#I Try Not To Think About The Past

[akwardlyuncool]

Sitting To Know Your Collection March Roundup

Sitting To Know Your Collection: Week 10! (March 3rd - March 10)

Album: Tall People Have No Feelings by The Vanilla Milkshakes Play Count: 3-4 ish times Top 2 Tracks: - We Sound Shitty So Spin Will Like Us (Track 11) - Deez Boots (Track 3) Yay! We made it to 10 weeks!

Doesn’t the title give the same energy and Randy Newman’s “Short People Got No Reason To Live?” 😂

Back in 2019 I went and saw a Green Day cover band and these fine folks were opening for them. At that show I’m pretty sure I got a free copy of this week’s album and if it wasn’t free then I just paid for it like an upstanding human lol. Anyway this is a solid, cheap punk record and I had fun listening to it. The repetitive lines (inside of songs) that come with a lot of punk music were some of my favorite parts, especially because when I’m binging ish, I’m drawn to anything that I can latch onto. So, it doesn’t take too long for me to attach myself to lines like “I annoy myself with my misery. I annoy myself with my misery. I annoy myself with my misery….” lol.

If y’all want some sh*tty but good and easy punk to dabble in and have fun with, go check them out. I don’t think they’re on Instagram anymore, but there’s BandCamp and Spotify and wherever else you consume music.

PS: Just like no sealed tapes, I unsealed this one cause, no sealed CDs either lol.

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Sitting To Know Your Collection: Week 11 (March 11 - March 17)

Album: Metro Station (2007) by Metro Station Play Count: 3-ish times Top 2 Tracks: - California (Track 9) - Seventeen Forever (Track 1) We visited 2007 for the second time during this year of albums and let’s just say I love 30 minute-ish albums. They’re just so digestible. Back in the day, like back in high school, I remember standing in Walmart and trying to decide whether to get this album or Taylor Swift and 17 years later you could see what kind of teen I was and thus part of the elder “emo” I grew up to be. The album came on and I immediately knew every word. I haven’t listened to this one in a while, but it came back like it was yesterday. There was only like one or two songs that needed to get to the chorus before I got it, but I still got it. We still got it. That being said the scene although it still gives good memories, gives me some pause as well lol.

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Sitting To Know Your Collection: Week 12 (March 18 - March 24)

Album: As Cruel As School Children (2006) by Gym Class Heroes Play Count: 4 Top 2 Tracks: - 7 Weeks (Track 7) - Shoot Down The Stars (Track 2)

It’s fun coming back to this album when I do cause for the most part there still are some good vibes, however this time I caught somethings I hadn’t before and will say that not all vibes are good vibes. Maybe I just missed every time it came on previously, but the song about the affair with the teacher was not it bruh. And we all love Clothes Off, but we don’t have to take them off to have a good time. Now I’m not trying to trash the album or anything like that, I’m just realizing what I’ve been singing for many years now. Look up them lyrics y’all lol. Anyway it was still fun, just had to pause a little bit.

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Sitting To Know Your Collection: Week 13 (March 24 - March 31)

EP: I Try Not To Think About The Past (2018) by Zach Frost Music Play Count: 4 Top Track: You Can’t Go Back (Track 2)

I usually avoid EPs with these listens cause they’re so short, however due to #NoSealedCDs and this one being special I made an exception.

A few years ago the very kind Zach Frost sent me a some merch and a few CDs after I talked about a band he used to be in that I really loved. I never opened the cd because I never found the right moment and just listened to him on Spotify. Anyway I finally cracked it open and gave it a few official physical listens.

My opinion is that this sounds like it could have been a Ska record. Maybe it’s because I’ve been listening to like one Ska Punk artist or the catchy lines in You Can’t Go Back. Anyway I had fun with this one and wish I would have gotten more than 4 listens in cause it was so digestible. (I honestly just kept forgetting to press play after it was over.)

.

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What was your favorite from March or what would you check out?

Stay Tuned For April!

[panthermouthh]

“Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?”

