#Misanthrope (2023)

[kuzzzma]

To Catch a Killer (2023) – is a strange film, that outright LIES to it’s intended viewers.

It’s not about how they are going to catch a killer, this title is just a feint, to fool critics and audience alike. The purpose of the film is to ask some very uncomfortable questions sneakily, so subtly that viewers are not even aware that they were asked anything, yet the question will linger and doubt will fester and maybe this will lead to finding some answers in oneself.

Problems stated, questions posed:

Homelessnes

Sexual harassment

Human and LGBT rights

Gun control

History

Racism

Sexism

Police bias

Media responsibility

Media sensationalism

Ecology

Pollution

Politics and populism

Workers rights

Police unprofessionalism

Police brutality

And it’s not an attack on any one country. You see people at the mall, workplace, struggles with higher-ups, who don’t care one bit about solving the crime, but only about how it will reflect on their political aspirations (and everything can be sacrificed for that). It’s universal.

I look at those human interactions and it’s the same everywhere. I look at these landscapes and see a typical Russian small town during winter:

РУС!реал

– How long have you been married? – Ever since we were allowed.

This snippet of dialog jolts the viewer with it’s choice of words: the notion that you need to be ALLOWED to get married feels instantly WRONG, and yet… I find it much more effective that just silently doing token “representation”.

This jolt is much needed, it shakes up viewer and pokes at their assumptions about what kind of film they are watching just in time to pose the main Question right in the next scene.

The Question is stated outright, as well as the answer author proposes and later puts to test.

Big question to ask.

– That’s the big question. How people shape systems and how systems shape us. Today it’s all about the STATUS. People who have it will kill to protect it. People who want it will kill to achieve it and everyone else will be crushed inbetween. Governments, corporations, high school.. pattern seems to be the same. – How do we change that? – You need empathy. Connection. If we truly see ourselves in other people, we want to raise them up, not bring them down.

This is exactly what our protagonist will try to do when facing their perpetrator – establish connection, empathise, work together.

The perpetrator with his need for space and time, with his cabin in the woods reminds me of Henry David Thoreau. He even looks like him!

In the last arc wounded and dying perpetrator is hunted down with the whole might of police force. It’s all blinking lights, whole fleet of cars, helicopters in the air, radio chatter and sirens, all hands on deck. Hunters form a line and their prey is trapped.

We got his tracks!

This comes after this man stated his need for quiet, desire and inability to hide from society.

Makes viewer feel sick long before suicide by the firing squad of cops.

It’s a strange sad film, but it’s got sharp teeth and claws, and it puts boredom, glory, beauty and horror on display:

Boredom and Glory.

Beauty.

Horror

The essential advantage for a poet is not to have a beautiful world with which to deal; it is to be able to see beneath both beauty and ugliness; to see the boredom, and the horror, and the glory. T.S. Eliot

[olvaheiner]

To Catch a Killer (2023)

[im-just-sal]

Happy pride to all my queer family except for the ones who grew up rich🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

[starkmaiden]

So did Bill ever find the execution field of all his neighbors?

Did he stumble on it in the early days of securing the town when he ventured out for lumbar?

Did Joel and Tess tell him? Did Frank?

Did Bill know that everyone he knew before Frank died hours after they left?

[kyndaris]

The Never Changing Nature of Humanity and War

As another year ends, I look back over the major events that defined it and despair. Humanity seems desperate to repeat the same mistakes of old. Though there are moments when we shine, we are still motivated by greed, jealousy and pride. Look no further than the two wars currently being fought, the posturing in the Pacific and how little our world has done to combat climate change. Still, I suppose things could be worse. We might, after all, be suffering the effects of a nuclear winter (except no-one yet has the cajones to start such a huge chain reaction just yet).

But I digress.

January 2023 was a mess of events. Here in Australia, news of Pope Benedict passing away was only in headlines on New Year's Day. Other notable deaths included George Pell (a cardinal who was sent to prison for child sexual abuse in 2019 but who had his convictions later quashed) and the former king of Greece. From there, the world spiralled with Europe enduring very warm temperatures for winter (turns out 2023 was the hottest year on record!), Jacinda Ardern resigned from being Prime Minister of New Zealand/ Aotearoa. In Brazil, Bolsonaro tried to pull a Trump by stoking a Capitol-riot-style insurrection. This was later met be counter protesters.

As the year progressed, Kevin McCarthy was elected as speaker to the House of Representatives after going through fifteen rounds of voting. He was later removed and later replaced by another Republican: Mike Johnson. News of his Kevin McCarthy's unsuccessful bids were later drowned out by the shooting down of a Chinese air balloon. This led to several other unidentified objects to be shot down, which later turned out to be weather balloons set up by civilian scientists.

The United Kingdom enjoyed protests and strikes among public servants due to rising costs of living. Madrid protested their leftist government. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's First Minister, resigned.

But in case the first quarter of the year wasn't exciting enough, Mother Nature also wanted to have a little fun by sending a cyclone towards New Zealand (Aotearoa), with many residents suffering from flash-flooding. Oh, and there was an earthquake too!

An earthquake also hammered Turkiye and Syria. What's particularly telling, though, was the fact most of the humanitarian aid was directed to and more focused on the citizens of Turkiye rather than Syria. It lefts thousands dead and millions were displaced. Thankfully, though, it didn't much impact this blogger's trip overseas as our tour stayed primarily in the western portion of Turkiye and din't venture too far south.

From there, we saw the rise of the H5N1 avian flu, killing huge swathes of domestic and wild birds. The flu also had outbreaks in mink farms. So, although COVID-19 might be in the rearview mirror, there are plenty of new diseases ready to take its place! Like the zombie dear disease which as been spreading in Yellowstone! Essnetially, though, it's a chronic wasting disease with symptoms such as drastic weight loss, stumbling, listlessness and other neurological symptoms. While there are no current reported cases of this in humans, studies suggest it could pose a risk to anyone who eats meat from infected animals.

Of course, one should never forget that COVID-19 is still rampant around the world. We've all just comfortably shoved the little inconvenience to the back of our mind, even as it features as one of the core reasons for death.

Back home in Australia, permanent residency was being offered to many refugees who held temporary protection visas. There was also a resumption of assessments for asylum seeker sponsored visas where they would try to bring family members over.

Speaking of refugees (and jumping ahead a few months), there was a shipwreck off Greece carrying several hundred refugees and migrants. Most were fleeing conflicts in their countries. Of major note was the one in Sudan between the army and a paramilitary force. And when you have many countries refusing to take up migrants or helping out their fellow humans (looking at Tunisia cracking down on illegal immigrants), you end up with many a humanitarian crisis.

Further disasters abounded with a head-on crash in Greece leading to 57 being killed. China later had its own subway crash due to heavy snowfall causing carriages to detach. India, too, also had a train crash killing about 100 people.

Elsewhere, many other social media services began to emulate Elon Musk's subscription services for Twitter X, allowing users to become 'verified.' The Silicon Valley bank collapsed, followed by Credit Suisse leading to a significant downturn on Wall Street as people panicked.

In happy news, Everything Everywhere All At Once won 7 Oscars. A victory, it seemed for so many people living in Asian diasporas across the Western world. Given that many Asians were attacked during the COVID-19 pandemic simply because of their appearance, the win of Everything Everywhere All At Once proved to be a pivotal moment for many.

As the year rolled on, the International Criminal Court issued out a arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin. Trump was indicted for falsifying business records. He was even later arrested. But alas, nothing has seemed to stick and Trump has used many of the court cases brought against him to target those who would stand against him in his bid for the 2024 electoral campaign.

Following the death of Her Royal Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II last year, King Charles III enjoyed a state coronation alongside his wife, Queen Camilla.

Other quick events: Joe Biden was forced to cancel a trip to Australia to deal with the US debt ceiling. There was the discovery of a Kenyan starvation cult. Tina Turner passed away. There was the destruction of a dam in southern Ukraine by Russian forces.

And in the news of cyber security, there was a hack of file-transfer program MoveIt, affecting many companies and governments. This was topped by a hack against Insomniac and the leaking of 1.6 TB of files showing games in development as well as the personal information of many employees.

