#I love punk Artie

[deconstructthesoup]

One thing I absolutely adore about Dead Boy Detectives is the immaculate costume design. Specifically, how it perfectly encapsulates who the characters are, both as a whole and who they are in the moment.

From the very first scene of the show, we know immediately that Edwin is a bookish, somewhat stuffy guy from the Edwardian era who attended a boarding school, and Charles is a punk from the 1980's who's most likely the wildcard between the two of them, just going off of the way that they're dressed. Both of them have distinct color schemes and different styles, but the general shape of their outfits is actually relatively similar---both of them have collared shirts (Edwin's dress shirt, Charles's polo), something over those shirts (Edwin's vest, Charles's suspenders), a jacket of some kind (Edwin's suit jacket, Charles's flannel thing), a longer overcoat (Edwin's traveling coat, Charles's peacoat), something around the neck (Edwin's bowtie, Charles's necklace), slacks, and nice shoes. They're distinct, yet matching, two clearly defined separate characters yet part of a set.

Edwin's prim, proper, buttoned-up personality lends itself to the way he dresses throughout the season---in the first episode, he only dresses down when he's in the office with Charles, aka his safe place and his safe person, and he doesn't really dress down like that again for a good long while after getting stuck in Port Townsend (though, if my memory serves me correctly, he does take off the suit jacket while watching TV with Niko). But in episode six, he's changed up his usual look for a cozier, casual-looking sweater and a little bit of collarbone, and in episode seven... well, he's in his nightclothes, and he's about as open, raw, and vulnerable as you can get. Edwin's color scheme is also predominately blue, which lines up nicely with his logical and practical, yet deeply sad and closed off personality, and the only time he really wears anything other than his normal blue-and-brown outfit (willingly, that is) is when he's in that green sweater in episode six. And, uh... all I can say is that it's quite telling how blue and green---or, well, teal---are the main colors of the gay/mlm flag.

Charles, by contrast, dresses down a lot, and that makes a lot of sense when you consider the fact that unlike Edwin, he feels comfortable pretty much anywhere. On any given episode, he goes from wearing his peacoat to just wearing his flannel to ditching the flannel to not even wearing the freaking polo---though, again, the latter is something that only happens when he's in the office with Edwin. Safe space, safe person. And, well, plenty of people have analyzed Charles's polo shirt going from red to burgundy to black over the course of the series, and there being a little bit of red under the collar of his coat that's only visible when Edwin fixes it, and then it goes back to burgundy, and then it's red again when Edwin's out of Hell... for good reason! It's color symbolism at its finest! Not to mention, the red and black not only perfectly contrasts Edwin's color scheme, but it also lines up with Charles's personality---he's a rebel, he's hotheaded, he's bold and brash and loud... and yes, he's angry, but he's also so, so loving.

When we first meet Crystal after she loses her memories, her outfit choices feel very deliberate. They're stylish and vaguely trendy, they're arty and a little bit witchy---pretty fitting for a psychic who's also a showbiz kid, even if she doesn't know that last part. But all of her clothes appear thrifted, or at the very least vintage, and the patterns and the general vibe all feel natural and comforting. Her makeup's always fairly simple, her hair's either down or up in a couple of cute space buns... overall, this Crystal looks like the kind of person who'd make you tea when you're in a bad mood, who'll listen when you just need to vent, and who may not always know the right thing to say but will understand what you're going through. But when we see her in the flashbacks, her clothing's flashy and prioritizes high-end trends over comfort, she's either got her hair up or has it straightened, and she not only has dramatic makeup, but acrylics. This is a girl who talks shit about you behind your back, who's bitter and cynical and wants everyone to feel the same way, who makes up for the lack of love and stability in her life via material things. It's also worth noting that Crystal's color scheme has a lot of purple, which is a color that connects to wealth and luxury, but also creativity and magic---which, yeah, fits her two conflicting sides pretty damn well.

You cannot talk about Niko Sasaki without talking about her outfits, and the meaning behind each of them has already been talked about at length. However, one thing that really stands out to me is that the reason they're so iconic isn't just because of the monochrome color schemes, but because they're out there. They're weird, they're eclectic, they're a little mismatched in style sometimes, and they're so unapologetically her. Niko wears heart-shaped sunglasses, unironically. Everything about the way she dresses speaks to how, even though she's a recovering shut-in who initially doesn't want to be perceived, she's still very sure of who she is.

Jenny's design, like Charles and Edwin's, is a design that gives you the key information you need the minute she first appears onscreen. The dark makeup, the silver jewelry, the leather apron, and the hairstyle all point to a person who's tough, doesn't take anyone's shit, and has long since given up on caring what other people think---in other words, she's a badass. But the butterfly tattoo hints at a softer side, a side that we see time and time again throughout the series as she shows that she cares about Crystal and Niko, and even the boys... eventually. Also, Jenny's design is perhaps one of the most clearly queer-coded in the series, to the point where her being a confirmed lesbian is pretty much a no-brainer.

Esther's design oozes camp, from top to bottom. The fluffy coat, the bustier, the boots and the cane and the everything, speak to a woman who's kept with the times and yet has seen it all. There's really not a lot I can fully say about her design, other than what Charles has already said: "She looks like a witch... like, kind of a sexy witch, who smokes a lot." (Or maybe I'm just tired and running out of steam at this point, idk, I love Esther's design and I can't really put it into words.) It's also pretty fitting that her color scheme has a lot of yellow in it---after all, she's always striving for more, so what better color for her than the color of gold?

Everything about the Night Nurse's design speaks to a woman who follows rules and discipline above all else, from the pantsuit to the pinned-up hairstyles to the tie to the heels. She's also the most muted out of the main cast in terms of color, dressing mostly in browns, dull greens, and duller browns---and while I don't have a lot to go into detail about there, I feel like that's kind of a symbol of her narrow-minded and bureaucratic worldview.

And the animal characters... Jesus Christ, I fully forget that they're all being played by human actors. Tragic Mick dresses like a man who's always spent his life by the sea, layered denim and all, and it's never a stretch to see this sad, bushy-bearded, baggy-clothed fisherman and imagine him as a walrus lounging on a beach. Monty, at first glance, seems to only wear black, which would be perfectly fitting for a crow, but when he's in better lighting, you see that he dresses in layers of red and blue, calling to how he envies Charles and Edwin and clearly longs for something more---and this might just be me, but I think that even though his outfits seem fairly normal at first glance, they feel kind of like a costume for Monty more than anything else, like he's trying to emulate a teenager that he's seen on TV more than someone in real life.

The Cat King fits this just as well, with all of his outfits aligning perfectly with whatever his cat form is at the time---when he's a fluffy ginger, it's always sequins and fur coats and clothing pieces that are specifically designed to take up space and call attention, and when he's a black shorthair, it's sleek styles and shiny leather and pieces that are designed to cut an intimidating yet more subtle figure. And while I could go into detail about all of those, what really stands out to me is how clearly queer everything is---more than Jenny's alt lesbian attire, more than Esther's campy coat and corset. From the very first scene he's in, he's wearing a skirt, and it looks natural. Nothing about the way the Cat King presents himself is exaggerated, nothing about the way he dresses is played for laughs---he's flamboyant and feminine and flirty, and he looks so fucking hot while he does it. It's gorgeous.

