#and we'd also for one reason or another have local kids sometimes talk about their own experiences as locals coming to the american school

[becca4leafclover]

waiiiitt I just realized the reason why I love QSMP so much as a concept is because it's kind of like my childhood growing up overseas oh my goooodddddd what if i cried

[blubushie]

Is there a reason you're so open about your sex life?

Yeah actually. I've had a lot of shit happen to me in my life.

The first person I ever had a crush on was another boy, and my best mate. We'll call him Nate. I knew I liked boys before I knew I liked girls, cuz up until I was 12 I'd never really spent time with girls at all—I didn't even know any girls my age—but I did have Nate. I met him when I was 10, and he taught me to ride horses and work stock. So growing up that was one helluva secret to hold. And he knew that I liked boys, and he jokingly called me a faggot and a queer and we laughed about it. And when other kids would hang shit on me at school, he didn't. In private, sure, with love. But in public, he stuck up for me. Cuz I was one of the Good Ones™, and his friend.

When I was 12 I was abused by a man in his 40s. And I heavily repressed my feelings towards other boys because I figured that that was the path it led down. "Gays are paedophiles. Queers wanna touch kids. They're dangerous." And I figured that if I just ignored it, I'd never end up a monster like he was. And when I told Nate about this, he said the same thing. "They're all like that. They're dangerous. You need to be careful or people will think you'll do the same. And I know you won't, cuz you're one of the Good Ones™. But you have to be careful." Nate was the first and only person I told about my abuse until it went public. He kept my secret for 3 years. He held me and I cried.

Nate was the last man outside of family who's held me. I haven't been held by another man since I was 12. I haven't been hugged by another man outside my family since I was 15.

At 14, I met another kid we'll call Lake. He was fun, and cheerful, and bubbly. And he was also gay. Very very openly gay. The feminine kinda gay. Talks like a girl kinda gay. Not my type, but I admired him. And I envied his bravery in being so out and not caring about what people thought of him.

Or the risk.

At 15, Nate got me drunk. We'd been working calves all day on the local station where his parents lived as hired hands. He snuck a slab from his parents' outshed on the station and we took our horses out and sat in the shade of a gum and drank. I'd never had alcohol before except at Mass, and I got pretty tipsy. And the sun was setting and it struck these orange streaks through his hair, and reflected real pretty off those eyes, and I decided he was very very handsome in that moment and in drunk brain, I should kiss him. So I leant over and pecked his cheek.

He went off on me.

It turns out that it's ok to be gay, as long as you're gay for the right people. And the right people is anyone who isn't the person you're talking to. Cuz he turned to me and I saw a rage in his eyes that I knew meant whatever kinda friendship we'd formed over 5 years, it was dead in the water the moment I kissed him. He looked at me the same way he looked at all the other queers, same way he looked at Lake, with that "I don't mind gays but I wish they'd be a little quieter about it" face. And then he slogged me.

We scrapped. And at first I thought he was just being an idiot, cuz I was 15 and he was 17 and we were both teenage boys and we biffed sometimes. But after a few seconds he got on top of me and stopped pulling his punches, and I was trying to tell him to stop and that I was sorry and he didn't. He kept hitting me. And he called me a faggot, and a queer, and a freak, and that there was something wrong with me and he had to beat the faggotry outta me cuz I had a skull too thick for my own good and if he didn't teach me a lesson now I'd do it again and the next bloke might just kill me for it.

He gave me a good slog to the side of the head and rung my bell real good, and then he kicked me in the stomach and got on his horse and rode back to the station. I laid there maybe ten minutes trying to breathe through all the blood in my nose and making sure he didn't knock any teeth out. That was the first time I really genuinely got a bashing.

I never talked to him again. I saw him once on station, and tried to talk to him and apologise, but he just walked away. I stopped visiting the station after that.

I made friends with Lake. We both went to Catholic school, so he got picked on a lot for being gay. But he never let it get him down. And I started standing up for him when I saw kids treat him like shit. Because he was my friend, and he was one of the Good Ones™. But deep down I envied him. I wanted to be him. I wanted to be able to walk with my chin high and strut like a fucken peacock knowing I'm hot shit and that nobody could touch me. But internalised homophobia is a hell of a thing, and deep down I also knew I'd never be like him. Because my issue isn't just me being attracted to men, but also being intersex and a dozen other different little things. But to Lake, that didn't matter. To Lake I was cut of the same cloth. We were confidants.

