#Inside problems

[kv55]

I will come back for him

[sinceileftyoublog]

Andrew Bird, Margaret Glaspy & Julian Lage Gezelligheid Preview

Andrew Bird; Photo by David Black

BY JORDAN MAINZER

It's that time of year again--not just for Christmas or Hannukah or beer and wine advent calendars, but for Andrew Bird's annual Gezelligheid concerts at the Fourth Presbyterian Church. This year, Bird will perform 7 shows: tonight, tomorrow, and the 11th-15th. Usually, he plays a mix of original songs and holiday-related covers or standards. In 2020's Hark!, Bird has his first ever Christmas album to his name, so you can expect to hear a few of those tunes, too.

If it were up to me, Bird would gift us some instrumentals. That is, earlier this summer, he followed up 2022's Inside Problems with a companion album, Outside Problems (Loma Vista), improvised instrumentals recorded outdoors in Ojai, CA. Though it follows some of the formless themes of Inside Problems, it's wholly original and some of Bird's most inspired work in years. "Epilogue" is flaneur-like, Bird purposefully not giving thought to the potential for other band members or a chorus or structures, while cheekily titled tunes like "Mormon House Party" and "Tik Tok" use repetitive sways to lull us into the bends of Bird's violin. Best, his gorgeous voice does appear, but in the form of wordless vocalizations, harmonizing with his plucks on "Mancey" or popping up on the off beat on "Mormon House Party".

Margaret Glaspy; Photo by Josh Goleman

Opening for Bird each night is a duo comprised of Margaret Glaspy and Julian Lage, creative and life partners who have never released any recorded duo material but have plenty of history showing up on each other's records. For one, each had a hand in producing the other's 2023 album, Glaspy's terrific Echo the Diamond (ATO) and Lage's Grammy-nominated The Layers (Blue Note). Echo the Diamond prominently features both Lage and Bird collaborators (The Bad Plus drummer Dave King, bassist Chris Morrissey), and you can certainly hear Lage's jazz influences on the skittering Ryan Lerman co-write "Hammer and the Nail". Not to take anything away from Glaspy--Echo the Diamond is far and away her best album yet mostly thanks to the increasingly worn twang of her voice and ability to make worlds out of fleeting moments and the conversations we have with ourselves, in our own heads. From country-tinged odes to new love ("Act Natural") and feminist rallying cries ("Female Brain"), to reverent admittances to the power of our minds ("Memories") and self-criticism ("Turn The Engine"), Echo the Diamond runs the gamut of emotions in a lean 35 minutes. At the center of it all is Glaspy's observational prowess, or as she describes on closer "People Who Talk", her ability to "make like a fox and start listening."

Julian Lage; Photo by Alysse Gafkjen

Glaspy's influence on Lage's The Layers is a tad more palpable. Written as a described "prequel" to 2022's View With A Room, the record showcases interplay between Jorge Roeder's bass and King's drums, and at times between Lage and Bill Frisell. Glaspy's able to emphasize the raw timbres of Lage and Frisell's acoustic guitars on "This World", or Lage's expansive, twinkling playing on "Missing Voices" atop King's creaking percussion. And the title track is a chugging, almost country rock number, an instrumental that could back Glaspy without batting an eye. In fact, it wonderfully previews Lage's latest choogle of a single "Omission", produced by Joe Henry and that will feature on an upcoming Blue Note album next year. It's hard to predict what Glaspy and Lage will play, but both artists, individually and together, have the chops to make it a memorable opening set you won't want to miss.

[spookberry]

tucker goin thru it

[determunition]

had king on the brain recently; wondering if, up on the spire, she was maybe beating herself up a little over not knowing how to talk things out for once

[rookanisstuff]

I do find it really funny that Lucanis just immediately started referring to Spite with he/him. Like Spite’s a demon, realistically “it” would probably be more appropriate, but instead Spite got handed he/him pronouns and just rolled with it lmao

[uncanny-tranny]

Basically, my philosophy around disability fakers is: I would rather a thousand people fake a disability than have one disabled person suffer without care, aids, compassion, or any help.