As the northern hemisphere reached the summer, Canadia endured several severe wildfires that even affected the air quality in America. Silvio Berlusconi passed away and to cap it all off: five people were killed in an imploding submersible headed down towards the Titanic.

In other news, both domestic and international, corruption findings were noted of previous New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian. A teenage boy was shot dead in France leading to protests. Microsoft won a case against the FTC to delay a merge with Activision-Blizzard. SAF-AFRA began to strike alongside the writer's guild regarding working conditions with the move to streaming and the threat of AI supplanting jobs.

With summer peaking and then waning, heatwaves continued to devastate America, Europe and Asia. There was the passing of a controversial bill in Israel limiting the power of the Supreme Court to overturn decisions made by government ministers. In Niger, the military staged a coup.

To put our thoughts at ease, people turned on their televisions and headed to stadiums to watch the FIFA Women's World Cup hosted by Australia and New Zealand. Although Spain won, I'm happy to say Australia's own team came in fourth with a strong showing and with much love showered on our Matildas.

To keep us on our toes, however, we also saw the death of Wagner Group leader in a plane crash: Yevgeny Prigozhin. There was chaos in New York when live-streamer Kai Cenat decided to host a Give Away event. In Africa, there was another coup. This time in Gabon. And in some positive news, India was the first country to land on the Moon's south pole.

As the rest of the world headed towards winter, and Australia to summer, Mother Nature thought another earthquake would shake things up a little - killing thousands in Morocco. There was also an earthquake in Afghanistan, killing quite a number of citizens.

And just to fill out our assassination quota for the year, Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar was killed in Canada.

But in a move to surprise us all, and to raise the stakes in our very fragile ecosystem, Hamas launched an attack on Israel on 7 October, killing a few thousand and taking hundreds hostage. Israel, of course, retaliated - vowing to crush Hamas. This has since led to Israel bombing the Gaza strip, killing many hundreds of people including children and a few of their own people in a desperate bid to stamp out Hamas.

While there was a brief ceasefire and a release of hostages, the situation is still quite dire for many Palestinians. And now Iran has taken a step, declaring they would close off the Mediterranean.

In Australia, we hosted a referendum for the Voice to Parliament. Unfortunately, it was a campaign filled with a lot of disinformation and misinformation. To my dismay, the Voice to Parliament failed, setting Australia back when it comes to acknowledging Indigenous voices.

As for those clamouring for a Treaty first, while I agree with you that a Treaty would be important, a Voice would have greatly paved the way. Even if it might not have been an immediate change or be the change everyone wanted, sometimes the best way to make things better is by taking small steps. True, it might not be what one hopes for but when it comes to swaying the minds of the public on key issues, governing a nation is a delicate balancing act. TAKE WHAT YOU CAN GET BUT DO NOT TRY TO HOLD THE PEOPLE/ BUDGET HOSTAGE. Public opinion IS important but relying solely on populism will get you nowhere and a country in shambles.

Australia also saw several bushfires in Queensland and norther New South Wales. We even had an Optus outage nation-wide, where many people had no internet or phone coverage. It proved, once again, the disadvantages of relying solely on technology and our phones for anything and everything.

And as we neared closer to Christmas and the New Year, Henry Kissinger passed away at the age of 100. In China, there were reports of another mysterious respiratory disease affecting children - with cases of pneumonia beginning to spike again. In north-east Myanmar, a temporary ceasefire was negotiated between the rebels and the military government. New Zealand also saw the rise of a new government (with Labour having been ousted in favour of the National Party). This set in motion a 100-day reform agenda seeking to unwind many of the policies designed to improve outcomes for Maori and Pasifika people, damaging race relations.

In India, after the firing of a smoke grenade in the halls of Parliament, more than half of the Opposition Members of Parliament were suspended in India. Back in America, Joe Biden pardoned thousands convicted of marijuana charges and there was also a mass shooting in Prague!

To round off the year, COP28 was held in Dubai for some inexplicable reason.

And as Santa touched down in Australia, many Australians have been struggling due to the large interest rate hikes and the increased cost of living. Rent, in particular, has proven difficult to overcome for many because of the high demand for housing. Some of it has been exacerbated by inflation but quite a bit of it has also been attributed to the changes in migration policies following the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of course, it's not an Australian Christmas if we don't have a cyclone tearing through northern Queensland in the week or two beforehand, leading to floods and the shutdown of Cairns airport.

So ends another rotation of the Earth around the sun. 2023 has had its highs and its many various lows. Yet although it was the hottest year recorded in living history, we are still here, ticking ever closer to midnight for when we destroy the Earth as we know it.

Actually, no. The Earth will be fine in the long run (unless we somehow destroy the core or the sun explodes). It's us humans who will be wiped out from the planet, resetting civilisation as we know it. And I, for one, am eager for a reset though I doubt we will learn our lesson.

Of course, since I'm writing this post on Christmas Day (and listening to the 2023 Carols in the Domain), I can only hope there will be a light at the end of this very long tunnel we've found ourselves in. They do say it's always darkest before the dawn. Here's hoping there is a dawn for us all where collective governments can work together to make changes so we can continue thriving on this planet we call home.

[cartoonistcoop]

ShortBox Comics Member Interview: Sloane Hong

Throughout the month of October, the Cartoonist Cooperative will be sharing interviews with members of the Co-op who have a new comic available at the ShortBox Comics Fair 2024! 

NOTE: The Cartoonist Cooperative is not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way formally connected with ShortBox.  

Today’s spotlight is Sloane Hong ( @plaest2k ) and their new comic for ShortBox, Expiry Date.

We’d love it if you could introduce yourself and tell us about your background in comics.

Sloane Hong: Kia ora, my name is Sloane Hong (she/her), I’m a Korean-tauiwi illustrator, comic artist and tattooer based in Aotearoa, New Zealand. I only started making comics professionally about five years ago but they’ve always been a significant part of my life for as long as I can remember.

Tell us more about your new comic?

SH: Expiry Date is an erotic, body horror, sci-fi short story about coming home from a long day at your shitty, minimum-wage job, crashing on your couch and fantasizing about how fucking good it would feel to just die.

I mean, it’s also about transness, labour rights, our relationship with our bodies and death under capitalism, etc but it’s mostly about shitty jobs.

My friend described it as “what if David Cronenberg was a transsexual dyke who grew up reading ero-guro”.

What are some early experiences as a cartoonist that shaped you or your process?

SH: My brother’s also an artist, probably better than I could ever be, and I basically owe any good taste I might have to him. Growing up, I always got home from school first so I’d sneak into his room to admire his drawings and read his comics. He had most of the usual stuff you’d find on any Korean kid’s shelf in the 90’s: Akira Toriyama, Masamune Shirow, Yoshito Usui, etc, and a couple of Korean manhwa that are all now damn-near impossible to find. As he got older, he started getting into American comics and brought home stuff like R. Crumb, Daniel Clowes, Fletcher Hanks, etc from the library.

But it’s not just that I had someone to introduce me to all this stuff, it’s the fact I’m six years younger than him and he was already reading this stuff earlier than most. So I think I started looking at all those misanthropic underground comics by horny white men when I was, like, what… about 10 years old?

Besides my brother, the trauma of working shitty jobs for years on end, The Terrible Boredom of Paradise, and this weird and fucked up miracle we call life are probably the wellsprings of both my inspiration and ceaseless burnout. 

Tell us about your creative process; how did you develop this comic and what are the steps you took to bring it to the final stage?

SH: I did something really stupid for the 2023 ShortBox Comics Fair. I have ADHD and one of the many ways it manifests is that I have a debilitating habit of overthinking my stories. “Are the themes too obvious? Is it too heavy handed? Are the motivations for this character clear enough? Is this the right way to phrase this? Is this the right word? Is this the right letter? Is this the right punctuation?” etc, etc.

