#I Am NOT Tagging This Shit

[mercseven7]

i did. something. tw extremely suggestive. nothing graphic but theres just no way to make this non sexual at all

MY SONA ISNT OLD I PROMISE HES LIKE 22-24 ITS JUST A GENETIC THING ❤️ also i stole it from a fictive appearance 🫶

anywayssss me n saberspark 👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨👬👬👨‍❤️‍👨👨‍❤️‍👨 sigh i had to take so many breaks cus i almost jizzed just DRAWING him in this way.. /JOKE anhways saberspark my beloved middle aged cisgender white man

[funky-dealer]

art summary and QUASAR SUMMARY!!!!! the results may SHOCK YOU

[farewell-persephone]

A decent summary of bad music. highlights (red text for emphasis):

Sleep Token’s music feels so meticulously pored-over and stylized that it’s almost entirely bereft of human feeling — and that’s kind of the point. The London-born band is a masked, “anonymous” metalcore group helmed by the mononymous singer-songwriter Vessel. Like Ghost, there’s an extensive pseudo-religious lore behind their lyrics that involves Vessel’s mysterious deity-lover-abuser Sleep, and their convoluted storyline — the musical version of a TikTok romantasy book — plays out across Sleep Token’s three-album arc. Also like Ghost, who write all of their “MESSAGE FROM THE CLERGY” social media posts in third-person and with ceremoniously rigid prose, Sleep Token post in the voice of a Skyrim NPC, alerting their fans that tickets to their “rituals” (see: shows) “have been swiftly depleted” and encouraging fans to “obtain” (see: buy) merch from their shop.

Sleep Token’s savvy pretension projects the illusion that they’re a lot darker, deeper, and cooler than they actually are. The beige pen-and-ink album cover for 2023’s Take Me Back To Eden — coincidentally the same color palette Avenged Sevenfold used for Life Is But A Dream… — could be mistaken for a post-metal album released on The Flenser label. . . . The presentation is perfectly suited for a Cult Of Luna or Amenra record, but Sleep Token employ it to make their mundane seem arcane. The arthouse elegance attempts to paint over the band’s clunky fusions of contemporary radio schlock and rudimentary djent-metal.

The songs on Take Me Back To Eden . . . sound tailor-made for the era of reaction videos, where a song’s merit derives more from its construction than its content. The average Sleep Token track is 75% stately pop-rock — often undergirded by stomp-clap drums or department store trap beats, and spritzed with a whiff of PG-13 sensuality — and 25% concussive metal breakdowns and ghoulish screams. Sleep Token deploy the metal passages like land mines, erupting without warning after several verses (upwards of six or seven minutes into their overwrought suites) of distinctly un-metal sounds. Some of their songs have absolutely zero metal in them, and are just saccharine, blindingly polished pop tracks that could easily be mistaken for Imagine Dragons, who Sleep Token have been frequently compared to. . . .

In “Chokehold,” one of several 2023 singles that caught fire online and turned Sleep Token into an overnight sensation, Vessel spends the first two minutes achily cantillating atop an elastic synth and a sparse trap beat. Suddenly, a wave of down-tuned guitars and bludgeoning drums come crashing in, only to recede completely and then return for one last go-around. The errant breakdowns serve as little more than reminders that what you’re listening to is in fact a metal song — “don’t worry, this isn’t actually pop,” their perfunctory inclusions seem to suggest. In the “crabcore” era, metalcore bands would jumpscare their fans with garish Euro-trance drops to essentially troll their listeners with brief detours into pop. Decades earlier, Type O Negative would flip the lights on in the middle of their sultry goth-metal romps to bask in a resplendently sunny psych-pop hook. Sleep Token’s music effectively does the same thing, except they’ve reversed the proportions, making metal the gag in an otherwise pop-forward feature. Their biggest song, “The Summoning,” is a little moodier and djentier during its main motifs, but in its third act twist, the metalness swiftly drops away and Vessel croons over a Bruno Mars-inspired funk groove. In metalcore’s scene era, bands would have fun flipping bubblegum pop hits into scream-infested mosh jaunts on the infamous Punk Goes Pop compilations. Now, one of the biggest new bands in metal is unironically emulating that tier of normie pop in their own songs, and supporters view it as a bold genre exploration rather than a naked embrace of fundamentally corny, centrist, playlist pop. Sleep Token are primed for our cultural hypnosis toward artists who “transcend genre,” which in most cases (and especially Sleep Token’s) means the artist just stacks a bunch of dissimilar sounds on top of one another and passes it off as innovative eclecticism. Whether or not the genre-jumbling follows any creative or emotional logic is irrelevant. Songs like “The Summoning” just get props for stacking blocks on top of books like a toddler in a playpen. . . .

