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happymetalgirl · 5 years

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2019

Despite all the hubbub about year-end wrap-ups, and decade-end wrap-ups this year, it feels to me like as soon as the year is over and the next one starts people immediately stop caring about all the top tens and bottom tens.

I got really busy over this past December and, along with missing out on reviewing several albums I wanted to review, I totally missed writing the extensive year-end lists I had planned. Last year I had listed over 50 of my favorite albums and nearly 100 of my favorite songs, and I wanted to do lists this year that would follow 2018′s lists respectably. Unfortunately, time got the better of me, and it still has the better of me, but I feel like I still should at least offer some kind of closure on last year.

It’s not going to be nearly 150 entries, but I do want to very briefly give an abbreviated list of my favorite songs, my favorite metal albums, my favorite non-metal albums, my least favorite albums of 2019. I’ll be keeping the lists pretty short, but I’ll go numerically still, starting with the bad news first.

The Bottom 10 Albums of 2019:

Maybe it’s my being calloused to what’s awful, or just doing a better job of avoiding it, but I feel like I wasn’t as angry at my bottom ten this year (2019) as I was at the two that preceded it, and perhaps it’s because I feel like I got pretty much what I was expecting with most of what I heard here; not as many of these were tremendous letdowns like Bullet for My Valentine with Gravity or just horrendous beyond comprehension like Black Vale Brides’ Vale. But just because I expected the shit didn’t mean it necessarily went down any easier when I had to ingest it this year.

Like the two years before 2019 when I did worst-of lists, a lot of the worst of the genre came from obviously contrived mainstream playlist/radio bait projects from bands to which it comes as no surprise. This year didn’t include as much shitty political commentary (being that I could probably fill this list with NSBM if I actively sought that shit out) or nostalgic cash grabs as the past two years, but the staleness of the long-tired formulas by which these radio-aspiring bands adhere to in their pursuits of mainstream crossover (or maintenance) only grows more frustrating the older they get. And the amount of surrender by so many bands to Imagine Dragons’ way of dominating the rock charts has been similarly frustrating. Often cited as the new Nickelback, we now kind of look back on Nickelback with a little bit of rose-tinted hindsight with the realization that it was mostly their omnipresence that irritated us all, and the case is the same for Imagine Dragons, but I don’t remember quite as many bands trying to copy the very unoriginal Nickelback and replicate “Photograph” or “Rockstar”. But I have heard so many acts churn out knock-offs of “Radioactive”, and “Believer”, and “Whatever It Takes” in obvious attempts to get themselves into that band’s royal court on the rock charts. There was of course plenty of unimaginative atmospheric blackgaze and post-metal to be found, but even the worst of that was just ineffective and boring at worst and not so much torture upon the eardrums like the albums to follow are.

10. Bad Wolves - N.A.T.I.O.N.

We didn’t get a Five Finger Death Punch album this year, so Bad Wolves came to the rescue to fill that void in 2019, despite also releasing an album in 2018. Though I’ve seen already that FFDP are slated for a release in 2020, so, great... While I would say that N.A.T.I.O.N.’s few high points made it a slightly better project overall than the band’s debut, those highlights were not nearly enough to outweigh the bafflingly poorly arranged variety pack of trashy alt rock ballads and formulaic alt metal from ten years ago that made up the majority of this album. As erratic as its flow was, everything on this album was so predictable once you got a ten-second taste of any given song, a few too many of which reeked heavily of Nickelback (and I know I just got done saying not that many bands really copied them, but that’s how obsolete and dated this album sounds at times). It’s obvious trying to market to FFDP’s demographic and co-occupy that giant, lucrative SiriusXM niche with them, and I’m just not thrilled to have basically a clone of FFDP walking around, taking up space in the metal ecosystem to keep an eye on.

9. Municipal Waste - The Last Rager

It might seem mean to put an EP down here, but my god this was terrible. If it had gone on longer it would undoubtedly quickly make its way to the top (well, bottom) of this list. I feel like my negative review of Slime and Punishment and this EP could at face value be miscontrued as me just being a sourpuss and a way too self-serious critic or just having it out for Municipal Waste, but I love thrash, I love totally not serious music, and I wish there was more high-profile fresh thrash being released these days. I wish one of the few notable thrash releases I heard in 2019 wasn’t bottom-ten quality. But that is just where Municipal Waste are right now, lazy, run-of-the-mill party thrash that is so deficient in that real vibrant party energy that this style of music needs to work. Yeah, I get that it’s not supposed to be taken seriously, but it’s so clearly recycled that it’s not even fun, the one thing it’s supposed to be. It’s like the shit near the end of the human centipede.

8. King 810 - Suicide King

I really wasn’t expecting much from this album, and that’s pretty much what I got, with the added bonus of a weirdly amateurishly experimental flair to King 810′s usual street-cred chest-puffing brand of retro rap/nu metal. I imagine fans of the band enjoyed the added theatrics and the usual chug-backed struggle bars, but I found the whole thing to be just kind of ham-fisted and kooky. It wasn’t one of the more infuriating releases I heard all year, but I sure as hell won’t be eagerly returning to it.

7. Attila - Villain

This was another musically recycled album from a band that usually makes their appeal through fun, nasty bangers. While the music on the album was, sure, as derivative as Attila’s deathcore usually is, the primary issue with Villain was the soured attitude of the band’s usually charismatic frontman. Fronz went from being the life of the party (who, while oozing with fratboy energy that you really wouldn’t want to be around anywhere else except a crowded rager, you could at least count on to be cool and keep the party going) to that loud, overzealous asshole trying to turn up when it’s totally not the time and then getting pissy when met with resistance, making it about him and making everyone around him uncomfortable and totally. Fronz sounds like a drunk asshole challenging you everyone to chug faster than him at best and like a pushy frat bro at worst, embodying the title of the album way to much in a manner where it’s justified that he be viewed that way, if not generous given the term’s romanticized connotations. Silver lining: I listened to “It Is What It Is” during a workout the other day, and that track is a qualified banger.

6. Saint Vitus - Saint Vitus

I think this is the only doom metal album to reach a bottom ten spot for me at any point this decade, and I’m not surprised that it’s Saint Vitus doing it. The band’s self-titled record was so derivative and wholly unoriginal, it was like listening to a cheap Sabbath cosplay. It was so long ago that I listened to it in full that I honestly don’t remember anything specific about the album, but I sure remember how I felt while listening to it every time.

5. Steel Panther - Heavy Metal Rules

Probably the biggest letdown on this list, I actually really enjoyed the band’s 2017 effort, Lower the Bar; I felt like they had got a better handle on their comedic parody of 80′s glam metal than any of the three albums before it, despite it not getting as much attention as their debut, for instance. This one, however, captured the cringe and cheese of the 80′s just fine, but with the jokes falling flat or way too repetitive, it just sounded like a less subtly raunchy version of an actual hair metal album. It’s another album that’s just supposed to be fun, but wasn’t nearly the experience it set out to be, the difference being that this one’s failure seems to have come more from a bout of writer’s block than anything else, which is understandable, five albums in, to a project that specifically makes fun of one dead subgenre of metal.

4. Arch Enemy - Covered in Blood

This has to be one of the shittiest covers albums I’ve ever heard, with Arch Enemy earning record points for monotony on this one. The whole thing sounds like the band just tossed a hefty album’s worth into an Arch Enemy processor that just stripped away all the songs’ character and replaced it with low-effort growls and robotic melodeath guitar playing. At its best, the band offers up passable by-the-books rehashes of songs up their melodeath alley; at its worst they butcher songs they have no business putting so little effort into covering. And it’s fucking 70 minutes long! So they get points for the agonizing length too, as well as incompetence points (I’ve yet to hear a death-growled cover of an Iron Maiden song go well), and, yeah, laziness points too. So many of these were recorded already years ago as bonus tracks to past albums, yet the band couldn’t spare the effort to make the new recordings like a little bit exciting.

3. Papa Roach - Who Do You Trust?

I’m not even mad about this one; I knew it was gonna suck, my curiosity just got the best of me and I was treated to some of the most laughably amateurish lyricism and poorly dated rap rock and alt metal instrumentation I’ve heard since the Prophets of Rage album two years ago. Jacoby Shaddix is doing features these days with hit or miss results, but what the hell is Papa Roach going to be this coming decade? More of this? I just don’t know whose socks this is supposed to knock off. Who’s getting hyped for more Papa Roach in the 2020′s? Probably me, just to see how poorly this band continues to try to keep up with the already sluggish pace of radio rock trends as the signature style they feel obligated to keep a tether to ages poorly.

2. Skillet - Victorious

Now this one I was kind of mad about, and I was expecting it to be pretty bad too. Skillet sold their soul to the whim of pop rock radio early last decade and haven’t been interesting to listen to for a long time now, to the point where it’s so obvious that raspy frontman John Cooper started his own side outlet for his more passionate urges while he lets the winds of pop rock and Christian rock playlist curation steer his main project for little more than a paycheck. The band’s reputable touring work ethic is such a stark contrast to their transparent artistic laziness and spinelessness. Again, despite the formulaic broad-reaching rock radio fodder, embarrassingly cheesy ballads, the token heavy tune at the end for the long-time fans, and even the obviously contrived Imagine Dragons mimicry being totally predicted, it was still so frustrating how blatantly soulless and capital-motivated this thing was to hear.

1. Mark Morton - Anesthetic

I didn’t really have any expectations for this album, but my god was it the year’s quietest disaster of a collaboration project. I didn’t hear anyone else talking about this thing after it came out nearly as much as I did leading up to it, and thank god. The album is supposedly a solo project from the Lamb of God axeman, a distilled showcase of his creative voice, but the whole thing feels like it was in the hands of label execs the whole time and he was just the guy who recorded guitar tracks to all these songs. For some reason, a lot of these “star-studded”, compilation-album-feeling projects in the metal world don’t seem to come out so well, maybe because no one involved is bringing their A-game to a feature in a compilation album, and that is exactly what Anesthetic suffers from, and it suffers fucking hard, not just from the utter lack of cohesion and poor flow from track to track, but from the phoned-in performances of the guests on the variety of generic, underwritten, surface-level songs. Like, again, this is a project under Mark Morton’s name, one that’s supposed to be guided primarily by his artistic vision; you’re telling me, Spinefarm Records, that the Lamb of God guitarist’s vision of a solo album is various flavors of neutered rock/metal radio bait? And he was satisfied with everyone’s contributions to this thing? The whole thing feels like he was just along for the ride and the project was never even in his hands, like Spinefarm had the idea/opportunity to do a various artists comp. album but thought putting under Morton’s name would be more marketable or something. Maybe that hypothesis is totally off, but regardless, this album is a colossal failure on the performance and writing fronts, the worst thing I voluntarily heard in 2019.

My 20 Favorite Songs of 2019:

Okay! With the trash taken to the curb, I feel like it might be time to address before getting into my favorite songs that they might not resemble my favorite albums quite as much as previous years, one, because this is very abbreviated, and, two, because some songs really lend themselves to enjoyment outside the context of their album more than other songs. One band here lands three entries and probably would have landed a whole lot more on a slightly longer list simply because of how great of music their album this year was for me to work out to. But I tried to diversify this list a bit so that it wasn’t just my favorite additions to my workout playlist. The top albums, I promise, are a far better representation of the year in metal for me. But anyway...

20. Periphery - “Blood Eagle”

Periphery have pretty much crystallized their brand of djent now and spent much of this year’s album doing a little adventurousness with it, but the first single, “Blood Eagle”, was one of the more traditional, crushing, explosion tracks from the album, harnessing hardcore groove, punishing accents, tasty guitar tones, and emphatic vocals of both the coarse and soaring variety. The song isn’t anything new for Periphery, but it’s a tremendous example of how potent they are at their heaviest and how easy it is for them to disprove their detractors who lampoon them for Spencer’s clean singing.

19. Panopticon - “The Crescendo of Dusk”

Despite being a one-off piece kind of off the beaten path for Panopticon for a two-track EP recorded during the previous double-albums’ sessions, this song is a fantastic example of bold, cathartic blackgaze whose soulful choral climax is built up to and pays off phenomenally, and that’s not the side of atmospheric black metal Panopticon usually wanders too. It’s a gorgeous piece that is worth it for every moment of its 12-minute runtime.

18. Car Bomb - “Scattered Sprites”

Switching quickly to a much shorter and more jolting song, it was hard to pick a prime highlight on Car Bomb’s new album, but ultimately I found myself loving the tasty, effects-laden, Meshuggah-esque 8-string mathcore groove of “Scattered Sprites” and the rest of the song’s fascinating tonal jumps from Deftones-ish atmosphere to crushing distorted madness. It certainly represents very well the constantly transforming beast that the band’s fourth album was.

17. Spirit Adrift - “Angel & Abyss”

On yet another album full of songs that would have packed a longer list, Spirit Adrift’s standout moment on Divided by Darkness was, for me, the melodically soulful trad-doom power ballad of sorts, “Angel & Abyss”. The melodic guitar leads being the obvious driver of the song’s feels, the clean and rhythm backing and the seething vocal delivery are perhaps the underappreciated foundation for the extra emotive NWOBHM-influenced guitar leads to shine through.

16. Inter Arma - “The Atavist's Meridian”

Definitely the standout track from Sulphur English, “The Atavist’s Meridian” is a menacing mammoth of a song, twelve-and-a-half minutes of brooding, towering sludge and haunting echoed throat-gurgling growls. Even when the wall of sound gets less jagged, the lour does not let up as the band maintain their fearsome, ominous presence in the song’s more atmospheric middle section and burst back so satisfyingly to round it out. There are bands out there that stick to this form of sludgy, death-y doom metal much more exclusively and religiously than Inter Arma who wouldn’t be able to top this.

15. Opeth - “Charlatan” My favorite cut from Opeth’s most ambitious album this decade, the band actually sound energized and adventurous on this song rather than just playing 70’s prog dress-up. The Meshuggah-esque bass groove on here is of course right up my alley, but the whole song is full of actual progressive dynamic that keeps you fixated on it and it’s intriguing emotive journey.

14. Sermon - “The Preacher”

Being the second-to-last song on the album, “The Preacher” kind of goes hand-in-hand with “The Rise of the Desiderata” as part of the album’s climactic ending, and it’s as meticulous and calculated as every track on the album with its small, this song being a standout for its particular dynamic between is louder and softer sections, making it such a thriller of a track that serves its role as part of the album’s climax beautifully.

13. Misery Index - “New Salem”

I’ve loved Rituals of Power all year and there have been several standout tracks for me, but “New Salem”, with its gruff refrain and relentless powerviolence aggression, has been my favorite from the album this year, one of them top workout playlist tracks for me this past year. It’s a pretty straightforward, fast, brutal track, but god is it effective.

12. Korn - “You’ll Never Find Me”

From the irksome guitar wails from Munky and the thick and tasty seven-string accents from Head, to Jonathan Davis’ volatile vocal delivery, “You’ll Never Find Me”, is one of the (several) prime examples of Korn’s committed return to their old-school sound on this album that really fucking stuck the landing and impressed. That build-up to that fucking intense headbanging crash at the bridge is exactly what made me such a fan of Korn’s early work in the first place, and this song is one of, again, several that shows why more than twenty years down the road while all their imitators have come and gone, Korn have been the dedicated champions of nu metal.

11. Cattle Decapitation - “Time’s Cruel Curtain”

It was honestly hard picking a favorite from Death Atlas, but I felt like this song captured the album’s lyrics’ overall dread and gloom in the musical sense pretty well through the dissonant clean guitars and Travis Ryan’s melodic snarling, which is particularly gut-wrenching on the chorus. And it’s as fierce, fast, and disgustingly brutal as we’ve come to expect of Cattle Decapitation now.

10. Motionless in White - “Thoughts & Prayers”

One of the many vibrant, tasty alternative metalcore bangers from the band’s fifth LP that dominated my workout playlist this year, “Thoughts and Prayers” is undoubtedly the most blasphemously in-your-face, Slipknot-influenced cut that highlights the highs of metalcore heaviness the band have no trouble reaching. The defiant attitude of the melodic chorus’ refusing of prayers for help, and really the whole song’s self-sufficient denial of religion over some of the band’s most potent metalcore to date, got me past a lot of physical thresholds this year.

9. Babymetal - “Arkadia”

Babymetal on their first two albums for me have been a project trying to iron out their vision of J-pop metal fusion in real time with the first and second albums’ primordial experiments producing the odd hit among many more misses, but this year’s Metal Galaxy was far more consistent, less stylistically clumsy, and packed full of hits. And if this list was longer, there wold be several bops and bangers from that record here. And while circumstance had just one song in my top 20 this year, what a tremendous entry it is. The album’s closing track, “Arkadia” starts out like a basic-ass Dragonforce cut, but the triumphant melodies quickly lead into higher and higher echelons of catharsis with the guitar vocalist Su-metal delivering the most powerfully soaring performance of the band’s career. It’s like a Dragonforce song that blows most (if not all) Dragonforce songs out of the water through its sheer unashamed passion. And while I know there are many in that camp who stiff-arm Babymetal and would wretch and rage-quit upon simply hearing Su-metal’s voice come in, I imagine they would have a hard time denying this song’s power if tricked into listening to a guy’s vocal cover over the instrumental.

8. Rammstein - “Puppe”

While Cattle Decapitation’s “With All Disrespect” is certainly a gut-punchingly grim outlook on humanity’s self-destruction, this standout cut from the German industrial metal juggernauts’ self-titled album is undoubtedly the most chilling cut on this list, and quite possibly Rammstein’s entire catalog. Till Lindemann’s poetic narration of the song’s dark story is expertly timed and laid out, but his gripping, manic, wholly unsettling vocal performance, coupled with the rest of the band’s brilliantly scored instrumental tracking, is what paralyzes you in terrified awe of the song.

7. Motionless in White - “Disguise”

Another alt-metal banger that dominated my workouts this year, the opening title track to the band’s fifth album isn’t really doing anything all that revolutionary or stylistically original, yet it’s somehow distinctly Motionless in White and it succeeds and makes it here simply because its execution of such a straightforward, yet often fucked-up style is so on-point.

6. Sermon - “The Rise of the Desiderata”

The grand finish to one of the subtlest, yet most magnificent progressive metal albums of the decade (spoiler I guess), “The Rise of the Desiderata”, even outside the context of the album building up to it, is a tremendous work of patient, well-measured progressive metal that exemplifies so magnificently what that band did with such a small musical arsenal on Birth of the Marvelous. The slow, brooding build-up to the absolutely orgasmic finish is hardly a mere waiting game, with not a dull second of the song, and the thematic climax of “rise! rise!” chants the song finishes on is, for me, the kind of representative of rewarding and immersive journey prog metal is all about!

5. Motionless in White - “Holding on to Smoke”

This one was the sleeper hit (in my eyes) for the band this year; in the album’s marginally weaker second half after the slew of bangers that occupied the first, “Holding on to Smoke” is the perseverant anthem among anthems that almost single-handedly lifts that second half. But outside the context of the album, “Holding on to Smoke” is not excessively heavy like “Thoughts & Prayers”, not even as catchy as the bouncy “<c/ode>”, and not even as sick in the breakdown department as “Disguise”, but it more than makes up for it in sheer performative passion and the compositional consistency that characterizes the whole album and strings the determination teeming throughout the song together into a hugely triumphant banger of a track.

4. Periphery - “Satellites”

Periphery really outdid themselves on the grand, ethereally cathartic closing track to their fourth (and best) self-titled album. Unlike the directly aggressive “Blood Eagle”, “Satellites” is a much longer, more multi-staged, moodier piece that gradually builds up from bright, somber reverb-driven ambiance into several tremendously heartfelt and instrumentally full-bodied crescendos, with the band timing their bursts of heavy energy perfectly. Spencer wildly outdoes himself in particular with his gloriously high-flying vocal performance during the song’s cathartic climax. It’s such a great ending to a great album, and such a great picture of Periphery’s constant perfecting of their sound.