[greenbergsays]

I'm going to say something that will make sense to the Fandom Olds and will probably be slightly controversial to the younger crowds, but I'm going to say it anyways

TPTB becoming increasingly aware of fandom and fanfiction over the past two-ish decades and thus, the spawning of the expectation of your ship going canon has ruined fandom a little bit

I mean, fandom does a great job of ruining itself a lot of the time, but this idea that a ship isn't "real" or "valid" if it isn't canon

or the idea that one ship is superior to the other because one is canon and the other isn't?

it's absolutely bananas

I grew up in an era of fandom where characters didn't even have to be from the same media source to ship them. I mean, do you know how many BtVS/HP crossover fics I read back in the early 2000s???

That shit was never gonna be canon, but we had fun with it, anyways

Like. Yeah, a lot of fanon speculation is bullshit, but it always has been and always will be. You have hundreds and/or thousands of people riffing off each other, the observations and the meta will always be deeper than what TPTB intended, and that's okay! That's what makes it fun!

I just think more people would be a lot happier in their fandom experiences if they realized that fandom is supposed to be an escape instead of a crusade

[somnimagus]

out of the frying pan and into the fire and into another frying pan that's also on fire

[id in alt text]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Archery Nemesis.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[wardingshout]

Zelda goes mushroom girl

[kaet-draws]

…in the field, the ground warms as blood seeps into the dirt. (Nathaniel Orion G. K, "הבל | hevel")

[aunmenosheteroenespanol]

2.12 Chimney Begins - 2.09 Hen Begins - 2.16 Bobby Begins Again - 7.04 Buck, Bothered and Bewildered

Tommy's family arc

[stars-obsession-pit]

Aftermath.

It was an unfortunate truth of reality that heroes were oftentimes a reactive force. They could only respond to what they knew about.

So whenever the heroes uncovered an illegal lab, it typically had a history. Experiments that had been performed there already. Horrors no one in their right mind would want to bear witness to.

But someone had to go through all those records left behind. To risk the worst of humanity’s crimes in search of any potential clues. Often, they found little that was useful. Maybe some closure for the families of the missing, at most. But sometimes, sometimes they did find things. Their work could save lives.

That didn’t change the fact that few in their departments lasted long, and even fewer could ever sleep soundly.

The man took a deep breath and attempted to steel himself. He knew it wouldn’t help.

He clicked on the file anyway.

GIW Research Logs, Project HLFA, subject DP-01, Experiment #0001.

[gemsalive]

re: that HEFTY siffrin sweep on id5’s isat favourite blorbos poll — this might sound silly but i do actually think it’s kinda fascinating that isat, as a game so inseparably steeped in (for lack of a better way to describe it) queer fandom culture, managed to so completely sidestep the common Fandom Phenomenon that i suspect was behind the poll in the first place by creating a main character that is also overwhelmingly the fan favourite character for once.

obviously there are any number of factors we could point at to explain the extent to which siffrin nomiddlenames nolastnames manages to grab people and absolutely not let go, but personally i think one of the most interesting ones to consider is the one specific to the medium — that is, how siffrin subverts the “silent blank slate video game protagonist” archetype in such a way that happens to be primo brainrot breeding grounds.

like, when a video game dev makes a silent protagonist it’s usually a bid to maximize immersion by closing the aesthetic distance between player and character as much as possible, right? which is especially true of rpg video games — players find connection in the generic, as that is what gives you the freedom of motion to insert yourself into the story in whatever unique shape suits you best. you are your character and your character is you.

(as ever, post ran long. yall know the drill. tossin in a quick header pic before thoughts on blank slates & blorboification continue under the cut)

and then you’ve got siffrin, who is expressly pointed out to be the taciturn type; who when initially giving the player exposition about their journey so far doesn’t seem to hint at a life or history or even really any motivations outside the journey; whose every thought and action is narrated in second person so as to keep tracing and re-tracing the connection between him and you.

even their design — all darkless and shapeless, bundled up in that big cloak, as if an invitation for you to fill it in with whatever lets you relate to them most! at this point they are their own character for sure, but they also have enough very clear parallels going on with the silent protagonist archetype to feel more than accidental.

of course, as you keep playing you start to recognize that his blankness is much, much more than just a grab at immersion; his apparent lack of backstory, itself a fundamental piece of backstory. this is where he flips dramatically in the player’s perception from “generic vessel for story delivery” to “thoroughly multidimensional character trapped within endless torment nexus custom-built to target and exacerbate all his very specific worst traits rooted in very specific traumas”.

