#did i totally completely hijack this post because i got too excited that someone shared the same sentiment?

[from-a-reckless-writer]

AAAAAAH YESSSS I NEED ALEX AND LENA TO BE SCHEMING IN SCIENCE LABS BECAUSE AS MUCH AS ALEX LOVES THE ADVENTURES SHE AND SUPERGIRL GET UP TO, SHE MISSES THE LAB TOO. SHE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW SHE MISSES BEING A SCIENTIST TILL LENA IS DRAGGING HER TO THE LAB. SHE'S NEVER REALIZED HOW MUCH SHE'S MISSED THE STARING AT WHITE BOARDS FOR HOURS, THE UNMISTAKABLE SMELL OF BURNING HAIR, THE FRUSTRATION WITH A PIPETTE AND GEL ELECTROPHORESIS AND HANGING WITH LENA? HANGING WITH LENA MEANS ALEX GETS TO GO BACK WHERE SHE STARTED, WHAT ONCE WAS HER HOME.

sometimes they spend hours together in the lab and they dont even speak. alex finds out that lena did the same thing she did when she was in college; stay inside the lab to impress her professors and then get shitfaced the next night to forget everything else. She learns that lena knows how to blend in with alex's work habits and they work together effortlessly. the only thing that alerts them that theyve been cooped up inside for so long is Kara barging in and whining about how she cant believe shes lost her sister and girlfren to science. and then Kara realizes wAit im smart as hell I CAN PROLLY HELP WITH ALL THE PHYSICS PLS LET ME SCIENCE WITH U. which of course just leads to kara willingly being their test subject for alien experiments and engineering kryptonian weaponry in between

There's not enough alex/lena brotps, seriously, they would be so good friends. They both like hot women, alcohol, science, and are Kara’s number 1 fans.

I agree!!! I think I have some alex and lena brotp one shots buried in my writing tag somewhere

[mayfriend-archive]

Totally understand if you're not up for it and fully recognize the ronald mcdonald dom/sub anon vibes which is an AMAZING post btw but like...now i'm curious, what the hell did Lord of the Flies anon DO that got him blocked for the discourse? like...i just can't wrap my head around high school lit being...uh...that inflammatory i guess?

Okay so, I'll start by saying I've had a new anon from apparently the same anon saying they are NOT the person I blocked, just a rando making the same points, but I'll answer your question anyway just to set out why this person in particular got blocked, out of the several thousand who reblogged/commented on that very successful addition to the LoTF post I made.

First off, I added the 'real life Lord of the Flies' story because I thought it was a good story. I had read about it only a couple days beforehand in Humankind and, after reading out the entire chapter to my parents who weren't very interested, I was excited that there was not only a post where it would be relevant to post, but that I wouldn't be hijacking it, as it was already rejecting the widespread interpretation taught in many schools, that humanity is inherently savage.

When making the addition, I a) did not think it would get more than a couple reblogs, because the post was already at 50k notes and I figured anyone that might be interested would already have seen it, and b) I did not know the very specific context that prompted William Golding to write the book; all I knew was that he had been a teacher at a public school (basically, the poshest schools in the country - think Eton, Harrow, very 'old money' places that pump out Conservative politicians by the bucket-load 🤢) who hated his job and the boys he taught (which, valid), and new information I'd been given in Humankind - that Golding had said to his wife one day, "Wouldn't it be a good idea to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave?" - which had no mention of The Coral Island by R. M. Ballantyne, which I have since learned was the text that Golding loathed enough to write an entire novel in refutation of - and included what I considered a very telling letter from Golding to his publisher, in which Golding wrote of his belief that 'even if we start with a clean slate, our nature compels us to make a muck of it.' Another Golding quote that I believe portrays his belief in humanity's 'innate savagery' is that "man produces evil as a bee produces honey."

Obviously, the author of a book putting forward the case for humanity's inherent goodness was going to oppose Golding's hypothesis; Bregman not only noted Golding's literary accomplishments and beliefs, but his personal life.