On paper, it probably sounds like something every writer goes through but when I say debilitating, I mean interferes-with-my-ability-to-live-a-normal-life-kind of debilitating. It’s kind of impossible to articulate how bad it was but it got to a point where I was so sick of myself and all the stories I never finished that I said fuck it–maybe if I just jump into a comic with nothing but a stupid premise, no planning and an impending deadline, I won’t have time to think about all these inconsequential details. So I sat down and forced myself to write, pencil and ink a comic, page-by-page.

It was essentially an exercise in automatism: I was still thinking about draftsmanship, composition, flow and everything but I kinda just let the story tell itself by writing/ drawing whatever felt like a natural progression for the narrative.

That was how I ended up with Marrow, which was kinda funny because the whole point was to make a goofy, low-stakes comic about nothing to circumvent the pressure of having to write anything good. Instead I’d inadvertently made something that was layered and deeply intimate and won the sci-fi category in the 2024 Minicomic Awards. But, more importantly, the whole process helped bring everything together. It reminded me of something I used to tell young artists: developing a style isn’t something you really set out to do, it’s something that just happens. You don’t practice drawing to get better at drawing; you do it to better channel your voice. It’s only when you can stop thinking about how to move your hand that your heart can take the lead.

I’d forgotten my own advice. I was so concerned about the technical details of how to write a story that I was basically assembling components rather than writing anything at all. Marrow helped me realize I’d already internalized everything I needed to write long ago. I just needed to stop thinking.

Expiry Date was a continuation of that process and made in basically the same way. There was just significantly less stress involved now that I knew I could trust myself.

Mostly.

Read the rest of the interview HERE! And dont forget to check out the Shortbox Comics Fair to support these lovely creators!!

[blujayonthewing]

besties you will never guess where she got covid

friend who is constantly bugging me to come to karaoke with her on wednesdays, including this past wednesday, has covid, again

[a-silent-symphony]

"Things have always been ****ed up." How death, cancer and a whole pandemic helped make Yesterwynde the most optimistic Nightwish album yet

Tuomas Holopainen was a teenage misanthrope. Growing up in the small Finnish town of Kitee, he had the regulation all-black wardrobe and the soundtrack to match. “I did not use to be an optimistic person when I was younger,” he says. “I loved black metal and all that. But I started to come to the realisation that things have always been fucked up, but we’re still going for the better despite the horrible things that are going on in the world.”

We’re sitting in a suite in an upscale Berlin hotel, as mid-morning traffic flows along Potsdamer Platz several storeys below us. Literally as we talk, unthinkable things are happening all around the world: war, abuse, torture, murder, wilful destruction of the climate. The grim realities of humanity in 2024, basically.

But right here, right now, all that seems a long way away. Not because Nightwish’s keyboard player and band leader is in epic denial mode, but because his band’s 10th album, Yesterwynde, is charged with emotion: hope, beauty, positivity and, yes, optimism.

It’s an unexpected choice on more than one level. Aside from the rolling catastrophe that is the 21st century, Nightwish themselves have been battered by turmoil over the past few years. Their last album, 2020’s Human. :II: Nature., was released during the first, intense throes of the pandemic, scuppering their plans to tour it. When they did return to the road in May 2021, it was without longtime bassist Marko Hietala, who cited a mixture of long-standing depression and disillusion with the music industry for his decision to leave the band.

On a personal level, things have been no less turbulent. In 2022, singer Floor Jansen revealed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer (she was given the all-clear following surgery). In June 2023, the singer – pregnant with her second child – collapsed with exhaustion following a Nightwish show in Finland, prompting the cancellation of two subsequent solo gigs. Amid all this, Tuomas’s father, Pentti Holopainen, passed away in 2021.

Other bands may have buckled under the battering of the last few years, but Nightwish – and specifically Tuomas as their chief songwriter – have taken a different path. Rather than wallowing in trauma, Yesterwynde pushes back against it. The 12-track album covers a lot of emotional ground across its 69 minutes, but the overwhelming sense is that, honestly, everything is going to be OK. “Yesterwynde has a very optimistic vibe to it,” says Tuomas. “It celebrates life and humanity and mortality. The important things.” 

Yesterwynde begins and ends with the sound of an old film projector starting up and winding down. It suggests a movie is playing out in between. What exactly that movie is, Tuomas Holopainen isn’t letting on. “It’s something different for everybody,” he says, smiling but evasive. Musically, Yesterwynde is everything we have come to expect from Nightwish, only more. One song, the hyper- dramatic An Ocean Of Strange Islands, features over 600 studio tracks and sounds like it. Another, The Children Of ’Ata, was inspired by the real-life story of a group of teens from Tonga stranded for 15 months on a remote island in the Pacific, and features five indigenous Tongan singers. Elsewhere, Yesterwynde features two separate choirs – one classical, one kids – and three different orchestras, all recorded in London’s prestigious Abbey Road Studios, naturally. There are no side-long epics – only two tracks, An Ocean Of Strange Islands and first single Perfume Of The Timeless, stretch beyond eight minutes – but it still feels bigger, bolder and more grandiose than anything else out there right now.

But amid the dramatic power and intricacy, there’s the emotional core that sets Nightwish apart from every corset-clad knock-off that has followed in their wake. That emotion is conveyed by both the music and Floor Jansen’s career-best vocal performance (as on the two other Nightwish albums she’s been involved in, the Dutch native is joined on singing duties by multi-instrumentalist/resident Brit Troy Donockley). Loss, grief, the existential fragility of humanity and the hope it inspires: it’s all there.

There’s one problem. Literally seconds before we step into the lift to go up to meet Tuomas, a rep for Nightwish’s label makes it clear that he will not talk about the death of his father. On the one hand, this is understandable, even admirable – privacy is a scarce commodity these days, and there’s something to be said for not laying everything out for public consumption. On the other, it’s frustrating – death and birth both play into the big, interlocking themes of Yesterwynde, namely the passage of time and the unfolding of history, and how both make us aware of our own mortality.

This is clearest of all on the album’s closing track, Lanternlight, a moving yet celebratory lament for those who are no longer with us. ‘Gone is the hurt, the wait / Gone is the warmth of day,’ Floor sings. And later: ‘To the meadows I go / I’ll be waiting for you.’ Tuomas won’t say whether it was inspired by the death of his father – “I lost something very dear to me a few years ago, and this song was born out of that emotion,” he offers opaquely – but it’s hard not to join the dots.

“The major theme of the album is time – going back in time, recognising your own mortality,” he says. “Connecting to the past.” The past seems appealing, given how shitty the world is at the moment. “Yeah, it is,” he concedes. “But it’s also incredibly good in many ways. And in many ways it’s better – the innovations of science and medicine, the child death rate... A small example: would you rather go to the dentist today or a hundred years ago? “I want to emphasise that I’m not immune to the bad stuff that’s going on in the world. I’m aware of it and I do everything I can to help. But I think it’s good for our mental state to recognise the good stuff. And I think that we have the chance as a species to survive and get together. That’s the core message, the essence, of Yesterwynde.”

Like so many things, Yesterwynde was born out of the pandemic. The seeds for the album were sown after the tour in support of Human. :II: Nature. was postponed due to Covid. “Suddenly I had nothing to do,” says Tuomas. “So I thought I’d better start writing songs for the next Nightwish album.”

For Floor, the experience of making her third Nightwish album was unlike that of making Human. :II: Nature. or its predecessor, 2015’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful. “It was different for me,” she says. “Not bad, not at all, but different.” It’s a few weeks after we met Tuomas in Berlin. We’re sitting backstage at Muziekgebouw, a concrete concert hall in the Dutch city of Eindhoven, where Floor is due to play a show in support of her 2023 solo album, Paragon, later this evening. She’s not alone: her eight-month-old baby daughter, Lucy, is here too, unknowingly sitting in on the interview and letting her mum know when she’s hungry.

Just like many things that emerged from the pandemic, Yesterwynde began in isolation. Tuomas began writing the songs at home in Finland while his bandmates were busy dealing with their own lives. The rest of Nightwish knew he was writing something, but they didn’t know what. “He didn’t email us saying, ‘This is what I’ve written today,’” says Floor. “He doesn’t like sharing snippets, he likes to share the whole thing. But we knew he was inspired.”