3. As I Lay Dying - “My Own Grave”

It was released in 2018, but I included it here instead of that year’s list because I had the hunch at the time that it would be part of an As I Lay Dying album, and it was. But the first song the band released after their unlikely reunion was always going to be a contentious one given the situation with Tim Lambesis, and being that the song was released at a time when Tim would have still have almost two years in prison to go if he had done his full original sentence of six years, the importance of the band’s first release since that whole terrible situation transpired is hard to overstate. Everyone else in the band had to justify linking back up with a convicted felon and reentering the fold of music again, and “My Own Grave” is exactly the statement they needed to make. During his trial and after his early release, Tim had kept pretty quiet, but from the one somber video exposition he gave before entering prison, it was pretty clear he knew and finally accepted how badly he fucked up, and that awareness of his own terrible failure, succumbing to evil, and his understanding that he still has a lot to do to make things right is what makes this song so vitally confessional and the determination expressed so powerful. And this all comes through not just in the lyrics, but in the passionate performances from everyone on the song as well. It’s an emphatic triumph in classic metalcore fashion through (higher, more real-life stakes than usual for the genre) the worst of one’s own faults.

2. Demon Hunter - “Peace”

This one is kind of the enigma of this list, a more subtle, hard rock track than the rest of the heavy, boisterous bangers here, but what an excellent song it is from the mellower of the sister albums the band released in 2019. Ryan Clark’s smooth, baritone subtlety serves as a veneer of calmness in the face of collapse as he sings a tearful welcoming of the peace from the pain of a sin-ridden world that finally comes with death. There’s almost a suicidal angle to the song, but it might be more representative of one’s readiness to be taken into a divinely peaceful afterlife after a lifetime of struggle, which is pretty insightful from Ryan Clark and captures that feeling in a tangible way even for people with (ideally) many years ahead of them like me, I must say. Either way, it’s a much more sober pondering on one’s own mortality and the temporariness of everything around us than its upbeat rock tempo initially lets on, the kind of meditation that gives people hope and faith in a heavenly afterlife.

1. Rammstein - “Deutschland”

Simultaneously subtle and directly expressive, Rammstein’s lead single from their self-titled 2019 album may not have been as musically outrageous as its grand, ambitious video was, but the song itself sure stands on its own just fine as a tense, conflicted song of pleading heartbreak to a nation and its history, and who better in metal to write a threnody for a Germany caught in the middle of the rest of Europe’s refugee crisis and its own version of many nations’ recent fights against a resurgence of right-wing extremism than Till Lindemann. The tone of the song is so mournful and heartbroken, as though it’s a song about leaving a lover you still want to love, yet stern and firm in its principle.

5 Outside Albums of 2019:

I’ve made a point the past two years to highlight the music I enjoyed outside the metal sphere, usually keeping it to a few mini-reviews of five “outside” albums, and this year it was certainly hard to narrow down the immense amount of quality hip hop, indie rock, experimental rock, especially jazz (Jesus, there was so much good jazz this year), and even some respectable pop music I heard this year. The paragraphs are going to be shorter this time around, but I still wanted to show my appreciation for these albums.

Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains

Formed by David Berman, the former frontman of Silver Jews (who helped pioneer the flavor of indie rock/alt country in the 90′s and early 2000′s that got me more into indie music) ten years after the termination of Silver Jews, his short-lived return from retirement from music through Purple Mountains’ sole eponymous album only became more tragic after Berman committed suicide less than a month after the record’s release. The subject matter was as confessional and depressive as anything from Silver Jews, my favorite song from the record immediately after its release, “Nights That Won’t Happen” (a song very clearly indicating Berman grappling with the guilt of his suicidal mindset), being an even more bleak song in the posthumous context. Upon learning that Berman had come back to music, formed this project, and made this record full of emotionally retching expositions of his mental state in an effort to pay down a crippling mass of debt (which I’m sure had a significant impact on his decision to end his own life), it makes the album all the more devastating and my feeling toward it much more complicated. Much like David Bowie’s Blackstar, Purple Mountains takes on a different light in the aftermath of its creator’s death so soon after its release, the songs on Purple Mountains pretty much as prophetic as those on Blackstar, though Berman’s foreseeing of having to take his death into his own hands as opposed to Bowie’s waiting for the inevitability of the progression of his cancer gives this album a much less celebratory, commemorative feeling than that of Blackstar, though listening back through it now with 20/20 hindsight really puts the similar element of inevitability into perspective too, and it makes it hard to really enjoy this album in a sense similar to how I enjoy most of my metal and most other music. Knowing that this album was secondarily a last ditch effort by Berman to lessen the burden of the tremendous anxiety caused by his poor financial state, and primarily a means of talking himself through his decision to end his life in the likely event that the album and its touring cycle didn’t make that burden bearable enough, it’s very hard to listen to and be thankful for this album that kind of indirectly killed its creator. The existential dread of crippling debt is no light weight, however, and the art Berman made and was proud of should not bear the brunt of the blame for what the procedures of a heartless and oppressive economic system at least catalyzed, if not caused. Purple Mountains is a hard album to listen to, but its tragic surroundings aside, it is a welcome return of one of indie music’s most brilliant and influential voices, even if just for a moment.

Denzel Curry - ZUU

On a much different note, Denzel Curry made a quick return to the studio after creatively upping his game yet again on his 2018 album, TA13OO. And while not as ambitiously conceptual or dense as TA13OO, ZUU was yet another banger-packed display of pure rapping prowess. It’s been stated that good form is just that, temporary, and a mere snapshot of an artist’s trajectory, and that it takes time and consistency to prove class. Well Curry is undoubtedly in very good form right now, and has been for the past five or six years and has been making the most of it, only getting better and better across his main projects and his consistently fire guest appearances. And sure it’s arguable that he’s just making the most of his hot streak by putting out as much as possible while he’s one fire, but it’s at the point where if this was a flash in the pan it would have been over by now, and Curry’s still going. The dude put out a megamix of spare verses already this year, and it’s killer! The man at this point, in my eyes, is class, and definitely one of hip hop’s most exceptional forces now that he’s finally getting his long-deserved acclaim. As far as ZUU goes, yeah it’s quick and more about tight bars and emphatic delivery than any grand concept, but to reduce assessment of this to as if it mere turn-up music would be improper, as Curry uses this album to jump at the opportunity given to him by the traction of TA13OO to elevate his hometown and pay tribute to his friends and family who have been with him throughout his journey, and shed light on the roughness of the reality of life for the people he cares about in Carol City, Florida. And he pays tribute to those who got him here with such passion and splendor that it’s tangible and invigorating even from far outside.

Angel Olsen - All Mirrors

I saw a fair amount of people (mostly outside her fanbase) complaining about Angel Olsen’s handling of her more instrumentally dense fourth LP, which I don’t get at all. Olsen had tread the ground of minimal indie folk thoroughly on her early work and she proved she could handle a bigger instrumental pallet on 2016′s My Woman, of which All Mirrors is a well-executed expansion on that bolsters Olsen’s emphatic sonic presence without suffocating her out of her own songs, which I never had any worries about with the raw vocal power she’s showcased convincingly before. And Olsen remains at her open, heartfelt best in terms of lyricism and songwriting on the album, no drop-off in emotional potency or sonic beauty, so I’m a little confused with some of the griping over this album. I love it and highly recommend it.

Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah - Ancestral Recall

It was hard to pick a from the several great jazz records this past year (so much great afro-percussion-driven stuff coming from the UK lately that has been scratching my itch like crazy), The Comet Is Coming had an LP and a similarly impressive follow-up EP both in 2019 that made thrilling use of electronics amid the energetic jazz madness and Matana Roberts had put out an intriguing spoken-word concept album tied together with some of the most eccentric avant-garde jazz instrumentation I heard all year. But I ultimately went with the dynamic and delicious Ancestral Recall from Christian Scott, whose impressively holistic weaving together of traditional jazz elements with hip hop and modern jazz atmosphere, despite not being as quite up my violent jazz alley as other records this year, I could not deny the magnificence and accomplishments of. The electronics are kept to a minimum and used only to highlight the work of the piano, horns, and percussion typically associated with the genre, but none of it feels at all unnatural or clashing, rather a cooperative interplay between old and new that elevates both and shows what they can achieve in harmony. And yes, there are plenty of boisterous trumpet performances from the main man to quench that thirst. But it’s an album about respect for the foundational work of the genres incorporated and expanding on it rather than demolishing and rebuilding it.

clipping. - There Existed an Addiction to Blood

My favorite non-metal album of the year, clipping. really took the campy genre of horrorcore to far more cinematic and tangible realms through their signature noisy/industrial approach. And There Existed and Addiction to Blood is a project where after hearing it, it left me with a sense of “well, duh”. Of course clipping. would absolutely nail an actually immersive and not totally laughable horrorcore album. The members’ experiences in cinema serve as a tremendous asset to this album as William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes produce an industrially enhanced horror score to soundtrack Daveed Diggs’ gripping rapped storytelling, which takes so many of the genres tropes and breathes fresh air into them to make them far more vital and consequential in this day and age. And the songs (many of which are serious bangers) are immersive, cinematic, and intense in a way that I could see a lot of metalheads enjoying. I could seriously go on about the chilling bursts of distortion on the twisted club turn-up track, “Club Down”, or the cold swagger of Diggs’ delivery on the industrially tense “All in Your Head”, or the suspense of the more instrumentally traditional house-hideout cut “Nothing Is Safe”, but I would be going on for paragraphs, and I said one. If there’s one album for people reading this section to check out, it’s this one.

My 30 Favorite Metal Albums of 2019:

Yeah, 30 is keeping it really short here; I feel like I could have included a couple dozen other very praiseworthy metal albums here, but this post is massive enough and I don’t have time for that. As far as patterns or trends go, metal’s respective subgenres largely continued to mind their own business as the divergent evolution that the genre has been undergoing since the passing of its peak of mainstream limelight has progressed. The metallic hardcore revival is still going strong with a lot of bands outside that scene taking notice and influence from these vibrant younger bands (Code Orange being the obvious prominent example) and their ancestors. I heard a lot more hardcore-influenced breakdowns and noisy industrial-ish guitar work this year than usual, and even though it graced that shitty aforementioned Bad Wolves album, the metallic hardcore song was a highlight and most of the hardcore influence I’ve heard outside that scene has been implemented well. The year also saw a lot of big, storied names in metal releasing high-profile projects and really coming through and exceeding most realistic expectations (with one quite notable exception), so a good portion of this top 30 is going to contain your basic bitch, Loudwire-type picks, but, you know, those acts delivered and earned their way here in my eyes. This whole thing has gotten pretty out of hand, and what was planned as a quick year’s recap is now a gargantuan mega-post, so I’m going to TRY to make these quick.

30. Full of Hell - Weeping Choir

It’s hard to complain about a pretty continuous sequel to one of the most addictive deathgrind albums in years (Trumpeting Ecstasy); I’m sure not griping about it. Weeping Choir may not have as high of peaks as its predecessor, but it’s a similarly compact, dizzying, and forward-thinking release that definitely earned similar respect.

29. King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Infest the Rats’ Nest

Thank god King Gizz released this, otherwise there wouldn’t be a bonafide thrash album in this top 30. Despite not really being a “thrash band” or even a “metal band”, King Gizzard’s adventurousness and versatility makes their adaptability to this style come as no real surprise. In fact the naturalness with which the band play shows that they have clearly always had a true reverence for the genre and have wanted to make this album for a long time. The album is as fuzzy as King Gizz usually is, taking on a very old-school vibe in tribute to the genre’s progenitors without being mere nostalgia. I doubt they’ll do it, but I can dream of more of this from the Gizz.

28. Knocked Loose - A Different Shade of Blue

Knocked Loose have quickly established themselves as one of the strongest forces in metallic hardcore these days, with each album improving significantly off the last, and A Different Shade of Blue being the latest in a string of stronger and stronger releases from them, embodying pure hardcore aggression with precision accuracy and efficiency.

27. Lord Mantis - Universal Death Church

Looking back through this band’s catalog (I hadn’t heard of them before this album), they’ve always taken a very sinister and esoteric approach to experimental black metal that makes them and Profound Lore a match made in heaven as a prime representation of the boundary-pushing ethos the label does well to curate, and Universal Death Church is a fine example of the band’s signature incredible capacity to make black metal nastier and more nightmarish than it already is.

26. Infant Annihilator - The Battle of Yaldabaoth

The Battle of Yaldabaoth is such a ridiculous album and such a treat for it, the unreal, gratuitous techdeath wankery so obscene, it’s impossible to take too seriously and not love for its absurdity. It’s a fun album and one that fast-forwards much of the increasingly fast and techy death metal straight to its next musical checkpoint.

25. Venom Prison - Samsara

A far more holistic death metal album than Infant Annihilator’s, Samsara is just teeming with performative power and calculated technicality. I had said at first that it wasn’t really much of a step up from Animus, but as I’ve listened to it more throughout the year, the band’s subtle maturation really began to show and the album grew on me more and more, so it’s definitely one of the year’s best death metal records.

24. Misery Index - Rituals of Power

Even more emphatic than Samsara was Misery Index’s reaching the pinnacle of their form of powerviolence on their best album to date, Rituals of Power, which suffers no loss of intensity in its incorporation of infectious (though still hardly melodic) hooks, and it puts them at the top of their league.

23. Demon Hunter - War

I had originally cited the more measured, hard-rock-driven partner album, Peace, as the better of the two records Demon Hunter had released this year, but over time, so many of the tracks on the intentionally heavier War that I thought might wane on me stayed strong and some of its other tracks grew on me. The album and its counterpart were such a refreshing pair of releases for the band that I hope revitalizes them going forward.

22. Opeth - In Cauda Venenum

And we’ve got the most basic pick of the list so far here, post-Watershed Opeth. That term has annoyed, frustrated, and infuriated so many within the band’s fanbase who have, at this point, given up (either out of acceptance or intolerance) on hopes of the band’s death metal sound ever returning to the progressive music they make, and I myself have found the band’s lack of ambition beyond simply eschewing growls and metallic elements on the band’s past three albums to be a bit underwhelming with the clear 70′s-prog LARPing finding them punching pretty below their weight. Wow, that was an annoyingly long sentence too. But Opeth finally came through with an album that did more than just imitate the likes of their prog idols like King Crimson, Styx, Yes, and Pink Floyd. In Cauda Venenum is a theatrically big album that puts the band in the kind of creative context in which they’ve proven to succeed in and established themselves in their career in it as the death metal pillar of the prog palace, and the band came through with a rewarding progressive rock album without needing to bring their death metal elements out of retirement.

21. Deadspace - Dirge

Dirge was not the album I expected from Deadspace, but it shifted them from their more somber atmospheric style of black metal into something so much more suffocatingly dark and sinister that they went on to produce another full-length album and an EP in the style of before the year’s end, and I have been loving the Australian band’s more menacing side since the transformation. The band’s first album in this newly terrifying style for them is a masterpiece of vile, demonic black metal that still features what has made Deadspace a worthwhile figure to follow in the worldwide atmospheric black metal scene, and I imagine there is plenty more to come from the tenacious Australian group and have been so proudly supportive of, which I am eagerly looking forward to.

20. Uboa - The Origin of My Depression

This is the first not-completely-bonafide-metal-album entry on this list, but it is a worthwhile and impressive one that I think a lot of fans of the kinds of experimental and black metal that incorporate dark ambiance, industrial elements, and harsh noise could get into. But it is an album as intensely depressive as its title suggests, a meditation on the turmoils associated with its creator’s gender dysphoria and the efforts to cope with and mitigate it that comes through in all shades of pain, from melancholic-ambiance-backed stone-faced recitations of doubt about self-worth to seething, agonized screams of torment for release from the hell of the creator’s condition over abrasive industrial noise. It is not by any means easy listening, and its lyrics demand a lot of emotional energy. Be advised. But also it’s really painfully cathartic and expresses an important and often quieted perspective for those not affected by gender dysphoria to hear.

19. Blood Incantation - Hidden History of the Human Race

I do like this album a lot, I really do, but it has to be the most overrated album on this whole list. So many people wetted their britches over this damn album and jumped to call it a perfect masterpiece of death metal. It’s a very very good death metal album, but it’s not beyond improvement. And, again, it’s good and I don’t want to be tempering the jubilee over this thing in this list where I’m supposed to be highlighting my appreciation for it, but it makes me wonder if this is how people who aren’t that into Meshuggah see the band’s adoring fans (like me). But Hidden History of the Human Race, mind-blown ancient aliens sci-fi concept aside, is a great continuation of the semi-psychedelic modern twist on early death metal that started on Starspawn, and the band’s progressive compositional abilities certainly do deserve a lot of praise, and I do hope that they continue building on this.

18. Inter Arma - Sulphur English

Another band making continual improvements on their sonic foundation, Inter Arma have never let their labels of death or sludge or doom or post-metal box them in or make them feel forced to pick one and stick with it, and Sulphur English is a fantastic example of how wide the band’s capabilities span, with elements of all the aforementioned subgenres mashed together in so many different configurations together and on their own, and it makes for such an overpowering record whose wall of sound really takes a lot of spins to withstand the continuous impact of.

17. Fit for an Autopsy - The Sea of Tragic Beasts

Okay, I’m gonna have to really start being shorter now, because now we’re getting into the top of the list, the cream of the crop of the cream of the crop. And I’ll be here until 2021 if I don’t slow down. Anyway, Fit for an Autopsy reinforced their melodic supplementation to their brand of deathcore on The Sea of Tragic Beasts, and clearly put the work into making sure it meshed well with their style. And the work paid off. While a lot of deathcore these days is kind of departing from that original “core” core that the genre’s early contributors established for more straight-up death metal and other progressive or techy styles (basically just retaining the affinity for breakdowns), albums like this are a fine example of how beneficial this evolution is for the genre.

16. Rammstein - Rammstein

It’s hard to be brief with an album ten years in the making, featuring the best song of the year, but I’ll try. Rammstein’s long-awaited follow-up to Liebe ist für alle da does very much pick up where the band left off in 2009, feeling like a natural successor rather than some contrived nostalgia trip to Sehnsucht or Mutter to appease fans for their patience. And for as much as I unpacked every song in detail in my review, the album as a whole is hard to sum up beyond simply a solid offering of Rammstein tracks, several of which have grown on me since my write-up, like the ballads “Diamant” and “Was ich Liebe”, and especially the whimsical “Ausländer”. Lindemann’s lyricism remains a strong point for the band, and the tight compositions another positive on the album. I just hope it’s not so long until the next one.

15. Slipknot - We Are Not Your Kind

Like I had said in my review, every new Slipknot album is one of the biggest events of the year for metal, if not the biggest, and aside from Tool’s underwhelming return to the studio with Fear Inoculum, We Are Not Your Kind was definitely the year’s biggest release. As has become kind of the norm for them now, Slipknot’s sixth album was steeped in its own turmoil, this time being the confusingly ugly departure of Chris Fehn. Nevertheless, the rest of the band pulled through with a solid album that did quite well to highlight the band’s various strengths and a good balance of classic Slipknot aggression with forward-thinking experimentation with their sound. Yet another big name delivering the goods this year.

14. Korn - The Nothing

And speaking of success from storied bands, Slipknot’s supposed nu metal rivals also really came through this year with one of their best albums in a long long time, and this is coming from someone who has been a fan of Korn’s later era, their untitled album, See You on the Other Side, etc., but the band’s increasingly more committed return to their old-school sound this decade, after the flop of The Path of Totality, has culminated magnificently on The Nothing, which essentially sounds like a modern-produced Untouchables or Issues. The songwriting is consistently well-measured and Jonathan Davis’ chilling performances in the wake of the loss of his wife especially give the album such a real sense of turmoil that heightens the intensity of everything around them. As therapeutic as music is in times of great pain and loss, and as great as this album is, I hope Jonathan’s grief wasn’t exploited or exacerbated for this art, and I hope he is doing okay.

13. Baroness - Gold & Grey

This album got a lot of flack for its indeed frustrating production, with a lot of critics not being able to get past the blown-out, fuzzy, lo-fi crackle that blurred a lot of the songs’ finer details away. And I agree that the band certainly could have put their sonic strengths in a better light with clearer production and probably should going forward. Nevertheless, underneath the hazy veneer of grainy mixing, Gold & Grey boasts great songwriting in the styles of Purple and Yellow & Green, as well as treading newly segue-heavy ground for them. And after a few listens getting used to (or getting over) the album’s production, the sharp-as-ever songwriting and booming-as-ever vocal performances from John Dyer Baizley really come through and are worth appreciating.

12. Pensées Nocturnes - Grand Guignol Orchestra

Arguably the weirdest album to come out of 2019, yet so much more than a novelty project, Grand Guignol Orchestra takes the creepiness of the often-mishandled dark carnival aesthetic and applies it to the band’s twisted brand of avant-garde black metal to make something truly weird and unsettling, yet fixating. The psychotic clown-like screams and wails across the album reinforce this aesthetic to the point of perhaps creating a new subgenre of metal: carnival metal perhaps.

