#I guess il just a slow artist

[coline7373]

« We should have grown old together… »

[hunflowers]

The Aftermath

Word Count: 3.7k

Requested? Yes, and you can too, here :)

A/N: here she is, the little piece of the puzzle y’all have been waiting for. it’s a small part two of 1964, and it’ll take place just after their reunion at the end of the story!! i hope you enjoy it, because i missed writing my babies a lot and i hope you love them just as much as me.

pls, reblog the fics you read or heck even if you see it on your dash; it means a lot <3

good luck and have fun, in that order *nose boops*

“Happy Birthday, Rose.”

No one can explain the phenomenon of joy processed through the body and soul as Harry spoke those simple words into the air to Y/N.

It can only be described as a chill shooting down her spine, flaring goosebumps on her skin, her mouth running dry at the sight of him, or maybe the way her eyes glossed over with a glistening sheen. Pure joy.

As if she didn't already feel transported back to 1964 when sharing her many stories with her eager to learn granddaughter, she certainly did now. Seeing Harry's face, the same features that made her swoon all those years ago - though a little mature now - made her feel like she was her twenty-one year old self all over again.

It felt like a movie, as if the two of them shaped back into their younger statures, adorned in the style from way back when, embodying a world of black and white that would explode into color. Hannah and Eleanor disappeared into the future, and all there was, was Harry and Y/N like how they once were.

Before she could process what she was doing, Y/N was scurrying across the wood floor, walking the fast she has in a while, throwing her arms around Harry’s shoulders and burying her face into the crook of his neck. She could feel the rumble of his chest as he laughed, easily reciprocating the love by engulfing her in a hug, pulling her impossibly closer.

The smell of the roses swarmed Y/N’s nose, tingling her senses in the best way possible. Her brain was overpowering as it continued to be overwhelmed by the events happening, still trying to understand how Harry, her H, was in front of her.

Pulling away a few moments later - but not completely unraveling herself from his hold - she looked up at him, looking at her favorite shade of green that she tried so hard to recreate yet always failed. “Are you really here?”

“Yes! He is, Nona!” Ellie cheered from behind her, causing everyone to gape at her while also laughing. He’s really here, in her arms, breathing the same air as her.

Maybe he wasn’t a dream, after all.

Looking back up at him, Y/N smiled softly, bringing her hands up under his jaw, using her thumbs to caress the soft skin that was lined with a little bit of stubble. “I missed you,” she whispered, almost like it was meant to be a secret.

With his own little grin, Harry placed his own free hand on her cheek, using his thumb to swipe the tear that managed to escape her eye without her noticing. Instinctively, Y/N leaned her head to rest in his palm, a reflex she never seemed to have shake.

Harry didn’t have to say anything back for her to know that he felt the same way, if not more. His actions always spoke a lot louder than his words, and it also seemed that old habits hardly seem to die, even so many years later.

“Okay,” Hannah cleared her throat, trying to gain the attention of the two older folk for the first time in the last couple of minutes. “We’re meeting Aunt Carmella and Uncle Frank in twenty minutes.”

The duo separated, heat rising to their cheeks as they realized just how close they had been for those moments. Harry offered her her bouquet of roses, to which she took gratefully and scurried off to find a vase, uttering a quick, “I’ll be right back.”

In reality, yes she went to find a vase, but Y/N also needed a second to recuperate, inhaling deeply to get her heart to start slowing its rapid pace. Fifty-five years since she’s seen him.

Fifty-five.

It was a lot to comprehend. She was convinced she’d never look at him, hold him, appreciate his existence ever again. One thing is for sure, she never did stop loving him.

Y/N placed her hands down on the counter she placed her roses on, leaning her weight onto her hands as she felt the emotions roll over her like waves crashing on a beach. Her insides felt like mush. She was experiencing the come down after getting off a rowdy rollercoaster, like those she used to go on on Coney Island whenever she visited New York. Electricity shot through her veins as if she had been succumbed to the consequences of the electric chair - yet it wasn’t painful. In fact, she felt alive.

“Mom,” Hannah spoke from behind her, causing her to nearly jump out of her skin. Y/N didn’t realize she had been so lost in her own thoughts for a few moments there. Raising her hand to her chest, she turned around and let out a breath, before smacking her daughter in the shoulder.

“You can’t do that to me, Han. I’m old, I could die from a heart attack.”

“Don’t even joke about something like that,” Hannah rolled her eyes. But quickly the annoyance dissipated as she remembered why she came into the kitchen in the first place. “Are you okay?”

Y/N pursed her lips, giving her a simple shrug. “Yes and no. It’s not easy being reminded of... the love and pain I felt. How did you even find him, anyway?”

Hannah sheepishly smiled, “Aunt Carmella...”

Y/N scoffed, knowing it was exactly like her friend to be secretive about something so monumental like knowing where Harry is and how to contact him. She couldn’t determine if it was a good thing that Carmella kept this information from her, but deep down she knew it was.

As soon as Y/N gathered her wits, the foursome were out the door and on their way to lunch. They had decided to drive two separate cars, and after a bit of begging, Y/N let Harry drive them in his rental. Though, along the way it was a bit of rocky journey. “First time driving on the right side of the road,” was his excuse.

In the car ride, Y/N took the time to truly admire the man she once laid beside at night, trying to wrap her head around the fact that he was next to her again. She wondered if in his old age he would turn wrinkled and decrepit, maybe using a cane or having a hunch back. It only seemed fitting that he beat all of those stereotypes and looked like he had the health of his younger self rather than a seventy-six year old man. He’s timeless; just like their love.

When they finally met up with Carmella, it didn’t take Y/N long to scold her friend for keeping such a humongous secret from her, and working in tandem with her own daughter and granddaughter. All the Italian woman did was shrug before latching her arms around both Harry and Y/N’s frames, pulling the three of them close for a long-awaited, reuniting hug that felt like home.

“Il trio è tornato e meglio che mai. questo merita un brindisi,” [The trio is back and better than ever. This deserves a toast] Carmella cheered, clapping her hands in giddiness as she waved the waitress back over to order the most extravagant wine.

Leaning down to whisper in Y/N’s ear, Harry muttered, “And I still have no idea what she’s saying.” Y/N bumped his shoulder with hers, shaking her head gently as a small smile snuck up onto her lips.

Lunch was shared with many laughs and old stories - all per the request of Ellie. She was eager to keep learning and eager to see her nona so happy.

When lunch was over and they were all saying goodbye, Ellie practically all but pushed Y/N to go with Harry so they could go somewhere private. Hannah of course condoned her daughter’s behavior, but also told her mom it was for the best they catch up without either of them around. They needed to be alone.

That’s how they ended up at the park downtown, where Y/N used to frequent often when she used to run in the mornings or whenever she needed a spark of creativity for her next painting. 

Once Harry placed the car in park, the stagnant tension between them only rose as neither of them jumped to get out of the vehicle. They simmered, absorbed, melted into the atmosphere, basking in it before they flipped it on its head to talk about what they both had been avoiding.

It was an unspoken truce to get out of the car at the same time. The sun was winking at them through the clouds, luring them to venture deeper into the park, just like it used to. Almost as if the star was just as excited as them to be back in each other’s lives. The saying is if walls could talk, but what about the sun? Or the moon? Both kept Harry and Y/N’s moments inside of them, stored deep in their cores right next to all the other love that happened in their line of vision.

Out of instinct, the two locked hands. And they didn’t seem to mind. It felt like a magnet pulled them together, and it would take a lot of force to break them apart.

As they walked along the paved path, being passed by those on bikes or joggers, or really even anyone that walked faster. They weren’t in any sort of rush, because moments like these aren’t meant to be fast paced. They needed to simmer, absorb, and melt.

Harry decided to be the first to speak up, surprising both of them considering, well, his past. “I see the artist life treated you well.”

Slightly turning her head to face him, she laughed softly, shrugging her shoulders. “I guess it did. You predicted it.”

I can’t wait to buy your art one day.

Harry gazed down at his feet, humming a response. He didn’t have the proper words to respond to her allusion to his letter. Hearing the twinge of spite sitting on top of her words was enough for him to gauge that his letter was a sore topic for her. And rightfully so, because even he hasn’t completely forgiven himself for not giving her a proper goodbye.

Coming up on a patch of grass that was half hidden beneath a large oak tree and half in the glory of the sunlight, Harry and Y/N decided to take a seat. If they were going to throw themselves into the past, might as well go all the way and lay in the grass like they did in Florence. Albeit, they wouldn’t actually lay down because it would’ve been impossible for either of them to properly get up.

They rested their backs against the large trunk, looking out into the field and watching little kids play around as their parents kept their distance off to the side with other parents. Y/N found it near impossible to not snap a mental picture of what was in front of her, cursing herself for not bringing her camera with her. It was a beautiful day, and one she wished to remember. Not because of the dreadful conversation that was bound to swallow her whole or the man sitting beside her, but because of the landscape.

What a waste of a beautiful day.

Now, it was her turn to break the silence, because she knew he wouldn’t. He may have once, but that was all he could probably handle. “Tell me about your life, Harry. Please.”

Letting out a breath of air he didn’t realize he had been holding in, Harry twiddled with his thumbs in his lap. “Got two kids. Ben and, uh, Rose.”

Ouch.

“Five beautiful grandchildren.” He spoke shortly and to the point, finding it very difficult to open up the can of worms that is his life.

Once Harry got the call from Carmella that he was going to surprise Y/N for her birthday, he couldn’t get on a plane any faster. The idea of being face-to-face with her again after so many years was daunting and normally he found it difficult to escape his confined box of reality. But that was the thing about Y/N, she always made things seem less terrible to him.

England is his origin and where his family resides, but it hardly felt like home anymore.

His marriage with Nancy balanced on its very thin, tight rope for thirty years, but they both knew it was bound to fall off. Once he returned from Italy, it was like he was a soldier returning from war, because he in no way was the same man who left for Italy when coming home. But, they pushed on, because it was what they were meant to do.

They had two wonderful kids and they seemed like the picturesque family they were planned to be. Behind closed doors, they were anything but. He and Nancy fought a lot and their kids seemed to loathe him for reasons still unbeknownst to him. He supported them and loved them like any parent would, yet it felt like they joined everyone else in his life that wanted to keep him silent. Everyone except one person.

Once his and Nancy’s divorce was finalized, the kids couldn’t be more thrilled. All they needed was a solid reason to drop their father out of their lives. As the years went on they slowly worked him back into their day-to-day routine, but not really. Only for the sake of his grandkids was he in their lives.

It was especially hard living his life knowing his own creations couldn’t stand him just like everyone else, and that was exactly why he couldn’t agree faster to get on a plane to America.

“I officially retired last year, so m’not really doing much these days. Actually, I picked up drawing again if y’could believe it. Haven’t touched a pencil for artistic purposes since... well, since then.” Their heads remained forward, not a single glance made towards one another because it felt easier this way. 

Y/N listened intently to the drawl of his voice, engraving the words he spoke deep into her mind, right next to the dusty ones he spoke fifty-five years prior. Everything and anything he’s ever said rests idly on little bookshelves in her brain, collecting dust the longer she takes to go back and hear them over. It was nice to add new additions to her collection. “That sounds lovely, H.”

His heartstrings pulled at the use of his nickname, something only she would call him. He was only Harry to any one, both by his choice and because every one else was too prim to call him something else.

Y/N took notice to how he mentioned nothing of Nancy, and paired that with the fact he wasn’t wearing a wedding band on his most intimate finger. She thinks maybe he did it out of courtesy to not beckon any unwarranted anguish and pain for her sake - because that’s exactly why she didn’t wear hers.

When she went to put her flowers in a vase in the kitchen, she slid her engagement and wedding rings off her finger and set them down gently on the counter, not wanting to clash her two separate lives.

That’s why she had to ask about her. She couldn’t keep going if she didn’t have any sort of answer to her wondering questions that she’s had for the past five decades. “How’s Nancy?” Y/N didn’t care to actually know how she is, she just wanted to know their story.

The leaves above them blew in the suddenly apparent wind, threatening them that what they were about to indulge in was like a storm on the horizon. It was bound to come and impossible to avoid. “Dunno. Haven’t spoken to her in a couple of weeks.”

This opened the door to many unanswered questions in Y/N’s mind, sending her down on spiral of want and need for an explanation that he didn’t seem keen on giving. This closed the most important door, flooding her with relief she didn’t realize she needed to feel just a little less pain sitting next to him.

Not knowing just how to pose her next question, Harry beat her to the punch, halting her thoughts in her tracks. “We’re divorced.”

Divorced. A strange concept. Y/N never imagined divorcing her husband in all of the years they were married. It seemed trivial and time-consuming and led to no greater purpose in her mind. She could either be miserably alone, or miserable with a man by her side. The latter seemed the most comforting.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I’m not. We weren’t meant to be,” he chuckled, laughing not because it’s actually funny, but because Y/N knew they weren’t meant to be. It was obvious. “Just meaningless pieces in my parents puzzle.”

Hearing his broken words that he used to rant about all those years ago resurface, Y/N couldn’t help reaching for his hand again, clasping it between both of hers and holding it in her lap. It didn’t matter how many years had passed, because it was certain his parents were still a sore subject. She wanted him to know that she never forgot the hurt they put him through, and that she will always be on his side. Always.

Diverting the attention away from himself, it was Harry’s turn to pour salt into a wound he knew would sting harshly. “Did you uh, ever get married, Rose?”

When Carmella had managed to get his number a couple years after Italy, they kept in contact nearly every week. A lot of the time their topic of conversation would revolve around Y/N, and what ever new information Carmella could relay. One thing he refused to know however, was if she ever got married. He didn’t need to know, nor did he want to. But now, he supposes he does. 

“I did. He passed in February.” The 1st. Coincidental, maybe ironic. “He was a good man.”

Silence. It was nice Y/N was able to settle herself with someone deemed to be good. It’s what she deserved. But Harry didn’t want to know anymore.

Silence. They kept their heads forward, but over time Y/N’s head slowly ended up resting on Harry’s shoulder. Their hands stayed latched and their bodies radiated each other’s warmth. Y/N felt cold though. Rehashing their pasts slowly brought them closure, but it in no way healed the pain that rested heavy on her heart. “I wish things could’ve been different for us, Harry.” They deserved different than what they were given. Why do soulmates exist if they can’t be together? 

A love like theirs is folklore; unsure if it ever existed, but meant to be told for generations. “We were special don’t you think?”

“We were everything,” Harry murmured, squeezing her hands, then planting a gentle kiss to the crown of her head.

Y/N laughed again at his allusion, but she wasn’t laughing because it was funny, but because it stung like a wasp. Over and over again. “I’ve still got that stupid piece of paper, y’know. Your letter. Saved it all these years because it was all I had.”

The little anger she had left inside of her began to bubble up. Though it didn’t last very long as tears welled in her eyes, just like when she picked up the stupid paper for the first time. Grief stampeded her stomach like a herd of frightened elephants, bruising her deeply as the pain she felt from that day made itself known in the present.

“You didn’t say goodbye. Why didn’t you say goodbye?”