Eventually with time I realised that there's no such thing as "one of the Good Ones™." Being attracted to someone the same sex or gender as you isn't a fault. It doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. But I still hid it. I wasn't brave enough to be open about it, I was scared of judgement, I was scared of punishment for something I couldn't control, so I kept it a secret.

The third person I told was my girlfriend. She took it in stride. I thought she was afraid that I'd made her my beard when I was definitely attracted to her too, but she was actually the one who explained bisexuality to me. And everything clicked. But she was also aware that I was squashing down my attraction to men because I was afraid, so she made me watch Brokeback Mountain, and that's actually how I ended up genuinely coming to terms with my sexuality. I didn't want to be so afraid of loving that I'd never loved at all.

I never acted on my attraction, cuz I'm a loyal bastard, but when she and I split I stopped trying to hide what I am. I am a man who happens to be attracted to men. I am also attracted to women. And that's ok. That's not something to be ashamed of, it's not something I need to hide, it's not something I have to keep secret.

I'll never be the loudly out gay man. I'll never be the loudly out bisexual. I don't wear pride pins, I don't flaunt my sexuality, I don't wear rainbows. If anyone looked at me they wouldn't assume I like men, let alone immediately know.

I'll never be like Lake. But I don't have to be like Lake. I just have to be me. And through talking about my experiences, maybe some other young man who's in the same shoes I used to be in will look at me and realise that all he has to be is himself. And if that man likes men, then so be it.

[eriyu]

i beat xvi so here are my reactions from along the way

for posterity (my future self is posterity)

i did not do this in any kind of organized way like i think i skipped writing anything down for big portions of the game;;;

spoilers obviously. and also after this i'm going to start reblogging xvi things including spoilers tagged #ffxvi so. be warned.

i guess i'll link my demo impressions because this is basically a continuation of that.

a mite predictable so far....... though i did think cid was gonna crystallize instead of regular dying.

GODDDDDD i wish there were a chatlog. or at least that dialogue were progressed manually. i don't have the focus for this shit when i can't even rewind it.

i love the combat a lot. which is weird to think seeing as i'm very much a turn-based fan and really. don't play action games ever. but it feels very kingdom hearts to me? there's even shotlock.

THE BIG MOMENTS ARE SO SO GOOD. A+ ON THE MELODRAMA.

clive is prime whump material and i love it.

some of the worldbuilding is a little baffling... mostly ORCS? REALLY? WHEN THERE ARE SO MANY CLASSIC FF OPTIONS TO CHOOSE FROM.

personal preference i guess but i feel like they could chill with the "mature content" a bit....... how many sidequests do we need to drive home how shit Bearers are treated. how many random sex workers does one game need.

i was going to complain about linearity, but things opened up nicely soon after i thought it, so props there LOL

i know it's supposed to be "dark" but like.... i want to fall in love with a game world. i want to wish i lived there. i want unique local flavors and COLOR. most of this so far is just generic medieval squalor. even places like the treno slums had beautiful waterways and plucky npcs and... COLOR...

jill feels like......... an afterthought. sometimes she's there; sometimes she's not, and it doesn't seem to matter either way. she barely talks. we haven't seen shiva in game since we first met back up with her. there's a vague implication that jill's doing important things but that's kind of it???

jill update: okay Things Happening but like. now she's out of commission? i'm getting sacrificed-for-man-pain vibes. i don't know; it's too soon to say that, but it just doesn't feel great.

the state of the realm UI is SOOOOO good. it's a bit of an overload in the way xiii's datalog was, but it's fine if i remind myself i can read things Later.

oh my god i love shotlocking a zillion enemies in a tornado.

i really love mid but "midadol" sounds like a pharmaceutical.

CANON GAYS?????

ultima looks like a tumblr lumpy-faced reptilian oatmeal man.

the voice acting is so good. like clive's screaming and crying reminds me of dub gaara's "MY BLOOOOOOD" which is the highest compliment i can possibly give.

oh my godddddddd the fighting at twinside is giving alexandria. again, in the best possible way.

okay seriously where the fuck is leviathan though. i keep wondering when leviathan is going to show up and i'm starting to think he's... not.

jesus christ i couldn't stop thinking about clive and joshua and dion today. i want to eat them.

look i KNOW clive and josh had a really good reunion moment in twinside but consider this: i want another one. i think they should have had another one at the hideaway. i want more tenderness. i deserve more tenderness.