When I began delving into the author's life, I learned what an unhappy individual he'd been. An alcoholic. Prone to depression. A man who, as a teacher, once divided his pupils into gangs and encouraged them to attack each other. "I have always understood the Nazis," Golding confessed, "because I am of that sort by nature." (Humankind by Rutger Bregman, p. 24-25)

I have bolded the part about him as a teacher, because it is incredibly relevant to the original post that I commented on, which begins with a comic of a teacher locking her class in to see them 'recreate' Lord of the Flies, something which the follow up comments before mine staunchly reject as both misunderstanding the point of the book, and the fact that it took the kids in Lord of the Flies a significant amount of time without adult supervision to go 'savage'. This misreading of the text is widespread enough that when Golding won the Nobel Prize for Lord of the Flies, the Swedish Nobel committee wrote that his book 'illuminate[s] the human condition in the world of today'. Whether or not they misread it is beyond my expertise - they do at least mention the factors of the outside world neglected by many when analysing the book, but still seem to believe it says something about human nature as a whole rather than just, to quote thedarkbutbeige 'British kids being rat bastards' - but Golding quite happily took his Nobel prize on this basis. Which, in fairness, I would too. It's a fucking Nobel prize.

It was with this knowledge, and this knowledge alone, that I stated in my now very, very widely read comment that Golding 'wrote the book to be a dick', in response to the tags of the person I reblogged from. As I said, I now know that Golding did not write the book (solely) because he hated the kids he taught, but as a response to The Coral Island and the general idea that clearly the British were inherently civilsed, whilst the people they colonised and enslaved were inherently savage. So. That's the background.

The anon - or rather, the person I thought was anon - was the sole exception out of dozens of replies, who instead of telling me about The Coral Island politely decided it was time to go ALL CAPS and regurgitate points already made by thespaceshipoftheseus, and implied that the only reason that the real life Tongan castaways didn't go all Lord of the Flies was because they weren't British. Not because they weren't surrounded by violence like the boys in Lord of the Flies, or there wasn't a World War ongoing, or that they weren't the upper, upper, upper crust of a class-obsessed society like Britain - but because they weren't British. A complete inversion of the concept that Golding was trying to get across - now, instead of all of humanity being equally prone to savagery in the right conditions, it was solely nationality that determined it. As in, the British were inherently savage, but nobody else was.

I, trying for humour, made the terrible mistake of replying to them.

I won't lie, I was absolutely blown away that this was real life. What I think they were trying to do was be that Cool Tumblr Person who, after somebody's been shitty on a post, goes to their blog and sees something Damning in their about/description. In an ideal world, I imagine I'd have gone nuts or done something Unforgiveable. In what I can only call the rant that followed, they stated several times that I needed to go back to high school to get some 'proper literary analysis' skills and that the story of the Tongan castaways was completely unrelated to the point at hand which. I mean, I disagree, considering that I made the addition, but I couldn't get my head around how commenting on a post that was already rejecting the thesis that the 'point' of Lord of the Flies was that humanity was inherently savage and was, in fact, about how kids - British or otherwise - learn how to function from the adults around them, and that traumatised, terrified children aren't going to create a mini-Utopia, and put forward a real life example of how without the key additions of an ongoing world war, a colonial Empire and the subsequent mindset of thinking you are 'inherently civilised' and therefore can't do anything wrong, actually, people just want to take care of each other.

A friend has since asked me why I even have 'england' in my description. To be honest, it's a timezone thing - I talk to a lot of people online who don't share my timezone, and it generally makes me feel like if I don't reply immediately because it's 3am, they have the tools to see that I'm not in their timezone and not just ignoring them. I did consider changing it to 'british' or 'uk' after it was... 'used against me', I guess, simply because I didn't want to deal with it, but you know what. No. Not gonna do that. I am from England, and I have never hid that fact. I have a tag called 'uk politics', during Eurovision I refer to the UK's act as 'us' (even if I really, really don't want to. Because James Newman slaughtered that song and it was downright embarrassing), I regularly post stuff in my personal tag about where I live (and mostly complain about this piece of shit government). If people really think my nationality makes every point I make null and void, then they don't have to follow me or interact with my posts; tumblr is big, and I am one medium-small blog very easily passed over.

