#but i'm genuinely living for izzy rn

[long-suffering-little-spoon]

Very good day to be an Izzy Hands enjoyer

[hospitalterrorizer]

diary128

1/20-21/2024

saturday - sunday

i had a weird dream today.

but maybe i'll put that at the end or something, there's a bunch of other stuff i've been thinking about today, mostly all of it is dumb and pointless, but that's why i have a diary, i guess. but rn i am waiting for ableton to load so i can do some stuff to a song, the idea is to double the rhythm-carrying riff, and to make the one panned left a little more mid focused/less high end, but maybe just a touch of that. and then i'll make the vocals quieter, and they'll have to be re-recorded at some point, cuz i want to re-write some lyrics.

still waiting tho, so i'll talk about some positive stuff, good day for music i listened to:

this band is new to me, but really fun, at least 2 of their songs are good, other stuff seems way patchier but that's how a lot of myspace era stuff just seems to go. i also really like the cover art, such a perfect thing, the inexplicable tigers on everything, i need to put a tiger on my thing i think. also i'm #yearofthetiger (i think( cuz 1998)). obv super crystal castles sounding but they have a bit of another thing going on, the bass drum is super fucked sounding, and the track feels constructed differently.

their other good song, a lot more distinct from cc, i think. still really good, more chiptune-y.

liars are a classic band for me, cuz i listened to them a ton in highschool, but i've been meaning to come back to this record, just cuz it feels connected to the whitebelt thing i'm into/part of my past w/ that whole thing, even when i didn't know what ti was, they're definitely also not totally part of that but close enough, they're related/inspired i think. it's totally there in how they do the dance stuff w/ the noisy fucked up guitar playing, but they are way more gang of four than say, idk, arab on radar or six finger satellite, and those bands already love gang of four but they're doing some other weirdo shit. liars aren't straightforward but they are definitely more straight laced than either of those bands, at least in this point of their career. lyrically though, this album is really awesome, he's great at writing stuff that resembles nonsense but is approaching something larger.

i never expected to ever talk about new sematary in a positive way again, but this song is awesome, i keep hoping on some kind of comeback, he's been working on this song for a while it seems like, and you can tell, i really want him to be on some kind of upswing, and this song has everything i want from him, he's like writing something catchy, which is like what's he's really good at, he's got a great sense of melody, and he's even doing some good stuff lyrically i think, like not genius but there's poetry in wendigo/i don't know where to go, he's thinking harder about what he's doing. i hope this sticks around.

having a bit more of a moment w/ this song today, really freakish vocals but they're kinda hard, love how garish the video is too, these guys are masters of ugly vids though, fresh jame (exactly like that, the vocalist here) is so good w/ ugly stuff, he's a bit of a genius in that way, hope nation blows up more generally, i love that fucked up ep of theirs:

genuinely such strange music, they're the closest thing to var i've heard in a while, hypnagogic approaches to rave music kinda, like obviously not rave especially though, but they feel connected to it in some kinda way. var were def more post punk inflected, this has internet freak all over it, but in a way that's not commonly publicized, or maybe just older, they are probably james ferraro adherents in some way. god this ep is so good, the second song here is so beautiful, 'we don't have time to just forget'. i wonder if they play this stuff live, and how that sounds. i'd love to see if they do any shows out here. inexplicably, they were on tour w/ yves tumor, that whole thing around yves is probably this thing they're trying to break, izzy spears is touring w/ yves/was, i guess. that's probably over now. all these people hang out in some capacity, too. this ep feels so huge, no one seems to give a shit about it, but it seems like it has a touch of some kind of future in it. idk.

some pretty solid indie stuff, here, this guy is i think, cosmo potts, also known as frog power, kind of a songwriting genius, however the other half of this project is really good vocally, this is a rlly good story song, perfectly miserable and gothic, dirty in quotidian ways, 'time to take one for the team' is super haunting. i think the dude is definitely weird, not like, sexually, i think, but weird in that he made a song called 'i've been cancelled again,' but i think he's an artsy weirdo from new zealand who has done too many psychs and is into like mde or some shit. that's the kind of weird he is. ultimately people like that are putting work into writing some weird/interesting music about being online too much.