11. Waste of Space Orchestra - Syntheosis

The work of two whole bands (Oranssi Pazuzu and Dark Buddha Rising) joining forces in their entirety, Syntheosis is a surprisingly cohesive and immersive project, as synth-driven as its name suggests and cinematic in its massive sound. It’s a weirdly atmospheric form of experimental, psychedelic black metal that is both serene and crushing; the artists involved clearly had this ambitious project in mind and they worked meticulously to make sure their vision was realized.

10. Spirit Adrift - Divided by Darkness

Again, really trying to keep it short here, but what an album from Spirit Adrift. Divided by Darkness is the album that sounds most like and reminds me most of the most recent perfect album I heard (2018′s Desolation by Khemmis), and the emotional potency bubbling up to the brim of this album’s doomy melodies and soaring vocals is similarly enriching, while not as ridiculously perfect as Khemmis’ latest release, Divided by Darkness takes Spirit Adrift to new heights and makes them one of modern doom-influenced melodic metal’s most promising figures.

9. Nile - Vile Nilotic Rites

The departure of longtime guitarist/vocalist Dallas Toler-Wade was arguably a blessing in disguise for Nile, with their ninth album, Vile Nilotic Rites, being a roaring comeback from the relative lull of their previous two albums, much of which is due to the reinvigorating performances of new guitarist/vocalist Brian Kingsland, whose more traditionally roaring growls breathe new life into and provide a fitting new angle to the band’s Egyptian-themed brand of extremely fast, technical old-school death metal. It’s great to have them back in such emboldened form.

8. Lingua Ignota - Caligula

This is the album that just got me. Very much in a similar, yet more neoclassically-inspired vein of industrial darkwave as Uboa’s album, Kristen Hayter herself has said that Caligula is also not a metal album, and she’s right, but holy shit does it hit harder than a lot of metal tries so hard to hit. I had been trying for months to write a review for this album, but it never came, partly because the subject matter from which the album is pulled is tender and not easy at all. But it’s incredibly important to talk about, and I want to give Caligula some of the written attention it deserves from me. Sure if I just put the album on for unassuming listeners, they probably wouldn’t immediately pick up on the manically shrieked and operatically wailed languishing and biblically proportioned defiance being curses of the project’s creator toward her sexual abuser, but the resilience she puts forth into these proclamations of insubmissive survival is certainly tangible even without knowledge of the heartbreaking history that birthed it. And while it makes tremendous compositional strides from All Bitches Die and Let the Evil of His Lips Cover Him, Caligula, like the two albums before it, is such an enigmatic album that feels wrong to consume in the conventional sense or without anything other than pure undivided attention and empathy for what Hayter is so courageously pouring out of her mind and body for the music. It feels wrong to just put music on as a background for room-cleaning or even working out that comprises real, unbridled emotion about its creator’s rape. Yet I know that everything about Caligula and Lingua Ignota has been about surviving that and overcoming that suffering, so it certainly deserves to be listened to and respected; I would posit, though, that if you’re going to enjoy the sounds borne from Kristen Hayter’s subjection to sexual abuse, its candid portrayal of its aftermath should at least serve as further deterrent from committing such abuse to another person, if not convicting you to stop doing so if you are or actively seeking to prevent it where you know you can.

7. Periphery - Periphery IV: HAIL STAN

Periphery have been a band who I have gradually come to realize I quite respect and rate very highly. Their Juggernaut double-album in 2015 was the major catalyst in this and has become one of my favorite albums in djent (if not my favorite if you don’t count Meshuggah’s music as djent). And while I wasnt as into their 2016 album, Periphery III: Select Difficulty, I have definitely seen this band’s continuous improvement and strong upward trend that their fourth self-titled record has continued. The band went for more than just thick, tasty djent on this album, though the thick tasty djent that is here (like “Chvrch Bvrner” and the aforementioned “Blood Eagle”) is some of their thickest and tastiest. But the band expanded their sound to more ethereal corners that produced impressively cathartic results (such as the aforementioned “Satellites”, and the swaggering “Crush”, and the bright “Garden in the Bones”). Major respect to this band that keeps getting better and making it harder on their stubborn detractors.

6. As I Lay Dying - Shaped by Fire

To say this album was controversial would be an understatement, and to point out that it was important that As I Lay Dying come through in several big ways would be as well. Yet for every bit of vocal disapproval and expression of how irredeemable Tim Lambesis was there seemed equal rejoicing about the metalcore legends’ return. It was important, though, that the band come through with and album the showed their understanding of the heaviness of the context and didn’t come across as trying to bypass it or sweep things under the rug, and they did a tremendous job of rising to the occasion. The band continued where they left off before their disbandment as the strongest force in metalcore, sounding even more impassioned and vital upon their return, clearly enriched by the real-life consequentiality of their music. And while it certainly looks even more impressive given the withering state of NWOAHM metalcore in 2019, let that not detract from the incredible power of the genre’s juggernauts’ return to and improvement upon their best form of themselves before their disbandment.

5. Motionless in White - Disguise

When this album came out I honestly didn’t have a lot of hope invested in it. I had hoped that the band would expand on the best tracks from their previous album, Graveyard Shift, the alternative metal bangers, and focus on what worked well for those songs, and to my surprise that’s actually what the band did on Disguise. I had initially said that the high points on Disguise were not as high as the peaks on Graveyard Shift but after listening to Disguise so much this year, it’s shown itself to me to be such a ln impressive improvement on the direction that Motionless in White we’re heading in, and to put it any lower on this list for the sheer fact that it’s not a particularly critic-friendly album would be dishonest. But after getting more into their catalogue I think that this band are one of the best in their field, and sure, they’re very much an amalgamation of their influences, but goddamn do they channel those influences so effectively into so many flavors of delicious, nu metal, gothy, metalcore bangers. And it’s totally accessible too, I wish more of the bands who are trying to achieve more mainstream success would take the approach Motionless in White are taking, because this shit is actually really fucking enjoyable and full of soul.

4. Numenorean - Adore

Making strides from their debut full-length, Numenorean’s sophomore album is a great example of atmospheric blackgaze at its best without resorting to cheap Deafheaven imitation. Numenorean have found their own way to harness the power of blackgaze into emotionally vibrant compositions that come through triumphantly. I just hope the band can keep this up and expand on what they did here.

3. Car Bomb - Mordial

I had this as the number one album for a hot minute, and even teased about it maybe being a perfect release in my eyes as well, and even though it’s neither of those things, Car Bomb’s deeper foray into melodic and slightly atmospheric territory with their Meshuggah-esque brand of technical mathcore produced some seriously impressive results that I can’t wait to hear more of in the coming years.

2. Sermon - Birth of the Marvelous

I already said so much about this debut album, and it was so close to clinching that top spot, but Sermon deserve to be basking in so much more acclaim than I have seen for them, as this album is a nearly perfect prog metal example of how to do a lot with relatively little. I had expressed my disappointment in Soen’s and Tool’s albums this year, but I think this album really fits nicely into that cleaner section of progressive metal and knocks it out of the park. I know I’m repeating myself a lot from my review, but every little detail and accent is expertly calculated to make as positive of an impact as possible on the album, every note is arranged with both microscopic precision and with the grander scheme in mind, and I cannot get over how mind-blowingly well done this album is with so few bells and whistles or shortcuts. This is THE new band to keep an eye on.

1. Cattle Decapitation - Death Atlas

I don’t know if I like giving the top spot to such a grim, hopeless album, but fuck have Cattle Decapitation earned it, and I can’t blame them for their pessimism either. After aptly applying the disgustingness of goregrind to commentary on human mistreatment of animals and the ugly underbelly of the food industry, Cattle Decapitation turned their sound and their scope to even grander proportions, expanding the boundaries of deathgrind and the possibilities of dirty vocal technique to criticize humankind’s fucking up of the entire planet and foretelling the catastrophe that science has long foreseen. Despite their already bleak outlook on Monolith of Inhumanity and The Anthropocene Extinction, Cattle Decapitation somehow sound even more hopeless in Death Atlas, and Travis Ryan’s greater expansion of his melodic vocal application helps facilitate this, and the band takes their ever-furious rapid grinding battery through so many channels to enhance its epic scope. I should probably try my best not the just regurgitate my very long review of this album, but the band are essentially reading humanity its eulogy in advance and beckoning the end of our species in no romantic fashion, beckoning the universe to ruthlessly purge the species they refer to as a shit stain and move on like we never even happened. This is obviously an exaggeration of their frustration at the inaction and denial of many of the consequences our actions are inviting into our future, but it’s so fitting for the grave circumstances at hand. If there’s any band whose lyrics and sound represent humankind’s self-inflicted ecological apocalypse, it’s Cattle Decapitation, and of there’s any album that paints an adequately dismal picture in fittingly horrifying bluntness of where the world is headed that needs to be understood, it’s Death Atlas. The best and most important album of the year.

And that’s it. 2019, great as always for a genre that refuses to go quietly into the night. A lot of people have been doing decade-summarizing lists, but seeing how long this was, I don’t think I’ll be doing that. Maybe I’ll just post a quick tribute to a few of my favorite albums of the decade that I didn’t get to write about before. But for now, 2019 is over, here’s to 2020, it’s going to be a big year, and I have a few things about that I need to say about that, so that’ll be coming soon too.

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mongrel-eyes · 5 years

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Everything I Read in 2019

In total, I read 45 books of my own accord in 2019, and there were probably about one-fourth as many that I started but never ended up finishing. A loose goal for myself (which I formed in the later half of the year as I realized that I had read quite a lot) was to reach 52 books so that I would effectively have one book per week of the year. That obviously didn’t happen, but it’s not something I feel was of great importance. Last year, I read 10 books (I think I may have read a few more than that, but I don’t remember). That was more than all the books I’d read in the past 7 years added together. The past decade has been a rollercoaster, but this final year has brought something of a conclusion, closure, and some healing. It’s the end of one novel of my life - time for the next.

2019 Booklist

The Slow Regard of Silent Things // Patrick Rothfuss

I have read all of the books published for The Kingkiller Chronicle thusfar; however, The Slow Regard of Silent Things honestly trumps both The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear for me (and I do not say this lightly because I think both novels are fantastic, and I was practically drunk and grinning from ear to ear after reading “A Silence of Three Parts” for the first time). Auri’s quirks and the way she sees and moves through the world is nearly identical to what I have experienced for much of my life. The first time I read this book, I wept because I saw myself so vividly written in its pages. Though it is short, and I think many would deem it as not particularly exciting or significant, I understand it very deeply. As Rothfuss writes in his end letter: it is not a normal story for normal readers; it is a story for the storytellers and the dreamers.

The Magician’s Nephew // C.S. Lewis The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe // C.S. Lewis The Horse and His Boy // C.S. Lewis Prince Caspian // C.S. Lewis The Voyage of the Dawn Treader // C.S. Lewis The Silver Chair // C.S. Lewis The Last Battle // C.S. Lewis

I grew up reading C.S. Lewis’s stories of Narnia. One of my earliest memories is of listening to an audiotape recording of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I remember exactly where I was in this memory, and the exact sentences of the book being read to me through the car speakers. Narnia has always and will always hold a special place in my heart, and it was good to visit again after such a long time away. Thanks to a variety of health problems which had all but wiped out my long-term personal memories, I remembered only an echo of the enchantment of these books, and when I picked them up again early in the year, I was not disappointed.

Educated // Tara Westover

Educated was a hard book for me to read. It was raw and powerful, and I know a fraction of the pain and circumstance Westover describes. In one portion of the book, she writes that believing you are not hurt is sometimes the way in which abuse hurts you the most. I understood that, and by the end I felt so proud of this strong young woman who challenged her entire world. It wasn’t always pretty or heroic (oftentimes it was ugly and lonely), but it was true.

Bridge to Terabithia // Katherine Paterson

I grew up 10 miles away from the small town which served as the inspiration for Lark Creek. It has been a powerful and significant story in my life from the time I first read it early in 2009. Again, due to failing memory, I only recalled an echo of what it really was. One spring morning, I walked outside, hung in my hammock and didn’t budge until I had read this book from cover to cover. It was like reuniting with a very old friend.

Mortal Engines // Philip Reeve

I became interested in Mortal Engines because of the trailers for the upcoming film that kept showing up for me in Spotify. I was thoroughly warned by the internet to steer clear of the film (I still would like to see it at some point, but I don’t have high hopes), but my friend highly recommended that I read the book. I actually listened to the audiobook recording from Hoopla. Barnaby Edwards is a brilliant narrator, and I loved every minute of it. It was not the kind of story that struck me to my absolute core (personally), but it was powerful and captivating all the same.

Where the Forest Meets the Stars // Glendy Vanderah

I picked up this book because I liked the title, nothing more. It turned out to be a beautiful story of the making of a beautiful family (it also made for a beautiful hardcover). It was unfortunately triggering at one point, but despite that I enjoyed the story and the characters and the cleverness crafted into Ursa’s character.

Perelandra // C.S. Lewis

In the Fall/Winter of 2018, I listened to Out of the Silent Planet on my commutes to and from school. Many years ago (I can’t even remember how long), I had read Out of the Silent Planet but had quite forgotten anything about it other than that the main character’s name was Ransom. After returning to it at the end of last year, I listened to Perelandra in late May. Out of all of books in the Space Trilogy, I found this one to be the slowest and least interesting. However, that is not to say that I did not enjoy the book. Lewis’s descriptions of the world on Venus were riveting and vivid, and listening to and analyzing the debate/war between Ransom and Weston was of particular interest and importance to me.

That Hideous Strength // C.S. Lewis

Following Perelandra, I immediately listened to That Hideous Strength. It surprised me later to learn that this third installment of the Space Trilogy was received with the least positive appraisal of the three. I found it to be my favourite of them all. I see many echoes between this fiction and the reality which we face, and that was somewhat intriguing, frightening, and comforting all jumbled together. I have a theory (or more accurately, a hypothesis) which I refer to as “the mortal gods.” I won’t go into any details of it here, but I felt in That Hideous Strength that C.S. Lewis understood my mortal gods. He just called them by different names.

Night Flights // Philip Reeve

I listened to this book on Hoopla, and though it was short I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about the character of Anna Fang. This story provides details on how she rose to become the notorious Wind Flower plaguing the cities from Mortal Engines.

I Rode a Horse of Milk-White Jade // Diane Wilson

I first read this book when I was younger than 9 years old. Even back then, I loved this book, and when I returned to it this year, I loved it again. I had not even touched it for over 10 years. When I was very young, I had a great respect for the Mongolian nomads; and, of course, since this book brought those people to life, it became and is very special to me.

The Bible (English Standard Version)

Though I was raised in a religious household, I had never actually read the Bible from cover to cover (although I had read the majority of it in bits and parts throughout my life and been lectured on it for countless hours). It took me 3 months to slog through it, but in the end, it wasn’t just slogging. I found that if I put aside everything I thought I knew about this book and read it as if it was historic mythology instead of whatever rigid, legalistic stories and verses I had been led to believe it was when I was younger, it came alive in the way the story of Icarus comes alive every time you read a new rendition or see a new painting. C.S. Lewis described it as “true myth,” and I am inclined to believe that approaching it as “myth” is perhaps the most accurate of all the different ways in which I see people trying to describe or understand it and failing in their attempts to squash a god (seriously, the thought of a god in and of itself is mind-bending if you really stop to think about it) to fit into the tiny boxes of their mortal lives.

The Wanderer’s Journal: A Journey Through the Heart of Hallownest // Kari Fry & Ryan Novak

Saying I loved the game Hollow Knight is an understatement. Of course, when Fangamer announced they would be publishing a wanderer’s journal in collaboration with Team Cherry, I had to read it. I’ve always loved field guide-esque books (specifically, Dragonology), so of course I was especially delighted while reading the journal.

The Hobbit // J.R.R. Tolkien

Previously, I had only listened to The Hobbit as an audiobook. Once. That was over 10 years ago (probably closer to 13 or 15 years). This summer, I finally read the words written on the pages myself. Middle Earth is home to me, and it was good to be home.

The Book of Three // Lloyd Alexander The Black Cauldron // Lloyd Alexander The Castle of Llyr // Lloyd Alexander Taran Wanderer // Lloyd Alexander The High King // Lloyd Alexander The Foundling // Lloyd Alexander

I remember I was in the car with my mom and sister on the way to Nowhere one day. I was reading a book of my own in the back (I have a vague recollection that it might have been from the Redwall series by Brian Jacques) when my mom announced that she had a new series from the library that she wanted us all to listen to together in the car. Initially, I was annoyed because my mom did not always pick out the most interesting of books (there had been occasions where I was bored to tears when she picked something), but I grudgingly gave in. Of course, it was The Prydain Chronicles. I returned to these books this summer and barreled through them within two days (during which I had been excused from work with a doctor’s note due to a curious situation). Middle Earth is home, but Prydain (alongside Narnia) has to be a close second.

Native American Myths // Diana Ferguson

I have held great respect and admiration for the Native Americans and their cultures for as long as I can remember. Over the years, I’ve read books on Norse, Welsh, English, German, Greek, Egyptian, and Sumerian mythology; however, finding good books on Native American mythology seemed almost impossible (at one point I did find a book of Native American myths centered around Raven in a used bookstore but it was 60USD, and while I did want it very much, I was a poor student who couldn’t afford expensive second-hand books). Ferguson’s compilation of myths was fascinating to read. Some of the stories I had heard echoes of before in various places, but Ferguson also provided anecdotes and insights of how these myths were woven into the Native American tribes and cultures. Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed learning even a little bit more about these people whom I have admired since I was a small child.

The Fellowship of the Ring // J.R.R. Tolkien

[ See The Return of the King ]

The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen // Lloyd Alexander

I started out reading this story expecting it to be one thing, but it turned out to be something else entirely. I had read it before a long time ago and gotten it mixed up with a different story I have been able to vaguely recall but unable to find for 10 years and counting. Jen’s story is captivating and lovely in its own right – simple and enchanting, like a dandelion wish.

The Two Towers // J.R.R. Tolkien

[ See The Return of the King ]

Tolkien and Lewis: The Gift of Friendship // Colin Duriez

Despite having read the vast majority of Tolkien’s literature and a good amount of Lewis’s, I had never read a biography of either of them. I found this biography addressing both authors and their unique friendship. I enjoyed learning more about both of them and how their relationship formed and affected each other’s work.

The Return of the King // J.R.R. Tolkien

[Unlike Narnia and Prydain, I felt I couldn’t lump the titles of The Lord of the Rings together and still maintain the chronological list; therefore, the first two titles received no paragraph, but here is a summary for all three.]

In lieu of how easy it is to just watch Peter Jackson’s film adaptations, it’s easy to forget how deep and rich Tolkien’s writing really is. I can say this with honesty and without judgement, because I forgot too. Relearning the depths of Tolkien and rediscovering why I came to love and live and breathe Middle Earth in my childhood in the first place was powerful and healing for me. If you’ve only watched the movies, you’re honestly really missing out. Yes, Tolkien loves to talk about plants and trees and forests to no end, and maybe that’s not your thing and that’s okay; however, these stories are pure magic – tried and true.

The Raven Boys // Maggie Stiefvater The Dream Thieves // Maggie Stiefvater Blue Lily, Lily Blue // Maggie Stiefvater The Raven King (+Opal) // Maggie Stiefvater

I had tried to listen to The Raven Boys on Hoopla earlier in the year and become bored to tears – the narrator was just that bad and I felt the whole thing was just doomed to become a terrible love polygon. Several months later, a friend encouraged me to give it another try. I did (this time reading it straight from the page), and I was delightedly surprised. I had heard of The Raven Cycle for years but been too scared to pick it up (honestly, love polygons can be terrible things), but I’m glad that this year I finally did.

Carry On // Rainbow Rowell

I heard of Carry On while in the midst of reading The Raven Cycle. I found it to be highly amusing: reminiscent of Percy Jackson, but perhaps with better writing (in my personal opinion; I still have a fondness for Percy).

Comet in Moominland // Tove Jansson

I have seen screenshots of the 90’s Moomin show for years but never bothered to truly figure out where they came from until recently. I learned that Moomin originally came from a book. I thought it would be a picture book, and I was pleasantly surprised when I learned that Moomin actually came from a book book. I found Comet in Moominland to be heartwarming and cute with beautiful illustrations and words that can speak to the oldest soul, despite being a children’s book.