I did reply to them, trying to explain the above, but their next response really just doubled down. Because I used the word British instead of English - foolishly because the posts above mine focused on Britishness, and also because although Golding was English and taught English kids, the pro-Imperialism author of The Coral Island, R. M. Bannatyne was actually Scottish so, ding ding ding, falls into the 'British' category - they then decided that I was somehow trying to pretend I wasn't English and made all the same points, before ending with this doozy:

At this point, I knew there was nothing to be gained from replying, because if we're whipping out conditions like they're pokemon cards then there's no actual conversation anymore, and I'm not going to start mudslinging like an identity politician. They made up their mind, and I figured there could be no harm in letting them think that they 'won' by blocking them instead of replying.

Until the ask. INNATE ENGLISH SAVAGERY did, I'll admit, make me think it was them, back again. I even thought up a really good response approximately 12 hours after I replied, I was that sure. Until the second message came in, and said they were just someone who came from the post and made the same point by chance. So the saga draws to a close... for now.

It may have been them, it may not have been - the anon feature makes it impossible to be sure, but as the second message I got said, we're in a heatwave. It's too hot to argue. And I've just written a goddamn essay about a book I dislike anyway.

My pasty English ass is going to go melt. If there's Disk Horse, do not tell me. I am Done™

[againstallelse]

The Confessionals of John H. Watson: First Draft

Hello all. Now that the month from hell is being pushed behind me (Don’t ask), I’m back to writing and I bring you The Confessionals of John H. Watson. Written by John after The Reichenbach Fall, it focuses on the question that everyone has asked in one way or another. What is John Watson’s relationship to Sherlock Holmes?

This is a first draft that I do plan on continuing. I’d love any feedback anyone has. A beta reader (or a collection of them) would be very appreciated.

Why I’ve chosen to write this now I’m not entirely sure. It feels far too little, far too late. Just like everything else seems to always be.

This will never even see the light of day. Maybe someday, long after I’m dead, someone will research into the great Sherlock Holmes’ legacy and find it. But my expectations are low. Even though it’s what everyone always wanted to read. The blog post everyone was practically begging for.

I have received one question above all others over the course of the past few years of my life. It’s one I’ve avoided addressing because in all honesty, I still do not have a simple answer.

“What is your relationship to Sherlock Holmes?”

And in a sum of words, I genuinely don’t know.

I have never had a real answer to this question. I got it from the very first day I met Sherlock, seemingly from everywhere. At that point, there was no suitable answer. A stranger? A new friend? An interest? I didn’t know. And I was too afraid to ask him what I was to him.

To me, he was like a light in the darkness. Everything had felt so dull, so painful, so dark. I was entirely alone in the world. I trudged forward every day because I wasn’t sure what else I could do. But then he came. He was enematic. Charismatic. Bright.

He lit up my entire life all at once, thrusting me into a whole new world where I finally felt like I belonged.

He was strange and finicky. A total prat. Early on, I couldn’t tell if he cared if I lived or died. I couldn’t tell if I cared if I lived or died. As long as I didn’t have to return to the darkness, I didn’t care. I felt so empty for so long. I did everything I could to keep things steady between us. Stable.

I couldn’t jeopardize losing the only good thing in my life.

I had known I had an interest in Sherlock from day one. I would have rather ended it all then admit it to a soul. But I knew it was quite obvious to anyone who bothered to throw us a second glance.

However, I didn’t realize how bad I had it for Sherlock until we had been living together for a while. I knew he was gorgeous. I knew that my heart beat faster when he was close enough to touch.