Within a year’s time, the band have gone from a mid-size club act to arena-filling headliners (their spring US tour is sold out), and their fanbase’s behavior on TikTok and Twitter now mirrors the cadence of a popstar stan army. That exponential spike wasn’t because there was suddenly 10x more appetite for djenty metalcore then there was the year before. “Chokehold” and “The Summoning” went viral because they were effectively pop songs, and the album that followed even moreso. Therefore, treating Sleep Token’s popstar rise like a win for metal feels like a misrepresentation of what makes their songs appealing.

Are Sleep Token metal’s new breakout act because of or in spite of their own metal-ness? The same question could be asked of Bad Omens, who are actually bigger than Sleep Token by several metrics (they’ve had three top 10 hits on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, including a #1, and boast 2 million more Spotify monthly listeners than Sleep Token). Moreover, their frontman/songwriter/producer Noah Sebastian feels fatigued by his band’s dizzying fame (which has manifested in an even more intensely parasocial stan army than Sleep Token’s) in a way few modern rock musicians ever get the opportunity to fret about. . . .

The convergence of sleek, office-park R&B and SiriusXM-ready metalcore was first introduced in the 2010s by bands like Memphis May Fire and Issues, but Bad Omens reupholstered that tacky sound with a mentholy sexiness that’s one part gentrified industrial-metal and one part “Blinding Lights”. . . .

So what’s novel to this moment isn’t that Bad Omens’, Sleep Token’s, and Spiritbox’s most popular songs happen to be their catchiest ones. It’s that the totality of their sounds — not just their singles, but album cuts, too — are directly dialed into major-label pop, and they’re explicitly taking influence from some of the most mainstream, non-metal pop singers of the day. . . . And it’s not just these bands. Look at almost any popular metal or metal-adjacent act of the last decade, and their metalness is either used as a prop, a gimmick, or a counterweight to their otherwise non-metal sounds. . . .

Metal is instead part of these bands’ convoluted creative schemes, where it’s either used like a comedic foil (Babymetal), as a musical garment in a theatrical production (Ice Nine Kills), or as a sort of sonic Instagram filter (Our Last Night), where the vague idea of metal is used to market a hunk of normie-millennial cultural detritus as something alternative.

The thread connecting this entire new generation of bands — from Ghost and Bring Me The Horizon to Sleep Token and Our Last Night — is that they all use metal more like a signifier than an artistic framework. . . . Instead, they’re enamored by the mainstream, and are adopting its cultural products to shape the way they sound, look, and transmit feeling through their art. Optimists see their methods as a necessary creative overhaul of a genre that’s already exhausted its own appeals. The heaviest, fastest, nastiest metal songs have already been written, and these bands are giving audiences something new to chew on. Cynics, even the ones who acknowledge that innovation is the lifeblood of all artistic mediums, and can recognize the many ways in which metal’s tropes have grown stale over the decades, are wary that these pop injections are a diluting, not renewing, force within a form of music that’s purportedly at odds with commercial orthodoxies.

For my part, I would charitably sum up most of the mentioned bands as "metal ashamed to be metal," though this would presume that any of them actually are ashamed of distilling metal into a 3D-printed plastic simulacrum. Maybe "pop ashamed to be pop" would be more accurate. I'm not against pop influence in heavy music; The Dillinger Escape Plan's "One of Us Is the Killer" is a great example of pop-mathcore with strong R&B influence, and one of the best memories I have is singing along to the chorus in a crowded venue, not to mention the many other examples of pop influences scattered throughout their discography. I am against the deification of mediocrity; the bizarre, rabid parasocial cults that have sprung up around some of these artists; and the transformation of a genre with a rich and varied history into little more than an algorithmic gimmick.

(Also I have nothing against Spiritbox based on the little I've heard. They at least seem to have riffs. I've been meaning to listen to them properly at some point.)

[realityandrebirth]

Hang on everyone stop and listen. I've got the most insane roleswap idea.

Acronix -> Aspheera -> Misako

Misako is the Elemental Master of Time. Acronix gets locked away in a tomb. Aspheera is Lloyd's mom.

[ribcageeater]

why is there a BRENNEDY discord server

Anyway I forgot to actually post this, here's the fan kid I made

[theenemyod]

I think people should be allowed to sleep in the same bed in a non sexual and non romantic way. I think cuddles can happen non sexually and non romantically. I think most acts of affection are non sexual and non romantic until you make it sexual or romantic (other than the obvious things like actual sex is sexual)

[ot3]

like truly there is nothing more heartbreaking than watching game franchises go from 2d art that's filled to the brim with personality and near flawlessly executed to middling 3d models.

[inquisitor-apologist]

Ok I’m being so brave about it but a couple of days ago I saw this post claiming that the Jedi saying ‘this weapon [your lightsaber] is your life’ is emblematic of ‘the Jedi’s failure as peacekeepers’ (not an exact quote but pretty close) because why would a weapon be the life of a peacekeeper?