also i listened to some sundry powerviolence (ofc, i am an addict, it's like embedded in me), hardcore is fun to just throw on, random trax, some despise you, some other stuff, a band called peter mangalore, soon i need to listen to the first spazz record, but i did do all of these:

love this album's title, we should all be like it t b h....

here's the pic of the postcards, i def wanna see if i can use this for something in a collage or whatevs.

and then this is from the bellagio, the whole arboretum display thing they change up, this is here for chinese new year, the day we went, i saw them rescue a sick koi fish from the pond they had, it was hiding against the wall, really sad, especially seeing it thrash in the net, or even pre-net, how it always would return to the spot it had been before, just trying to fight off illness. i hope it is well, but maybe they'd just put it down in a situation like that. i don't trust casinos with animals i guess. but i hope it lived. i remember there used to be dolphins in the mirage. my grandma took me to see them, it made me really happy, las vegas felt so tropical that day, so many years ago.

re: my music, i did 2 traxxxxx today, both sound better than before, one i might wanna keep messing with but little bits, but it seems pretty solid i think. just listened to the one i'm most scared about, and it is closer to what i want, there's just this sound that i need to have a bit more presence/punch, idk how to get there though. it is really close and probably there, basically, it's just like, such a tiny thing, a little bit closer, just a bit over the edge, is the feeling, but my rule is i am not touching what i do/did w/ the distortion, under no circumstance, cuz that is a good sound. slowly i have been reducing the cut lows and i think that's giving me what i want, so maybe up by 2-3 db on the final eq in the chain in the lows. on the double tracked thing. that will probably do it.

kayyy, and nowwww:

fashion mag scans off that forum again cuz it's fun:

nylon japan:

this mag is super fun/of the time, like 07-09ish, is the region we're looking at. i love the first one a lot, the bangs are crazy and that floral dress is so cute. the last one is maybe one of my favs though, it's really cool and strange, i love the belt.

gisele japan:

this one is hilarious cuz it covers so many moods / moments in that time, like the middle 2 here are so american apparel coded in photography style it kind of hurts. but then the top 2 have the regular sort of distance i've noticed in jp fashion mags, and the bottom 2 are that retro throwback that was big at the time over there it seems. really all of this has that inside of it but they all treat it differently.

l'officiel singapore:

this one is genuinely weird to me, but i love it also, the outfits feel crazy, being like, inside right now, so gaudy in sick ways, that kinda thing ought to come back, especially that third thing that's like a freaky athleisure thing? idk. and then the armor look with the chain collar, i have a friend that would love that, i'll send it to her when she talks to me again.

harper's bazaar china:

idk why but everything i've seen from this mag had something athletic going on, likely cuz of the olympics being around that time, 07ish so they were getting hype up i think. anyways it's really cool and unique photography with these. i love how they stick the ornate stuff in these, treating it as thoughtfully as they treat the chanel sportswear stuff.

anyway brb gonna write something.

wrote for something i haven't worked on in a while.

anyway the crazy stuff from today:

one thing is that caffeine really is fucking twisted, for me, when i have too much i feel like the world really is ending, something terrible will happen, or something. the world feels dirty, everything can go wrong, i am just sitting here waiting to be put to death by nuclear weapons or something. everything feels yellow, kidney failure on everything, i can't filter out the world and i get small, ant sized. awful.

so i shouldn't ever have that panera lemonade ever again, but my gf's mom brings it, it's hard to tell her when something is not something i should get often, or at all.