The first time Floor heard the new songs Tuomas had written was during Nightwish’s festival run in the summer of 2022, after touring had properly resumed. “Imagine us all gathered in a hotel room, everybody has brought a drink or two, or three, sometimes the minibar is emptied,” says Floor. “Tuomas would play us the music – we didn’t listen to all the songs at once, that would’ve been too much. He’d explain what the songs were about – he’d start off by telling us very little, letting the music speak for itself, but he’d start to go into the depths of what inspired him.”

At this stage, there were no vocals on the record, just piano melodies in their place. But Tuomas would sometimes sing along as the demo played. Floor made voice recordings on her phone to help her understand what the songs were about and ensure she could connect with the emotions in them. “I’m sure he hopes I never put them on the internet,” she says playfully.

Floor’s personal circumstances meant the recording process was different too. Her pregnancy meant she was unable to join the rest of the band at the campsite in Kitee they’ve used for several albums now to rehearse the songs for Yesterwynde. It also meant she recorded her vocals at home in Sweden, where she lives with her husband, Sabaton drummer Hannes Van Dahl (Tuomas was there for the sessions).

“I was pregnant, and before that there was the cancer, and then I had my baby and I was just really, really fucking tired, so I wasn’t there like I had been in the past,” she says. “The connection to the album is much less than it was before, because we haven’t been spending as much crazy time together as we usually would. That doesn’t mean I don’t give a shit – quite the opposite – but I’m still growing into what it means, and what it means to me.”

What song hit you the hardest the first time you heard it? “The last song on the album [Lanternlight] hit me the most,” she says. “When I heard that the first time – he explained what it was about, this song he wrote for his father – it went straight to my heart. It was so beautiful, even in demo form. I sat there crying.”

Even without the pandemic, the last few years have been a rollercoaster for Floor. There was her well-documented diagnosis with and subsequent recovery from breast cancer, followed by her pregnancy. It culminated in her collapse from exhaustion following a Nightwish show in June 2023, while pregnant (thankfully, both Floor and her unborn daughter were fine). Two solo shows were cancelled in the wake of the latter, though no one would have blamed her if she’d walked away from it all for good.

“No, no, I just had to quit for a couple of months,” she says, meaning the heavy workload. “Did I ever think of quitting for good? No, never.” Hearing her talk, it sounds like Floor is in a unique position: a key part of Yesterwynde, undoubtedly, but also someone with a little distance, who is still learning its deeper meanings. What does the album mean to her right now?

“To me, it’s a continuous awareness about the beauty of the planet we’re on and the positivity of us as a species. We get all this negative feedback about killing the planet and hurting each other, and all of that is unfortunately true. But there’s also a lot of beauty to it – humanity has achieved amazing things throughout history, and we should remind ourselves of that. That is sometimes forgotten in the speed of the life we live today.”

For all Yesterwynde’s against-the-grain optimism, Tuomas Holopainen is as aware as anyone of the grim realities of the world in 2024. That was brought home in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when there were fears that Russia’s neighbour, Finland, could be next.

“Not fear, but an awareness,” he counters. “I haven’t felt afraid, not once, even though I live less than 10 kilometres from the Russian border. But we have such a good defence that he is not going to come after us.”

He seems equally unflappable when it comes to matters closer to his band. Earlier this year, original Nightwish singer Tarja Turunen – who was acrimoniously and very publicly fired from the band in 2005 – and former bassist Marko Hietala reunited to tour together and release a joint single, Left On Mars. If it feels like a slap in the face for Tuomas, he hides it well.

“Honestly, I don’t care at all,” he says. “It doesn’t move me in any direction that they have found each other. They can play and perform as many Nightwish songs as they want, it doesn’t bother me one bit.” Have you spoken to Marko since he left? ‘A couple of times.” Are you on good terms? "Yes. There’s no bad blood between us. His leaving was his decision. I was actually quite taken by the fact that in the first interview he gave after he left the band, he said, ‘Don’t anybody dare to put this on Tuomas. This was my decision.’”

You’ve talked about the passage of time. Do you miss the friendships you once had with Tarja and Marko? “I remember the best of times we had, with Tarja and Marko. I’m filled with nostalgia and warmth when I think about the latter half of 2004, for example, which was one of the best times Nightwish ever had, right after the release of the Once album and the European tour. It was just wonderful. But my life is in such a good place at the moment that it’s no more than a whiff of nostalgia.”

That sense of nostalgia is threaded through Yesterwynde, linking the past to the present. But what about the future? For Nightwish, that future seems to be tinged with a degree of uncertainty. In April 2023, they announced in a statement that the band would not be touring their next album – a huge deal for a band whose epic live shows match the grandeur of their music. That decision still stands today. Tuomas is insistent that there will be no live shows in support of Yesterwynde, though he politely but firmly refuses to reveal why.

“The reasons are personal, we’re not going to go into it, but it was something that had to be done for this band to continue,” he says, cryptically. “There’s no bad blood between the members, nothing like that. We just have to take a long breather.” Are there any plans to do anything around the album? A live stream? “We will have something planned, which is not playing music but something else.” Which is? “I can’t say, because we don’t know right now,” he says, unconvincingly. “But there are still things happening.”

Backstage in Eindhoven a few weeks later, Floor is equally unwilling to divulge the reasons behind the decision, though she seems to have a slightly different view of it. “The whole idea of not touring... it’s not mine,” she says. “I wish we could continue, but it’s a mutual decision. Everything with Nightwish, we’ve done with 120%, but if you don’t have the energy to do that, it’s better to take a break.”

Not having to tour for months on end does have its upsides. Tuomas says he’ll spend the time working on a new record from Auri, the side-project featuring his wife Johanna and Nightwish’s Troy Donockley. Floor will likewise use the opportunity to spend time with her family and work on her second solo album.

Both insist that the lack of a tour in support of Yesterwynde doesn’t mean that Nightwish are coming to the end of the road. Tuomas points to the fact that they’ve just signed a new deal with their label, Nuclear Blast, as “evidence there are going to be more albums in future”.

“I’ve seen a lot of reactions, people drawing conclusions,” says Floor. “Making an elephant out of a mosquito, as the Dutch say – making something much bigger than it actually is. It’s not the end of the band, I’m not going to leave, nobody’s angry at each other. There’s a lot of drama been added to this – it’s bad enough that we’re not playing, but there’s nothing more to it.”

In many ways, making such a monumental album as Yesterwynde, and then opting not to tour it, is a very Nightwish thing to do. This is a band who have always followed their own path, even – especially – when it’s flown in the face of popular trends. They’ve watched nu metal, the NWOAHM and the mid-00s emo scene rise, fall and rise again while their own career has followed an unbroken upwards trajectory.

But Nightwish exist entirely in a universe of Tuomas’s own creation. Ask him if he listens to Sleep Token or any of the crop of modern bands currently taking metal in interesting new directions, and he shakes his head.

“No. I don’t listen to music at all anymore, practically. I haven’t for 10 years. I enjoy silence much more these days. Maybe I had an overdose of it for the first 35 years of my life. I’ve heard of the bands you mentioned, but I don’t actively listen to music at all. Though I just heard that My Dying Bride are coming out with a new album. I’ll definitely check that out,” he adds wryly.

Earlier, he’d talked a little more about the imaginary movie that starts and finishes at either end of Yesterwynde. Or, more specifically, the one that runs in his head.

“It’s a very unique one,” he says after a moment’s pause. “I’ve come to realise how incredibly lucky we are to be alive. It’s ridiculous, the odds that we are all here. We should celebrate it.”

[gofancyninjaworld]

The OPM Manga in 2023

By the numbers:

23 updates (most 14 days apart, shortest interval: 9 days, longest: 33 days).

662 pages (range 12 - 41 pages, mean page count: 29 pages).

Volumes published: 2 (Volumes 28 and 29). 1 bonus chapter included in Volume 28 -- Olfaction.