The wind picked up as the clouds in the sky completely covered the sun in forecast, hovering over Harry as a reminder, just in case he didn’t already know the pain he caused.

Pulling Y/N close to his chest, he let her cry, knowing it was best to not say anything at all. She wasn’t legitimately asking why he didn’t, but it felt good to get the question off her chest. So he let her cry, his own tears pricking his waterline, balancing on the edge before tumbling over and down onto his cheeks.

Just when the sun began to come out from its hiding spot, the two subsided their emotions, calming down just like the leaves above their heads. The storm had passed. All that’s left now is the aftermath.

“We don’t get forever, Rose. But we have each other now.”

Something tells them though that despite how many physical years they may have left with one another, they’ll always have forever. The thought rests easy on their minds.

With just a few more minutes of sitting in the grass and simmering, absorbing, melting, the duo decided it was time to get up. They were going to put the past behind them, starting with the fact that maybe they were too old to be sitting in the grass like they used to.

Laughs and giggles were exchanged as they both tried to get to their feet as gracefully as possible without drawing any attention to themselves. They were a heap of giggles and optimism as they retraced their steps back onto the pathway, heading back to his car.

It almost seemed like déjà vu the moment a speedy bicyclist zoomed past Y/N, nearly grazing her left side. She moved out of his way just in the nick of time, but haphazardly fell into Harry’s arms, who always seemed ready to catch her even in the most abrupt of times.

It all happened so fast yet also so slow, running parallel to the moment this exact occurrence happened fifty-five years ago. Their whole day ran parallel to their pasts, so it was only inevitable that that same electricity sparked through their bodies again.

They gazed into each other’s eyes the moment her body felt safe, that same magnet pulling them close enough that their mouths were only a few inches apart. Not a single word was exchanged as their breaths mingled together and their fingers gripped each other forcefully.

Remembering when she told Ellie about their first electric moment, Ellie immediately questioned if the two of them had kissed because it seemed like the perfect moment. Disappointingly, they didn’t.

She would hate to disappoint her granddaughter again.

So, this time they did.

It was the perfect moment, after all.

[unibrowzz]

Mod (finally) reviews all 67 winners of the Eurovision Song Contest Part IV: The 1980s

Ah yes, the 80s. One of my favourite decades for music overall, and one of the only decades in Eurovision where I wouldn’t immediately jump at the chance to change most of the songs that won, the other decade being the 2000s. 

But at least with the 80s there was more quality songs per year, whereas the 2000s was mostly drivel.

I also count the 80s as being somewhat of a turning point in the contest’s history, and by that I mean it always seemed to me like it was the decade where the UK really began to stop caring. Most people know the song that won in 1985, but nobody knows what won in 1986. Everyone knows Johnny Logan won twice, but couldn’t name his second song. Everyone knows Celine Dion competed, but can’t remember if she won or what she sang. 

That and countries also started experimenting with more modern sounds and outfits towards the end. The early 80s is just an extension of the 70s I swear. 

But that’s enough of all that, how do I find the winning songs?

1980- What’s Another Year?

Country: Ireland

Artist: Johnny Logan 

Language: English

Thoughts: Ah yes, the song that makes every 50something woman in the UK and Ireland all doey-eyed and rosy cheeked as they remember back to when they were a teenager watching this on TV and drooling at the lovely looking sad Irishman singing his sorrows into the microphone.  Or that’s my experience with this song anyway. Another experience is that most vintage fans I know tend to dislike this song on the grounds of it beating out [insert song here] Everyone has their favourite from 1980 since it was honestly a pretty strong year, but even though this song isn’t my first place for that year I can still clearly see why it won. See, 1980 had a lot of pop songs, so a slow, sad song like this one was bound to stand out, whether it was popular or not. Luckily for this one, it turned out to be a popular choice. Other songs wouldn’t be so lucky… Back on track though. Like I said, this is a very sad and melancholy song with sad and melancholy lyrics, which not only made it stand out in its year, but also made it stand out amongst other Eurovision songs of its time. It’s strange to think, but at this point in the contest’s history there hadn’t been a winner with lyrics so solemn and personal. See, in modern Eurovision, every other song is the artist baring their soul about their horrible ex-boyfriend, or their depression, or past abuse, or whatever, so knowing there was a period where songs like that were so rare is just… surreal to me.

Is this my personal winner for this year? This or Greece tbh, I don’t mind this one

If no, what is? Greece- Anna Vissi- “Autostop”

Personal ranking (out of 67): 23rd

1981: Making Your Mind Up

Country: United Kingdom

Artist: Bucks Fizz

Language: English

Thoughts: Ah yes, the UK winner that nobody really likes, but the BBC still forces at us anyway because they’re proud they came up with a gimmick that everybody remembers. Or maybe it’s not that well remembered, but nobody would know that because we’re reminded of it every year. This song is… alright. Just alright. The first listen of this one is always the best, because after a while it just gets kind of annoying. The singing ESPECIALLY starts to grate you for a while. Even in the studio version the two girls sound unbearably shrill and whiny, and I’m not sure if that’s their fault or the songwriter’s (since if I remember correctly only one of them was a professional singer). I’m seriously convinced there’s no way for a female vocalist to pull this off without sounding terrible.  Again, this one’s perfectly fine and serviceable, but that doesn’t mask the fact it’s still the worst UK winner and the worst winner of the 1980s too. 

Is this my personal winner for this year? No

If no, what is? Portugal- Carlos Paião- “Playback”

Personal ranking (out of 67): 58th

1982: Ein Bißchen Frieden

Country: West Germany

Artist: Nicole

Language: German (Translation: “A little peace”)

Thoughts: This song gives me a really warm, nostalgic feeling, and I don’t know why. I mean, I know this one did well internationally, so it’s possible I just heard it as a kid, but given how I grew up in the early 2000s, “Eurovision is a shitty freak show full of weirdos from the USSR who gang up on the UK and don't vote for us on purpose” era Britain, that’s highly unlikely. Anyways, this is such a warm, fuzzy kind of song. It has a lovely… round-the-campfire, singalong kind of vibe, like this is meant to be sung by a load of long haired hippies with flowers in their hair and CND symbols drawn on their cheeks. And it’s… … Also kind of bland. If you’ve been reading my personal winners so far, you’ll have noticed I definitely have a soft spot for old German entries, so it’s a shame I find the one song they actually won with to be so… generic. It’s like they got tired of being unique so decided to send the same saccharine fluff everyone else was sending, and guess what, it paid off majorly, because this song was a huge hit at the time. Something about that kind of bothers me, like, out of all the entries they sent, it’s the one that’s the most “Eurovision-y” that ended up winning. And there’s something depressing in that.

Is this my personal winner for this year? No

If no, what is? United Kingdom- Bardo- “One Step Further”

Personal ranking (out of 67): 50th

1983: Si la vie est Cadeau

Country: Luxembourg

Artist: Corinne Hermés

Language: French (Translation: “If life were a gift”)

Thoughts: You want a tip on how to stand out amongst Eurovision fans? Say you like this song. Probably won’t make you very popular, but you’ll stand out at least. I will confess, I, too, was part of the hate-wagon for this song. Like most fans I knew, I’d complain about how boring and uninteresting it was and how it, ahem, “robbed” so many other entries, and how basic it was, et cetera, et cetera. But… honestly? It’s not even that bad. Sure I had other favourites from 1983 (the ones I could stand watching anyway, the host that year was so unimaginably terrible I gave up watching halfway through. I DARE you to watch the whole thing without wanting to neck yourself), but this song gets way more hate than it deserves. I honestly don’t think this song is half as bad as I made it out to be myself, or as bad as the fandom makes it out to be. It’s got a decent melody, some solid vocals, some appealingly 80s instrumental, like there’s a lot I like here. …Until you read the lyrics and realise they’re almost as half-assed and lazy as All Kinds of Everything’s, but I digress. Did I prefer other songs from that year? Of course. Am I going to complain about this one winning? Nah. It’s alright. 

Is this my personal winner for this year? No

If no, what is? Sweden- Carola Häggkvist- “Främling”

Personal ranking (out of 67): 41st

1984- Diggiloo, Diggiley

Country: Sweden

Artist: Herreys

Language: Swedish

Thoughts: Whenever I was a younger fan I used to describe this song as being drunk-dad-at-a-wedding-music performed by three sentient Ken dolls, and I still stand by that statement. And I don’t really know how else to describe this one. It certainly has its charm, and it’s still a likeable song, but it also feels very… vapid. Like if this song were a person, they’d be a bit of a bimbo. And I mean, the song’s about how the singer’s oh-so-happy and prancing down the street in his brand new shoes, so that’s probably a fair description. Part of me wonders if that’s down to old Eurovision songs being vapid in general or if it’s down to the schlager genre itself requiring songs to be kinda neutered and happy-go-lucky, but even though I do like this song, it does come off as being a bit bland. A bit by-the-numbers and playing-it-safe. And I don’t mind songs like that, but I’d rather they didn’t win, y’know?

Is this my personal winner for this year? Not really

If no, what is? Italy- Alice & Franco- “Il Treni di Tozeur”

Personal ranking (out of 67): 15th

1985- La det Swinge

Country: Norway

Artist: Bobbysocks

Language: Norwegian

Thoughts: Ah yes, the song which finally hauled Norway into first place after years of being a regular last-placer. Maybe the UK should take some notes instead of blaming Brexit. Or Russia. Or Iraq. Or anything other than their own apathy, for that matter. But this is about La det Swinge and not the UK, so what are my thoughts on it? Well it’s… It’s the kind of song I imagine my mom and aunt would sing at a wedding if they ever attended one. It’s a very fun song, a little cheesy, sure, but it’s hard to not like a song that’s this upbeat and cheery.  And yeah I know it’s because it’s schlager and that’s generally a really cheerful genre by default, I touched on that in the review above, 

Is this my personal winner for this year? This or Israel

If no, what is? Israel- Yizhar Cohen- “Olé Olé”

Personal ranking (out of 67): 14th

1986- J’aime la Vie

Country: Belgium

Artist: Sandra Kim

Language: French

Thoughts: This song is an enigma because I’m an absolute slut for 80s pop, yet, for some reason, I find this song painfully average and uninteresting. Now, I’ll get it off my chest and say that 1986 was also a painfully average and uninteresting year, and most of the time I just felt myself remembering the singer more than the song, and even then I struggle to remember what some of the acts even were. It was just such a boring blur of a year I’m surprised the juries even managed to stay awake to pick a winner. And I GUESS you could argue that this song is so upbeat and peppy that it woke them up, but that doesn’t excuse how bloody generic it is. Like, this is the most generic 80s song you can imagine, and not in a good way. It feels more like stock music than an actual publicly released pop song. Had it not won, I doubt it would’ve stood out to me at all; it would’ve just faded into the background with all the other muted, 80s-coloured mush from this year. Basically, there’s a reason the singer’s age is the only thing noteworthy about this song.

Is this my personal winner for this year? Not really

If no, what is? Luxembourg- Sherisse Laurence- “L’amour de ma vie”

Personal ranking (out of 67): 49th

1987- Hold me Now

Country: Ireland

Artist: Johnny Logan 

Language: English

Thoughts: Ah yes, the superior Johnny Logan winner.  And I’m not sure why everyone forgets this one because Mother of Mercy this song is in another league entirely compared to the other schlock Ireland’s won with. Like this is their best winner, no competition. One of their best songs overall as well. One of the best entries from the 80s, one of the best winners of the 80s, one of the best winners… Yeah, I really like this song.  I’ll admit to sleeping on this one for too long myself, always dismissing it as some boring Irish ballad to go with all the other boring Irish ballads they somehow managed to win with (we’ll get to that later), and always agreeing with people who said XYZ country (always Yugolslavia) should have won instead.  Basically I learnt the hard way to never judge a song on its country and genre. But one day I found myself in the midst of a revisiting trip, going back to winners I didn't pay much attention to, just to see if there was anything I’d missed the first time round. And something about the lyrics in this song resonated with me a lot more than I thought they would. In a strange way, it made me feel older; like I’d grown up and was able to relate to the words in a song and appreciate it more than I could when I was younger. The line “what do you say when words are not enough?” especially hits harder than it should; as someone with autism I tend to find showing emotions difficult, even in virtual conversation where I’m not using my voice or face, because… Well, what do you say when your words aren’t enough?

Is this my personal winner for this year? Yes

If no, what is? N/A

Personal ranking (out of 67): 2nd

1988- Ne Partez pas Sans Moi

Country: Switzerland 

Artist: Céline Dion 

Language: French

Thoughts: Telling people Céline Dion won this thing is a new favourite hobby of mine, just to see the confused reaction. And that’s the most interesting thing about this song because it’s… fine, I guess? It’s a perfectly serviceable 80s power ballad, but there’s no bells and whistles to make me sit up and declare it any better than just “okay”. It’s basically the ballad equivalent of J’aime la Vie from 1986, in that it’s extremely 80s and also in French, but there’s nothing to make it that memorable aside from the singer herself. And even then this isn’t the song that made her famous anyway. Even her singing doesn't make this one stand out, partially because the song doesn't do anything special with it, and partially because she just blends in with all the other good singers of this era. And that’s kinda sad to think about.

Is this my personal winner for this year? Hmmm....

If no, what is? Greece- Afroditi Frida- “Clown”

Personal ranking (out of 67): 22nd

1989- Rock Me

Country: Yugoslavia

Artist: Riva

Language: Croatian

Thoughts: So this is another song it really took me a while to get into (there’s lots of those, trust me) and one that was very briefly in my top three overall favourites. It’s slid down a few slots since then, though I would still say it’s… Somewhere in the top 15.  I don’t really have a lot to say about this one, if I’m honest. It’s just a good, fun, solid song which stood out in a very dull and ballad-saturated year, nothing more, nothing less. The lyrics are nice too, being about a bored musician who learns to love music again by teaching himself how to play pop songs to entertain his friends. That’s a unique subject and I can imagine it resonating with a lot of people who’ve fallen out with a hobby they used to love because they took it too seriously (providing they either speak Croatian or have looked up the lyrics, of course). I mean, it resonates with me at least. All in all, I just like this song for its message more than anything else.

