#but folks in the 1990s had no way of knowing that would be the case

[blowflyfag]

WORLD WRESTLING ENTERTAINMENT/FEDERATION MAGAZINE: OCTOBER 1996

EL SID! 

THE POTENTIAL IS ABOUT TO BE TAPPED

By Vince Russo

In the early 1990s I just didn’t buy it. This man didn’t belong in anyone’s shadow. Especially a champion who had by far seen his better days. In my opinion, I will always view WrestleMania VIII as a disappointment. It should have been Sid's day… Sid’s year… and Sid’s era. Instead, a voodoo man, a Warrior, and immaturity crashed and ruined his party, thus forcing him almost into obscurity.

In 1992, at WrestleMania VIII, Sid Eudy should’ve, would’ve and could’ve beat Hulk Hogan. He was bigger, stronger, faster and smarter than the then champion. Unfortunately, in his own words, he was not ready for the “big time”. A hometown boy from Arkansas, Sid was not quite prepared for the lights, cameras and action of the World Wrestling Federation. As a matter of fact, before a deserved rematch could have even be issued, Sid had already packed his bags and headed back to “Razorback Country”.

After some extensive soul searching, a more grown-up, seasoned Sid made his comeback to the World Wrestling Federation three years later in 1995. Little did he know that the hurdle that would stand in his way this time was not himself, but rather something that would be far beyond his control. His “greenery” was small potatoes when compared to the professional jealousy that Sid would have to overcome in order to get to the place he wanted to be… the top. Kids, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–WRESTLING = SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT = BIG BUSINESS = POLITICS and with politics comes jockeying for position. Yes, there are many Willie Shoemakers at TitanSports, both outside…and INSIDE the ring. When Sid made his long awaited return, those who ruled the ring at the time may have been intimidated by him… in more ways than one. He was the new kid on the block, not to mention the new “BIGGER” kid. Fans immediately began cheering him because he was “cool,” and that became threatening to many of his peers. I was at Monday Night Raw in Macon, Georgia, on  February 20, 1995, when Sid debuted as the new bodyguard of Shawn Michaels. To say the place became an asylum would be an understatement! When Sid made his way down that aisle, the patients went beyond CRAZY! They ripped off their strait-jackets and got ready to rock! 

Folks, to certain individuals–THIS WAS NOT GOOD.

“Warning, warning, Will Robionson. An intruder is looking to steal our spotlight!” That’s right, IN MY OPINION, a certain number of Sid’s peers may have been shaking in their boots. If Eudy were, by chance, to become more popular than them, it would be devastating… devastating to their egos, of course, NOT to the business as a whole! So, in more ways than one, they saw to it that Sid was buried. And, buried he was. Left out to rot… fossilize… chum for the maggots.

For the next six months, Sid would lie low. IN MY OPINION, he had become a victim of “circumstance”. For understandable reasons, he may have become sour with the business. The politics seemed to have pushed him into the “could have been” category. He even went so far as to announce his retirement from the squared circle. If this truly was the case, then it would be nothing short of a tragedy. A wasteful loss not only to the World Wrestling Federation, but to the business as a whole. 

But wait, at the end of the tunnel you could hear the firing of a match. Yes, there was light.

The balance of power shifted among the ranks of the World Wrestling Federation, largely due to the almighty buck. Those who may have buried Sid earlier were not being buried themselves in a gushing flood of undeserving greenbacks. Remember, those who tore Sid down behind his back said it was for the “good of the company”. Well, my question is, “Where was the ‘good of the company’ when you were negotiating behind the boss’ back?!”

You  know what, scratch that. I’m not going to get up on my soapbox because that is not what this commentary is about. This commentary is about SID. And, for the reasons I am about to mention, I strongly believe that Sid’s time has arrived!!!

Along with Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels is probably the most “confident” individual I have ever known. He doesn’t worry about the “threat” of others overthrowing his Kliq because as the World Wrestling Federation Champion he realizes what he brings to the dance. He doesn’t have to tear down others to build himself up, because he already is the tallest skyscraper in the city! He has no shortcomings. Nothing to hide or protect. He has the belief in himself that no man is  going to knock him off his perch. It’s the security of himself. Shawn Michaels knows that Sid is good for the “business”. He’s a monster with a personality and people will pay money to see him! Sid will help everybody–including Shawn Michaels–in the long run.

With Shawn Michaels on top, there is no question in my mind that Sid’s time is NOW! Politics can take a beat seat and let him do the driving! The potential has only thus far been tapped… but now it will EXPLODE!!! 

Yes, Sid Eudy just may soon… “RULE THE WORLD”!

[amplifyme]

20 Fanfic Questions

Thanks to @randomfoggytiger for tagging me again. This was fun!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

72. But not all of them are mine. I've been transcribing and posting some fics under a pseud, from Beauty and the Beast 4th Season hardcopy zines written by folks who've since passed on, just so that part of the fandom's history doesn't get lost.

2. What's your total AO3 words count?

1,133,574, but half of those are fics posted under my pseud. Nan Dibble was a writing fiend when it came to her Acquainted With the Night series. 💕

3. What fandoms do you write for?

The X-Files, Beauty and the Beast 1987, A Song of Ice and Fire.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Huh, interesting. They’re all ASOIAF/SanSan fics. In descending order: These Scars We Wear, The Calling, Beggar’s Banquet, Blessed Be (The Third Night) and Pas de Deux.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes, as often as I can. I feel bad if I don’t. If you can take the time to leave a comment, I can take the time to thank you for it.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably Pass You By and Incomplete, both in TXF ‘verse.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I have a few. The Possibility of Being, LifeSongs and Upsidaisium (BATB 1987) and These Scars We Wear and The Calling (ASOIAF). Both these ‘verses seem to lend themselves to happier endings than TXF.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Nope.

9. Do you write smut. If so what kind?

I used to. I got bored with it. And when it started to feel as though it were expected of me, I lost interest. I still write steamy stuff, just not explicitly anymore. I'd rather you use your imagination instead of mine. 😉

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Nope.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yeah. Someone plagiarized one of my TXF fics back in the day and reposted it for The Nanny fandom. Who knew?

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Several, mostly the ASOIAF fics.

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Yes, once. I collaborated with Alanna Baker on a TXF fic called Doors.

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

Can’t narrow it down to one and you can’t make me. But the Big 3 are Mulder and Scully, Vincent and Diana, Sandor and Sansa. I do love me some big, tortured and damaged men in romantic relationships with stubborn redheaded women. What can I say? It's my kink.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

The case file I started for TXF many, many moons ago. Sticks and Stones. It’s dead in the water.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue is the big one. I think my pacing is pretty good, and I have a feel for knowing what POV should be used when and where – and how to stick to that (I can't tolerate wandering POVs). I think I'm good at showing body language and tone in a way that's in-character and doesn't hit you over the head. Is it a strength to know when and how to ignore “common” writing rules? If so, I think I’m pretty good at that, too.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I tend to overthink things, which leads to too much exposition. I try to cut out as much of that as I can when doing final edits. The danger there lies in cutting too much, though. It’s a fine line I’m still learning to navigate. I generally suck at plotting anything unless the muse steps in and demands to take over. Now that I think about it, most of the very favorites of my fics are long and plot heavy, which makes no sense. I’m also not so great at beginnings, but my middles and ends are usually shiny. Is it a weakness to be The World's Slowest Writer? (On second thought, I think GRRM would beat me at that.) But yeah, takes me forever to get anything done. So that, as well.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I have, but I do it sparingly. I added a few short sentences in Italian for The Possibility of Being. Thank you Google.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Beauty and the Beast. 1990-ish or so. I've been at this for a while.

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

Nope. Can’t do it. That’s like asking me to pick a favorite child. I love them all, for various reasons particular to each one.

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Stats Time! Europe Saves Disney in the '70s

The so-called "Dark Age" of animation, and especially Disney's, the entirety of the 1970s and a good part of the 1980s... The span of films made in the post-Walt years from THE ARISTOCATS (1970) all the way up until - depending on who you ask - THE BLACK CAULDRON (1985). Some extend it further, counting THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE (1986) and OLIVER & COMPANY (1988) as part of this "Dark" age or "Bronze" age or whatever.

I feel like those labels are an oversimplification...

While the general consensus is that the films made at Walt Disney Productions' animation wing in Burbank after the completion of THE JUNGLE BOOK and before the release of THE LITTLE MERMAID are relative low points for the company or that those films are just not-that-great (which is all subjective, I know at least one or two folks who make a case for this age of Disney being an "underrated" one), this was **not** a period of box office failure. That's for sure. Every film except THE BLACK CAULDRON made its money back. It is presumed that the Frankenstein-job clipshow feature that was 1977's THE MANY ADVENTURES OF WINNIE THE POOH also did pretty well...

After all, if one of those 1970s movies were to lose money, then the animation unit could've circled the drain. Heck, BLACK CAULDRON's performance brought about discussions of shutting down Disney Animation. That's all it could've taken... One movie losing money, and that would be the end of that. Animation was often at the mercy of indifferent executives who saw it as something too costly and something that just had a hard time drawing in audiences.

Finding box office stats isn't easy for older Disney animated films, you usually come across exaggerated or inflated numbers of some kind. (For example, THE JUNGLE BOOK did not make $73m in North America in 1967/68. The total was closer to $13m. Maybe $73m was the number it adjusted to in like, the 1990s?) International numbers are even muddier, but sometimes, you do find some juicy helpful information..

More recently, I discovered just how much the European box office helped Disney's animated features soldier on during a transitional, rollercoaster period...

I have often pointed out on here that France and West Germany were where these films usually made bank, big time. THE ARISTOCATS, ROBIN HOOD, THE RESCUERS, and THE FOX AND THE HOUND were all massive there, Top 10 hits. I mean, given that THE ARISTOCATS is set in Paris and the French countryside, it being a blockbuster in France is a given. Despite some Americanization (Southern-accented dogs, the very late '60s-looking American hippie cat in Scat Cat's gang, etc.), a lot of which likely bypassed in the movie's French dub. But yeah, French moviegoers rewarded each of these movies nicely, as did Germans on the West side of the Iron Curtain. This all came off just how *huge*, like ginormous THE JUNGLE BOOK was in West Germany and how big it was in France...

Even THE BLACK CAULDRON did pretty great in France. THE RESCUERS outgrossed STAR WARS... STAR WARS... In France and West Germany, in the same release year... Wild, huh?

Meanwhile, these movies did not crack the Top 10 in America in their respective release years. THE JUNGLE BOOK would be the last Disney animated movie to make the Top 10 domestically, until BEAUTY AND THE BEAST... Some 24 years later.

The UK box office was also quite charitable. THE ARISOCATS and ROBIN HOOD did exceptionally there, THE RESCUERS did well too. Unusually, THE FOX AND THE HOUND did not break the UK top 20 in its release frame... Maybe that one was a little too American? Too gloomy? I couldn't tell you.

Speaking of the UK box office, that's where the homegrown WATERSHIP DOWN shined. It only did, as far as I know, fairly here in the states.

Don Bluth's THE SECRET OF NIMH was a minor success in France, ditto AN AMERICAN TAIL. According to some reports out there, Ralph Bakshi's HEY GOOD LOOKIN' did pretty well in Europe despite a nonexistent run in the U.S.

Fascinating... Other countries to the rescue, it seems.

[nickgerlich]

A Case Of Good Judgment?

I remember back to 1985, when the Coca-Cola Company did the inconceivable: They announced they were going to reformulate their flagship product, and rebrand it as New Coke. Public outrage and panic ensued, with people protesting as well as hoarding whatever stocks could be found.

It took only a couple of months to go by before Coca-Cola announced it would re-introduce its flagship, which would have the familiar taste yet now be called Coca-Cola Classic. New Coke—at least for a little while—would continue to be sold and marketed directly at Pepsi drinkers. The company and the brand survived with flying colors, and New Coke slid into oblivion a few years later.

Either Coca-Cola made one of the biggest marketing blunders ever, completely under-estimating how loyal their customers were to a specific formulation, or they pulled off the biggest coup ever, staging a seeming PR debacle from which they would emerge victorious after all.We’ve had nearly four decades to digest this one, and as for me, I think the folks at their Atlanta headquarters were heaving a gigantic “Pheeeeewwwww!” They’re lucky to be alive.

The jury is still out on Bud Light, though, as it is still too early to tell how things will play out for the brand. We all know what happened last April with the Dylan Mulvaney scandal. All it took was a few photos of a one-off aluminum beer can with Dylan’s face, and all hell broke loose. Boycotts ensued, and sales have languished, with Bud Light relinquishing its title as best-selling beer in the US.

But here we are nearly six months later, and Bud Light is going all out as if nothing ever happened, except that this time it appears they have changed the play book. While Bud Light has always been associated with football, it was primarily at the professional level. Now Bud Light is going for the college market, staging major campus events at high-profile games to garner the attention of a younger demographic.

It’s a subtle change for sure, because older folks like college football as well. It’s just that by putting young adults in the crosshairs, and specifically, the people who are very much supportive of LGBTQ matters, the brand might just have a chance. You know, gain brand preference among consumers at an age when those things are being formed.

It is at this point we have to ask some tough question. Was this the plan all along? Has Budweiser effectively said that they no longer care about conservative-leaning, Joe Six-Pack customers, the people who made the brand Number One in the first place? Or is this just a Hail Mary pass with three seconds to go in the game?

I’ll say it again, but it is still too early to tell, because we just don’t have enough data yet. Based on what I am seeing now, I would venture to say the answer is somewhere in the middle, that Bud Light is doing a reboot of its core demographic, but it may have had to do so in order to still have some skin in the game.

To Budweiser’s credit, at least thus far, they have not attempted a total rebrand. Those things are expensive. I remember—there he goes again with that phrase—when this university changed its name from West Texas State to West Texas A&M back in 1990. We had just become affiliated with the Texas A&M System, and decided to show that affiliation in our name. It was not a cheap proposition, and this was before domain names and all that stuff.

Shifting demographics, though, is not uncommon. Sprite did it, aiming toward the Hip-Hop crowd. Mountain Dew did it with extreme sports. But neither had a controversy prompting such a change. I am seeing, though, a firm reluctance among companies to reverse their stances on anything dealing with LGBTQ. They may tone down the message for a bit, but they’re not changing. That’s another way of saying that some companies may very well be flipping off a bunch of people. This would be about where Michael James Lindell shows up on TV hawking his My Pillow brand and touting his traditional values.

The big difference between Coca-Cola’s 1985 mess and Bud Light’s in the present is that there is a culture war going on today. The fact that Bill Gates and his Gates Foundation just invested $96 million in parent company AB-InBev tells me that there’s at least one rich person bullish on the company. Who wins this war will be determined later.

Academics and analysts will be watching this one continue to unfold for a long time. It is normal for consumer boycotts to sputter after six months, a time window that is rapidly vanishing. Is this the boycott that caused a major marketer to blink? Or was this a carefully orchestrated plan?

Stay tuned, and pop open a bottle or can of your favorite beverage. We might be here a while.

Dr “Make Mine An IPA, Please” Gerlich

Audio Blog

[spike-and-faye]

Hello, I require your infinite wisdom please!! :O So I just finished cowboy bebop and I am so confused like who the fuck was Julia. WHAT was Faye's past. I literally never process tv shows and the bebop was not immune to my stupidity LMAO like... I guess the ending just really confused me, from what I gathered Spike and Vicious were friends? But then they weren't? And Julia dated Vicious but also Spike? And he? Went after Vicious even after Julia had died? I am Confusion. Please help. Thank u...

Oh BABEY I am so glad you asked! :) Be prepared for a long answer and I apologize in advance for how incoherent it will probably be.

ALSO Please note: this show is fucking complicated. I have watched it all the way through several times a year, every single year, for over a decade now, and I am *STILL* finding new shit every time I watch it. It's packed with symbols, motifs, allusions and underlying themes that are just so rich. It is so extraordinarily well-written that it could give a lot of classic literature a run for its money. I'm literally working on an in depth literary/film analysis my husband lovingly calls my Manifesto on the series right now. SO PLEASE don't beat yourself up about not catching everything on the first go round.

HEY BTW for anyone who hasn't finished the show, please know there will be MANY spoilers ahead!