yknow, the good stuff !

but by then you have also been playing enough to be feeling the effects of the thing isat’s design does best of all. i’m talkin bout that ludonarrative lockstep baby. every piece of isat’s gameplay is designed to make you feel what siffrin is feeling — you understand by now that he is not a stand-in for you, but all the same you share in his frustration, his grief, his rare moments of joy and the subsequent heart-in-your-shoes devastation when that joy is inevitably poisoned — and through it all, the desperate grasping for anything new — all as if they were every bit your own.

so in this way the connection is maintained, even if you were someone for whom siffrin’s particular traits & struggles might not otherwise cause you relate to them at all if you had encountered them elsewhere, in a setting where you weren’t actively controlling them as a player. siffrin still gets to carry all the “just like me fr” impact of the blank slate protagonist in the tropes he embodies and in the game mechanics’ design, while totally free to evolve completely into his own character and keep you relating to closely them all the same. now toss back in the fact that said traits & struggles very much ARE of a flavour that a great many people Would Tend To Relate To and just like that you’ve got a perfect storm cookin.

too individual and compellingly written to be an empty vessel for plot delivery. too closely connected with the player’s emotional state to be a story observed impassively from the outside. he has 92 mental illnesses and for the low low price of free u can give him yours to carry too. nobody is doin it like him. congratulations on your well-deserved nose sniffrin nomiddlenames nolastnames <3

[benevolenterrancy]

("Always. Continuously. With increasing apprehension, and decreasing hope. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this." -- paraphrased from The Beatrice Letters, Lemony Snicket)

[bunnieswithknives]

made a lil comic based on your nature au hope that’s cool lol

After a lot of careful thought I have decided that he in fact can! It uh, might not be quite what he was hoping for though.

[sad-leon]

a mood or somethin

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Have you seen my little lad?

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[knockknockitsnickels]

I think this is one of my favorite lines from the Wraith route because of (imo) how much the meaning changes depending on if you got there via Spectre or Nightmare. For Spectre, it honestly strikes me as a genuine question. Why are you doing this to her? If you're on the Spectre route, you presumably already know the Narrator can't really be trusted, since you had to reject his reward to get here. What are you hoping to gain from continuing to hurt her? For Nightmare, it honestly just makes me sad. As the Shifting Mound describes her, "She desires only companionship, but the only thing she knows is how to hurt." This line feels like a plea from someone who genuinely doesn't understand why you keep rejecting her. She wants to be with you, but she just can't understand how to do that in a way which doesn't hurt you.

[thresholdbb]

what's the threshold theory

There was a post about how Tom is the only crew member who isn't really affected by the Borg, and there's a theory that he has so much luck because he saw the past and the future when he crossed the transwarp threshold. He saw the past and the future, all of time and space. There's some subconscious part of him that remembers that experience. In fact, Tom refused to play a part in Chakotay indulging Annorax's temporal incursions, probably because a part of him knew nothing good could come of it.

If we extend that same theory to Janeway, some of her wild luck with time travel and other crack plans starts to make sense. She doesn't verbally hate time travel until after the events of Threshold, since it happens in Time and Again without complaint. Janeway has an uncanny knack for time travel, as evidenced every time she deals with it. She hates time travel, but it might be because part of her knows exactly how to manipulate the timeline. She manages to avoid the "inevitable" temporal explosion in Future's End, saving both Voyager and Braxton. She resets the entire timeline in Year of Hell, and no one else followed her reasoning. She pulled it off flawlessly. In Relativity, she senses the incidents are all related, despite it being just one reading that connects them. By the time she's involved, she has a temporal incursion factor of .0036 and a time travel protocol named after her, even if that may just be Braxton's personal grudge. Then there's Endgame, where she intentionally changes the timeline. Up until this point, she has been dragged into time travel, but for the first time, she jumps in on purpose. How does Admiral Janeway know how to get them home sooner in a way that completely avoids the Temporal Integrity Commission? It's because she has seen all of time, and part of her knows exactly what needs to happen so she can get Voyager home and do it in a way that becomes baked into the prime timeline. Maybe she doesn't consciously remember what happened during her transformation, but the experience lives in her mind somewhere, guiding her decisions.