So... yeah, uh, all the awards for the Dead Boy Detectives costume designers!

[pumaskulls]

y'all get more WIPs bc i cannot believe i came up with a design so good. im barely getting any progress on this ref done bc i keep wanting to stop and cry over how cute Artemis is

Actually feel like sharing a WIP for once, bc I'm accidentally making Artemis & Apollo more detailed than I intended....but I wanna show their new designs off already

[pastelslugcat]

I find it so funny when people think that anyone who dresses goth/punk always looks like that when in reality we look like this 90% of the time

And also what Arti is wearing in this drawing is what I'm wearing right now I love my silly duck shirt

[thefugitivesaint]

Folk On Fire were a Louisville (post) punk band who came out of the 80s alternative/DIY scene and who put this album together while, I believe, they were still High School students. "A diverse group of musicians inspired by punk but in love with funk, FOF played literate, psychedelic dance music once described by Louisville music legend Bryan Hurst as a cross between Talking Heads and They Might Be Giants. Arty but not arty-farty, the band’s experimental side (backwards tapes, 3rd world musical influences) was held in check by a penchant for broad parody and comedic antics (polyester leisurewear, swinging from ceiling ducts). Sadly, this dichotomy would contribute to splitting up the band, with B. Linn and Jones moving on to art school in Chicago while Brunner, Hoagland, and T. Linn formed the intentionally jokey Fancy Pants. FOF gigged heavily for a three-year period - mostly in Louisville, mostly at Tewligan’s – and recorded two well received LPs of original music (“Folks On Fire,” “Under a Hairy Sun”) with the ubiquitous Jeff Carpenter at Real-To-Reel Studios before imploding. A letter from EMI Records requesting tapes from the band arrived too late." (Source)

[schismusic]

Joy Division, or: how I learned to stop worrying and love New Order, too

Spring is weird as hell because one time you have this glaring sun that powers you up like being plugged into a wall outlet, then not five minutes later clouds begin to gather and you feel like you're going to die if anything goes south. So the most obvious combination to represent two sides of this same coin, emotional and meteorological, is Joy Division and New Order.

Sometimes you need Transmission or Shadowplay for the sunny days — impassioned jolts, sparks flying everywhere. Sometimes The Perfect Kiss hits harder on a cloudy afternoon, coming back home and in need of that extra push to not fall asleep in the train. It's surprising to realize the versatility displayed by both bands, or the same band in two different iterations according to whomever you ask. Peter Hook says, as late as 1993, that the laziest member of New Order is Ian Curtis. Or again this other person, in the comments under the Atmosphere official video on YouTube, who went to see New Order (Hooky-less New Order, which might be a relevant distinction) at the O2 Arena a couple of years ago and they gave an encore, says "Those of us who stayed got the privilege of watching Joy Division perform three of their songs". Interesting outlook on the matter. I personally saw Peter Hook and the Light play both Joy Division records and, I'm pretty sure, an encore comprised of just Love Will Tear Us Apart at the Arti Vive Festival in Soliera, back when it was still free to attend some of the events. I remember being pretty mad that Hooky had stopped to take pics with basically everyone and then left exactly as I was approaching. In retrospect I don't exactly blame the man, it was like midnight anyway. I remember nothing of the back trip home.

My first contact with Joy Division happened when I was thirteen and very much in my prog era. I was in Rome staying at an aunt of mine's place for my fourteenth birthday and she told me I could get a CD, since I had gotten some money saved up over time. Some Facebook page dedicated to Pink Floyd I'd liked (yeah, Facebook at age thirteen — I literally just wanted to play a fucking Flash game, back when Facebook allowed them, and I ended up getting to be terminally online. Crazy how things turn out) used to share a lot of memes and fanart relating to the Unknown Pleasures album cover, and me being a massive Pink Floyd head at the time I thought "I mean, if these guys are pushing this band so hard, that's gotta mean something". The album cover was pretty striking, admittedly: a far cry from the paisley ass paintings that I had grown to accept as the gold standard for the music I liked, but its simplicity struck a chord closer to The Dark Side of the Moon, or perhaps The Wall. Those were records I liked a lot, probably called them "the best records ever made" to more than one person, not like they aren't but that's a very bold statement to make when your listening experience consists exactly of

Madonna's Confessions on a Dance Floor when I was six;

Daft Punk's complete discography (minus Random Access Memories, which wasn't out yet) when I was twelve;

Pink Floyd's complete discography, courtesy of a CD collection coming out with some Italian newspaper, that same year;

a couple random classic rock records recommended to me by older friends and relatives usually well into their fifties or sixties at the time, random people on Internet forums — which, for clarification, I did not actively attend, preferring to just lurk from time to time — and the OndaRock "milestones" page.

So browsing through the surprisingly expansive CDs section of this electronics shop in Rome, and being mesmerized by a vinyl rack in the days when Music on Vinyl was the final frontier of pretending you could re-analogue the digital ("you mean to tell me these are like CDs, but bigger? Whoever designed these truly lived in the future"), I came across that very same album art that had stricken me so hard. I had listened to the first seconds of the album on YouTube, but that weird drum sound — so echoey, so distant, ultimately not particularly powerful, meaning it didn't really sound like Bonzo: it sounded more like my own band, which at the time didn't even exist yet — I didn't really know what to make of. This store I was in had one of those preview listening machines that would scan the barcode on the CDs and give you a small snippet of the song. I pull the CD up to the scanner, the scanner lights up green, I put on the headphones and the solo from this comes up:

Clearly they had to be kidding me. I had come to know, sneaking into infinitely many rehearsals with the band from my mother's town, what it sounded like when someone tried to play lead without something else filling up the arrangement (even though I didn't really know all that, or at least lacked the vocabulary to properly express it) and, for Christ's sake, didn't these guys notice rehearsing? It sounded empty, weirdly so, and it wasn't my thing, I thought. I put that CD away and picked up a band I knew I'd like — Genesis, specifically. So Nursery Cryme became the first CD I've ever paid with my own money, the very day I turned fourteen. Not a bad pickup. I remember being very impressed with the fast blurring lead guitar on The Musical Box and digging the sweet pastoral atmospheres of For Absent Friends and Harlequin. I still think of that record more often than one would probably assume looking at this blog, or my most played on Spotify. At the time, that was the best move I could take, really: why beat my head against a record that, as your average prog nerd ballbreaker, simply wasn't speaking to me?