By the story:

Psychics and Temper Tantrums (chapters 176 - 184)

Well, the Monster Association is behind us but the fallout from it is slowly beginning to settle. Most of the heroes are now back at work and some of the consequences of a world that's increasingly scared of monster attacks are beginning to show up. The first quarter of the year was taken up with Tatsumaki's temper tantrum -- and Saitama once again daring a strong person to do their worst -- it's like he didn't learn his lesson with Garou, which disappoints me. [I love Saitama, but when brains were being handed out, he was not at the front of the queue.]

That said, even though I did not care one whit for Tatsumaki throwing Saitama around (it wasn't terrible, but really it could have been condensed into 1-2 chapters), the start of the Psychic Sisters arc was fantastic, and its ending was very interesting. I made a nuisance of myself at the start of it, pestering everyone in earshot with my excitement that Tatsumaki was taking Fubuki into her confidence to try getting Psykos out rather than trying to do everything herself.

Her complex feelings of disappointment, betrayal, and the sense that she'd made a mistake were some of the most complex and nuanced we'd seen in the story. She may be paranoid and misanthropic, but she's not crazy: there's a basis for her actions, and being knocked back just when she'd taken the risk of opening up was harsh. Unfortunately, Tatsumaki's default response is rage.. and I'm not going to waste time on recounting what happened then.

I felt pain for her here.

The end as well, expanding as it did on Tatsumaki's thoughts about how she'd accidentally woken Fubuki's psychic powers by scaring her so badly and the guilt she felt at having made her sister a target, was great. Her feelings about Blast are great, as this is the first time we get what she actually thinks of him. I still want her to learn that Blast doesn't work alone -- it'll blow her mind. The session ending with her giving the Fubuki group a chance to grow stronger and prove themselves is a fantastic development.

Even when she's giving someone a chance she still has to be scary.

Schemes (chapters 184, 187 - 191)

I really love how seamlessly the Psychic Sister arc flows into the next big theme: that of schemes and threats to the Hero Association's future. ONE has done a lot of work reworking the webcomic story so that the storyline is a coherent whole rather than two-three apparently unrelated storylines. Fubuki taking advantage of the chaotic aftermath to extract Psykos while securing immunity for her sister, and Tatsumaki brazenly using the HA's need to keep the rich clients sweet to scupper an investigation into Psykos's whereabouts was all clever. However, they're just amateurs and their antics played beautifully into McCoy's hands, who leveraged the crisis to make himself appear indispensible to the HA, thus making it very hard for him to be removed, even as he works to implicate the Hero Association in scandals (many of which he's running).

You can't call McCoy hasty: this guy has played a good long game.

The Hero Association is already having issues recruiting new heroes as they're going to Neo Heroes, which is also pinching existing heroes. However, it's not 100% going McCoy's way. Something I started praising in my review of chapter 173 is the greater self-efficacy of the characters in the manga. Sekingar and Sicchi haven't just been sitting on their hands watching McCoy sell the HA down the river. They've teamed up with Child Emperor to find out what he's really up to.

I think that this is the best cover of 2023: a collection of individuals who embody heroism, whether or not they're recognised as such or work in 'regular' ways. Well, there's one impostor…

Critically, they're not assuming that the Neo Heroes are necessarily evil: they want to understand what this outfit is actually doing. After all, heroism is heroism, no matter what guise it takes. To see that Sekingar has so earned Metal Bat's respect that the latter follows him into the heart of danger did my heart good [1].

Please, my poor heart, it'll burst if things get much more awesome.

Ninjas, Ninnies, Nintendos (193 - 199, ongoing)

That Blast has some connection to the ninjas from Sonic's Ninja Village has been clear for a long time in the webcomic. [2] However, it is only here in the manga that we're getting a full explanation of what that connection is.

Yes, yes, my partner may be a monster but he's a useful monster.

The intertwined story of Blast and his attempts to reach his former partner, Empty Void, who was also running a horrifying 'school' for grooming boys into assassins, and that of Flashy Flash and Speed o' Sound Sonic isn't done yet, but it looks to be reaching at least one turning point. It's a pity that the fan translators stopped translating the cover text because that for chapter 199 was incredibly pertinent: 'Staring at the back of a friend you used to stand shoulder to shoulder with.' Sonic has so much to process.

And like that, Sonic's world has been turned upside down.

Since Blast has an ongoing relationship with Empty Void, we get troubling questions as to how long Blast had known about the Village and whether he disapproved, or had been content to ignore it as long as he had his partner by his side and found his talents indispensible. It's going to be interesting when those two meet! Also, if Blast is hoping to reverse Empty Void's monsterization, he'd better hope that the guy isn't like most people who became monsters. Most ex-human monsters *want* to be that way and there doesn't seem to be a good way to undo it. Well, maybe if you chop them up, have Phoenixman (oops, he seems to have lost his powers) resurrect them, then shock them incredibly hard, that might work. It's unlikely that anyone present can deduce what happened to Gale Wind and Hellfire Flame, much less put all the working parts of that together.

Still, they're going to try. This *is* going to be interesting. Also, potentially heartbreaking.

Reappearances

Genos: the disciple returns to his duty

Unlike the webcomic, Genos has not been completely absent. He's been quite busy: helping Saitama recover their apartment, meeting the Hero Association to discuss important matters, and also, hanging out with Saitama as a friend rather than as a disciple. It's been fun to see that he's finally ditched his flip phone for a smart one, heheh.

Nevertheless, it's not until Dr Kuseno finishes his new upgrade that Genos sets foot in Saitama's house, formally reporting for duty, so to speak. I praise Saitama's self-discipline and good sense in not breaking eye contact and in politely ignoring his disciple's new-found exhibitionism until he had the sense to put a shirt on [3].

Less positive, it's been painful to see that Genos is frustrated at how he doesn't seem to have grasped the kind of growth he's looking for and is unsure whether Saitama truly sees him. It's not been helped by Saitama trying to reassure him, pulling his best 'Reigen' face and instead made everything worse. There are two interesting shames, which will surely be built on at some point. 1: We see Saitama seeing Genos's strength but he doesn't say anything. 2: Genos is right that the strength that comes from within is different from that granted to one by upgrades. We see in another chapter from Nichirin, that having artificial parts is no hindrance to pulling out that great inner strength. The funny thing is that Genos has shown that kind of strength before, when he was fighting Elder Centipede, but he doesn't know it.

Ah, despite everything, those fools are no better at speaking to each other than they were before! It'd be hilarious if it weren't so tragic.

Rarely have the words 'open your mouth and solve your problems' been more apposite. Sadly, that's exactly what they don't do.

Garou: the other disciple tries to learn duty

Now this really threw a lot of fans for a loop -- ONE making clear that he's aware of how young Garou actually is. It was very easy to read Garou as a guy in his early twenties, but strip away the pretensions and he's really young. His over-simple understanding of what was wrong with the world and his over-large sense of responsibility to fix it are thoughts of a teen. It's just a good thing that teenagers don't have world-shattering power, and so can be extreme and wrong without hurting anyone. But it has really jarred with a lot of fans.

I may be giving Bang the side eye as he implements his idea of reformation (apparently, it involves hitting Garou over the head often), but the sense of lightness Garou feels at having a reliable mentor, the relief he undoubtedly feels at having a way to work his crimes off -- being a social outcast may seem cool in a 'reject-the-corrupt-world' way but it gets old fast -- and being able to contribute meaningfully to the dojo's re-establishment is palpable.

His life is sure to start sucking again soon, but for now, it's a joy to see him.

Let him gambol for now. Go Garou!

King: ugh

Sorry, King just irritates me some days and this was one of them. Not because he was running around trying to find someone who could help him: that was fine. But because, unlike the webcomic, once Saitama told him to work out, he's continuing to stick around and play videogames. In a world where everyone is trying their best to make sense of their world and help themselves in some way, however imperfect, the sight of this poster child for mediocre white men overpromoted for looking the part continuing to laze about just pisses me off.

Let him start helping himself and I will praise him.

He's been told what to do but he's not doing it.

GAY!

This year, ONE said: here, my children, I have brought you a pint of homo milk. Drink. What else are we to make of Fubuki triumphantly cradling Psykos as she makes a clean getaway?