Anyways ~

1.     Spike / Julia / Vicious:

The information we get on Spike's past, including Vicious and Julia, is pretty limited considering how big of an impact they have on the story. We get our first glimpse in Session 1: Asteroid Blues, then again in Session 5: Ballad of Fallen Angels, Sessions 12 + 13: Jupiter Jazz, and Sessions 25 + 26: Real Folk Blues. I recommend reviewing these episodes for you Julia and Vicious fix.

What we know:

Spike and Vicious were both members of an organized crime syndicate called the Red Dragons, which is roughly analogous to the Yakuza or the Mafia. Their positions in the organization are not clear, but there are some images alluding to them being hitmen, and they likely rose up in the ranks as they were close acquaintances of Mao Yenrai, a Capo of the Red Dragon.

Spike and Vicious were close comrades. Spike taught Vicious everything he knew about fighting, and the two had a deep trust in each other. Which Spike fucked up ….

^^Vicious looks hot asf here

Julia was Vicious' lover/girlfriend. One night in 2068 (three years prior to the time we watch in the Bebop) Spike is injured, presumably from a syndicate-related fight and he passes out in front of her door. She takes him in and nurses him back to health and he SIMPS HARD for her. We’re all but told he's in LOVE love with her. They start an affair, and Spike tells her he's ready to abandon the whole life - the syndicate, Vicious, Mao, all of it - and they could run away together.

WELL Vicious finds out about this whole affair, and is DOUBLY betrayed because his literal best friend and girlfriend have been having an affair, and tbh I think he was just as jealous of Spike's attentions as he was of Julia's. (Whether or not it’s a sexual thing for Spike … well … I have my own headcanons about that). SO when he finds out they're going to run away together, he gives Julia an ultimatum: you can either kill him, or I'll just kill you both. Spike had written her a letter about meeting him in the graveyard to start their new life together, which she tears up to hide his location from Vicious. (This is the falling ripped up pieces of paper we see in Spike's flash back in Session 5).

^^ r/gifsyoucanhear

**NOTE: There are those who disagree with this view, (looking at you Cowboy Bebop wiki) instead suggesting Vicious and Spike were buds in the past, but then hated each other once they were both considered as potential successors to Mao. That's why Vicious wanted him dead, and he was enlisting Julia (who he didn't necessarily have a romantic connection to) to help kill Spike since he knew Spike loved her. Personally, I think there is plenty of evidence that Vicious also wanted Julia, and in fact was already with her, when Spike started seeing her. If you want me to cite my sources please send an me an ask about it :)

Spike gets the idea, whether by her just not showing up or word around the syndicate being like YO Vicious wants you dead. Despite Vicious' ultimatum to Julia, he was gunna kill Spike either way. SO he sets up an ambush, and SadBoy™ Spike walks intentionally into their trap. Somehow, he doesn't die, though the entire syndicate thinks he did. (Note Annie's reaction to seeing him alive in Session 5). It’s also implied that this is where he lost his eye.

HIS EYE - possibly the most important symbol in the show so I do have to mention it. In episode 26, he explicitly explains to Faye that one of his eyes only sees the past. (PS this isn't dissimilar to Jet's arm… we can get into that another time). Basically, he's constantly living halfway in the past and halfway in the present, and describes the past like a dream he can never wake up from. Because dysfunctional or not - the syndicate WAS his family. (Again - see his relationship with Annie, Mao, and Vicious (prior to Spike's betrayal)). It's his reminder that Julia didn't run away with him, and that he'd left behind that life for her. (He didn’t know she was being threatened until the final episode). Basically Spike is hyper-fixated on what he had and what could've been.

Not long after this, Spike starts bounty hunting because like? What else is he going to do. He doesn't care if he lives or dies but if he has to be alive, he may as well be able to eat. He joins up with Jet Black on the Bebop.

TL; DR: Spike stole Vicious' lover, Julia, so Vicious made Julia choose between her killing Spike or Vicious killing them both. She instead went into hiding and Spike thought he'd been stood up. He fake died and got the hell outta dodge.

2.     What was Faye's past?

Ok let me start by saying Faye is my wife and my life. HOWEVER I hated her the first time I watched this show circa age 13 because I thought she was annoying/vain/shallow (also because #internalizedmisogyny lol am I right fam). Good news! She is all those things! But she's also very lonely and scared and an amnesiac and secretly a sweetie and she realizes she loves the crew of the Bebop like family.

SO my wife's backstory:

she was born in the 1990s (#only90skidsremember). There's some debate over her race/nationality, but due to the images of her hanging out in Merlion Park in Singapore, my bet is that she's Singaporean. She comes from a wealthy family with a big house, and we see some utterly *adorable* film of her as a child/young adolescent in Session 18: Speak Like a Child. I cry everytime </3

^^ Holla for the representation

In 2014, circa age 20, she and her parents were going into space when the shuttle they were on had some kind of malfunction/accident and it killed an unknown number of people, including her parents. At the time, the technology didn’t exist to be able to save her, so she was put into a cryogenic sleep state. Meanwhile, the Lunar Gate accident occurs, breaking up the moon and causing rock showers on Earth's surface. Most people died, moved to Mars, or settled underground.

She wakes up from her cryogenic sleep in 2068. (Also the year Spike leaves the syndicate.) She's 'woken' by the corrupt Dr. Bacchus who plans on charging her for the years and years of medical debt she's accrued. (See Session 15: My Funny Valentine.) Luckily a lawyer takes interest in her case (Whitney Haggus Matsumoto) and tries to help get rid of her debt. The two fall in love, but turns out Whitney is a Scumbag. He's actually Dr. Bacchus's nephew, and faked his death, writing Faye as the sole inheritor to his will. This means she'll take on all his debts. So baby girl has LOTS of debt at this point.

In the intervening years prior to her joining the Bebop, she gambles, cheats, gains a lot of street smarts, and adopts a very seductive character to get her way. She joins the crew on the Bebop in Session 3: Honky Tonk Women.

TL;DR: Faye is Austin powers

YIKES this is so long I am so sorry. Bitches are obsessed with this show. (I am bitches)

3.     The Ending

Okay I'm going to present this in the way, in my scholarly opinion, would be correct, though there are SO many interpretations other than simply 'Spike died :/".

To understand the plot of the last couple episodes we actually have to go back to Session 5: Mao is instructed* to sign a treaty with a rival syndicate called the White Tigers. (*He's instructed by The Van (Council of identical creepy old men) who are the actual head of the dragon. I think we only see them in Session 26.) Well - Vicious is a Bastard Man and he and his fellow mutineers blow up the White Tiger guys' ship and slit Mao's throat. Before he dies, Mao is like "Gotdamnit if Spike was still here this shit wouldn't have happened." Later in the Cathedral battle, Vicious explains to Spike he killed Mao because Mao 'lost his fangs'. He planned on killing Spike for good her, IMO, so there'd be no rival to take over as Capo for the Dragons.

^^These guys are The Van btw

THEN in Session 25, the Van basically catches Vicious and is like “you killed Mao and now you have to go to Time Out.” The Van also decides to just kill everyone associated with Vicious, just 2 B safe. That's why there's a big ass shootout at the Loser Bar where Jet and Spike are chilling, drinking, (missing Faye and Ed and Ein lol) and Shin (younger brother to Lin, who's helping Vicious overthrow the Dragon) explains all this to Spike. OH and PS JULIA IS ALIVE AND HERE IS HER LOCATION :). (**Notice Spike's reaction at this point is different than his reaction in Jupiter Jazz when he hears there's a Julia on Calisto. Much less excited… hmm…).

SO THEN you know we get some flashbacks of the past as previously explained *and* Julia just happens to run into Faye. She recognizes that Faye is one of Spike's friends from the Bebop (she was keeping tabs on him it seems) and picks her up. Faye doesn't know who Julia is but is like damn bitch I'm a little gay for you. (I mean … that may just be my bi ass projecting, but Faye is REALLY struck with her. Look at how she describes her to Jet, I mean come on.)

 Faye's like, 'we should team up' and Julia says 'no thanks but also tell Spike to meet me at *the place*'. Meanwhile back on the Bebop Spike and Jet are talking and Spike goes on about some dream woman who was his other half. (We assume he means Julia … I have my reasons to doubt this … I have a lot of angry DMs about my opinion here lol but I just do not give a fuck (: I can expand on this in another post or you can refer to the title of my fucking blog haha) Personally, I think Watanabe personally left this specific scene open ended, the same way he does with the ending and various other things.

more like SIMP Spiegel

ANYWAY Faye comes back to the Bebop to tell Spike about Julia, and Jet gets intel from a former cop buddy that there's some shit going down with the Dragons. (Again, the Van is hunting down everyone ever associated with Vicious, including your pal Spike). Bebop is attacked, Faye tells Spike what's up with Julia, and he heads out.

 PAN TO VICIOUS chained up - about to be executed - but what's that!? It's a bird!? It's a pla- no it's just a bird. (With one glowing red eye … hm … reminds me of Spike, also the drug Red Eye. Pls let me know if you have any thoughts on this). Just a bird with a BOMB! Explosion (RIP bird c. 2065 - too soon), Vicious kills the elders, his buddies show up and are ready to go fuck shit up.

this show could not be more of an aesthetic

MMMPhhh okay RAINY CEMETERY. Spike and Julia. She draws a gun, explains why she didn't meet him that day, and then hugs him. Now Spike is not *great* at showing his emotions but he literally just stands there. Maybe it's a stoic expression of how sad he is that he never knew she still cared, when it seemed like she dumped him. Maybe he's finally getting some closure on his past. Maybe the past doesn't mean the same thing it used to. (I'll elaborate later on this).

They go to Annie's to get stocked up on stuff, she lets them know she denied knowing Spike was still alive and hey also the Van was assassinated by Vicious and his guys so. Watch out for that. Then her shop is surrounded by Vicious' guys and she dies :(. Spike and Julia escape to the roof, but she's shot and dies in Spike's arms, and says 'it's all just a dream' :(. (Refer to: Spike living in a dream of the past).

Anyway Jet SAID he wasn't gunna go after Spike but. Jet's parental instincts kick in (oh yeah he was shot in the leg earlier btw) and he goes to Sitting Bull to see if he knows where Spike is. He basically says yeah Spike's about to die somewhere. (I want to do a further analysis on all the Sitting Bull scenes.) Well conveniently Spike returns to the Bebop, eats, tells his story about a tiger-striped cat. (At one point Jet asks if he's going there for her, and Spike is like well she's dead now so whatever). THEN we get to the scene where Faye is like HEY YOU CAN'T GO OFF AND DIE ASSHOLE and he's like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I 've been living in the past so I might as well see if I'm living now. (**This will play heavily into my interpretation of the ending). Faye is pissed, shoots the ceiling and he goes off to the syndicate headquarters to fuck shit up.

He basically John Wicks his way through the building, Shin dies, he and Vicious have the big boss battle and whatnot. He kills Vicious and stumbles back out down the stairs and says "Bang!" and collapses. We pan to the sky and see a star fade away.

Well that explains the plot … now here's what I think happened!!! ALSO may I mention, anon - you picked up on something I feel like a lot of people miss out on. Why *did* Spike go back to kill Vicious if Julia was already dead??

Basically, once it became clear that anyone associated with Vicious was being killed, Spike knew they'd hunt him down, and they weren't beneath Kill-Billing their way to him, (i.e. systematically destroying this companions to get to him). And for all his apparent indifference - he really loves his new found family. Jet is literally like an older brother to him. Ed is a little sister. Ein is well … a very good boy. And Faye? Well the relationship is complicated, and I'm not going to get into the 69,420 reasons I ship them here, but I think it is beyond argument that he really does care for her, even if that just in a filial way. He didn't want the syndicates to kill them for their association to him, or in order to get to him. So he did what he had to do to protect them. *AND NO* I am not saying that he didn't love Julia. But it was clear that his desire was no longer to run away with her. I think he genuinely loved and cared about her, but at some point between Jupiter Jazz Pt 2 and now, he accepted that their time together was over. Now he had a new raison d'etre, which is the Bebop.

I think at this point Spike has 'woken up' to reality (as he implied to Faye in their final conversation in episode 26: "Look at these eyes. One of them is a fake, because I lost it in an accident. Since then, I have been seeing the past in one eye, and the present in the other. I had believed that what I saw was not all of reality...I thought I was watching a dream that I would never awaken from. Before I knew it, the dream was all over." (This is from the sub btw I'm too lazy to look up the dub transcript.) He wasn't going there to die, he's going to find out if he's really alive. This line is fucking cool and everything - but it's implications are multitude. I won't go into them all here but basically : what makes him alive now is that he's free from his past. He's alive because he has this new family and protecting them is all he really wants now. Spike was protecting Jet, Faye, Ed, (and Ein) by going and facing the entire syndicate, knowing that their lives would all be in danger.

SO - did Spike die? Well again - Watanabe has purposely and artfully left this open ended. Well, if we're following the symbolism from Sitting Bull, then yeah, the man is as dead as disco, and wouldn't that be a fitting ending? BUT at the same time, Spike always refers to having 'died' before (meaning when he was ambushed by the syndicate, and they all thought he died, and he pretty much did). Don't forget that in  movie (takes places roughly between episodes 22 + 23, and yes, was made AFTER the series but whatever) he like .. DIES dies. He goes to the afterlife and everything. He wakes up to find he's chilling with Sitting Bull, who's like nah it wasn't your time to die yet. So the fact Sitting Bull confirms Spike will die in the final episode, means yeah, Spike is pretty much dead.

BUT -- okay now hear me out -- could this death in the final episode be a death to his previous life? The person he was in the syndicate? Now that he's extinguished the Red Dragons for good, is it not possible that its merely *that* life which has ended? That's the optimist in me saying that, but if it keeps me from staying up all night crying, I guess it'll have to do. Watanabe definitely wants to leave it up to the viewer, so whatever you think, I feel like there's validity to it.

WELL any anon, sorry for the fucking lecture - and believe me, I could've said MUCH, MUCH more - but I enjoyed this question. I always love talking about this show so please all you fuckers feel free to message me or send an ask about anything any time. I am really slow at replying because #life'sAbitch.

Love you all.

SY,SCB <3

[giriduck]

As a young teen in the mid-90s, I got bit by the Pern bug hard and I quickly consumed all the books published by that point. I was pulled in by one of the iconic Michael Whelan covers, picked up one of the young adult books from the school library, got sucked into the world-building, found the societal structure fascinating, loved the reveal that it was sci fi all along, cheered for and up to the conclusion of the major story arc across 8 books, and legit went into mourning when my favorite character died.

Excited about all of this, I launched AOL and took five to ten minutes to dial into the internet, found some stunning fanart and some more online roleplay chat logs (the proto-Discord), and learned about everything the OP described about how Anne McCaffrey would mail out cease-and-desists to fans who wanted to play in her world. It was surprising and disappointing to see, because unlike the thriving online X-Files community I also lurked in around at the time, there wasn’t a Pern fan base to attach to. The Pern fandom had to fly their dragons under the radar to talk to each other and share their theories, fanart, and stories, all the while fearful of getting caught.

I agree with the OP that how Anne McCaffrey discouraged her fans from using Pern as a sandbox for their imagination inhibited her works from thriving all these years later. But there are many other things to consider with regard to expansion of an IP that are completely unrelated to its fandom, such as licensing, market, and technology, which were particularly fraught in the 1970s and 1980s. The OP noted that Blade Runner is a lasting remnant of a Philip K Dick short story, but Blade Runner is a very loose translation of the original story (like unrecognizably so), and that adaptations to film that hit such notoriety were extraordinarily rare.

Other authors of that era had big budget movies (2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clark, etc.), but they were sci fi, not fantasy. Fantasy movies of that era were limited or downright terrible, and dragons would have been extremely expensive to fabricate in practical effects. Pern would need to be high budget right out the gate to do well at all.

Do note too, that all those authors with successful movie adaptions were male. Anne McCaffrey was one of the few female sci fi / fantasy authors who did really well at that time, and the genre of all her books were also romance; a niche that hasn’t been embraced in mainstream visual media with a female gaze until the last couple decades (Twilight, Bridgerton).