Is this my personal winner for this year? No

If no, what is? Portugal- Da Vinci- “Conquistador”

Personal ranking (out of 67): 9th

[gay-impressionist]

Hellooo! All the Song Rec questions with 3 please ✨

I guess you understood my not so subtle wish to answer everything so thank you haha 👀😅💕

PS : I don't always have a favorite so I often just chose something I really liked and tried not to put the same artist twice

1. Three songs with the same name

I couldn't find three 😬

Dreaming of you – The Coral

Dreaming of you – L'impératrice

2. A song for when you’re sad

Anyone – Demi Lovato

3. A song for when you’re happy

You Can Never Tell – Chuck Berry

4. The best song to dance to

Les démons de minuit – Image

5. The best song to drive to

Toxic – Britney Spears

6. The best song off your favorite album

Genius – LSD

7. The best song from any soundtrack

Seventeen - Lili Reinhart, Cole Sprouse, Vanessa Morgan, Madelaine Petsch (Riverdale Heathers musical episode)

8. A song for the morning and a song for the night

Morning : Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay – Ottis Redding

Night : Nuit – Requin Chagrin

9. A song that makes you nostalgic

Comme des enfants – Cœur de Pirate

10. The best instrumental song

Suite Bergamasque - Debussy

11. A song from the year you were born

La Tribu de Dana - Manau

12. A song from your favorite solo artist

Good in bed – Dua Lipa

13. A song from your favorite movie

La gloire de mon père – Vladimir Cosma

14. A song starting with the first letter of your name

Let's straighten it out – Latimore

15. A song by your favorite band

Sweet Sun –Milky Chance

16. A song from ten years ago

Over the rainbow - IZ

17. A song that reminds you of winter

Weiße Wand – AnnenMayKantereit

18. A song that reminds you of spring

Kiss in the Shadows – Sweatson Klank

19. A song that reminds you of summer

Chan Chan – Buena Vista Social Club

20. A song that reminds you of fall

California Dreaming – The Mamas & The Papas

(i know it’s supposed to be in winter but it has fall vibes to me)

21. A song for a slow Sunday morning

Charcoal Baby – Blood Orange

22. A song to fall asleep to

could cry just thinkin about you – Troye Sivan

23. A song from 2013

Thrift Shop – Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

24. A song from the 70’s

Soudain il ne reste qu'une chanson – Claude François

25. A song from the 80’s

Sunday Bloody Sunday – U2

26. A song from the 90’s

U Can't Touch This – MC Hammer

27. A song from the 00’s

Dernière danse - Kyo

28. A song that you discovered recently

Noir paradis - Georgio

29. A song you unexpectedly really like

Just because of you (Come on my love) – Eric Filet

= la chanson de Les Bronzés font du ski mdr

30. The best song to sing along to

Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

31. The best road trip song

La Traversée – Radio Elvis

especially good for train rides

32. Two by an artist who passed away

Wishing well / Come & Go - Juice Wrld

33. Your favorite song from your favorite show

With Love, Vincent – Murray Gold

34. A song that reminds you of a book

Black Beatles (Rae Sremmurd Cover) - Waxx ft. Bleeker

(I listened to that song on repeat when I read Beronica fics a looong time ago, now it always make remind me of those)

35. A song that makes you want to go on an adventure

Into the Unknown – Panic! At The Disco

36. The best cover of a song

Rock El Casbah – Rachid Taha

37. The first three songs that come up when you hit shuffle

Finally – James Arthur

Cuz I Love You – Lizzo

Latch – Disclosure ft. Sam Smith

38. A song from your favorite genre

Sun – Two Door Cinema Club

39. A song with a number in the title

40 Day Dream – Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

40. A song with a place in the title

Paris – Brigitte

41. A song with a person’s name in the title

Marcia Baïla – Les Rita Mitsouko

42. A completely ridiculous song

Fous ta cagoule – Fatal Bazooka

43. A song by an artist from a different country than you

Σιγά μην κλάψω, σιγά μη φοβηθώ (I won't cry, I won't be scared) – Killah P, aka a Greek antifascist rapper who was murdered by a neo-nazi in 2013.

Here is a video with the lyrics in the subtitles

44. A song from your childhood

Confessions Nocturnes – Diam's & Vitaa

45. A song that makes you cry

Petit pays – Gaël Faye

About the Burundian civil war and theTutsis genocide. I cried even more after reading his book (I didn’t watch the film tho)

46. A song that reminds you of a vacation you took

Naive – The Kooks

47. A song that reminds you of a friend

Pompeii – Bastille

48. A song for a late night

Saint-Lambert – La Bronze

49. A song that makes you feel better

Mir-e Nowruz (Ramteen Remix) - Ahmad Ali Rezayi

50. Your absolute favorite song (or just right now)

My favorite song ever : Wastin' Time – The Shoes

[regalgorgon]

I’ma have to stop you right here

Hemlo this is your reminder that putting pictures against one another without context or explanation to try and prove some point that’s so much of reach that your arms are like noodles is actually trashy thanks.

Just seeing more Shadowlands/Shadowbringers stuff.

Shadowbringers doesn’t have a Revendreth goth/vampire themed zone. They have sin eaters that look nothing alike and act nothing alike. You know what has vampires and goths and all that? The San’layn and Nathrezim. That’s where Revendreth came from. Shut the fuck up and go away. Blizzard is literally rehashing old shit and making it look new. It’s already been in their game before.

Shadowbringers does not have anything near Bastion. Blue is not purple like Lakeland, and Bastion is based off the Val’kyr with same aesthetics and themes as Stormheim/Trial of Valor with heavy Titan influences. Stuff that has already existed in WoW, and not Shadowbringers. Another reference I’ve seen is Mount Gulg. I’m sorry, but if you put the two together, the only similarities are the Val’kyr and sin eaters and the Val’kyr came first. And if we want to get super technical, angels came first before all of those. (The faction in Bastion is literally named after the Val’kyr; the KYRian)

Shadowbringers does not have Satyrs or the lore of Ardenweald. Ardenweald is the Emerald Dream and Ashenvale love child. The only thing remotely similar are the moth fairies and pixies. There are no Satyrs in Shadowbringers. The only things that Il Mheg and Ardenweald have in common is that it’s the sUpEr CuTe zone full of flowers and abundance of life and the fairy pixie people. Which isn’t original to either of the games, but go off I guess.

Then we have Maldraxxus- really, do you really need me to tell you that there is no parallel zone for Maldraxxus at all in Shadowbringers? That the Shadowlands has existed since WotLK as The Realm of Shadows? ?? Which predates FFXIV entirely. We knew it was the death zone, and obviously things like Nathrezim would be involved so places like Revendreth and Maldraxxus would make sense. Bastion is just the stereotypical “Heaven” modeled as Valhalla as evident with the Val’kyr and their origin, and the Maw is Hell. Shadowbringers doesn’t have any of that, only Biblical mentions and Hades which are two different mythos entirely.

The most annoying two I’ve seen is the name and the premiere picture representation. Icecrown’s opening to the Shadowlands is nothing alike in terms of lore or even physical representation. The name is  common. There’s shadow in everything. There’s even shit like Red Dead Redemption and Death Stranding. There’s World of Warcraft, World of Tanks, World of Darkness, World of- do you get it yet? A name’s a name. It was just unfortunate that they came out relatively next to each other. As for the premiere picture? The Shadowlands is an opening to the realm of DEATH with the mirror of ICECROWN while the Shadowbringers premiere picture/login screen is the  WARRIOR OF DARKNESS bringing DARKNESS to the world of LIGHT by breaking the sea of Light. Not the same thing, not even remotely.

Then let’s talk about production time and presentation!! Upon Shadowbringers release, Blizzard would have had 4 months to make an expansion that is ready to be demo’d at Blizzcon. Highly unlikely, next to impossible. The leaks were even happening before that. So if you want to go by the trailer and announcement, please note Blizzard isn’t known for how fast they are with expansions, let alone content. At the bare minimum, they would have had artwork and storyboard by that time. You all sorely estimate how slow creating this shit is, especially for Blizzard. They even cut half  the stuff they promise or talk about because it just takes too much time or they save it for another expansion down the road (remember when they cut Azshara from Cataclysm? I did).

So by the time Shadowbringers was announced- assuming there’s no secret spy working for Blizzard planted into their studio which is dumb and highly unlikely as there were no leaks whatsoever about this expac- Blizzard would have already picked out the IP and had their artists draw up creature and zone designs while the story team developed what we now were presented in a cinematic trailer.

Shit happens. But when you look at the two, they are very painfully different no matter how much you wanna’ reach. Not even the color pallets in any of these pictures they smash together are remotely similar. 

THE ONLY THING BLIZZARD TOOK INSPIRATION OR “STOLE” WAS PALACE OF THE DEAD and called it Torghast. And even THEN Palace of the Dead wasn’t an original concept.

Like I joked. I did the cute little jabs about the names and the post-apocalyptic feeling of the expacs, but facts are that they are entirely different and anything you can remotely compare the two already existed before they were even a thought in someone’s head from somewhere else.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. 

Stop being unironic about this. There’s other things you can pitch a fit about in terms of similarities and stolen things. Just stop being cringe about it.

[swedeandsour]

Oh Land on Love, Tragedy and the Wonders of the Natural World

Tragedy can hold an underlying beautiful meaning or cause. It's tragic when you lose someone you love. But it's only tragic because you love. And love is beautiful. In that sense, all emotions are connected.

Photo: Lasse Bech Martinussen Words: Peter Quincy Ng Perhaps Nanna Øland Fabricius' most ambitious record to date, Oh Land's fifth and latest record "Family Tree" is a surprising effort. Eschewing the limiting architecture of traditional pop structure in favor of more a instrumental sound, Oh Land's subtle hacking of classical music yields vivid textures and the lush poetic of her storytelling lyrics. Written in a time beset by personal tragedy, "Family Tree" anchors itself in both heritage and through her connection to the natural world. A meaning bound in metaphor and in animistic reverence, Oh Land's allusion to the centuries-old tree has become a symbol of both resilience and totem of honor in her family lineage of musicians and explorers. Speaking to us how the record came to be, and how resilience has become her second nature, Oh Land wrote to us ahead of her upcoming tour in support of her stunning record "Family Tree".

Putting together a new sound is always a bit difficult. As an artist being "just being yourself" or doing what you are used to is an impossibility and an unsustainable thing because you are always trying to challenge yourself creatively. Rather it amounts to having a vision and sticking to it. You are now on your fifth record, how did that having a creative vision and sticking to it amount to what it is?

I think the answer to that is that "yourself" is an evolving ever-changing thing. So unless you stay the same it's hard to keep doing the same thing. For me, in particular, the past couple years have changed me in many ways, and to just keep doing what I've always done didn't feel like an option. How can you go through massive change without it soaking into the art you're doing? 

For me, that was a question I asked myself. And I guess, seeing how my life has changed in the past, I give myself the freedom to change again in the future. That doesn't mean that I'm a different type of animal now. I'm the same species, but having learned what I've learned, I have a different perspective now (-:

Oh Land’s Live Video of “Brief Moment”

Your international debut was released on a major label but you've since been releasing music independently. What is it about having your own creative vision and also the difficulties of releasing music independently? I know your previous “Earth Sick” was done through crowdfunding. What's it like to know that you have a record that is entirely funded by your backers? That was a very cool project, but also hard work. I think every project that is done independently is a lot of work, but rewarding when you succeed with your goal. I'm thankful for every opportunity I've had of releasing music, both on major, through crowdfunding and on my own indie label. And mostly, thankful to have listeners who care! 

It's a bit surprising to see how you've moved on from your electronic pop roots to something more classical. I remember you saying how you once hated classical music because of its rigidity; the fact it was bound by definition. Why did you end up creating something that was more classical in nature and how did you turn the rigid structure of classical music into something that was yours. I guess my perspective has turned, perhaps, or I've found a way to "hack" classical music now. Cause I actually see the liberty more than the restrictions. There are no compositional rules of A, B, A, B like in a pop song. It doesn't have to be 3 minutes and it can be more abstract and textural. I think the short answer is that I love music - all music! And I like to expand my musical language

Oh Land’s Video of “Family Tree”

The title of your album is called "Family Tree". I suppose that having a more classical album is a way of honoring your roots in the family tree. You come from a creative family of musicians and explorers. You grew up as a ballet dancer and now a musician, was a creative career path in your blood would you say?

I've never imagined doing anything that wasn't creative. I just haven't seen it as an option. Only because I've always felt that I've seen things from an odd angle, which has given me problems sometimes-- learning things and understanding the world in a more structured and traditional way. Music and art have been something I've understood. A natural language to me. There were no other options. 

A lot of the album has been written about what has happened in the last few years, but first the return to Denmark. On your album "Earth Sick", your track "Sleepy Town" talks about the move from small-town Denmark and dreams of city lights. How has that changed moving back? Denmark is a very safe and very privileged part of the world to live in. People don't struggle the same way they do in many other parts of the world. It's easy to become a little too content. It's very important for me to travel the world and never get stuck. Cabin fever can be a thing in Denmark.

The record touches on many deeply personal and tragic events in your personal life. Has it been a cathartic feeling to sing about such difficult moments?  

I have no choice. My inability to "talk it out" when I'm troubled leaves this huge desire to express my feelings otherwise and that has, for me, become music. 

A lot of your artistic career has been being no longer being afraid to step out into the light, this speaking post-injury. What is it about being persistent, not being afraid of failure and having a particular honesty and openness that has been crucial to the vision of Oh Land? I think the experience of failure I have experienced on many levels. Being an injured "retired" ballerina at the age of 19, then redefining a goal. Going through a divorce. All of those things - you survive; surviving "failures" improves stamina. builds emotional muscle. I'm unafraid.

Oh Land’s video for “Human Error”

Your music has always been bright and cheery, but with dark undertones. In a way, it's a contrast between the light and the dark which you have previously mentioned. Is it strange how beauty and tragedy intertwine so readily?    Tragedy can hold an underlying beautiful meaning or cause. It's tragic when you lose someone you love. But it's only tragic because you love. And love is beautiful. In that sense, all emotions are connected, Besides music, you've spent time advocating for the environment. Tell us about your work with Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund, you grew up being fascinated by animals and you've even had your wedding at a zoo. Also as a person with a platform, why should we advocate for the environment and what do you think we can do to help? I wish I could do more is my initial thought reading this. I try to follow people like Greta Thunberg who inspires young people around the planet to act for the climate. But really, the best thing you can do is be very considerate where you put your vote. Vote green!

I know there's been a lot of heavier questions and we know you call your beloved fans narwhals, but what can you tell them about your animal friends, your rabbit in particular and the majesty of the Gobi desert, slow loris and the infamous sloth?

Haha, I'm currently sneezing cause I have rabbit fur all over. I love animals, they never need me to explain. they just live and let live.

Oh Land will be joined on tour by Arthur Moon who recently remixed her track for “Salt”. Arthur Moon will appear alongside Oh Land for all dates except Toronto*. You can check out the remix below alongside their tourdates:

SEP 23 Great Hall Toronto, ON* SEP 24 The Bell House Brooklyn, NY SEP 25 World Cafe Live Philadelphia, PA SEP 26 Miracle Cafe Washington, DC SEP 27 SPACE Chicago, IL OCT 20 Columbia City Theater Seattle, WA OCT 21 The Old Church Portland, OR OCT 23 The Independent San Francisco, CA OCT 24 Bootleg Theater Los Angeles, CA 

[franeridart]

Hey! So sorry if you already answered this but what application and tablet do you use??

I use Easy Paint Tool SAI and a pretty old wacom intuos tablet! Both questions are answred in my faq, actually~

Anon said:You. You awesome person. You are my new fav artist. 💘💘💘

AW thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anon said:I love your art and the style, it’s all so cute and it might give me a heart attack

He c k let’s hope not! Thank you so so much!!! ;^;

Anon said:hey, can ya do more tokage, pls

Sure, I mean to draw more 1B in the future anyway~

Anon said:nori is soo adorable!! I love your art and seromina so much and seeing them combined makes me mega happy!!! I gotta ask though, how are sero and mina as parents and how do they handle nori’s quirk?