One morning I came downstairs to find him shirtless in our kitchen and found he had made tea for us both, I was overcome with something unfamiliar. I sat beside him as he read and drank his tea, ignoring me for more interesting things.

I stared at him. I studied the curves of his face. His bare chest. His lips as they curled around the edge of his mug. The most dangerous realization settled in my heart.

I wanted to be here, with him, forever. I wanted to be with Sherlock for the rest of my life. I couldn’t imagine spending my mornings with anyone else. I wanted to wake up beside him in the morning and have him be the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes.

I choked a bit and laughed it off, trying to seem casual. His eyes peered up from his book to look at me and I shook my head. He crooked his brows and before going back to his reading.

I got more serious with Sarah, my girlfriend, after that incident. I wasn’t sure what Sherlock’s sexual preference was, but I was fairly certain that it didn’t include me. Or possibly any human being. Which didn’t phase me that much.

Did I want to be sexually involved with Sherlock Holmes? Admittedly, yes. I did. He was on my mind far more often then he should have been, in scenarios he shouldn’t have been involved in. Especially when I was shagging my girlfriend.

But I didn’t mind it if Sherlock never had an interest in me. As long as I got to stay by his side for the rest of my life. That was always the priority. Anything that might scare him away had to be kept at a minimum. So I was careful about staring at him. I avoided touching him in any way at all. I knew he’d see through me and connect the dots if I indulged myself too much, so I was careful.

I still think he might have known.

Sarah figured it out. We went on a trip together, alone, since she kept asking. The whole time I was checking my phone, calling and checking in on Sherlock, talking about him nonstop. One night on our trip she found me up late, scrolling through Sherlock’s boring blog.

She asked, “Do you really love me?”

I put my computer down. She caught me off guard. “Why are you asking that?”

“Because… you don’t look at me the same way you look at Sherlock. I’m not blind John. You could be enjoying your holiday in bed with me. But you’re not. You’re thinking about him.”

Her words burned into my brain. She was right. My god, she was right. She was so kind, letting me keep my privacy. We parted amicably when the trip was over and she wished me the best of luck with Sherlock. She never told a soul, even though the papers would have paid her enough to retire a year down the line if she had.

Why couldn’t I have just loved her?

My life continued with Sherlock. Our cases were interesting, he was vibrant. He had his days, but overall we were very happy those months. That summer was likely the happiest of my life, traveling around with Sherlock, chasing after criminals in the warm summer evenings.

Sometimes I wonder if he had any concept of how romantic that summer was. Sometimes I wonder if it was the best summer of his life too.

Then she came.

The woman.

Everything changed when she came into our lives. She excited Sherlock. In ways I didn’t. Mentally. And seemingly physically, I think. It was such a shock to see Sherlock attracted to anyone in any way. Especially a woman.

It frustrated me. It hurt. After everything we went through, it seemed momentarily like she would come between us and break us apart. It was a whirlwind, one day it was he and I against the world. The next he was composing music for her.

I ran through three girlfriends in three months, trying to distract myself. Trying to distance myself from Sherlock, steal my heart so when I lost him to a dangerous dominatrix it wouldn’t hurt so badly. It didn’t work even remotely. All three of them saw right through me in record time.

When Irene pretended to die, some part of my selfish self was relieved. Maybe things could return to normal. But Sherlock’s reaction… he was totally devastated. It was heartbreaking to watch. He was quiet, reclusive even. His mourning wasn’t loud and external like most people. It probably would have been invisible to most people.

But I wasn’t most people. I was his blogger, his roommate, his best friend. His family. And I saw the way his shoulders hunched and how sad his eyes were in the reflection of the window glass.

When she returned, expecting my help, I had wanted to throw her out the window. She hurt the man who my world revolved around and wanted my help? But then she saw right through me. No matter how I denied that I wasn’t gay, she saw me.

She could see me. She could see my real feelings, probably better than anyone else ever did. I felt raw. Naked. Exposed.