And like. The Jedi are a culture. They’re a religion.

You know that, right? You know that many cultures, including generally peaceful ones, have sacred weapons, right? You know that the bond between a Jedi and their crystal(s) is an extremely sacred thing that requires the consent of both parties and is integral to their way of life, right?

You know that lightsabers are not intended to be only for killing, right? That the first thing Luke learns to do with his lightsaber is to shield and defend? You know that a culture having sacred weapons doesn’t mean that they view killing as sacred, right?

Not trying to start shit, I don’t even remember who said it, but ugh

[mafufuu]

I AM IN EMOTIONAL DISTRESS RIP (REST IN PRIDE) GAY (SKRUNKLE) YOU ARE MISSED

[hotelchlorine]

i saw this post talking about discomfort and still supporting people y'know and idk it was a pretty good concise post and then it listed like things you shouldn't use discomfort to excuse like homophobia, transphobia, antishipping, and wait wtf why it that there. They were defending themselves in the comments like oh I'm not saying they are equal, but it's still rather odd to include in a serious post about real issues. You cant tell me this mini fandom war thing is that important enough to list alongside shit that is getting people killed. It feels like saying, oh it's so bad this earthquake killed hundreds of people, and it also spilled my apple juice :( idk it was so jarring lmao

[hellspawnmotel]

gravity falls x the night of the hunter (1955)

[on-the-clear-blue]

Little idea wiggling about in my brain...

So like *holds Danny and Billy up by the scruff of their shirts* these two bastards won't leave my brain, and for punishment I will make them kiss...

Just, the Rock of eternity technically is Shazam's (the wizards) haunt? He has been dead for a long time, living only though his champion, what if Ghost King Danny gets slapped with a post it note that reads like

"Daniel, you're required to assist the Champion of Magic as the High King of the Realms, even Pariah helped the previous Champion Black Adam."

And Danny is like, "Sure, why not, Magic is real and so are ghosts."

And like....

Sparky Danny meeting Literal Sun Beam Billy, they are both 14, it's puppy love at its finest. Danny doesn't know what to do with gay panic and Billy is just straight up "This man is my soul mate, he shall be mine." (Call iy Zeus bestowing more than just lightning)

The leauge is very concerned why Captain Marvel seems to have a seeming underage partner.

Superman squinting very hard and trying to figure this out: So...just how old is Phantom?

Billy, unaware how bad this looks: Oh I don't know honestly, it's kinda hard to tell with beings from the Realms! Though he died when he was 14!

Superman, gripping the table (which cracks a little) :And how exactly long has he been 14?

Billy, taking out his phone and flipping out pictures: Like I said, I don't really know how old he is, but there is Egyptain hieroglyphics of him! Look!

Superman, blinking at the very real looking pictures: Ahh. Fun cool cool cool...a-and how are you again Cap?

Billy mindlessly swiping the photos, excited to show off his boyfriend:Never said it, but he is definitely older than I am.

(Danny is older by a month, Billy calls him an old man for it.)

Billy gets to live full time in Danny's haunt in the Zone, Danny built him like the best house, Tucker and Sam get to meet Billy and they just are flabbergasted that Danny "I can't get a girl to date me or else she ends up wanting to kill me" Fenton has a boyfriend that has been going steady for a few months.

My brain sees like, Maddie and Jack are 100% backing Danny, they are fully supportive of their bi/gay/pan son, but in no way would they support him if he was a ghost, like they are organizing Amitys first ever Pride parade, but there is a shoot ghosts on sight order.

And just the reveal is like...

Danny gets finally tells them he is a ghost: if you start shooting me, your shooting the only Gay person you know, not very ally of you mom and Dad.

Maddie mouth open in horror: Oh no...Jack are...are we homophobic?

Jack sharing her look of fear: Great Scott...Dann-o a-are you sure...its...it's a life style right? Y-you chose this?

Danny, trying very, very hard not to laugh: It's not a life style dad! I didn't choose to Die!

Anyway, thank you for coming to my brain word vomit, I haven't slept in 20 hours.

[damndorothea]

shaniacs try defending this one

[clefadrylcorner]

Obsessed with lovers and piners calling the object of their affections their best friend. Like yessss blur the lines between platonic and romantic love. show how important they are to you in a multifaceted way. Cover up your feelings with another kind of love that is just as true. One type of love does not negate the other and but tragedy can rip both out from under you single handedly, and it will hurt so much more that way. Losing a friend and a lover. Gaining both and not needing any labels for what they are. Using labels but having it be so much more than a title. Were they friends before they were lovers? Or were they lovers whose friendship grew inside of their love? Unclear! Who cares!

[noornight]

Long distance besties. This definitely happened after the third movie (source: trust me bro)

Based on this

[01107aeon]

"No one leaves here, unless I say so."