Then all of a sudden in August of the same year my friend's dad hands me a 16 gigabyte USB drive, full of random music from all eras of rock. A lot of it remains inscrutable to me for a really long time, most notably Tom Waits (see related post), but I spent the whole month reading random folder names, seeing if something catches my eyes, and at one point I come across the Mars Volta. Open the folder up, read the names of their first three records, and my first thought is "Christ, these guys look incomprehensible. I'm about to have some fun". Long story short: I end up having a lot of fun, the Mars Volta turns into my favourite band at the time and finding out that they had previously been called At the Drive-In makes me gain some measure of respect for punk rockers: if they tried hard enough, I must've thought, they could prog as hard as anyone. In the meantime the ghost of Joy Division remains at the back of my head. I feel like I'm missing something, for the first time in my life: it's not them, it's me. Too bad that same realization didn't occur to me when it came to the people in my life until much, much later, but that's being fourteen for you I suppose. Early King Crimson and the Mars Volta were the pinnacle of violence to me, and not even the very few Metallica songs I'd downloaded just to see what would happen scratched that itch. It felt a bit too cauterized for some reason (I would later find out I had been looking in the wrong direction the whole time: the Black Album "sucked", according to my favourite metalhead of the time, who somehow catalyzed my interest from the very second I saw him in the school's courtyard. Hard to imagine why I would imprint on people like puppies do, but what the fuck, not like I've ever outgrown that anyway, I've just gotten better at managing it). But I felt there was more than violence to this, or different forms of violence. When Christmas came around and my relatives tried to get me presents, my mother asked if there was anything specific I was interested in, and I basically told her "look, if they can get me some CDs off of this list, I'm golden". It had some bangers on it, namely Noctourniquet by the Mars Volta — it's one of their best and I will die on this hill, be warned — and The Downward Spiral, which might as well warrant its own post in an ideal world. But the best of them all I think came from a random purchase, once again with the little money I had lying around at the time.

Closer appears to be, right away, a bit more concrete, and if there's something inexperienced music fans like is a pretty packaging that conjures a strong emotional response before they've even played the record. Compare a color-inverted graph of pulsar emissions to a literal funerary monument. Opening up the booklet I was shocked to see that Genesis was used as a negative point of comparison (bad omen, I thought) by people close to the band, and I came across much more detailed information about Ian Curtis's untimely demise — at that time, something far too removed from my experience to be faced with the delicacy and attention it deserves. Atrocity Exhibition hits like a ten-ton truck, a reference which at the time I wouldn't have been able to make for obvious reasons, and Isolation exposes all the nerve tissue under the skin. Passover comes in and strips everything even barer, and then A Means to an End turns… danceable, for some reason? Big emotional moment with The Eternal and Decades, which I thought actually took them closer to my usual tastes. And yet at the same time I kept looking at Colony, Heart and Soul and Twenty Four Hours as the most compelling cuts. Geometric assault sounding like sheet metal if it were music; rhythmically driven emptiness that serves as a minimal backdrop for depressed poetry, and finally a rocking ebb-and-flow that would probably inform a lot of my interest in GY!BE-like post-rock in the coming years. Very interesting to think that the same guys who'd done Unknown Pleasures could think of this. To this day, when asked, I still do think that Closer is the best Joy Division record, but what does it even mean when the records are exactly two, compilations notwithstanding?

It was around this time that it came to my attention that both Joy Division and another band called New Order had a record called Substance out, both published by the same recording company, both coming out within a year of each other. Looking it up, it turns out it's fully intentional, because New Order is simply Joy Division minus Ian Curtis. It would turn out to be a tad bit more complex than that. Anyway, I look New Order up and kind of have to do a double-take. Synthpop? In my Joy Division? More likely than you'd think, considering Isolation exists. But yeah, that sort of seals it — I wouldn't care about this New Order for a million years. Until all of a sudden a couple of years later David Sylvian bursts like a comet in my face, which of course leads me straight to Japan, the same year as I'd come across Berlin-era Bowie, and you can probably guess where this is going, right?

Well, you'd be wrong. I still don't check out New Order. There's a whole new world open to me — vaporwave and therefore R Plus Seven come to my attention, which leads me to dissect that record like an alien tool of unclear purposes. This of course leads me onto an ambient tangent, taking me back to my Tim Hecker listens of that same year, which has the effect of renewing my interest in "pure" electronic music and the then-rising post-dubstep movement. The sheer experience of sound, the dazzling modernity and innovation, is what's in at the time. I have no time for nostalgia-pandering dimwits: the future awaits. Then all that jazz from the first Godflesh post hits, then God pulls the funniest gag in the history of viral infections to my memory, and I have some time to actually look back, a bit less prejudiced. As it turns out, synthpop is not the devil, as some of you might have surmised by now, and as I relisten to Blue Monday I realized I have never listened to either of the Substance record. I do know some, most perhaps?, of the tracks on the Joy Division one, and I do think the New Order one has the more striking cover art — not to mention I knew, by this time, that this was the one to give Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance its name, and that Your Silent Face soundtracked one of the most memorable moments in Nicolas Winding Refn's Bronson. As the ultimate Hideo Kojima stan, I couldn't let this slide, so I pop the record on and get hit with this:

Way to go, guys. Holy shit. I knew that Ceremony was a Joy Division cut before they could record it, but what the hell — Bernard got it, too. It wasn't a matter of singing ability with songs like these, it's just getting it, finding the right energy. They had that right energy. And then it hit me just as many times these dudes have made Blue Monday over and over again before actually getting it right, and everytime I look into it it's funnier and funnier to realize just how many different attempts it took them to finally be Kraftwerk, but augmented — with the stellar results we all know. Everything's Gone Green, 5 8 6, Temptation potentially, all lead up to this one moment in the history of dance music where somehow three dudes and a girl hailing from Manchester managed to out-gay the Pet Shop Boys (by their own admission, apparently), to shake the whole world's collective booty, to do whatever it is they were supposed to do in this last comparison that would ideally make the previous one a bit less obnoxious but whatever, it's 3am as usual, you know how it goes by now don't you? But then after Blue Monday the record keeps going, and thank god it does, because it's banger after banger. How do these guys keep doing it?

So I spend some time with that record, then it fades down, then it comes back up last month, when the weather calls for it and its parent company. Which is when I find myself watching the Control movie for the first time, surprisingly enough seeing as I already enjoyed the work of Anton Corbijn as a photographer. Looking at all that, it is revealed to me that Joy Division never really having died is not a bug, it's a feature. Everyone is gasping, I get it, but please pick your jaws up and check this out: the band has never learned how to play their respective instruments. One might go so far as to argue they play their own stuff their own way, and that's basically it. Nothing could be further from the truth. These guys jammed, a lot; that's how Joy Division wrote songs, that's how New Order wrote songs, even going as far as having Bernard Sumner fucked up on acid so he could find the chorus to Temptation or the whole band bombed out of their minds on X in Ibiza clubs to write, basically, the entirety of Technique — and even then, not really, there's a couple jangly tracks that the X would most likely render unlistenable but what do I really know? Point being: it might now have been sparked by a music teacher or instructor, it might not have been the product of a process comparable to that within Television, which led them to organically seek out better, more "by the book" musicianship, but New Order were incredibly familiar with their instruments, had formed an element of comfort and understanding that counterbalanced the alien-ness to music terminology.