Even once she was really dead, Sherlock and I never truly went back to normal. He looked at me differently. I never identified the look in his eyes our final year together. Sadness? Fear? Pity? He hid his emotions well, very well. But I could still see that hint of something there that felt cold. And it broke me.

I felt like he knew. Maybe she had told him my true feelings. Maybe he pitied me? Maybe he couldn’t see me the same, knowing I had feelings for him? Maybe he was afraid that I couldn’t truly be his friend without my feelings getting in the way?

I’ve driven myself insane with the maybes. I’ve gone over it again and again. It still keeps me up at night. What did those looks mean? I will never know, now.

When everything happened with Moriarty, it shook me to my core. Not the cases, not the insanity of the man who was chasing Sherlock, but how hard Sherlock pushed me to believe he was a liar in the end. I could not, would not ever believe that. I still do not believe that.

Sherlock was magnificent. He was brilliant. And beautiful. He came into my life and hijacked it entirely and it was the best thing to ever happen to me. None of my past experiences nor my future ones will ever compare to the part of my life I shared with him.

I could never have written this down with him still alive. If I had ever acknowledged this much, even to myself in private, he would have known and it would have broken us. But now he’s gone. And I’m left with this.

If I ever had a soulmate on this earth, it was him. I knew on some level from the night we met. More than how alluring he was both mentally and physically, something drew me to him. Something I doubt I will ever feel with another human being. With him, I felt complete in a way I never had before.

And never will again.

God, I can’t continue writing this. What’s my relationship to Sherlock Holmes? I don’t know what I was to him. But he was my soulmate. And now he’s dead.

[thatsjustsupergirl]

Hey I know this is random but I just read ur original (?) post on SG fanfic stats that mentions a complete hiatus of karolsen fic writing over the summer, and I haven't read much (any) karolsen fic but maybe its bc they got together at s1's end so fic writers were like 'welp our job is done here' and just chilled bc they assumed their ship was safe and going to take center stage next season? (1)

You’ve probably come to ur own better conclusions about this but I know I read romantic fic mostly for the build-up, especially if the ship isn’t Canon (or Canon yet). So I thought I’d toss in my two cents. Have a lovely day/night!

Hah, so that post was funny, because about halfway through its circulation it got hijacked by the supercat/kalex end of the femslash fandom and someone spent “the lady doth protest too much” amounts of time demonstrating their lack of reading comprehension skills and calling me names when all I was trying to do was a) even locate hetship fans within the sea of femslash ones; and b) understand why they did or did not lose interest in the show’s main ship.

The most interesting thing about the complainer who insisted I was a lesbophobe and also mean for suggesting lack of interest in Karolsen was due to racism is that I’ve made multiple posts since then specifically addressing issues of race and fan engagement just within the femslash community – and that entire subset of the fandom has been silent on the issue, even though they claimed to care before … but only because the general lack of WOC in the cast made it really easy to hide the bias within the femslash end of the fandom.

S2, for all its disaster flaws, has been quite helpful in teasing out what was motivating the concerns from Karolsen fans last year when it came to racism. On the surface, the complaints about people not liking the ship puzzled me at first, because that seemed to contradict what was going on with fic writers & readers on AO3: Karolsen was the most popular het ship during S1, with Alex/J’onn in distant second place, and all the white-dude ships lagging behind them by a large margin. (I exclude S1 Kara/Barry because it was propped up almost entirely by Flash fans; Supergirl fans largely have not crossed over to the rest of the CWDCU shows.)

S2 has done me the favor of revealing a really important reason why Karolsen seemed to be doing relatively okay in S1: the lack of prominent white dude characters in S1 meant that a lot of hetship fans opted out of fandom and/or watching the show altogether.