they pronounce "chocobo" AND "popoto" with a short o in the middle like "chock" and "pot" and i'm so uncomfortable.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME. WE LIKE JUST PROMISED JOTE WE'D KEEP JOSHUA SAFE AND NOW WE'RE SPLITTING UP. i'm so afraid everybody will die.

all the xiv references ;w; for some reason it's the quest names that keep getting me??? "through the maelstrom" this time.

i REALLY really wish jill's character didn't just revolve around clive.............. is my impression but i don't know if that's entirely fair of me. like if i made a list of bullet points i don't know that she's any worse than say, tifa with cloud. but it Feels worse. i WANT to love her, but i'm just not feelin' it.

god i want to be able to switch between two eikon/ability sets. i want a single-target setup and a trash mob setup. not even to switch mid-battle; i know that could be OP, just switchable in the menu.

i legit panic every time joshua leaves the party. like NO we're supposed to be WATCHING HIM??????? EVERYBODY IS GOING TO DIE IF I LET MY GUARD DOWN. also i love him. i can't stop thinking about him. continuing the proud tradition of square enix joshuas (being loved by me).

"EVEN LEVIATHAN THE LOST IS HERE" OH THANK FUCK.

uhhhhhhhhhh active time lore is absolutely giving me spoilers? MAJOR spoilers??? what the hell????????

reverie givin' me legend of dragoon vibes. like wingly stuff. i love it.

daaAAAAAMN zantetsuken OP????? but as it should be tbh. i love it.

hey

hey

HEY

i'm sad.

for real i. i feel like i'm not as upset as i COULD be because i was really emotionally preparing for Everyone to Die through the whole game. but wow. this still hurts.

i actually got maliciously spoiled with "clive dies" before i even got the game in my hands and partly succeeded at not letting that ruin the experience for me, but. damn i had a little bit of hope that it was a fake spoiler until i saw his hand.....

jesus christ though. ow.

i mean it was a largely satisfying ending. the fights were good. the Moral of the Story felt a lil heavyhanded but i do love the Power of Friendship. it could have been a lot sadder. but i'm such a sucker for a real happy ending o|--<

i think trying to brute force myself into liking jill more has made me like her less;;;;;;;;; i will try a different approach. her getting left behind for the end didn't help though. for the record i'm talking about liking her as a character. she's a perfectly lovely person.

holy fuck i'm emotional about joshua though.

oh no the post-credit scene made me sadder. it feels like a character flaw of mine but anything about losing magic, ever, makes me SO SO SAD. even when i KNOW it's supposed to make for a happy ending. like in kiki's delivery service when she can't hear jiji anymore??? fucking destroys me and not in the good way.

and joshua........... o|--<

i've really been looking forward to finishing so i could go look up shippy things but i just feel like. oof. now. i need to marinate for a while first. this isn't the time for shipping.

[frequentrandomboners]

SELF SABOTAGE IN DATING [another rant]

My dating life in 2024 can be summed up by these two words "Self Sabotage". I really screwed myself over this year. I can't stop self sabotaging. I will tell the sad woeful tale of TWO failed dates I went on this year, and then talk about WHY I think I ruined everything.

FAILED 2024 DATE #1 : The Low Income Girl.

Earlier this year, I met this really nice girl. She was VERY beautiful. But also she was very low-income. Growing up, those were the kids I related to the most for whatever reason. I think it's because we had dealt with the ugly sides of life early on. The rich privileged kids wouldn't have to deal with the ugly realities of independence till they became older, but us poor kids had to grow up fast because we did NOT have parents.

I thought maybe I'd be able to establish a deep connection with this girl. She was totally a hippie. AND she had done her homework on me. She knew about everything I posted online (because I put it out there on my dating profile).

That's right. We met on a popular dating app. This is the second time I ever met a girl in person via a dating app. The previous time was almost TEN YEARS AGO. That was great. But I messed that up.

Anyways, back to the present day... I met this low income girl. When I say low-income, i mean her beat down car was FILLED with filled up trash bags, presumably her things. She was semi-living out of her car.

She was in her early 20s. Super hot. Slender, skinny, but also very muscular from working on a farm/horse stables. She was a worker at a high end fancy ranch for race horses. She told me the rich people there were often very "detached" from reality and they often treated her like the poor girl she was, beneath them. Creepy old men in golf suits hit on her regularly and sometimes asked if she'd join them on their private luxury cruises/yachts. She said she always turned that down.