[cubbihue]

I just want to see Cosmo, wanda, Timmy, Prei

And the god kids, if you want to

In a cuddle pile.

Cuddle pile!!! Once, Peri brought home a stray Furby. It brought the entire house into chaos as the Furby went feral on them. It took sacrificing Cosmo to it for the Furby to calm down.

It spat him out eventually, but the house was a wreck afterwords. Wanda refused to let Timmy or Peri keep it as a pet, thinking (rightly) that they're not ready for one. Cupid took the Furby off their hands afterwords.

Bitties Series: [Start] > [Previous] > [Next]

[morganbritton132]

Eddie’s immediate response to finding out that the guy in their living room was Tommy was to say, “Let’s have sex.”

Steve: Right now? We have a guest!

Eddie: No, we have the guy that beat me up in high school in our living room and I am married to the guy that he had a massive crush on. Tell me that wouldn’t make you a little horny.

Steve: Tommy did not have a crush on me

Eddie: He did. He convinced you that it was totally heteo to make out with your male friends when you were alone

Steve: I mean, Carol was there sometimes

Eddie: That’s - fascinating, I did not know that and we’ll circle back to it but right now… let’s get naked.

Tommy, from the bottom of the stairs: You do know that you’re still live-streaming, right?

Eddie, looking down at the phone in his hand like he’s seeing it for the first time: Yes

[artgletic]

case study of the self-identified god

[corseque]

I honestly just wanted one single plot step that I could not predict given the 10 year wait. More behind the cut, I talk about Emet too, and I'm comparing his writing favorably to Solas' writing and why it worked better for me personally, but I am just talking about the writing skill that went into the games and not the dudes themselves, I love them both dearly of course. idk this is a mess and I am not going to edit it for clarity

For me, the game was a series of me saying

"ok I knew that. cool."

"oh yeah, I knew that. I guess it's good that the larger fandom knows about that now."

"nice, but yeah I already knew that too"

"that was something we've been talking about a lot for years"

"this thing they are acting like is a huge enormous reveal that the characters could not possibly have deduced through simply thinking about it in depth over the 10 years... the fans easily figured out by thinking about it in depth 10 years ago. So you would think his girlfriend would be able to figure it out more easily than we did. Like, why couldn't the game have been like 'oh lavellan already figured that out a while ago' it would have cost them nothing"

"this is something I've been thinking about for years, and now that it's being revealed, the companions' reactions to it are very irritating and jarring and unnecessary and I really dislike the experience I'm having right now, in this, the hour of my greatest triumph"

"this thing that is happening on my screen right now is something that I wrote an essay about 2 years ago describing how it would be a letdown if it happened without the correct setup"

"this way that they're characterizing Solas makes him less likable and less interesting than I have been finding him for all these years, and I have had people tell me 'no, he's simpler than you think' for years but I guess I was wrong, he really is simpler than I thought, so that fucking sucks. I wish I could take that information out of my brain."

"this thing is a retcon of information I have been thinking about for 10 years, and so I don't know how to follow along with this new direction, and I'm not sure if I even want to because it's not particularly interesting anyway"

"aw that was sweet"

"why is it like, so very impossible to have an honest back-and-forth with my favorite character about the dilemma that was most interesting to me about the previous game"

and then, as soon as, like, the other fans had caught up to the Solas lore that was really obvious from the other games, the game was.... over without anything surprising happening, or introducing a new element or plot point or perspective, or a real true twist (or two, or three) for those of us who have thought about it too hard for too long. It was very simple and easy, much, much, much, much easier than I was imagining. It all felt sort of like that Nicholson quote:

The thing was, the whole story was so interesting to think about because in 10 years, I couldn't figure out a good solution to it!!!!! It's why I was never able to write post-game fanfic about it. So I was stoked to find out some reveal we never knew about, some new information, in maybe a SERIES of steps of new information, that made the situation more complicated but also something that could be navigated by everyone involved. I know it was asking for a lot, but they had TEN YEARS, and they seemingly had set up the things they did in DAI on purpose, so surely they had some idea of a complex and satisfying narrative that would reconcile everyone.