Basically, when racists choose not to participate it has the side effect of making it seem like there’s less racism, because the hetship fans left over are not human garbage. Except then the total proportion of hetship fans is way lower than we should reasonably expect it to be, given an endgame het ship supported by the show. The same was also true with regard to m/m slash: when there was only one white guy in the main Supergirl cast there was almost no slash at all, and it was evenly split between interracial and white-only pairings. And then we get to S2, where there’s now more Mon-El/Winn than all the other slash ships put together.

Also, you’re right about Karolsen in one sense: ships that are canon normally do not excite creativity in the same ways as non-canon ones, because a big part of the draw in fandom is the ability to imagine possibilities that won’t appear in the canon text. That said, I’ve also seen a bit of a qualitative difference in the reasons why femslash fans pick and choose canon vs. noncanon when compared against hetship fans. (Namely: there’s a lot more anxiety about what kind of mistreatment canon queer women might suffer onscreen.) Regardless, canon ships can and do sometimes account for a large share of a fandom’s creative work, even in big fandoms – you’ll see this with Harry Potter, Glee, or the Pirates of the Caribbean series, for example.

What I still haven’t managed to establish re: Karolsen is a solid set of reasons why fans of the ship went so quiet over the summer, because everyone I knew who shipped it bailed near the end of S1. I do have some hypotheses based on my experience and observation across multiple fandoms, but at the moment that’s just speculation so I’m not going to toss it out there just yet.

[discovermtc-blog]

A Ball fit for Teens

Governor’s Ball Post If you asked me who my favorite artist was last month, and then asked me again today, the answers would have been the same...I don’t know. This isn’t because I don’t listen to enough music or because I am one of those people who never listens to a whole album or even worse, someone who only listens to the music that’s on the radio, no it’s quite the opposite actually. Like music defines eras on a global scale music also defines “eras” of my life. Different artists mean different things to me and different songs are reminders of different feelings and moments that I have experienced. Music has been ingrained in me ever since I could hear and I have been dragged to concerts ever since I could withstand the volume. I am a dead head by default due to my father’s mantra: “my car, my music”. The point is, I knew I loved music and I knew that it was a big part of me but I didn’t know how much I could love it until the Governor’s Ball music festival. The festival was from June 2nd to June 4th on Randall’s Island NYC. For many students of Montclair High School, Governor’s Ball, Gov Ball for short, is a tradition. Thousands of people attend Gov Ball every year and yet it is almost guaranteed that at some point over the three days you will see someone that went or goes to Montclair High School. This year was my first year, and I had no idea what to expect. I was a little nervous, we talked before about my feelings towards lines and waiting for long periods of time but at festivals if you want a good view of the stage then waiting is imperative. At the end of the first day I could barely walk. We tried to see every band that we could with only an hour break total, and for half of that time we were waiting around for food, a huge mistake. This is where I learned my first lesson, prioritization. It’s important.  I, the same as my friends, spent many hours surveying shops, racing around the mall, looking for three perfect outfits to wear for this festival. My motto is always: “you never know who you are going to meet”. For the days leading up to gov ball I was pretty self conscious about what I was going to wear. I had never been to a festival before, I had no idea what people wore, or what I should wear. I wanted to stand out, but I didn’t even know where to start. What I found was that once you got to the island, there are so many people walking around that they all start to blur into a sea of laughter and fearless dance moves. It was about being carefree, it was about the music and the way that it brought people together. The second day was so much better than the first. For one, it was slightly cooler than it was the day before which made all the standing and waiting slightly more bearable than it was before. We also got there a little earlier and were able to avoid the long wait to get into the festival. During the second day we also took a much longer break than we did friday, it was about two hours long, I slept for most of it and regenerated for the long wait that I had ahead of me. There was really only one artist that I absolutely had to see at gov ball and her name was Banks. I had her record on vinyl and it’s my go to record when I am painting. It is emotional and sensual and perfect for getting lost. I was so excited to see her. I left the meadow about an hour before her performance in order to get a halfway decent view. The rest of my group, with the exception of the infamous Liz, who on this trip, was still our co-pilot, went to get food instead of staying the whole hour. Liz stayed with me for reasons that I still do not know for she wasn’t a Banks fan. But no matter the reason, I am completely grateful for her company, the concert was even better with someone to share it with. After the Banks concert liz and I headed for the food. It was around 9:15 and everyone was waiting for Childish Gambino to play so there were no concession lines. Exhausted from the long wait to see Banks, we decided to find a grassy area to sit and to watch Childish do his thing. We were enjoying the music and sharing an absurd amount of laughs when an abrupt flash of movement caught my eye. Over to my right was a couple, probably ten years older than my parents, who were completely wasted and completely in love.  They were dancing like they were the only ones on the whole entire island. It wasn’t a sweet kind of dancing, it was the embarrassing, goofy, way too sexual kind of dancing that would make any teenager blush.  Liz and I looked at each other with the same expression equally filled with admiration as disgust. This day for me was the best one, not simply because of the music, although it is something that I won’t forget, but because of the love that I felt that day. I felt like I was a part of something bigger, it was a place where people were free to dance crazy and to fall in love. STEPHANIE