the other thing is i watched that drama re: that mama max freak, which iss so weird and evil, i regret looking but i was too curious, like who is that fucker, why does he keep showing up in my recs. it turns out this pedo hunter youtube stuff is obviously evil and heavily fictionalized/ sensationalized to create as strong a reaction/reactionary worldview as possible. it's scary that this kind of content isn't being interrogated, because no one would ever say defending kids is evil, but you have to question what this level of exposure re: narratives of child abuse really does, other than make people paranoid and thirsty to keep hearing about it. honestly as someone who got jacked off to thru the internet over webcams as a child it's all pretty weird and ineffective/evil, i know kids are watching it now, like i watched tcap clips as a kid, it's really worrying, idk. there's almost too much to say about it. like it goads people into feeling good and like something is being prevented, but really it leaves one hopeful to hear more, everyone knows there's more abuse to learn about, or more abuse to simulate and then make someone guilty for. entrapment stuff even, those people are evil obviously and should not be on the streets but when it becomes entertainment idk, it's like it gives me the feeling that we're headed to a satanic panic 2 and it's not just going to be old people talking about it. it's so spectacular it stops anyone from seeing the rather dull reality, of how most people doing this stuff aren't all megafreaks who have crazy stories (so often this is queer people, who get to be talked about in these things, at least from certain accounts it seems like), but like, just men, just regular men, and as long as 'teen' is the most popular/most standard category of porn, this will not disappear, it's standardized/regular, so it can go on, so there will be more people like me.

the mamamax thing in particular made me think of wiseblood, just that he's trying to be clean, that he is evidently some kind of doomed man, working from a fucked moral framework, but he is less interesting than hazel motes. it just came to me cuz i am reading it now. that's how i am. that's how like everyone is.

anyway, a basically worthless thing to think abt, i said i'd write my dream here but i'm just tired now, so:

byebye!!!!!!!!!

[wilderat]

gimme ur top 5 fanfics rn

FUCK YES I LOVE GIVING MY OPINIONS

i don't think i could ever list a top 5 of all time so i'm just gonna scroll through my ao3 bookmarks and jot down 5 that i've read recently and really enjoyed (hence why there's so much ofmd lol). under a readmore because it got kinda long.

to have and to hold by FortinbrasFTW (our flag means death, rated t, unrequited izzy/ed, 6581 words)

one of my favorite pre-canon izzy fics ever. it's written with such a painful, aching tangibility of feeling that i genuinely had to step back at one point while reading to collect myself. fake marriage and there was only bed tropes but with NONE of the fluff and ALLLL of the awful, awful misery that you'd expect from izzy hands.

you can almost see st. augustine from here by shortcrust (our flag means death, rated t, stede/ed + izzy is there, 7188 words)

in contrast to the first fic, this one's like... actually kind of pleasant :) post-canon ed and stede living in blissful domesticity, and izzy showing up on their doorstep like an old feral cat who's begrudgingly decided to move indoors. terrific characterization all 'round and some really sweet/bittersweet moments.

i also HAVE to recommend i'd talk with the devil but i wouldn't know what to say by anirondack and nothing as painful as the truth by morian but i didn't want this entire post to only be izzy-centric fics lol i swear i read other things too. LIKE:

contact is crisis by brandyalexanders (succession, rated m, tom/greg, 33.7k words)

quite possibly my favorite succession fic to this day. been a bit since i've read it but it's SO good - basically an alternate season 3 with some truly gut-wrenching emotions - this addresses greg seemingly spending the night with andrew dodds at tom and shiv's wedding which is SOOOO. YEAH. terrific stuff.

Listen to Bands That Don't Even Exist Yet by wakeupnew (scott pilgrim, rated m, stephen stills/joseph, 10k words)

absolute fuckin' curve ball here but i adore this fic too much not to bring it up given the question of top fanfics. this fic is half the reason i always try to talk about stephen and joseph when my friends mention scott pilgrim even offhandedly, it's so wonderfully characterized and captures the comics' tone SO well. it really makes me feel for stephen as a (HIGHLY UNDERRATED) character and his (CRIMINALLY UNDERRATED) relationship with joseph. if the upcoming netflix animated adaptation doesn't give me these guys i will be causing problems.

old and new by the_author_anonymous (our flag means death, rated t, ed/stede + mary/doug + ensemble crew, 10.9k words)

bringing it back to pirates for the last one (technically like the seventh fic but whatever. my post my rules). post-canon mary and doug and the kids spending time with the crew of the revenge - this and the other fics in the series are just plain old good fun. feelgood, slice of life, amicable divorcees and pirate babysitters (a little violence in this one, actually but hey, what can you do). i've legitimately come back to these as a pick-me-up once or twice since first reading.