They’re disasters as parents but they try their best and are always having fun - Nori adores them! In their house not a minutes goes by without someone laughing, they’re all super loud and cheerful always~ neither of them has any problem dealing with Nori’s quirk, Sero has spent a whole lifetime learning how to deal with sticky stuff and tape and glue so he knows all the tricks to save clothes and furniture from accidental quirk usage and so on, while Mina’s own quirk makes it easy to counter any glue that might end on her - the main thing actually is that the quirk itself was a surprise! Since Nori looks a lot like Mina, both she and Sero had expected her to have acid like Mina so when she started gluing herself around in places and walking along walls and stuff it was a surprise (they had expected to have to deal with the house being constantly half destroyed by acid though, so glue is nothing compared to that haha)

Anon said:Heyy I saw your twitter account and was wondering if you could link some of those “fics about them boys sharing a bed..“ I’ve been following you for a while now and absolutely love your work (: I hope you don’t mind lol. I need more kiribaku in my life gahaha ❤️ thanks !!

I didn’t really bookmark any and most were old things I had read in the past and spent time rereading lately, but the newest one I read is this one - honestly though at this point 99% of the fics set in the dorms have them sharing a bed, you just need to open ao3 and scroll down less than a page to find stuff lol

Anon said:If you’re not an Adventure Time fan this ask will make no sense to you (so skip it), but when I saw your drawing of Katsuki with a guitar, I immediately thought he was singing some edgy Marceline song, like the teasing-aggressive “I wanna bury you in the ground / I wanna bury you with my sound” (which he actually says at some point I think XD) or the romantic and melancholic “Slow Dance with You” and Eijirou M-E-L-T-S.

Not an AT fan, but the concept is adorable so I’m keeping the ask anyway

Anon said:Do you think you might draw more of your fantasy AU children while you’re playing with you’re new pencil tool? It would be neat if you did! Regardless, I’m grateful for anything you draw!

Yup! Can’t promise when it’ll happen but I love the fantasy AU and I love childhood friends AU, so the chances of me going back on it are pretty high!

Anon said:Are you going to draw Mako and Taiyou again? They are so wonderful.

YAH that’s definitely in the near future plans! Thank you for liking them!!

Anon said:I just…I love all your art. It’s so amazing you’re awesome

THANK YOU SO MUCH !!!! ;^;

Anon said:Stavo scorrendo il tuo blog e ho notato che hai risposto ad una domanda in italiano? Ho seriamente pensato fossi inglese tutto questo tempo! Amo seriamente i tuoi disegni, i tuoi oc sono meravigliosi e non vedo l'ora di scoprire più di loro.

AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH grazie infinite omfg ;^; specialmente per i miei oc, è sempre incredibile per me sapere che alla gente piacciono abbastanza da volerli vedere di più ;^;

Anon said:Hewwo! I’m a huge fan of your artwork!! I was wondering if you have any time could you draw some more of those dorm room scenarios?

Anon I’m sorry but I need you to be more specific, which dorm room scenarios are you talking about? Most of my comics at this point are set in the dorms hahaha

Anon said:I just noticed that on every artwork you sign “do not repost” and I hate it.I don’t hate that you do it, but the fact you NEED to do it. Artists all over the Internet say to not repost their art but people still do it…I hope this will stop someday Sorry for my english btw

Yeah well, I guess as long as people keep on following and giving notes to reposters that’s not really gonna change is it orz

Anon said:You should draw Present Mic x Aizawa *awkward finger guns*

Hell I really should, shouldn’t I

Anon said:my god im gay for your kiribaku like they’re so good aibdjsbsknwnx and i love the interactions between the bakusquad ahh keep being awesome :)

HECK THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!

Anon said:Honestly, this might be an odd question I don’t know, but would you ever consider putting your art together in a art book to sell? Cause to be honest, there’s not a piece by you that I don’t adore and I’ve seen some artist do things like that before so I didn’t know if that was something you’d consider. Maybe like all your BNHA pieces or something?

It’s not like I never considered it? It’s more like I dunno how worth all the work to figure out how to make it/where to print it and then to actually make it would be compared to the interest people would have in buying something they can have for free on my blog? It’s just doodles after all haha

Anon said:Would you be willing to draw a little lavi (dgm) doodle for me? Anything tiny, I just love him and your art!!!

I’m not doing requests right now, sorry, but soon enough the new chapter is coming out so I might draw him around then!!! I always fall in a serious dgm mood around the time of the chapter release haha

Anon said:More abuse of the ask function: 1- I love your art and have been for months. On top of that, it often feels cathartic, which is amazing to me. 2- I love how balanced you can make KiriBaku. You even manage to make me appreciate that overrated attention hogger that is Bakugou, you can handle him so much better than the author, because your character dynamics make so much more sense!! 3- I always, ALWAYS find myself reading through all your tags. They’re awesome. Thank you for everything.//Avevo finito lo spazio nell'ask precedente, so I’d only like to add that aside from cutie-smoochy (“It’s not about whether you break” and “I don’t need you” might be my favorite, and for what’s worth, I remember writing something exactly like the latter in the past), you also make mu burst into laughter. Like, the comic where Katsuki is about to out Eijirou on his red hair, I am still rolling. Kiri’s giant mouth is seriously hysterical XD

Thank you for the compliments!! I’m glad I can make you like a character and a relationship you’re not much of a fan of in the actual manga? ? ? Bakugou’s actually one of my favorite characters ever though so………. maybe……….don’t offend him and the way Horikoshi writes him while talking to me………….orz

Anon said:I am starved for Bakukamikiri stuff in this fandom……..But you got some good shit.

I’m!!! happy to be able to help there!!!! haha

Anon said:They mama Mitsuki art you drew 👏💯💖☺️💕👌 I love your art so much

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anon said:Yessssss you have Twitter! It is boring at the beginning but then you’ll love it! I can’t wait to see you here and there! Now all my Bakushima favorite artist have one I can die of happiness!!

I’m!!!!!!!!!! Still trying to figure it out but!!!!!!!! For now it’s not that bad? Just!!! Very different from tumblr so I’ll need to get used to it first!!!!

Anon said:Omg do u shade jirous hair like its a heartbeat line? Dhdisbdisb thats so fuckibg good

THANK she actually has it in canon too, tho, so I can’t take credit for this!!!

Anon said:Im crying on how you draw kirishima’s soft hair

S O B I’m glad you like it!! ;^;

Anon said:Can I ask what your stance is on bakugo’s mom being abusive and sorry if you’ve answered this before

I love Mitsuki with my whole heart and while I don’t think she’s perfect I do think she’s loving and caring and trying her best and always looking out for what’s best for Bakugou 👍 no abuse anywhere, for me

Anon said:OMG I LOVE SEROMINA LOVE CHILD NORI

Thank you for liking her???? heck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anon said:I wish I could use your art for my phone’s background ;^; You’re amazing! I love youuuuuuuuuu

No one’s stopping you from doing that, anon!!! Unless you don’t have a phone that allows you backgrounds, in which case ;-; thank you for liking my stuff that much tho!!

Anon said:Hey! I followed you way back when your main output was haikyuu!! comics and once you started putting out more bnha, i had to unf because i had no idea who everyone was rip. but now that ive finally had the chance to watch it i’m glad to come back and see how much you’ve improved!

HECK THANK YOU???? I’m glad you decided to come back????? oh man that’s super flattering !!!

Anon said:Yolo bakusquad bakubowl ?

I don’t really like the whole concept of [character]bowl, sorry!

Anon said:I absolutely adore your art style😍 every time I see your art it makes me happy:)

THANK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anon said:Can you draw Hawks and Tokoyami together? You are rlly creative and amazing! So I believe you will produce sth. awesome!!!! (If you don’t want to draw Hawks, could you draw a Tokoyami fusion?)

I can draw that! I’m just waiting to know how tall Hawks is compared to him before doing that 👍 be patient pls relative heights are something I’m stupidly fussy about 

Anon said:Burn the whole world to ashes for you? R U serius?! You always killing me dude. I ascended to the heaven of soft things. I N C R E D I B L E. Im sorry for the break down, i was without tumblr 2 months and the firts thing i do is go to your profile. Keep doing this plis im trully love it 😭💖

mAN I’m so glad you liked that one this much, drawing the boys being unreasonably soft with each other is my fav thing to do tbh !!!

Anon said:Omg I can totally imagine Nori and bakushima’s daughter being friends!!!

THEY ARE !!!!!!!

Anon said:Your seromina is amazing!!! I love that ship I feel like it is so underrated! Thank you for this blessed image!! 😭

No prob!! thank you for liking it!!!!!!! I’ve been in such a seromina mood lately, I might actually draw more soon enough!!

Anon said:Omg imagine a Tetsuwase love child. Something tells me they’d be adorable and one rather angry child, considering who their fathers are

I can see them as being quiet and grumpy………. hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Anon said:Hey just wanted to tell you I love your art. It’s so soft and beautiful. My dad doesn’t ship any characters from the series, but he does like the series and he thinks your art and style are really pleasing. We were talking about how nicely you shade and that the style is well developed and lovely to look at. Thanks for making such great art that makes me smile and giving me and my dad yet another thing to bond over.

YO THAT’S SUCH A COOL THING TO HEAR!!!! Thank you to both you and your dad for liking my stuff????? h e c k !!!!!

Anon said:Thanks to you I started reading haikyuu.

I hope you’re enjoying it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[collected-sports-bra]

Elisabeth’s ESC Semi-Final 2 Recap (Part 2)

Previously on Elisabeth’s ESC Semi-Final 2 Recap, Elisabeth talked way too much about The Rasmus (sorry not sorry), fangirled about Georgia and Serbia, and didn’t remember much about the song from San Marino - but remembered the stage show in great detail, I wonder why...

Anyway, here’s part 2:

Cyprus (Andromache - Ela)

I didn’t hate it, but it’s just ... we’ve had the same exact song like fifteen times on Eurovision already, sung by women who look identical. Didn’t care for it...

Ireland (Brooke - That’s Rich)

Again, not a bad song, not a bad performance. Also, not a ballad, another big plus. Not much else to say about it though, didn’t stick out to me at all.

North Macedonia (Andrear - Circles)

Amazing voice! I will definitely check out this artist’s other songs. That song though, pretty meh. Not as boring as some others we’ve heard that evening, but also not that interesting. Sorry.

Estonia (Stefan - Hope)

The cowboy guy with the guitar. Meh. I wouldn’t change the channel if I heard it on the radio. That’s pretty much all I can say about this song.

Romania (WRS -Llámame)

By this point in the evening I got rather bored and tired, a little underwhelmed by the last few songs. Then suddenly there is Romania, singing in Spanish for some reason! A singer in a torrero-like outfit flirting with both his male and female dancers. A super catchy song, lots of dancing, and all everything that makes Eurovision fun! Thank you so much, so glad they made it through to the finale!

Poland (Ochman - River)

AND we are back to the slow songs. Although to be fair, I didn’t hate that one as much as I expected to. The singer has an AMAZING voice, and the song is not as boring as I feared.

Also, it sounds like Arcade. Again.

Not surprised he made it to the finale, and I guess if I listen to it a few more times I’ll probably like it. For a ballad that is.

Montenegro (Vladana - Breath)

Another very emotional and personal song, and again I am very glad for the artist that she was able to share it with such a huge audience. But also I didn’t care for it much. I did love the weird costume though, and the singer has a good voice!

Belgium (Jérémie Makiese - Miss You)

Pretty okay. Not bad, also not my favourite. But well performed. I don’t mind the song made it to the finale, but I wouldn’t have minded if it hadn’t, either...

Sweden (Cornelia Jakobs - Hold Me Closer)

Sweden, oh Sweden. It’s not a bad song, not a bad performance, and a very talented singer. But it’s just... so generic? This song could have been sent by ANY of the countries, or it could be by an american pop star, there is just nothing Eurovision about it. So yeah, next time be a bit more daring, Sweden, okay?

Czech Republic (We Are Domi - Lights Off)

Pretty great way to end the show. Fast, fun, well performed. Also there is a guy playing an electric guitar with a bow string in the background, that’s a nice touch. Overall, yeah, I’m into it.

Intermezzo 1:

First we had Laura and Mika sing two songs together. That was great. Not a huge fan of either of the songs, but well performed.

Nitpick though: Mika has always been known for his amazing vocal range. And he didn’t get to show it off here, at all. I guess it’s because Laura has this beautiful beautiful deep voice, and they didn’t want him to sing higher than her (cause ... I dunno ... girl be singing high boy be singing low?).

Intermezzo 2:

After that we had Il Volo, and again my local TV station chose to show some commercials instead...

Great performance again. Liked it, no complaints.

And that was it, let’s see what Saturday brings. Happy Eurovision, everyone!

Love Love Peace Peace

[nautiscarader]

Kim Possible season 3 recap

And here is part 3 of my KP marathon notes. Obligatory thanks to @fereality-indy for encouraging me to watch this awesome show. 

So, what will happen this this time? Will Kim Possible save another kitten from a tree? Will Ron discover something better than nachos? Will Doctor Drakken release the Krakken? Will Shego puncture her ego? Will Lord Monkeyfist buy Club Banana just because he is bonkers? Will Duff Killigan finally score?

So, let’s see what’s the first big problem KP has to deal with!

Kim being alone on a Friday evening. Okay.

Also, amusingly, everyone is doing something on a Friday evening, including the villians. 

Motorhead turns out to be Drakken’s cousin. okay.

And people know the address of Draken’s lair bc of mailing list

See, it’s the little touches like those that make this show a very accurate portrayal of superheroes and villians. 

KP gets jealous of Ron’s friend in wheelchair because they spend too much time together playing video games, so she has to find a way to “fit in”.

Okay, so they can approach it in a sensible and subtle, or so-cringe-worthy-and-painful-the-skip-button-presses-itself way.

So, which did they choose?

painful it is

Few stupid scenes later, Draken STEALs THE WHEELCHAIR FROM A DISABLED KID

shego: what’s next, stealing lolipop from a baby?

and there is a brilliant running joke about it

is it ableist to say that a joke about disabled person is “running”? Well, this is tumblr you gotta be carfeul

Anyway, turns out that Drakken and Jake the Dog make an actual competent combo, even though they end up in prison. And momma Lipski is still clueless about her son’s profession

Next ep: KIM CHANGED HER HAIR! and she looks cute

Ron is a pickle, but that’s normal

Draken and shego steal moodulators (get it?) from random scientist #464

Shego: if you are so smart why do you always steal instead of inventing things yourself

Draken: it’s called outsourcing, shego

God d amit, that is a smart show. 

And of course moodultaors accidentally fall on KP and SHego, so they act random throughout the day. And boy it is weird when it’s set to loveskick

Shego: steals lolipop from a baby for Drakken because she luvs him

KP turns into  a proper stalker mode for her Ronnie

And Monique is completely fine with it. 

and then kim KISSED him!!!