This girl did not care about money or luxury. She was VERY stripped down bare bones minimum. When we met up, she was wearing very old torn up jeans with sharpie drawings all over them, and a very long flowy bohemian shawl that wrapped around her hair and covered most of her body. She looked like she was going to Burning Man.

We met up around 4 or 5 pm. We decided to grab snacks at a local Safeway (I paid. It cost about 45-50 which was no biggie). Then we took our treasure to a fancy high end city park where there's never any homeless nearby. I don't say that sarcastically either. This park was in a rich neighborhood, it was a high up hill with a gorgeous sunset view, and NO HOMELESS. There was only rich families and rich kids hanging out there. I knew about the park because I had done multiple family photos there in the past.

But I digress. We talked literally all night. From 4/5 pm till about midnight. . . and I don't even remember her name.

There was just no deep connection. Both of us were so dissappointed and also very sad inside. I've been battling depression so hard this year. She had also been battling depression.

We just couldn't stay focused on the things we had in common. We ended up just talking to each other like we were our therapists but neither of us could understand nor help the other.

We didn't want to date someone, we wanted to TALK TO someone.

She couldn't listen to me. I couldn't listen to her. She couldn't understand me. I couldn't understand her.

I remember I mentioned that I wanted to travel, and I only meant maybe once or twice per year, and for both work and leisure. She responded as if we'd be traveling constantly and said she cannot do that. I told her that's fine and she made a big deal out of it.

We couldn't even talk about our favorite music without feeling disconnected from one another. We talked about Warped Tour. We talked about settling down and what we want to do with our lives.

I truly feel we could have met up more and gotten used to each other and we would have fallen in love. But she didn't want to see me again after that. And truthfully, I was kinda thinking to myself I might have better luck elsewhere because it was still early Summer at the time and I was meeting lots of girls during that season.

So we went our separate ways.

...

FAILED 2024 DATE #2 : The High Income Girl.

Okay so this is not actually a "date" but it sort of semi-became, or could have become, one. You'll see. Let me explain.

There's this hot rich girl in her early 20s that I see regularly near me. I don't know her. She doesn't know me. But we cross paths and bump into each other several times per year because we live really close to each other in the city.

We've said hi to each other a few times. But then one day we actually got to hang out together. She invited me to her place. She had two other guys with her.

The minute we walked into her place she said loudly "Google : play music!". Her place was 100% MOOD. Ambient lighting, modern designer square black furniture with an aesthetic Tiger rug underneath the coffee table. The coffee table had of course Cannabis accessories and giant bong. She also had a fancy glass liquor display table. There was a fancy coffee espresso machine near her fridge.

We all smoked some cannabis. She drank a can of Modelo. We sipped some Liquid Death water. She talked about work with her two guy friends. I barely said anything because I had no idea what they were talking about. And then she dismissed us.

As we left her place, she took me aside and asked me to come back in so she could "interrogate" me. The first question she asked me: "how old are you".

I told her to guess. She guessed my exact age EXACTLY.

Then I guessed her age. And I guessed she was slightly older than she actually was. First mistake! She laughed it off. The night kept going.

Eventually I invited her to my place because she asked how my place was layed out. So I thought I'd show her. SECOND MISTAKE. My place was not ready for guests at all. It was a complete messy disaster.

But she came over, and I showed her the "layout" of my crib. I told her the entire time, it was NOT normally like this. I'm just going through some shit right now and cleaning up the place. I told her she should come back when it's clean and I think she'll be impressed then.

She didn't care . . . at first. I didn't notice, till too late.

I started showing her all my STUFF. My computers, my photography gear/accessories/equipment. We talked about video games, and Cyberpunk 2077. She asked me a bunch of times about what food I like to eat and even invited me to make food with her sometime with her friends.

It didn't hit me that she was coming onto me till SO MUCH AFTERWARD by the time it was too late.

Eventually I felt so comfortable with her. I started feeling super insecure. Here was this insanely hot girl and she was super into me. Ignoring all obvious my red flags too. And then I really fucked it up.

I started talking about my work. I've been very stressed out about my work for the last two years. I can't talk about it here. But I just get very defensive and aggressive.

She didn't do anything wrong. She just asked me to explain further. And I started over thinking and getting really anxious.

THIRD MISTAKE . . . Insecurity, anxiety, overthinking, I started talking out of my ass and shooting myself in the foot. I started saying really stupid things. And then getting defensive when she called me out on it.