Peter Hook recently uploaded a Yamaha-sponsored video to his Instagram, which I am pretty sure has a say in running, where he jams on a Yamaha bass and, you know, it sounds like Hooky alright, but it's never a discernible bassline until he kicks into the A major strumming that opens Love Will Tear Us Apart. Before that, he just strolls around the neck, leisurely strumming away at power chords imbued with that thick chorus and reverb combo he became renowned for. I would never, in my wildest dreams, have imagined I'd find myself thinking "okay, awesome, stop talking — I want to hear you jam a bit more" referring to one of the musicians who were part of possibly two of the craziest storiest in the history of contemporary rock'n'roll, also notorious for playing the rockstar whilst carrying the minimum possible baggage of technical knowledge he could. Once again, this is nowhere near a knock to the man — quite the opposite. Ian Curtis asked "persistence, well, what does it matter?", and Hooky (and, of course, the other members of New Order) found a way to constructively answer that question. Moments before Coil, but a bit later than Israel Regardie, they said "persistence is all" and built a brand on finding a way to consistently sound like splendid, eternal, golden children: "like crystal", impassionate, tightly-knit performers with the purity of a child's heart. Ian Curtis had, in certain ways (at least artistically), the purity of a child in his heart, which some might even argue was a distinguishing feature of most of his literary idols — if you think about it, William Burroughs could be your dirty-minded classmate who walked in on his parents sharing an intimate moment in the bedroom (had his parents been gay men, the metaphor would probably fly better, but that most definitely wasn't the case). So the heart of Joy Division remains untouched, if a bit more naked. Heroes of post-punk, sons of the silent age, you can sleep soundly tonight.

[postpunkindustrial]

Stewart Home - The Assault On Culture

Stewart home - Cranked Up Really high

Stewart Home is a writer, artist, cultural critic, something something, something.

Because I am lazy here is a brief description from his Wikipedia page:

Kevin Llewellyn Callan (born 24 March 1962),[1] better known as Stewart Home, is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. His novels include the non-narrative 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess (2002), and the re-imagining of the 1960s in Tainted Love (2005). Earlier parodistic pulp fictions work includes Pure Mania, Red London, No Pity, Cunt, and Defiant Pose which pastiche the work of 1970s British skinhead pulp novel writer Richard Allen and combine it with pornography, political agit-prop, and historical references to punk rock and avant-garde art.

What I have here is a couple of his books for your perusal.

The first is The Assault on Culture: Utopian currents from Lettrisme to Class War

A history of the What followed the Surrealist movements and how it affected culture.

From Stewart Home's Website where you can also read this for free:

This book was written in 1987, things have moved on since then (both for the author and in the world), so please bear that in mind....

Anyway If you want to read it you can get it from my Google Drive HERE

The Second Book is CRANKED UP REALLY HIGH: GENRE THEORY & PUNK ROCK 

The title is pretty self evident but here is the blurb from Goodreads:

A lot of ink has been split on the subject of punk rock in recent years, most of it by arty-farty trendies who want to make the music intellectually respectable. Cranked Up Really High is different. It isn't published by a university press and it gives short shrift to the idea that the roots of punk rock can be traced back to 'avant garde' art movements. As well as discussing sixties garage rock and the British, American and Finnish punk scenes, Home devotes whole chapters to deconstructing Riot Grrl, Oil and the sorry saga of Nazi bonehead band Skrewdriver. This book champions the super-dumb sleazebag thud of The Ramones, The Stooges, The Vibrators, The Art Attacks, The Snivelling Shits, The Lurkers, The Queers, The Germs, The Child Molesters, The Ants and The Blaggers.

Also you can read this on his website or you can get it from my Google Drive HERE

He has his own spin on things but if you find these things worthy of reading about he is worth reading.

[mackmp3]

album recs please 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺I've listened to the same three like an actual 10 times each in the past week (you'll never guess which)

YIPPEEEEEEEEEE my guesses are the bifrost incident ulysses dies at dawn & the arthuriana one. am i right did i get it hehe ANYWAYS YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

without you i'm nothing by placebo - edgy whiny gayboy music (not technically emo but sort of a 90s predecessor to emo)

dry by pj harvey <3 i love that album so so so so much what if grunge but slide guitar & women <3 (well. one woman & two guys but irrelevant)

pink moon by nick drake - sad arty english folk music, really short album but really beautiful & melancholic

I CANT FUCKING SLEEP! by reef brazendale i saw this guy play this album live its soooooo so so so so so so good its like. angry folk? folk punk? i know you cant tell what genres things are but i'm trying to describe it hmm. folk music but about being kinda miserable & living in a shitty flat sung by a guy with a slightly odd voice with a bunch of stick n pokes who wears pink sweaters

welsh goth band called tristwch y fenywod has two songs!! & theyre both really cool <3

[that-strange-artist]

Looking for UK photographers to collaborate/work with.

💜🖤💜🖤💜🖤💜🖤💜🖤

I can do sexy, gothic, punk, sensual, classy, arty, gorgeous, statement, and bold.

Anyone out there looking to make a name for themselves as a photographer, contact me, and maybe we could help each other out

Would love a chance to do a few more low-level photoshoots

#Aspiring art model

🥰🥰🥰

[freeuselandonorris]

As you mentioned fic prompts: I'm not sure this is unhinged enough (although it's André so there's always that possibility) but if you were up for it I'd love to read a James/André shibari fic. Or alternately just them fucking about in Tokyo in general and having a filthy old time.

Also I hope your week improves!

wahh i'm sorry this took me so long! life, and then covid brain fog, got in the way.

anyway, i hope you like this! i had fun revisiting the slutty old tokyo days 🥲

thanks for the prompt and for all the gdocs hype as always! 😘

André puts his feet up on James’s coffee table, dislodging a stack of arty-looking books with his heel. They’ve been drinking steadily for a few hours now; he’s not drunk, just buzzed. 

“Careful,” James says mildly. He’s got the glazed, happy look he gets after a few beers. He’d won at Suzuka two days ago and has been celebrating, in one fashion or another, since. 

André straightens the stack up enough to stop it from toppling completely, then runs his fingers down the spines. James is into all these coffee table books, full of artistic black-and-white nudes and severe-looking women in sculptural clothes. Not really André’s thing, but he has to admit they lend an air of class to James’s otherwise extremely bland Tokyo apartment. The decoration in his own extends about as far as a framed Senna poster in the hallway and his helmet swap collection lined up across the top of the bookcase in the sitting room.

One of the books, halfway down the pile, catches his eye—yellow text on a red background, the title reads ‘ARAKI by ARAKI’. André slips the book out from the pile. The front cover shows a Japanese man holding a banana, kinda punk-looking. Not James’s usual thing at all. 

Curious, André flips it open. At first glance, he can see why James likes it. It’s the Tokyo they know: dive bars and groups of salarymen with loosened ties sitting around their half-discarded otsumami, lines of washing strung between alleyways. 

“This is cool,” he says, flicking through the pages. James, who had been fiddling with the aux cord plugged into his iPhone, trying to get it to connect to the speaker without much luck, looks up.