OMG NOSEBLEED

And then poor Ron has no idea what to do with dating KP so suddenly, and the whole scene where he debates what to do is absolute gold with a punchline that defies expectations. 

Draken and Shego go on a date and boy it is weird. SHE CATWALKS TO HIM

I can already see Disney censors thinking when it’s going to be too much for The Mouse

and kim’s dad threatens to send ron to a black hole when he takes her on a date

Also the random professor wants to sell his no-longer-existent moodulaTors on auction and he thinks about blaming it on the mail. You know, i’ve seen some approaches how to handle a world where superheroes/villians/geniuses live in our society (like in BNHA, for example), but KP so far makes it the best approach, because it makes them so relatable. 

And boy the finale is satisfying because everything completely backfires

Shego and KP got stuck in an anGry mode, and chase their boys. Ron tries to hide in the same place as drakken

Drakken: Dibs!

Ron: Double dibs!

Drakken: all right, you won with your superior dib-calling (ACTUAL QUOTE)

And the day is saved thanks to the power of friendship and not that Kp and ron are definitely in love with each other

KP, Ron, Drakken and Shego somehow manage to get into Tv, where they visit parodies of famous shows

Honestly, meh. I remember a similar episode of Teen Titans, that one was funny as heck.

and then we find out who’s the real villian of the middleton high: THE SCARY LIBRARIAN!

And turns out Ron accidentally put a book Kim rented in his backpack, causing her to get into trouble doing library duties. 

So he goes on a mission to revisit all of the bad guys they fought to see where he might have left it

Okay: calling it now, it’s still in his backpack

Shego: Where’s Possible?

Ron: She’s not my girlfriend!

Shego: Never said she was. 

And Ron accidentally saves the world on that book hunt

Lord Monkey:Ron Stoppable!

Ron: You’re the only one, who remembers my name, I respect that

Okay, so Wade can make stuff invisible. Like, how?

And there we go: the book it was in his backpack all the time. 

Oh, and Ron takes a book from Lord Monkeymonkey contaning a spirit of a monkey demon.

And he returns to the library, saving Kim from being bored to death by retunring the book. 

GUESS WHICH ONE HE RETURNED.

Oh, it was another half-episode. Weird. 

And the next one is about giant bugs. Interesting how Kim tells Ron not to be afraid of bugs, and next moment she’s all squirmish while Ron befriends a giant roach and calls him Roachie. 

KP: Ron, did you start working on the project? it was supposed to be autobiographical

ron: No, I’m waiting for it to write itself.

WE MIGHT GET RUFUS’ BACKSTORY!

Oh, and Drakken tried to take over the world with shampoo. Honestly, it’s funny as heck

he tries smarty mart to sell it

he even makes loreal-style ad, but it doesn’t sell

so he tries product placement in a hip hop song, and the artists is like “Aw, hell no”

And then 

and then

turns out that Shego and Drakken are having karaoke night every friday.

God dammit, i don’t know why but that is beyond funny

and turns out that Drakken can sing. 

and shego points out that he could sing about the shampoo

so he goes to an american idol

And I think I realise what really makes it funny: Kp is barely in this episode, helping ron with homework. No evil-doing is actually done, we only get to see, for the most part what goes behind the scenes of an evil plan that is so insanely and unnecessary convoluted it is beyond belief. 

OH, AND kp GETS TO RIVAL HIM ON STAGE, OF COURSE.

people hypnotised by the shampoo so far: one (1) random henchman

one (1) old TV producer in a sauna 

one (1) Simon Cowell

And...holy shit, his song is actually good. 

And instead of KP, who is busy fighting the mean lean green machine, Ron sings about Rufus. The song is titled “Naked Mole Rap”. And it is FREAKING PHENOMENAL.

Oh, add one (1) Shego to the list. 

Okay, so far that is the most crazy episode. Like, seriously, the quality was through the roof.

SCRATCH THAT NEXT EP is EVEN WEIRDER

So, the Team Impossible, which we have learned about in the movie, is angry at KP for saving the world for free, whereas they actually charge people for it. 

And they try to cut Kim from all of her world-traveling assets and knock her out of competition.

THAT IS FUCKING V ILE

And they hack Wade

AND TURNS OUT YOU DON’T FUCK WITH WADE

YOU DON’T CUT THEIR INTERNET CABLES OF A NERD

SINCE THIS IS ONE WAY TO MAKE AN OBESE SUPER GENIOUS  WALK OUT OF THEIR ROOM

AND HE LOOKS SO FREAKING BAD-ASS WHEN HE STORMS INTO THEIR HEADQUATERS

aaand TI is defeated the same way they would have been defeated had they answered the call. 

Pretty funny, and it does go into the details of how on Earth superheroes work in this world. 

And we have another episode about the secret ninja high school Ron was sent to 

And Yori travels to US for Ron 

And Kim is super jelaus

Wade: Kim, you are jelly

Kim: So not

Monique: You are jelly 

Kim: So not

Kim: *is jelly*

So she pretty much stalks Ron all the way to the school, and nearly fails the mission of trying to save the levitating magical jedi principal. Seriously, he’s OP as fuck.

And he’s escaping from a huge monkey. turns out it’s crazy dna lady who turned herself  into monkey for Lord Britishmonkey. 

Next episode is bascially one huge satire on the movie industry, down to the title (”and The mole rat will be CGI”). KIm and Ron accidentally crash a movie set, after Senior Senior Junior crashes it first since he accidentally applied for a role of a henchman in said movie. 

It was supposed to be set in Britian, but the movie set was in New Zealand, since “it was cheaper”

And I was like 

Is that a “Lord of The rings” joke? Someone tell me if I’m right.

Oh, and we have another long episode WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE IS ANOTHER MOVIE?

And it looks like it’s a three-part episode again, I wonder if the formula’s gonna work again. 

The beginning feels like a short promo scene for people who might not know what KP is about, and I’m not gonna lie, this sums it up perfectly. Action, drama, explosions, more drama, goofy ron, naked mole rat kicking ass and more drama. By the way, what;s the title? 

I guess the intro is an homage to the James Bond ones, with lots of colourful, surreal visuals floating in the background to the soothing, slow music. Love it, too bad it’s short, but again, it had to fit an episode’s running time.

 wait so the Nakasumi president CAN speak English? Even the movie calls him wacky for whispering all the time as if he couldn’t. 

Okay, now the movie just fucks with us. 

mr and mrs possible almost switch their cloaks with important documents, but she switches them back just at the last moment

mr posible ALMOST deletes his work file worth three billion dollars but undos it at the last moment.

it’s like the plot TRIES to start itself

And I bet the key is under the doormat

So the dating drama IS going to be the theme of the movie, huh. 

Wade: Drakken has been spotted in the Bermuda triangle

Bermuda triangle: *turns out to be a hotel*

And Ron just happened to have his suit under the scuba diving gear.

Shego proves to be once again, way more competent than Drakken.

and we have obligatory fight between two kickass ladies in dresses and high heels. This IS a James Bond movie. 

So, the prom drama continues, and it is sadly kinda goes into the cringe territory, with some new dude falling in love with Kim and Kim falling for him, Ron feeling sad, they both being conflicted, yep, seen it. 

But for once Drakken helps the cause and moves the plot forward, stealing some super project from dr Possible.

he deletes the file like he did in the opening, but GASP drakken has some mind reading machine

I do wonder if the coat switcheroo is going to be part of the plot. 

Holy shit

Drakken’s plan is so crazy that it actually makes sense. Take over the buneo nachos and put kiddy meals in it with robot toys that take over the world. And neither kim nor Shego could have forseen it. 

And more prom drama. Ugh. 

I always like when Possible family work together to stop the evil-doers.

So Drakken’s plan was brilliant, minus the part when the entire army of robots shuts down when the signal goes off-line. Kinda a major fuck-up. 

And they kindapped Kim’s boyfriend to lure her.  

OH, SO HE WAS A SYNTH ROBOT

I genuinely didn’t see that coming. 

Drakken learns Ron’s name, yeah! And it’s shot like Drakken’s yelling a curse to the skies, love it. 

Also, HOLY SHIT, Kim kicks Shego into the tower so hard it looks like she was about to kill her. Like, that was genuinely chilling moment, especially with an ominous, lightning-filled close-up onto her later.

Spoiler: she didn’t die. 

Okay, colour me confused: I didn’t think that Kim and Ron were going to kiss and start dating now, I thought this movie was going to be one huge prequel to a movie by the end of S4. Or more precisely, it feels weird NOW, knowing that there is a whole season ahead of me. Cos that felt like a pretty good end of a series, something akin to the Last Airbender one, so I’m slightly concerned how it’s going to be played into season 4, cos this can go haywire pretty easily. 

Uh, not going to lie, I’ve got mixed feelings about the movie. On one hand, it gave us a proper evil plan from Drakken, one that attacks Kim psychologically, showing that for once, he DID his homework and actually studied Kim’s behaviour. On the other, the prom/dating drama is kinda painful to watch, but fortunately gets resolved in the end. Maybe it’s just me, but I had the same expression as Rufus when he and Ron said that guys don’t talk about feelings. It felt kinda clumsy and not subtle at all, and what’s worse, the show itself did way better job of portraying romance in previous episodes, most notably the moodulator one. But as I said, those last few scenes with Ron and Kim fighting together does make up for it. 

also, Rufus once again is the unspoken hero. He did so freaking much, including, but not limited to: saving ron from the tentacle monster, freeing kim and ron, defeating the synth boyfriend, pushing Kim and Ron together... He really is a badass.    

So, not a bad one, though I preferred the first movie. Also, on the whole Season 3 was significantly shorter than second. Wonder what’s gonna happen in the next season.  

[uterusclub]

I can’t say for sure how we initially stumbled upon the brilliant idea of having a ‘clown party’ but approximately three years ago, it’s magnificence was born.

If I had to guess, I’d hypothesize the concept spawned from a casual night of sitting around discussing terrible horror movies featuring clowns which (naturally) snowballed into designating an all-clown movie marathon of sorts. But that wasn’t enough. We needed elaboration. But how? With what? Food? Yes, of course, food! And so, it was decided, traditionally speaking, that ‘clown food’ would be incorporated into our parties. Last year we got a little overly-ambitious and made the entire day a marathoning of clown foods included pancakes, burgers, pizza and cake which we discovered to be too much a. time b. effort and c. food. So now we stick to the basics: pizza and cake. Generic party food? Yes. But not in the way we fashion them…

Clown Cake | Year 1

Clown Cake | Year 2

The pizza. The first year we arranged our clown party, I used my expert, investigative skills and discovered a pizza place called Little Clown Pizza. I was in awe. It couldn’t have been more perfect. Or could it? Because in our minds this still just wasn’t enough. What if . . . what if we requested they make a clown pizza? Yes! Each and every year, we fatefully ordered a ‘clown pizza’ from a nearby restaurant and awaited the potential horror or delight of their interpretation. First year? Our pizza was practically inedible. I recall there being mustard and ketchup involved (dear god, why?). Last year? Last year was a slight step up – although they did incorporate black olives which is a huge no-no for us. But it was definitely progress.

Clown Pizza | Year 1

Clown Pizza | Year 2

And as for this year…

Friday the thirteenth. We had been looking forward to this day for weeks now and our game-plan was set. First, start the cake – then, walk to Rex Tavern down the street to take a photo (explanation on this soon), after that – order pizza while cake cools, then – start movies and finish decorating cake during intermission. Solid plan.

Having already, anxiously accumulated our baking gear earlier in the week, Sharon began making our clown cake utilizing some freshly bought skull pans she’d purchased. Our shit was going 3d this year! I had my doubts, though. I honestly felt this was just way too ambitious for a bunch of amateurs. I mean, fondant? Yikes! This was a whole other playing field of baking. But Sharon was convinced we had this in the bag. Or rather, she did. I was mainly planning on watching (and drinking).

As the cake pan came out of the oven to cool, we headed out down the street to a nearby bar called Rex Tavern in Jefferson Park. Now this is generally not a part of our clown party tradition, however, we had both seen (on several occasions), the bar’s elaborate Halloween decorations which entailed a huge, creepified clown hanging in their front window. This was a must for our party! Walking over, our Moscow mules were in full effect. Perhaps I had made our drinks a tad bit strong earlier. In any case, there was no way we were sitting down for a drink – especially when we could as easily walk back home and have more, free drinks! So instead of actually going inside Rex’s and being good patrons, we skulked outside for a couple, quick pictures before heading back to the apartment at which point, we happened upon an additional window display featuring a clown. What are the odds? And with a snap, snap – bonus photo!

Rex Tavern | Chicago, IL

Jefferson Park | Chicago, IL

Back at the apartment, we began that most pleasant of activities: the ordering of the clown pizza. It was, conveniently, at this point when Sharon’s PTSD from last year kicked in.

“It’s your turn to call” she insisted.

I obliged immediately – for I have no shame. And for added dramatics and pleasure, we video recorded the entire phone exchange – although thanks to Sharon’s mom calling mid process, the recording cut out after being placed on hold. But to summarize, we called the Bacci’s Pizza joint down the street from us and explained our ‘situation’ before placing the order which, as anticipated, was met with delightful silence. Shortly thereafter, I was asked to be placed on hold to run our request passed the restaurant manager. Ten minutes later, our request was underway! Apparently the ten minute delay was the result of waiting on several cooks attempting to pull up clown images on their phones for artistic reference. We laughed, requested no olives, and were charged the price of a pepperoni pizza.

Now back to that cake.

Having finally cooled, Sharon commandeered the cakes from the skull pans with minor difficulty and coated them with a crumb layer of frosting for further refrigeration before covering with fondant. So, what now? It was movie time! On our agenda this year was Killer Clowns from Outer Space and a more recent flick simply titled, Clown. We began with KCFOS for no particular reason but I’m sort of glad we did. If you’ve never seen it, first off, how? If you have, well, you probably know where this going. Killer popcorn, cotton-candy cocoons, the excessive usage of ‘buddy’ and ‘pal – I mean, this movie has it all, really – not to mention the pizza-delivery scene! What perfection!

Once pizza arrived, I suggested to Sharon we video record the reveal to which she enthusiastically agreed. For dramatics, I slow-motioned the entire thing which tech-savvy Sharon said she could just edit on her phone. She’s fancy.

In any case, this year’s pizza was, I’d say, par from last year’s. It wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t anything impressive either. I feel fairly confident that if the tables were turned, I could knock out some super impressive clown artwork. But, that’s all in the fun – the not knowing. Perhaps next year we’ll brief the restaurant with images from past years – give them some idea as to the type of standards we’re working with. Wouldn’t take much to up the ante at this point.