The reason why I was expecting this is because FFXIV did a very similar story arc, which was started AND concluded WITHIN those 10 years (so it took the FFXIV team far less time to deliver as well). And the conclusion to the story in FFXIV did what I was expecting Dragon Age to do. So I thought, "holy shit, if this is the FFXIV version of this plot, how much more complicated is DA4 going to be!?!?" The DA devs also PLAYED FFXIV so they were completely aware, several years ago, of a satisfying story ending that was pretty darn similar.

People are probably going to think "oh, well Chelsea was disappointed because she spent too much time building it up in her head" but that's exactly it - I actually speculated and thought about FFXIV's story IN DEPTH NONSTOP for a year+ before its ending came out, and the ending absolutely blew me away. FFXIV Endwalker managed to introduce information and new story elements that I was not able to figure out in the YEAR I spent speculating on the ending of FFXIV's story. It took a complicated situation and revealed several several more facets to it that I was not able to predict, but were very interesting and thematically compelling, and took us all to surprising and climactic places that we could not have predicted.

Endwalker ("end" is in the title on purpose) too, was written to be THE ULTIMATE SATISFYING ENDING for a very long-running story in the exactly way that Veilguard SHOULD HAVE for Dragon Age, so while this complexity is being explored, FFXIV also gave catharsis to many different plot threads that have been built up through the previous expansions, until finally it ends with a bang. The story is desperately good to me, I loved it, it gave me closure for Dragon Age long before Veilguard was even revealed, and going back and looking at its story has made this whole thing far less painful for me.

So, I actually did not have a picture in my mind for how things SHOULD go. I just had the thought "I hope it's complicated and there are points of view or facts that we haven't before been exposed to, and the situation is resolved respectfully for Solas, not making him look like a fucking idiot (lol, the only thing I asked for). I don't even care what happens to Solas and Lavellan, I just need the story to be complicated and interesting to think about. Please, god, don't let it be "solas is wrong and he just needs to be convinced" because that's like the simplest story you could tell with this setup"

(btw they managed to tell Emet-Selch's story without making him seem like he's being an idiot on purpose or can never get anything right, and in fact the more the story goes on, the more you think of him as smart and capable and cool, so it is possible to write.... I wasn't asking for the entire moon)

And I played it and... yeah. Most of the story beats were more simple than I wanted them to be, a lot of them didn't make sense in my heart given the writing from Inquisition. (This is another essay, but if Solas' thematic story arc was always about him needing to let go of regrets, why was his personal quest the way it was? After that quest, doesn't he end up regretting not doing more....? Why did he never really talk about regret during Inquisition? If he was so trapped by regret, why was he able to do so many actions? It doesn't mesh well to me. The whole regret thing was very quarter-baked to me, I don't even like thinking about it.) His story never seemed like one that was as simple as being about one man's regrets, but then, I guess, it was always just about one man's regrets.

Emet-Selch's personal storyline (and the way it interacts with and affects the larger story) is very similar but much more cohesive and satisfying to me. It would be difficult to explain why without the aforementioned 5-hour essay. Emet-Selch's story IS about grief and anguish on a world-shaping scale in a similar way that Solas' was apparently always about letting go of regret, but Emet's story was also very pointedly and beautifully about that one theme for the entirety of his story from every tiny detail, from beginning to end - meanwhile, it seemed to me that they tried to introduce 'regret' as the main thrust of Solas' story only in the short story with the Regret demon onward.

From Inquisition just by itself, the closest I personally could get to a story theme for Solas was his inability to trust others hurting him and the world, but his trusting others in DA4 wasn't really addressed to my satisfaction. He is never required to trust anyone before the ending, he never opens up or makes himself vulnerable at all. People find out information about him, he never really dynamically opens himself. So the personal story I thought he had was never addressed at all, while a new one about regret was introduced that never made a ton of sense to me. And I don't think this is just because of my expectations - my reaction to FFXIV proves that I am able to meet good writing where it goes in surprising directions, as long as it's interesting and thoughtful and clear.