This has to be the smuggest 'got the girl' face I've ever seen.

Or Blast continuing to call Empty Void his partner, despite everything that the guy has done, including turning into a monster? He wants him back so badly, and though he says it's strictly professional interest, we think the man doth protest too much.

And then whatever's going on with these two:

Flashy Flash, you ain't got no business calling Blast soft when you're handing Sonic tissues and smiling at him.

Fandom Follies

Do we need to do this? Yup! This year, we discovered that a lot of dudebros who have been against the idea of romance in OPM have just been shippers afraid to come out and own it. The sheer number of Saitama x Tatsumaki fans has been incredible. Nothing wrong with SaiTatsu but the obnoxiousness of fans new to shipping has been hard to tolerate. Learn some manners, folks!

Asides

[1] I think this is great foreshadowing of something Forte says later in the webcomic to paraphrase, risking your life for another hero is something you do as a favour for a friend, not because someone's declared themselves the boss of you and ordered it. It's nice to see Sekingar embodying that ideal.

[2] It's hard to believe it, but to this day (chapter 149), Blast is not yet seen in the webcomic. At this rate, he'll show up at the very end to get jobbed by God (no ID), but not before giving an over-long exposition about what he's been up to. That is, if he's not already dead, only nobody knows yet.

[3] I can see SaiGenos shippers worried that my saying that it's good that Saitama isn't taking Genos up on his obvious attraction means that I might be disapproving of the ship. That is not the case. I'm going to assume that most of us here are old enough to vote, enter into contracts, and pay taxes and so can think of things with nuance and context. A fandom that needs the reassurance of canon to decide what's permissible is a weak, timid, and pallid imitation of one, and one I want no part of. For certain, we're here to discuss the story as it exists, but please, we're also here to consider and explore scenarios and make works that cannot and often should not exist in the canon because they are FUN. Even more pertinent, ONE is on record as LOVING that fans spend their time and creativity doing things with his stories. So please, don't allow any in-universe discussions on what is helpful or unhelpful in the story affect what you draw and write! PLEASE SHIP! Gimme!

[ametistacollinsworld]

☠ .• Murder Drones Masterlist •.✎

Created: 07/03/2023

Last update: 15/05/2024

✿ Closed Requests!

Characters!

✿ RULES!

✉ Inbox: Close!

✉ Anons: Close!

⊹⊱•••《 ✮ 》•••⊰⊹

Uzi List:

Uzi x Reader x N Cuddles hcs

Uzi x Enigmatic! Cyborg! Reader

Uzi x Misanthropic! Worker Drone Reader

Uzi, Doll and V x Adopted! Human child Reader hcs

Uzi x Worker drone Reader x Thad poly hcs

Uzi x N x V x Stoic! Apathetic! Reader

Uzi x Artist! Reader

N x Nezuko Kamado like! Human Reader x Uzi

N x Nezuko Kamado like! Human Reader x Uzi 2

Uzi x Murder Drone Reader with trust issues hcs

Uzi x N x Best friend! Reader who is always honest of everything poly hcs

Uzi x Autistic! Reader

Uzi x Older Sibling Figure! Worker Drone Reader that got missing years ago

Uzi x Angel Drone! Reader

Uzi, N and V x Very strong! Human friend Reader hcs

⊹⊱•••《 ✮ 》•••⊰⊹

Thad List:

Thad x Male! Worker Drone Reader hcs

Thad x Chaotic! Inventor! Worker Drone Reader

Uzi x Worker Drone Reader x Thad poly hcs

Thad x Innocent in public! Worker Drone Reader but when alone loves to flirt

Thad x Super Shy! Reader

⊹⊱•••《 ✮ 》•••⊰⊹

Doll List:

Yandere! Doll x Reader

Doll x Reader x Lizzy Sleepover hcs

Lizzy x Reader x Doll Cuddles hcs

Uzi, Doll and V x Adopted! Human child Reader hcs

Lizzy x Worker Drone Reader x Doll poly hcs

Doll x Artist! Reader

Doll x Kanae Kocho like! Reader

Doll x AbsoluteSolver! Infected! Worker Drone Reader

Doll x Sick! Reader x Lizzy

Doll x AbsoluteSolver! Worker Drone! Reader

Doll x Chinese! Worker Drone Reader

⊹⊱•••《 ✮ 》•••⊰⊹

Lizzy List:

Doll x Reader x Lizzy Sleepover hcs

Lizzy x Reader x Doll Cuddles hcs

Lizzy x Worker Drone Reader x Doll poly hcs

Lizzy x Drone! Reader

Doll x Sick! Reader x Lizzy

⊹⊱•••《 ✮ 》•••⊰⊹

Khan List:

Platonic! Khan x Disable! Worker Drone Reader

Khan x Male! Worker Drone Reader Couple hcs

⊹⊱•••《 ✮ 》•••⊰⊹

N List:

N x Non binary! Reader

Jealous! N x Fem! Reader

Yandere! N x Reader hcs

Uzi x Reader x N Cuddles hcs

N x Inventor! Worker Drone Reader hcs

N x J x V x Reader poly hcs

Yandere! J,V and N x Human Reader hcs

Uzi x N x V x Stoic! Apathetic! Reader

N x Worker Drone Reader Dance hcs

N x Nezuko Kamado like! Human Reader x Uzi

N x Nezuko Kamado like! Human Reader x Uzi 2

J, V and N x Masochist! Worker Drone Reader hcs

J, V and N x Masochist! Worker Drone Reader hcs 2

N x Pretty flirty! Reader hcs

N x Blue Diamond like! Reader hcs

Uzi x N x Best friend! Reader who is always honest of everything poly hcs

N x Autistic! Reader

N x AbsoluteSolver! Reader hcs

V x N x Murder Drone Reader who collects plushies

N x Sarv like! Reader hcs

V, J and N x Child! Realistic Human drone! Reader

Uzi, N and V x Very strong! Human friend Reader hcs

⊹⊱•••《 ✮ 》•••⊰⊹

V List:

Yandere! V x Reader hcs and drabble

V x Lazy! Reader

Uzi, Doll and V x Adopted! Sad! Human child Reader hcs

N x J x V x Reader poly hcs

Yandere! J,V and N x Human Reader hcs

Uzi x N x V x Stoic! Apathetic! Reader

J, V and N x Masochist! Worker Drone Reader hcs

J, V and N x Masochist! Worker Drone Reader hcs 2

V x N x Murder Drone Reader who collects plushies

V x Semi-AbsoluteSolver! Female! Murder Drone Reader

V x AbsoluteSolver! Worker Drone Reader

V, J and N x Child! Realistic Human drone! Reader

Uzi, N and V x Very strong! Human friend Reader hcs

⊹⊱•••《 ✮ 》•••⊰⊹

J List:

J x William Afton like! Reader

J x Male! JCJenson employee! Reader hcs

J x Stupid! Worker Drone Reader hcs

N x J x V x Reader poly hcs

Yandere! J,V and N x Human Reader hcs

Yandere! J x Worker Drone Reader

J, V and N x Masochist! Worker Drone Reader hcs

J, V and N x Masochist! Worker Drone Reader hcs 2

J x Extremely upset! Reader

J x Professional! Murder Drone Reader

Platonic! J x Best Friend! Reader first meetings

J x Very clumsy! Smart! Murder Drone Reader

Yandere! J x Fem! Worker drone Reader

V, J and N x Child! Realistic Human drone! Reader

⊹⊱•••《 ✮ 》•••⊰⊹

Tessa list:

Tessa x Very sweet! Cheerful! Female! Reader

⊹⊱•••《 ✮ 》•••⊰⊹

[sweetarethediscords]

You're the meaning in my life, you're the inspiration...

The Maiden of the Barren of the Rime wouldn't exist if it weren't for Critical Role, Liam O'brien, and most importantly Caleb Widogast.

I'm sure every Critter out there has asked themself the question: 'What character would I play if I ever got to play at the table?' My answer was Mina.