After pizza was consumed and KCFOS was over, we reverted our attention back to the clown cake. Sharon rolled out some white fondant and covered the skull head quite impressively while I covered a cake ball with red fondant for a nose and two additional balls with white fondant for eyes. And while our clown cake was only loosely based on the ‘It’ clown, Sharon had come across some vampire-teeth candy corns to use and as such, found herself doctoring up a mouth hole. We then skewered the cavities into the mouth using toothpicks – all the while knowing we had no actual intention of consuming any part of this sugar-coated death-trap. Sharon smeared on some red lip coloring while I attached a jumbo red nose and two ridiculously bulky eyeballs topped with gummy pupils into the eye sockets.

“Ah, I think the balls are too much” Sharon replied.

“Yeah, it’s a little ‘AHHHHHHHHHHH'” I laughed.

So, we removed the eyeballs and reattached the gummy pupils. Much better. And now for the eyebrows. Fortunately, I had already decided earlier that morning to wear my ‘It’ t-shit so I was Sharon’s point of reference. As she stenciled along, drippage began – followed shortly by panic. Luckily, the drippage was short-lived but unfortunately, my suggestions were not.

“Are you going to do anything under the eye?” I asked.

“You think I should?”

“I mean, I think it’ll stand out more.”

And that was the beginning and end of my terrible ideas. Sharon did her best to outline the entire eye but ended up dripping into the pupils which had to be replaced with fresh gummies. By the time all was said and done, I had much regret. But the project was still not finished! Hair! This clown needed hair! Since day one Sharon had been going on and on about buying a cotton candy machine so we could make hair for this but I outright refused. Total waste. And cotton candy is awful. Regardless, I had gifted Sharon a bag of cotton candy last Easter that she had apparently forgotten all about. Poor guy had just been sitting in our cabinets collecting dusk and dreaming of the day his destiny would fall upon him – dreaming of becoming clown hair. Several toothpicks later, we had hair-plugged the shit out of this cake and it looked . . . well, actually, pretty decent. Still – there was no way this thing was being consumed.

“What should we do with it?” I asked.

“We can throw it in the river?”

I busted into laughter.

“What? . . . . what did you just say? This isn’t a dead body, Sharon!”

“No, didn’t they do that in the movie?”

“Uh . . . let’s just sleep on this one . . . ”

I later came up with an awesome master-plan of bringing the cake to a nearby restaurant I love called The Big Top and leaving it in the parking lot after hours as it would be super ironic and mysterious (not to mention creepy)! But after I called the restaurant to check their hours, it appeared the timing would have been quite impossible since there was no way we were going out after 9pm on a Sunday!

The night wrapped up with our final movie viewing: Clown. Now there isn’t really too much to say about it. Short synopsis: guy finds old clown suit in his house and puts it on for his kid’s birthday party ; guy can’t get clown suit off and finds out it’s stuck to him and eventually turns him into a demon (hate when that happens); guy eventually gets killed by his wife. And that’s about it. It was pretty gory, to say the least. It was also unamusing since we were both super exhausted that late at night and barely paying attention anyway. When we finally did turn in for bed, Sharon bid me adieu.

“I’m probably going to dream about clowns tonight” she proclaimed.

Scuffling off to bed I wondered if the Bacci cooks were all anticipating the same.

Clowning Around I can't say for sure how we initially stumbled upon the brilliant idea of having a 'clown party' but approximately three years ago, it's magnificence was born.

[kattalectic]

okay lets get some things written out of a todo to help self

somehow re-write 4-500 things, give or take, +2 each day too. will plan to add two, update 3 until I get the hang of it, then +2 update 5, possibly more in the future, as it goes. slow going today on that, trying to get the hang of it. not that they are long or anything just, different to my usual routine. need to confirm if i done an alright job or fucked it up somehow first though

apparently? create a website? so i guess ill work on that. WP too. i guess you can call that a freelance or .. something. i like the wording yesterday “we’ll have to create him one” followed by knowing that it’ll be only me, but, alright fine i Guess. that will be a learning curve, part of me is going to be sour over doing it

i done a fair amount of image editing yesterday, heck it covers today if needed, ill see if i can follow up and make myself get more in-front if i can, if not i’ll just use some of my surplus to cover today, thats possible

look into that other thing which i.. have no idea on, il lget back to that. that’s an earlier morning job typically which . ill see. i need more indifference to begin to deal with that. it doesnt sound like i have any choice on that if im ready or not but okay, will see

also throw some content stuff into that other site. please remind me why i was never trained in website stuff. i am not at all cut out for it. i can ignore one thing though, go straight to templates.. technically? i havent figured that completely.. or at all. ill flip a coin later and take a choice then. im at an odd stage there

side note i really hope the level of alcohol is not consumed around me today like it was yesterday, that was highly concerning

also gotta do side chores? lil jobs, whatever you wish to call them, ill fit those within breaks or such i think

personal todo list? which is always nice

time sensitive: do that doodle, and that other one already, i have the sketch just do the l i n e s the are small too, why do i have 101 sketches dotted around

finish that remake idea, also that larger idea which is a vague concept sketch stage currently, or .. actually i’m not entirely sure, a new idea may be needed

complete that animation for sherl project for saturday meeting, grab the next one on the list of todos, possibly the reaching / grabbing, because thats simplistic enough if not taken by the other artist

try not to die in-between is always a nice idea too

[sellinout]

TRANSCRIPT for EPISODE 1

Hello,

I’ve started on the process of transcribing to text the entirety of each episode. This should have been ready for launch, but better late than never.

[music]

TIM WILLIAMS: If it would’ve been money I would’ve kept going. But all that stress and everything, like the years of really trying to make that work, it was never really up to me how good or bad it did.

MIKE MOSCHETTO: Just one of many lessons learned the hard way from today’s guest, Tim Williams of Our Lady and Ritual Apparel. I’m Mike Moschetto, and this is Sellin’ Out.

[music post: “I’m a casino that pays nothing when you win / please put your money in”]

MIKE: Hey! Thank you so much for joining me – I’m Mike Moschetto you’re listening to Sellin’ Out: a spaghetti western about music and money that takes place in a town that just ain’t big enough for the two of ‘em.

No, it’s my podcast! It’s the first episode of the podcast and I do think because of that it will be helpful for me to spend a little bit of time setting it up, lest you think it’s just another “band dudes talkin’ about band stuff” show, and...you know it’s gonna be some of that from time to time I’m sure, but ideally the conversations that you’re gonna hear today and going forward are meant to discuss the economics of creative endeavors. And when I say “economics,” your eyes have probably glazed over by now but if you haven’t already hit +15, I don’t mean that I’m gonna restrict this to matters pecuniary because that would get old pretty fast. No, what I mean by “economics” is incentives; I’m talking about motivation, the sacrifices people make to pursue their art and sustainability – or I guess the lack thereof.

For my own part I tend to take sort of a fatalistic attitude toward my quote-unquote “music career” which I guess should be fairly obvious by my turn toward podcasting...but I often vacillate between this sad resignation that the scene I grew up in is in some state of decline, and a more optimistic tone and vicarious joy in the successes of my friends and just general admiration at the lengths people will go to follow their passions and hopefully you’ll hear that range. Maybe not every episode but over the arc of the entire show. So if you’re interested in art and music and you want to hear this frank and inglorious conversations about how pursuits are bought and sold, you’ll find those here...warts and all.

So now finally I’m pleased to introduce my guest for today: Tim Williams. Tim is a graphic designer and, pursuant to our conversation today, was the vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter of the Springfield, IL-based band Our Lady. Now Our Lady hasn’t been an active band in a few years but I still can’t recommend their music highly enough. You’ll hear some of it peppered throughout the show. They’re one of the best bands I’ve ever had the pleasure of touring with and Tim is one of the best friends I’ve made through this whole music thing, so I thought it only appropriate to have him as my first guest. Talking to Tim I was reminded of a lot of things that exemplify DIY touring, at least in my experience and the things that made me want to start this show and talk about these issues – not just the downs, and there are kind of a lot of downs with Tim’s story, but also the ups, like, you know, landing on your feet after your band ends. And since Our Lady disbanded band in 2016, Tim and his now-wife Molli started Ritual Apparel, which is a fitness and specifically powerlifting-oriented apparel company and lifestyle brand. So we chatted about that move from focusing on your band to focusing on your brand and whether that’s a distinction without a difference. We chatted about freelance life and DIY and stagnation and lots more, so without further preamble, here’s Tim.

[music]

MIKE: I wanna start with the first time that I kinda ran into you, not literally but by reputation at least, and this would’ve been when Aviator was on tour in 2013, beginning of 2013 – we played at a punk house in Huntington, WV and we ended up staying at a different punk house in town, and either you had just been through or you were coming through soon again or something. But the folks that put us up were saying, “Oh, have you guys seen Our Lady? They’re fuckin’ incredible,” yada yada yada...and then it would be another year or so before we ended up seeing that for ourselves, and another year before we did that ten-day run together. But it sounds like by that point in the beginning of 2013 you guys had already been making the rounds and leaving quite an impression on people. So what I’m wondering is, was Our Lady really active from the jump or did you kinda start slow and ramp up?

TIM: It was definitely a slow burn. We started off and it was just like me writing acoustic songs in my apartment…

MIKE: And how old were you? Where were you in your life at that point?

TIM: Maybe 19?

MIKE: Oh man.

TIM: Yeah, so I was just writing songs and we would get together with our friends and just kinda get drunk and learn these songs. And they were really bad songs...like, really bad songs. I’d never written songs before. I’d been a vocalist in metal and hardcore bands up until that point.

MIKE: Okay, so this wasn’t your first band, but was this the first band that you really pushed and went out on the road and tried?

TIM: It wasn’t the first band I’d been on the road with, actually. I’d been on the road with a band called Scavenger before that was like, a tech metal band and I just did vocals.

MIKE: Nasty. [laughs]

TIM: Yeah… [laughs] It was my first thing that I really, really cared about. Like I inevitably quit Scavenger just because it was too much of a...they lived in a different town, I always had to get rides, they expected a lot of out me. They were really going for it at the time. I’d just gotten out of military school not long ago and I was really concerned with girls and drinking and doing, you know, just dirtbag stuff. So I was coming out of that phase of wanting to do those things, and I started writing these songs and it just kind of fell into place. And then I got a really solid group of people and a version of Our Lady did its first tour, maybe 2 or so years before we actually started doing the version of Our Lady that you know.

MIKE: Okay, and what’s the difference between those versions? OBviously you said you were writing on acoustic, was that still the case at that point?

TIM: Yeah, it was definitely all acoustic. It was more of a folk-punk thing. A band hit us up on MySpace – this is how long this was ago – and they were like, “Hey, we’re doing this tour...do you guys wanna come?” And we were like, “Yeah!” It was a band called The Almanac Shouters.

MIKE: That sounds really folk-punk.

TIM: Like WAY more folk-punk than we were. We were kind of like...loud emo, loud acoustic emo.

MIKE: “Emo” as totally a blanket term, obviously...kind of an “E-word,” we’ll say.

TIM: Yeah.

MIKE: So Our Lady starts as just you and then kind of balloons up to being 4 pieces, 5 pieces...after a couple of years you hit the road, and so how are you running things internally? Are you handling all the financials, is everyone kind of putting in for expenses? Or because it’s your “baby,” are you shouldering most of that burden?

TIM: In the beginning it was definitely like I said, just me writing songs. And then Molli came into the picture as teh first solid person in the lineup, and this is even before her and I were together. She was just really into the idea of being a girl in a band, which at that time was not as common as it is now. I kind of drove us to make a lot of big decisions – to go on tour, to buy amps and stuff like that when we first started playing what is a semblance of what we are now. We went through a lot of members in the beginning before we toured or anyone knew who we were, just trying to figure it out. And as it came down to when we were really, really going, Molli was the logistics side. She did financials and handled all that. I was everything that involved the art, so I wrote all the songs, wrote all the lyrics, kept up on all the social media, did the merchandise, worked out the record stuff with labels and brokered all of that stuff. So while Molli handled a lot of the actual action of doing this I set forth the plans for doing these things.

MIKE: I’m glad you brought up doing the merch and all this other stuff. Now, relative to putting more and more effort into Our Lady, when did you start doing graphic design? Or have the two always gone hand-in-hand? What came first?

TIM: I’ve always been interested in art, but more so in music. At the time that Our Lady started touring I’d probably been playing guitar for a solid three years. Graphic design stuff really came super gradual. We started out paying artists to do stuff and as we started to do more and more we realized that we weren’t going to be able to feasibly afford it with the budget we were working with, so I started to do more and more and more, and I also always played around on Photoshop, so the two simultaneously grew.

MIKE: I’m glad you put it that way, because I was gonna say that I imagine there’s some artistic freedom in not only being able to take your musical vision a step further and translate it into a visual medium and define the aesthetic better than anyone else can, but also not having to pay to outsource for merch designs, tour admats and album layouts to other people. I know you’ve worked with other designers but it does free up some capital to put into the really costly things like recording maybe, or saving for a van.

TIM: Or buying your own merch. It was honestly less about the fiscal decision, it was more about your first point which is being able to recreate what I see as the vision. Although as this went on and the band got more and more and more and more serious, it ended up being a basis for arguments in the band. Like arguing over methodical differences between design A and design B, how it relates to the concept of whatever we were trying to accomplish. And when usually you’d be mad at a designer or you’d be unhappy with something the designer does, the band had to talk to me.

MIKE: Right – you can kind of compartmentalize it maybe and keep it professional, but when everything is in-house there’s more of a personality conflict. It comes back to you more directly and it’s easier to get frustrated.

TIM: Yeah, and I think that’s actually my biggest flaw in the band, is taking a lot of criticism from the bandmates. Because I did so much of the art stuff on my own, I think at some points it would hurt my wimpy little feelings that they didn’t like something.

MIKE: From doing the recording of my own bands, believe me. When I feel like nailed something...

TIM: Absolutely, like you’ll come in and you’re super excited about it and they’ve got 10 edits that they want. As it goes on, as with your recording you obviously got better at recording. Well, same with me and design. I started to be a good designer and when they would say they didn’t like stuff, I would be like, “How about you just trust the guy that knows what he’s doing?” MIKE: “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, pal.”

TIM: Yeah, but also that’s unfair.

MIKE: It is, because it comes down to how much agency you want to give your bandmates.

TIM: I always wanted everyone to be really involved because the people who weren’t involved with the band were always the people who ended up leaving.

MIKE: It’s like I said, the amount of agency they have to make decisions and to see themselves in the final product. And speaking of doing a number of things at once, I just recalled now that you were also running a DIY label for a little bit in this span of time? TIM: Yeah, I was. My friend Ada who’s from Kansas City and I had started a DIY label. I ended up backing out of it because Ada had some really big ideas for it and I was still very much doing the band stuff, and she wasn’t anymore. So I didn’t really have the financial backing to make a lot of these big ideas happen.

MIKE: A label especially, that’s tough. You didn’t put out any of your own Our Lady stuff on Guard, did you?

TIM: Yeah actually, the split 7” between Estates and Our Lady.

MIKE: That’s right! For some reason I thought you kept them separate, but I knew there was a reason I was bringing up, other than you just wear a lot of hats.