“Oh, yeah.” He takes a closer look at the page André’s come to a stop on, showing a group of women sitting around a table, deep in conversation, and grins. “You’re not at the good stuff yet, though.”

André raises his eyebrows and takes a swig of beer, flipping through the pages faster. Quickly, it becomes apparent that James was right, when he comes across a section dedicated almost entirely to—well, it’s porn, really. Naked girls, girls touching themselves, sucking cock, spreading their legs for the camera.

“You dirty man,” André says, amused. He can feel his cheeks burning up. “And I thought you were so classy, with your art books.”

James smirks and points the neck of his bottle at the open book. “Tell me that’s not art.”

André looks at the book. It’s a double-page spread, full colour, of a Japanese girl tied in ropes, one white-socked foot barely brushing the tatami mat and the other leg hoisted high. Her eyes are closed, lips parted in pleasure. Her top half is fully clothed in a kimono and obi, but from the waist down the ropes have totally exposed her.

He swallows. It is, undeniably, art. He doesn’t feel like saying that to James though. “Too much bush for my taste,” he jokes instead, pointing at the girl’s extremely well-covered crotch. James snickers and André relaxes slightly. 

Something compels him to keep flicking through, even though it would be far more sensible to put the stupid book back and keep drinking and maybe see if James wants to watch a movie. 

There are a lot more photos of women tied up. The rope is artistically tied in flattering shapes around their bodies, and most of them are suspended from the ceiling or thick posts. André takes a swig of his beer, trying to distract himself from the blush he can feel across his cheeks.

“Took a course on that once,” James says conversationally, having finally got the speaker connected and, unfortunately, now able to pay full attention to André’s journey of discovery.

“What?” André says, momentarily confused.

“Shibari,” says James, and then, at André’s blank look: “The ropes.”

“What?” André repeats stupidly, and mentally shakes himself. He sounds like an idiot.

James looks supremely unfazed. “Yeah, not long after I first got here. I was seeing a girl who was into it, so for her birthday I got us both tickets to a ‘couple’s workshop’.” He leers a bit as he says it, and André’s traitorous cock twitches. 

“Huh,” André says, and swallows. “You should teach me.”

He holds his breath after he says it, expecting James to burst into laughter or recoil in disgust, but James just shrugs and says, “Yeah, alright. I’ve still got the ropes in my room somewhere, hang on.”

He’s up and out of the room before André can backtrack or say he didn’t mean right now or any of the other excuses that leap to the tip of his tongue. André finishes his beer and tries to quell the rising panic in his chest—and the way he can feel his cock fattening up in his pants. 

There’s some crashing about and the sound of drawers and cupboard doors being opened and closed, and André half-prays James can’t find the ropes after all. When James reappears a few minutes later triumphantly waving a small bundle, André tells himself the flip in his stomach isn’t relief. 

“Alright,” James says, eyeing him critically. He’s acting like this is all completely normal, which is making everything ten times worse. “Get your jacket and shoes off and sit on the floor, it’s probably easier with a bit of room.”

For some reason, André complies immediately. He feels ridiculous, sitting there in his socked feet next to the coffee table, watching James untangle a long length of rope from the pile and fold it in half.

“Right,” James comes round to kneel in front of him. “Bear with me, I’ve not done this for a bit. Hold your hands out like this.” He demonstrates, holding his hands out in front of him with the wrists pressed together. André obeys, and James wraps the rope around them twice and then wraps the short end between his wrists and around, knotting the ends. It happens in about five seconds, and André realises he’s been effectively handcuffed. 

“That was fast,” he says thickly. James is still holding the long end of the ropes, and gives it a little tug, grinning.

“Double column tie,” he says, pulling again so André tips forward and has to use his core muscles to steady himself. “Good for tying your girl’s wrists to the headboard.”

“Great,” André says, like he’s going to be able to remember and recreate any of this, like all the blood in his body isn’t rushing southwards every time James tugs on the fucking rope. 

James gives him a long glance, something unreadable in his expression that makes André look away nervously. He undoes the wrist tie and André lets his arms drop, wondering if that’s the end of the demonstration. Apparently not, though, because James shuffles on his knees to sit behind André.

“You can take your T-shirt off for this,” he says offhandedly. “If you want. It looks better that way.”

André hesitates, then pulls his shirt over his head. It would be weirder not to. If he insisted on staying fully clothed, he’d just be drawing attention to the potential awkwardness of the situation, and then James might stop entirely. 

James runs the flat of his hand across André’s shoulder blades. “Put your hands behind your back,” he says. Is it André’s imagination, or does his voice sound lower than usual, a throaty rasp to it? “Bent at the elbows. That’s it.” 

He takes André’s arms and adjusts their position to his liking, pulling his shoulders back and lining his wrists up over each other. André’s used to being manhandled—by physios, by engineers strapping him into a car—but it’s never felt like this before, an electric shock of sensation as James tugs him into place. Something aches in his chest, a desire he can’t put into words. It makes him drop his head forward, close his eyes. 

James loops the rope around his wrists, hand brushing against the small of his back as he tucks the end through and pulls it tight. There’s a bit of fumbling that André guesses is him knotting the rope, and then suddenly James is pressed up against his back, bringing the long free end around his chest. 

Before his brain can tell him not to, André leans back against James. James breathes out a chuckle against the back of his neck. His nipples are stiff beneath his T-shirt, pressed against André’s back. 

Just for a moment, James nuzzles at the curve of his neck, lips brushing over his skin. It’s not quite a kiss, but it’s close. André lets out a breath. His fingertips are already tingling, blood flow restricted by the rope. Maybe that’s why he feels lightheaded. 

“Careful,” James murmurs as he peels himself away and André’s balance falters. He presses a hand against André’s back for a second, steadying him. The skin he’d touched feels cold when he takes his hand away to concentrate on the ropes again. 

He wraps the rope around itself and pulls, the loop around André’s chest suddenly cinching tight. André gasps. 

Swiftly, James kneels up behind him, arms coming around André’s chest once again with the rope, this time tucking it up tight beneath the swell of his pecs. He pulls, hard, and André groans at the pressure, head falling back against James’ shoulder. 

“Good?” James murmurs, doing something complicated with the ropes at the back that suddenly makes everything feel stable even when he takes his hands away. He starts pushing the free end through the tiny gap in André’s armpit where his arms are squeezed against his sides, cinching the rope into a loop around his upper arm and truly pinning him in place.

“Think so,” André says belatedly, licking his dry lips. He feels slightly drunk with it, and it’s not because of the beers he’d had earlier. 

“Certainly seems like you’re enjoying it,” James says with a hint of a chuckle in his voice, and skims his fingertips over André’s waistband, just above his erection.

“Yeah, and you,” André says, too far gone now to care about escalating things, rocking his ass back to where he can feel James’ cock swelling against the seam of his jeans. 

James does laugh then, a breathless inhale.

They’ve forgotten to talk about their girlfriends, forgotten to keep up the charade that this is purely instructional. André gives it one last attempt, thinking about some cute girl, the one he’d been for drinks with a few weeks ago, maybe–how she’d look tied up like this. 