As far as her protectiveness online, she wasn’t the only one. Mercedes Lackey also protected her work by outlawing the distribution of fanfiction... with a similar result. Authors did this in the early days of the Internet because they were encouraged to, and they believed that they were protecting their property. It’s like Disney extending copyright laws to protect Mickey Mouse from entering the public domain. The Internet was a whole new thing that content creators did not know how to navigate other then attempt to retain control.

Now, after 30 years of global online access, the internet is ubiquitous in literally everything we do: marketing, commerce, communication, etc. The vast majority of the folks who will ever see this post likely never knew a world before the Internet existed. So assigning blame of a lack of foresight or charity to someone—living on the precipice of a potentially scary new global jump in technology—who was unwilling to embrace the online culture and viral communities we know today doesn’t feel entirely fair.

Especially with the age gap here. Anne McCaffrey was born in 1926. She was in her mid-60s by 1990, when non-academic civilian access to the Internet with the first web browser was only just beginning. Up until to that decade, books and publications only existed in printed form, were meant to be enjoyed by readers, and then maybe discussed in-person in book clubs or eventually fan conventions. So, of course it would be uncomfortable when people could suddenly start engaging with the content in a new way: writing stories where their original characters were interacting with her characters and then post / pseudo publish them for free for the world to see. That had never been possible at that scale before. She'd made a whole career out of being an author, and then there is this sudden, world-changing shift in communication, and with it a growing evolution in the perception and definition of ownership and intellectual property. To content creators in the 90s—especially since it was before the Internet was leveraged as a tool for marketing—it probably felt like the threat of losing control of your livelihood. If I were in her shoes, I’d be freaked out about it, too.

As a fan though, I personally would have loved more opportunity to find safe places to interact with fellow fans online in those days. As we know, fandom is a form of community that often extends and take liberties with a creator’s vision, but we are ultimately consumers of their product and thus support them. Although it can get toxic, it (usually) is not an antagonistic relationship, and it’s sad that some older-school or territorial folks might have assumed the worst and didn’t accept that earlier. I totally agree with the OP that if Anne McCaffrey had been open to it, her fan base—much like Star Trek and Doctor Who—would have ensured the legacy of Pern had remained stronger and ideally evolved in much more diverse and inclusive ways.

But that said, I’m very glad she didn’t sign the rights away to have some shitty B-grade movie made in the 80s, or even the early 2000s. (It was already embarrassing that the Pern video game wasn’t great.) Sci fi, fantasy, and video game adaptations to film have seen far too many flops until very recently. It wasn’t until the wild successes of Peter Jackson’s take on Lord of the Rings and the first Harry Potter movie (both came out in 2001) that studios were even willing to start investing in big budget epic fantasy and sci fi adaptations of adult and young adult book series to film. Game of Thrones made epic fantasy a whole prestige TV genre in 2011 (the same year McCaffrey died), and really moved the needle on making these kinds of previously labeled “geeky / nerdy” stories mainstream.

Attempting a Pern movie or show before then could have been a bad gamble, and likely a costly mistake. She and her family were smart not to jump in too early.

But the market is there now, as is the CGI. It feels like only in the last 5 or so years that HBO or similar streaming services could fund and effectively bring Pern to the little screen at a high quality, and like the new Dune movie, introduce a whole new generation to a series that was first written in the mid-1960s.

Also—quick note on the content of the books—McCaffrey’s writing was somewhat progressive for the day. A strong female protagonist was unheard of in 70's fantasy and sci fi, but she had several. That said, I haven’t gone near the books since the late 1990s and I am scared to, because I’ve been told they do not age well and absolutely believe it. There were definitely some big yikes moments I can recall, and Pern—as with everything—would be 1000% better with more diversity and representation, but these books were also of an regrettable era when inclusivity was far more limited.

But all-in-all—now that there is a ripe market for it—a well-made and updated Pern show could do extremely well, given that it is sexy sci-fi / fantasy dragon romance. One could only hope that it actually happens someday. *shrug*

An Outside Look on Dragon Riders of Pern (and why it amounted to nothing)

My initial contact with the Dragon Riders of Pern were the dogeared paperback books that lined the shelves my roommate’s father coveted so lavishly. With their aged covers, their traditionally drawn scenes of drama, I knew they were old and I found myself automatically turned off by them by that alone (I know, I know, I shouldn’t judge a cover). I wouldn’t find out till months later that this series by Anne McCaffrey was one that had been well beloved for decades; not just a few weird looking Goodwill books. That it had been the source of numerous old roleplay MUDs (basically, fancy chatrooms). And, unsurprisingly with its age, that its author was one of the many at that time who despised fanworks and issued DMCAs against people, often with threats to sue.

And I can’t help but wonder if that was why this supposedly long lived and adored series… has never amounted to more than a handful of contentious fantasy sci-fi novels on gen-X and baby boomers’ shelves. 

Keep reading

[thelastraigeki]

An Unpopular Opinion of Mine

I really do not think that this is something which is easy to talk about, especially here over at Tumblr. It’s going to be an extremely difficult opinion to express out and I have a feeling that I am going to anger quite a few, or quite a lot of people but I really do not mean any harm in what I have to talk about in regards to this particular letter to the editor and how I feel about this, and if there could be a compromise.

I understand that as our society changes, comics often times reflect what is going on within our society in the form of social commentary or political commentary. Let me say that I do understand and fully acknowledge that representation matters to a lot of people and there’s been efforts made to create representation for fans in a variety of mediums ranging from film, video games, novels, and of course-- comic books. Characters representing many races, creeds and of course sexual orientations have been created and some have become quite popular over the years such as Miles Morales Spider-Man, Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz, Calvin Ellis, Val-Zod, and in the case of IDW’s TMNT-- Jennika, who has become a representative of bisexuals for IDW’s TMNT title under the writing of Tom Waltz and by extension, Sophie Campbell.

For a lot of people, comics are a means of escapism and perhaps even a sense of empowerment. I’ve been reading comics since the early 90′s when I got my first copy of Web of Spider-Man #82 when I was very little, and not once did I particular feel left out. For the record, I am a Latino male and I managed to find enjoyment in reading my first comic which happened to be a Spider-Man comic. And I started to read more of Spider-Man’s adventures in the mid 1990s when the Venom and Carnage thing was high in popularity at the time. Then I moved onto reading Dark Horse’s Alien-Predator series around the late 90′s, and those stories had a very good diverse cast of characters, and I related more to the Yautja (Predators to you uninitiated folk!) than the human characters. Odd I know...

But around the early 2000s, I rediscovered TMNT through the Mirage comics. And the TMNT were the first heroic (or anti-heroic if you’re a Mirage fan) group I actually encountered as a child. And I’ve loved them ever since, some incarnations more than others, with Mirage, Image and IDW being the top three for me. And I related more to the Turtles than any of the human characters. Not once did I really feel left out, and most TMNT media didn’t really have much political commentary aside from the occasional environmental message.

Representation matters, and I do respect that but... there is no easy way to say this and this might get A LOT of people angry, furious even, but I am of the opinion that an established character’s sexual orientation shouldn’t be changed. This applies to both heterosexual and LGBTQ characters. Established heterosexual characters shouldn’t be changed and neither should LGBTQ characters. For example, if Northstar, one of the most iconic and beloved gay characters in Alpha Flight was suddenly turned straight, it would get people upset and rightly so.

Also, there is the news regarding Superman being revealed as bisexual. Well, it's not Clark Kent folks, Classic Superman hasn't been changed. This is a new and different Superman and you know what, that's absolutely fine.

But in the case of the TMNT, canonically they've been shown in most mediums as having heterosexual tendencies. A case could be made that they're asexual in the case of the 2003 series as Peter Laird had no interest in exploring the romantic lives of the Turtles.

In the Mirage canon, Leonardo has had a romantic affair with a Native American super heroine named Radical and even marries her in the future. Michelangelo even has had sex with a Saurian Princess named Seri and even becomes a father to a clutch of eggs. Peter Laird even drew a picture of Michelangelo with his children, prior to Mirage folding in 2021. Raphael even has displayed some interest in Lucindra Thompkins, a sparring partner of his. Donatello? Well, he was too busy with science to be attracted to anyone. I can see Donnie being asexual in this aspect solely because of this.

In the 1987 cartoon, Leonardo developed romantic feelings for Lotus Blossom. Raphael had Mona Lisa. Not sure if Michelangelo or Donatello had anyone. Admittedly my memory of the 1987 cartoon is fuzzy at best, so I cannot recall if Michelangelo and Donatello had anyone.

In the 1990 movies, the Turtles also had heterosexual tendencies when they were flirting with April.

In the Next Mutation, Venus was introduced to be a love interest to the Turtles which had much dismay from fans as it retconned the brothers from being biological brothers. But the Next Mutation isn't canon in the grand scheme of TMNT, so we can discount that one.

In the 2012 series, the Turtles were paired up with characters such as Raphael with Mona Lisa, Leonardo and Karai were sort of love interest, Michelangelo seemed to be smitten with Renet, and Donatello had an unrequited crush on April.

As for IDW... Let's go over that-- Raphael and Alopex are a thing. That's firmly established. Michelangelo has developed a crush on Trib, the Neutrino Princess, and Donatello seems to have a thing going on with Mona Lisa. Leonardo seems to be the only one left but comic covers and teasers suggest he might have an upcoming rivalry with a PoC character named Carmen, and solicitations mention that Carmen is of importance to Leo. But that last part could mean anything such as a platonic friendship or rivalry.

Since the start, IDW has made itself unique with it's own canon and continuity, initially drawing elements from Mirage but gradually pulled from the 1987 toon, the 2003 toon and 2012 series. The writing by Tom Waltz at the time also had it's own touches as well, and some changes to characters were made such as Null and Jagwar being female rather than male like their Archie counterparts.

But I don't believe that changing a character's orientation this far into the canon and story for the sake of representation is the way to go. I don't believe that to be progressive, a character has to be changed so drastically.

When comic writers change an established character’s orientation, especially when that character has been popular for thirty to seventy years, it lessens a victory that could’ve been achieved for the LGBTQ community. Rather than create a new character who could earn the chance to be iconic and popular, it renders the existing established character as a hand me down. It’s also incredibly weak, lazy and unimaginative. It sends the message that they weren’t worthy to make a mark on their own without being given the chance to try first.

It would be a much more meaningful victory if a new character who is LGBTQ was created and well-written with relatable characteristics and put in a great storyline was given the chance to achieve that iconic status and popularity, and stand on their own alongside established legacy characters.

Being progressive doesn’t mean an established character’s orientation has to be changed for representation. In the case of the Turtles, I can see the brothers as being allies for the LGBTQ characters, fighting alongside with them, teaching them and passing whatever knowledge they have, and even adding them to their extended family. I know they’re kind of already doing that, but it would be much more meaningful for a new character to represent and make their own impact to achieve that victory, rather than changing the brothers' orientation.

I suppose that’s all I have to say regarding my thoughts on the matter, and these thoughts don’t come from a place of hate but rather concern and a desire to see the TMNT title succeed and flourish without taking any cheats or shortcuts which might hurt the success of the title in the long run.

[thenightling]

The Sandman / Locke & Key crossover review

I just read The Sandman / Locke & Key crossover issue 2 and though the artwork is beautiful some of the continuity issues really start to bother me very quickly

Warning, there are some spoilers below.

Continuity problems on the first few pages.  What's with Gilbert's dark humor about Lucien being blinded?  I know he has some quirky moments but that seems a bit much, like mocking Rose for nearly being raped in the alley.  The Corinthian being banished.  In Overture he fled.  He went on the run to avoid being uncreated. Since when is The Corinthian sexist? He's many things but "You're just a woman."  That didn't quite fit him.   He's an asshole but for many other reasons.  The title of the book Mary asked for to trick The Corinthian was a parody on "How to make  friends and influence people."  That book wasn't published until 1936.  The year this is set in is 1927...   They still keep calling him Shaper.  Only the fae called him shaper, it's a direct translation of Morpheus.   They should be calling him Dream or Morpheus in The Dreaming or in the case of Cain and Abel "Prince of stories."   They claim only "The shaper" can uncreate his dream folk.  Okay but... holding The Dreaming from 2018  Lucien uncreated Merv's friends...

And that’s just in the first five pages.

One thing that really felt wrong to me is when Gilbert and Lucien find out that their master is being held in a cage in The Waking World they decide NOT to rescue him because it would “humiliate” him.  And he can be “dangerous if he resents you.”  So you let your world deteriorate for a century because it might bruise his ego.   

By that reasoning in issue 2 of The Sandman when Morpheus ended up at The House of Mystery Cain and Abel should have left him on the doorstep.

(Mocking scenario:   Abel: “Should we help him?” / Cain: “Naw, don’t want to embarrass him. Just leave him on the doorstep.”

Seriously, it would have been better to just not let them know their king is caged- rather than “We left him there because it would bruise his ego to be rescued.”  That’s so... stupid.

Also, no, Lucien.  His last lover did not suffer in Hell for ten thousand years.  He had lovers after Nada including Titania. YOU would know this.  

She literally says fuck him and none of his subjects say otherwise?!

Ha... ha?

Also why does Gilbert know who Rose Walker is already?   He says “You remind me of someone I haven’t met yet” and then name drops her.  Did Joe Hill completely misunderstand what was going on in Soft Places?  That though Morpheus was fresh from Captivity, for Gilbert it was the 1990s?

The characterizations in here are so terrible. Lucifer is portrayed as more of a traditional Devil and for some reason not just resembling Bowie but specifically 1997 Bowie including 1997 clothing for some reason.  And his behavior was more traditional maniacal villain.  

There are so many continuity errors.   Etrigan isn’t a rhymer yet.  Hell somehow already seems to have its triumvirate.  Azazel was eating Choronzon but somehow he’s fine when The Sandman starts.

Even the bonus article about a massive fire at Fawny Rig is a current canon contradiction.  Fawny Rig is in tact in The Dreaming (2018) comics.   

 I had trouble reading it simply after she woke from The Dreaming knowing Gilbert AND Lucien voted to leave Morpheus caged.  

 I can’t believe Neil was okay with Gilbert and Lucien deciding it’s better to leave Morpheus caged for the next century.

Yet again, the art is lovely but the characterizations and continuity errors are just so terrible, it made it an unpleasant read.  The first volume wasn’t as bad even with mysteriously de-aged Alexander Burgess...

I feel like Joe Hill wasn’t trying to emulate Neil Gaiman and his universe but rather the continuity created by Caitlin R. Kiernan during the era of The Sandman presents and I ...I am not a fan of that era of Sandman writing. I doubt many people are.  I disliked Caitlin R. Kiernan’s Sandman content so much it almost made me lose interest in The Sandman all together and doubt the quality of the original Sandman.  This had nearly the same effect.   I sat here thinking “How could Neil Gaiman approve Lucien and Gilbert literally voting to leave Morpheus caged and bad mouthing him worse than Merv Pumpkinhead?”  

This is harder to ignore than Caitlin R. Kiernan's Dreaming because this was written by Joe Hill as part of his Locke & Key comics.  That means it'll forever BE canon to Lock & Key.  There's no de-canonizing this...

I think I liked it better when it looked like Joe Hill was just going to stepstep The dream folk asking about where Morpheus is but instead... they really opt to leave him a cage for a century and let their world crumble around them as a result all because it might bruise his ego.   It made a lot more sense when they did not know where he was at all. I know Morpheus was a jerk in this era but it makes me feel extra sorry for him that his own subjects would treat him this way, especially Lucien.

I can’t get over their reaction to Mary suggesting they rescue Morpheus.  Honestly, it would have made more sense for them to try to save him, fail, and somehow lose the memory of the effort.  It would have been frustrating but it would not have character-assassinated Lucien like this, that he LET his library be destroyed because he didn’t want to free his master from his cage.  Seriously, this makes no sense.

Based on one of the variant covers of issue 2 of this crossover it does look like they originally planned to have a subplot of Mary trying to rescue Morpheus, perhaps with Gilbert and Lucien’s help, but maybe Roderick caught them and erased their memories of seeing Morpheus there, via magick spell. That would have made more sense than what is actually inhere.  It’s like at the last second someone decided they shouldn’t do that so now you have Gilbert and Lucien going very out-of-character and literally voting to leave Morpheus caged indefinitely and talking Mary out of trying to save him.