Mina, originally, was a ranger/bard eladrin cursed to stay forever in the winter season. Specifically made with Campaign 2 in mind, I wanted to design a PC that would create a good juxtaposition to those already at the table. A literal iceblock that the Mighty Nein could chip away at as they often did with too-serious NPCs, and someone who could be mirror to Caleb, my favorite PC from Campaign 2.

As Campaign 2 steered it paths towards Aeor and the Eyes of Nine however, Mina didn't fit in the campaign any more (as most fandom OCs will do as canon goes along) but I couldn't abandon her. Couldn't throw her into my constantly growing pile of character sheets.

And she wouldn't let me forget her. In fact, her and her eventual counterpart, Sebastian, are some of the first characters of mine in recent memory to invade my dreams.

There was something in her I had to explore. Her rage echoed my rage. Her want to overcome her trauma, but fear that she would always be chained by it, mirrored my own healing journey.

Other characteristics of myself and themes I wanted to explore became the other characters. Sebastian became the other side of Mina's coin, someone who met inconveniences with relentless optimism instead of rage. A self-sacrificing people-pleaser against a self-preserving misanthrope, whose flaws both came from coping with past hardships.

A dirty little fire wizard sparked a rich story exploring the societal expectations of womanhood, the nature of generational trauma, and the complex journey of learning how to love one's self through others (among many other themes)...

...and a incredible talented singer/songwriter from Ireland helped hone them.

When I first started writing The Maiden of the Barren Rime in 2021, Hozier's music played an important, but minimal roll in providing emotional clarity for the characters. "Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene" helped to color the more ethereal and deadly nature of Mina, the fae part of her that lures people in, while "Nina Cried Power" grounded her fury, and helped to shape the larger world of Mina's story that will be revealed in later books.

As the core of the novel was written and finished in January 2023, the editing and refining process became my next great beast to slay. A huge slab of marble that with my fantastic editor and outside readers I was able to carve away at, but Hozier's Unreal Unearth steadied my hands.

It was already a wild enough coincidence that 'Blood Upon the Snow', a song meant to capture the brutality of winter in God of War: Ragnorak, released during writing MBR; eerily capturing exactly how I pictured Mina's upbringing. Hearing Unreal Unearth, a beautiful album about heartbreak, healing, death, and grief among other things, while I was writing an novel about heartbreak, healing, death, and grief among other things was surreal. And wonderful.

It helped to inspire the words I was missing, helped me carve out more cutting prose to capture the depth of my characters' emotions, and most importantly gave me the reassurance that the themes and emotions I was exploring were not singular, but shared. In different shades and presentations, but all coming from a same source of universal human truth.

I can not thank these two enough for the inspiration they've given me, and I can not thank you enough if you've read this much of my ramblings (and suffered my cheesy use of a Chicago lyric.)

[aroaceconfessions]

as a recently identified aro-ace person I feel so weird when someone visualizes an aro person to be so dull and inhuman? I don't like it and I can't even imagine those people who actually experience this type of personal injustice. i think everyone needs to give up the idea that being in the aro spectrum is a step into being emo. or aro people are bitter filled with hatred for everyone. that aro people are major misanthropes. because aro-ace or people in the aro spectrum can be extroverted, they can harmlessly flirt whilst enjoying it or they can adopt kids and be in a non-romantic marriage. I just want to share the message that if you identify as aro or if you're part of the aro spectrum and you have an outgoing personality and if you still seek people's attention and care about people & society and if you deeply care about social validation or validation of ang kind from a friend or stranger then that's okay! every aro person is not the same and we do love and appreciate aros who love spreading positivity & affection and we also do love and appreciate aros who like being left alone!

honestly this is just my observation I'm new so I don't know what the personality of the majority of aro people is but I do feel like this message is worth spreading for those who experience self-hatred

Submitted May 14, 2023

[jessicanjpa]

Twilight Advent Calendar 2023 Event

🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲

Dec. 10 - Pick one of the witnesses in Breaking Dawn. What was it like for them to stay at the Cullens' home for those two weeks? Who did they spend time with?

I'm trying to decide who Alistair spent time with when he finally ventured out of the attic (or who finally joined him in the attic). Bella's impression was that he didn't have any admirers among the gathered witnesses; fair enough for a "misanthropic English vampire."

But he does consider Carlisle his friend, at the very least, and as much as Carlisle loves a full house, I imagine that attic started to look rather appealing after a while. Carlisle eventually crawled up the ladder and stooped as he wove his way through the empty Christmas decor boxes over to where Alistair was huddled, quickly burning through the pile of books the Cullens had thoughtfully "stored" up there.

Nothing eases a stressful situation like completely ignoring it for a while to catch up with a distant friend. They caught up on news and gossip and such, and eventually settled into their old banter about philosophies and ancient monster legends and eschatology and other happy topics. Carlisle finally got to thank Alistair for sending his father's old cross a few decades back. Eventually, he found Alistair receptive enough to share a little more deeply about how his life has changed over the past century and how he fears the confrontation with the Volturi will go.

Alistair is a good listener when he needs to be. Whether or not he had any comfort or advice is another matter, but it still helped Carlisle to take off his mantle of leadership for a while and just be a regular guy talking to his friend. Alistair returned the token of trust by rolling his eyes and saying that Carlisle clearly needed a good, stiff drink. So they went on a hunt together. It was a little outside Carlisle's comfort zone, what with Alistair taking the hunter and Carlisle taking the deer, but he was tired of being preachy when no one ever listened anyway.

Siobhan is more of an fond acqaintance because Liam is deeply uncomfortable with Alistair's literal English nobility vibe to the point of open hostility. So Siobhan takes the opportunity to catch up with Alistair a bit, but she doesn't go up into the attic. They only talk when Alistair takes the occasional breath of fresh air. He can't help but be intrigued by Carlisle and Eleazar’s theory re: Siobhan's "gift," so that gives them something new to talk about. And novelty is the currency of choice among vampire friends in general.

Finally, I hope Alistair made at least some small effort to introduce himself to the American nomads. Garrett, at least, is up for anything.

In the end, the whole thing was too much for Alistair. Learning and observing kept him going for a little while, but his rusty social battery was depleted long before the Volturi were due to arrive. His anxiety finally beat out his loyalty in the end. Ah well, he knows Carlisle well enough to expect forgiveness.

You can find all of the #twilightadvent23 prompts here!

🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲

[dukemeropide]

38. Is there anything they wish they could change about their worldview or thought processes? What, and why?

Character Dev Questions | still accepting

I think the answer to this question lies in Wriothesley's level 6 friendship line:

"I've managed to get myself to a pretty comfortable place in life, but there's still some things I want that are outside my reach, like a peaceful and happy childhood, or the ability to trust other people. Maybe some people would see those feelings as shameful or contradictory, but I don't see a problem with sharing them. After all, why should anybody be afraid to admit what they want?"

Trust, or the lack of it, is a central part of his character. He holds others at arm's length, he skirts around the truth even with those he's somewhat close to, and he still carries the memory of his foster parents' betrayal close to his heart. His teapot lines and his 2023 birthday letter also both illustrate how he tends to see danger everywhere, and keeps a steady vigilance in almost all public spaces. I also choose to interpret his animation for the Starlit Letter web event, where he appears to nod off for a second and then wake himself back up, as a repercussion of this constant vigilance. He never lets himself rest because he doesn't trust his environment or the people around him. From his point of view, this dangerous world will take advantage of the weak and unaware.

This is certainly true in the Fortress of Meropide. Both as a prison warden and as a former prisoner himself, this trait has helped him survive, so it's been constantly reinforced. However, I think that we rarely see characters admit that they don't necessarily like being distrusting. At least I don't. There's usually some sort of accompanying misanthropic mentality, too, but Wriothesley's character quest pits him against the truly misanthropic Dougier in part to highlight how Wriothesley still believes even sinners deserve the dignity of choice and a life they find worth living. His compassion for the people of the Fortress is what sets him apart from the former administrator as well, and has allowed him to create a society the exiled people of Fontaine willingly live in and contribute to long past the ends of their sentences.