It’s no use. He doesn’t want to think about doing this to someone else. He wants to concentrate on James, right here, doing it to him.

As the thought occurs to him, James moves away, and André realises he’s completely bound.

He wriggles his shoulders experimentally, tries to squirm his hands out of their bonds. He can barely even open his elbows wide enough to move his wrists.

“Fuck,” he says.

“Easier than it looks, right,” James says, very close behind him again. His breath tickles the curve of André’s neck. He tilts his head to the side. To his relief, James takes the bait, bends to scrape his teeth over the tendons and then lick the reddened skin.

James’ right hand sneaks around his waist, hesitating at the button of his jeans. 

“Can I–” James starts, words trailing off uncertainly.

André instinctively tries to grab James’ hand and press it where he wants it, realises he can’t. He curses under his breath and turns his head to the side, pressing his forehead to James’ cheek.

“Yeah,” André manages to grit out, and James lets out a breath. He pushes a hand into André’s jeans. André’s so hard already, the tip wet where it’s been smearing against the inside of his boxers. He wonders whether James will say anything, whether he thinks it’s weird that André is so desperate already. But James just groans against his neck, very quietly, and presses himself against André’s back.

It’s—there’s so much sensation, the tight constriction of the ropes around his upper body mixed with the sweet pressure of James’ hand moving quick and sure over his cock, the warm weight of him from behind. André twists his torso just to feel the way the ropes dig into the meat of his muscles. 

“Yeah,” James breathes against his shoulder, “that’s it,” and then he’s kissing André’s neck again, properly now: mouth hungry and wet with just a scrape of teeth over André’s feverish skin. His hips are moving on their own now, fucking into the tight seal of James’ fist, threatening to destabilise them both where they’re kneeling. 

He shouldn’t look. Looking will make it real, and if it’s real then that means he’s going to have to deal with the aftermath at some point.

Fuck. He can’t not look.

He opens his eyes and stares down the line of his own body, at the way the ropes have bunched his pecs up, his stiff nipples, and finally James’ slender fingers wrapped around his dripping cock. 

He can’t help moaning at the sight. Can’t help it when his stomach clenches and his balls tighten. Can’t help it when he spills all over James’ eager fingers. 

James doesn’t even wait for him to stop shuddering through the aftershocks, just wraps his other arm around André’s waist—another point of restraint—and grinds himself against André’s arse. His bound hands are crushed between them, the covered head of James’ cock bumping up against the heels of his hands. 

Some part of André, the part he usually keeps buried, aches to pull free of his bindings and cover James with his hand, return the favour properly. But he doesn’t know if those are the rules of the game and anyway it’s too late. James’ breath goes short and choppy, his arm tightening around André’s stomach. He pushes his face into the curve of André’s neck. His hips are the only bit of him still moving, twitching spasmodically against André’s ass as he comes into his underwear.

André closes his eyes again, listens to the sound of their mingling harsh breaths. Eventually he has to squirm, reluctant to disturb the fragile peace but suddenly aware that his shoulders are aching where they’re pulled back. 

The motion seems to wake James up from whatever trance he’d fallen into. “You okay?” he says, voice rough, and then his hands are busy in the small of André’s back, undoing the knots he’d put there. 

André nods as James works to free his arms, the ropes falling loose around his chest. 

It’s a lot quicker for James to free him from his bindings than it was to get him into them. His shoulders relax, the muscles protesting at the sudden change in angle.

“Was that–” James starts, and then falls silent. The knots around André’s wrists loosen. His arms drop to his sides, no longer held. 

André takes a deep breath. “Yeah,” he says. “Good demonstration, huh.”

James swallows audibly behind him. His fingertips brush down André’s spine. 

“There’s more I could show you,” he says. The hesitance in his voice is clear. “If you wanted.”

André closes his eyes, counts to three, and gathers his nerve. He turns to face James. 

“Yeah,” he says, and the lurch in his chest when he sees James’ face relax into a smile is as strong as any orgasm. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

[slugcats-and-ghosts]

Mm post time..

Introducing

The Neighbourhood Au

An au by me and my friend @zyekno involving all the scugs as though they were people with houses, jobs and silly clothes :))

And the iterators are like mayors or presidents and stuff idk-

I know this is like a lot of info but I like info dumping so if u read it all, thanks :D

Anyways scug lineup! And their houses i guess-

Including all 9 scugs (some designs which are partially based on the outfits from @zyekno’s fashion meme)

Gourmand, everyone’s dad: constantly hosts barbecues for the whole neighborhood, platonic marriage with Saint??? And they were roommates….

Saint the all knowing: loves History, archaeology and all other scholarly subjects, loves teaching the younger scugs about stuff

Inv/Enot/??? the billionaire and landlord: acts as a platonic sugar daddy to Nightcat lol, keeps offering to just give Arti her house for free but she’s stubborn

Nightcat the gamer: lives rent free in Enot’s mansion streaming and playing video games, comes with the full gamer package

Artificer #1 punk mom! Single mother of 2, struggles to pay rent but Hunter helps her out with groceries sometimes, employed by Five Pebbles

Hunter #2 momdad dadmom! Lives with Survivor and Monk and helps take care of them somewhat, Arti’s kids see Hunter as a second mom/dad/parent, employed by No Significant Harassment

Survivor and Monk! (Might redesign them in the future tbh) can’t decide if they’re kids/teens adopted by Hunter or young adults in need of help (if kids then they like to play tons of games and roleplay together :D)

Rivulet the extrovert: can make friends with anyone, will make friends with everyone, constantly has sleepovers with Spearmaster, might be crushing on Spearmaster but don’t tell! They have a shared treehouse in their backyards. Also really close friends with Moon (the mayor??)

Spearmaster the introvert: Very shy doesn’t talk much to others except for Riv, kinda tired all the time but still somehow really strong, also crushing on Riv but they’re both too oblivious to realize, friends with Seven Red Suns cuz ya, likes to bakes??

Anyways ya that’s all of em. Anyone’s welcome to like use this if they want and even like make up their own version of the au cuz it’d be cool to see what other people think so ya have fun :)

(Also I might colour the scugs eventually I’m just impatient and wanna post it now lol)

[fanonsupremecy]