Call Down the Hawk // Maggie Stiefvater

Ronan was my favourite character from The Raven Cycle because I felt I understood him the most, which is a rather amusing sentiment to me on the surface level since I am probably one of the least edgy people you will ever meet. Learning more about Stiefvater’s world of Dreamers was particularly interesting and important to me (dreams have always been important to me, and dreams have shaped a good part of my life, actually). Chapter 3 (starts on page 19 of the hardcover copy) was very much like reading The Slow Regard of Silent Things for me: I understood, and I felt understood.

Tales from Moominvalley // Tove Jansson

A collection of cute short stories from Jansson’s Moomins. These were amusing, but at this point Moomins are important to me, so the book was very special all the same.

Six of Crows // Leigh Bardugo Crooked Kingdom // Leigh Bardugo

Six of Crows is a significant book to me. I remember when it was first published in 2015. I heard of it and immediately wanted to read it; however, there were many circumstances and unfortunate happenings which led to me not being able to read it until this year. The duology is now ranked among the stories which made me. To me, it’s a victory song.

The Moomins and the Great Flood // Tove Jansson

I had heard talk of the Great Flood in Comet in Moominland and been slightly confused from it being out of context. This book provided the context for this flood and is somewhat of a prequel to the rest of the Moomin books. As always, it’s a cute story with wonderful illustrations.

Shadow and Bone // Leigh Bardugo Siege and Storm // Leigh Bardugo Ruin and Rising // Leigh Bardugo

After finishing the Six of Crows duology, I learned that it was actually a sequel series to Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone trilogy. I finished Ruin and Rising last night and while I didn’t enjoy the trilogy as much as Six of Crows, it provided context for some of the characters featured in the duology, and I enjoyed the characters of Alina and Mal as well as learning more about Bardugo’s Grishaverse.

Other Reading

For school, continuing education, etc… Basically stuff I was compelled to read in one way or another.

Gilgamesh (English version by N.K. Sanders)

“The sleeping and the dead, how alike they are, they are like a painted death.”

The Song of Roland (translated and with an introduction by Robert Harrison)

I’d read this long ago, and re-reading it would have been a better experience if I wasn’t being pressed into writing a paper about it for a professor who was Machiavellian in behaviour but only intelligent in his own pride (these are gentle words).

The Prince // Niccolò Machiavelli

I seriously hate this guy.

The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People // Oscar Wilde

I read this for a compare-contrast essay between the original play and the 2002 film adaptation. I thought it would be annoying and tedious to re-read, but I actually enjoyed it because the professor was simply a delight to work with.

A General Introduction to the Bible // Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix (8th printing, 1975)

I’ve always been interested in how the Bible came to be compiled because almost no one talks about it (asking questions on this topic basically got me excommunicated when I was 12 hah). I read this book to find the answers to the questions I suffered for asking. I found some answers and a whole lot of data (seriously, these people aren’t messing around).

In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens // Alice Walker

A beautiful short story – perhaps one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I have ever read.

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ofstarsandvibranium · 6 years

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Protect My Heart: Part 3

Fandom: Marvel (Bodyguard AU)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: You’re an actress and after an assassination attempt on your life, your manager hires a bodyguard that will be with you 24/7.

A/N: For @buckthegrump ‘s writing challenge.

Part 2 | Series Masterlist

You woke up in the middle of the day. A bit groggy, but you felt well-rested. You sat up on the couch, stretching out your arms and legs.

“Oh good. You’re awake.” you looked back to see Bucky walking towards you with a plate of food and a glass of water, “I was going to wake you up.” He set the plate and glass onto the coffee table in front of you.

“What time is it?”

“Nearly one.”

“In the afternoon?!” you exclaimed with wide eyes.

Bucky chuckled with a nod, “Yeah. You look tired though, so I figured to just let you rest.”

“Oh,” you blinked up at him, “Thanks.”

He shrugged, “No problem. Steve came by to check on you earlier. Said for you to call him when you wake up and all that. Anyway, made you some food. Eat up. Call Steve. All that. You didn’t have plans today, did you?”

You shook your head, “Not really. Well, actually, I wanted to go grocery shopping. I should get out of the house anyway. Been cooped up for three days now.”

Bucky nodded, “Of course. You go ahead and do what you need to do. Sam will bring up his car-”

“Wait, I can’t use my own?”

Bucky shook his head, “We saw that it’s a self-driving car. Those are unreliable and can get hacked into by anyone with the right set of skills.”

“I haven’t had any-”

“I’m sorry, Y/N, but as a precaution, you need to ride in the car that we provide. We know that they’re safe. They’re also bullet proof in case someone tries to catch us off guard.”

You can’t argue against that. Sure, your car was cool and drive by itself, but it wasn’t bulletproof, “Fine,” you mumbled before biting into the sandwich that Bucky made for you.

“Do you know what grocery store we’re going to?”

“Haight Street Market.”

“Alright. I’ll send Nat and Hope over to-”

“Is that really necessary? I know the people there! I’ve been going for years-”

Bucky gave you a stern look, “Y/N, please, our job here is to protect you and that means scouting out every destination you’ll be going to to ensure nothing and no one looks suspicious.”

You rolled your eyes and mumbled, “Whatever,” before taking another bite into your sandwich.

Bucky couldn’t help but scoff, “You know, for someone who was scared shitless these past few days, you really don’t seem like you care about staying alive.”

“I just don’t see why all this extra stuff is needed!” you threw your arms out, explaining yourself.

Bucky took a few steps forward, towering over you, “This ‘extra stuff’ are precautions to keep you alive. So sorry if we’re doing our job.” with that he began walking away but not before hearing you mumble, “Asshole” under your breath.

_____________________________

You sat in the back of a sleek, black 2018 Toyota Camry. You stared out the window trying to ignore Bucky’s presence at the other end of the car. Sitting in the driver’s seat was Sam. You all sat in silence, completely aware of the tension rolling off you and Bucky, but not wanting to say or do anything about it.

When you arrived to the grocery, Bucky spoke to Sam, “Stay-”

“I want Sam to come with me,” you stated plainly.

If you looked to Bucky, you’d see his jaw was clenched, “Sam stays with the car. Hope and I-”

“I really don’t want to even be the same car with you right now, let alone a grocery store without wanting to punch you in the face. So Sam and Hope will accompany me. You stay in the car.”

Bucky closed his hands tightly into a fist as he gritted, “Fine. Sam will go with you.” he nodded his head, telling Sam to go. He fell back into his chair as you and Sam exited the car. He watched as you entered the small market, Hope and Sam following behind you, “Brat,” he mumbled.

His phone began to vibrate and he pulled it out of his jacket pocket. Seeing Nat’s number, he answered it, “Yeah?”

“How come you’re not with her?”

He scowled, “The princess wanted him to go with her instead of me.”

Hearing Nat chuckle just agitated him even more, “Already causing problems, I see.”

“Have you thought that maybe she’s the one causing the problems, Romanoff? Not me? Since she woke up, she’s been giving me attitude!”

“What did you do?”

“NOTHING! All I said was that she couldn’t use her car anymore because it was self-driving and that she can only use our company cars! Then she got all defensive about sending you and Hope over to the store before she got there! Miss Princess is so used to getting her way and when she doesn’t she has to be a brat about it!”

“Hm...have you ever thought that this is hard for her, Barnes? Not only is her life in danger, but now she has us following her around everywhere and telling her what she can and cannot do. It’s not something that she’s used to.”

“But it’s for her safety!”

“And we know that but she doesn’t. Not really. You yelling at her won’t help. You just gotta explain it to her. Give her examples, speak from our experiences, Barnes. She’s a frightened young woman who’s life got turned upside down. Give her time to adjust.”

“Yeah. Okay. Fine.”

“Good.”

_____________________________

“She has all four with her. Two in the store and two waiting outside. I can’t make the grab for her.”

“Report back to headquarters. We need to adjust our strategy. Figure out who we’re dealing with.”

Protect My Heart Taglist (CLOSED): @badassbaker @mrsdaamneron @avengersbabe13@hiddles-rose @denimandcabernet @courtmr @bitchwhytho@thebookwormslytherin @emilysallysmith @partiallyinthecloset@randomfandompenguin @thefridgeismybestie @wellfucksorrymum@moonlightbae14 @feelmyroarrrr @chewymoustachio @doctoranon

#Bucky Barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes imagine #bucky x reader #marvel #au #bodyguard au

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chinasites · 5 years

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I had the option to utilize Spectra connector tubing to utilize this pump with Freemie cups making it ultra compact! Yippee! The battery goes on for in any event 3 20-min pumping sessions and doesn't appear to lose a lot of suction power in that time. It's incredible for a work or vehicle pump. I believed I was facing a challenge in getting it at fisrt yet it's ended up being an awesome buy!

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Britney

5.0 out of 5 stars Yes! Dump your medella and purchase this thing!

Explored in the United States on August 22, 2018

Confirmed Purchase

Omg. I had been thinking about getting another pump for some time. I have been on my breastfeeding venture for very nearly 9 months now and it was the ideal opportunity for my medella to go. That thing was so cumbersome, I continually needed to purchase new parts and the suction was beginning to dull. I did a ton of research and needed to discover something that would accommodate my financial limit. I arrived on this pump. The way that it wasn't a brand I knew about frightened me marginally, yet I read the audits and chose to put it all on the line. I was worried that this pump wouldn't fit effectively, as I needed to buy the littlest flangue for my medella. I LOVE THIS PUMP. Absolute GAME CHANGER. I love that its light and transportable and furthermore remote! I'm exceptionally intrigued with its suction too. Numerous modes and levels make it snappy and simple to take care of business in a fraction of the time it took my medella! The main thing I despise about this pump is the measure of parts that should be taken a section and sanitized...a however of a culture stun having originated from a medella, yet a penance I'm glad to make to have a quality pump!

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NY Tech Family

5.0 out of 5 stars Portable and incredible

Surveyed in the United States on November 6, 2018

Checked Purchase

This is the fourth pump that I claim now and my preferred one!! I have the medella (that I despise), the spectra (that is strong) and the Freemie autonomy (overly compact and quiet). I love the compact one since you can do anything while at the same time pumping, particularly driving!! Contrasted with the Freemie autonomy, this one is significantly more remarkable. What I love with it is the effectively set up programs that can animate a let down and change to articulation mode. It has diverse articulation modes and you can pick the suction level. I love the way that you can pump in packs straightforwardly, that you can change the container to bolster legitimately and that the breast shields can be secured and have a reverse assurance included. In any case, to include conveyability, I utilize my freemie cups with this pump. They are absolutely perfect (it would be ideal if you check pictures, I cut a little bit of the freemie cylinders and fitting the containers of this pump framework on them). I do wished the cylinders were somewhat more and that the pump was more quiet yet in general this is my best pump up until this point, particularly thinking about the cost. I enthusiastically prescribe it to any mama.

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Ashley

5.0 out of 5 stars Best pump! Incredible for moms in a hurry!

Looked into in the United States on October 17, 2018

Confirmed Purchase

Originating from a mother who nearly lost her inventory!! I had been utilizing the Mandela pump from the earliest starting point. Child is right around 5 months now. Wasn't working all around ok. Was given the medical clinic grade Mandela pump notwithstanding the regular.... Still not understanding that much milk out. Purchased every single new part for the pumps and was completely engorged at one point and couldn't get much out. Purchased this dependent on audits and an impulse... what's more, I am soooo happy I did! I was too near losing my milk so early (I'd prefer to go for a year), yet this pump and the numerous levels it gives had the option to pump it full scale and increment my inventory instantly. What I required was a stonger and longer draw from the pump and this certainly does it! I despite everything don't utilize it on it's maximum setting, so it could truly get some obstinate pipes unclogged if need be!

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Battery likewise keep going for a few pumps, so would be extraordinary for moms who work or are in a hurry and can't connect each time!

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Laura L

5.0 out of 5 stars So stunning I purchased two!

Assessed in the United States on May 25, 2019

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I am infatuated with this pump! I've been utilizing the Spectra S2 and cherishing it yet needed a littler progressively versatile pump that I could take to work and utilize when voyaging so I thought I'd check out this. I've been a (nearly) select pumper because of managing a tongue and lip tie at an opportune time so having a decent pump is extremely critical to me. I didn't have exclusive standards yet I've been overwhelmed by the incredible punch this little pump packs! I genuinely trust it exhausts me preferred and quicker over the spectra or the Medela orchestra pump I've likewise utilized. It isn't great however it is truly darn close and at the cost point it is completely brilliant! Here are the upsides and downsides as I've seen them:

Stars

1. Practically identical with Freemie cup framework for most extreme conveyability and opportunity to do different things.

2. Tantamount with spectra pump parts so supplements a home pump framework effectively.

3. Has flawless suction setting different pumps don't care for the long suction setting for faster purging and the variable suction setting that truly appears to help keep the milk moving.

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Cons

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By and large I love it so much I purchased a subsequent one! I energetically prescribe to anybody searching for a pump!

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hellyeahomeland · 5 years

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Me again with more Carrie and Saul. can you elaborate on how it’s different between them? You say it’s evolved but I don’t see how. Things have happened to Carrie especially, but I don’t really see how their relationship has changed at its core. Maybe Saul treats her more like an adult but even that’s debatable imo. I don’t mean to be argumentative for argument’s sake but... (continued...)

Cont… can you give concrete examples of how the development has played out on screen so I can understand it & hopefully S8 better. Specific scenes and what how they weren’t just individual scenes but changed the relationship going forward. Much appreciated! Oh and one more thing re: Saul and Carrie, sorry I forgot. Can you also venture a guess what it means in practice? What do you think will happen between them that will feel like closure or catharsis or something that’s expected of a show’s final season and perhaps finale as well?

Note #1: this became a lot longer than I expected (sorry, you asked!). Beyond what I’ve written, I challenge you to go back and watch these individual scenes. I’ve chosen ones from each season to illustrate the full arc of their relationship. Observe the differences in Claire and Mandy’s body language, in their facial expressions, in their discomfort, in the shared trauma of what’s come before. It’s deliberate writing and deliberate acting. Shorter version of this post is here, from April 2018.

Note #2: I chose almost exclusively scenes of conflict to represent the evolution of their relationship because I believe that conflict drives change.

PROLOGUE:

To understand the Carrie and Saul relationship, we’ve got to understand what their relationship was before we met them. From what we know, Saul recruited Carrie, straight out of college. He saw in her something special and unique, something that didn’t come around every other day. She was gifted but she was also alone. She had no partner. She was socially isolated from her family and from the world (he didn’t yet know of her mental illness). This was an advantage of sorts. It meant she could give herself more and more to the work, same as he did. Remember this is his Achilles’ heel: whenever they call, he picks up. He doesn’t know how not to. It destroyed his marriage. But he molds her in his image. He teaches her, he raises her, the way a father would his daughter. He brings her up. Their relationship melds the boundaries of teacher/student, boss/employee, mentor/mentee, and father/daughter. It’s personal, and it’s deeply intimate.

This is what we are given before the pilot and it’s what we’ve grappled with for nearly eight years: his attempts to harness her gifts–often to her detriment–and her simultaneous resentment of him for it and unwavering yearning for his approval.

Key Scenes in the Carrie and Saul Canon:

#1: “What happened to the Saul Berenson that trekked the Karakoram?”: Much of the season one conflict between Carrie and Saul comes from her three thousand miles an hour suspicion of Brody and him being like “whoa slow down pls.” He is the first person she tells of these suspicions and he essentially shoots her down, causing her to go rogue. It’s here where the lines become blurred between boss/protege and father/daughter, because the way in which he chastises and punishes her feels awfully familial.

So when Carrie finally reaches a breaking point in “Blind Spot” (the original Carrie Mathison Appreciation Episode), we feel that as though a family is breaking up. It doesn’t matter that she comes crawling back to him, just an episode later, remorseful.

Carrie underlines just how much Saul has changed: in her words, from the man who “did three months in a Malaysian prison” (HELLO???? repeat: he raised her in his image) to a pussy. We understand that Carrie and Saul are both outsiders in the CIA. We understand that Saul is still grappling with his former employee David Estes bring promoted over him. While Carrie truly seems to not give a fuck, Saul keeps in line. He says “yes, sir.” He advises caution. None of these are inherently bad qualities but in this scene we come to understand that what drew Carrie to Saul was not his caution, his yin to her yang, but his daring and bravery and “FUCK THE CIA” mentality (there’s a reason why that line is in this episode too).

#2: “You don’t know a goddamned thing”: This scene is now famous for lines like “you’re the smartest and dumbest fucking person I’ve ever known” (he’s not wrong) but this scene is actually one of the more important ones ever on this show, and I still maintain that t“The Choice” is the mos important ever Homeland episode. As to why this scene itself is significant in their relationship, I’ll allow Jacob Clifton to explain:

Saul is one thing only, and his love for Carrie comes out of the idea that they are the same. And he’s right. But because she’s giving up herself to something he can’t, it looks like they are not the same. It looks ugly to him. He fights it like an addict fights recovery, striking blindly at her softest places because can’t stand the change in vector: Her madness is only acceptable as long as it’s useful; her self-abnegation is only positive so long as he can understand it.

I bolded that last sentence because it’s almost shockingly predictive of future seasons. We can hem and haw all we want about Saul’s relative rightness about Carrie leaving the CIA for Brody being a terrible decision, but the truth is that he would have done it regardless of who Brody was. He would have done it if she’d left with Quinn, with Jonas, with Otto, with Estes, with anyone, or all by herself. I don’t actually believe that Saul wants Carrie to be miserable. I just think he doesn’t care. I think he sees her gifts, her “saving the world” (to be totally Mandy Patinkin about it) as a more profound and upright calling than, for example: having a family, being a mother, having an integrated and whole personal life… the list goes on.

But the moment when Carrie tells him she doesn’t want to end up alone her whole life, like him, is probably the first great fissure in what was until then a generally even relationship. It establishes her desire for… something beyond everything he’d ever shown her (she literally turns down the greatest career opportunity ever for THE DUDE IN THE SUICIDE VEST… and like, did we ever consider that wasn’t really about Carrie loving Brody so much but more about how much she really didn’t fucking want to be Saul????). She threatens his control and he strikes her at the knees.

#3: Literally all of season three: It’s difficult to choose a single scene in season three to encapsulate just how much Carrie and Saul’s relationship this season was changed but let’s just discuss the overall arc:

Saul and Carrie come up with a plan to lure out Javadi (i.e., Iran) since they know he’s partially responsible for the Langley bombing. In their shared plan, Carrie will pretend to be crazy in front of the Senate and the press so that she seems vulnerable to the influence of a foreign power. Coolness.

Except Saul changes the plan in the middle and:

Publicly blames the Langley bombing on Carrie

Outs Carrie’s sexual relationship with Brody on national television

Has Carrie committed to a mental institution for four weeks with little to no contact with the outside world

Sics Dar fucking Adal on her when she gets out of the mental institution in order to maintain the cover

The scene at the end of “Game On” where Carrie comes to Saul’s house and tells him the plan has worked is devastating to watch. I don’t think it was entirely clear at the time just how much Saul’s plan had strayed from their shared vision until Carrie tells him, through tears, “you should have gotten me out of there, Saul. You shouldn’t have left me in there.” He doesn’t say anything in response. When she tells him it’s too hard, she can’t keep going, he offers her some tea. It would be funny if it weren’t so fucking sad.

Again:

Her madness is only acceptable as long as it’s useful; her self-abnegation is only positive so long as he can understand it.

Season three was all about that: about the lengths Saul would go with Carrie’s own illness, and how far along she’d left herself go too. Javadi literally makes a speech about it.

Now, Carrie wasn’t forced to do any of this (well, except the mental institution, that was extremely forced). We see at times how desperately she craves his attention and approval: in “Tower of David,” when she pleads with her therapist to give a good report back to Saul; in “The Yoga Play,” where he berates her for getting involved in Brody Family Drama and tells her she’s ruined everything and ARE YOU HAPPY ABOUT THAT NOW CARRIE (god, the father/daughter vibes in that one are nauseating); in “Still Positive” when she calls him, triumphant, after having arranged the meeting with Javadi and he’s like “oh yeah by the way we lost you for a few hours there.”

(This doesn’t fit into the above theme but the scene at the end of “One Last Thing” when Carrie tells him in order for any of this shit to work they have to trust each other is one of the most interesting and important scenes of the whole season, simply because it implies one easy truth: they don’t trust each other. And what a change that is from earlier seasons.)