And I think this might be part of what people felt was off about the ending - Solas is sort of uninvolved in the revelations that are about him, and doesn't do much to be part of his own ending. Part of what I loved about Solas in Inquisition is that he is not controlled by you in any way, and so he feels like his own person with a very strong sense of character.

Anyway, Emet-Selch, in a very comparable and arguably more extreme plot position, is very involved in the revelations about himself, he always feels like a very strong character who cannot be affected by the player, and the whole situation is handled with deft emotion and care and delicacy. The story is comparatively very uninterested in litigating Emet-Selch or putting him on trial - the story allows you to simply feel the way that you feel in an organic way, and Emet's story spends that energy instead actually exploring his thematic material about grief and legacy, and the larger story theme of existentialism instead, in a way that is very refreshing and interesting. I've seen a lot of western stories tie themselves in knots over "redemption" and frankly it's almost never been interesting at all. Who cares about any of that. lol

(Now, I guess this is a matter of preference, because some people really like being able to shape a character's story, but idk I rewatched the ending of FFXIV and even though there wasn't a choice with Emet, because it isn't a branching story, his story felt more satisfying to me, maybe because there isn't a patronizing choice to be made for him. He is who he is, and he fulfills a very beautiful narrative role and purpose that no other character could in the story.)

I don't know how this could have been improved to me and still allowed players to choose Solas' ending for him, but I can actually think of a few different methods, none of which involve Rook condescendingly and patronizingly lecturing Solas as if Solas had never thought about a single aspect of this horrible situation he's in before that very moment that Rook lectures him lmfao.

All this to say... idk I'm writing this and I am not going back to edit it so it's stream-of-consciousness. But yeah

I just wanted the story to be complicated on a few more levels than I could have predicted. I genuinely don't care what happened, but I thought of a few twists like the Veil coming down and yeah, I was expecting A Single Twist or reveal to happen. In a Dragon Age game.

I wanted Solas to seem cool and capable and noble and smart, and actually feel like he was as old and experienced as he is.

I wanted a clear theme I could sink my teeth into

Like notice I didn't even say anything about Solavellan. Like I never in 100 years thought they were getting a happy ending where they were both alive in bodies, and I like that we got that, but I would honestly trade it for a more complicated story. To me, if a story is sad you can always write fanfic, but if a story isn't COMPLICATED, that's a much more urgent issue.

These 3 things DA4 didn't give me in a way that satisfied me but FFXIV did. anyway idk the way my hyperfixations work, I completely switch to a new subject so talking about Dragon Age is actually hard for me right now.

[inkskinned]

it mattered because when my brother asked me what if this is the happiest you'll ever be? the best you'll ever get? the thing i felt was fear, not peace. everybody thought you were so perfect for me. even i thought you were "helping me grow". i had to challenge every internal clock. make myself more thoughtful, more kind, more beautiful.

i told my therapist it was good because i like the changes i made and there's something so strong about saying i did that. the problem is that i can like the difference all i want, but i changed for you. something akin to getting your name tattooed, all my progress is stamped with fuck you.

it was the happiest i'd ever been and also the best i'd ever gotten. i would still get in the car and think what the fuck just happened.

[mentalsstuff]

its so hilarious to me that even when Luke says the most out of pocket thing, they're so used to it by now that it doesnt faze them anymore

look at AJ watching them like this is perfectly normal

[justarandombrit]

According to Inside No. 9, if you want to get revenge on someone who caused your daughter's suicide, you have two options.

Track down her abuser, and pretend to be suicidal in order to lure him into a psychosexual mind game which ends in your own suicide and the death of his teenage son.

Become gay

[nondelphic]

i fucking love writing a healthy best friendship between a man and a woman without making it weird or having them fall in love

[buildbuymode]

procrastinating playing by retooling the goth manor for the seventieth time