I am unnerved that Neil was okay with how poor Gilbert and Lucien were treated to accommodate plot convenience.  Raising Morpheus from the dead is forbidden but having Lucien and Gilbert vote to leave Morpheus caged and destroy their own world- AND The Dreaming Library- that's fine?!

Mary’s story ends okay but the portrayal of the dream folk and how they act about Morpheus, even during his darker phase of his existence, is pretty terrible. 

[sweetdreamsjeff]

A LIFE TOO SHORT

By:  Greg Kot CHICAGO TRIBUNE

June 20,1997

Jeff Buckley's voice was a sanctuary. Walking in from a blizzard on a February night in 1994, heads fogged in by the cold, listeners found themselves in thrall to this amazing singer at a Wrigleyville coffee shop called the Uncommon Ground.

Seated in front of the pastry counter strumming an electric guitar, Buckley was then 27, but he looked 17, an unlikely shaman presiding over a surreal seance as steam from dethawing bodies and hot coffee fogged in the windows. The crowd of 50 arrayed around the singer was so close to him -- every breath audible, every goosebump visible -- it was almost embarrassing. Because Buckley wasn't so much entertaining the room as revealing intimacies in a voice like an androgynous angel.

I'm certain that every person who saw that performance mourns Jeff Buckley's death. But nearly as much, I mourn those who weren't there, who didn't know he existed, who never experienced that voice first-hand.

Buckley died in a swimming accident a few weeks ago in the Mississippi River. His body was found June 4, several days after he was pulled under while frolicking in a dangerous section of the river. He was in Memphis to record what would have been his second album. His first, "Grace," released in 1994, was not a particularly big hit. But it was a marvelous starting point, as he poured himself into songs associated with Leonard Cohen ("Hallelujah") and Nina Simone ("Lilac Wine") and made them sound like hymns for people who never set foot inside a church. Buckley originals such as "Grace" and especially "Lover, You Should've Come Over" were nearly in league with those songs.

But it's doubtful that any compact disc could have contained what Buckley had to offer in concert, where he played with the sound and rhythm of words and navigated new arrangements while exploring every inlet of his music. Sometimes the music would crash and burn, and Buckley would chastise himself for failing. But with his multi-octave voice and his willingness to expose his every vulnerability, to appear frail, to embrace the feminine side of his soul, Buckley could inhabit a song by Edith Piaf as easily as he could one by Robert Plant. He was an extraordinary talent.

"It's all about getting to a place where I can let my deepest eccentricities out," Buckley once said in an interview shortly after the Uncommon Ground show. "I just see things a little differently and express myself a little differently and I think it's because I haven't been in one place for very long (in four years, Buckley attended three high schools). So I was seen from my childhood as hyperactive, homosexual, weird, insane, obnoxious, offensive, funny. . . . It's a tremendous point of pain, my inability to relate to the status quo."

Buckley was the son of the famed folk-soul singer Tim Buckley, but he never knew his father, who died of a drug overdose in 1975 at age 28. Jeff grew up in California with his mother and stepfather, then moved to New York in 1990.

"Moving to the East Side from California was the most extreme and successful self-rescue operation I'd ever implemented," he said. "Otherwise I was going to rot from the inside. It was do or die. I've always done music, been in bands, but at the time I was staring at the walls, with no hope and no confidence. New York is stinking with industrial waste, but it's also stinking with purpose."

There he stripped his music to its essence in intimate solo shows at the Cafe Sin-e on the Lower East Side, documented on his debut EP, "Live at Sin-e." He began working with a band, with whom he made "Grace" in 1993. The disc's inner casing includes a hauntingly strange portrait of Buckley, his face obscured by a microphone, his hair teased, his frail torso encased in a glittering cocktail jacket.

"I am a storyteller, lounge singer, I am the entertainer, I am the rock star, I am gay, I am wrong, I am there for the story to go down, the cocktail host-shaman, the little romantic chanteuse wanna-be," Buckley once said, trying to explain the image. He says he wanted it as the cover art for the album, but was talked out of it by friends and the record company. "All the men hated my Judy Garland jacket."

And like Garland, Buckley loved to leap off a cliff into a song rather than avoid its darkest, harshest emotions.

"Sometimes it's life-affirming to say you want to kill yourself, because I've felt that way, that I'm useless, a withered old flower," he said. "But there's something murkily beautiful about living this life, and to recognize it and sing about it is tremendously nutritious. . . . That's why when I go see a movie or a play or a concert I want to be ripped apart, to witness something that totally sucks the life out of you. I want to be dashed on the rocks. That's what I'm going for when I make music."

Jeff Buckley didn't kill himself. By all accounts, he was in a giddy mood the night he jumped into the Mississippi fully clothed and full of anticipation about the album he was about to make. He was a singer who surely would have broadened his following had he lived. But the music he made while he was alive was unforgettable enough. He dashed us against the rocks and then quietly slipped away.

[revchainsaw]

Stephen King's Graveyard Shift (1990)

Blessings upon you congregants from your dear Reverend my beloved Cult of Cult! Gather round a receive today's message as hear a word from the writings of Saint Stephen! I have a bit of inside baseball to share with you today, and that is that I love the fact that Hulu curates a list from your watchlist that lets you know what films have been sitting queued up unattended. You know those movies that you kind a want to see and you keep saying "i'll get around to that" right before you binge King of the Hill for the 90th time? Well Graveyard Shift was one of those movies for me, in fact, I frequently decide what films to cover based on what is about to disappear. In many cases the films I sit through are not very engaging or surprising. I think to myself, yeah, this is about what I thought it would be, no wonder I chose not to engage. Graveyard Shift, however, was actually quite a wonderful surprise.

Sermon

Graveyard Shift begins at the overnight shift of a rat infested textile mill. The employee working the machinery has been so severely pushed to the brink by engaging with the little invaders that he begins to toy with them and sets a very tragic precedent for the film by gleefully tossing living rats into the cotton picker. We get some shots of a blood and viscera mixed into the cotton before this son of a bitch is offed by an off screen force. I'm not gonna hold out on spoilers here for you folks, the movies 30 years old and it's a giant mutant bat.

Our hero Hall, a drifter with a tragic past, blows into town and is quickly hired by Warwick, the womanizing and half insane owner of the textile mill. Warwick has an awful habit of giving easy work to the women in his mill who provide him with sexual favors, while punishing those who don't with the most filthy and strenuous work he can find. This abuse also extends to any of his male employees who he sees as competition for their attention. This is why when Hall begins a relationship with Jane, an independent type who has repeatedly told Warwick to back off, they are soon destined to land on the sub basement cleaning project that brings them into contact with our nocturnal beast.

As this plot unfolds Warwick and Hall become increasingly at odds. Hall at this point has been substantially assigned to contend with the hordes of rats in the basement, playing games and almost training them in a way to leave him be. Eventually the time comes for the much feared cleaning of the basement levels of the mill, and our three main characters as well as a slew of murder lambs descend to their doom.

These poor blue collar folk are accosted by rats, floods, collapsing architecture, the Mutant Bat Mama and Warwick himself descends into madness, killing Jane, before he himself is eventually caught in the leathery wings of the blood thirsty beast. This leaves Hall alone to fight the monster. The battle for survival between Hall and the Bat works its way back up to the Mill where Hall uses the cotton picker and ingest the creature in a bloody cottony mess the likes of which I haven't seen since a 13 year old Chainsaw tried to teach himself to shave.

The Benediction

Best Character: Who's the Boss?

Sometimes with certain characters there's a certain intangible something or other that draws a viewer to them. In the case of Warwick it must have been the pure charisma of actor Stephen Macht. He was definitely not the best actor in this film, it was very clearly a phoned in role with some questionable choices, like I don't get what that accent was about. The character was a sleazy heel and I was absolutely satisfied when he was killed. He provided a very realistic menace despite the utter cornball portrayal. This is truly what they mean when they talk about characters you love to hate. Fuck You Warwick, you magnificent bastard. I'm glad you were eaten by that giant bat.

Best Actor: Chucky's Cheesin' It!

Brad Dourif is perhaps the only actor in this movie who was memorable. It's always great to see Dourif outside of the chucky role. He's always bringing his best stuff and although I didn't mention him in this review, Dourif plays an absolutely demented Vietnam Vet/ Exterminator with his little rat catching dog Moxie in this movie. Whenever I think about Graveyard Shift I think about Warwick, Brad Dourif, and the Bat!

Best Kill: Nana nana nana nana BatMess!

Unfortunately for Graveyard Shift most of the deaths that occur are incredibly tame. It's a creature feature that mostly plays like a Who Dunnit. Its honestly the weakest feature of the film. In fact I'm going to call it right here. (Worst Feature: Genre Confusion). In a film that fundamentally does little more than 'Giant Bat Eats Mill Workers in Mild Criticism of Capitalist Exploitation', I'd like to see some people getting absolutely wrecked by this bat. That doesn't really happen. Most of the kills are off screen, or obscured by big leathery wings. The bat looks pretty damn cool, and when it is chewed up by the Cotton Picker it's about the most gore and effects you get in the film. It's a shame that it is the monsters undoing rather than the monsters doing that really shows off the effects. C'est La Vie!

Worst Kill: Rats Off to You!

In the opening scene that fucker is throwing rats into the cotton picker just for being rats. I know there's a ton of them, but it's such a mean spirited bull shit way of eliminating rats. Rat Terrorism is bullshit and I'm against it. Fuck you you weird rat killing guy, Let Brad Dourif do his thing and stop picking the rats up by their tales you asshole.

Summary

Graveyard Shift was a disappointment to Stephen King, who called it just another "quick exploitation picture" and you know what, that's all it had to be to make me happy. Graveyard shift has a cool looking bat creature, that is unfortunately underused. A quick and engaging little story that doesn't try too hard to be too deep, and I know that was probably a huge temptation with the themes of the story. The characters that are notable are over the top and interesting, and those that aren't are the perfect murder lambs, they are just unique enough to differentiate and keep the action moving. It's by far not one of the greatest films you'll ever see. It's a creature feature that doesn't do enough to feature it's creature. It's effects are good when they are shown, and I'm so happy it was made in an era where we didn't get bombarded with weightless grey blobs of CGI rats everywhere. It's exactly what the doctor ordered for a low stakes night in with some pop corn and a coke. Don't let the haters stop you, definitely give Graveyard Shift a shot.

Overall Grade: C

[beckyhop]

Yo I actually wanna hear about the satanic panic

Well, I hope you’re ready for a bit of a long read, then!

(TW for discussions of sexual assault, suicide, and CSA)

Back in the 1980s, there was a big moral panic that Satanic cults were on the rise and were brainwashing, kidnapping, raping, and killing people, especially children. I don't think there was one single reason this all happened, but a lot of factors played a part in it:

This was around the time evangelical, conservative Christianity was getting a mainstream foothold in politics (remember, this was the Reagan and Thatcher era), so people were listening to them more.

There were new, "occult" or "demonic" interests among teens and young adults, such as heavy metal music, darker superhero comics, and Dungeons and Dragons. Even G-rated fantasy/horror-themed cartoons like He-Man, Thundercats, or 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo got backlash from religious folk who accused them of promoting "occult" practices.

The New Age movement had introduced Eastern spiritual practices to the West, which naturally scared a lot of more traditional Christians afraid of "evil" foreign religions. In addition, Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible saw a big surge in popularity after its 1969 publication. There was probably also a lingering fear of cults in general in the years after the infamous Jonestown mass suicide and the Manson Family murders.

With an increase in working parents sending their kids off to daycare, there was a related panic that daycare workers were abusing children in basically every way possible, and several of these accusations conflated into "these daycares are actually covers for Satanic cults that sacrifice and recruit children". Now while it's generally a good practice to believe victims of sexual abuse when they speak up, it was found out in most of these cases that the kids had been interrogated very poorly, as they would just tell the adults what they "wanted” to hear so they could be rewarded and get out of the interrogation quicker. A prime example of this were the interrogations in the infamous McMartin Preschool case, where the therapist in question was unlicensed with no formal psychiatric education and pressured the kids into making up outlandish claims such as the daycare workers flushing kids down toilets and even making themselves fly.

Psychiatrists were learning how to deal with repressed memories and Dissociative Identity Disorder (then called Multiple Personality Disorder), but it's now believed that their then-poorer understanding of memory and DID may have caused some doctors to lead patients to remember Satanic ritual abuse that had never actually happened. One good example of this is the book Michelle Remembers, written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder, which details his patient Michelle Smith’s supposed memories of Satanic ritual abuse; it became apparent after the book’s publication that a lot of Michelle’s “memories” were outright lies, and some of the “Satanic” rituals were actually based on West African religious rituals. Also, Pazder himself would later marry Michelle despite being her therapist, so...ew. 

Because of all this, you had a swell of people accusing various groups and individuals of being child-snatching woman-murdering Satanists, sometimes with a touch of xenophobia or homophobia thrown into the mix. There were even prominent Christian figures who claimed to have special insight into the occult as "former" Satanists (the most famous example being Mike Warnke, who turned out to have made up his entire claim of being a former Satanic high priest before he became born-again). And yes, you would get the occasional real murderer who would claim to be Satanist, but how is that different from the numerous murderers who are associated with other religions? 

Side notes: One common claim as to how all these supposed sacrifices were occurring without drawing public attention or without bodies being found was “they eat and burn the remains!”. If you know anything about cremation, the temperatures required for the process, and what gets left behind after a cremation, you’d already see the holes in that argument. Also, a lot of panickers claimed that Satanists loved to drink/eat feces and urine in their rituals along with blood; I’m pretty sure that’s not common Satanic practice, but it does sound like something I’d have to turn off SafeSearch to find.

Eventually society calmed down as conservatives lost their grip on politics, mental health became better understood, the aforementioned "occult" media became more mainstream, and most of the daycare workers accused of abuse were found not guilty. You still had/have evangelicals get attention for screaming about "demonic" children's media (Harry Potter and Pokemon got that backlash in the late 90s/early 2000s, for example), but it's not really on the same level as it was in the 1980s/early 1990s.

Anyway, if you want some further reading/viewing…

A Vox article detailing the Panic even better than I can, which links to even more resources throughout

Retro Report’s videos on the McMartin Preschool scandal AND Dungeons and Dragons’ early controversies

In the early 90s, PBS’ Frontline produced a report on patients who left psychiatrists that had misdiagnosed them as being involved in Satanic ritual abuse, titled “The Search for Satan”

And if you want examples of some of the really off-the-wall propaganda the Panic produced...

Pretty much any Jack Chick tract produced during this time would count, most notably the infamous anti-D&D tract Dark Dungeons

Video guides were even made for police departments to combat this supposed threat, the most notable one being Law Enforcement Guide to Satanic Cults (yes, this is the one Red Letter Media covered

The YouTube channel Occult Demon Cassette collects an amazing amount of old VHS stuff, and they’ve found so much weird Satanic Panic propaganda, including:

Deception of a Generation (the infamous video where two grown men speculate on how evil children’s toys and cartoons are)

Kids and the Occult

The Fantasy Explosion

Doorways to Danger

In the Name of Satan

Satanic Cults and Ritual Crime (another law enforcement guide!)

UPC Codes and 666 (again, I believe RLM found this one too)

Devil Worship: The Rise of Satanism (produced by Jeremiah Films, a practical factory of weird and wild anti-pagan anti-atheist “documentaries”)

The Pagan Invasion, Vol. 1: Halloween, Trick or Treat (another Jeremiah Films production!)

Even mainstream news media at the time got in on the action!

Most notably, Geraldo Rivera, he of the empty Al Capone vault, busted nose, and current bad Twitter takes, produced an entire TV special dedicated to how Satanic crime was supposedly on the rise titled Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground. Of note is that, out of all the interview subjects Geraldo features, Ozzy Osbourne is by far the most level-headed.

20/20 also produced a segment on Satanism titled simply The Devil Worshippers. Doesn’t get as bonkers as the Geraldo one, but it’s there if you want to see it.

In conclusion:

[lastsonlost]

Crossing the divide

Do men really have it easier? These transgender guys found the truth was more complex.

In the 1990s, the late Stanford neuroscientist Ben Barres transitioned from female to male. He was in his 40s, mid-career, and afterward he marveled at the stark changes in his professional life. Now that society saw him as male, his ideas were taken more seriously. He was able to complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man. A colleague who didn’t know he was transgender even praised his work as “much better than his sister’s.”