And then she gave me a horrifying look. I had verbally attacked her out of defense. She knew that. And she tried to calm me and told me she wasn't judging me, She wasn't trying to counter me or anything.

And as she said that, she her eyes looked deep into mine and she looked like she was about to cry. She had such high hopes for me. And I had just ruined everything.

I had become so triggered from talking about work, that I had become defensive, and argumentative, and flustered. I started sounding like a pompous jackass. And I was taking every question she asked me as an insult and becoming aggressive verbally.

FOURTH MISTAKE . . . dispite all that, she stayed a while longer. We tried to change the topic and went back to talking about our homes and the layout. Hoping to go back to how things were an hour ago or so.

But I just couldn't keep my mouth shut or my head in a right direction. We started talking about noise levels and if we ever got any noise complaints. I told her I had called the cops on my neighbors upstairs because I had heard domestic violence. And she mentioned she and her ex used to yell at each other at the top of their lungs.

We talked about domestic violence. Why on earth did I think that was something to bring up. How stupid can I be?

FIFTH MISTAKE . . . I gave up. I stopped making any effort to make this night work. And once she saw I had given up, she gave up too.

Ultimately, I looked like a mid-life crisis, wreck. She ignored all the red flags at first. But then my behavior and language really revealed I was not the one for her.

I don't have her number. Didn't even ask for it. We know where each other live though. So I bought a bag of Starbucks Coffee and left it at her door with a typed up 3 page apology for my erratic behavior, and making her feel like shit, and I tried to explain my problems but it probably only came off as if I was making excuses.

I never heard back. I don't think she ever wants to see or hear from me again. I don't blame her. I would never give me another chance either. I completely blew it.

I will leave her alone. I'm never going to leave anything at her door step again. I'm not going to bother her. I might even move now that the memory of her looking at me like she was going to cry, trying to assure me she wasn't against me or anything, -that memory haunts me. I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want to be at my place anymore. I want to move ASAP.

AND I can't trust myself anymore. I don't like anything about myself. I hate that I did this, to her, and to myself. I hate that

TRYING TO HEAL, FIX MYSELF, SO I CAN MOVE ON : HERE'S WHAT I THINK I NEED TO WORK ON

AWARENESS : I want to be a better active listener. I really need to get outside of myself and outside of my head. If I could go back, I'd put all my focus on trying to learn more about my potential partner. I'd focus only on the things we have in common. I get tunnel vision way too easily. How the hell am I going to make a relationship work if I'm not paying attention to her?

BE "WRONG" / STOP ARGUING : I want to let go of having to be right all the time. I have a huge problem. I naturally want to argue and debate. I find myself disagreeing with everyone quite often. My opinions do not matter when it comes to the relationship. My feelings don't matter when it comes to the relationship. All that matters is I'm a team player and on her side. How the hell am I going to make a marriage last some day if I'm fighting my partner and trying to be right all the time?

MAINTAIN A CLEAN LIVING SPACE : You just never know if/when someone is going to stop by. I need to keep the place clean. If I had kept my place clean through out the year, I would not have had it in a giant mess, in the middle of my end-of-the-year clean up routine. Even though I should not have brought her back to my place, she didn't care.

HEALTH : I'm running every day now. I run laps around some of the parks I live nearby. I'm going to be earlier and waking up earlier. I'm eating leaner. I'm drinking at least 64 ounces of water every single day. I have not been playing any video games. I'm trying to spend less time in front of a screen.

[iamfuckingsorry]

I've been thinking about my old art club teacher recently.

This is something I never really thought about back then, but I think she influenced my life more than I realized.

For context, I went to this art club thingie from grade 2 to grade 11, and would have continued if I hadn't moved abroad at that point. It was like 3-4 hours a week at the local art/music school - in my country you don't have clubs/extracurriculars at school but instead there's another "school" kind of thing where you can go do extracurriculars after school, or independent sports clubs for kids run by sports organisations. The non-sports ones are subsidised and cheap af and it's where you go to learn to play an instrument, sing, do art, improv/theatre, dance etc - basically learn skills that can in some way be tied to "culture" or w/e. So I went to this club/class/whatever thingy because I enjoyed drawing when I was 6-7 and then kept going cause why not.