RomCom idea: Adam Sandler, Dwayne Johnson, Jim Carey and John Cena play californian bachelor roommates (Joey, Corey, Dewey and Davey) who for some reason have to coparent 2 twin teen girls from texas (Enid, an alt girl bordering on goth with a hint of punk whos obsessed with yungblud, falling in reverse, carolesdaughter and MOD SUN and Eva, A super girly colorful bubbly optimist and hopeless romantic who true to her texan roots is in love with country music and is obsessed with scotty mcreery, tenille art, kane brown and kacey musgraves) AND adam sandlers character and dwayne johnsons character fall in love, john cenas character is ace and jim careys character ends up with a character played by megan fox named Delia. Also kevin james and kevin Hart make an appearance as Arty and Darnell who are high-school sweethearts and joeys best friends from high-school and theyre always bickering but about endearing things and they own a lawfirm together and are renowned lawyers. idk who plays the twins maybe Olivia Rodrigo. Just her she plays them both. But she has to be able to do a thick texan accent. Maybe the twins end up in their care because their mom is dying and says corey is their dad so when she dies theyre sent to him except he has 3 roommates who end up fullhousing the shit out of the situation. theres some doubt that corey is actually the dad by himself but he ends up loving them and it turns out he IS the dad but some shit goes down and theres some "CoNcErN" for the girls and the situation but Arty and Darnell help him keep custody. The movie could be called how did we become girl dads, I would also accept this as a tv show. I would prefer it actually. Joey and Corey get married and get a house to raise Enid and Eva in and Davey lives with them too and helps out (so still fullhouse vibes) but Dewey and Delia get their own place close by when Delia finds out shes pregnant and of course Jack Black plays Enid and Evas new teacher who also moonlights as their counselor and the art club leader that their both in this whole time. and the whole time Davey gets asked why he doesnt date anyone by everyone but Joey, Corey, Enid and Eva and everyone else just doesnt understand when he explains that hes just not interested in sex or romance but then he meets Lane played Misha Collins who is also a sex and romance aversed aro ace and they enter a queer platonic relationship and eventually Dewey and Delia start to understand. I want Ryan Reynolds to make an appearance also but idk what his role would be. But it could be really funny if he was the case manager or judge. But idk.

[boricuacherry-blog]

I'm very much a California girl. I grew up in Long Beach, then moved to San Pedro, which was very multicultural. And my stepfather was Thai and Hawaiian. I do have a musical family, my [biological] dad was in a barbershop quartet and my mom had a lovely voice, which I of course didn't inherit. I was really athletic - I played handball in school and beat all the boys twice before the bell rang - and I had a lot of anger I needed to get out, so I figured I would play the drums. I wound up playing in bands within three weeks of starting to play. Thankfully my family was encouraging. I always wanted to be an artist. There was this gallery near our house and they use to offer oil painting lessons. And I was really into that. That was really my jam.

When I heard punk rock, it had a really big impact on me. I was like, Woah, you can do that? In high school, these girls invited me to go see The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Pink Flamingos. Then you start meeting other people, you know, the guys from Red Cross, and The Stingers [a Longbeach band], because they were also seeing the movies. There was a definite crossover with, you know, punk rock and John Waters movies.

Some of the bands I really liked going to see in Hollywood were like, The Weirdos, and X. I really loved X so much. I copied Exene's hair, with just the bangs and kind of like the egg running down your head of different colors, as if you just cracked an egg of colors down your hair. I also liked The Alleycats - God there were so many bands at that time - Nervous Gender - The Bags. I also listened to a lot of Neil Young and Nick Cave and the bad seeds.

I played in a punk band that was like an art punk band. One of my first bands was called Sexually Frustrated. The two girls that were in it were little people [midgets] and you know, I'm like six foot tall. So it was like a visual thing on top of what we were doing. I was also in a band called IUD with the same two women. We were playing with The Omelettes at Camarillo State Hospital. You know, it was very arty, and there were like saxophones.

I met Courtney [Love] through a friend and she wanted me to be the drummer in a band she was starting. Courtney really wanted to make good songs. I don't think I'd ever played in bands where the words were really revealing anything of yourself - the emotional part of being a woman. I really responded to her lyrics. It's like Courtney was speaking for me in a way I couldn't for myself. The words really tapped into something. Pretty On the Inside really spoke to me - all the horrible stuff in my childhood, the dynamics in my family and with other people - that song just really, really spoke to me. I think I wrote a lot of my drum parts to accent what she was saying in the songs. I would, like, ride the cymbal, but make it sizzle - like Rat Scabies from The Damned, he would do that alot. I'm a very emotional drummer. I'm not the timekeeper metronome type of drummer.

When Jill [Emery] joined, that was when Lisa Roberts had left. Courtney let her go because she was threatening the owner of a club with a screwdriver when they didn't pay us. It turned out the owner was the wife of Eddie Nash, the infamous gangster, so Courtney was like, "No she has to go." And Courtney had already been in acting, so she knew all the Hollywood rigmarole.

I wasn't as into Pearl Jam - I was more into Mudhoney. I really liked the garage rock and Iggy Pop - kind of that Detroit thing.

Babydoll [from Pretty on the Inside] was about Madonna. Courtney saw her driving a Mercedes and didn't like it. Courtney worshipped Madonna though. I think that was her playbook. She wanted to be the rock version of Madonna.

I guess it could be said that grunge owes a lot of its existence to Reagan. We were deep in Reagan's America at the time, with the hypocritical values at the time.

Around the time Courtney got pregnant, I was also pregnant, but didn't realize it at the time. I'd had the flu for weeks, and Eric [Erlandson] goes, "Maybe you're pregnant." And it turns out I was. And unfortunately, my relationship at the time was breaking apart because I was always gone [on tour with Hole]. I got a voice-mail on my answering machine that I was being let go from the band, and this was after Eric had already given me money for an abortion. Courtney was telling me we were gonna be playing with Sonic Youth in November in Japan, so she didn't think me being pregnant was going to be good with me playing drums. So I thought, OK, as part of my career move, I'm going to have the abortion. And then she just kicked me out anyway.

I was actually kicked out three times, which a lot of people don't know. Courtney chastised me in the middle of a show because she thought I wasn't playing fast enough. I felt she was publicly humiliating me, so I threw a drumstick at her head. She was mad and kicked me out. Then it was like, OK you can come back if you just do Slimfast and cigarettes and then play drums everyday and do drum lessons. She really liked how I played, but she wanted me to play perfectly, like a Dave Grohl. So I would just comply - I lost weight, etc.

There were a lot worse experiences I had with Courtney, like her telling me, 'I made you,' and stuff like that, like saying I needed to do whatever she wanted at any given moment because 'I didn't even belong here.' So it feeds on your insecurities. That's what manipulative people do. It just got more and more tense that way.

And I mean at first she would, like, spend the night and we would pig out on Entenmann's and watch like weird videos, and have fun like that, but you know, now I realize what she was doing - she was trying to learn all my Achilles heels. And then she would just press on those things when she wanted me to do something.

Courtney was really smart. She was a speed reader - I mean she went to Montessori school - so she's a fascinating person.

Kurt's funeral was intense. There were about 50 people, not a lot of people there. It was Kurt's family, the Sub Pop family, and just all the people he knew. I was around Kurt, but I didn't really know him. We had very few private moments and unfortunately we did not get to be friends. I went to his apartment one time and he was in his pajamas and I sat on their bed. And he was excited to tell me he had a dream about me. He goes, 'We were in Aberdeen and we were riding bikes in my neighborhood,' and I was asking questions and he was telling me about it. And Courtney was standing in the hallway, very Bette Davis, smoking a cigarette, and she goes, 'Well he needs some female friends, but not you, your tits are too big.' And I was engaged to be married, so I don't think she thought I was flirting with him. And then he just looked at his feet, really ashamed. And I left shortly after that. But I'm proud of what we created.