[music]

MIKE: I think about this a lot with jack-of-all-trades kind of DIY folks: obviously utilizing the skill sets within your own pool of bandmates has a lot of benefits, not the least of which is keeping expenses down, but do you suspect that approach might accelerate burnout and maybe shorten a band’s lifespan? Or is it all totally circumstantial? Obviously there’s no control group…

TIM: I don’t think there’s a right answer. I see bands go all-out in the beginning and they totally flop because of it, and then other times I see bands go all-out in the beginning and they totally get huge. So that one all-out push is really all they need. I think it really comes down to the idea and also what’s happening in music - how much you should push right now.

MIKE: Obviously this is just a little theory I’m developing in real-time but it seems to me that if one isn’t spreading oneself so thin, maybe it’s a little easier to roll with the punches, which I want to get to now if you don’t mind talking about those punches, because it seems like the universe took a big shit on you toward the very end. Would you be okay talking about that?

TIM: Yeah, of course.

MIKE: So the last record that you put out, ‘Lure’ – which is excellent by the way – things didn’t really shake out the way that I think you were hoping.

TIM: No. [laughs]

MIKE: So what exactly transpired?

TIM: I spent a year writing that record. I had a serial killer wall in my bedroom where I was weaving it all together. I had a concept that I really wanted to get across in an order that I saw it panning out. I had this whole grand plan, right? And I just spent a year driving myself insane over this record. Bob from Mayfly was really adamant about wanting us to do a 12”. I didn’t really want to do a 12” just yet, because as far as the rest of the world was concerned, we were a band with an EP and a split 7” and to jump onto doing a 12” with Mayfly didn’t seem like, at the time, the best route to go. But I also realized that volume of music was something that we lacked, so I put my whole head into it, my everything into it. And the rest of the band did too. Kyle and I worked tirelessly at get rhythms – really interesting rhythms – onto the record. We spent a year really grinding for it in a really, particularly terrible recording situation because it was 110º degrees throughout the week of recording.

MIKE: Oh my god. [laughs]

TIM: And the place we were recording didn’t have air. Well it did have air, but we couldn’t run it because it showed up in the recording.

MIKE: But you spent all this time – was part of that fleshing out a release plan? Like, “gonna hit the road big time and tour on this record for a bit?”

TIM: That was the plan. Up until then it had been a few solid years of touring all the time.

MIKE: What is all the time? Some bands really do tour like 6 months out of the year...when we toured it felt like all the time but realistically it was like...2 months out of the year and it was every 3 months we’d go out. What was the frequency at the most?

TIM: At its highest point it was 2 weeks on 2 weeks off.

MIKE: Holy moly.

TIM: That was in the very beginning, like when we first started touring. And then the lowest it ever got was probably while we were recording the record. I think we did one tour that whole year. You know what? Actually I think we did two still. We spent this whole year doing this. We did have really big plans...a big reason we decided to go with Mayfly was that they offered to pay for a lot of promo stuff and do all this press for it. Essentially ever since the record left our hands it was just plagued with problems. The test presses came back bad, there was like...a sound or something, and it was a big deal...I don’t know, I don’t even remember exactly what was the problem. And then the release date ended up getting pushed way back, which screwed up all of our tour plans. We had to cancel a tour; we had to cancel a release show. And this isn’t why we broke up necessarily…

MIKE: But it couldn’t have helped.

TIM: No [laughs] it really didn’t. And like at this point we are road-worn. All of us are living in damn near squalor to make this band happen, you know what I mean? Living on the end of the rope constantly, just no money for anything ever. It was all about doing the band, getting on tour, recording this record...there was nothing else. All that stress after all that happened just kind of imploded.

MIKE: I can only imagine. I’m familiar with the rhythm of basically working while you’re not touring, going out, blowing all of it and having to come back and recoup. So on that subject, what are you doing during Our Lady - I know you’re obviously doing graphic design on the side as part of your income, but what else are you doing to supplement that band capital?

TIM: Honestly, I was on the hustle the entire time. I sold and constantly promoted Our Lady merch. When we weren’t on tour I was working on booking the tours or writing the record and just constantly going through every avenue I can to get graphic design work because I didn’t have time to manage the band, manage booking tours, manage writing the songs and everything that I was doing while holding down a job.

MIKE: So you’re totally freelance.

TIM: Yeah, except I did work part time at a coffeehouse.

MIKE: Obviously anything freelance like that is feast or famine, and then any job that you hold down in the meantime, I assume the pay wasn’t...amazing.

TIM: Yeah, terrible.

MIKE: This is a huge thing in DIY, but the other side, the advantage of these low-paying fly-by-night jobs is that they’re pretty flexible with you being able to take time off generally. Obviously they could have other boots on the ground while you’re gone…

TIM: They are. You literally are looking for a job where you’re not special, so it’s like the exact opposite thing that everyone in the world’s looking for. Really though, the reward for it is getting to go on tour.

MIKE: Oh yeah. For the time that you’re doing it, it’s so worth it.

TIM: I only thought this towards the end, like maybe the last two years but I denied it for the better half of that...I think that it stopped being a reward for me. I think that I started dreading going on tour.

MIKE: In what sense?

TIM: I kind of unwantingly had obtained this odd...leader role, and I never wanted that role. I felt myself tasked constantly to keep everyone in the band happy with what was going on. And at this point I think I was a little traumatized from losing members, so knowing that Our Lady was a moving vessel, that I wanted to keep going, I would constantly stress myself about how everyone was feeling and if they were feeling included enough and if we were also spending an adequate amount of time doing fun things as a band, you know?

MIKE: Yeah, no I do.

TIM: I know, you play that role too!

MIKE: Yeah, I think I’ve gotten better at delegating...for what it’s worth now...but I’ve been that guy, and it’s funny that you should say that too because it sounded like you had Molli doing some of the grunt work and crunching numbers and things like that. Did she pick up the slack when you were feeling down in the dumps about it?

TIM: Molli being in the band is the only thing that really made it go so long. She kind of made all the stuff really happen as far as figuring out how we were gonna have enough money as a band to do this or that, and I and the rest of the band were more like, “We should do this!” And she’d be like, “Okay, well we need to figure out how we can actually accomplish that task instead of talking about it.” And she’s just a great bookkeeper and she’s really good with numbers and she’s really good at being really organized. And also it helped because we were in a relationship, but then again sometimes that was a flaw too. If she got into it with another band member it felt personal to me, and it shouldn’t have.

MIKE: It’s a tightrope there for sure.

TIM: and there’s no correct way to walk that.

MIKE: From seeing other bands in a similar situation of having two people in the band in a relationship, I have to say the way that you guys carried yourselves was far and away better than most of the other ones I’ve observed in working with bands in the studio and being on the road, so...you’ve got agood thing goin on there obviously.

TIM: We had kind of developed this thing that we weren’t in a relationship on tour, we were just business partners.

MIKE: Interesting...because then you go home and you live to gether and you have your normal life.

TIM: And I also think that was a big part of the tiredness of tour. I felt like especially toward the end Molli and I spent more time together as business partners than we did being in an actual long-term relationship.

MIKE: So all of this combined, is htat what kind of prompts the decision to end Our Lady?

TIM: You know, Our Lady was a hellride, all the way through. And I say that in a non-sarcastic way, it really really was. We did a really good job of making it not seem like that on the surface…

MIKE: I guess so.

TIM: ...but there were problems constantly. A lot of financial, a lot of member stuff...just shit happened to us. We were one of those bands, it was like always something was happening to us. A few of my personal friends would make jokes about how Our Lady was cursed, because so much stuff would just happen. I think we maybe had like...two or three tours in total where something didn’t go wrong with the van…

MIKE: Even the one that we did!

TIM: Yeah, that first day something major went wrong with our brand new van! But we got really used to dealing with that chaos, so in the end it happened at a practice. And Kyle kind of threw it on the table...I don’t remember what we came to in the conversation but he was just like, “it’s done.” I was like, “I agree, it’s done.” And I remember feeling really sad at first, then Molli went on a long drive out in the country after that and then I realized how much stress I’d put on myself...how much expectation I’d put into this thing, and how it was never really up to me how good or bad it did. All that stress and everything, the years of really trying to make it work, it never really was on me. People when I go to shows now will be like, wary about talking to me about Our Lady. And I’m like, “you don’t understand, I don’t care. I’m in such a better place now.” I’m not upset about it, I’m not mad, I don’t regret what I did. It was an experience I wouldn’t trade anything for, and I learned almost all of my skills from doing that.

[music]

MIKE: I agree with the sentiment that I wouldn’t trade it for anything but is there anything you think could be done, maybe not specific to your band but what would you say is the biggest impediment to the sustainability of it.

TIM: Oh, I’m wringing my hands right now because I have so much to say about this...DIY is a very, very fast-paced moving vessel. Things get phased out ultra-quick. In under a year, you’ll see genres of music and you’ll start thinking they sound corny because no one’s doing them anymore. Venues that really base themselves off a certain vibe or sound, they fail - that’s just how DIY is. If you don’t see it for that, maybe take a step back and look at it because it changes constantly. Another thing is, tons of people will go out of their way to support bands where their “like” on Facebook or their, you know, share on Facebook or their “like” on Instagram is a drop in a very large bucket, but they won’t go out of their way to do the same for a band who’s really trying. There used to be this joke - Kyle at the time had a lot of Instagram followers on his personal account.

MIKE: He did, didn’t he?

TIM: Yes, but now I have way more which is no big deal...just throwing that out there. [laughs] Anyway, the joke was that if he posted a selfie, over 100 likes every time. If he posted anything about Our Lady...25.

MIKE: Oh yeah, and it’s hard to know if that’s algorithmic, if that just isn’t getting out because something is looking at the raw data of the image and saying “oh, this isn’t a human face, this is a bunch of text on some clever flyer,” you know what I mean? Or if it’s localized, like “we’re playing a show in Champaign tonight!”

TIM: Sometimes it’s that factor, the localization factor, absolutely. Not everyone’s gonna see or give a shit about that, but they still should! There’s still a band from your town somewhere very fucking far away from you, trying to do shit that’s gonna bring shit back to your scene, it’s gonna bring better bands back to your scene. If you see a show flyer on Instagram and you’re involved in DIY culture, you should probably be liking that shit because you’re a supporter of DIY music. You’re a supporter of your friend’s band.

MIKE: Do you think it’s hard to overcome the signal to noise ratio? I feel like just from when we started to now there are so many more bands, and so many more bands that are able and trying to tour? So people’s attention can’t go as far as it maybe once did?

TIM: From the outside perspective of still having a foot in the door with DIY and keeping up with it through the internet, DIY music in general is kind of coming to a point where it’s not...needed anymore. The platform is shrinking. A lot of it has to do with the specific nature of people’s tastes in the age of Spotify, Apple Music...we’re able to be force-fed only the things we like all the time. Going out to a show and seeing five different bands instead of only seeing the one band that you like is becoming obsolete. Also it’s because mainstream media dipped their pinky into emo because they realized they could make some money off of it. But DIY has kind of reverted from that and it’s now made itself to where mainstream media is almost never going to do that again. I think that the “band” thing is kind of dying.

MIKE: Oh yeah, I think about that. I don’t know if there’s any way to really quantify that, but it seems harder to start one and it seems harder to get off the ground and make it what you want to be.

TIM: I think that the success ratio is just far less.

MIKE: It was never that high.

TIM: No, but always there’s been a band or a musician who’s playing a guitar or has a backing band that has been big. Like, really big. Really, really big. And we don’t really have that right now, aside from maybe Ed Sheeran. The new way to become a successful band is not through DIY.

MIKE: Define “successful” for me though. I hate to put it on the nose like that, but is it a self-sustaining thing or do you go home and work a job but you don’t have to worry about the next run?

TIM: I’m defining success on a high level-

MIKE: Like a professional musician type thing.

TIM: Exactly, where your job is to be in the band and do the band solely. That is it, that is your 100% job, 365 days a year. Like how Slipknot is. Ed Sheeran, another good example - any pop star, anything like that because all of those people used to be bands, and now they’re pop stars. Do you see what I’m saying by that? It’s a little bit of a muddy way to express what I’m saying.

MIKE: Right, they used to be “bands” as in they used to be performing on some circuit where they’re making the same rounds until they got some big break.

TIM: Absolutely. We used to have your Green Days and stuff - we still have a lot of bands from that generation when things were happening, when bands were getting signed to major labels and it was getting pumped out like that…

MIKE: Maybe on my fingers and toes I can count bands that operate in something analogous to our world that can call themselves “professional musicians,” and it’s not even everyone in the band either. Maybe the singer doesn’t have a full time job, like his full time job is the band. His or her full time job is doing things to advance their own career, but that is such a small percentage.

TIM: Yeah, and it’s also still nowhere near the level of success that we’re talking about.

MIKE: No, you’re living - probably like you alluded to - “in squalor” in a lot of ways. We did a tour with Lume, who you obviously know well and toured with them as well - they do a lot of things to really keep costs down, like they don’t stay in hotels - they sleep in their own van. They have a stove in their van and do meal prep on the road, which is crazy because I think a lot of guys look at touring as being reprieve from their normal lives and the thing through which they realize their own humanity, right? So maybe they treat every two-week tour up to a certain point like a vacation...they spend, they have a little fun with it, but those guys (Lume) really go all-in and try to make it happen in a way.

TIM: They put themselves in a position where they can keep doing it because they still love to do it. Talking to Lume, it’s...so refreshing. Because they haven’t been doing it long enough to be really jaded, and I will full-out admit that touring jaded me and the way that I felt about it. Lume is coming into a really hard world though, and they will get there. But as of right now talking to them and the way they put themselves in that position, they’re handling it as smart as they possibly can. They’re gonna be more successful than the band standing next to them just on the tact with which they approach the situation.

MIKE: They do love it, and that’s huge because it’s one of those things where if you don’t - if you have any reservations - it’s a house of cards, man. The slightest perturbation, or really a series of them all in a row, domino effect, can just grind things to a halt for everyone.

TIM: I’ve been on tour with a lot of bands and seen a lot of bands play. You start talking to people in bands...they don’t actually like doing this anymore. They’re just doing this because it’s what they know how  to do.

MIKE: Yeah, I mean there’s a certain thought process to it, it’s so pervasive. It’s the only thing that seems natural, but I’ve always felt like for me, it’s in the act of creation - writing songs and the negotiation process of putting a tune together and having a finished song and being like, “oh fuck yeah, that’s awesome” - vs. having to go out and perform night after night after night and try to put yourself...because the music that you and I make, and I would say is at least ideally emblematic of DIY, is very personal. It’s from the heart. You want to put yourself in that same frame of mind to perform it but it’s exhausting physically and emotionally, and a strain on the wallet of all things.

TIM: Like you said, it’s just taxing all around. I would hate to sit around and blame my failings on my financial situation because that’s not what it was. If it would’ve been money, I would’ve kept going.

MIKE: So looking to the future of DIY as it pertains to emotional hardcore bands or “emo” or “indie” or whatever, who takes up the task of continuing to make that music for the people who still...you know, if it becomes an even more unprofitable venture, does it continue to shrink? Or will there always be some kind of hangers-on?