To circle back to the original question though, distrust, while useful, does force one to live a lonely existence. Wriothesley likely recognizes that he has never felt truly close to anyone since the day he martyred himself for his foster siblings, and this comes with some regret. Whether this wish being "out of his reach" is because his wariness is so deeply rooted by now, or because he sees change as a detriment to himself and his position in the Fortress is unclear, but I believe it's likely a mixture of both. It will probably take quite a while before he allows himself to treat anyone in his life as more than colleagues or business partners, if ever, since he speaks about it as if it falls under the same category of impossibility as going back in time to fix his childhood.

[warningsine]

Françoise Hardy, an introspective pop singer who became a hero to French youth in the 1960s with her moody ballads, died on Tuesday. She was 80.

Her death, from cancer, was announced by her son, Thomas Dutronc, in a post on Instagram that said simply, “Mom is gone.” No other details were provided.

With songs like her breakthrough 1962 hit, “Tous les Garçons et les Filles” (“All the Boys and Girls”), and later “Dans le Monde Entier” (“All Over the World”); her lithe look, prized by star fashion designers; and her understated personality, Ms. Hardy incarnated a 1960s cool still treasured by the French.

“How can we say goodbye to her?” President Emmanuel Macron of France said in a statement on Wednesday, a play on the title of Ms. Hardy’s 1968 hit “Comment Te Dire Adieu” (“How Can I Say Goodbye to You?”).

She was the only French singer on Rolling Stone’s 2023 list of the 200 best singers of all time.

Ms. Hardy’s ethereal, almost frail voice expressed a particular kind of youthful French ennui, though it became fuller with the years. She sang of love sought and not found, of love lost, of time passing, of hopes unfilled, in words written by herself, by the French pop legend Serge Gainsbourg, and even by the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Patrick Modiano (who wrote, in the song “Étonnez-moi, Benoît,” “Astonish me, Benedict, walk on your hands, swallow some pine cones, Benedict”).

Ms. Hardy captured the melancholy of her generation, born, like her, at the end of World War II and, like her, unsatisfied by France’s material progress in the decades after, in the “Trente Glorieuses,” or “30 Glorious Years.”

That youthful discontent, anticipated by the Existentialists — she was sometimes considered their pop-singer adept — exploded in the demonstrations in France of May 1968, when her fame was at its peak, though she disapproved of them and fled to her retreat in Corsica. The words Mr. Gainsbourg wrote for her that year incarnated the icon of cool she had already become: “Under no pretext/Would I want to have/The reflexes of unhappiness.”

Indeed, her cult of steely, solitary sadness would keep her well shy of movements of mass solidarity, leading her to reject what she called “the intolerances of the left” and steering her later toward right-leaning affinities with the likes of Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, or the misanthropic writer Michel Houellebecq.

A damaged childhood with a single mother led Ms. Hardy to seek refuge in inner exploration, through songwriting. As she told Le Monde in 2016: “I am incapable of dissimulating and lying. Writing a song, on the contrary, forces you to go deep into what you have lived, and felt.” Songwriting, she said, was “an outlet.”

Everything was already present in the lyrics to her first hit, “All the Boys and Girls,” which she wrote in 1962 and which sold more than two million copies. She later disavowed the song (“I’m ashamed of ‘Tous les Garçons et les Filles,’” she said in 1995, when a collection of her work was released), but all the essential sentiments of longing and nostalgia were there:

“And me, I walk alone, because I am loved by nobody,” she sang.

Without joy, and full of ennui. When will the sun shine for me? Like the girls and boys of my age, I ask, When will my day come … The day when my soul is no longer in pain?

Her career was launched. The next year, 1963, she released her first LP; received a major French music award, the Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles-Cros; and appeared on the cover of Paris Match. By 1965, she had become a hit across the English Channel; she recorded a 45-r.p.m. single in London, “All Over the World.”

Bob Dylan fell for her, writing about her in the liner notes of his 1964 album “Another Side of Bob Dylan.” He began, “For Françoise Hardy/At the Seine’s edge/A giant shadow/Of Notre-Dame.” When he held his first concert in Paris, in May 1966 at the Olympia, he refused to return to the stage after an intermission unless she came to see him in his dressing room. Dylan was 25; Ms. Hardy was 22. She duly appeared.

Ms. Hardy’s singular look — tall, long brown hair, a natural reticence — catapulted her into the worlds of fashion and film. She was dressed by André Courrèges, Paco Rabanne and Yves Saint Laurent and appeared in movies by Roger Vadim (“Castle in Sweden,” 1963) and John Frankenheimer (“Grand Prix,” 1966).

She disliked making films, however (“I cried every night,” she told the Le Monde interviewer), and soon stopped. In the 1970s and ’80s, there were more albums and experiments with jazz and bossa nova styles. But by then the public fascination with her had cooled, and in 1988 she announced that she would stop singing, though she continued to write songs for others.

She returned to singing in the late 1990s and 2000s with a turn toward a more rock-oriented style, recording an album with Thomas, her son from her marriage to Jacques Dutronc.

In later years, as illness overtook her — she was diagnosed with cancer in 2004 — she retreated into astrology and gloomy autobiographical writings. “The pessimism I attribute to myself, or that others attribute to me, is perhaps quite simply realism,” she was quoted as saying in 1997, after a concert with the singer Julien Clerc.

Françoise Madeleine Hardy was born on Jan. 17, 1944, in German-occupied Paris, in a clinic at the top of the Rue des Martyrs, in the Ninth Arrondissement, in the middle of an air raid. Her mother, Madeleine Hardy, was a bookkeeper, and her father, Étienne Dillard, who was largely absent during her childhood, was an already-married industrialist. The class divide between her mother and her sometime father marked her life, as she made clear in interviews.

She went to a Roman Catholic parochial school in the neighborhood and later attended classes at the Institut d’Études Politiques and the Sorbonne.

But it was the gift of a guitar from her father, after she had received her high school diploma at 16, that she later remembered would prove decisive. She would practice for hours in the kitchen of her mother’s tiny apartment. By age 17, she had landed her first recording contract.

She would later say that her long relationship with Mr. Dutronc, whom she met in 1967 and finally married in 1981, inspired the “sufferings, frustrations, disillusions and profound self-interrogations” that suffused her songs. They separated in 1988.

As her health declined in the 2000s after her cancer diagnosis, Ms. Hardy became an outspoken supporter of euthanasia. In 2016, she was placed in a coma, her doctors thinking that she would never wake up. She did, and went on to record another album, “Personne d’Autre” (“Nobody Else”), which proved to be her last, in 2018.

Her son is her only immediate survivor.

In his statement on Wednesday, Mr. Macron described Ms. Hardy as a singer who “with reserved elegance, almost shy, didn’t hesitate to lay bare, raw emotion in her sentimental ballads.”

“She sang of love,” he said, “that was dreamed, deceived, wounded.”

[thebeautifulfantastic]

reading log | 2024

1. let the right one in -> jack thorne (jan 23)

2. night of the living dead -> lori allen ohm (jan 25)

3. oedipus rex -> sophocles (jan 31)

4. open: an uncensored memoir of love, liberation, and non-monogamy -> rachel krantz (jan 8 - feb 10)

5. lysistrata -> aristophanes (feb 8 - 14)

6. heartstopper: vol. 5 -> alice oseman (feb 15 - 19)

7. the brothers menaechmus -> plautus (feb 20)

8. the second shepherd’s play -> wakefield master (feb 27)

9. the taming of the shrew -> william shakespeare (mar 26 - 28)

10. life is a dream -> pedro calderon de la barca (apr 4 - 8)

11. doubt, a parable -> john patrick shanley (apr 11 - 12)

12. assassins -> stephen sondheim (apr 12)

13. shades of rust and ruin -> a.g. howard (jul 12, 2023 - apr 14, 2024)

14. hamlet -> william shakespeare (mar 7 - apr 15)

15. the misanthrope -> molière (apr 23)

16. acts of service -> lillian fishman (apr 18 - jun 5)

17. coriolanus -> william shakespeare (jun 8)

18. dance nation -> clare barron (jun 12)

19. the wolves -> sarah delappe (jun 13 - 28)