And yet, he needed her for it all to work. Saul may have been the mastermind of the entire clusterfuck of season three (better on rewatch than you would think!), but without Carrie literally every step of the way, it would have gone up in flames. She lured Javadi to America with her 95%-based-in-reality mania. She convinced Brody to go to Iran knowing it would almost certainly end in his death. And then she went straight along to Tehran knowing she’d probably have to witness it all.

The end of season three is super interesting in their relationship because I believe in my gut and in my soul that Carrie still resents Saul for convincing her to convince Brody to go kill himself. I really believe this. Again, she wasn’t forced. She did this of her own volition. But he planted the seed in her head, and I think some part of Carrie–likely equal parts rational and irrational–blames him for it, even as she mostly blames herself.

I won’t even mention Saul’s complete un-acknowledgement of Carrie being nine months pregnant in the last half of “The Star” but Saul basically ignoring Carrie’s child for four years is more significant than we give it credit for.

#4: “Escape or die. I promise.” The season four relationship between Carrie and Saul is interesting because it upends their previous dynamic. Carrie and Saul were always outsiders in the agency, but now he’s actually on the outside and she’s ascended, more an insider than ever. Also, I know part of it was grief, and again this is not an absolution, but where else do we think Carrie learned her casual disregard for human life? I’m just saying, season four came after season three.

So anyway, when Carrie promises to Saul that he’ll kill him before letting him be re-captured by the Taliban, we almost sort of believe her. She nearly killed him once before (wanna know the quickest way to get me from 0 to 1500 words on this show? mention the end of “From A to B and Back Again.” but actually don’t please).

The middle episodes of season four–Carrie nearly killing Saul, reneging on her promise to kill him, and then tearfully saving him from himself–are extremely moving. And they cement the arc of that entire season, of Carrie ascending where Saul had fallen. “The student becomes the master” (or the Drone Queen, rather) and all that jazz. Her journey to save her soul coincided with her journey to save him. Is that coincidental? Saul stopped being Carrie’s moral compass around the time he lied to her and had her committed. But just as Carrie is finding her way amid the chaos and fog of war, Saul is making backdoor deals with Dar fucking Adal to turn a blind eye to Haqqani’s reign of terror so that he could go and be the CIA director again.

Saul preached idealism and goodness and morality in an increasingly terrorized, dangerous, chaotic world. He raised her in that image. She strayed, but was finding her way back to it. In those final moments of season four, that betrayal is complete. She detaches from him. And their relationship is forever altered.

#5: “There’s a line between us that you drew. Forget that. There’s a fucking wall.” Oh, season five. This is getting really long so I’ll try to be succinct: Carrie and Saul’s relationship in season five is about her being in mortal danger and him being like “lol good luck….. NOT.” Ok, it’s only like that for an episode.

How do they come back from the damage done at the end of season four? I think the answer is that they didn’t. They’re not healed from it. Parts of Carrie don’t trust Saul, and parts of Saul don’t trust Carrie. There are the surface elements of course: Carrie went and found a cool life in Berlin, riding bikes and wearing balloon hats and such, working for a man whose ideals often stood in direct counter to the CIA’s. In effect, she basically went and did the opposite of everything Saul had ever done. That this all comes in a time of real upheaval in Saul’s personal life (Mira divorced him, he’s literally fucking a Russian mole) only makes his ego more volatile.

And then we have The Landstuhl Conundrum. I’m calling it this because it doesn’t yet have a name but I’m referring to the moment when the doctors say that they can’t wake Quinn from a coma, because if they do he will probably die or have irreversible brain damage. But Carrie and Saul believe he has valuable information about a terror cell that he’d eagerly share after coming out of said coma. Honestly!!! This show is extremely ridiculous sometimes.

Anyway Saul is like “what would you want me to do if it were you lying there,” implying DUH she’d have him wake her. She says she can’t speak for Quinn. Well apparently she can, because she wakes him. Cue the irreversible brain damage, the almost-death.

Later Saul comes to see her and Quinn at the hospital and asks how he is. “Not great,” she replies tersely. He tells her he didn’t come here to fight with her.

Resentment City: Population of 1. I’ve actually beat this drum for a few years, but I still think that Carrie harbors resentment toward Saul for coercing her into waking Quinn. First Brody, then Quinn. This isn’t meant to absolve Carrie of blame. She convinced Brody to go to Tehran because she believed in that mission. She woke Quinn because she believed in that mission. But I do think that Saul gave her a nudge and I’m not 100% convinced that without his influence she’d have made the same choices. When we talk about Saul teaching Carrie, about him mentoring her… and then we talk about Carrie having no regard for human life, of choosing mission over man, time after time… how much of that is her nature and how much is him nurturing her toward that outcome?

#6: “Maybe I don’t like the idea of you worrying about me.” Season six is spectacularly dull on many fronts, and the Carrie/Saul relationship is not the centerpiece. The evolution of their relationship after Berlin has taken the shape of something like season three. Saul needs Carrie’s help, she’s in no position to give it, he coaxes her with some terrifying outcome If She Won’t, then she agrees, and things still Turn Out Shitty For Her.

Ultimately I think this season highlights that whatever difficulties they now have working with each other, whatever trust issues they both still harbor, at the end of the day it is ALWAYS Carrie and Saul Versus the World. That’s always what this story has been (though this is extremely different from their relationship being the same as it’s always been), and it’s what the show comes back to after Quinn’s death.

He still cares about her. She tells him not to, he’s not her fucking father. This is one of the great complexities of their relationship: Saul often does coddle her the way a father would a daughter, but he’s a firm believer in tough love and all the forms that can take.

Again, I don’t think that Saul wants Carrie to be miserable. I also don’t think he wants her to happy. Her personal fulfillment and well-being is just entirely secondary to her role in his own mission of Whatever The Fuck. I mean I guess his mission is for the world to be more peaceful and better but like… y’know how Thanos thinks that killing half the universe’s population will help with the suffering caused by overpopulation? I’m not saying Saul is Thanos. But they’re both deranged males! (Also, if y’all don’t think Saul would Gamora Carrie right up outta this dimension if it meant fulfilling his life’s mission then please let me sell you this Homeland lamp!) (But honestly, I’m not saying Saul is as bad as Thanos.) (Do not send in asks about this.)

#7: “You’ve given me a hard time these last few years.” Season seven takes the post-Berlin foundation that season six built and adds some new interesting layers that are like a weird inversion/combo of seasons four and five. Carrie’s more on the outside than she’s ever been and now Saul’s the one who’s gone to work for the enemy.

Still, no matter whatever shit has gone down between them, it’s still Carrie and Saul Versus the World. The show highlights some key ideas in the last three episodes. First, it fully acknowledges that whenever Saul comes calling, Carrie will always answer. Remember how he said this was his Achilles’ heel? Remember how in that same episode Carrie said she was going to be alone her whole life? Remember how Saul raised Carrie in his image? These callbacks are not evidence of stagnation of their relationship; they’re references to its elemental core.

Second, the show finally has Carrie acknowledge the… um… storm of shit Saul has put her through while also fully copping to the extreme codependence of their entire relationship:

I’ve not come all this way in that fucking plane and in my life to fail in that mission when I know I can succeed. You’ve given me a hard time the past few years. I’m in, I’m out, I’m all over the place. I am not all over the place now. I’m here and I’m all in, and I need you to say yes.

She pledges her devotion to the mission (above all else). She acknowledges Saul’s hot-and-cold nature with her. And then she says SHE STILL NEEDS HIS APPROVAL because–say it with me–they are in an extremely! toxic! relationship!

In a nutshell, the evolution of the discord in Carrie and Saul’s relationship started with him putting her life at risk in service of the mission. And now we’re at a point where she fully fucking volunteers for the task! In my heart of hearts I think a non-zero part of Carrie is doing it so he will love her more. Did I mention they are in a codependent relationship?

So where do we go from here?

If you are still reading, congratulations! That’ll teach you to ask me a question about Carrie and Saul! Actually, about five questions were asked. The last–what will happen in season eight that will feel at all like a catharsis–is not one that I’ve actually thought that much about.

I think I’ve made a case for Carrie and Saul’s relationship being the soul of this show–its mangled, twisted soul. The truth is their relationship is toxic. They are both their best and worst selves with each other. Like family, they know what buttons to push, and where to strike to make it hurt the most.

What catharsis looks like in this relationship depends a lot on how you see this relationship. For example, it would be cathartic for me for Saul to die, but that will almost certainly not happen. It would be cathartic for Carrie to strike out on her own–finally–and attempt some type of fulfillment. Also very unlikely.

If I had to guess about what the end of this story will look like for them, it’s probably with Carrie dead. Probably on a mission Saul convinced her to believe in.

Saul’s been alone his entire life. He will never be less alone because Carrie is alive. I guess that’s the prison he has to live in. And then maybe she’ll finally be free of hers.

EPILOGUE:

The above is a reading of their relationship that is quite sympathetic to Carrie, obviously, and quite unsympathetic to Saul, also obviously. You will probably disagree. Gail has written very interesting stuff on how the dynamic of the Carrie/Saul relationship is most like handler/asset. I think that is a very astute perspective and there are definitely aspects of it but I think the relationship more resembles the trope of found family: she is the daughter he never had and he is the stable father she never had, and they will both ruin each other. Fin!

#Anonymous #ask #hyh ask #by: sara #carrie and saul #homeland meta #long ass post

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friendlycybird · 6 years

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Stanuary 2019 Week One - Love

Stanuary Week One - Love

Summary: The most important baby born in the last eighteen years hits a developmental milestone.

Word Count: 1514

AO3

Santiago Lee Ramirez, otherwise known as Baby Yago, was born July 23, 2018, and Stanley Pines hadn’t been there. He’d planned to be there. He’d planned to be there the first week of August. But no, Baby Yago just HAD to take after his dad and show up early to EVERYTHING. Including life itself. So Stan had still been up in the middle of nowhere, hiking the mountains around Gravity Falls with Ford and the kids. Baby Yago’s official time of birth was 8:27PM, and Stan could even pinpoint exactly what he’d been doing at that time. He’d looked at his watch not five minutes before while Mabel chattered on about class options next year at Southern Oregon University. Ford had been engaged in the conversation, Dipper’s mind had seemed a million miles away, and Stan? Stan had been checking the time to see if it was late enough to turn in without being teased about being old. He’d been worried about being called old when the most important baby born in the last eighteen years came into the world.

They’d been relegated to McGucket’s Mansion that summer, as the attic bedroom of the Mystery Shack had already been changed into a nursery. Technically, nothing had been keeping Stan and Ford from returning to their former home, just the younger Pines twins. Neither of them had wanted to be underfoot. Abulita had gone full mama bear mode this late in Melody’s pregnancy, and Melody herself was turning out not much better. When they got back from the camping trip though, Stan had braved the angry women to come back and help out.

Toward the end of September, when Mabel finally left for her second year of college, Stan had asked Ford “So, when were you thinking we’d head out?”

The look Ford had given him was strangely calculating. As if trying to make some sort of judgement. Finally he said “I’ve heard forecasts of a fairly mild winter coming here to Oregon this year. Which, while good news for the locals, is likely bad news for some snow-dwelling cryptids in the area. I might like to stay through the season to observe.”

Stan couldn’t keep himself from grinning. Ford had never been a very good liar, but Stan didn’t call him on it. He was too grateful. Instead he just asked “You think McGucket’s gonna let you stick around that long?”

Ford shrugged. “Probably, but if it becomes an issue I’m sure I can return to my basement study at home.”

It never became an issue. Ford stayed at McGucket Mansion, and Stan stayed at the Mystery Shack. It was actually good to have the space after the close quarters on the Stan O’War II. They saw each other often enough, and Stan trusted McGucket to make sure Ford ate and slept. Which meant Ford was probably getting more sleep than him for a couple months there, given the newborn Stan was living with. Early on he got up for a share of the nightly feedings and changings and whatnot, and as time passed he and Abulita took turns just taking the baby monitor entirely for a night or two at a time to let Soos and Melody rest.

By late November, taking the baby monitor for the night was a little less like giving up on getting a full nights sleep and more gambling with one. Stan had arguably “won” a round with baby Yago’s sleep habits the night before Thanksgiving, when it was well past six in the morning when the little speaker starting blaring the familiar cries that had Stan out of bed and out the door in under a minute. Arguably, because Stan himself had been awake until nearly three.

December 12, 2018 saw Stan offering over dinner for the fourth time that month “I can take care of Yago if he wakes up tonight.” and for only the second time that month, Melody agreed. A handful of hours later, Stan was halfway up the stairs to the attic when he realized he hadn’t even checked the time before he bolted out of his room when the baby monitor kicked on. Maybe it was just the bad dream baby Yago’s cries had pulled him from talking, but Stan would swear there was something urgent sounding in the four and a half month olds voice.

Turns out, there might have been. The little athlete had managed to roll himself most of the way over and gotten wedged at a weird diagonal against the bars of his crib. Stan reached in carefully and managed to dislodge baby Yago and pick him up. He rested the baby against his chest and held him close for a second, bouncing his arms just slightly in what had become a reflexive gesture to help calm him. Then he turned and walked the few steps to the rocking chair by the foot of the crib. If Yago didn’t settle in a minute or two of rocking, Stan would take him downstairs for a bottle. Normally that’d be his first move, but Soos had told him repeatedly to stop reaching to feed the kid every time he was the tiniest bit distressed so Stan was trying to listen.

Stan hummed a little, making quiet sounds that almost passed as musical and mumbling things about “Rocking baby Yago, ‘cause he woke up after I took the baby monitor like a dumb-dumb.” Sure enough, after less than a minute Yago settled and Stan said “There. That’s better. Now maybe you’ll learn somethin’ and save rolling over in your sleep for when you’re older, huh?” The rolling forward-and-back of the rocking chair was also comforting to Stan, even more than half a year since his last time on the ocean. It wasn’t exactly the same at all, but it was a change from solid ground, and Stan always felt at peace sitting up here. Of course, that probably had just as much to do with who he was sitting up here with as with some dumb rocking chair. “Think you’re gonna get back to sleep soon?” Stan asked the baby, not expecting an answer. It’d be hilarious if the kid promptly fell asleep though. That had actually happened once.

This time, Yago did the opposite. His little hand pressed as hard as a baby could press on anything against Stan’s chest, and the little guy actually pushed up and lifted his little head right off of Stan’s shoulder, then looked Stan square in the eye. Stan blinked. Yago was still looking at him, big brown eyes wide open and alert. “Huh.” Stan said. “You uh...you couldn’t’ve waited ‘til morning for this?” Yago wiggled a little, but kept his head in the air. “Seriously, kid, your ma’s gonna kill me if she finds out she missed you lifting your head for the first time.”

As if concerned by the threat, Yago dropped. The side of his little face plopped against Stan’s shoulder. “There ya go.” Stan said. Then “...I’m still gonna have to tell your parents, huh? Can’t keep major milestones a secret.” He rocked the baby a little bit more, then, observed “I mean I could.” Before he could get into the ethical dilemma of lying to family to make them happy, something he probably shouldn’t be talking about with an infant, he felt a little tug at the side of his neck opposite from where Yago was.

By the time Stan remembered he’d been too wiped from the day in general to take off the thick gold chain Dipper had sent him for Hanukkah this year before going to bed, Yago already had his little fist around it and was drawing it into his mouth. Stan eyed him for a moment, and concluded that the chain was big enough, and attached enough, that it wasn’t a choking hazard. “Ya like that, huh?” he said. “Well, somebody in your family’s gotta have a sense of style. May as well be you, right?” Stan chuckled and shifted the baby against his chest, adjusting him slightly before dropping his own head against the back of the rocking chair with a sigh.

Yago gummed contentedly at the chain for a few minutes more before his eyes began drooping. “That’s it.” Stan encouraged. “Get some more sleep, kiddo. We both need it.” Only another few moments later, Yago seemed to have listened to him. The babys eyes were completely closed and he’d stopped actively gumming. So now Stan faced the challenge of getting his chain out of baby Yago’s mouth without waking him. This would be fun.

Sure enough, Yago stirred on his first effort and fussed a little. “Hey, hey, hey, it’s okay…” Stan attempted to soothe, shifting the baby slightly and gently patting him on the back. Yago was asleep again shortly, so Stan stood and put him back in the crib. Then he started back to his own room.

If he stayed in the doorway just watching baby Yago a whole lot longer than necessary, no one had to know.

#stanuary #stan pines #stanuary 2019 #I literally forgot that tag #Soos and Melody have a baby!#fluff #literally the fluffiest thing I've ever written #It's Stan though so things aren't necessarily perfect

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the-trees-have-spirits · 5 years

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In mid-April of 2019, I discovered I’ve been a green witch for my entire life. I found myself wanting to learn as much about this new part of my identity as I possibly could, and to discover what I could do with it. This weekly post is to help with exactly that - to serve as a focus, a single place to compile all my thoughts, my learnings, my findings, my discoveries and realizations.

May 15th, 2019

There’s more here than I would normally write in just one week - this is to catch up on the last month.

What I’ve Tried

I tried aura reading for the very first time on Thursday, on my own hand. Most of it was clear and unreadable, but I did catch tiny glimpses of a deep blue. On my very first attempt!!

I’m trying to make charging my morning tea a daily habit. It’s not perfected - I often forget to charge it, forget to notice results, and have a hard time focusing on visualizing. Drinking tea - and even being interested in it! - is such a new interest for me too, so there’s still much progress to be made.

I’m also trying to make thanking the earth and the sky upon my first steps outside a daily habit, but I’m having an even harder time remembering to do that. It’s worth noting though - it was raining pretty hard the first morning I tried. I got to my car and started driving to work - and nearly immediately, the rain stopped. Like, completely. It would have been the kind of rain that makes it hard to see while driving, otherwise. But it was clear for the entire length of my drive. And it picked back up again almost right after I got to the office. That, sent chills down my spine.

I was on the local Renaissance Faire grounds on Saturday for the first time since the season ended last fall, and while there I visited one of my favorite shops for old time’s sake - what I thought was primarily an incense shop, built into a forest thicket. I had no idea that it was actually a witchcraft supply shop, until I walked into it this time knowing what I do now. The walls were crowded with herbs for sale, and loose leaf teas, and mortars and pestals, and essential oils, along with so many different kinds and scents of incense.. I wanted to stay for so much longer, and appreciate everything, maybe ask some questions of the shopkeepers, maybe even buy some things.. but I’m still in the broom closet, and I was with Tyler at the time.

I also discovered the Faire’s tea shop for the very first time, and actually DID buy some tea from that lovely, lovely shop. I also bought a diffuser, so I can play with loose leaf tea right alongside bagged tea. And there is a beautiful garden in the back of that shop for anyone to enjoy, and let me tell you, when the weather isn’t cold and rainy, and I’m back for the regular Faire season come August, I am going to spend so much time getting to know that garden.

I also noticed that there are so many other witchy shops at the Faire that I had no idea were the real thing. The herb shop, the tea shop, a candle and lantern shop, multiple jewelry and clothing shops, another shop selling I don’t even remember what but is inside another thicket, but at this one the thicket is the shop, with walls made of leaves and branches, instead of a shop getting built inside a thicket.. I cannot wait until August so I can take a closer look around, and see what exactly has been under my nose this whole time.

What I’ve Learned

Oh, many, many things already. It has technically been a month, and I haven’t been recording anything in that time until now. So to save myself the stress of trying to just remember everything, I’m just going to list what I’ve learned in the last week, and anything else as it comes up.

My aura is deep blue. Or, at least it was Thursday afternoon. I’m not sure if it’s a permanent color, or if it changes from moment to moment. A quick google search turns up this as its meaning:

If your aura energy is blue, you're intuitive, and you love helping people. You remain calm during a crisis. Others lean on you for support. Royal blue aura: This means you are a highly developed spiritual intuitive or clairvoyant.

How about that shit. I wouldn’t say I’m “highly developed”... but that potential is absolutely there. It is raw and untamed and I have had run-ins with powerful spiritual experiences before.

I swear there’s some kind of magic in music. I listened to a Harry Potter ambient video on YouTube on Monday evening as background noise, the first time I poked into anything Harry Potter since learning I’m a witch, and that took me on a ride. The emotions I felt were unreal. I don’t even get that emotional anymore listening to the soundtracks just by themselves. ... there was something about that mix. I wonder what that power is, whether it’s something in me or something in the music, and what other ways it can come to call. It is unlikely I’m just making too much of it.. one of the very first things I’ve learned is that there is no such thing as coincidence.