And my teacher was just like... the most chill person ever. She was really good with kids, treated everyone like a tiny human with a personality instead of like someone who had to listen to her (which is what my actual schoolteachers did). Would have casual conversations about her life and the TV shows she was watching and shit with us even when we were like 8. There was this one kid that was a couple of years older than me who was writing theatre pieces and short stories and she'd discuss them with him and give concrit and brainstorm with him and give suggestions on what to do and who to talk to if he wanted to get into writing/theatre more seriously (she had a second job doing backstage stuff at the local theatre). I didn't really learn any art skills except for what you learn by being forced to draw for a couple of hours every week, but god this club was the only place where I could really be myself. Three to four hours a week, I could be as weird as I wanted to be and no one cared. I'm not sure I'd say I looked forward to it per ce - I didn't really look forward to anything at that point in my life and I'm sure I skipped some weeks just to lie in my bed instead - but it was just... nice, y'know?

And in hindsight it was obvious she was a bit lost in life, just trying to do what she liked doing. She was fat and single and not planning on having kids and lowkey broke. She wanted to go to an art high school as a kid and wasn't allowed to, so after she graduated she applied again and did the 4 extra years required to get this art high school diploma. She worked like 15-20 hours at the art school and then another maybe 15-20 and then she sold art and crafts stuff at markets and stuff sometimes to make ends meet. She dyed her hair bright red and orange sometimes back when unnatural colours were still really unusual and sometimes wore clothes bordering on what you'd see at a ren faire. I think she must have been in her late 20s when I started and close to 40 when I left, but she'll forever be 37 in my mind for some reason.

And looking back knowing what I know now, I am so sure she was a fandom person. She was into House MD and X-files and LOTR and Stargate and NCIS, and would have hour-long convos about the shows with some of the kids. She was very into Sean Bean to the point her sister got her a life-size Boromir cutout and also into Jeremy Renner, though I can't remember any specific shows with him in that she liked (it wasn't the Avengers stuff - maybe MI?). I remember her going to the capital for a movie premiere once or twice, and travelling abroad to see her favourite actors from time to time. I'm pretty sure she talked about something that I can now identify as writing fanfiction at some point.

And I was very into fandom myself by the end too, I was going to cons and shit, roleplaying with my online friends, hanging out here on tumblr and shit. I had a friend in the club who was into Supernatural just like I was, and sometimes we'd spend half of the club talking about SPN, reading the new episode summary together every week waiting for the episode to come out, discussing, me talking about fanfic sometimes (something that my friend was /not/ into). I wonder what she thought about that lol.

Anyway.

My point it just... I never knew another adult who was into the same stuff as me as a kid growing up. Like sure, my mom was a massive sci-fi and fantasy fan, but not in a fandom way, and she didn't really enjoy discussing things. And I never knew another adult who genuinely didn't seem to care what other people thought about them, in a good way - she was fat and kinda weird and broke and she fucking rocked it, at one point she got a phone call from a friend who needed to talk about a Stargate episode and she fucking answered and talked to the friend for like 15 minutes. And I never knew another adult who chose to do what they wanted to do instead of doing what was expected of them - getting an education, getting a good job, maybe settling down and having kids. This lady was just like, nah fuck that, I'm gonna go to the goddamn art high school even if I'm gonna be like 24 by the time I graduate, and I'm gonna get this horribly underpaid part-time job at a theatre because I like theatre and the people who work there, and I'm gonna spend half my day talking about this TV show I really like. And she had so many stories about people (especially teachers at the art school) being unfair or shitty and her standing up for herself and not taking their shit.

And I never had a role model growing up, but slowly approaching my 30s and looking back... I think maybe I did. And I wonder what she's up to now (still teaching at that art school and working at the theatre, I could google that much), and I wonder if the fact that she was doing okay meant that I will do okay too.

And I hope we keep fostering places where little lost kids like me can meet cool weird adults who were exactly where you are now 20 years ago and who made it through and are living their best lives now.

[musicatheart12]

A Chat with a Bassist: Natalie Kim from Old Joy

Old Joy is an indie/alternative rock band that released their debut album on September 7th, 2018. They come from the underground New Brunswick scene and have played many basement shows around the area, with their most recent performance being for a student-run charity club at Rutgers University. This week, I got the chance to interview Old Joy's bassist, Natalie Kim, also a student at Rutgers University.

The interview:

What kind of music do you guys play?  How do you, as a band, characterize it?

It's kind of under the umbrella of Alt Rock and Indie just because we're in the local New Brunswick scene. So it's kind of like Indie, DIY kind of music.

