ have been up to this month – are requested to check out the posts over at Instagram. Of note are the funky, old-school boombox 3D model [here] that arg built in early May, a previoulsy-unseen rendering of the Alien City interior from The Apocalypse Project [here] and a quick Marvinverse post [here].

And once he had these off his hands, arg began work on a new Apocalypse Project news report, which was completed and published last week. Not one to let an Instagrammable opportunity pass him by, arg even published a behind-the-scenes, work-in-progress post about this new report [here], and designed a promotional image for it, which can be seen here.

And all this, as arg never fails to point out, was done using only a laptop…

Wait! There’s more… Next week, arg will publish a short coda – a footnote, if you will – to the Devil’s Cove – Death, Delirium and Doom! news report. So be sure to visit The Apocalypse Project on twitter, and machine HQ on twitter and/or on Instagram…

Therefore, contrary to what the apparent lack of blog posts here at the machine HQ blog may suggest, the month of May has indeed been a busy and productive one.

Amidst all this apocalyptic stuff arg, however, did find time to listen to music as well… which brings us to this week’s post: a brand-new machine HQ playlist for June 2023!

Music in May! Like all previously-published machine HQ playlists this one, too, includes a couple of tracks from each of the albums arg listened to this month. As always, you will find a wide range of genres in this new playlist: hard rock and rock, metal, dub and reggae, funk, soul, hip hop, jazz, blues and blues-based rock, electronica, ambient and dark ambient, tribal, pop, the occasional movie soundtrack and world music. Also as usual, you can preview it above, or listen to the entire playlist on Spotify.

Well folks, that’s it for this week. See you all next week on twitter and Instagram [links above]…

[metalmessage]

RAVENLIGHT • Under the spell of bewitching mysticism!

Action: RAVENLIGHT Base: Belfast • Northern Ireland Genre: Symphonic Power Metal Title: Immemorial FFO: Nightwish, Kamelot, Sonata Arctica Format: Album Label: Distortion Project Records Distro: Code7 Release: Jan. 27, 2023

Bulletpoints:

2nd studio album of the Irish nature mystics

Beauty, longing & power in a touching trinity

Tasteful, emotional songs full of beauty & aesthetics

https://youtu.be/bt4-f6an7-U [ Official music video by TWKOM & John Connor ]

RAVENLIGHT comments on „Reflections“: „We chose ‚Reflections‘ as the first single for ‚Immemorial‘ as it was one of the early songs that set the tone for the rest of the album, it showcases a mix of emotional vocals and lyrics alongside heavy riffing and strong hooks, the contrast of light vs dark, heaviness vs beauty and hope vs fear runs throughout the whole release, and so it seemed like the perfect song and video to welcome the audience into that theme.“

https://youtu.be/NNaTeYLAoNU [ Official music video by John Connor ]

RAVENLIGHT comments on „Spirit Of Life“: „A unique track on the album – while most the songs represent darker themes, we decided to keep ‚Spirit Of Life‘ as the light in the darkness. The song was written to be infectiously fun and just a good time for the audience and listeners, so we made the video a little bit weirder than usual too!“

LINE-UP:

Rebecca Feeney • Vocals John Connor • Guitars, Keyboards Dean Kane • Bass Michał Bugajski • Drums

RAVENLIGHT returns, stronger than ever with their long awaited second album, „Immemorial“!

TRACKS 01. Masque Of Red Death (04:27) 02. Reflections (04:22) 03. The Painters Dream (04:33) 04. Spirit Of Life (03:58) 05. Paper Ships (03:37) 06. Rain (03:46) 07. Spiral (04:22) 08. Left Behind (05:57) 09. The Maze (04:13) 10. Springtime Lament (08:40)

total: 47:58 min.

Channelling their live energy into this new release, „Immemorial“ features 10 tracks of hard hitting Power Metal showcasing a range of styles and themes, from the reflective „Spiral“, to the grandiose „Springtime Lament“, this album highlights the band’s evolution and determination from the past few years.

FLASHBACK: Formed in 2018, RAVENLIGHT play an energetic brand of progressive tinged SYMPHONIC POWER METAL which have gained them a reputation as one of the most exciting and unique bands to emerge from the Irish Metal scene in recent years.