The Governor’s Ball is a music festival on Randall’s Island in New York City that has increased in popularity since it began in 2011. Although it is not a hidden gem of New Jersey, it is so popular among our peers that we were inspired to write about it. The Governor’s Ball (or “Gov Ball” as many call it) is three days of constant concerts ranging from big names like Chance the Rapper and Wu Tang Clan to unknown treasures like Jack Martini and Charles Bradley & the Extraordinaires. I had gone to the festival last year for one day, but this year I was finally ready to take on the full 3-day experience. Sophie and I were joined by 6 of our friends on this journey to juggle, concerts, meals, and transportation. We were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to hijack our friend Leela’s grandparents’ apartment 1 block from the ferry terminal. This allowed for an unusually seamless transition from ferry to bed. Many Montclair teens take the late night bus or train home when the concerts end, only to return early the next morning. This is an exhausting experience that I was happy to refrain from, but it doesn’t deter many of my classmates from making the trek.

When I stepped on the ferry to Day 1 of the festival, I was struck by the homogeneous nature of my fellow festival-goers. Almost everybody was between the ages of 15 and 25. Boys wore some sort of sports jersey or college paraphernalia while girls wore a creative variation on undergarments as clothes, addition of glitter optional.

After a long wait at the entrance and a very thorough pat down, I walked into the festival. The island was already teeming with teenagers buying lunch and taking a picture before indulging. We had scoped out the lineup before the festival, and there were many unfamiliar names. For me, those names are one of the things that set festivals apart from normal concerts. It gives people the opportunity to discover new bands, especially while strolling the grounds at the beginning of the day, as the festival saves the headliners for the nighttime. An artist I was surprised and impressed by was Dua Lipa, a rising Albanian pop artist who I was able to see up close due to the fact that I was one of the few people there for her 1:30 pm set.

The front row at a venue that attracts 50,000 concert-goers is not always as easy to achieve. Many people sit at the same stage all day just to see their favorite night performer up close. Sophie and I were slightly less intense fans wehn on Sunday we waited for hours in order to be in the front for two of my favorite artists, Franz Ferdinand and Logic. As much as this seems crazy, I cannot stress enough how worth it the 3 hours of waiting were. For artists that you know and love, “camping out” is worth it, but I had an equally good time sitting on the lawn with my friends while an unfamiliar, yet pleasant, tune found its way to my ears.

Gov Ball is a juxtaposition of many different experiences. You can go from purchasing a food item that is almost too pleasing to the eye to eat (thing every featured item on a food blog in one place) to standing in the middle of a mosh pit, to playing a round of mini gold in a matter of a couple of hours. As much as I take digs at the clothes people are wearing and their picture-taking habits, the music festival is a part of the millennial experience that I wholeheartedly partake because I believe it represents a balance that our generation often struggles with. Many parts of life are categorized and people are forced to make a choice, sacrificing one thing to experience or achieve another. Although there are elements of this sacrifice at music festivals, they give people the unique opportunity to have many experiences in one event. That is what is so enticing to me and many of my peers because at a festival you can really have it all.