How I’m Learning

I started off doing a little bit of googling, and haunting a Facebook group I’m a member of called DIY Witches. But now I’ve moved to mostly following and creeping on fellow witchy blogs, so if I like A WHOLE TON of your old posts at once, that’s why. Don’t mind me, I’m just collecting posts to reblog and keep, once I get to them in my likes to add to my queue.

Honestly, Tumblr witchcraft is SO MUCH MORE informative and varied - and not to mention woke - than anything I’d yet seen anywhere else. You are my people. I am going to learn so much here.

My Situation

I am 28 years old, work as a project manager at a full-time office job, and live in a rented townhouse with my boyfriend, Tyler. We moved in together July of 2018, have been together for almost four years now (four years in August!), and have been seriously talking about engagement. We have not been without our hiccups of varying severity, but we always work on understanding each other and finding a compromise, and things always work out in the end. I love him with all my heart and can’t imagine my life being spent with anyone else.

I was living in my parents’ house prior to moving last July. So, this is the very first time I’m living on my own, and dealing with all the responsibilities of adulthood on top of working a full-time job, home management, and dedicating time to my relationship. Finding time for myself and my multitudes of hobbies (I have so many) has been one of my biggest challenges, and highest priorities. And I’m happy to say I’ve been mostly successful in it. I’ve even been balancing a semi-good social life with it all.

With all that said, finding the time - but mostly, the energy - to devote entirely to witchcraft is something I have only barely begun to address. With everything else that takes up my time, and the balance I only just seemed to discover, I have not yet figured out how to add this as well.

And perhaps the more detrimental factor is Tyler. He doesn’t believe in anything in this vein at all, and in fact has been known to make fun of it on a regular basis. It’s entirely possible it’s because he’s understanding it incorrectly, and generally just doesn’t believe in any kind of spirituality. But currently, I am not comfortable talking to him about it at all. Maybe someday I’ll talk to him about it, and reveal what I am and what I feel, and help him learn and better understand. Maybe. But for right now, I have to keep anything I do quiet, private, and hidden.

Luckily, though, I’ve already been incorporating my love for trees and all things green into every aspect of my life for the last several years. I have made no effort to hide it. I thought it was just me “living my aesthetic.” Turns out it all meant so much more than that. And, hey - it can make it really easy to disguise things that are actually witchy as just “part of my aesthetic.” So I may actually be able to do some things without being discovered. 😊

My Story

This is something that will have to wait for another post. This one is already long enough. But, just you wait. This story reveals everything, and why my blog name is what it is. 🌳 💖 ✨

This Week’s Witchcraft Posts

Energetic Healing: Waterbending Style

Browse my tags: #witchcraft [useful] ❀ #witchy [aesthetic]

#witchy wednesdays #green witch #witchblr #witchcraft #pagan #personal

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beccaland · 6 years

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Beccaland reads and responds to an article about Doctor Who that she really should have known better than to have read in the first place

You know how you KNOW you should never read the comments sections, but sometimes you just can’t help yourself? That’s usually how I feel about reading articles about Doctor Who during the past few years, except from a handful of trusted sources. Yet there I was this morning, checking my regular email from Tor.com, and out of a slightly-morbid curiosity, I found myself reading “How It Feels to Want to Watch Doctor Who Again” by Alex Brown.

Partly, I really am interested in the fans who are getting interested in Doctor Who again. They left for a lot of reasons, and really you can’t begrudge anyone’s waning interest in a TV show. And it would be far, far more silly to begrudge them regaining interest! I’m excited for the awesome changes that are coming on October 7th, too. And I am fully aware that not every era is every fan’s cup of tea. On the other hand, I also know that I’m frequently irritated by the shallow criticism levelled in order to “justify” some fans’ disaffection. So there I was. Reading an article I knew very well was probably going to annoy me, like a masochist.

And just because I feel like it, I’m going to quote a bunch of it and offer my own commentary. I’m going to be as fair as I can, noting where I think a given critique is valid, where I think it’s valid but still disagree, and where I think it’s the same old tired, inaccurate nonsense.

Here we go:

“I miss Doctor Who.”

ME TOO!

“There was a time when I watched it fervently, reverently, passionately. It was something I put on when I was stressed or overwhelmed or needed to be reminded of the good things in life. The relationship wasn’t perfect, but it was powerful and affirming.”

Yeah, I do that too, but I never really stopped.

“Until suddenly it wasn’t.”

I mean, sure. Doctor Who did something on a purely personal and emotional level for the author, and then it stopped. That’s totally fair.

This actually happened to me with the novels in the ‘90s–they just weren’t doing enough for me imaginatively or emotionally anymore to justify the challenge of finding them and the expense of buying them. It happens. (I still wanted Doctor Who in my life though, so I rewatched my VHS tapes instead, until they had degraded in quality to the point where that wasn’t very fun either.)

“The show twisted into something unrecognizable and unpleasant. And so I abandoned Doctor Who just as it had abandoned me.”

The really negatively loaded language here bugs me a lot, but this article is a personal fan narrative more than it is a review, and it’s impossible to refute a subjective response. Clearly, it’s true that Alex Brown and the show were no longer on the same wavelength. So, fair enough.

“If you asked me in 2016 if I would ever watch Doctor Who again, I probably would’ve shaken my head and sighed. The chances of the show making the kind of changes necessary to pull me back seemed slim to none. But here we are, fall 2018, and I am so excited about the Season 11 premiere that I can barely stand it.”

I’m really happy about everyone coming back. I share this excitement!

[I’m omitting a couple of paragraphs here where Brown describes more of what Doctor Who meant to her when she first encountered the show during an obviously extremely difficult time in her life. It’s really moving, and I find it relatable in some ways.]

“With the takeover by Steven Moffat in 2010, my relationship with the Doctor shifted dramatically. As much as I loved Doctor Who, I wasn’t blinkered to its myriad problems.”

See, my issue with this is simply that it implies that people like me ARE “blinkered by its myriad problems.” We’re not. But sometimes we disagree about what those problems are, or where the blame (and praise) for those problems (and their amelioration) properly lies. Hence this post.

“Trouble was, the annoying but tolerable issues were magnified into something unbearable by Moffat’s numerous faults as showrunner. Under Moffat, seasons went from episodic romps loosely knitted together by repeating themes—think “Bad Wolf” Easter eggs throughout the first season—to Lost-style mystery box seasons bogged down in an increasingly convoluted and grimdark mythology.”

I think it’s fair to say that the series 6 arc in particular was much heavier than previously attempted by the show, and this was a turnoff for some viewers. Personally, I liked it a lot conceptually, but I acknowledge that it could have been better executed. It’s also not representative of Moffat’s whole era; he experimented a lot with structure. That in itself was probably frustrating to some viewers–again, I liked it a lot, but that’s neither here nor there.

However, calling the Moffat era “grimdark” is frankly bizarre. It seems to confuse a shift in LIGHTING with a shift in TONE. The Moffat era’s TONE was, if anything, substantially more hopepunk than the RTD era (to say nothing of Torchwood, which Brown also professes to adore).

“River Song, Cybermen, Daleks, and the Master work best when used sparingly,”

Yeah, I agree.

“but Moffat dragged them out of the toy box so often that they lost their appeal.”

A criticism that (aside from River, for whom YMMV) applies equally to the RTD era.

“Even the Doctor suffered from too much focus. Doctor Who is a show that flourishes when it cares more about the people the Doctor helps than the Doctor. The Doctor is much more interesting as a character who drops into other people’s stories than when everyone else exists only to serve the Doctor’s narrative.”

This is a matter of taste, and on that level cannot be refuted.

But I’m not actually sure it’s true that the stories in the Moffat era focused more on the Doctor than was the case in previous eras. It didn’t seem that way to me. I suppose one could develop some way of objectively evaluating the validity of that premise, but I’m not going to go to that much trouble.

“Worse, women went from equals with their own vibrant lives to codependent followers.”

This is not merely a matter of personal taste. It is an assertion about content of the sort which could hypothetically be supported by evidence. If it were true. And it is literally the opposite of true. It’s a gross mischaracterization of the Moffat era companions, and moreover ignores the sometimes-problematic characterizations of the RTD era companions. I’m skipping the rest of that paragraph, which merely rehashes worn-out, shallow readings of Amy and Clara’s characters. I have nothing to say about those arguments that I haven’t said elsewhere before.

“[Moffat’s] seeming disdain for how fans interpreted the series,”

Showrunners SHOULD disdain how fans interpret their work. Or, more accurately, they should ignore it. Since fans are a motley bunch, the alternative would be a total lack of creative vision, either deeply bland or utterly fractured.

“for critiques of his own biases and bigotries,”

In reality, Steven Moffat demonstrated a remarkable openness to critiques of his biases and made steady progress in addressing them both in front of the camera and behind the scenes.

“and for the depth the show was capable of became a virus that infected everything.”

From where I sit, Doctor Who demonstrated far more depth during the Moffat era than during the RTD era (and some of the deepest scripts in RTD’s era were written by Moffat and according to RTD, barely touched by his editorial influence). I’m willing to consider the possibility that the RTD era displayed depths that I failed to perceive, but given the number of times I’ve rewatched it and the fact that I study texts for a living, I have to say I think that’s a long shot. I would welcome a persuasive analysis of the depths of the RTD era.

“I have never been one to shy away from dropping shows that I no longer like, but I held onto Doctor Who longer than I should have. I finally tapped out after the frustrating penultimate episode of Season 6, “The Wedding of River Song.” Reductive, repetitive, and boring, the episode encapsulated everything I couldn’t stand about Moffat’s storytelling.”

OK, Brown has got a point there. I love TWORS for purely personal reasons (it was just FUN, in the same way that the more crazy-ambitious failures often are in Doctor Who), but I’m under no illusions about its quality. In addition to being “reductive [and] repetitive” that episode was also rushed and full of holes. I didn’t find it boring, but that’s a subjective thing.

It’s a bit weird though that Brown claims to have quit watching Doctor Who at the end of series 6, since earlier she critiqued both Clara and Moffat’s “over"use of Missy, both of whom post-date Brown’s purported exit. Hmm. Seems like (as is not uncommon, in my experience) people who dislike Moffat base a lot of their dislike on mere hearsay.

"Although Moffat drove me away from Doctor Who, other factors kept me from coming back. A not insignificant chunk of my exhaustion came from the frustratingly limited diversity and the frequently poor treatment of characters of color—see Martha and Bill, plus the weirdness around the few major interracial relationships.”

OK, this is approximately half fair. There WAS a frustrating lack of diversity which continued well into Moffat’s era. Martha and her weird marriage to Mickey are RTD’s doing entirely. And the author claims not to have ever seen series 10, so she’s hardly in a place to evaluate Bill’s treatment (which, for the record, seemed pretty great to me–vastly better than in any previous era, anyway, though there’s no doubt that there is still room for improvement).

“Prior to Season 11 there had never been an Asian or South Asian companion despite the fact that people of South Asian ancestry make up nearly 7% of the population of England and Wales, according to the most recent census. Islam is the second largest religion in the UK, yet Muslims are also largely absent from the show, and certainly from the role of companion.”

This is a totally fair criticism.

“Moffat said it was hard to cast diversely without impinging on historical accuracy,”

Gonna want a citation for that one; I admit it’s possible he said something like that at some point but I feel like I would remember if he had.

“a notion that is patently false and wholly ignorant of actual history.”

A point which Sarah Dollard makes in the series 10 episode “Thin Ice,” with the enthusiastic approval of Moffat himself.

“To be fair, Moffat also admitted this claim was nonsense and rooted in a white-centric view of history and acknowledged that the show needed to do better…then made absolutely no changes.”

Thanks for being fair…almost. In fact he made substantial changes during his tenure, though most happened after Alex Brown quit paying attention. Seems to me that if you’re going to write an article for a blog affiliated with a major SF publisher, you might actually want to check your facts rather than relying on information that’s several years out of date (if it was ever true).

“And don’t even get me started on frequent Moffat collaborator and Who writer Mark Gatiss who infamously whined about diversity initiatives ruining historical accuracy because they cast a Black man as a soldier on an episode about Queen Victoria’s army battling Ice Warriors on Mars.”

Yeah, this I do remember. Ew, Gatiss! What were you thinking?

“Not to mention Moffat’s asinine declarations that we couldn’t have a woman Doctor becausehe 'didn’t feel enough people wanted it’ and 'This isn’t a show exclusively for progressive liberals; this is also for people who voted Brexit.’”

This is also the man who wrote the first-ever gender-changing regeneration (of the Doctor, no less!) in his comedy special, “The Curse of the Fatal Death,” the first female incarnation of a previously male Time Lord (Missy, who turned out to be incredibly popular), and the first official, non-comedy, on-screen gender-changing regeneration scene (the General, in Hell Bent), thus paving the way for even many of those non-liberal, Brexit-voting audiences to accept a female Doctor, and making it virtually impossible for the BBC not to do it without looking like total assholes (though by that point they were totally on board and needed to further persuasion).

But sure, go ahead and cherry-pick a couple of real-but-not-representative Moffat quotes to perpetuate your misogynistic Moffat pseudo-narrative.

[Cutting the rest of that paragraph because it adds nothing to the critique]

“Why can’t we have a trans or disabled companion? Why can’t the Doctor be a queer woman of color?”

These are totally legitimate questions, and we should keep asking them.

“Do you know what it’s like to be told by someone in a position of power that you don’t belong here? That you are an aberration, a glitch in the matrix, that including you would be so inaccurate that it would collapse the narrative structure of a fictional television show that features a frakking alien traveling through time in a police box?”

Yes. I do.

And when you dismissed Amy and Clara as mere sexist stereotypes, mere codependent hangers-on of the Doctor, you re-inflict that wound on me and many other fans, because you’ve been granted a position of power, a platform in the blog of a major international SF publisher.

“Hearing that message all the time from pop culture is hard enough, but to get it from my favorite show was heartbreaking.”

I feel ya, Alex Brown. This needs to continue to be addressed.

But I’ll also remind readers that the Moffat era, despite its still-too-limited representation, gave us more disability representation than any other era of the show up to that point.

“Cut to the Jodie Whittaker announcement in July, 2017. For the first time in years, I watched the Christmas special—live, no less. To give credit where credit is due, Moffat’s swan song exceeded my (very low) expectations and Peter Capaldi was as excellent as I hoped he’d be. Whittaker had almost no screen time, but what she did get left me with a smile a mile wide.

"On top of her pitch-perfect casting, Thirteen will also be joined by three new companions, one a Black man and another a woman of Indian descent. Plus, the Season 11 writers’ room has added a Black woman, white woman, and a man of Indian descent. Several women will also be directing. New showrunner Chris Chibnall proclaimed that the renovated show will tell 'stories that resonate with the world we’re living in now,’ and will 'be the most accessible, inclusive, diverse season’ ever produced.

"These changes go beyond tokenism and into real diversity work. The show isn’t just sticking a woman in the titular role and patting themselves on the back. Diversity can’t just be about quotas. It must be about inclusion and representation in front of and behind the camera. Marginalized people need to be able to tell our own stories and speak directly to our communities. The majority already gets to do that, and now that conversation needs to happen across the board. The show still has a lot of work to do, both in terms of undoing the status quo of harmful tropes and in laying strong groundwork for later casts and crews. Yet, somewhat surprisingly, I feel hopeful for the show’s future.”

I totally agree with these three paragraphs (except I had high expectations of TUAT, which were also exceeded). In fact these paragraphs are a big part of why I felt like this article was worth sharing. I just couldn’t do it without significant reservation.

“And isn’t hope what the show is really all about? Doctor Who is a story about the hope for a better tomorrow, faith in your companions, and trust that you’re doing the right thing. It’s about a hero using their immense powers responsibly and in order to benefit those who need it the most. The Doctor creates space for the marginalized to stand up and speak out, to fight for their rights against those who would silence or sideline them.”

I’m not totally sure that that’s ever really been true before, but it’s an ongoing aspiration that the show keeps moving closer to.

“For too long, that ideal was lost to puzzle boxes, bloated mythology, and trope-y characters”

No it wasn’t. See above.

“but with the appearance of each new Thirteenth Doctor trailer, my hope grows a little more.

"It’s not often that you find your way back to something you loved and lost. At first, Doctor Who was a touchstone during my trials and hardships. Then it became a cornerstone in the foundation of the new life I was building. For a long time I left it encased in a wall, hidden in the basement of my subconscious, untouched and unwanted. Yet here I stand, sledgehammer in hand, putting a hole in that wall. I have set free my love of Doctor Who as Jodie Whittaker cheers me on. October 7 can’t come soon enough.”

This sentiment is really lovely. Welcome back, Alex Brown, and every other fan returning to Doctor Who after an absence of any length and for any reason. It’s shaping up to be a great new era.

Please remember, though, when talking to other fans, that other eras meant as much to some of them as this one means to you, and for similar reasons.

To those who are leaving because of toxic discourse about previous eras making them feel like their presence isn’t welcome and/or participating in fandom right now will only cause them pain: I’m going to miss you. I hope your DVDs and Big Finish and stuff continue to bring you joy. I hope you’ll come back again when it’s safe to do so.

To those who are leaving because they don’t like the idea of a female Doctor and/or two POC companions: BYE BYE! To be honest, nobody will miss you, but nevertheless I hope that eventually you realize how silly and harmful your biases are. When you do, I hope you’ll come back to Doctor Who. And you’ll be welcome.

#doctor who #series 11 #thirteenth doctor #dw fandom discourse

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seluandthecrow-blog · 5 years

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The entertainment industry in America is imbued with racist ideology, and gaps in representation and wages between actors of color and white actors are reigning free. Black actors are sometimes more successful than their white counterparts, but even then they’re not being recognized or compensated in the same way. I observe this from a privileged lens as a white person, and though I have struggled economically and still do, I have the privilege that comes with whiteness. Here I will attempt to communicate some of what I see as disparities and racist ideologies in the American entertainment industry today.

I saw the most recent Star Wars movie “Solo” when it came out on Netflix. Alden Ehrenreich plays Han Solo, our lovable, orphaned, thief-but-for-the-right-reasons protagonist. He’s moving up through the ranks, stealing for the noble cause of one day being reunited with his adolescent crush Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke). Donald Glover plays Lando Calrissian, the owner of the Millennium Falcon. His methods for acquisition of the Falcon are under constant scrutiny, and he is portrayed as the crook, with little back story. When white writers Jonathan and Lawrence Kasdan created this story, did they intend to cast Lando as a black man, or was it perhaps the casting agency who thought Glover would be good for this supporting role?

When Donald Glover was offered the job, he faced a choice. Did he want to be in the new Star Wars movie if he played a thief? There is a sacrifice made when an activist musician and comedian takes a high caliber role that potentially stereotypes him based on race. Certainly the circumstances are unique for each actor, but when a black entertainer is given an opportunity to succeed, but there is a wage gap between black and white entertainers, as well as male and female actors, and intersections of these different categories work like a confusing math problem that becomes easy to distill: there is disparity.

Sure, films like Black Panther are working against subjugation by taking black characters into the forefront of the picture, but what goes on behind the scenes is still inequity. It is generally stated that Chad Boseman who plays Black Panther earned $500,000 for his appearance in the film, and around 2-3 Million for Avengers, Infinity War. Robert Downey Jr. however, earned $500,000 for the first Iron Man, and earned a sickening $40-$50 Million for Infinity War. (QUORA.COM, 2019) (MENXP.COM, 2019)

Entertainers with more weight in the industry based on previous successes gain more creative independence and move up in the income ranks based on that success. But roles and incomes are limited for black actors in the mainstream, and when you see a black actor or hear a black musician, what parts of their blackness are being commodified and to what end can they be undervalued as artists when their bodies and voices are being harnessed to entertain?

According to Forbes, Black Panther grossed over 1.3 Billion Dollars, more than Titanic, one of the highest grossing films to date (Forbes, 2018), Whereas the first Iron Man grossed less than half that, close to 318 Million. (Box Office Mojo, 2019). There are some lurking variables affecting the difference in Boseman and Downy Jr.’s salaries in Infinity War, like that fact that Downey Jr. has appeared in more films than Boseman (IMBD, 2019), but the key factor in the wage gap here is clearly white privilege. This phenomenon is hard to name because acknowledging it opens up hundreds of years of dialogue on oppression and dispossession which is painful to talk about, but it is impossible to ignore if you want it to change.