Clinics have reported an increase in people seeking medical gender transitions in recent years, and research suggests the number of people identifying as transgender has risen in the past decade. Touchstones such as Caitlyn Jenner’s transition, the bathroom controversy, and the Amazon series “Transparent” have also made the topic a bigger part of the political and cultural conversation.

But it is not always evident when someone has undergone a transition — especially if they have gone from female to male.

“The transgender guys have a relatively straightforward process — we just simply add testosterone and watch their bodies shift,” said Joshua Safer, executive director at the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Mount Sinai Health System and Icahn School of Medicine in New York. “Within six months to a year they start to virilize — getting facial hair, a ruddier complexion, a change in body odor and a deepening of the voice.”

Transgender women have more difficulty “passing”; they tend to be bigger-boned and more masculine-looking, and these things are hard to reverse with hormone treatments, Safer said. “But the transgender men will go get jobs and the new boss doesn’t even know they’re trans.”

We spoke with four men who transitioned as adults to the bodies in which they feel more comfortable. Their experiences reveal that the gulf between how society treats women and men is in many ways as wide now as it was when Barres transitioned. But their diverse backgrounds provide further insight into how race and ethnicity inform the gender divide in subtle and sometimes surprising ways.

(Their words have been lightly edited for space and clarity.)

‘I’ll never call the police again’

Trystan Cotten, 50, Berkeley, Calif.

Professor of gender studies at California State University Stanislaus and editor of Transgress Press, which publishes books related to the transgender experience. Transitioned in 2008.

Life doesn’t get easier as an African American male. The way that police officers deal with me, the way that racism undermines my ability to feel safe in the world, affects my mobility, affects where I go. Other African American and Latino Americans grew up as boys and were taught to deal with that at an earlier age. I had to learn from my black and brown brothers about how to stay alive in my new body and retain some dignity while being demeaned by the cops.

One night somebody crashed a car into my neighbor’s house, and I called 911. I walk out to talk to the police officer, and he pulls a gun on me and says, “Stop! Stop! Get on the ground!” I turn around to see if there’s someone behind me, and he goes, “You! You! Get on the ground!” I’m in pajamas and barefoot. I get on the ground and he checks me, and afterward I said, “What was that all about?” He said, “You were moving kind of funny.” Later, people told me, “Man, you’re crazy. You never call the police.”

I get pulled over a lot more now. I GOT PULLED OVER MORE IN THE FIRST TWO YEARS AFTER MY TRANSITION THAN I DID THE ENTIRE 20 YEARS I WAS DRIVING BEFORE THAT.

Before, when I’d been stopped, even for real violations like driving 100 miles an hour, I got off. In fact, when it happened in Atlanta the officer and I got into a great conversation about the Braves. Now the first two questions they ask are: Do I have any weapons in the car, and am I on parole or probation?

Being a black man has changed the way I move in the world.

I used to walk quickly or run to catch a bus. Now I walk at a slower pace, and if I’m late I don’t dare rush. I am hyper-aware of making sudden or abrupt movements, especially in airports, train stations and other public places. I avoid engaging with unfamiliar white folks, especially white women. If they catch my eye, white women usually clutch their purses and cross the street. While I love urban aesthetics, I stopped wearing hoodies and traded my baggy jeans, oversized jerseys and colorful skullcaps for closefitting jeans, khakis and sweaters. These changes blunt assumptions that I’m going to snatch purses or merchandise, or jump the subway turnstile. The less visible I am, the better my chances of surviving.

But it’s not foolproof. I’m an academic sitting at a desk so I exercise where I can. I walked to the post office to mail some books and I put on this 40-pound weight vest that I walk around in. It was about 3 or 4 in the afternoon and I’m walking back and all of a sudden police officers drove up, got out of their car, and stopped. I had my earphones on so I didn’t know they were talking to me. I looked up and there’s a helicopter above. And now I can kind of see why people run, because you might live if you run, even if you haven’t done anything. This was in Emeryville, one of the wealthiest enclaves in Northern California, where there’s security galore. Someone had seen me walking to the post office and called in and said they saw a Muslim with an explosives vest. One cop, a white guy, picked it up and laughed and said, “Oh, I think I know what this is. This is a weight belt.”

It’s not only humiliating, but it creates anxiety on a daily basis. Before, I used to feel safe going up to a police officer if I was lost or needed directions. But I don’t do that anymore. I hike a lot, and if I’m out hiking and I see a dead body, I’ll keep on walking. I’ll never call the police again.

‘It now feels as though I am on my own’

Zander Keig, 52, San Diego

Coast Guard veteran. Works at Naval Medical Center San Diego as a clinical social work case manager. Editor of anthologies about transgender men. Started transition in 2005.

Prior to my transition, I was an outspoken radical feminist. I spoke up often, loudly and with confidence.

I was encouraged to speak up. I was given awards for my efforts, literally — it was like, “Oh, yeah, speak up, speak out.” When I speak up now, I am often given the direct or indirect message that I am “mansplaining,” “taking up too much space” or “asserting my white male heterosexual privilege.” Never mind that I am a first-generation Mexican American, a transsexual man, and married to the same woman I was with prior to my transition.

I find the assertion that I am now unable to speak out on issues I find important offensive and I refuse to allow anyone to silence me. My ability to empathize has grown exponentially, because I now factor men into my thinking and feeling about situations.

Prior to my transition, I rarely considered how men experienced life or what they thought, wanted or liked about their lives.

I have learned so much about the lives of men through my friendships with men, reading books and articles by and for men and through the men I serve as a licensed clinical social worker.

Social work is generally considered to be “female dominated,” with women making up about 80 percent of the profession in the United States. Currently I work exclusively with clinical nurse case managers, but in my previous position, as a medical social worker working with chronically homeless military veterans — mostly male — who were grappling with substance use disorder and severe mental illness, I was one of a few men among dozens of women.

Plenty of research shows that life events, medical conditions and family circumstances impact men and women differently. But when I would suggest that patient behavioral issues like anger or violence may be a symptom of trauma or depression, it would often get dismissed or outright challenged. The overarching theme was “men are violent” and there was “no excuse” for their actions.

I do notice that some women do expect me to acquiesce or concede to them more now: Let them speak first, let them board the bus first, let them sit down first, and so on. I also notice that in public spaces men are more collegial with me, which they express through verbal and nonverbal messages: head lifting when passing me on the sidewalk and using terms like “brother” and “boss man” to acknowledge me. As a former lesbian feminist, I was put off by the way that some women want to be treated by me, now that I am a man, because it violates a foundational belief I carry, which is that women are fully capable human beings who do not need men to acquiesce or concede to them.

What continues to strike me is the significant reduction in friendliness and kindness now extended to me in public spaces. It now feels as though I am on my own: No one, outside of family and close friends, is paying any attention to my well-being.

I can recall a moment where this difference hit home. A couple of years into my medical gender transition, I was traveling on a public bus early one weekend morning. There were six people on the bus, including me. One was a woman. She was talking on a mobile phone very loudly and remarked that “men are such a–holes.” I immediately looked up at her and then around at the other men. Not one had lifted his head to look at the woman or anyone else. The woman saw me look at her and then commented to the person she was speaking with about “some a–hole on the bus right now looking at me.” I was stunned, because I recall being in similar situations, but in the reverse, many times: A man would say or do something deemed obnoxious or offensive, and I would find solidarity with the women around me as we made eye contact, rolled our eyes and maybe even commented out loud on the situation. I’m not sure I understand why the men did not respond, but it made a lasting impression on me.

‘I took control of my career’

Chris Edwards, 49, Boston

Advertising creative director, public speaker and author of the memoir “Balls: It Takes Some to Get Some.” Transitioned in his mid-20s.

When I began my transition at age 26, a lot of my socialization came from the guys at work. For example, as a woman, I’d walk down the hall and bump into some of my female co-workers, and they’d say, “Hey, what’s up?” and I’d say, “Oh, I just got out of this client meeting. They killed all my scripts and now I have to go back and rewrite everything, blah blah blah. What’s up with you?” and then they’d tell me their stories. As a guy, I bump into a guy in the hall and he says, “What’s up?” and I launch into a story about my day and he’s already down the hall. And I’m thinking, well, that’s rude. So, I think, okay, well, I guess guys don’t really share, so next time I’ll keep it brief. By the third time, I realized you just nod.

The creative department is largely male, and the guys accepted me into the club. I learned by example and modeled my professional behavior accordingly. For example, I kept noticing that if guys wanted an assignment they’d just ask for it. If they wanted a raise or a promotion they’d ask for it. This was a foreign concept to me. As a woman, I never felt that it was polite to do that or that I had the power to do that. But after seeing it happen all around me I decided that if I felt I deserved something I was going to ask for it too. By doing that, I took control of my career. It was very empowering.

Apparently, people were only holding the door for me because I was a woman rather than out of common courtesy as I had assumed. Not just men, women too. I learned this the first time I left the house presenting as male, when a woman entered a department store in front of me and just let the door swing shut behind her. I was so caught off guard I walked into it face first.

When you’re socially transitioning, you want to blend in, not stand out, so it’s uncomfortable when little reminders pop up that you’re not like everybody else. I’m expected to know everything about sports. I like sports but I’m not in deep like a lot of guys. For example, I love watching football, but I never played the sport (wasn’t an option for girls back in my day) so there is a lot I don’t know. I remember the first time I was in a wedding as a groomsman. I was maybe three years into my transition and I was lined up for photos with all the other guys. And one of them shouted, “High school football pose!” and on cue everybody dropped down and squatted like the offensive line, and I was like, what the hell is going on? It was not instinctive to me since I never played. I tried to mirror what everyone was doing, but when you see the picture I’m kind of “offsides,” so to speak.

The hormones made me more impatient. I had lots of female friends and one of the qualities they loved about me was that I was a great listener. After being on testosterone, they informed me that my listening skills weren’t what they used to be. Here’s an example: I’m driving with one of my best friends, Beth, and I ask her “Is your sister meeting us for dinner?” Ten minutes later she’s still talking and I still have no idea if her sister is coming. So finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I snapped and said, “IS SHE COMING OR NOT?” And Beth was like, “You know, you used to like hearing all the backstory and how I’d get around to the answer. A lot of us have noticed you’ve become very impatient lately and we think it’s that damn testosterone!” It’s definitely true that some male behavior is governed by hormones. Instead of listening to a woman’s problem and being empathetic and nodding along, I would do the stereotypical guy thing — interrupt and provide a solution to cut the conversation short and move on. I’m trying to be better about this.

People ask if being a man made me more successful in my career. My answer is yes — but not for the reason you might think. As a man, I was finally comfortable in my own skin and that made me more confident. At work I noticed I was more direct: getting to the point, not apologizing before I said anything or tiptoeing around and trying to be delicate like I used to do. In meetings, I was more outspoken. I stopped posing my thoughts as questions. I’d say what I meant and what I wanted to happen instead of dropping hints and hoping people would read between the lines and pick up on what I really wanted. I was no longer shy about stating my opinions or defending my work. When I gave presentations I was brighter, funnier, more engaging. Not because I was a man. Because I was happy.

‘People assume I know the answer’

Alex Poon, 26, Boston

Project manager for Wayfair, an online home goods company. Alex is in the process of his physical transition; he did the chest surgery after college and started taking testosterone this spring.

Traditional Chinese culture is about conforming to your elders’ wishes and staying within gender boundaries. However, I grew up in the U.S., where I could explore my individuality and my own gender identity. When I was 15 I was attending an all-girls high school where we had to wear skirts, but I felt different from my peers. Around that point we began living with my Chinese grandfather towards the end of his life. He was so traditional and deeply set in his ways. I felt like I couldn’t cut my hair or dress how I wanted because I was afraid to upset him and have our last memories of each other be ruined.

Genetics are not in my favor for growing a lumberjack-style beard. Sometimes, Chinese faces are seen as “soft” with less defined jaw lines and a lack of facial fair. I worry that some of my feminine features like my “soft face” will make it hard to present as a masculine man, which is how I see myself. Instead, when people meet me for the first time, I’m often read as an effeminate man.

My voice has started cracking and becoming lower. Recently, I’ve been noticing the difference between being perceived as a woman versus being perceived as a man. I’ve been wondering how I can strike the right balance between remembering how it feels to be silenced and talked over with the privileges that come along with being perceived as a man. Now, when I lead meetings, I purposefully create pauses and moments where I try to draw others into the conversation and make space for everyone to contribute and ask questions.

People now assume I have logic, advice and seniority. They look at me and assume I know the answer, even when I don’t. I’ve been in meetings where everyone else in the room was a woman and more senior, yet I still got asked, “Alex, what do you think? We thought you would know.” I was at an all-team meeting with 40 people, and I was recognized by name for my team’s accomplishments. Whereas next to me, there was another successful team led by a woman, but she was never mentioned by name. I went up to her afterward and said, “Wow, that was not cool; your team actually did more than my team.” The stark difference made me feel uncomfortable and brought back feelings of when I had been in the same boat and not been given credit for my work.

When people thought I was a woman, they often gave me vague or roundabout answers when I asked a question. I’ve even had someone tell me, “If you just Googled it, you would know.” But now that I’m read as a man, I’ve found people give me direct and clear answers, even if it means they have to do some research on their own before getting back to me.

A part of me regrets not sharing with my grandfather who I truly am before he passed away. I wonder how our relationship might have been different if he had known this one piece about me and had still accepted me as his grandson. Traditionally, Chinese culture sees men as more valuable than women. Before, I was the youngest granddaughter, so the least important. Now, I’m the oldest grandson. I think about how he might have had different expectations or tried to instill certain traditional Chinese principles upon me more deeply, such as caring more about my grades or taking care of my siblings and elders. Though he never viewed me as a man, I ended up doing these things anyway.

Zander Keig contributed to this article in his personal capacity. The opinions expressed in this are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of the Department of Defense.

--------

Old story worth a repost SOURCE

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 7, Number 4

Axel Ruley x Verbo Flow

A little bit of optimism is creeping into the air as Dusted writers start to get their shots. We’re all starting to think about live music, maybe outside, maybe this summer. But as the spate of freak snow storms demonstrates, summer’s not here yet, and in the meantime, piles of records and gigs of MP3s beckon. This early spring version of Dust covers the map, literally, with artists representing Pakistan, Australia, Canada, Sweden, the UK and the USA, and stylistically with jazz, rock, punk, rap, improv and many other genres in play. Contributors include Jennifer Kelly, Justin Cober-Lake, Bill Meyer, Ray Garraty, Patrick Masterson, Tim Clarke and Bryon Hayes.

Arooj Aftab — Vulture Prince (New Amsterdam)

Vulture Prince by Arooj Aftab

Arooj Aftab is a classical composer originally from Pakistan but now living in Brooklyn. Vulture Prince, her third full-length album, blends the bright clarity of new age music with the fluid, non-Western vocal tones of her Central Asian roots. “Last Night,” from an old Rumi poem but sung mostly in English, lilts in dub-scented syncopation, the thump and pop of stand-up bass underlining its bittersweet melody. An interlude in some other language shifts the song entirely, pitting vintage reggae reverberation against an exotic melisma. “Mohabbat” (which is apparently Urdu for sex) soothes in the pristine instrumentals, lucid guitars, a horn, scattered drumbeats, but smolders and beckons in the vocals. None of these tracks feel wholly traditional or wholly Western and modern day, but sit somewhere in a well-lit, idealized space. Timeless and placeless, Vulture Prince is nonetheless very beautiful.

Jennifer Kelly

 Assertion — Intermission (Spartan)

Intermission comes from an alternate timeline. Founding drummer William Goldsmith started his musical career in Sunny Day Real Estate and had a notable stint with Foo Fighters. To cut the biography short, Goldsmith took a decade off from the music industry. He's returned now with Assertion, joined by guitarist/vocalist Justin Tamminga and bassist Bryan Gorder (both of Blind Guides, among other acts). This band picks up in the late 1990s, imagining a new path for post-hardcore/post-grunge music. The trio's name suits, as the songs' energy and the lyrical assertiveness develops the intensity of the release. The group works carefully with dynamics, neither parroting the loud-quiet tradition nor simply pushing their emo leanings toward 11.