SOPHIE

 If you asked me who my favorite artist was last month, and then asked me again today, the answers would have been the same...I don’t know. This isn’t because I don’t listen to enough music or because I am one of those people who never listens to a whole album or even worse, someone who only listens to the music that’s on the radio, no it’s quite the opposite actually. Like music defines eras on a global scale music also defines “eras” of my life. Different artists mean different things to me and different songs are reminders of different feelings and moments that I have experienced. Music has been ingrained in me ever since I could hear and I have been dragged to concerts ever since I could withstand the volume. I am a dead head by default due to my father’s mantra: “my car, my music”. The point is, I knew I loved music and I knew that it was a big part of me but I didn’t know how much I could love it until the Governor’s Ball music festival.

The festival was from June 2nd to June 4th on Randall’s Island NYC. For many students of Montclair High School, Governor’s Ball, Gov Ball for short, is a tradition. Thousands of people attend Gov Ball every year and yet it is almost guaranteed that at some point over the three days you will see someone that went or goes to Montclair High School. This year was my first year, and I had no idea what to expect. I was a little nervous, we talked before about my feelings towards lines and waiting for long periods of time but at festivals if you want a good view of the stage then waiting is imperative. At the end of the first day I could barely walk. We tried to see every band that we could with only an hour break total, and for half of that time we were waiting around for food, a huge mistake. This is where I learned my first lesson, prioritization. It’s important.

I, the same as my friends, spent many hours surveying shops, racing around the mall, looking for three perfect outfits to wear for this festival. My motto is always: “you never know who you are going to meet”. For the days leading up to gov ball I was pretty self conscious about what I was going to wear. I had never been to a festival before, I had no idea what people wore, or what I should wear. I wanted to stand out, but I didn’t even know where to start. What I found was that once you got to the island, there are so many people walking around that they all start to blur into a sea of laughter and fearless dance moves. It was about being carefree, it was about the music and the way that it brought people together.

The second day was so much better than the first. For one, it was slightly cooler than it was the day before which made all the standing and waiting slightly more bearable than it was before. We also got there a little earlier and were able to avoid the long wait to get into the festival. During the second day we also took a much longer break than we did friday, it was about two hours long, I slept for most of it and regenerated for the long wait that I had ahead of me. There was really only one artist that I absolutely had to see at gov ball and her name was Banks. I had her record on vinyl and it’s my go to record when I am painting. It is emotional and sensual and perfect for getting lost. I was so excited to see her. I left the meadow about an hour before her performance in order to get a halfway decent view. The rest of my group, with the exception of the infamous Liz, who on this trip, was still our co-pilot, went to get food instead of staying the whole hour. Liz stayed with me for reasons that I still do not know for she wasn’t a Banks fan. But no matter the reason, I am completely grateful for her company, the concert was even better with someone to share it with. After the Banks concert liz and I headed for the food. It was around 9:15 and everyone was waiting for Childish Gambino to play so there were no concession lines. Exhausted from the long wait to see Banks, we decided to find a grassy area to sit and to watch Childish do his thing. We were enjoying the music and sharing an absurd amount of laughs when an abrupt flash of movement caught my eye. Over to my right was a couple, probably ten years older than my parents, who were completely wasted and completely in love.  They were dancing like they were the only ones on the whole entire island. It wasn’t a sweet kind of dancing, it was the embarrassing, goofy, way too sexual kind of dancing that would make any teenager blush.  Liz and I looked at each other with the same expression equally filled with admiration as disgust. This day for me was the best one, not simply because of the music, although it is something that I won’t forget, but because of the love that I felt that day. I felt like I was a part of something bigger, it was a place where people were free to dance crazy and to fall in love all over again.