Coincidentally, Donald Glover’s hit song This is America was co-written by Swedish computer Ludwig Göransson , who also wrote the score for Black Panther. Göransson speaks to that experience in an interview with Complex.com last year:

“What I’ve been working with, and really trying to be aware of, is how you take traditional music from these different countries and put electronics and big orchestra on top of that while keeping the same sounds,” he said. “It’s been really challenging. I went to west Africa and South Africa for a month to do research and record a bunch of different musicians for the score. I brought that back to my studio and, for the past year, I’ve been figuring out ways to preserve the essence of that music and try to make it cinematic to fit this superhero universe.” (COMPLEX.COM, 2018)

So where are these nameless musicians from Africa credited in information on this blockbuster’s soundtrack? Nowhere that I could find. Were they paid anywhere close to what Göransson received as the Composer for the film?Do they receive royalties from their performances?

Michelle Alexander speaks to new manifestations of racism in her book The New Jim Crow, a book which according to a 2018 article in The New York Times is banned in prisons in North Carolina and Florida. (Bromwich, 2018)

“In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So, we don’t. Rather than reply on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today is it perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans…we have not ended the racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.“ (Alexander, 2012)

And that’s exactly what is going on in the entertainment industry today. We are redesigning racism with wage gaps, divisions of screen time and biased survival in apocalyptic pictures (Infinity Wars,) and portraying black actors as thieves and sidekicks (Solo,) while black rappers in the mainstream sing about prison time, womanizing, gold chains, and street drugs, perpetuating these images to the public. In Lil Baby’s song Pure Cocaine, which is #24 on the Billboard rap charts as of April 5th, 2019, he says:

“When your wrist like this, you don't check the forecast/Every day it's gon' rain (every day it's gon' rain), yeah/Made a brick through a brick, I ain't whip up shit/This pure cocaine (this pure cocaine), yeah/From the streets, but I got a little sense/But I had to go coupe, no brain, coupe no brain/I ain't worried 'bout you, I'ma do what I do/And I do my thing, do my thing”

Chris Holmlund makes observations of the entertainment industry’s racist ideology flattening the Whoopi Goldberg into a tool for the white protagonists to connect in the movie Ghost in his book Impossible Bodies:

“Garishly dressed and made up, Oda Mae [the crook turned accessory to the white protagonist’s happiness, played by Goldberg] looks ridiculous when she visits Molly at Sam’s urging. “I don’t see what’s wrong with what I’m wearing,” she complains, voice off over a bird’s eye shot of Manhattan.

The next shot shows her striding along, resplendent in a badly fitting rose-colored jacket, black flounced skirt, black stockings, white net gloves, bouffant black wig, and rakish hat. Her legs splay apart awkwardly above spike heels. In African leggings she later seems more at ease, but she never looks as deliciously fragile as Molly [Demi Moore] does in her pixie haircut, baggy sweaters, and spaghetti strap T-shirts.

No wonder, then, that Oda Mae lends her body to the dead Sam when he wants to hold and kiss his wife one last time. “O.K., O.K., you can use me,” she says, “You can use my body. Just do it quick before I change my mind.” Orlando at least submersed himself in her, before reemerging in ghostly superimposition to hear his wife’s response. Sam simply replaces her, obviating the lesbianism implicit in a first, teaser, closeup of Molly’s white hands held by Oda Mae’s black ones, by suddenly appearing in medium shot to wrap his strong arms protectively around his tremblingly eager widow’s torso.” (Holmlund, 2002)

This example from the 1990 film may show that movies have come some way in representation of black characters, but Lando’s role in connecting Han Solo with his love Qi’ra seems to follow a similar trajectory. Epigenesis is painful, and there are many steps back accompanying each step forward in how ideologies can be reshaped. In 2010 there was one such instance of painful steps backward which instigate change in the 15th annual broadcast of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, which aired on CBS. A summation of the event from The Color Complex by Kathy Russell-Cole, and Drs. Midge Wilson and Ronald Hall follows:

“Over 9 million viewers, the largest audience yet, tuned in to watch thirty-four female models, six of whom were women of color, parade around in lingerie and little else. The display of wares was organized around six differently themes sets, and in each, even the country-themes one featuring a barn and blond wigs, the subset of “girls” participating was racially integrated-with one notable exception. The single themed presentation in which the producers saw fit to showcase only the six models of color was the segment entitled “Wild Thing.” The setting was a jungle and the models entered wearing nothing more than African wraps on bodies covered in tribal body paint. From the African-American community could be heard a collective moan: “Seriously? Again, you put us back in the jungle?”

Since before the Civil War, the dominant White culture has abused and manipulated images of African Americans, usually for the purposes of fear, humor (i.e. what Whites thought was amusing,) and marketing.” (Russel-Cole/Wilson/Hall, 2013)

Awareness of these disparities is the key to unwinding what large entertainment corporations are continuously feeding to the public. I encourage you to question the lyrics on the radio, and ask yourself who is writing them, who is singing them, and for what reason. Watch the behaviors of actors. What are they promoting? Mainstream media is engineered by corporations to succeed with awareness of what consumers will buy into. It’s your responsibility as the consumer to shape the reality of the entertainment industry, and equality on and off-screen.

#white privelage #blacklivesmatter #disparity #entertainment #robert downey jr #solo #chadwick boseman #whoopi goldberg #demi moore #wage gap #wearethe99%#universal #hollywood #activism

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musingsofanewbienurse · 6 years

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Importance of Sleep

Growing up I’ve always been told the importance of sleep, how you should get your 8 hours to allow your body to recharge and heal. In today’s society, where everything is so fast moving and people are expected to carry out dozens of tasks simultaneously, whilst not being even as half as active as our ancestors to tire our bodies out, it means that getting enough sleep is easier said than done. It just takes one simple google to find hundreds of articles from people complaining about poorly they sleep and their resulting tiredness.

I’ve spent many a night tossing and turning, whether that due to be stress keeping me up or because I just don’t feel tired, and that has always impacted my performance the next day. Which, as a nurse on a busy hospital ward, could lead to dire consequences.

My family have also never been a fan of having lie ins. My dad wakes up at 8am on weekends and my mum rarely past 7:30, and subconsciously I have grown up turning my nose up at sleeping till 10 or 11 in the morning, viewing it as a waste of the day. It has lead to me not always getting the rest I desperately needed on my days off, as I pushed myself to get up at 8 (9 at a push) when not at work. During university that method was fine. Placements ran for an average of 6 weeks, so even though by the end of this time my exhaustion levels were at their peak, I then had a 2 month theory period to rest and recover. Since qualifying, where I work three to four shifts a week, every week (with a much higher day:night ratio than I ever had during my training) I have since learnt that my previous attitude to sleep and rest was in desperate need of getting updated.

It all came to head at around Christmas time of 2018, when I had been working for just over two months and my body was crying out for some time out. I was lucky if I was managing 8 hours on my days off, and averaging around 4-5 on days when I was at work, equalling to one very sleep deprived gal. I hated the idea of napping, viewing it as a waste of time and as a form of weakness; although I tried to get early nights (often going to bed at around 9pm) I would regularly be tossing and turning for hours or waking in the middle of the night and unable to get back to sleep until my alarm was due to go off. With every passing minute still awake I would be working out how much sleep I was losing, which caused my stress to increase and my brain to be waking up more.

My workouts at the gym also suffered. Although I have the goal of always going on my days off, I rarely had the energy for it and I probably only had one or two decent workouts during the entire month of December. Looking back on it I’m amazed I didn’t fall ill as I was at such risk of burning out.

On the 27th (after pulling 6 12 hour shifts in the space of 7 days) I headed to my family home for a week with the promise to properly rest my body. I slept soundly for at least 10 hours each night and had an afternoon nap nearly every day. But I refused to feel guilty about it as I once would have. My body needed this rest and it was not a sign of weakness I told myself. I know I’m healthy, I’m an active person with a very active job, and it means that because of that, I need to properly rest it when I get the chance.

On entering the new year, one of my resolutions was to start taking the pressure off myself when it came to sleep. For so long I had refused to nap during the day, convinced it would lead to a poor night’s sleep, but I had been having those anyway. Maybe if I had a lie down during the day, yes I wouldn’t sleep all the way through the night, but I would be less sleep deprived come morning.

It was also becoming increasingly clear that going to bed at 9pm was doing very little good for me, and I resolved that if I was unable to sleep, instead of spending hours tossing and turning, and therefore forming a very unhealthy relationship with my bed, I would try meditation or do some light reading in hopes that my brain would start to relax and allow me to drift off. I listen to James Smith’s podcast and he recently spoke of a 5 minute challenge he does everyday. At around the same time each night he would go to bed, turn off the lights and attempt to sleep, if, after 5 or 10 minutes he is still wide awake he would get back up and work to start slowly unwinding, but more often than not it’s enough to help him drift. I’ve been incorporating this into my daily routine and have noticed it does help. And even when it doesn’t, it still successfully works to get me off my phone and break the never-ending social media scrolling cycle we all undoubtably find ourselves in.

Since putting thought into my sleep, and consciously working to improve it, I’ve come to accept that going to bed early wasn’t necessarily a suitable goal for me. I work so many nights which has caused my sleeping pattern to be almost non-existent and I’ve realised that sometimes the best thing to do is to sleep whenever I get the chance, even if it’s not at a ‘socially acceptable’ hour. Keeping to a proper sleeping routine is best for most people, but with the nature of my job I’ve had to accept that this isn’t the case for me. For so long I was trying to do what I thought was best and what I had been told or read on the internet, without spending time actually thinking about my lifestyle and situational factors. When I did that over the Christmas period, I realised that actually, having a set bedtime just doesn’t work when I spend some months working 9 nights and the next only one.

I am also working to remove the taboo I have placed on having a lie in. Sleeping in late does not automatically write the day off, nor does it make me an unproductive slob, in fact, it gives me the energy to actually carry out my goals. Three times in the past seven days I have slept well past 10am (and on all of these occasions I have slept for 12 hours apiece) showing me just how much I needed the rest. And you know what? I have been productive on those days still. I’ve gone to the gym, had good workouts, carried out errands, visited friends and completed some writing.

On waking up and checking the time I sometimes still have an immediate feeling of panic on seeing that the morning is almost over, but each time that’s becoming less and less. 2019 is the year of sleep, and it’s becoming bloody glorious.

#health #healthcare #healthcare blog #nurse #nursing #nursing blog #sleep #rest #sleep health

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sunsetinmyvein · 6 years

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Stay Frosty - Trick or Pete 2018

A/N: Hey, happy Halloween guys! I hope you’re all out there enjoying your day/night/whatever. We’re gonna do something a little different this week because I wrote a thing for the Trick or Pete collection over on AO3! (Which is here: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/trickorpete2018) Heaps of people have written Halloween inspired Peterick fics that will gradually be added to this collection over the course of Halloween. It closes when Halloween is over in Honolulu, so check back once it’s closed because there will be heaps of stuff up there to be read! Feel free to give kudos/comments/nice messages to all the writers you love.

Anyway. This was heavily inspired by the sheer level of “Get the fuck off me” in this image: https://78.media.tumblr.com/a240439fc26828dbdc648323afd5f5d9/tumblr_mi18zbqKBs1qblwcwo1_1280.jpg

Mid-July 2006

“What do you mean you only have one bunny suit and it’s already booked out?” Pete asked through gritted teeth.

“I’m sorry, sir,” The cashier behind the counter said automatically. He could see that she very much didn’t want to be having this conversation when Halloween was still three months away. But he did want to be having it, so they’d be having the damn conversation. “It’s been reserved for that night.”

He took in a deep breath, trying to steady his hands that were gripping the edge of the counter. His knuckles had gone white in his attempt to not pick up the nearest object and hurl it across the room. “By who?”

“That’s confidential information, sir.”

“By who?” He repeated, trying to keep from shouting. She only gave him an indifferent stare in return. After a few seconds of glaring, his anger boiled over. “Fine. FINE! I will find some other costume shop that will help me.”

“Not a problem. Have a nice afternoon.” She called out after him as he stormed away from the desk.

“Get fucked.” He growled, kicking over a hat rack on his way out.

Two Weeks Earlier

“So he doesn’t actually have different coloured eyes, it’s just an illusion because he has an issue with his pupils.” Patrick finished. After someone had mentioned in passing that they liked ‘that one guy who sang that one song’ and it turned out to be David Bowie, he had spent the last half an hour going over just about every Bowie fact he knew.

“Ughhhhh” Joe groaned, his head hitting the table in front of them with a resounding thunk.

“And-”

“Stop, Patrick.” Andy said, placing a hand on the younger man’s shoulder reassuringly. “I think we’ve heard enough for now.”

“But, you guys don’t want to-” Before he could even finish his sentence, the table of friends around him erupted in a chorus of ‘no’s.

“Honestly, ‘Trick,” Pete started, laughing to himself like he knew some inside joke that nobody else at the table had the privilege of sharing. “I don’t think you could go a week without trying to lord your music knowledge over someone.”

Patrick frowned up at him, feeling as though those words contained a lot more underlying bite to them than what everyone else heard. “Fuck you, Pete.” He spat back. “Just because you can’t appreciate good music doesn’t make me a music snob.”

Pete stared at the shorter man sitting across from him. He could feel the competitive tension growing between them, but nobody else seemed to take notice in the shift in atmosphere around them. A part of him wanted to keep taunting the kid, but he knew that would only result in a black eye tomorrow. A better solution would be for him to put his money where his mouth is.

“I bet you couldn’t go a whole week without correcting someone on music.” He challenged, trying to fight the smile that wanted to plaster itself across his face.

“A week?” Patrick scoffed. “Easy. I could go a month.”

Pete shrugged. “I’ll settle for a week, know-it-all.”

The singer glared at him, wanting nothing more than to lean across the table and knock the self-satisfied look off of his face. He had punched Pete for less in the past. “You’re on.” He said with a firm nod. Pete held his hand out across the table, waiting for Patrick to shake it to seal the deal. Without thinking about it, he took Pete’s hand and shook it once.

As soon as Patrick had walked away from the table to get another drink, Pete grabbed a napkin the seemed (mostly) clean and pulled his pen out of his pocket. Within minutes it was filled with lines and lines of writing and dot points.

“What are you doing?” Joe asked, leaning over the table to look at what Pete was scrawling onto the napkin on the table.

“Working out what Patrick will have to do when he loses.” He answered.

“He didn’t set terms?” He asked in surprise. Pete shook his head as he continued to write. “You really think he’s going to lose the bet?” Joe asked with an eyebrow raised as he sat back in his chair. “He’s pretty stubborn.”

Pete started laughing loud enough to get the attention of the guy behind the bar. “Oh, he’s going to lose the bet.”

Mid-July 2006

Patrick lost the bet within two days. He had tried to excuse himself (“Well I couldn’t just let them get away with saying that The Beatles did more work than Prince to get where they were. I wish I could write as many songs as he has”), but Pete’s terms were clear. He couldn’t allow someone to be wrong about music, so he lost. It was at this point that Patrick realised that they had never set a condition for what happened in the event that he did fuck up. Unfortunately for him, Pete had already run through almost every embarrassing thing in the book that he could think of to do to the poor boy. But what he had settled on, much to Patrick’s displeasure, was choosing his Halloween costume and activities. Patrick wasn’t a fan of Halloween at the best of times so having someone force him into something he knew he would hate was already setting him up for failure. But nobody, nobody, could love Halloween as much as Pete. It was his favourite month of the year and he’d been forming ideas since last Halloween. Patrick had complained to no end that Halloween wasn’t for months yet and to just get the bet over and done with, but Pete’s mind was made up.

He’d spent the past two weeks trying to find the perfect costume to shove his bandmate into, but every idea he came up with seemed to leave him empty handed and back at the drawing board. The costume shop he’d just left had already dealt with his anger twice this week, but it was only getting worse as he continued to be denied his requests. He figured maybe it was time to call in some backup.

“Joe, do you know any costume shops?” He’d asked into the receiver of his phone as his shoulder pressed it up into his ear.

“Is this about the bet?” Joe’s voice crackled down the line.

“Do you know any or not?” Pete huffed as he continued rifling through his closet to see if he had anything stashed away that might suit.

“Did you try the one over on Fullerton?” He asked.

“Yeah, I’ve been there twice already.” He sighed. “I don’t think I should go back.” He added under his breath.

Joe let out a long groan and Pete could hear the indifference in his voice. “There’s this really good one over on Belmont, but my girlfriend keeps talking about this one on Irving Park, Scary Terry’s or something. Could be worth checking it out.”

“Thanks, man.”

“Don’t make him wear anything-” Pete hung up the call and shoved his phone back into his pocket before Joe could finish.

Halloween 2006

After a few more attempts, Pete found the ideal costume to shove his guitarist into that hadn’t already been booked out. He was rather proud of his efforts. The weeks passed and the holiday rolled around a lot quicker than Patrick had anticipated. The familiar feeling of fall started to fill the air, decorations slowly started appearing on houses and then all of a sudden pumpkins were on every doorstep. Patrick had been ordered to be at Pete’s place at 4pm sharp on the night (a bold request from someone who was always late), and he begrudgingly forced himself to step into his excuse of an apartment. As he made his way through the door, he was met with Pete’s shit-eating grin sitting on the recliner that had been pulled over to face the entry.

“Happy Halloween.” Pete said, trying his best to maintain composure of the serious master-planner that he saw himself as.

Patrick rolled his eyes with a groan. “Get it over with. Where’s the costume?”

“In my room.” He said with a wink. Patrick only groaned louder, walking past him to his bedroom and punching him as hard as he could in the shoulder on the way.

A few struggled minutes and grunts later, Patrick came stumbling out of the bedroom in a fluffy, white llama suit. “Pete, why the fuck am I in this-” Patricks sentence was cut short as he came face to face with Pete’s Halloween costume. His eyes nearly bulged out of his skull and his jaw nearly hit the floor at the sight of Pete’s matching purple llama suit.

“They were out of bunnies and unicorns.” Pete shrugged as he pulled on his fluffy mittens, answering the half-finished question. Patrick now noticed that he had apparently walked straight past the two llama suit heads sitting neatly by the front door in his rush to get his embarrassment over with.

“Why are we matching?” Patrick asked as his voice cracked from the anger suddenly building in his chest. He could deal with wearing a stupid costume, but being with Pete while they were both in stupid costumes? That was out of the question. And he hadn’t even revealed what they were meant to be doing tonight yet.

“Well I couldn’t let you look stupid alone.” The shit-eating grin was back, and Patrick wanted nothing more than to knock out Pete’s teeth so that he’d never have to see it again. But instead of busting up his knuckles, he let out a loud shout, unable to put his hatred for this moment into coherent words. Pete’s smile faltered for a moment, but it only came back with a more malicious hint to it as he added. “You lost, remember?”

“I know! I know I lost!” He yelled.

Patrick spent a while pacing Pete’s lounge room and muttering to himself angrily, but eventually he calmed down. He knew that the sooner they did this, the sooner he could get out of the suit and go home to pretend this never happened. And at least the head of the suit would hide his face so that he could pretend he was someone else.

“So…” He pinched the bridge of his nose in an attempt to keep his newly formed headache at bay. “What are we doing?” He asked the man who was now lying across his couch and waiting surprisingly patiently.

“We’re going trick or treating.” He answered, glancing up from his phone. Patrick went to start another half an hour of objections, but then he figured that out of everything that they could be doing tonight, this was probably the least likely to result in him destroying what little reputation he had. He may not even run into anyone he knew while trick or treating, even if they were definitely far too old to be collecting candy.

“Okay…” He sighed. “Okay, let’s go.”

Pete’s smile returned as he jumped up from the couch and grabbed his llama head. He stopped for a moment though to turn and admire his handiwork. “You make a cute llama” He said as he ruffled the shorter man’s hair.

“Fucking get off me.” Patrick barked as he slapped Pete’s hand away. He tried to glare at him with as much menace as he could muster, but it was hard to make it come across as intended when he was dressed as a llama. There was nothing in their bet to say that he couldn’t murder Pete for being the worst human being in the world, and if he kept going the way he was, that event was imminent.