“The Lamb to the Slaughter Pulls a Knife” epitomizes the album. The track sounds like Foo Fighters decided to get dirtier rather than more arena-friendly, while the lyrics mix violence with emotional persistence. First single “Supervised Suffering” finds triumph in endurance, turning the aggressive chorus into something of a victory. “Set Fire” closes the album with something more delicate, but it's just the gauze over a seething anger. Goldsmith's time off seems to have served him well, as does collaborating with some new partners. Assertion makes its case clearly and effectively, and if the intermission's over for Goldsmith, the second half sounds promising.

Justin Cober-Lake  

 Michael Beach — Dream Violence (Goner/Poison City)

Dream Violence by Michael Beach

“De Facto Blues,” from Michael Beach’s fourth solo album, is a barn-burner of a song, rough and messy and passionate, the kind of song that makes you want to take a stand on something, who cares what as long as it matters to you. It snarls like Radio Birdman, slashes like the Wipers and follows its muse through chaos to righteousness like an off-cut from Crazy Horse, just back from rockin’ the free world. It’s got Matt Ford and Inez Tulloch from Thigh Master on guitar and bass, respectively, Utrillo Kushner from Colossal Yes (and Comets on Fire) on drums, and Kelley Stoltz at the boards, and it’s a killer. The rest of the album is varied and, honestly, not uniformly astounding, but there’s a nice Summer of Love-style psych dream in “Metaphysical Dice,” a slow-burning post-rocker in the title track and a driving, pounding punk anthem in the opener “Irregardless.” Beach has been splitting his time between San Francisco and Melbourne, Australia, and lately settled on Melbourne, where he will fit like a native into their thriving punk-garage scene.

Jennifer Kelly

 Bloop — Proof (Lumo)

Proof by BLOOP (Lina Allemano / Mike Smith)

The trumpet is already a catalog of sound effects waiting to happen, and Lina Allemano knows the table of contents by heart. So, to shake things up, she has paired up with electronic musician Mike Smith, who contributes live processing and effects to Allemano’s improvisations. A blind listen to Proof might leave you with the impression that you’re hearing a horn player jamming with some outer space cats, and we’re not talking about hip, lingo-slinging jazz dudes. In fact, everything on these eight tracks happened in real time. Smith’s a strategic intervener, aware that too much sauce can spoil the stew, so he mixes up precise layering and pitch-shifting with more disorienting transformations. It’s hard to say how much Allemano responds to the simulacra that surround her brass voice, but there’s no denying the persuasiveness of her melodic and timbral ideas.

Bill Meyer

 Bris — Tricky Dance Moves (TrueStory Entertainment)

Bris left some music behind when he died in 2020, but it took almost a year to shape these recordings into a proper CD. The label CEO Mac J (a fine artist himself) could easily capitalize on his friend’s death, stacking Tricky Dance Moves with features from the artists Bris never would have worked with. Yet the album was prepared with the utmost care, not giving an ugly Frankenstein monster feel. Bris’s references to his possible early death are scattered throughout the whole tape: “Heard they wanna pop Bris cause they mad I’m poppin.” Almost every song could be easily turned into a prophetic tale (a cheap move one wants to avoid at all costs). Nonetheless, something is missing here. Or maybe it is just an image of death that disturbs the whole picture, making us realize that this is the last we’d hear from Bris.

Ray Garraty

 Dreamwell — Modern Grotesque (self-released)

Modern Grotesque by Dreamwell

I recently read an interview with Providence’s Dreamwell breaking down in almost excruciating detail the influences that led to the quintet’s sophomore full-length Modern Grotesque. I kept scrolling past Daughters and Deftones and Deafheaven and increasingly disconnected influences like The Mountain Goats and Nina Simone. I went back to the top and looked again. I typed Ctrl+F and put in “Thursday.” Nothing. This is preposterous. I may not be in the post-hardcore trenches the way I once was, but even I’d know a good Full Collapse homage if it swung a mic right into my face the way this one did; hell, just listen to “The Lost Ballad of Dominic Anneghi” and tell me singer Keziah Staska doesn’t know every single word of “Paris in Flames.” That may not look like flattery on a first read, but too often, bands striding the emo/pop divide have chased the latter into sub-Taking Back Sunday oblivion; what Thursday did was much harder, and Dreamwell has ably taken up the torch here. That they did it unintentionally is a curious, bewildering footnote.

Patrick Masterson

  Paul Dunmall / Matthew Shipp / Joe Morris / Gerald Cleaver — The Bright Awakening (Rogue Art)

It’s a bit perplexing that reeds player Paul Dunmall hasn’t spent more time playing with American musicians. He’s firmly situated within the English improvisation community, where he’s perhaps best known for his longer tenure with the quartet Mujician, and his ability to double on bagpipes has allowed him to establish links between improvised and folk music. But

his jazz-rooted approach makes him a natural to work in settings such as this one. When Dunmall toted his tenor to the Vision Festival in 2012 (even then, it could be costly to lug multiple horns on a plane), he found three sympatico partners in Fest regulars pianist Matthew Shipp, double bassist Joe Morris and drummer Gerald Cleaver. They all hit the ground running, generating a barrage of pulsing, roiling sound for over 20 minutes before the piano and drums peel off, leaving Morris to sustain momentum alone. Dunmall’s gruff, spiraling lines find common cause with each of his fellows, and the gradual addition and subtraction of players from that point makes it easier to hear the exchange of ideas, which often seem to take place between dyads operating within the larger flow.

Bill Meyer 

 Editrix — Tell Me I’m Bad (Exploding in Sound)

Tell Me I'm Bad by Editrix

Wendy Eisenberg’s rock band is like her solo output in that it snarls delicate, self-aware, mini-short stories in complex tangles of guitar, hemming in high, sing-song-y verses with riffs and licks of daunting difficulty. The main differences are speed, volume and aggression (i.e. it rocks.) and a certain communal energy. That’s down to two collaborators who can more than keep up, Josh Daniel on surging, rattling, break-it-all-down percussion and Steve Cameron, equally anarchic and fast on bass. The title track is an all-out rager, thrusting jagged arena riffs of guitar and bass forward, then clearing space for off-kilter verses and time-shifting, irregular instrumental interplay. “Chelsea” follows a similar chaotic pattern, setting up a teeth-shaking cadence of rock instruments, with Eisenberg keening over the top of it. “I know, perfectly well, that we’re not safe, safe from the men in power,” she croons, engaged in the knotting difficulties of the world as we know it, but winning.

Jennifer Kelly

Elephant Micah — Vague Tidings (Western Vinyl)

Vague Tidings by Elephant Micah

The new Elephant Micah album, the follow-up to 2018’s excellent Genericana, has an apposite title. Vague Tidings conveys an atmosphere of feeling conscious of something carried on the wind, a story passed on that may have shifted through various iterations, leaving only a sense of its original meaning. All that can be sure is that this is sad, sober music, unafraid to brace against the chill of mortality and speak of all that is felt. The instruments — guitar, piano, percussion, violin and woodwinds — move around Joseph O’Connell’s voice in stiff yet graceful arcs, distanced by an unspoken etiquette. Repetitive melodic figures, stark yet steady, gradually accumulate weight as they roll along like tumbleweeds. It’s a crisp, forlorn country-blues, in no hurry to get nowhere, carrying ancient wisdom that seems to acknowledge the empty resonance of its own import.

Tim Clarke

 Fraufraulein — Solum (Notice Recordings)

Fraufraulein’s music is immersive. Anne Guthrie and Billy Gomberg beam themselves, and us along with them, Quantum Leap-style directly into multiple environments in medias res. Through the clever employment of field recordings, they transport us to a hurricane-addled beach, performing a voice/piano duet as driftwood missiles careen through the air. In another “episode,” the manipulation of small objects conjures up the intimacy of a water garden filled with windchimes. Partners in both life and art, Guthrie and Gomberg are also consummate solo artists. He is a master of spike-textured drones, while she explores the intimate properties of physical entities. Like a child tends to resemble one parent while borrowing subtle traits from the other, Solum identifies more with Guthrie’s electroacoustic tendencies than it does with Gomberg’s electronics. This is in stark contrast to 2015’s Extinguishment, which felt a little more balanced between those two modes. Both approaches work, yet Solum feels more meticulously crafted and nuanced. Careful listening unveils multiple subtle tones and textures, and each piece is an adventure for the ears.

Bryon Hayes

 Gerrit Hatcher / Rob Magill / Patrick Shiroishi — Triplet Fawns (Kettle Hole)

Triplet Fawns by Gerrit Hatcher / Rob Magill / Patrick Shiroishi

The album’s title implies a crew you wouldn’t want on your yard; while those adolescent ungulate appetites do a number on your bushes, the hooves are hacking up your grass. But if they knocked on your door, saxophone cases in their respective hands, you could do worse than invite them around the back for some blowing. Hatcher, Magill and Shiroishi present with sufficient lung power to be heard fine without the reflective assistance of walls, even when they aren’t making like Sonore (that was Gustafsson, Vandermark, and Brötzmann, about a dozen years back). This album, which was released in a micro-edition of 100 CD-Rs on Hatcher’s Kettle Hole imprint, builds gradually from restrained melancholy to pointillistic jousting to a climactic blow-out, and the assured development of each piece suggests that each player was listening not only to what each of the others was doing, but where the music was headed.

Bill Meyer

A.Karperyd — GND (Novoton)

GND by A.Karperyd

On his second solo release, GND, Swedish artist Andreas Karperyd broodingly ruminates on snatches of musical ideas that have been percolating in his consciousness over extended periods. Anyone familiar with his 2015 debut, Woodwork, will find these 55 minutes similarly immersive, as Karperyd manipulates live instruments such as piano and strings into shimmering, alien tapestries. Opener “The Well-Defined Rules of Certainty” appears to take Fennesz’s Venice as its blueprint, issuing forth cascading, percolating tones that tickle the ears. “The Desire to Invoke Balance with Our Eyes Closed” and “Failures and Small Observations” have a Satie-esque elegance to their piano lines, albeit refracted via a hall of mirrors. The 12-minute “Reminiscence of Tar” sounds like a slow-motion pan across the hulking mass of a shadowy space station. And closing track “Mummification of an Empire” slowly fries its piano in static, then unfurls wistful melodica and throbbing synth across the wreckage.

Tim Clarke

  Kiwi Jr. — Cooler Returns (Subpop)

Cooler Returns by Kiwi jr

Kiwi Jr.’s brash, brainy indie pop punk vibrates with nervy energy, like the first Feelies album or Violent Femmes’ 1983 debut or that one great S-T from the Soft Pack. Those are all opening salvos for their respective bands, but this one is a second outing, suffering not a bit from sophomore slackening. Instead, Cooler Returns tightens up everything that was already stinging on the Toronto band’s debut and adds a giddy careening glee. An oddball thread of Robin Hood-ness runs through the disc, with Sherwood forest getting a nod in the title track and “Maid Marian’s Toast” tipping the love interest, but these songs are anything but archaic. “Undecided Voters,” the single jangles harder than anything I’ve heard since Woolen Men, slyly upending creative pretensions in a verse that goes: “You take a photo of the CN tower/you take another of the Honest Ed sign/Well, I take photos of your photos/and they really move people.” Has it been done before? Maybe. Does it move us. Yes indeed.

Jennifer Kelly

 Kool John — Get Rich, Die $moppin ($moplife Entertainment)

A year ago, Kool John was shot six times. Yet you wouldn’t know about it from the general mood of Get Rich, Die $moppin, his first tape since then. He does name one song “6 Shots” and explicitly mentions the shooting accident a few times on other songs, but his bouncy music says he wasn’t hurt bad after all. The beats perfectly match the rhymes, playfully ignorant and ignorantly playful. Kool John still doesn’t mix with broke people, doesn’t return calls if it’s not about money and “doesn’t get stressed out.” Instead, he gets high. His new tape is nothing groundbreaking, even though he’s pretending that is: “If I had no legs I’d still be outstanding.”

Ray Garraty

Nick Mazzarella / Quin Kirchner — See or Seem: Live at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival (Out Of Your Head)

See or Seem: Live at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival by Nick Mazzarella / Quin Kirchner

 Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this recording is that the titular festival happened at all. While most festivals either canceled or went on line, Chicago’s Hyde Park Jazz Festival dealt with COVID by spreading out. Instead of big stages and indoor shows, last September it staged little pop-up events on sidewalks and in parks. So, if the sound of See or Seem feels a bit diffuse, it’s because it was recorded with a device propped in front of two guys playing on a grassy median. There are moments when the buzz of bugs rises up for a second behind Nick Mazzarella’s darting alto sax and Quin Kirchner’s brisk, mercurial beats. But the thrill of actually playing in front of some people (or actually being surrounded by them; when there’s no stage and social distancing is in effect, it makes sense to walk slow circles around the performers) infuses this music, extracting an extra ounce of joyousness from Mazzarella’s free, boppish lines, and adding a restlessness charge to the drumming, as though Kirchner really wanted to squeeze as much music as possible into this 31-minute set. This release is part of Out Of Your Head Records’ Untamed series of download-only albums recorded under less than pristine conditions. A portion of each title’s income is directed to a charity of the artists’ choice; the duo selected St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.

Bill Meyer

 Dean McPhee — Witch’s Ladder (Hood Faire)

Witch's Ladder by Dean McPhee

Finger-picked melodies cut through haunted landscapes of echo and hum on this fourth LP from the British guitarist Dean McPhee. Track titles like “The Alchemist” and “Witch’s Ladder” evoke the supernatural, as does the spectral ambient tone, reminiscent of Chuck Johnson’s recent Cinder Grove or Mark Nelson’s last Pan•American album. Yet while an e-bow traces ghostly chills through “The Alder Tree,” there’s also a grounding in lovely, well-rooted folk forms; it’s like seeing a familiar landscape in moonlight, well-known landmarks suddenly turned unearthly and strange. The long closing title track has an introspective air. Pensive, jazz-infused runs flower into bright bursts of notes, not quite blues, not quite folk, not quite jazz, not quite anything but gorgeous.

Jennifer Kelly

 Moontype — Bodies of Water (Born Yesterday)

Bodies of Water by Moontype

Margaret McCarthy’s voice swims across your headphones like being on an innertube drifting languidly downstream. Typically, saying someone’s vocals are like water indicates a degree of timidity or laziness, obscured in reverb or simply buried by the mix, but on Moontype’s debut LP, it’s a compliment: McCarthy floats across the different styles of music she makes with guitarist Ben Cruz and drummer Emerson Hunton. You notice it not just because she often sings of water or because it’s right there in the title, but also because the Chicago trio hasn’t settled on any particular style yet — just listen to the three-song stretch at the heart of the record where achingly beautiful alt-country ballad “3 Weeks” leads into “When You Say Yes,” a sub-three-minute power-pop number Weezer ought to be jealous of, followed immediately by crunching alt-rock swoon and first single “Ferry.” All the while, McCarthy lets her melodies drift to the will of the songs. I’m reminded of recent efforts from Great Grandpa, Squirrel Flower and Lucy Dacus, but the brief, jazzy curveball of “Alpha” is a peek into whole other possibilities. Bodies of Water is a fine record, but perhaps its most exciting aspect is how much ground you can see Moontype has already conquered. One can’t help but wonder what sonic worlds awash in water await.

Patrick Masterson   

 Rob Noyes / Joseph Allred — Avoidance Language (Feeding Tube)

Avoidance Language by Rob Noyes and Joseph Allred

The 12-string guitar can emit such a prodigious amount of sound, and there are two of them on Avoidance Language. If Joseph Allred and Rob Noyes had planned things out in order to avoid canceling each other out, they might never have picked their instruments up, so they just started playing and listening. The result is not so much a summing of two broad spectrums of sound, but an instinctual blending of similar textures that ends up sounding significantly different from what either musician does on their own. Even when Allred switches to harmonium or banjo, as he does on the album’s two shorter tracks, the music rushes in torrential fashion. Their collaboration is so compatible that it often seems more like a recital for one big stringed thing played by one four-handed musician than a doubled instrumental duet.