-Caroline Rue, original drummer for Hole

[franciskirkland-deleted]

Is physical training important to England ? If so, is he also doing it out of jealousy? Because from what I can see, his wife likes a fit man.

ok i love that u asked bc i actually do think arthur works out!! not sure that this is a popular headcanon tho. to me he's a very disciplined man, and if not for appearances it's more about discipline, staying in shape, masculine honor and all that. i think he's stronger than he looks, obviously not super buff, i do have different characterizations of him with different body types tho. like my punk england is pretty rugged. nationverse/canonverse england is a staunch military man so he definitely has an exercise regimen. even generic human au rat man sad dad arthur probably hits the gym once in a while.

fran absolutely has a weakness for muscular men (sadik, romulus, ludwig, alfred, even toni is pretty built) and arthur is the jealous type so i'm sure he would be motivated by that. i could go on about their attractiveness disparity and arthur's insecurity being with someone drop-dead gorgeous like fran, but i'll spare you my rambling <3

bonus hot take; i actually don't think françois himself is all that strong. he's a little toned in the right places but that's for vanity purposes. probably has nice arms from carrying kids around all the time, thick thighs from walking and other activities, and lovely pecs for artie to rest his head on, but he doesn't have a six pack or anything.

thank u for the ask <3

[findteenpenpals]

Hi I'm Adrien, I'm in my second to last year of highschool and looking for someone 15-17. I like weird avant-garde art and design. I'd like to email and send snail mail. I like experimental arty music like swans, coild, aphex twin and protomartyr as well as glamrock and srt rock like Bowie, Lou reed, Velvet Underground and New York dolls. I listen to music all the time an my taste expands much broader than that from Fiona apple to Rammstein. I'd like to find someone who likes art and is a bit strange and creative. I like poetry, philosophical literature like Camus, Kafka and Sylvia Plath. I'm also interested in talking about politics, right now I've been very interested in solar-punk values and eco-anarchist ideas. I'm currently trying to start writing more and using tumblr ! I have a lot to talk about in terms of drama too if you want to talk about that. I also love to learn about other people's interests and intricacies and would love to know the fantastic things you have to talk about ((:

contact @xionetti

[celepom]

FAVOURITE FICTION GRAPHIC NOVELS OF 2022

Some of these may be a repeat, but I’d like to give them a an additional boost, as the books I read and loved the most this year (after reading almost 300 books again =w=;;; )

Pixels of You by Ananth Hirsch, Yuko Ota, J.R. Doyle

A human and human-presenting AI slowly become friends—and maybe more—in this moving YA graphic novel In a near future, augmentation and AI changed everything and nothing. Indira is a human girl who has been cybernetically augmented after a tragic accident, and Fawn is one of the first human-presenting AI. They have the same internship at a gallery, but neither thinks much of the other’s photography. But after a huge public blowout, their mentor gives them an ultimatum: work together on a project or leave her gallery forever. Grudgingly, the two begin to collaborate, and what comes out of it is astounding and revealing for both of them. Pixels of You is about the slow transformation of a rivalry to a friendship to something more as Indira and Fawn navigate each other, the world around them—and what it means to be an artist and a person.

神様のウロコ (The Dragon’s Betrothed) by Meguru Hinohara

A country sojourn turns into a forced marriage to a dragon god for troubled writer Chiharu! Troubled writer Chiharu Izunome reluctantly returns to his rural hometown, hoping some R & R will refresh his creative juices. Instead of finding respite, he’s quickly entangled by an old promise to wed a local god! (2 volume series to be released in 2023 in English)

Crossplay Love: Otaku X Punk by Tooru

 In this LGBT+ high school romantic comedy, a nerd and a delinquent find themselves attracted to each other, but only when they're crossdressing at a maid cafe! Shuumei has a problem. He's in love with a girl who works at a maid cafe, but he's too cool to go into a place like that without being embarrassed. But girls can go to maid cafes without seeming creepy, right? When he dresses in feminine clothes and transforms himself into Mei, he can finally walk into the place to meet the girl of his dreams: the lovely blonde Hana. Meanwhile, Hanae is an introverted otaku who's uncomfortable talking to people...unless he's dressed in feminine clothes himself. While decked out in his best dresses, he works at a maid cafe, and finds himself crushing on a young woman who regularly comes to visit him: a cool beauty named Mei! In this delightful LGBT+ romcom, two young people in love are about to find out a lot about each other--and themselves.

Another Kind by Trevor Bream & Cait May

Six kids search for a new place to call home in this middle grade graphic novel. Tucked away in a government facility nicknamed the Playroom, six not-quite-human kids learn to control their strange and unpredictable abilities. Life is good--or safe, at least--hidden from the prying eyes of a judgmental world. That is, until a security breach forces them out of their home and into the path of the Collector, a mysterious being with leech-like powers. Can the group band together to thwart the Collector's devious plan, or will they wind up the newest addition to his collection?

Artie and the Wolf Moon by Olivia Stephens

After sneaking out against her mother's wishes, Artie Irvin spots a massive wolf--then watches it don a bathrobe and transform into her mom. Thrilled to discover she comes from a line of werewolves, Artie asks her mom to share everything--including the story of Artie's late father. Her mom reluctantly agrees. And to help Artie figure out her own wolflike abilities, her mom recruits some old family friends. Artie thrives in her new community and even develops a crush on her new friend Maya. But as she learns the history of werewolves and her own parents' past, she'll find that wolves aren't the scariest thing in the woods--vampires are.

[ao3feed-sambucky]

Damn Poppa You A Rare Breed (No Comparing)

read it on the AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/48508417

by EdwardAllenPoe

EXCERPT FROM THIS WORK:

"After that, Sam dismissed them, so they hurried outside. "They probably already forgot, those punks," Sam muttered to himself.

"Don't worry Sam," Bucky started. "I already forgot too."

"Fuck you!" Sam exclaimed, tossing a wet hand towel at Bucky as the other laughed.

•••

"Since when? And what kind of song is this?" Bucky asked, trying to stave off a grin.

Sam huffed a breath then laughed. "It's Doja Cat, Buck."

""Buddy you ain't shit, need a laxative"? Is this whole song about fecal matter?" He shook his head.

Sam's mouth hung open. "Did you just say 'fecal matter'? How old are you? 100?"

"109." Bucky corrected.

"Shut the hell up.""

 Or;

 Sam Wilson loves cooking and listening to his favorite artis, Doja Cat, and Bucky Barnes thinks his boyfriend is a huge dork.

Words: 987, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (TV)

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Sam Wilson (Marvel), AJ Wilson, Cass Wilson

Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes & AJ Wilson & Cass Wilson, AJ Wilson & Cass Wilson & Sam Wilson

Additional Tags: Domestic Fluff, Cooking, Uncle Bucky Barnes, Uncle Sam Wilson, Bucky Barnes Feels, Retired Bucky Barnes, Captain America Sam Wilson, Inspired by Music, Fluff, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Established Relationship, Bucky Barnes Loves Sam Wilson, Sam Wilson Loves Bucky Barnes

read it on the AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/48508417