TIM: I think there will always be hangers-on, but I also think DIY shoots itself in its foot with its involvement in political discourse.

MIKE: Everything is right now though.

TIM: Yes, and DIY music has always been more or less a political thing. The problem is that people with very little difference in political views are fighting each other. I think that kills the DIY scene in general. DIY will always exist, but I definitely think as of now it will continue to climb, but I’m also not an authority and shit happens.

MIKE: Oh neither am I, I just think for all the ways that it does shoot itself in the foot and make things difficult for both artists and for fans, it also is very adaptive. So at the beginning there probably weren’t as many house venues. When one closes another might open up, even if it’s six months or a year later, if enough people want it. It’s cyclical.

TIM: Yes, it is, but it’s so different now. The age of Facebook, Instagram and all this stuff...it changes things so much. DIY is not a dictation of fashion anymore, and that’s a really weird thing to accept as a person who’s running a clothing line. Fashion exists as its own entity and people adopt things from fashion into DIY when it used to be kind of the opposite.

MIKE: So you’re saying it’s importing more cultural or subcultural influence than it’s exporting? It’s not creating the culture, it’s synergizing it into something else?

TIM: Exactly. DIY has always been really cyclical, and for the longest time now we’ve been in a repeat phase. I’m sure something new and great will pop up in the next five years…

MIKE: Until that gets chewed up and spit out. That seems to be culture as a whole; the thing that’s new is the approach or the aesthetic, and we’re just wrapping all of our old cultural hallmarks in it. There’s probably a lot of throughlines between emo when it came out in  the late ‘90s and the emo they’re making now, the “emo revival.” But there’s so much character in a something like Cap’n Jazz vs. something that’s meant to be derivative of that purposefully.

TIM: And we see the same themes in movies and stuff that we see in music as well. That’s kind of what culture in general does, as we’ve discussed.

[music]

MIKE: So at this point I’ll give you a chance to plug Ritual, which is your newest venture that seems to have been the silver lining that comes out of all of the unpleasantness surrounding Our Lady. Do you think that on a subconscious level you’ve been able to apply any of what you’ve learned from that experience, whether it’s design or ordering merch and knowin what people want - even the promotional side of it, like marketing - to what you and Molli are doing with Ritual.

TIM: Yeah, a ton of shit, especially in the beginning. It was kind of like repainting the same picture with less colors.

MIKE: Like, rather than having merchandise be an ancillary product to help support the music, that is THE main output.

TIM: Exactly. When I first start doing it, I was like, “Oh this is gonna be a piece of cake...it’s like one aspect of the thing I did for six years.” And it’s totally not. It’s a super hard thing to keep up with because I would say I ran out of the stuff I learned from the band in the first month.

MIKE: Wow.

TIM: That’s when I reached the topping point of “okay, that’s what I know...what do I do now?” But also I think that has to do with the fact that Ritual started off more successful than any other band thing that I’d ever tried to do.

MIKE: If you applied everything that you could in that first month, it seems like what you were talking about earlier, that initial “push” to get to the next level and make things perpetual motion, self-sustaining situation - kind of panned out better than you expected?

TIM: Absolutely. Definitely going into it knowing the stuff with the band helped to get people stoked for something. I think like, two weeks or so before we actually had any clothes I had started an Instagram and a Facebook, and I was posting little snippets of imagery being like, “Yo, this is coming.” This has also been an idea in the back of my mind for a long time because for about the last two years of Our Lady I got really into lifting and progressively more into powerlifting. It had become a bigger part of my mind. Actually, one of the more hilarious things that was said at the end of Our Lady was being like, “Hey, well at least I can focus on [lifting] now.” It was funny to me and Molli because it was such an unconscious shift in what we wanted to focus on. We didn’t expect to feel that way when Our Lady ended but...definitely not trying to seem in any type of arrogance or hyping up what I’m doing with Ritual, but the reason I say it was more successful than anything the band ever did is not because of some sort of financial goal that I had, because that didn’t exist. It’s more of what I expected to take to run something like that, vs. what it actually ended up taking. When we launched a bunch of people actually ordered...you know when you put new merch up for the band like “hey we got new merch!” and nothing happens? Maybe a few orders, like 2-3 over three days? Unless you’re a gigantic band, then of course your stuff probably sells a little better.

MIKE: I’m sure it’s actually still, just scaled up, the same effect.

TIM: Looking back, we sold our merch for a ridiculously cheap price. We were making like $2-3 maybe off of those shirts, when we paid $10 to get them. That was just bad business, we didn’t know any better. When Ritual started it was really odd because Molli and I planned it out really well. We had a lot of conversations about what we wanted to do, how much money we expected to earn back from it, which is a conversation we were never able to have in Our Lady. It just kind of started, and now it’s something...it’s something, you know? I find myself stressed out all the time that I can’t keep up with it. The biggest problem for Ritual is that I can’t keep shit on my shelves, I can’t keep product on my shelves.

MIKE: It’s a good problem to have. It’s no less stressful, but it’s a good sign I guess.

TIM: You know, people say that, but that’s because they don’t have that problem. No, it is a good problem, but it is pretty much a constant stress.

MIKE: A good problem is still a problem.

TIM: Exactly, and it is growing. There are tons of people who have married themselves to this idea that we put out, and that was purposeful to a certain extent, but this reaction...we never expected that. People who I don’t even know, who aren’t directly involved with the company, have quotes on their Instagram profiles and will tag us and I have no idea who they are. They’re not athletes or reps of ours.

MIKE: That’s another thing too, is that you have athletes you endorse or who are repping your brand. Is there a parallel here? Whether you’re sponsoring a meet or you have an athlete on your roster, is that like how some bands have a hookup through Ernie Ball or some other weird brand that maybe even isn’t musical?

TIM: Yeah, definitely comparable to that because really what a sponsorship is for us right now is you get free shit or heavily, heavily-discounted shit from us, and you know that in the future we will be paying for your competition fees.

MIKE: So that’s significant.

TIM: Yeah, but these are not big expenses. In the future that’s something I really want to do because I believe in the sport and I believe in the people that I’ve endorsed.

MIKE: And it seems like it’s growing.

TIM: Honestly it’s Crossfit. Thanks Crossfit, because you made all strength sports really popular.

[music]

MIKE: So that’s it for episode 1! If you enjoyed anything you heard and you want to support Tim’s endeavors I’ll have links and info in the description box of this episode. If you want to support this show, you can find out how to do that at patreon.com/sellinoutpodcast - I’m gonna have bonus content on there and I wanna hear from you about what that would be, so you can reach me at sellinoutpodcast@gmail.com or on Twitter @SellinOutAD. You can also leave a nice rating and review on Apple Podcasts or just tell your weirdo friend, and thanks! Theme music by Such Gold, the song is called “No Cab Fare.” Cover photo by Nick DiNatale. I’m Mike Moschetto, talk to you next time on Sellin’ Out.

[fairest]

Last Things 2017

25 police brutality photos I download to my stream on January 16, 2013 that I found again when I bought a new computer in September.

Rap simile of the year:  “I’m unexplained like a lot of things.” - Action Bronson

Best Business Headline: Roark Capital Bids $2.3 billion for Buffalo Wild Wings

Best movie(s) I saw in theaters Get Out  I am Not Your Negro Patterson Silence The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Worst:  The Lost City of Z Split (the latest horrible movie by the guy who did The Sixth Sense; seeing it at an ArcLight made it even worse.

Still the best movie of 2016:  American Honey

Best movie line: “Can I please have your MP3 player when you die? Please, please, please?” - The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Woody Allen movie for 2017:  Celebrity (1998) - “A society where every single member is famous: there are no uncelebrated people.” Donald Trump’s cameo in this film says he’s going to tear down St. Patrick’s and put up a big tall beautiful building in its place. An old grandmother in this movie makes his McCain joke: I like my heroes not captured. Leonardo DiCaprio as a wife beater who gets away with it; Adrian Grenier a member of his entourage. The ACLU and the KKK share bagels in a Today Show greenroom. Winona Ryder, of Stranger Things fame, calls herself the whore of Tribeca. Janice Soprano plays a neurotic psychic, BeBe Neuwirth a native New Yorker prostitute. Charlize Theron sports a Jean Seberg haircut and the voice Scarlett Johnson will perfect in Match Point. 

Worst Movie Title of the Year: The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

American Cities, ranked by someone cancelling on you at the last minute, and then what the hell do you do, talk to yourself for six hours?

0. Las Vegas 1. Washington DC 2. New Orleans 3. Los Angeles  4. Manhattan  5. San Francisco 6. Brooklyn/Queens 7. Chicago

Song it took me two weeks to figure out on the piano and I still don’t have it right: Father John Misty, “Ballad of the Dying Man”

Best FJM insult: Ryan Adams’ “Elton Josh”

Worst album cover I saw in December: Chief Keef’s Dedication

Worst Broadway Show:  Parade at The Writer’s Theater in Glencoe, IL.

Most excited 9-year-old I sat next to at a Broadway show: Hamilton

A word I would be happy to never hear again in 2018:  Normalize.

Most disappointing album, or did I just move on, maybe, I guess you can keep my favorite black t-shirt & I don’t ever want to see you again: Lana Del Rey

Post-#metoo ear worm:  Tower of Power - It’s Not the Crime

#metoo casualty who translated the two most crucial French novels of the last few years, at least to Americans:  Lorin Stein (Levé’s Auotportrait, Well-Beck’s Submission)

Worst album cover tied to a UPS social media campaign by a recording artist who earlier in her career trademarked the phrase “Welcome to New York” Taylor Swift, Reputation #TaylorSwiftDelivery

Live music moment of the year: 1. Tribe Call Quest at Pitchfork, recording of Phife’s verse on “Butter” 2. Big Thief at Pritzker Pavilion 3. Probably Quicksand at Thalia Hall, but I didn’t fucking make it.

The state of pop music criticism 2017: Musician: Tell the president to suck a dick. Music Critic: Politically is only one way to read this lyric.

The state of popular literary criticism 2017:  I really wanted to read this book but I was binge-watching The OA on Netflix ok thxs bye.

The state of TV criticism 2017:  It still exists.

Number of Entourage episodes Jeffery Tambor plays golf in:  One 

Song I listened to at least 500 times this year for the eighth year in a row.  Slow Club, It Doesn’t Have to Be Beautiful

Only bearable use of the word “narrative” in 2017:  That NRA video

Of “navigate”:  My therapist.

Of “To Your Point”: .....

Top Trump apologist who wouldn’t see herself that way because like historical:  Doris Kearns Goodwin

Best piece of advice to fake rappers:  Lock em’ in a room with The Cactus Album (Your Old Droog - Rapman)

What I accomplished this summer:  Parody lyrics to Solange’s Cranes in the Sky

Best movie of 2017 that feels like it came out in March of 1354 because this year took too long.  Get out

Top 8 love songs of the last 20 years.

1. Bored Games - Wild Nothing 2. Slow Show - The National  3. Chateau Lobby #4 - Father John Misty 4. This Blood is Our Own - The Love Language 5. Hotel Yorba - The White Stripes  6. Bound 2 - Kanye West 7. Real Love - Big Thief 8. Time Spent in Los Angeles - Dawes

Favorite movie line from a movie I don’t remember, but I think it’s from the Meyerowitz stories:  “If you don’t leave the house there are no transitions.” 

[asian-television-world-blog]

Yay, another horror movie!

This time we are up with Acacia, a 2003 Korean horror film starring Shim Hye Jin, Kim Jin Geun, Moon Woo Bin. This movie actually can be brought under the psychological horror genre as well (they seem to like to do that rather than straight horror), and even had a re-release in 2011 under the name Root of Evil.

What was special about "Acacia" was that it was not only very creepy and eerie, but it also contained some very beautiful and haunting imagery. And can honestly say that it is a real surprise at the end. Nothing is reviled through the movie until it is necessary. 

... I guess I should tell you what the story is right? Haha

After unsuccessfully trying to have a baby of their own, Dr. Kim Do-il and his father convince his wife Choi Mi-sook to adopt a child in an orphanage. Mi-sook is connected to arts and chooses the six years Kim Jin-sung that loves to draw trees. The boy becomes close to the eight years old next door neighbor Min-jee and is attracted to an old Acacia tree in their lawn. When Mi-sook unexpectedly gets pregnant, her mother asks her to return Jin-sung to the orphanage, beginning the rejection process of the boy. When the baby is born, Mi-sook does not treat Jin-sung well, who believes the acacia tree is his mother, and in a rainy night, he vanishes. Along the next days, the family becomes insane, disclosing a dark secret about Jin-sung.

What is with scary Asian movies with creepy kids?  The story is different from typical horror but conforms to the typical Asian horror style of taking something average and making it into a nightmarish object of hell, in this case, an Acacia tree in the backyard of a family. 

 Acacia is a slow-moving film; I'll grant any viewer that truth. There are a lot of scenes within the film that seem completely unrelated to the story of the film itself, like the expounding of the relationship between two children. The dialogue of the adults is also stilted and questionable, which in turn confuses the viewer and tempts one to just shut the film off.  It's not a film for people with short attention spans!

The actors all deliver an amazing job and are always authentic so that the long introduction to a more and more terrifying downward spiral of terror with a great twisted ending was worth all the wait. One must underline the great performances of the two very young actors, especially Mun Oh-bin. Another strength of the movie is the atmospheric score and the artistic factor of the movie.

[justinhulford]

Artist: Sinatras Album: Drowned Label: Logic (Il)Logic Records Genre: Metalcore A brief intro mood yields to some powerful riffs and pounding rhythms. There's loads of pace initially then they change the vibe with a slow section, before the aggressive vocals join in. Those then move to something vaguely cleaner, then back to the more brutal, and it's all a strong combination on the opening title track. More ideas come along later whilst remaining true to a powerful fusion of metalcore and thrash, and there is plenty to like. One song in and I am already on side. They then keep the standard high with loads more aggression but with plenty of diversions, ideas and combinations. There are lots of countering cleaner vocals whilst remaining true to its soul. There's space for some more industrial riffs, such as the opening bars of "Cockroach", maybe even something purely melodic at times, but at its heart this is deep and heavy, brutal and aggressive. But it isn't relentless in any way, with loads of opportunities to express some very cool ideas without straying too far from the basis of what they do. The most surprising element is the unexpected cover of "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)". It does show some versatility even if the chorus feels a bit odd in a metalcore/thrash fusion style and is undoubtedly one of the oddest covers I have heard. Placing it mid-album is probably a mistake as it detracts form the flow. That one track aside this is an accomplished take on the genre with plenty of diversions and tricks, and a mildly comedic cover isn't needed and just gets in the way. This is a strong album with a procession of clever tracks rooted solidly in metalcore but with louds of nice ideas and, dare I say it, progressive elements. The vocal styles are mixed up well and it just feels utterly honest. I'd drop the cover to a bonus track, get rid of the awful few seconds of what I guess is meant to be crying at the start of "Miss Anthropy", as well as the comedy (but thankfully brief) elements on "Blind Fury, and let the quality just speak for itself. 19/20