Starting with their 2018 EP release „End Of The World“, RAVENLIGHT quickly made their mark on the local scene and further afield with a number of shows across Ireland, including an invite to support Progressive Metal legends Evergrey in Dublin in March 2019.

At the start of 2020, RAVENLIGHT went back to the studio and recorded their debut album, „Project Genesis“, which was released in June 2020 across Europe and Japan via Novus Records, gaining positive reviews and press across the continent.

Unfortunately due to the pandemic, live shows to promote the album were postponed indefinitely, however instead of resting on their laurels, RAVENLIGHT returned once again to the studio to record their 2021 covers EP, „Intermission“ alongside a series of music videos shot over various lockdowns.

With restrictions easing, RAVENLIGHT made their long awaited return to the stage, with a delayed album launch show, a mere 21 months after the release of the album, an appearance at the Siege Of Limerick festival and shows supporting Firewind, Cruachan and Stormzone across Ireland.

DISCOGRAPHY 2018 • End Of The World • EP 2020 • Project Genesis • Full-length 2021 • Intermission • EP 2023 • Immemorial • Full-length RAVENLIGHT are available for interviews via phone, Skype, Zoom & email !

🌐 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙢𝙤 & 𝙋𝙍 Action: 𝗠𝗘𝗧𝗔𝗟 𝗠𝗘𝗦𝗦𝗔𝗚𝗘 ᴳᴸᴼᴮᴬᴸ • 𝐸𝓈𝓉. 2001 https://www.metalmessage.de/PR_RAVENLIGHT_en.php 💥 𝙌𝙪𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙞𝙣𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙖𝙙 𝙤𝙛 𝙦𝙪𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙩𝙮, 𝙘𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙨 𝙞𝙣𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙖𝙙 𝙤𝙛 𝙢𝙖𝙨𝙨!

MEDIA FEEDBACK:

9 / 10 ➤ „… an impressive album and it delivers everything, modern Symphonic Metal can offer: powerful guitar riffing, well composed orchestral arrangements, catchiness, epic melodies, ballads as well as dynamic and fresh songs … excellent vocalist who keeps the sound perfectly together and stamps her vocal authority on every track … set the bar very high for all other releases in 2023 … a must have …“ (Metal Temple)

85 / 100 ➤ „I was already thrilled with the first album. It’s no different now. Maybe just a little bit better … all in all very good …“ (Musika BE)

8,5 / 10 ➤ „The band stays true to their style, where emotive, melancholic and to some extent dramatic melodies lead a parade of tunes that invite moments of tranquillity … a good album mainly for Symphonic Metal lovers.“ (Locos Por El Power Metal)

3,5 / 5 ➤ „There are immeasurable reasons why this album impresses. Firstly, there is the lead singer who surely would’ve been a big name back in the day. Lastly, everything else. The album does not require extra immiscibility, it is already blended to perfection. The pounding drum, the beautifully played piano, and riffs; they strike a perfect balance between heavy and melodic. There is a sense of immenseness about the music, despite how straightforward it is. There is a great deal of passion behind it, and I believe that comes through immaculately.“ (Sputnik Music)

80 / 100 ➤ „… beautifully done Symphonic Metal songs with fresh and hard-hitting Power Metal … variety of styles … at all times musically … reflexive, melodic … Rebecca’s beautiful voice stands out a lot, it gives a unique softness to each track …“ (Darkzen Dragon)

8 / 10 ➤ „… has a very appealing orchestration … to enjoy, with eyes closed … beautiful vocals … RAVENLIGHT please keep it up, since today you have at least one more regular listener!“ (Obliveon)

8 / 10 ➤ „… I’m very impressed! Symphonic Power Metal is not my thing generally, but what this band are doing is unique to the Irish scene and offers something completely different. It also helps that they’re extremely good at what they do!“ (Burning Metal Irl)

8 / 10 ➤ „Symphonic class and not bombastic noise is what we expected, and they bring it with more than a little of their beautiful Irish charm layered in as well …“ (Powerplay)

7,5 / 10 ➤ „… some potential … good balance between the metallic and orchestral side … catchy melodic arcs … I really like its oldschool interpretation of Symphonic Power Metal and provides a nice counterbalance to the many identical sounding bands that populate the genre these days …“ (Powermetal DE)