Bill Meyer

NRCSSSST — S-T (Slimstyle)

NRCSSST by NRCSSST

There’s no “I” in NRCSSSST but there’s plenty of swagger. The Atlanta-based synth pop band, formed around Coathangers drummer and singer Stephanie Luke and Dropsonic’s Dan Dixon, taunts and teases in its opening salvo “All I Ever Wanted.” Luke rasps appealingly atop Spoon-style piano banging, and big shout along choruses erupt from sudden flares of synths. It’s all hedonism, but done with conviction. You haven’t heard a big rock song kick up this much fun in ages. “Love Suicide” bangs just as hard, its bass line muttering like a crazy person, unstable and ready to explode (and yet it doesn’t, it maintains its restraint even when the rest of the cut goes deliriously off the rails). Dixon can really sing, too, holding the long vibrating notes that lift these prickly jams into anthemry. It’s been a while since a band reminded me of INXS and U2 without sucking, but here we are. Sometimes guilty pleasures are just pleasures.

Jennifer Kelly

 Zeena Parkins / Mette Rasmussen /Ryan Sawyer — Glass Triangle (Relative Pitch)

Glass Triangle by Zeena Parkins, Mette Rasmussen, Ryan Sawyer

Harpist Zeena Parkins and Ryan Sawyer have a long-standing partnership in the trio substitutes Moss Garden, a chamber improv ensemble with pianist Ryan Ross. But swapping in Danish alto saxophonist Mette Rasmussen brings about a change, not just in instrumentation, but attitude. She plays free jazz like a punk, impatient and aggressive, and Parkins and Sawyer are up for the challenge. This music often plays out like a battle between two titans, one blowing and the other pummeling, while Parkins seeks to liquify the ground upon which they stand. She sticks exclusively to an electric harp whose effects-laden tone is disorientingly alien, blinking beacon-like one moment, low as a backhoe engage in earth removal the next. The combination of new and old relationships promotes a combination of instability and trust that yields splendid results.

Bill Meyer

 claire rousay — A Softer Focus (American Dreams)

a softer focus by claire rousay

In film, soft focus is a technique of contrast reduction that lends a scene a dreamlike quality. With A Softer Focus, claire rousay imbues her already intimate compositions with a noctilucent aura. She has created a dreamworld with sound. One glimpse at the glowing flowers that grace the cover art created by visual artist Dani Toral, with whom rousay closely collaborated on this release, and the illusory nature of the record is revealed. The reds, oranges, blues and purples of deep twilight are reflected in both the textures rousay weaves into her soundscapes and the visual themes that Toral conjures. Violin, cello, piano and synth are the musical origins of this warmth, which rousay wraps around environments crafted from the sounds of everyday life. She recorded herself moving about her apartment, visiting a farmer’s market, observing kids playing and just existing. These field recordings of the mundane, when coupled with the radiance of the musical elements, are magical. Snatches of conversation become incantations; auto-tuned vocals are the whisperings of spirits; fireworks explode into brilliant shards of crystal. With A Softer Focus, rousay takes a glimpse into the beauty of the everyday, showing us just how precious our most humdrum moments can be.

Bryon Hayes

Axel Rulay x Verbo Flow — Si Es Trucho Es Trucho / Axel Rulay (La Granja)

Axel Rulay must be kicking himself right now. With more than three million plays on the original version and more than five million on the remix that adds verses from Farruko and El Alfa into the fray, the Dominican is cruising into our second pandemic summer with an unbeatable poolside anthem — and to think, after years of clawing his way up through the industry dregs, working to get his name out there, all he had to do was make himself the chorus over Venezuelan producer Manybeat’s 2019 tropical house trip “El Tiempo.” Presto: Massive visibility in the Spanish-speaking world and a song that ought to transcend any linguistic barriers unlocked even if the best I can manage is a title that translates as “If It’s Trout It’s Trout.” Expect that long-desired Daddy Yankee collabo to follow any day now.

Patrick Masterson

  Rx Nephew — Listen Here Are You Here to Hear Me (NewBreedTrapper)

Rochester rapper Rx Nephew trailed brother-turned-archrival-turned-back Rx Papi’s coming out party 100 Miles and Walk’in by just a few weeks with the 53-minute all-in proposition Listen Here Are You Here to Hear Me. Unlike Papi’s Max B-ish smoothness, Nephew is all rough n’ tumble through these 17 tracks, provocative pump action with narrative bursts of violence and street hustling delivered with a verve most akin to DaBaby or, in some of his more elastic enunciations, peak Ludacris. A recent Creative Hustle interview provides some insight: The first time he went into the booth, “I didn’t write anything. I just started talking about selling crack and robbing people.” The stories haven’t stopped since. If he can keep putting out music as engaging as Listen Here…, Rx Nephew is destined for more than just the margins; until then, we have one of the year’s densest rap records to hold the line.

Patrick Masterson

 Nick Schofield — Glass Gallery (Backward Music)

Glass Gallery by Nick Schofield

Nick Schoefield, out of Montreal, composed these 13 tracks entirely on a vintage Prophet 600, the first synthesizer to designed to employ the then-new MIDI standard established by the instrument’s inventor Dave Smith and Roland’s Ikutaru Kakahashi. The instrument has a lovely, crystalline quality, floating effortless arpeggios through vaulting sonic spaces. Though clearly synthesized, these pieces of music resonate in serene and peaceful ways, evoking light, water, air and contemplation with a simplicity that evokes Japan. “Water Court” drips notes of startling purity into deep pools of tone-washed whoosh and hum. “Snow Blue Square” flutters an oboe-like melody over eddying gusts of keyboard motifs. The pieces fit together with calm precision, leading from one beautiful space to the next like a stroll through a museum.

Jennifer Kelly

  Archie Shepp — Blasé And Yasmina Revisited (Ezz-thetics)

The Ezz-thetics campaign to keep the best of mid-20th century free jazz on CD shelves (yes, CD, not streaming or LP) breaches the walls of the BYG catalog with a disc that issues one and a half albums from Archie Shepp’s busy week in August 1969. Blasé is a stand-out for the participation of singer Jeanne Lee, whose indomitable and flexible delivery as equal to the demands of material that’s be turns pungently earthy and steeped in antiquity. But the rest of the band, which includes Philly Joe Jones, Dave Burrell, some harmonica players, and a couple members of the Art Ensemble, is also more than equal to the task of filtering the blues and Ellingtonia through the gestures of the then-contemporary avant-garde. “Yasmina,” which originally occupied one side of another LP, makes sense here as an extension of the raw, rippling “Touareg,” the last tune on Blasé, into exultantly African territory.

Bill Meyer

 Juanita Stein — Snapshot (Handwritten)

Juanita Stein was the cool, serene, Mazzy Star-evoking vocal presence in the Aussie dream-gaze outfit Howling Bells, and she plays more or less the same role on her third solo album. Yet she is also the source of mayhem here, kicking up an angst of guitar-freaked turmoil on “1,2,3,4,5,6” then soothing it away with singing, hanging long threads of feedback from the thump-thump-thumping blues-rock architecture of “L.O.T.F.” and crooning dulcetly, but with a little yip, in the trance-y title track. This latter cut reflects on the death of her father, a kindred soul who wrote a couple of Howling Bells songs for her and passed away recently. It distills a palpable ache into pure, distanced poetry, finding a cool, dispassionate way to consider the mysteries of human loss.

Jennifer Kelly

 The Tiptons Sax Quartet & Drums — Wabi Sabi (Sowiesound)

Wabi Sabi by Tiptons Sax Quartet & Drums

Over its 30 years together, the Tiptons Sax Quartet has done less to hone its sound and more to figure out how many styles to embrace. The group (typically a soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone sax joined by percussion and even including some vocals) can dig into trad jazz but sounds more at home in exploration, adapting world music or other traditional American styles. The title of their latest album, Wabi Sabi refers to the Japanese concept of finding beauty in and accepting imperfection. The Tiptons, despite that sentiment, don't approach their play with a sloppy sound; in fact, they're as tight as ever. The understanding of impermanence and imperfection does help contextualize their risk-taking. When they turn to odd yodeling on “Moadl Joadl,” they find joy in an odd vocal moment that highlights expression and discovery over formal rigor. When they tap in New Orleans energy for “Jouissance,” we can connect the dots between parades and funerals, celebrating all the while. The whole album serves as a tour of styles and moods, always with an energetic potency. If it's more of the same from the Tiptons, that just means continuance of difference.

Justin Cober-Lake

[betweenthetimeandsound]

Three Minutes to Eternity: My ESC 250 (#210-201)

#210: Joy Fleming -- Ein Lied Kann Eine Brücke Sein (Germany 1975)

“Hör auf zu spielen und lerne zu fühlen, Wie viele Menschen Freunde sind, Lerne zu singen, vertraue so wie ein Kind,”

“Stop playing and learn how to feel, How many people are friends Learn how to sing, trust just like a child”

For an older and low-placed entry, this German entry has become a fan favorite! Despite this, I wonder if I really like this enough to make my top three of 1975, because I don't go back to listen to it often.

But when I do, it just takes the conductor's stomping to get me into the mood. It's just a great way to start a song~

While the chorus somehow bugs me a little bit, because of how jarring it is (Joy shouts it all out, in comparison to the verses where she has a somewhat lower register), how it builds really helps with getting the party started. The orchestration also helps with the joie de vivre of the song, and Joy manages to live up to her name on stage.

Personal ranking: =3rd/19 Actual ranking: 17th(?!)/19 in Stockholm

#209: Muriel Day -- The Wages of Love (Ireland 1969)

“There will be bridges to be crossed And there'll be teardrops to be lost...”

Ireland’s first upbeat song is a diversion from their first four entries in more ways than one. Not only it’s performed by a woman for the first time, but it also warns about the pains of love—while it’s a great experience, you have to pay a lot in the process. (This actually reminds me of one vintage Eurovision blogger talking about how Horoscopes incorporates a more liberal sound with Ireland's conservatism at the time--maybe it was from the same lines?)

And Muriel has an absolute ball on stage with her uber-high lime green dress. She twirls her microphone around when arriving, bounces up and down like she just got a can of Red Bull, and dances as if it was for the last time. The orchestration really helps out on giving out this vivacious vibe (though the lyric "it can make you live/it can make you die" in context is quite horrifying behind the upbeat track).

Basically, this was an upbeat track which I would've switched out for one of the upbeat winners.

Personal ranking: 3rd/16 (though here, it's 4th/16. A mismatch in rankings, which you can see again in the future) Actual ranking: 7th/16 in Madrid

#208: Alenka Gotar -- Cvet z Juga (Slovenia 2007)

"Moj beli cvet, moj daljni svet Daj, vrni se, moj bodi spet”

“My white flower, my faraway world Come, return, be mine again”

I've never been a big fan of opera--not just in Eurovision, but also in general. I recognize they have beautiful voices and worked on them for the performance, but I never really like the instrumental or the actual song.

Cvet z juga, however, managed to incorporate opera in a way which is actually enjoyable. Not only because of Alenka’s powerful vocals, but also the nostalgia created with the poetic lyrics and the instrumental. It’s a combination of classical and modern--it's not a dance-floor bop (despite the percussion in the background), but it's definitely out of the ordinary.

Combined with a subtle but effective gimmick (Alenka's light-up hand at the end), and you have Slovenia's first qualifier in the semi-final. Definitely deserved.

Unfortunately, Alenka's gone off a bad path since then...)

Personal ranking: 6th/42 Actual ranking: 15th/24 GF in Helsinki

#207: Giorgios Alkaios and Friends -- Opa! (Greece 2010)

"Έκαψα το χθες, νύχτες μου παλιές Κι από το μηδέν αρχίζω όσο κι αν δε θες Δάκρυα καυτά ψέμματα πολλά Πλήρωσα όσο χρωστούσα και τα δανεικά"

"I burnt the past, my old nights And I start from scratch even if you don’t want me to Hot tears, too many lies I paid what I owed and borrowed"

"Motherf---ing testosterone!"

The Scandinavia and the World recap for the 2010 contest basically sums up Opa! as this, with all the tribal cries and torn up shirts. I've also heard it described as the "Love Love Peace Peace" of Greek entries, with the prevalent cry "Opa!", strong ethnic influences, and Cretean lyre to boot.

But beyond that, there's a deeper meaning behind the lyrics. By late 2009-early 2010, Greece was facing the burden's of the Great Recession, which would envelop the country in many years. Their GDP would drop by 26% between 2008 and 2014, and unemployment rose up to 25% at the same time. This economic maelstrom led to public uprisings and an exodus of the highly educated.

Opa is a cry for joy--not just to party, but also to fight against a wave of despair considering the circumstances. It strives to give life and inspiration by those who need it, even if it means starting over. And while economics will trump national pride in the end, one asserts themselves as stronger than they think. And that's what makes it an important part of the Greek Golden Age at Eurovision.

Personal ranking: 6th/39 Actual ranking: 8th/25 (GF) in Oslo

#206: Boris Novkovic feat. Lado -- Vukovi Umiru Sami (Croatia 2005)

"Do zore je ostao još koji sat A vani nemir, k’o da je rat Oblačim kaput i odlazim Da sve zaboravim"

"Only a few hours left till dawn And outside unrest, as if a war is on I put my coat on and leave To forget everything"

Balkan ballads are one of the main joys out of Eurovision; obviously from that region, they feature folk instrumentation and sad lyrics about love. Vukovi umiru sami fits into this mold well, but I only managed to put this in tenth place because of the variety of songs on offer, ranging from glam rock to a wholesome peace ballad.

Over time, however, it has grown on me.

The poetic lyrics stood out the most for me--they tell of an end of a relationship on the Danube (which really grounds the song in its origins, despite the fact I associate it with Central European countries as a whole) and the loneliness of the man in it. There's a mournful nature about it, especially with the choir in the background.

And the way it build is so fantastic, amplifying the story and the stakes. The "Dunavoms" between the last two choruses are well-done and elevate this song to greatness.

I planned to rewatch 2005 to see how my rankings change, and thought it would get to be in my top five. Because of a typo on my list, I needed another song to fit the overall order of the list.

And finally, Vukovi umiru sami is in my top five. :)

Personal ranking: 5th/39 Actual ranking: 11th/24 GF in Kyiv

#205: Marlayne -- One Good Reason (the Netherlands 1999)

“Give me one good reason and I will give you two Say: "I love you forever", say you will, say you do...”

The guitar intro made me think this would be a song I would listen to outside of Eurovision. It reminded me of Michelle Branch’s songs in the early 2000s (of which, Breathe is my current all-time favorite song); her debut album, The Spirit Room, would only be released in 2001!

Alternatively, it has a very country-pop vibe, but it still has a sense of optimism which continues through the entire song. I love how sunny and earnest it is, and it got a really solid result out of it! Unfortunately, it would be the Netherlands' best placing until 2013, but at least it was a jolt of quality in a mediocre year.

Personal ranking: 4th/23 Actual ranking: 8th/23 in Jerusalem

#204: Niamh Kavanaugh -- In Your Eyes (Ireland 1993)

“Love's been building bridges between your heart and mine I'm safe here on my island, but I'm out on the edge this time”

One of the most nail-biting votes in Eurovision came in this particular contest: because Malta's phone connection malfunctioned, they had to wait until the end to give their points. At that point, Ireland was 11 points ahead, which means if Malta gave the runner-up their twelve, the latter would win by one point.

The Maltese jury ended up giving Ireland their twelve, which would give Ireland their second consecutive win in the 1990s, along with a point record which would only last a year.

I’ve never felt the vulnerability of falling in love, but I love the narrative arc in the lyrics, which crescendos with the chorus. Niamh’s voice is a bit harsh at times, but delivers on it with a stately grace in a choice suit.

What also seals In Your Eyes for me was the graceful orchestration thanks to Noel Kelehan. It's especially prevalent in the chorus--the studio cut doesn't do it justice...

Personal ranking: =6th/25 Actual ranking: 1st/25 in Millstreet

#203: Sonia -- Better the Devil You Know (United Kingdom 1993)

“I'll give you my heart and my soul if you give me your love..”

...not unlike with the song Ireland was competing with for the win! While the studio cut is decent enough, Better the Devil You Know wouldn't have gotten so close to victory without the live music aspect of it.

It’s not only the orchestration here, but also Sonia’s fun performance and her cute moves. The track is reminiscent of SAW, but it feels like being at a sock hop in a diner and dancing the night away. The backing vocalists do a good job too; I like how they harmonize the in the chorus .