How did the band get together?

So my two bandmates who started the band started it before I got to Rutgers. When I came here as a freshman, I met one of them, Phil, and he told me they were looking for a bassist so they kind of adopted me. And then we had no drummer, so we had to go out looking for a drummer. So yeah it started with those two people. The other two of us kind of made our way in.

How long has the band been together?

I joined at the very end of summer before freshman year, and back then we had a like a different drummer like every month.

That's interesting.

Yeah, it was kind of weird since I play bass. Bass and drum really have to work with each other so I would change what I played for like every person. It was kind of rocky to start with, but we found someone about 3 months in, who ended up staying for the rest of the next summer. So when we all decided we were in it for the long run, that's when we recorded our first album.

Wow, that's very cool. Yeah, but he decided to go back to school, so literally the day of our release party, we got a new drummer.

Oh wow! Fun fact, drummers are like the hardest people to find because if you're going to be a drummer, you have to be good because everyone can hear you. There was a really big shortage of drummers, and this is a problem that every band has.

I didn't know that.

So in this current state, we've been together about 2 months.

So even though the current band is fairly new, are you guys still playing songs from the first album?

Our new drummer, he didn't make his parts, he had to learn it. But obviously, from now on, it's going to be him.

Are you guys going to make any new music?

We've started making some new stuff, but we're probably going to record, I don't know, not for a while.

That makes sense.

Maybe sometime next year. But it's also a lot different, because the two members that started the band found me after everything was already written so like, in this case, it's everyone. It's more democratic in the way we're making music. It's like everyone is developing it together, rather than it being the work of two people.

So, I know you're a full-time student. It must be difficult to find time to practice.

It's f***ing hard. The good thing with my band is, they're really good at planning ahead. We'll set up a date for a rehearsal a week or two weeks in advance, I'm so grateful. The worst is definitely when we're recording an album. It was so hard last winter. I'd have to go down to the recording studio like twice a week, and it's like an hour away, so like what I ended up doing is bringing my homework and doing it in a dark lit basement. It was hard work, but it definitely paid off because now it's just basement shows and events, which are just a weekend sort of thing. Sticking it through recording was definitely a good idea.

Were you taught music/playing or writing? Are you self-taught?

Kind of, so like, I think I developed an ear for music growing up from piano lessons as a kid. Even though that only went up until like fifth grade, that's what taught me how to read music. And then through middle school, I played French horn, I played flute.  And when I got into high school, that’s when I picked up bass and I really should've taken lessons then. I regret not taking lessons when I had the time to when I was like 14. I kind of just learned bass by ear. And the internet's fantastic.

I have other questions, but I'm trying to think of a question based on what you just said.

I mean I can keep talking if you want.

Yeah, go for it if you want!

I mean, here's the thing about bass, so like I've had my friends ask me to teach them before. A lot of people have this conception that "oh I have to start the same way I learned piano" with all the scales and fundamentals, but I think for bass it's heavy on intuition. Of course, you'll be a better musician if you know all the techniques and fundamentals but like you cannot be a bassist if you do not have some kind of musical intuition. Like over the first year I picked it up, by the end of the year, I listened to music differently. I never noticed bass parts before I started playing. And then once it like really clicks you start to listen for it, and that eventually grows into the intuition. Especially playing in a band versus an orchestra. I play in an orchestra every year, and it's much more technical. Playing in the underground music scene, its more about what sounds good, what works versus what doesn’t work.

So it's more about understanding the vibe?

Yeah, kind of. It's like what people say about writing, how you can't be a good writer unless you read a lot, it's the same way. You have to listen to a lot of music to be able to play well.

Do you guys ever spend time experimenting with different kinds of music, or do you stick to the same kind of genre?

Right now, most of our rehearsals are geared toward preparing for shows. But in terms of being experimental, I'd say there are 2 parts to that. Number one, there's a lot of cover songs. We'll just like jam sometimes and go off of each other and play whatever. But also we're like trying to be different for our second album… now that we're trying to follow up to our first album, we're trying to be more advanced in terms of adding more atmospheric sounds and big picture stuff. We're going to add some synth, maybe some more keyboard stuff. I think like in terms of experimenting, I'd like to do it more, but we're not going in the wrong direction.

I know Old Joy plays a lot of basement shows. What other kinds of gigs do you guys play?