72 / 100 ➤ „… arrangements are kept simple and, to some extent raw, providing an ideal backdrop for Rebecca Feeney’s mesmerizing performance. She excels both in technique and emotional expression, displaying impressive control and a remarkable low register that adds weight and gravitas to her singing. The transitions between operatic and powerful rock vocals are seamless and a major strength of the album.“ (Metal Archives)

70 / 100 ➤ „Although ‚Immemorial‘ addresses itself primarily to the users of Symphonic Power and related subgenres, I believe it can easily have its say outside this narrow market as well thanks to a down-to-earth, immediate and catchy making, which shrugs off the all too cloying excesses of certain colleagues and distances itself from certain disposable music. Well done.“ (TrueMetal IT)

7 / 10 ➤ „… somewhere in the intersection of Nightwish, Edenbridge, Crystal Gates and The Dark Element … Rebecca Feeney puts the stamp on the tracks with her expressive voice … should be a welcome addition to the collection of fans of this style of playing …“ (Hellfire Magazin)

7 / 10 ➤ „… not simply looking back … the band also push forward by integrating interesting influences … a strong album that will appeal to a diverse range of listeners … fans of early Nightwish and traditional European Symphonic Power Metal will enjoy it, especially if they’re seeking something less pop-oriented … ‚Immemorial‘ is more than just retrogressive Symphonic Metal and may resonate with Metalheads who enjoy Occult Rock and even female-fronted Progressive Rock.“ (Metal Observer)

3,5 / 5 ➤ „… vocal approach inspired by Nightwish’s Tarja … contains some interesting influences of traditional Irish music …“ (All Around Metal)

10 / 15 ➤ „… with fine prog elements. Vocally, Mrs. Feeney moves in the higher, opera-like areas on … RAVENLIGHT know how to please in this genre, which is overflowing especially in recent years. Especially the now and then interspersed progressive elements, the piano passages and the wise decision not to inflate the songs too pompously, let you listen again and again …“ (My Revelations)

➤ „This optimally functioning, catchy melodic mix can make ‚Immemorial‘ a small, fine treasure for all those who would like to experience it as dreamy and enchanting as possible.“ (Sonic Seducer)

➤ „… true, signature Symphonic Metal style … like a good stew, it evolves on low heat … let its flavors meld and blend into each other … Rebecca’s vocals are once again superb and at times rise to the sublime, to a level that definitely and defiantly rivals some of the bigger and indeed biggest names working in the genre … excellent …“ (Über Röck)

➤ „Balm for the ears! … RAVENLIGHT definitely can’t escape a comparison with Nightwish, but that’s not necessarily a bad attribute … RAVENLIGHT, however, don’t reach so strongly into the symphonic box and so ‚Immemorial‘ could please all those who like clear female voices and like to lose themselves in pleasant tones …“ (Metalmamas Neuigkeiten)

➤ „… a remarkable Symphonic Metal work … with front lady Rebecca Feeney, the Northern Irish band has a singer with an excellent voice in its ranks, which should not only appeal to fans of classically trained voices, but also to fans of more Rock-oriented vocals …“ (Female Fronted Power)

➤ „… durch ihren variablen Gesang erlebt man Emotionen, die für solche Songs sehr wichtig sind … eine talentierte Band, die ihre Instrumente perfekt beherrscht … musikalisch sind sie wirklich sehr gut …“ (Nightshade)

➤ „… guitars play an important role in RAVENLIGHT’s music. They are strong, with great overtones, with flashy lines, and, most of all, prominent … RAVENLIGHT give Rebecca all the chances to bright very shiny and she does … great …“ (Metal Addicts)

➤ „… full of freshness, but with a certain nostalgic touch … a good album, strongly reminiscent of Nightwish in their first phase, combining this concept with a more progressive development … from beginning to end we can enjoy different subgenres in it … enjoy them!“ (Nada Hay Bajo El Sol)

➤ „… RAVENLIGHT have grown a lot … will definitely surprise you … it’s really different and a big step forward …“ (D Metal Galaxy)

etc. [ Logo: John Connor ] [ Pic: TWKOM Media ] [ Artwork: John Connor ]