That all being said, would've this made a better winner? It's hard to tell--it would've been more upbeat than most of the 1990s other winners, but In Your Eyes has aged quite well. And I have several other favorites, so I'm not the best one to comment on it.

Personal ranking: =6th/25 Actual ranking: 2nd/25 in Millstreet

#202: Serebro -- Song #1 (Russia 2007)

“Gotta tease you, nasty guy So take it, don't be shy Put your cherry on my cake And taste my cherry pie”

Unfortunately, song #1 neither placed on top of the 2007 class, nor was it the first song performed that year So, in more than one case, Song #1 is a misnomer.

Nor are they particularly unique amongst bands--Serebro has some similarities to tATu in 2003, in that they are a girl group with a sensual aesthetic. But while tATu's Eurovision entry is more dark, Serebro's has more attitude and edge.

Such saucy lyrics are what makes Song #1 such a total jam, albeit one the fandom overlooks. The dark production increases the attitude of this song, and I love the girls’ stage presence too! Especially those costumes (again, going back to the tATu comparisons, in that they were best known for their school uniforms, hehe); they never fail in adding some sexiness to the performance.

Personal ranking: 5th/42 Actual ranking: 3rd/24 GF in Helsinki

#201: Severina -- Moja stikla (Croatia 2006)

“Zvrc, zvrc, tražit ćeš moj broj, Kuc, kuc, kucaj nekoj drugoj, Jer još trava nije nikla, Tamo gdje je stala moja štikla!”

"Ring, ring, you'll search for my number, Knock, knock, go knocking somewhere else, For the grass has not yet sprouted, Where my high heel has stepped!”

There’s a lot of silly lyrics in Moja Stikla. From mentioning “sex” to “Afrika Paprika”, it’s easy to suggest that this is nonsensical. I’m reading over the lyrics again myself, and they tell quite a different story—of a woman who just wants men to stop hitting on her.

Even now, I'm still confused on how Zumba and African paprika make sense in avoiding men. Or high heels.

But it all doesn't matter when the music starts. Severina's backing vocalists add to the performances, with their solid harmonies and fun presence. Combined with Severina’s own high energy, it’s a good example of turbo folk (even though there was a bit of controversy about whether it actually sounds like Croatian music), and it’s all kinds of fun!

Personal ranking: 4th/37 Actual ranking: =12th/24 GF in Athens

[karlacri]

27. favourite national celebrity? 16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with?

oh, I didn't think they would ask me something so fast 😅 xDDD I don't know if this counts, but I think it's important to mention that although I live in Chile my parents are Peruvian, so the answers are probably mixed between the two countries xD

27) Favorite national celebrity: As I am not very aware of the entertainment world, I think that here the groups or people of whom I know 2-3 songs or something like that could enter  😅 and those would be:

*From Chile: The folkloric, Andean and Latin American rhythms groups 

Los Jaivas, canción Mira Niñita song Look little girl sub english   Todos Juntos song All together sub english Todos juntos full hd xd  Sube a nacer conmigo hermano sub english 

Inti Illimani, Samba Landó   I did not find a video with the lyrics, but I did find a web page that translated it (I hope it is ok)  Sirviñaco I did not find the lyrics in English, but in the comments it is in Spanish and it is about a young man proposing to a young woman that they marry Carnavalito de la Quebrada de Humahuaca (popular Argentine)

Illapu     Paloma Ausente  the lyrics are by Violeta Parra, but Illapu sings it xd  Lejos del Amor  Far away from love  Surviving /Sobreviviendo  lyrics in english  "Vuelvo para vivir" (I'm coming back to stay) (I feel that this song needs context xd from 1973-1990 in Chile there was a dictatorship where these groups were exiled due to political differences and when the dictatorship ended and they were able to return, Illapu wrote this song. The song Sobreviviendo I think was not written by someone from the group, but it was written during the dictatorship)

and Violeta Parra (who is famous for collecting and disseminating Chilean folk music and representing things like that in hers songs) Run Run se fue pal norte lyrics in english  La jardinera/ The gardener  lyrics english  Volver a los 17 Returning to seventeen sub english in youtube  Rin del angelito/ Rin of the little angel (rin is a musical genre from an island in southern Chile. In the song Angelito is a child who has died very young, Violeta wrote the song when her baby died and in this video there are scenes from that moment in a movie about her life. I say it in case someone is affected )

Thanks to life Gracias a la Vida  (is her most famous song and one of the last he wrote before her death)

As a curious fact, I can say that all of them were more or less contemporary during the time called New Chilean Song in the 60-70s that sought to recover folk music and was also combined with rhythms and instruments from other countries on the continent.

*From Peru: Group 5 which is a cumbia group, and I just discovered that it is practically the same age as my dad xd Motor y motivo/ my life’s mission song   Que levante la mano 

Yma Sumac who was a well-known soprano and has a star on the walk of fame. She was famous for her very high voice, she said that she had learned to sing like this by imitating birds singing as a child her duet with flute   Interview

Gastón Acurio who is a chef and promoter of Peruvian gastronomy, as far as I know he is one of the greatest ambassadors of Peruvian gastronomy (I don't always pay attention to everything his recipes say, but I do take some advice xD)

Juan Diego Flores: He is a light tenor that according to the internet is one of the best tenors on the current scene Ojos Azules / Valicha  

he singing the National Anthem 

  Juan Diego Flórez: What happens when an opera star goes onstage?

 Apart from them, I need to make an honorable mention to Los Kjarkas (Saya San Andrés  my favourite song xd saya is a bolivian dance), one of the most important groups in Andean music. The group is Bolivian, so technically I shouldn't mention them, but for me they are celebrities and they are the only group that I follow on facebook and of whom I have wanted to go to a concert xd

16) Stereotypes: I haven't seen this on my internet for so long that I probably mention outdated things, sorry From Chile: I remember there was a moment on Facebook where a couple of memes came out about how in Chile people were retarded and ate dogs. I do not know how widespread it was, I did not see much of it, but more than annoying me, it puzzled me because I did not know where that could have come from although a while ago I had a hypothesis about the matter of dogs. 🤔

meme on the matter and incidentally shows the myth that Peru eats pigeons

The best known among South Americans of all is that the accent and the way of speaking of Chileans is unintelligible to other Spanish speakers and that in Chile Spanish is spoken very badly xD Looking around, I saw that apparently so much is the case that in 2015 a Chilean linguist wrote a book about how Spanish was not badly spoken in Chile, it was only spoken differently xd According to me, the origin of this is that in Chile people tend to speak faster than everyone else, combined with the jargons that seem to be very different from those in other countries. I think I agree with this moderately, because there are people who speak quite fast, interrelated and / or it is difficult to understand the expressions they use, but it is not unintelligible as the meme says (in fact, I have a friend who speaks slowly, and even the Chileans themselves drew attention xd) and I can understand my teachers and classmates most of the time

meme about Spain laughing at France because most of their former territories don't speak their language, while the former territories of Spain learned their language ... or almost all of them xd And something I forgot to say, apparently it is quite distinctive that in Chile "asjkssjaskka" laughs while others laugh "jajaja" apparently xD

From Peru: I think the best known is still the one that Peruvians eat pigeons. As I read once years ago on Facebook (high scientific rigor xd 😅) the myth arose in Chile when in a certain place in the capital where many Peruvians came to live, the pigeons that had always been there began to disappear. From what I remember, sometimes the meme is shown as if the pigeon were the flag dish of Peru and that you cannot live without it, but it is a lie xd I know it is eaten, my mother at least ate pigeon with noodles and she told me that were raised to eat (and in fact he told me that it was possible that there really were people who had hunted in the plaza at some time 😅), and I also saw Gastón Acurio prepare pigeon ocopa (ocopa is like a cream and is eaten with rice, potato and lettuce). However, the case of Gastón Acurio was that he was preparing forgotten recipes from a 1950 cookbook, so I highly doubt that many people prepare it and it is definitely not very representative (there are much more widespread and famous dishes). About the noodles, it may be prepared, but it is much more common to see the chicken noodle.  Anyway, it does not seem very serious considering that there are other places where you eat or ate pigeon cake xd    

It is also that Peru claims everything as its own, but it is more because of a fight it has with Chile over whether the pisco sour (a drink with lemon) is Peruvian or Chilean and something similar happens with ceviche. Anyway it is exaggerated and I think that most people on both sides do not really care about the matter xD

Peru meme claiming things like yours

Chile and Peru fight for pisco sour. "wn" can mean from friend to idiot depending on the context and is one the best know chilean slang xd

Anyway, it is a meme that is almost always taken with humor (or at least I do) xd  😅  

I guess that's it, I'm sorry I literally answered you almost a month later and I'm also very sorry for how long the answer is, at first it was hard for me to write something and suddenly I ended up with this xd 😅

[imaginethebeautifulworld]

i would kill for some fail bros headcanons

[Hey, Anon! I'm kind of passionate about these three, so I'm giving you a heads up that this one is kind of long. Hope you enjoy~]

From a “nation” standpoint, England is the eldest of the three. He recognized his spark of sovereignty when King Ecgberht ascended to the throne of Wessex in 802, who would later go on to claim Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Essex as part of his kingdom; Ecgberht is often regarded as the “first king of England.”

For Denmark, his sovereignty came with the crowning of King Harald Bluetooth around 950, who completed the goal of unifying the region into a single state. Before that point, Denmark existed more or less as a smattering of small communities led predominantly by local chieftains.

Prussia didn’t fully recognize his sovereignty or nationhood until around 997, when the Aesti- Old Prussians- slayed  Adalbert of Prague, a missionary who had been sent by Polans to try to convert the “heathens” to Christianity. It was only one of many attempts to conquer the Prussians, but with Adalbert earning a martyrdom, and such a blatant show of sedulous autonomy, the first spark of nationalism truly ignited.

Not that much of this mattered in regards to their friendship though. 

Through the Saxons, Arthur and Gilbert had been friends since the 700s at least, and Arthur and Mathius had known each other for even longer, the Jutes having first made an appearance on the Isles around late 400, when Arthur was still part of Rome’s territories. Mati and Gil were practically next door neighbors; I wouldn’t be surprised if Germania had pretty much raised them together.

Despite a lot of shifting borders and conflicts of interest- like Denmark ruling England from 1013-1042, or how Denmark lost both Holstein and Scleswig to Prussia in 1864, and England and Prussia’s on-again, off-again alliance- they’ve remained fast, firm friends for centuries.

Truth be told, I think Mati was the one to get Artie so addicted to sailing, most likely dragging him on a few coastal raids back in the day.

Hamburg is one of their favorite meeting places. Initially, it was more convenient for Gil and Artie, as it was one of the central cities in the Hanseatic League, but the real draw came with the 1500s, when there were over 500 breweries for them to sample. These days, it’s more nostalgia that keeps drawing them back.

Actually, this is part of a tradition that still stands to date; with some rare exceptions (like this one tavern on Bornholm that’s been serving the same Brennivin recipe for the past 463 years), they rarely go to the same pub, distillery, or brewery twice. There are just so many of them.

These three try to meet up at least one weekend a month, if not more. Gil has it a lot easier working out his schedule these days, for obvious reasons, so normally he will crash with either Mati or Artie and the other will show up when they can.

Friday nights are usually their “drink nights,” and they’ll usually bicker for a good hour about which pub or club they want to try; all of these nerds had lists ready of venues they had looked up in advance. They also spend another hour or so bickering about which of them has the best beer.

When they’re together, they completely shrug off their more responsible images- Arthur in particular seems almost a 180 degree shift in personality. Around most nations, he tries to keep that prim and proper persona, but… Mathius and Gilbert are not most nations.

These three have crusaded to the Holy Lands together, harassed most of Northern Europe together, even spent a few precious months pretending to be humans and traveling the world together. They’ve sworn blood oaths under scarlet skies, literally sewn each other back together on occasion.

They really share most everything with one another- from matters of the heart to political problems to those dark desires they really can’t tell anyone else about- knowing that anything shared among them will never be discussed outside of their circle.

Usually, they don’t let themselves get drunk. But really- They don’t need alcohol to become total hooligans. Mathius is naturally high energy, and with Gilbert’s simmering competitiveness and Arthur’s pride keeping him from ever backing down from a challenge…

The shenanigans these three get up to can range from pranking Mati and Artie’s former colonies to strip karaoke to sometimes, quite literally, painting the town, and then some.

They have a few reprimands for breaking and entering, and perhaps there were one or two cases of arson, or a few protests that got a tad chaotic… 

Despite having more than enough beds for each of them, they usually end up falling asleep in a giant heap.

Arthur is loath to ever actually admit how safe he feels knowing the other two are there to watch his back, though Mathius is always very open about actually expressing the exact same sentiment.

Gilbert is usually the last one to drift off and always the first to wake up; he mastered some killer hangover remedies a few decades ago, and while he knows the others are perfectly capable of making breakfast without burning the house down, it’s his way of showing how much he cares.

Sometime after they’ve nursed the remnants of their hangovers, they usually go shopping for food together, all of them chipping in on a big dinner for that night.

Said shopping trips go about as well as you’d expect: Artie usually pretends he has no idea who Gil and Mati are as they piggyback through the aisles, Arthur and Mathius bicker constantly about the proper ways to eat eel (which always traumatizes Gilbert), and Prussia constantly is making bad puns with England about the different brand names, much to Denmark’s irritation because he can’t quite keep up. 

Just fucking getting to the store was a quest on its on; buying themselves actual food before getting kicked out is another challenge entirely.

They absolutely are down for cultural and music fests, theatre, boating, or even just reading together.

They totally do LARPing together, and try to attend either ConQuest or Drachenfest each summer.

There is often an attempt to play football when they have an hour or so to kill, though it typically ends up as a brawl with two of them (usually Mati and Gil) starting a giant game of keep away against the other (usually Artie). They’ve lost count of how many grass stains they gained in the process.

They’re each hella supportive of the others’ interests, and often you can find them laying on the grass or a roof somewhere having long-winded discussions about the arts, literature, science, philosophy, and on one particularly snowy night in 1989- what happens when they die. 

In fact, the only two people Gil ever really confides in about his fears are Artie and Mati. With Ludbug, he just can’t risk the thought of hurting him or burdening him, and with Fran and Toni, he’s scared they’ll- He can’t always handle how open those two are with their worry for him.

He knows that Mathius and Arthur won’t pity him, per say. Bleeding hearts the three of them, but they know when, and when not, to show it.

Arthur and Mathius made it their goal through the entirety of the 1990s to make sure Gilbert understood just how damn important he was to them, stealing him away as often as they could get away with, doing everything from a sailing trip around the Orkneys (and annoying Alisdair to no end) to camping in Scharbeutz for two weeks straight to trying (and horribly failing) to form a band around ‘94. 

The band didn’t work out mostly because they all have different music tastes- Artie fell deep into the punk scene and never climbed back out, Gil’s taste falls somewhere between heavy and folk rock, and Mati is very passionate about symphonic and alternative rock. Also, meeting up for practices as frequently as they needed was nigh on impossible. Still, sometimes they do get together just to jam for a bit.

Mati and Gil are the only two people actually allowed to call Arthur by “Iggy" and not get a black eye.

They love playing board games with each other, everything from Cards Against Humanity to Crazy Cat Lady to Risk. They tend to avoid the latter however as they all get rather… intense with their gameplay.

Really though, all they need is a deck of cards and they’ll easily get invested into a game of Slap Jack or Go Fish.

I am willing to bet they swapped parenting tips through the ages, each of them freaking out because "holy fuck I am not qualified for this!"

They have several dozen inside jokes at this point, the kind that if one says anything they all eventually will succumb to tears of laughter.

No one else really makes Arthur laugh as quickly as those two, no one else really sees Mathius as pensive and philosophical, and no one else really sees Gilbert completely letting his guard down.

With each other, they are, have been, and always will be Arthur, Mathius, and Gilbert.

They trust each other unconditionally, and know that, no matter the politics, they’ll always be there to support one another, no matter how silly the shenanigans or serious the situation may be.

[This was so long, omg. Thanks for the ask, Lovely!

If anyone is interested in any sources for further reading on their own, let me know! I got quite a lot of this from textbooks, articles, and encyclopedias ^_^; ]