Pete gave them a ride to the neighbourhood that they were to go trick or treating in. He said he knew one of the best streets in Chicago to hit, which was nearly a half hour drive away. But at least they didn’t have to walk. Which Patrick was very grateful for because the full body suits got very sweaty very quickly. Pete had bought them pumpkin shaped candy buckets for collecting their haul which just put the bow on top of the whole awful experience. The first few houses they went to were fine, they got some odd stares but Pete seemed happy to stay silent while people dished out their candy to them. Their fifth house along the run though was a different story. Not three seconds after knocking on the door, a little old lady pulled it open. She had a pleasant smile on her face until her gaze was drawn up to the two fully grown men standing on her doorstop.

“You’re some very large... children.” She noted as she pushed her glasses up along the bridge of her nose. The duo didn’t say anything, instead just shoving their buckets towards her. Pete had to bite his tongue to not laugh every time she made contact with the llama eyes and not his own through the hole in the suit. She hesitated for a moment before giving them each a single piece of candy. They both nodded as thanks before headed back down her driveway. Even as they walked away she still watched them with an odd sense of curiosity.

They continued along the street, hitting house after house and getting heavier and heavier buckets. Patrick had no idea what he was going to do with all of this sugar. His childhood dreams of demolishing it all in one night were long gone, and most of it he didn’t like anymore. They were about to ring the doorbell of the second last house on the street but the door was pulled open before they got the change. They were suddenly met by a guy grinning at them with a knowing smile. He looked oddly familiar.

“Pete!” He exclaimed, pulling the purple llama into a hug. “And Patriiiiiick.” Patrick could hear the alcohol entering into his voice, and he could definitely smell it as he was also pulled into a hug. It was at this point that Patrick heard the music coming from the backyard and saw all the people crowding the house. This was a party. “I’m so glad you guys came!”

Patrick’s mind raced for a moment before he turned to Pete. “You fucking knew this was here!” He growled. Pete didn’t say anything and only walked into the house. Patrick grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. “You dragged me to a fucking party with people we know at it.” He continued through gritted teeth.

“What’s Halloween without a party?” He asked. Patrick knew without even having to look that he was beaming with excitement. This is exactly the kind of thing that Pete liked to do for Halloween. Patrick on the other hand preferred to have a quiet night inside, ignoring the children at his door and watching b-grade horror movies. “C’mon, ‘Trick,” Pete started as he went to wrap an arm around him.

“Fuck right off.” Patrick spat, giving Pete the finger over his shoulder as he walked away into the back of the house. But it didn’t really translate through the fluffy llama mittens.

Patrick spent his time at the party trying to avoid people. If nobody saw him there, or at least if nobody knew it was him in the suit, they could never bring it up to him later. But he especially tried to steer clear of Pete at all costs. He could deal with the embarrassment if people recognised him, but if they were seen together he might just curl up and die. Certainly if he didn’t spontaneously combust from humiliation on the spot, he could never been seen in Chicago again. He would need to start a new life in Iceland. When he was certain that Pete wasn’t in the kitchen, he made quick trips to the fridge to soothe his mortified nerves with alcohol. He was satisfyingly tipsy after a few hours when he made the mistake of venturing into the backyard, only to bump into his counterpart on the way.

“Patrick!” Pete shouted at the top of his lungs. Great, everyone knew who he was now. He briskly darted back inside and started heading for the front door. He would find a way home. He’d hitchhike with a questionable trucker for all he cared at this point. “Patrick, hey! Wait up!”

“I’m done! I did what you wanted.” He called back, pushing through the front door. Before he could get out of the front yard, Pete tackled him to the ground, knocking the wind out of his lungs and both of their llama heads to the ground. “Get off me!” He wheezed.

“No! We’ve gotta be matching.” He sung. He was obviously drunk. Why couldn’t he have been drunk enough to not remember he dragged Patrick here? Or at least drunk enough to be asleep on someone’s couch. He started stroking the fur on Patrick’s arm and making weird humming noises.

“Get the fuck off me.” He repeated as he attempted to jab a knee into Pete’s groin. He assumed he must’ve missed because he certainly didn’t get the reaction he wanted.

“But you’re so soft.” He mumbled as he pressed his face into Patrick’s costume.

“Stop it, you asshole.” He said as he pushed himself up, and Pete off, to drag himself to his feet.

Pete lay on the grass for a few drunken moments before realising that Patrick had already walked away. He quickly hauled himself up, waiting a moment for his head to stop spinning before starting down the street in the direction he assumed he would’ve gone, leaving their llama heads on the damp grass. It took a solid fifteen minutes to spot the fluffy llama sticking out like a sore thumb on a swing set in a park. Pete walked over to him, taking the swing next to him without saying a word. He was beginning to think that maybe he had pushed Patrick too far. They sat in silence for a few minutes, the wind rustling the trees around them and the swings quietly squeaking under their weight. Patrick eventually felt the burning need to speak up, refusing to let Pete continue to ruin their night with any more of his stupid ideas.

“You’re such an ass sometimes.” He said, scuffing his stupid slippers on the asphalt.

“I’m sorry. I just thought the costumes would be a cute couple thing” Pete admitted with a shrug.

“We’ve only been dating for a few months-”

“Four.” Pete corrected.

“Four months. Are we really up to tha- this?” Patrick asked, gesturing down to his fluffy suit.

“Halloween is my favourite holiday; of course I wanna look stupid with you.” He said, pushing himself sideways to bump his shoulder into Patricks. The guitarist let out a quiet laugh, the first happy noise he’d made all night.

“Why llamas?” He asked.

“I dunno. I just think they have a lot of potential.” Pete said. Patrick erupted into full blown laughter at that. Of course it was one of Pete’s hare-brained schemes.

Part of Pete was happy not to go back to the party, to just spend their night sitting here and enjoying each other’s company. But he had promised that he would help pull a few Halloween themed pranks throughout the night.

“We should head back. You can take the suit off if you want.” Pete said. “I’ve got a change of clothes for you in the car.”

“No, it… it’s okay.” Patrick said with a soft nod, a smile slowly starting to form on his face.

“Sorry again for making a bet with you that you obviously couldn’t win.” He said with a wink. Patrick leaned over and punched him in the arm. “But you can school me in music knowledge anytime, ‘Trick.” He laughed as he kissed him on the cheek.

“Good, because you’re wrong a lot.” Patrick’s words seemed a lot less harsh with the blush that painted his cheeks.

“Hey! It’s not my fault the NeverEnding Story soundtrack is better than Batman.” He added with a shrug, a devious smirk playing on his lips. Patrick took a moment to process the words Pete had just blasphemously spewed into the darkness. He stared at him in bewilderment as he rose to his feet and started to head back in the direction of the party.

“You can’t say that.” He scoffed, not entirely certain if Pete meant what he said or not.

“I just did.” He called over his shoulder.

“No, that’s actually-” He only continued walking away. “Pete – Batman has a way better soundtrack.” His explanations fell on deaf ears. “It’s just fact. No, for real, Pete.” He scrambled to his feet, starting to run after the bassist. “Pete! Come back! We need to talk about this!”

#Pete Wentz #Patrick Stump #Pete Wentz x Patrick Stump #Peterick #Halloween #llamas #sunsetinmyvein

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realmamablog-blog · 6 years

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Introduction

Life as a stay-at-home mama who works a bit on the side, attends school, makes minor attempts at something resembling a social life, has difficulty and making time for marriage can be challenging and downright laughable at times. I have been making a serious attempt at keeping it real since the birth of my second-born, my beautiful daughter, Gracie is nearly 15 months old (tomorrow) and was, honestly, a very easy baby (similar to my first-born, Connor who is 3 years old). However, the major difference after the birth of Connor and Gracie was my intense anxiety that manifested shortly after Gracie’s birth. Whether it be a major hormonal issue (hello, progesterone shots every week throughout the pregnancy) or the fact that Gracie was born just before the insane 2017-2018 flu season began causing me to freak out every time someone coughed, I will never really know. I do know, however, that I have been struggling to return to “normal” since then, and it’s still very much a work in progress. As I see some semblance of I was before I had children and glimmers of hope and positivity from time to time, I still have some crazy moments of despair, insanity, and major self-doubt. I’ve honestly learned who I can count on and cannot count on (more on that later), and I am very grateful for friendships while other moms and so-called friends have been quick to exclude and make negative snide comments while I was enduring personal battles that the knew nothing about. This hurts, of course, but I am coming out stronger on the flip side. I am learning to laugh more, spend time with people I love, and create happiness out of every day situations. I am beyond grateful for little family and the fact that my children are healthy and happy, but this life comes with a side crazy. I mean, seriously, I attempted to enroll my child in preschool knowing he would be the youngest one there (August birthday) and that was truly exhausting and nearly hysterical. I am proud to be an in-between hippie and traditional mom who practices extended breastfeeding (My God, I have had some real issues when people realize I breastfeed past the age of 1!) but still believes in vaccinations. I try to make healthy choices for my kids and have given them honey instead of cough syrup, but I also give my 3 year old a tablet from time to time. I am coming to terms with who I am and learning to not apologize for choices that work for me and my marriage, my kids, my parenting, and myself. It’ s a hard journey as I probably care too much about what others think, but it’s my journey. I hope to be better at each tomorrow! Thanks for your support!

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thatishogwash · 6 years

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Bad Pick Up Lines

KuroDai Week 2018 May 9, Day Four: Admiration / Bad Habits AO3

Kuroo was nervous. He didn’t really blame himself as he adjusted his jar of brushes for the fourteenth time or moved his canvas before ultimately moving it to the original spot he had it in. He brought out extra lights even though he had purposefully chosen this space for its natural lighting. He thought of putting music on but then thought that might be weird. Would it make it seem like he was trying to set a mood? He was trying to set a mood but not that kind of mood.

Kuroo Tetsurou knew how fortunate and lucky he was to have the career he did. It’s not to say he didn’t fight and bleed and lose countless hours of sleep over it. He worked in shitty jobs for years, stayed in tiny apartments with far too many roommates, did everything he could to save up for just a couple mid-line paints and brushes. He worked himself to the bone and then continued to work just for the small hope that someday, someday he could do what he loved.

Now Kuroo could comfortably live as a full time artist. He had permanent art installations at actual museums and not just in Japan either, his art was being shown in twelve different countries around the world. He had an assistant that kept tabs on his schedule and filtered through all the commissions he got. Kuroo still worked his ass off but now it was doing something he loved, something he had worked so hard to achieve.

It didn’t mean that everything was perfect. There was something whispered amongst artists of all different mediums, something that felled even the best. The dreaded artist block.

Kuroo had faced a couple in his couple decades of life. He had always managed to power through it, to find inspiration or a muse from something. But Kuroo had basically run through every single modeling agency he usually contacted when he needed real life models. He had taken to venturing out to random places to see if anyone fit what he needed.

The commissioned pieces for his next art installation were half done. The first half had been done in record timing, almost laughably easy. His model had been tall, nearly amazonian with lean muscles and a grace of a professional dancer. Those pieces leaned against the wall, laughing at him.

Kuroo had become desperate. Hope came in the form of his taciturn assistant who sometimes Kuroo could have sworn wanted to watch Kuroo burn out. Tsukishima Kei was equal parts the best and worst assistant Kuroo had ever had. Definitely the worst had been the walking disaster known as Haiba Lev, who had thankfully been taken off of Kuroo’s hands by a modelling agency who liked the look of the half-Russian and wasn’t too concerned with his puppy dog like attitude. The best had Akaashi Keiji, who might have referred to Kuroo as pain-in-the-ass-Kuroo but was still the best damn assistant anyone could ever ask for. Of course he just had to graduate school and get a fantastic job in his field and fall in love with Kuroo’s traitor of a best friend Bokuto Koutarou.

But that was neither here nor there. The point was just when Kuroo was on a verge of a nervous breakdown and was thinking about burning his own studio down, disappearing into the night, and changing his name Tsukishima stepped in. Kuroo thought it was mostly self preservation on Tsukishima’s part. As much as the younger man complained about the workload, Kuroo knew he paid better than any job a broke full-time student could make.

So Tsukishima had suggested a different sort of company to book a model through. The type of company that might help lonely people out, someone might pay them for a date or other things.

It was an escort company and Kuroo had hired an escort.

Truthfully Kuroo had hired seventeen escorts and none of them had been the right fit. Kuroo didn’t even want to question how Tsukishima knew about the company since he couldn’t find a single trace of it online. Kuroo didn’t worry about his reputation much. Hiring an escort would probably be on the tame side for the rumors floating around about him.

Kuroo had gotten desperate and the man he always talked to when booking the escorts had sounded rough and annoyed. Kuroo had assured him repeatedly that he just needed a model for some sketches and maybe a painting or two. Yes they would have to remove their clothes but a pair of biking shorts could be worn.

The man had sighed and told Kuroo he was sending a guy his way.

Kuroo was nervous. The impending failure of an unfinished commissioned piece made Kuroo want to hole up in his apartment and never come out. So much was riding on this and he was being sent an escort he didn’t even choose.

A knock at the door had Kuroo flinching so bad he knocked over the jar of brushes he had been anxiously touching and he managed to kick over his easel.

“Uh- come on, the doors unlocked!” Kuroo yelled as he attempted to pull himself together while putting everything back into its place. “Hi! Hello. Hey.” Kuroo wanted to cover his face as his soul attempted to leave his body out of sheer embarrassment. Three greetings? Really?

“Hi, hello, hey.” The man by the door surprised Kuroo, not just from his cheeky greeting but by his looks.

Kuroo had been surprised with each escort he had met. Every single one vastly different from the last and none of them really screamed escort to Kuroo, which he guessed was kind of the point. Also he felt a little judgemental about his preconceived notions of escorts too.

The man in front of Kuroo took all those notions about what Kuroo thought escorts looked or acted like, pushed it into the garbage disposal and turned it on until there was nothing left. He looked like the type who would feel perfectly comfortable with a toddler on his hip as he enjoyed a backyard barbeque with his neighbors. He looked like he played some type of sport on the weekends and worked in an office where he was always bringing in treats for the rest of his floor.

The man looked plain and boring, as if he could blend seamlessly into a crowd of businessmen.

“Is that Toothless?” The man, the escort asked, seemingly surprising even himself. Kuroo didn’t blame him, not many people came into his studio but even Tsukishima showed the slightest shock when he walked in to see a life-size version of Toothless taking up the back portion of the studio.

“Yeah,” Kuroo answered with a grin, finally feeling a bit like himself. “My friend Oikawa, his son is having a How to Train Your Dragon themed party and I just really enjoy being liked by his kid so much more than him.” The admission surprised a laugh out of the man but with surprise of his own, Kuroo realized that he had purposefully distracted Kuroo.

He was a lot more cunning than his looks let on and Kuroo found himself enjoying that.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude, I’m Sawamura.” Sawamura took a couple steps over to Kuroo and held out his hand. It was a firm handshake, Sawamura’s hands were calloused and warm.

“Kuroo.” Kuroo stretched out his fingers by his side, still feeling the warm tingly after effects from the handshake.

“So I’m going to be truthful, this is all kind of new to me.” Sawamura gave a self deprecating grin and oh, he was so good. Kuroo would have to pay close attention because with one little sentence he had managed to put Kuroo at ease and in charge without either having to really talk about it. “I took an Art History class once and it was way beyond me.”

“Well why don’t you take your jacket off and get comfortable? I’m just going to start with some warm up sketches.” Kuroo stepped behind his easel, glancing over at Sawamura as he pulled his jacket off, causing the plain dark gray shirt underneath to pull tight against his torso. Without the jacket Kuroo could see that Sawamura was built better than the dad-bod Kuroo had been expecting. His shoulders were broad and they tampered off into a trim waist with rather impressive arms.

Kuroo started to draw those shoulders, trying to work out the muscles and bone beneath and how they moved and shifted. Sawamura wandered around the studio, taking a closer look at Toothless, which would be rideable when Kuroo was finished with it. He was excited to leave Tsukishima with the task of actually getting it to Oikawa’s house back in Miyagi in one piece.

Then Sawamura moved to the long table pushed against the far left side of the studio. Kuroo opened his mouth but quickly closed it as he got a good look at Sawamura’s back. He normally didn’t allow people to see his work in progress or his failed works, all of which were spread across that table, but Sawamura was proving a good study. There was something unique in the plainess, something intriguing past the neat hair and clean cut look.

“These are all for the project your working on?” Kuroo didn’t correct Sawamura about the term project, it clearly wasn’t meant to be demeaning or offensive.

“Sort of? They are all the models I’ve tried but something didn’t click.” Kuroo answered honestly, feeling more at ease with every passing moment. He had no idea how someone could be such a calming personality and make Kuroo feel as if he was challenging him at every turn. “None of them fit my first model. Could you take off your shirt?”

“Like mixing fluorine to hydrogen.” Sawamura mumbled as he did as asked. Kuroo was almost too distracted by the stretch of newly revealed muscles to miss the joke, almost being the keyword.

“Did you just make a chemical reaction joke?” Kuroo asked, earning a grin from Sawamura. “Hey Sawamura? You must be chlorine because you are polarizing my bond.” Sawamura stared at him in muted horror before tossing his head back and laughing.

“That was so bad!” Sawamura moved closer to Kuroo. “How many of those have you got?”

“Please Sawamura, I am a professional.” Kuroo continued to sketch, glancing up at an expecting looking Sawamura. “My favorite attractive force is van der Waal’s force. Can you feel it? I’ll move closer if you can’t.” Sawamura laughed again, that deep belly type laugh that made Kuroo intake a little too much air.

The rest of the time passed in sharing bad pick up lines and Kuroo was surprised when his phone beeped, signalling the end of their time. He had moved on from quick sketches to more detailed ones, the floor around him was covered with pieces of Sawamura. Kuroo had discovered a faint scar on his cheek, the middle and pointer knuckles on his left hand were swollen, his lips pulled up a little higher on the left side then right when he smiled, and several other minute things he could have easily overlooked when he brushed Sawamura off as plain.

“Thank you.” Kuroo said with real feeling because he finally felt as if he was seeing a light at the end of his dark, artist block tunnel.

“I didn’t really do much.” Sawamura shrugged though Kuroo couldn’t be but disagree. He gave the studio one last glance around as he pulled on his jacket. “All of this, everything you’ve managed to create even your petty life sized dragon-” A flashing, cunning grin at this. “It’s all amazing. It’s really admirable, what you do. Pulling nothing out of your mind with just some paper and pencils, sticking with it even after three dozen different models.” Kuroo could feel a creeping blush at this. He hadn’t realized he really needed to hear that until someone said it.

“I think what you do is really admirable too!” Kuroo rushed out. “I know your job can’t be easy but you came in here with confidence, not knowing what was in store for you and you made this easy and enjoyable. Thank you, really.” Sawamura wasn’t smiling though as Tsukishima came in through the door.

“What do you think my job is exactly?” Sawamura asked, eyes narrowed. Tsukishima paused before turning on his heel to walk out. “Don’t even think about it Tsukishima.” Kuroo had never seen Tsukishima listen to anyone as well as he listened to Sawamura in that moment.

“I’m sorry? Is it not okay to talk about it?” Kuroo asked worriedly, wondering if he had somehow insulted Sawamura. Tsukishima’s back was to them but his head ducked down.

“Talk about what?” Sawamura said. “Say it.”

“You’re an escort?” Kuroo meant to say it as a statement but it came out as more of a question. Tsukishima’s bean pole body seemed to slump forward at Kuroo’s words.

“I’m a what now?” Sawamura practically yelled. “Tsukishima Kei, what the hell did you tell him?”

It was then that Kuroo realized there was no escort business that Tsukishima knew about. He had his old volleyball coach pretend to be some sort of pimp while sending various friends and acquaintances of Tsukishima’s to Kuroo. Turned out that Sawamura really did work in an office during the week and played with a neighborhood association team during the weekends.

“So then, is it okay if I ask you out?” Kuroo asked to Tsukishima’s obvious horror.

“Please no Sawamura, you could do so much better.” Tsukishima said quickly.

“I’m telling Kageyama that you sent Hinata and Yamaguchi out as pretend escorts to your boss.” Sawamura deadpanned. Kuroo had yet to meet Tsukishima’s longterm boyfriend Kageyama but from what he had heard he was a pretty intense young man and the only one able to wring any sort of remorse from the emotionless Tsukishima. “And yes it is, but I’m paying.”

Kuroo couldn’t help but grin at that.

#kurodaiweek #kurodaiweek2018 #my writing #haikyuu!!#haikyuu #kurodai #Kuroo Tetsurou #sawamura daichi

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