Just last Friday we performed at the student center for the Seeing Eye club, I forget exactly what the event was called. Yeah so we did that, it was a fundraiser. And in a month we're going to be doing Overnight Sensations which is like a program run by WRSU, which is a Rutgers radio station. So every week they have bands come late at night. We've also done a lot of other charity shows.

And as far as setlist goes, do you have a specific order you play in?

Our album is 7, 8 songs. There are some songs that we all love, and some that we all don't want to play. So we'll play 4 to 5 songs and we'll do like one cover.

So it's short.

Yeah, it's usually like a half hour set. Also a lot of these songs, we recorded them in the winter so almost a year ago. Now that we're more mature musicians it's kind of like, I wish we recorded this differently or played this differently.

Do you guys tease new music in your shows?

Yeah we played a new song at our last show, which was last Friday… but yeah definitely.

Do you need to think about the audience, or do you just do you (as a band)?

It depends. We don't have very many songs yet, so there's a skeleton that we have to follow. It's usually the cover that we'll very. And then the other thing we'll mix up is the order. Sometimes it’s the energetic songs first if everyone seems dead. The hardest part is definitely when everyone's like "one more song!" and we don't have any more song.

What's your response to that? Do you guys play a song from the album that you wouldn't normally play?

We'll play another cover song, we have stuff that we kind of keep in the back in case we need it. But I wish we had more stuff.

How does recording working?

So basically what happens is, first everyone plays, to get a scratch track for timing purposes. Then everyone will go in on their own and we'll put it into the computer and do it as many times as it takes to get it right. It can take forever sometimes. And so the way we did this album was each time we went down there, we'd record one song. It took a while, but it turned out ok. The recording was less than half. The rest of the time was just mixing and then sending it out to get it mastered. Honestly, I'm not a fan of recording because sometimes I can get really perfectionistic. That’s why I really like playing basement shows. I don’t think I've ever played the same song the same way twice. Like this kind of goes back to the experimental thing. Thank god we play live shows because that's where you get to be creative as a musician.

How did you guys come up with the order of the album?

It's weird, I don’t think we discussed the whys of it. We all kind of came to a consensus. It might be a little bit subconscious, and it kind of goes back to the intuition of it. There might be some legitimate reason to it, like songs being in the same key. From what I can observe, I think the biggest things are tempo and mood. As an Alt rock, indie almost emo band, there are energetic happy songs like typical Alt Rock songs, but there are also songs that are really emotional. Like we have this one song "Rover Shore". Watching Phil do the vocals for that was literally spiritual. Like I've never seen anyone put so much emotion into one song. So obviously you wouldn't put that first. We put that sort of in the middle near the end. We never discussed the explicit details, it just flows somehow.

Yeah, it just feels right.

Do you guys plan on making music videos?

We filmed a music video last year, but because we switched drummers, we had to scratch all of that. I really wanted to because one of the girls in the band is a film major. It's definitely possible, the only issue is we all have no time. 3 of us are students, and one graduated but he has a full-time job. Yeah, the biggest issue is definitely time. I understand why some bands buy a house and live together like it definitely makes sense.

Do you have any other interesting stories? Anything cool!

The most exciting moment of being in this band was this Friday. We were at a house for a show and me and my bandmate we were just walking from one side of the room to the other, and we heard a group of people talking and they said Old Joy. It was the coolest thing 'cause it was like people actually know us. That was so exciting even though it was such a small thing because people actually recognize us. Like last week someone was at work and they said some of our music was on the radio. It was really cool!

What's weird is that the style of music that we play is not my style.

So what is your style?

I've never really gotten into indie music, but I figured I'd try it out. When I play on my own, I play a lot of Jazz and Funk. So this is very very very different. And this type of music isn't what I listen to but it's so interesting because the number of things you can do on bass is infinite. I do appreciate it, it's definitely grown on me. Before, all indie music sounded the same. Like to the average person, all classical music sounded the same. It's cool that I've learned so much through this.

Does it make it hard, not having listened to indie music beforehand?

When I first started, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was sticking to the root notes, keeping time. Super simple. By the time recording rolled around, I got the hang of it enough to create my own tracks, but looking back on it now, I would do things 100% differently.  

Natalie Kim is a talented young artist making her way through with her bandmates. With the first album already out, and another in the works, Old Joy is already paving their path into music. It's cool to see the beginning of a band that is transforming into something bigger, especially coming out of a local music scene.

Check out some of their songs: