#ep 16 my green heaven

[18catsreading]

Riz: got it. We don't have to talk about sex anymore, dad.

Pok: if you have any questions --

Riz: I actively don't want to talk about it.

Pok: the last time I was able to talk to you, you were nine years old. You've grown up a lot, kiddo. I really miss you.

Riz: I missed you too, dad.

Pok: this is ok to talk, for a father and a son. I missed all of puberty, maybe not all, but I missed a lot of it.

Riz: yea, I don't know, I just don't. It just isn't happenin' yet. Like not even just the act is not happening yet. Like me wanting to do it ... Is not happening yet. And my friends are all like super horny.

Pok: yea, that checks out. Well, kiddo, if it never happens that's also okay. There's a lot to life to enjoy, and I already know that you matter a lot to your friends and a lot to your family so if you never end up having those desires, that's completely okay bud.

Ally: ah, you're killing me in this episode

Pok: but if you, it's also okay if it doesn't happen for years, you know? That's also fine. You're your own person, it's gonna happen on your own time or not, and either way is a-okay bud. I won't lie, I know that me and your mom would love to see some grandkids, but that has nothing to do with procreation. That can happen a lot of other ways. Would love to have that Gukgak name continue. Gotta have another little young one scrambling around for blocks under the sofa.

[numetaljackdog]

Top 100 favorite albums as of March 2023 (full list under cut)

1. Radiohead - Amnesiac

2. Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory (Bonus Edition)

3. Rina Sawayama - Sawayama (Deluxe Edition)

4. Black Dresses - Forget Your Own Face

5. 100 gecs - 10000 gecs

6. Laura Les - i just dont wanna name it anything with "beach" in the title

7. 100 gecs - 1000 gecs

8. Bring Me the Horizon - Sempiternal (Deluxe Edition)

9. Linkin Park - Meteora

10. Linkin Park - A Thousand Suns

11. System of a Down - Toxicity

12. Radiohead - Kid A

13. Toby Fox - UNDERTALE Soundtrack

14. Linkin Park - Reanimation

15. My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade / Living with Ghosts (The 10th Anniversary Edition)

16. Radiohead - OK Computer

17. Against Me! - Transgender Dysphoria Blues

18. Linkin Park - Minutes to Midnight (Deluxe Version)

19. 100 gecs - 100 gecs

20. My Chemical Romance - Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge

21. Laura Les - hello kitty skates to the fuckin CEMETARY

22. Torres - Silver Tongue

23. Left At London - t.i.a.p.f.y.h.

24. Nirvana - Nevermind (Deluxe Edition)

25. food house, Gupi & Fraxiom - Food House

26. Chevelle - Wonder What's Next (Expanded Edition)

27. Tallah - Matriphagy

28. Breaking Benjamin - Dear Agony

29. Motionless in White - Creatures (Deluxe Edition)

30. Limp Bizkit - Significant Other (Explicit Version)

31. Limp Bizkit - Three Dollar Bill, Y'all $

32. Ada Rook - UGLY DEATH NO REDEMPTION ANGEL CURSE I LOVE YOU

33. Laura Jane Grace - Stay Alive

34. Jethro Tull - Aqualung

35. Fontaines D.C. - Skinty Fia

36. BACKxWASH - HIS HAPPINESS SHALL COME FIRST EVEN THOUGH WE ARE SUFFERING

37. Bayside - Interrobang

38. Black Dresses - Forever In Your Heart

39. Three Days Grace - One-X

40. Sophie - Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides

41. 100 gecs - Snake Eyes

42. Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory EP

43. Kittie - Spit

44. BACKxWASH - I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES

45. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here

46. Toby Fox - Deltarune Chapter 2 (Original Game Soundtrack)

47. Chongo - Mad Rat Monday

48. Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral

49. Motionless in White - Infamous (Deluxe Edition)

50. Indigo Girls - Indigo Girls (Expanded Edition)

51. Talking Heads - Remain In Light (Deluxe Version)

52. My Chemical Romance - I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love

53. Spineshank - The Height of Callousness [Special Edition]

54. The Used - The Used

55. Linkin Park - Live in Texas

56. Baroness - Yellow & Green

57. Death Grips - The Money Store

58. Nirvana - In Utero - 20th Anniversary Remaster

59. Hozier - Wasteland, Baby!

60. Radiohead - In Rainbows

61. Bring Me the Horizon - There Is a Hell, Believe Me I've Seen It. There Is a Heaven, Let's Keep It a Secret

62. Three Days Grace - Human

63. Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly

64. Limp Bizkit - The Unquestionable Truth (Pt. 1)

65. Kate Bush - Hounds of Love (2018 Remaster)

66. Bring Me the Horizon - POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR

67. Bring Me the Horizon - That's The Spirit

68. Go! Child - Coffee And Ramen

69. Limp Bizkit - Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water

70. We Are The Union - Ordinary Life

71. Chevelle - This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In)

72. Evanescence - Fallen

73. The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds

74. Jamie Paige - Bittersweet

75. Hayley Williams - Petals For Armor

76. Nirvana - Bleach

77. For the Likes of You - Withered

78. Bring Me the Horizon - Suicide Season Cut Up!

79. Lena Raine - Celeste (Original Soundtrack)

80. Holy Grail - Ride The Void

81. Tenacious D - The Pick of Destiny

82. a-ha - Scoundrel Days

83. Demon Hunter - Storm the Gates of Hell

84. Black Flag - Damaged

85. Masakazu Sugimori - Phoenix Wright - Ace Attorney OST

86. Kendrick Lamar - DAMN.

87. Alexisonfire - Crisis

88. Various Artists - Queen of the Damned

89. Limp Bizkit - Still Sucks

90. Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill

91. Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits

92. Architects - Holy Hell

93. Laura Les - REMIXES 2017

94. Linkin Park - Living Things

95. brian david gilbert - songs with videos without videos

96. Frost Children - SPIRAL

97. Parkway Drive - Horizons

98. Limp Bizkit - Gold Cobra (Deluxe)

99. Various Artists - Phineas and Ferb

100. Vanilla Ice - Hard To Swallow

[sepyana]

Jjba Stone Ocean Ep 13-22 Thoughts

50% Crying about F.F. %40 Sports Maxx arc %10 Making fun of Anasui. Also Pucci is there.

Ep 13-14

A lot happening this arc. I don't really know where to start. Let's talk Ermes first.

Turns out, Ermes ended up in prison to get revenge on her older sister's killer, who is getting out of prison in a year. Araki says Ermes's position in the story is like Polnareff's (in the stand commentaries iirc) though their arcs are handled very differently.

The most important one is that Ermes's revenge is framed as a good thing. Polnareff got Avdol "killed" in his pursuit. Much like Ermes, he didn't care what would happen to himself as long as he got his revenge. Kakyoin says Polnareff shouldn't go sacrifice himself. They both lack self preservation. They both run on their own and refuse to get help from others. Ermes straight up ran in for the kill and got severely injured for it.

What I'm trying to say is Ermes's revenge is framed as good (mostly) while Polnareff's is framed as bad. Her sister comes from the heaves to hug her when she kills Sports Maxx. She does it alone at the end too. If her arc was a counter-argument to part 3's in some way it would be one thing but it doesn't do that at all. If Polnareff's arc never happened I wouldn't have cared about the message of this arc but It's so hard to ignore it when part 6 is basically the direct sequel to part 3. It's looks like Ermes just got lucky that no one got gravely hurt or kicked the bucket.

I don't wanna be mean. Pol is one of my favourites and I already like Ermes a lot. I don't wanna make it sound like Pol's arc is great either. It has it's own issues.

There is still a lot of stuff I liked though. I liked the visuals and the music of this arc especially. The shot of Ermes landing the killing blow along with the music is obviously amazing, it's over the top but I adore that. The music playing is Dio's world iirc. It plays at the finale of both part 3 and part 4 when the main casts face off against the villain. It plays here because Sports Maxx is Ermes's main villain. I don't think Sports Maxx is cool enough to deserve this theme but I like the effect regardless. I appreciate it when music from part 3 plays every now and then.

This might just be me being an F.F. fanboy but I really liked the part when they shot the alligator straight in the mouth. Determination is one of my favourite tracks from part 6. I might like it a bit more than the main theme.

So she can use her strings to sense movement in the area around her. Ok. Okay.

(This bit is from later episodes but it fits better here)Talking to Sports Maxx, Pucci says "There is a fixed amount of souls in the universe". And then he talks about how if someone had thousands of souls at once. Now I know that this is referring to the green baby, I initially thought this was because there weren't enough souls. Since the number is is fixed souls would get divided in the afterlife maybe. It's sort of interesting to think about. If there are too many souls do they get destroyed? Or jjba has already reached the limit and souls are getting reincarnated. Reused, if you will.

Pucci does care about Dio but I do think their relationship was more transactional than he would like to admit. It's not as bad as Dio but Pucci does treat everyone around him like tools, and cannot trust others enough to connect with them. The concept of heaven is too vague for me to comment on it right now, though I do think it is not as different from Christian kind as you might think at first.

Ep 15-16

Anasui is a character that exists. I saw him way before I got into jjba. I liked his design back then and he still has one of my favourite designs now. I remember seeing a post saying "How can such a naked character have this many articles of clothing" and I think about it every day.

Personality wise... I'm sorry but he is just so fucking boring. He is a murdered that likes disassembling things and he loves Jolyne. That's it that's the whole thing. His specific obsession with "marrying" her could be interesting potentially. Then you could ask "Why does he care about marrying Jolyne so much? What is his view of marriage to begin with? Any personal history about that? Maybe his worldview might relate to it. etc. etc.

Another interesting thing is why he is with Weather and Emporio in the first place. Emporio says Weather is the only person who keeps him in check. I am interested in seeing them interact now.

It's a shame they changed Anasui's gender early on. I love problematic lesbians, if my adoration for Shiori and Homura means anything.

The survivor fight could have been shorter. That's all I'm gonna say I thought it was kinda boring tbh. Other than Jolyne flipping off the guard 4 different ways.

Ep 17-18

F.F. my best friend F.F.

I don't really have much to say about episodes 16 to 20 as it's mostly fighting. I think Dragon's Dream is a cool concept and it was executed pretty well. What can you do against an enemy when fate has their back? This arc also has the issue of being too long I think. Some of the bits drag on for too long.

Jolyne tunning to save F.F. despite all her injuries... My heart... I love them..

Ep 19-20

Jotaro not letting anyone take off his hat while in a coma, with no memories and half a soul. Jjba is pretty funny when it wants to be.

Jotaro injuring himself and it just happens to spell Jolyne. And the same cuts show up on Jolyne too. I get some families in jjba have psychic links but this is too much. My suspension of disbelief can only go so far. I can excuse the Dio bone plot but I draw the line at this.

Anasui actually tells F.F. to push Jolyne so he can hug her with zero shame. F.F. rightfully calls this sexual harassment. How does plankton who entered society like a few weeks ago has better morals than him. Get your shit together Anasui.

People loathe Yo Yo Ma. I don't think it is as bad as some say. Don't get me wrong though, it is bad. It's main problem is that it's really fucking boring. I shit you not I almost fell asleep while watching this which is absolutely huge for someone like me who takes an hour to fall asleep. It's not the worst part of jojo but it is up there.

Ep 21-22

Well after the pretty boring stretch we got the last few episodes we get this gem -> completely ignoring the green baby thing

Wow so much to talk about that Dio and Pucci interaction huh. I was initally iffy on what Dio's character was going but I'm loving it.

Do you remember Dio's whole peace of mind way back in part 3? I mentioned it while talking about Kira but I never thought it would be relevant again. Arakkiiiiii please more of this.

So firstly, this pretty much confirms peace of mind is what Dio seeks despite talking about humans. Dio from birth had absolutely zero time to chill, he couldn't trust anyone, he couldn't depend on anyone. Pucci is the person he is closest to but even then he cannot fully trust him.

This is just speculation from my part but maybe that's what heaven is? That serenity, the ease. For someone like Dio who has made so many fucking enemies by this point that peace of mind is not really possible for him outside of reaching heaven. Much to think about.

Also Leonardo Da Vinci is a stand user. This is the jjba equivalent of Joan of Arc being a magical girl in pmmm to me. Why would you tell me this.

Araki can't play with my heart like this. I thought F.F. might make it for a second.

F.F. started to have flashbacks and all I could think was "It's so over". The fight with White Snake was incredibly tense. Having a stand disc like that on hand was a good idea from Pucci.

The moment when Weather caused rain to help F.F. was so hype. It's a good comeback. I always love seeing White Snake suffer. He is annoying as shit.

Jolyne hugging "Weather" was really wholesome despite what we learn later. Despite what Anasui thinks I don't think there is gonna be a romance between the two. More like a positive male figure in her life (Which she seems to lack).

Then here is my least favourite insulting my fave and you already know what I'm gonna say. It would be one thing if Anasui talked shit about F.F. after Ep 22. But Anasui just keeps going on about how they don't deserve to live and that they are lesser because they aren't human and dude. F.F. hasn't even done anything. They only told you to stop being a immature baby about Jolyne hugging a guy when they've got Pale Snake to deal with, rightly so. I'm not even mad I just have no idea why he is reacting like this. All this shit talk over nothing and F.F. still decides to save Anasui instead of themselves.

I didn't see the reveal coming at all. It's was as much of a surprise to me as the characters because 1. I am dumb 2. I don't think Pale Snake has shape shifted up to this point.

Pucci's remarks about how much Jolyne has grown is definitely true. I thought she was just as immature as the other protags despite being older than most of em but that's definitely not the case anymore. My girl ate the musrooms growing on her bedframe in prison. Just to get a chance at saving her father. She has definitely grown... Stone Free grew with her too.

F.F. is not the most unique character. There are so many media that has handled "someone with a newly acquired consciousness learning what it means to be alive" trope way better. But I still found it heartwarming. They are just happy to be there and I appreciate that. They have memories and people dear to them. F.F. didn't have a life before meeting Jolyne. Living a life gave them a reason to sacrifice it for their loved ones. They have a soul now and here come the tears again

Love getting emotional about jjba because I will look at what I am actually crying at and it's the goofiest most nonsensical shit ever and I instantly stop

One thing that's weird is why F.F. without a body looks like Atroe instead of their normal design. Their soul too. I know why they did it and it was the better choice probably. To us Atroe look is F.F. Plus it's easier to make it emote than the Foo Fighters form.

[tyforthevnm]

L.S. Dunes: “We didn’t realise how much we needed this band until we started writing for it”

After two decades of interlinking friendship, L.S. Dunes saw five of emo and post-hardcore’s most respected figureheads finally get together. Rather than trading on old glories, however, debut LP Past Lives is about parrying their shared experience – from firebrand beginnings to fatherhood – into some of the coolest ‘dad rock’ the world has ever seen…

November 9, 2022 Words: Sam Law Photography: Nick Karp

Of the thousands of fans queued nearly a mile around Chicago’s Douglas Park on September 16, 2022, none were sure quite what to expect. From the Misfits to Jawbreaker, the Windy City’s annual Riot Fest has become world-renowned for facilitating the reunions of some of alternative music’s biggest names. This year, though, the gathered masses were jostling to see a band they’d only just heard of play their first-ever gig. Thrillingly, L.S. Dunes’ live debut did not disappoint.

“I’d already had the show in my head 100 times,” grins vocalist Anthony Green, with a relish that suggests he’s re-run it another 100 since. “Sure, we were a little nervous, but it was the same nervousness you feel before you kiss somebody for the first time. It was that excited anticipation. There was tension in the air, but it was a beautiful tension. The levee was about to break!”

Despite only one of the six songs performed on a dusty Rise Stage that blistering Friday afternoon having previously been released, there was an electricity in the air. Part of that was down to Anthony’s impossibly charismatic performance: exorcising demons, crowdsurfing headlong, daring us to keep up. Part of it was down to his bandmates – drummer Tucker Rule, bassist Tim Payne, guitarists Frank Iero and Travis Stever – keeping pedal firmly to the metal. Mostly, though, it was about five masters of their craft unlocking something untapped in each other.

“It was my favourite first show with any band that I’ve ever been in,” smiles Frank. “To be 40 and still be having these firsts is fantastic. We’d maybe played together only five or six times before that, and it’s not easy to have a first show outdoors at a festival, but I was like, ‘Hey, I trust these guys. I trust in the songs. It’s gonna be an experience!’ And it was fantastic. It went off like a riot.”

Catching up with three of L.S. Dunes six weeks down the line and just a couple before the arrival of feverishly anticipated debut LP Past Lives, the enthusiasm is undiminished. Frank fizzles during a flying visit home to New Jersey between My Chemical Romance’s two mega-headlines at Las Vegas emo gathering When We Were Young. Anthony and Tucker bounce off each other on break from Thursday’s autumn tour at Angels & Airwaves guitarist David Kennedy’s coffee shop in San Diego, sporadically interrupted by planes roaring into the nearby airport. “That was a big daddy…” the drummer delivers a running commentary. “That one had a little front propeller!”

On paper, no-one in L.S. Dunes needs this band. As well as his legacy with Pennsylvanian rockers Circa Survive, Anthony just started psychedelic side-project Fuckin Whatever with members of Grouplove and Taking Back Sunday, and is gathering momentum as a solo artist. Even aside from renewed commitments with MCR, Frank has a slew of ‘solo’ projects, with latest EP Heaven Is A Place, This Is A Place dropping just last year. Travis remains a mainstay of Coheed And Cambria. Tim and Tucker have plenty on their plates with Thursday, with the latter also featuring on a slew of other releases including Frank’s EP. Collectively, they have over 100 years tenure in other outfits.

So why why start another?

According to its members, L.S. Dunes’ “addictive” qualities are threefold: connection, creation, camaraderie. As we pick at that mysterious band name, there’s a reluctance amongst the group to give too much away – a desire to keep some secrets for themselves – but Anthony reveals how the imagery of shifting sands resonated, and notes the serendipity of how their chosen title became an “accidental monogram” for LSD: a drug taken for those trying to achieve more dazzling inspiration and deeper connectedness, “with people, with nature”.

They liked the rhythm of the name, too, which reminded them of the literary initials used by esteemed authors. Like J.D. Salinger or W.B. Yeats? “Like R.L. Stine,” the frontman grins, with just a touch of mischief. Perhaps most telling is Frank’s observation that they often joked about how the L.S. stands for “low stress”.

“At the heart of it is the love of creating”

Hear Frank on how the band formed through a shared creative connection

Where most professional bands resemble multilateral marriage, built on a shared spark but inevitably burdened by expectation, responsibility and the need for compromise that comes with such personal and financial union, L.S. Dunes is an attempt to set those things aside in the name of breaking new ground. The project started with the working title ‘Dad Bods’ as an acknowledgement not just of the members’ cumulative wisdom and encroaching middle-age, but also that their growing real families come first. Their group chat was labelled ‘Father Dads’.

“No-one’s a ‘slacker’ or anything,” Frank elaborates. “Those conversations always happen in other bands. There’s none of that shit when it’s like, ‘Hey, guys, I gotta go take my kid to soccer.’ It’s like, ‘Yeah, I do too!’” With all their outside commitments laid on the table, it boils down to the well-informed faith that when one player needs to go and handle something else, there’s enough enjoyment and investment in the music that they will get back to it. And they always do.

“Not to say our other bands aren’t fun,” Anthony nods, “but there’s a sense that we can do things with this project – and get things from it, personally – that we can’t with our others.”

“We didn’t realise how much we needed this band until we started writing for it,” Tucker expands, offering a vivid metaphor. “When someone first drives through Denver, they stare out of their window, like, ‘Oh my God, look at those mountains!’ But someone who’s lived there a while can begin to take it for granted. That’s what music was to us. We are all in love with it – writing it, playing it, performing it – but this project made us fall back in love with it. Sometimes, you need that reminder. Sometimes, you need to fall back in love with things.”

When he first began work on L.S. Dunes’ vocals, Anthony had no idea who else was in the band.

“We didn’t know if or when touring was going to come back,” he shrugs, reliving early 2021’s darkest days of lockdown. “And, if it did, we didn’t know how it was going to feel, or what it was going to look like. I was just stuck at home losing my mind, trying to get people in my life to send me music, trying to have new stuff to work on all the time. Then when this came up, it was exactly what I needed. Tucker sent me the music across and I thought it was just him and some of his dad-friends from the neighbourhood he lives in. I was like, ‘Damn! Tucker’s friends are really good!’”

In reality, the shared history between the five members of what would become L.S. Dunes is almost too stubbornly complex to untangle. Frank, for instance, remembers looking up to Thursday as a kid starting out with Pencey Prep when they were his labelmates on Eyeball Records, and how MCR were asked to play their first “really big” show when Coheed had to pull out of a support slot for Jimmy Eat World at the Allentown Fairgrounds in August 2002. Anthony, meanwhile, cherishes memories of driving out to New Brunswick, Jersey City and Philadelphia as a fan to catch early Thursday house shows, before supporting My Chem extensively in Circa Survive throughout the mid-2000s. Talk of deeper collaboration had kicked around for the best part of those two decades. All it needed to come to fruition was the world grinding to a halt.

“It was one of those things you talk about,” Frank reflects. “But it doesn’t happen because you’re on tour, doing other things. We all have like 85 bands, and sometimes you just wanna hang out and not play. But the pandemic was the time when everyone stopped. Everyone was at home. Nobody knew what the fuck to do or how long we were going to be here. So we became each other’s lifeline and were like, ‘Hey, let’s start that band we’ve been talking about for 20 years.’”

“New music became that life-preserver,” agrees Anthony. “It put a light at the end of the tunnel.”

The pieces began to come together at some point in the autumn of 2020. Broadly, writing was as simple as a musical version of Pass The Story, with one person laying down the beginning of a song, then passing the instrumental along to be built upon. “It was very much an organic thing,” explains Frank, “like when you start a band in high school and call your friends. ‘Oh, I know this guy who plays this.’ Then you just get together in a room – well, a virtual room – and start swappin’ spit!”

Of the almost-complete compositions passed over to Anthony, his soon-to-be-bandmates presumed he would initially have a crack at the couple of sparser pieces, seeking space in which he could detonate his explosive vocals. Instead, he gravitated towards the busy three-and-a-half-minutes that would become Antibodies – the first track on which they had also completed work. That piece of symbolic serendipity, coupled with the sheer effort the vocalist put in, without knowledge of who else was involved, galvanised resolve.

“The ‘blind date’ kinda thing made it even cooler,” grins Frank. “As soon as we got the tracks back from Anthony, I knew that this was a band rather than just a fun project for during the pandemic.”

The next few months went by in a blur. Although there weren’t originally plans for an album, the bangers continued to mount up. The full quintet were forced to flesh-out their self-recording expertise, with Tim stepping up as a de facto in-house engineer. They convened in person for the first time at Frank’s place in mid-2021, confirming their chemistry beyond the digital realm. Time was booked with red hot hardcore heavyweight Will Yip to record at the end of that year. Even as they went into a Jersey City studio to complete preproduction, the songs were still pouring from them, with eventual debut single Permanent Rebellion being written in the last half-hour of that trip.

At a time when scheduling shitshows had become the norm, L.S. Dunes had found calm by going with the chaotic flow. A fall just before the finish line came perilously close to derailing things, though, when on August 1, with studio time just over a month away, Frank suffered a six-stringer’s nightmare after slipping from a ladder, breaking his right wrist and severely spraining his left.

“To be totally frank...” the guitarist pauses with a wry smirk, before correcting himself to match the weight of his story. “To be serious, I didn’t know if I’d be able to play again. Everything exploded in that fuckin’ wrist. It was a real serious break. It was nerve-wracking. But it was something that I wouldn’t let myself say out loud because it was also super-scary. Not to get too serious, but I said to the doctor, ‘If you think that I’m not going to be able to play again, just leave me on the table, because there’s no point in waking me up. I can’t not play. I have to. And if you’re not the guy who can fix this, we need to find someone who can.’ I was meant to record in September, but my session moved to December, three weeks after my last surgery, with the stitches still in my arm. It was like my Through The Wire. Anthony had to wait for me. That’s why this record took so long!”

“I didn’t know if I’d be able to play again”

Frank talks about the potentially life-changing impact of breaking his wrist

From its lunging intro to the dreamy curtain drop, the record was 100 per cent worth the wait. More than just a set of songs, though, Past Lives is a glimpse into how L.S. Dunes see themselves.

‘I’m not all my mistakes, no matter what they say about it…’ howls Anthony on the outstanding title-track, admitting today that although “we came to this project to do something new, in the process of doing that, we were sort of shaking off the dust, baggage and resentments from some of our other projects.

”L.S. Dunes is no ‘supergroup’. There is no album-padding filler here. The striking simplicity of Gordon Douglas Ball’s album art – five equal elements in perfect harmony – is very much on purpose. But it is the result of all those miles on the road leading to this point.

“I think it’s a moment in time,” reckons Frank. “It’s about the people involved in that room at that moment. And it’s a fine line. We’ve all been in touring bands, running the gamut of the successes and failures. We’ve lost friends. We’ve gone through it. All that shit that we’ve done has gotten us to this point. I’m proud of it. I wouldn’t change anything. But it also doesn’t mean that what comes next has anything to do with those experiences. Those were our past lives. This is the new thing.”

Indeed, hammering through the album’s 11 tracks, there are flickers of familiarity, but they’re in service of breaking new ground. The ‘lonely shadows’ and ‘lost souls’ of Grey Veins are wrapped around a masterful emo composition and massive chorus, destined to tug at heartstrings for years to come. Blender packs a little of the brooding post-hardcore of Thursday, but feels more texturally mature, with guitars set to stun. Grifter starts with the angularity of Circa Survive, but builds into a shadowy epic capable of holding up against the most grandiose compositions of Coheed or MCR have to offer. Then superb closer Sleep Cult does something totally unexpected: delivering Anthony’s treatise on “self-hatred and dealing with self-obsession” via 225 seconds of music that simultaneously pays homage to and woozily updates 1950s doo-wop.

There’s a willingness to speak harsh truths, too, most notably in garotte-sharp political observations of Bombsquad. “This band became a platform for me to really speak on a lot of those things,” the singer explains. “It’s about everything that was going on in our lives, from dealing with the depression and anxiety of the pandemic, to having to deal with a corrupt political system – the most corrupt empire that the world has ever seen – taking over, isolating and dividing us all.”

Perhaps most illustrative of the lot is searing album opener 2022. Back at Riot Fest, it was a number Anthony described as, “the most fucked-up song I ever wrote… about learning to get through shit, so that you don’t want to kill yourself every day.” Having started life as an acoustic confessional intended for a solo record (‘If I can't make it ’til 2022 / Least we'll see how much I can take’), the song was a designed to process the personal suffering and isolation he’d been dealing with over the last few years, but it took the input of his bandmates to properly realise its potential.

“On the original version, it felt like I was stuck in the hole of it,” Anthony explains. “Rather than make me feel better about the things I was writing, it made me relive a lot of stuff. So I sent it to Tucker and was like, ‘Yo, this is too sad, make it heavy!’ He alchemised what I’d written into something that felt much more triumphant: less like I’m digging myself into a hole and more like I’m digging myself out. Listening to it as the year is almost over, the emotion’s still there, but we did it: we made it through.”

“This band was built around making songs that feel good to play in every atmosphere”

Hear Anthony on the importance of taking L.S. Dunes on the road

So where do L.S. Dunes go from here? Throughout our chat, it’s reiterated that this shouldn’t be a one-off. The logistical effort to plan not just East and West Coast tours of the United States, but also a four-date UK run beginning at the Glasgow Garage on January 27, 2023 is evidence of their will to see this through. Festival dates for the following summer have begun to leak through. Anthony and Tucker make the tantalising observation that, if this record was what they were able to write with Zoom links and Dropboxes, who knows what they’ll deliver in the flesh.

Still, with the world accelerating into the post-COVID era, and other projects getting back up to speed (MCR, Coheed, Thursday and Anthony all have live dates booked within days of our chat) are there concerns about continuing to fit L.S. Dunes in alongside so many competing interests?

“Always,” shrugs Frank, with an easy grin. “But that’s with anything. Everyone has commitments, but everyone has commitments to everything: we all have families, other bands, we’re just doing our best to have the calendar to do it all in. And, so far, there hasn’t been a lot of push-back. I don’t mind the work at all – I live for it. But I don’t like planning shit. I’ll say yes to everything, then leave someone else to arrange it. But we all have great teams behind us – many of whom [overlap]. Everyone knows that we want to do this, and we’re doing it as a real band.”

“I would love for L.S. Dunes to become my main band,” Anthony stresses his enthusiasm. With Circa Survive recently confirming their ‘indefinite hiatus’, it feels like that might be a real possibility, though the timing of one band stopping as another starts, he insists, is purely coincidental. “It’s rare to find people that you connect with so well. Everything they send makes me want to keep writing. That’s a special thing. When you find it, you want to keep a hold of it and nurture it. We’re in a dance, right now, where the music has taken the lead. We’re just seeing where it goes.”

Tucker cracks another gleeful grin, even more buzzed as we end our chat than when we started.

“The stupidest thing to do when the music industry seemed to be dying during a global pandemic was to start another project. It’s all against the grain. We’re taking a risk, but we’re here for it. Everyone is always in search of that sick leather jacket that fits them just right. For us, this is it.”

Past Lives is released on November 11 via Fantasy Records

[bboyplankton]

Hip-Hop/Rap Albums 2022

1. Conway the Machine – God Don’t Make Mistakes

2. Lupe Fiasco – Drill Music in Zion

3. Nas – King’s Disease III

4. A Boogie wit da Hoodie – Me Vs. Myself

5. Saba – A Few Good Things

6. Westside Boogie – More Black Superheroes

7. Freddie Gibbs – $oul $old $eperately (Bonus Edition)

8. JID – The Forever Story

9. Boldy James & Cuns – Be That As It May

10. Kendrick Lamar – Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers

11. Ab-Soul – Herbert

12. Method Man – Meth Lab Season 3: The Rehab

13. Nick Grant – Welcome to Loveland

14. Burna Boy – Love, Damini

15. Vince Staples – Ramona Park Broke My Heart

16. Jeezy & DJ Drama – Snofall

17. Westside Gunn – 10

18. Larry June – Spaceships on the Blade

19. Danger Mouse & Black Thought – Cheat Codes

20. Lloyd Banks – The Course of the Inevitable 2

21. YG – I Got Issues

22. Joey Bada$$ – 2000

23. Cordae – From A Bird’s Eye View

24. Apollo Brown & Philmore Greene – Cost of Living

25. Megan Thee Stallion – Traumatize

26. Wiz Khalifa, Big K.R.I.T., Smoke DZA, & Girl Talk – Full Court Press

27. Denzel Curry – Melt My Eyez See Your Future

28. Dizzy Wright & DJ Hoppa – Dizzyland

29. Royce Da 5’9” – The Heaven Experience Vol.

30. Snoop Dogg – BODR

31. The Musalini & 9th Wonder – The Don & Eye

32. Pusha T – It’s Almost Dry

33. Jalen Santoy – Without Hesitation

34. Drake – Honestly, Nevermind

35. Symba & DJ Drama – Results Take Time

36. Jack Harlow – Come Home the Kids Miss You

37. Bun B & Statik Selektah – Trillstatik 2

38. Key Glock – PRE5L – EP

39. EarthGang – Ghetto Gods

40. Young Dolph – Paper Route Frank

41. Kid Cudi – Entergalactic

42. Smino – Love 4 Rent

43. Drake & 21 Savage – Her Loss

44. Brockhampton – The Family

45. Tobi Lou – Non-Perishable

46. The Cool Kids – Baby Oil Staircase/ Chillout

47. Doe Boy – Oh Really

48. Dave East, Buda & Grandz, & DJ Drama – Book of David

49. Smoke DZA – 10,000 Hrs

50. Nigo – I Know Nigo!

51. Busta Rhymes – The Fuse Is Lit – EP

52. Wiz Khalifa – Multiverse

53. Ransom – Pain & Glory

54. Tee Grizzley – Chapters of the Trenches

55. Sy Ari Da Kid – The Shadow In the Shade 2

56. Roc Marciano & The Alchemist – The Elephant Man’s Bones

57. Mozzy – Survivor’s Guilt

58. Armani Caesar – The Liz 2

59. Action Bronson – Crocodilo Turbo

60. Earl Sweatshirt – Sick!

61. CyHi – EGOT the EP

62. Dreezy – HitGirl

63. Juicy J & Wiz Khalifa – Stoner’s Night

64. Logic – Vinyl Days

65. DJ Premier – Hip- Hop 50: Vol. 1 – EP

66. Paul Wall & Termanology – Start 2 Finish

67. Casey Veggies – Since Ya’ll Forgot – EP

68. 38 Spesh & Harry Fraud – Beyond Belief

69. Jay Worthy & Harry Fraud – You Take the Credit, We’ll Take the Check

70. The Cool Kids – Before Shit Got Weird

71. Boldy James & Real Bad Man – Killing Nothing

72. Dreamville & J. Cole – D-Day: A Gangsta Grillz Mixtape

73. Juicy J, Lex Luger & Trap-A-Holics – Crypto Business

74. Buddy – Superghetto

75. The Game – DRILLMATIC Heart Vs. Mind

76. Snoop Dogg & DJ Drama – Gangsta Grillz: I Still Got It

77. Future – I Never Liked You

78. Duke Deuce – CRUNKSTAR

79. Prodigy – The Hegelian Dialectic 2: The Book of Heroine

80. Payroll Giovanni – Back 2 The Ba$ics

81. Yo Gotti, Moneybagg Yo, & CMG The Label – Gangsta Art

82. Duke Deuce – Memphis Massacre II

83. Latto – 777

84. Metro Boomin – Heroes & Villains

85. RZA & DJ Scratch – Saturday Afternoon Kung Fu Theater

86. Cappadonna & Stu Bangas – 3rd Chamber Grail Bars

87. Mickey Factz & Ayo Shamir – It’s Only Us Here

88. Hodgy – Everyday People Change Into Someone

89. 38 Spesh – 7 Shots

90. Smoke DZA, Nym Lo, & 183rd – Driplomatic Immunity

91. Jay Worthy, Larry June, & LNDN Drugs – 2 P’z In A Pod

92. DJ Khaled – God Did

93. Casey Veggies – Crypto Veggies

94. Quavo & Takeoff – Only Built for Infinity Links

95. RZA & Bobby Digital – RZA Presents: Bobby Digital & the Pit of Snakes

96. Curren$y & Fuse – Spring Clean 2

97. Boldy James & Futurewave – Mr. Ten08

98. Westside Gunn – Peace “Fly” God

99. Mt. Westmore – Snoop Cube 40 $hort

100. Apollo Brown – This Must Be The Place

101. BigWalkDog – Trick City

102. Bas – [Bump] Pick Me Up – EP

103. Cam’ron & A-Trak – U Wasn’t There

104. Onyx – Onyx Versus Everybody

105. Blac Youngsta – 4Life

106. Leikeli47 – Shape Up

107. Tsu Surf – Disparu

108. Finesse2Tymes – 90 Days

109. 42 Dugg & EST Gee – Last Ones Left

110. Coi Leray – Trendsetter

111. EST Gee – I Never Felt Nun

112. Rico Nasty – Las Ruinas

113. TyFontaine – B4BMG: The Experience – EP

114. BlocBoy JB – Bacc 2 Da Bloc

115. Gucci Mane – So Icy Boyz 22

116. Lil Baby – It’s On Me

117. Post Malone – Twelve Carat Toothache

118. Gucci Mane – So Icy Gang: The ReUp

119. Vory – Lost Souls

120. Glorilla – Anyways, Life’s Great

[tedstunes]

upcoming releases

there is not really a comprehensive calendar of music release dates, so i'm going to try to compile upcoming release dates here. most albums especially from major labels are dropped on fridays fyi.

to navigate, here is the format album/ep - artist [genre] (release date) {other notes}

january 2024

Hot Air Balloon - Pile [alt rock] (january 5)

Letter to Self - SPRINTS [alt rock] (january 5)

Born to Be - Itzy [kpop] (january 8)

Four-Calendar Café - Cocteau Twins [dreampop/shoegaze] (january 12) {remaster/rerelease}

Milk & Kisses - Cocteau Twins [dreampop/shoegaze] (january 12) {remaster/rerelease}

Orquídeas - Kali Uchis [r&b/neosoul/hiphop] (january 12)

Hudson River Wind Meditations - Lou Reed [ambient rock] (january 12) {remaster/rerelease; lou reed's final album}

Big Sigh - Marika Hackman [alt] (january 12)

Lovegaze - Nailah Hunter [alt folk/ambient/fantasy/harp] (january 12)

Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations - The Vaccines [indie rock] (january 12)

Saviors - Green Day [pop punk/alt] (january 19)

Little Rope - Sleater-Kinney [indie rock/riot grrrl] (january 19)

Is Survived By (Revived) - Touché Amoré [post-hardcore/screamo] (january 19)

Peaky Blinders: Season 5 (Original Score) - Anna Calvi [soundtrack] (january 26)

Peaky Blinders: Season 6 (Original Score) - Anna Calvi and Nick Launay [soundtrack] (january 26)

Everybody Can't Go - Benny the Butcher [rap] (january 26)

Junk - Brion Gysin [avant funk] (january 26) {reissue}

People Who Aren't There Anymore - Future Islands [indie rock] (january 26)

Sadness Sets Me Free - Gruff Rhys [alt/folk rock] (january 26)

Blue Rasberry - Kat Kirby [indie rock/post-folk] (january 26)

Philip Glass Solo - Philip Glass [contemporary classical] (january 26)

Wall of Eyes - The Smile [art rock] (january 26)

What an Enormous Room - Torres [alt rock] (january 26)

Three Bells - Ty Segall [alt rock/glam] (january 26)

february 2024

What Now - Brittany Howard [rock] (february 2)

What Do We Do Now - J Mascis [alt rock] (february 2)

King Perry - Lee "Scratch" Perry [reggae] (february 2) {posthumous}

Chupetones - Meth Math [experimental] (february 2)

Band on the Run (Underdubbed Mixes) - Paul McCartney and Wings [rock] (february 2)

Compassion - Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh, and Tyshawn Sorey [jazz] (february 2)

She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She - Chelsea Wolfe (february 9)

What Happened to the Beach? - Declan McKenna (february 9)

Phasor - Helado Negro (february 9)

Rave:N, the Remixes - Kelela (february 9)

Weird Faith - Madi Diaz (february 9)

Forgot About Me - Pouty (february 9)

Magnet Factory - Pylon Reenactment Society (february 9)

Walls Have Ears - Sonic Youth (february 9)

Coming Home - Usher (february 11)

Adult Contemporary - Chromeo (february 16)

Blu Wav - Grandaddy (february 16)

Tangk - Idles (february 16)

This Is Me... Now - Jennifer Lopez (february 16)

Hole in My Head - Laura Jane Grace (february 16)

Grip - Seprentwithfeet (february 16)

The Past Is Still Alive - Hurray for the Riff Raff (february 23)

Rooting for Love - Laetitia Sadier (february 23)

Untame the Tiger - Mary Timony (february 23)

Loss of Life - MGMT (february 23)

Daniel - Real Estate (february 23)

march 2024

YHWH Is Love - Jahari Massamba Unit, Madlib and Karriem Riggins (march 1)

I Got Heaven - Mannequin Pussy (march 1)

Playing Favorites - Sheer Mag (march 1)

Where's My Utopia - Yard Act (march 1)

Apocalypse - Thundercat (march 1)

Tyla - Tyla (march 1)

Electric Blue Light - Lenny Kravitz (march 1)

Bleachers - Bleachers (march 8)

Letter to Yu - Bolis Pupul (march 8)

Glasgow Eyes - The Jesus and Mary Chain (march 8)

All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade - The Libertines (march 8)

Invincible Shielf - Judas Priest (march 8)

A Forsaken Lover's Plea - Chuck Strangers (march 15)

Real Power - Gossip (march 22)

Live Laugh Love - Chastity Belt (march 29)

Evolution - Sheryl Crow (march 29)

Heaven :x: Hell - Sum 41 (march 29)

sources:

pitchfork

bandcamp

[fangirlwithasweettooth]

dimension 20 enjoyers I need someone to scream with me about fantasy high pls

[strongtowerluxuryapartments]

my green heaven, fh: sophomore year ep.16

[leekimdramas]

2021 Dramas

The dramas that I watched throughout the year. If it has a bold font it means that I gave it a 10 if italic font that means that I enjoyed a lot but couldn’t give it a maximum for some reason.

You can also read all of the reviews I wrote about the dramas if you just click on it.

The list for 2020.

Kdramas completed in 2021:

1. Live On

2. The Goddess Of Revenge

3. Please Don’t Date Him

4. The Uncanny Counter

5. Cheat On Me, If You Can

6. Run On

7. True Beauty

8. Lovestruck In The City

9. It’s Okay, That’s Love

10. L.U.C.A: The Beginning

11. Love Alarm 2

12. Times

13. Meloholic

14. Sisyphus: The Myth

15. Beyond Evil

16.��Navillera

17. Vincenzo

18. Mouse

19. Taxi Driver

20. Youth Of May

21. Law School

22. Sell Your Haunted House

23. Prison Paybook

24. So I Married An Anti-Fan

25. Doom At Your Service

26. Move To Heaven

27. My Roommate Is A Gumiho

28. Imitation

29. Voice 4: Judgment Hour

30. Monthly Magazine Home

31. Racket Boys

32. The Devil Judge

33. You Are My Spring

34. The Last Empress

35. Hospital Playlist 2

36. Squid Game 

37. Hometown Cha Cha Cha

38. Yumi’s Cells

39. My Name

40. Dali And The Cocky Prince

41. Work Later, Drink Now

42. Dr. Brain

43. Happiness

44. Inspector Koo

45. Hellbound

46. The King’s Affection

47. One Ordinary Day

Dramas from other countries:

1. Raise de wa Chanto Shimasu (Japan)

2. The Untamed (China)

3. Douluo Continent (China)

4. Alice In Borderland (Japan)

5. Love Lasts Forever (Japan)

6. Accidentally In Love (China)

Web dramas:

1. One Fine Week 2

2. Amanza

3. Replay: The Moment When It Starts Again

4. You Make Me Dance

5. Scripting Your Destiny

6. How To Be Thirty

7. The Witch’s Diner

8. You Raise Me Up

9. The Great Shaman Ga Doo Shim

10. Love In Black Hole

11. Heartbeat Broadcasting Accident

Movies:

1. Fatal Journey (China)

2. Kim Ji Young: Born 1982 (S. Korea)

3. It's Difficult To Love An Otaku (Japan)

4. Exit (S. Korea)

5. Misbehavior (S. Korea)

6. Sweet And Sour (S. Korea)

7. The Negotiation (S. Korea)

8. Alive (S. Korea)

9. Secretly, Greatly (S. Korea)

Dropped:

1. She Would Never Know (ep 7)

2. Oh My Ladylord (ep 7)

3. At Distance, Spring Is Green (mid 3 ep)

4. Nevertheless (mid 2 ep)

5. The Veil (ep 3)

6. Reflection Of You (ep 4)

7. Hometown (ep 9)

8. Idol: The Coup (ep 3)

9. Chimera (ep 7)

10. Melancholia (ep 8)

11. Now We're Breaking Up (ep 9)

[sagehaleyofficial]

HERE’S WHAT YOU MISSED THIS WEEK (12.1-12.7.21):

NEW MUSIC:

Dance Gavin Dance’s Tilian Pearson and Circa Survive’s Anthony Green teamed up to present their own version of the holiday song “Christmas Don't Be Late.” The latter’s band recently dropped a new EP, which featured “Imposter Syndrome.”

Knuckle Puck shared their first new music since the release of their album 20/20 last year titled “Levitate.” The band will also be heading back to the United Kingdom for an appearance at Slam Dunk Festival and some headline shows.

Trophy Eyes released a new song titled “Bittersweet.” The song follows on from their previous singles “27 Club” and “Figure Eight.”

Gen and the Degenerates returned with another new track titled “Wild Thing.” The song follows on from previous singles “Runaway Blues” and “Underwear.”

Happydaze returned with a new single titled “With You.” It follows on from the release of “Missing Out” a few weeks back and “Closer” from back in the summer.

Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda released a new EP titled Ziggurats, containing four tracks. The EP was released as a generative NFT, via 5,000 unique pieces of artwork designed by Mike himself.

Short Stack revealed that they are going to be kicking off 2022 with a new record. Their new album Maybe There’s No Heaven will be released on February 25 via UNFD.

TOUR ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Slam Dunk Festival added more bands to their 2022 lineup, revealing that Rancid would no longer be playing. Dropkick Murphys and Sum 41 will now be headlining, with support from Mod Sun, Knuckle Puck, Hot Mulligan, Yours Truly and more.

State Champs premiered the “Outta My Head Experience,” a full concert recording of their show in Philadelphia on the recent Pure Noise Tour. They are going to be heading back to the United Kingdom and Europe for a tour next year.

Every Time I Die was added as Outbreak Fest's third headliner, joining Knocked Loose and Turnstile. Other bands like Touche Amore, Mannequin Pussy, Movements, Witch Fever and more were also added to the lineup.

My Chemical Romance added 10 more United Kingdom and European dates for 2022. The earliest show will take place in St. Austell, England, on May 16 and the last will be in Berlin on June 12.

OTHER NEWS:

Billboard released some of the biggest bands and tracks of the year, with Bring Me the Horizon at the top of the Mainstream Rock Songs with “Teardrops.” Foo Fighters are also at the top of both the Mainstream Rock Artists and Rock Airplay Artists charts.

___

Check in next Tuesday for more “Posi Talk with Sage Haley”!

[eggs-toast-and-daryl-dixon]

And I am back at it again trying to count the kills in The Walking Dead. I am slowly going insane.

That's the link to the first three seasons since I thought the post was getting a bit long :)

Season 4

Character introductions:

Patrick ? ep. 1

David ? ep. 1

Zack ? ep.1

Bob Stooky ep. 1

‘Mouldy lady’ (she doesn’t have a name I think) ep. 1

Lizzie Samuels ep.1

Mika Samuels ep. 1

Ryan Samuels ep. 2

Doctor S ep. 2

Tara Chambler ep. 6

Lily Chambler ep. 6

Meghan Chambler ep.6

Mr Chambler ep.6

Mitch Dolgen ep.7

Pete Dolgen ep.7

Alisha ? ep.7

Abraham Ford ep.10

Eugene Porter ep.10

Rosita Espinosa ep.10

Joe ? ep.11

Gareth ? ep.13

Gareth and Alex’s Mom ep.13

Alex ? ep.13

Top characters - in my opinion :)

Abraham Ford

Daryl Dixon

Beth Greene

Eugene Porter (don’t ask why, I genuinely don’t know)

Tara Chambler

On to the kills!

Karen: 5 walkers

David: 6 walkers

Glenn: 29 walkers

Daryl: 6 humans + 74 walkers (1 assumed) with a total of 80

Sasha: 22 walkers

Zack: 2 walkers

‘Mouldy lady’: 1 human (herself :( )

Carl: 28 walkers

Rick: 5 humans + 29 walkers with a total of 34

Carol: 3 humans + 10 walkers (1 assumed) with a total of 13

Maggie: 25 walkers

Tyreese: 26 walkers (1 was assumed when he put down a Mika)

Dr. S: 1 walkers

Michonne: 3 humans (1 assisted) + 32 walkers with a total of 35

Bob: 23 walkers

Herschel: 5

Martinez: 1 human (spoken of but never seen) + 1 walker with a total of 2

Governor: 2 humans + 5 walkers with a total of 7

Mitch: 1 human

Lily: 1 human (assisted) + 1 walker with a total of 2

Lizzie: 3 humans (not seen, but we can all agree she killed Mika) + 4 walkers with a total of 7

Beth: 3 walkers

Mika: 4 walkers

Tara: 10 walkers

Abraham: 14 walkers

Joe: 1 human (killed off screen and was by multiple of the claimers)

Rosita: 5 walkers

Eugene: 4 walkers

Total walker kills: 338

Total human kills: 27

Total kills overall: 448

Total walker kills over all 4 seasons: 1033

Total human kills over all 4 seasons: 121

Overall total kills in all 4 seasons: 1134

Main character deaths:

Zack: bitten on ankle and face, then crushed by a building ep.1-30 days without an accident

Mouldy Lady: stabbed self twice, left to turn ep.1-30 days without an accident

Patrick: ok I haven’t looked at this in a while and in my book it said he died of ‘extreme Covid’ so take that as you will ep.1-30 days without an accident

Ryan: Bitten and put down by carol ep.2-infected

Karen and David: Carol stabbed them in the head and then burned them 😳 ep.2-infected

Dr. S: Was sick and turned (I think Herschel put him down but I can’t remember) ep.5-interment

Mr Chambler: died from lung cancer then put down by ‘Brian’ ep.6-live bait

Shumpert: got drunk and walked into walker pits. He was killed in between seasons but is only mentioned at this point

Martinez (another fave dead): Hit by ‘Brian’ with golf club then fed to walkers ep.7-dead weight

Pete: killed by ‘Brian’ and left to turn under water ep.7-dead weight

Herschel (NOOOO): Head cut off by the governor (brutally) then put down by Michonne ep.8-too far gone

Meghan: Bitten then put down by The Governor ep.8-too far gone

The governor (thank the heavens): Shot by Rick (non-leathaly), stabbed through the chest by michonne, shot in the head by lily ep.8-too far gone

Mitch the Bitch: Shot with bolt by Daryl ep.8- too far gone (lots of people going this ep)

Lily: eaten alive, willingly. Between episodes but witnessed by Tara

Mika: Stabbed in the neck (I think) by lizzie ep.13-the grove

Lizzie: shot in the head by carol ep.13-the grove

Joe: Bitten in the neck by Rick (walker style) ep.16-A

Alex: Shot by Rick ep.16-A

Saddest death: Herschel. WHY DID HE DIE! HE NEVER HURT ANYONE! LEAVE HIM ALONE!

Happiest death: The Governor. Hmm let me see: he tortured Glenn, assaulted Maggie, tried to get Daryl and Merle to kill each other, killed axel, KILLED MERLE, killed his entire army, was the cause of Andreas death (but who really cares), killed Martinez and Pete (he just wanted to be a good person), beat the shit out of rick, tried to torture michonne, and I think I’m missing something... Oh yeah-HE KILLED HERSCHEL. That basterd deserved worse.

Best death: Lizzie. Lizzie was kind of a psycho and she deserved it a bit, but the main reason her death was the best is because it started carols whole ‘mental downfall’ thing, which is very important to the story.

Worst death: Martinez, I guess. I can’t choose Herschel since I’ve given him the saddest death so it has to be Martinez. Personally I think Daryl should have killed him because of their betting game thing in season 3

Top 15 killers:

1. Rick. 150 walkers. 10 humans. 160 total. Currently alive

2. Daryl. 140 walkers. 10 humans. 150 total. Currently alive

3. Glenn. 69 (noice) walkers. 0 humans. 69 total. Currently alive

4. Michonne. 61 walkers. 7 humans. 68 total. Currently alive

5. Governor. 27 walkers. 40 humans. 67 total. Dead S4 ep8

6. Herschel. 66 walkers. 0 humans. 66 total. Dead S4 ep8

7. Merle: 32 walkers. 24 humans. 56 total. Dead S3 ep15

7. Andrea: 54 walkers. 2 humans. 56 total. Dead S3 ep16

8. Carl. 50 walkers. 1 human. 51 total. Currently alive

9. Maggie. 39 walkers. 3 humans. 42 total. Currently alive

10. Shane (go away): 32 walkers. 4 humans. 36 total. Dead S2 ep12

11. Tyreese: 35 walkers. 0 humans. 35 total. Currently alive

12. T-dog (hang in there, man): 32 walkers. 0 humans. 32 total. Dead S3 ep4

13. Sasha: 25 walkers. 0 humans. 25 total. Currently alive

14. Shumpert: 21 walkers. 3 humans. 24 total. Dead between S3-S4

15. Bob: 23 walkers. 0 humans. 23 total. Currently alive.

First (and last) words:

Patrick: 1st (yes ma’am) last (I don’t wanna yack on someone)

David: 1st (take that) last (take that) he only has one line

Zack: 1st (I was just about to come find you) last (Don’t leave me!)

Bob: 1st (Hey!) last (?)

Mouldy lady: 1st (wait please) last (you don’t come back)

Lizzie: 1st (Nick! Look over here!) last (I’m sorry)

Mika: 1st (one of them has a name tag) last (I love them!)

Ryan: 1st (it’s happening isn’t it?) last (take care of your sister)

Dr. S: 1st (got no bites) last (you’ve gotta go)

Karen: 1st (Noah’s asthmatic) last (I’ll see you later)

Tara: 1st (you look like you barley got out alive) last (?)

Lily: 1st (Tara!) last (Meghan!)

Meghan: 1st (Mama) last (it’s ok, I can do it myself!)

Mr Chambler: 1st (have a cigarette?) last (please)

Mitch: 1st (you know this guy?) last (You, get up now!)

Pete: 1st (they’ve got a kid for Christ’s sake) last (it’s a sha-)

Alisha: 1st (just messing with my knife) last (I’ll find you)

Martinez: 1st (say the word) last (yeah and then-)

Hershel: 1st (was he bit?) last (it could work, you know it could) 🥺

The Governor: 1st (save your ammo for when you need it) last (liar)

Abraham: 1st (well look at this) last (?)

Eugene: 1st (it’s classified) last (?)

Rosita: 1st (don’t do this Abraham) last (?)

Joe: 1st (get your asses down here!) last (that’ll be fun, won’t it-)

Gareth: 1st (I’ll guess Alberts on perimeter watch) last (?)

Alex: 1st (did they deserve it?) last (Gareth?)

Finaly we’re done with season 4. Sadly a certain person *cough, cough* Shane *cough, cough* won’t leave us alone on the leader board, but I doubt he’ll be here for much longer. Until next time!

[18catsreading]

Gorgug: you'll never be half the vote my van is

Fig: [laughing] write that one down it'll be good for our next album

[littlepenguin21]

My notes/complaints/hope? on the end of SPN

(This was written the night of November 19th) My list of grievances against the last episode of Supernatural 1. There is absolutely no way on Jack's green earth Sam didn't look for Dean. When Sam got a dog and didn't look for him, Dean was so angry and sad that I refuse to believe Sam wouldn't at least try to bring him back, especially since Sam had no way of knowing a)where Dean went (Dean was even a little surprised to see he was in Heaven), b)about Heaven's reform, or c)whether that was what Dean truly wanted (he's lied before, remember?) It almost makes Sam look like a bad guy who just doesn't care about his brother as much his brother cares about him. I will acknowledge Dean's final wish was to not be brought back, but I still think Sam would've like investigated the afterlives to see where Dean ended up.

2. Cas's sacrifice was completely meaningless. Cas was always happy to bleed for the Winchesters, but his final time hit the hardest because he wanted Dean to lived so much that he admitted to happiness and caused his own death to save Dean. And then Dean dies. Like three weeks later.

3. Dean, the greatest hunter in the world, the man who killed Hitler gets impaled on a piece of metal and thinks, "yeah, this is how I wanna go out." There's no way that that's an outcome that Dean would've accepted so easily. Being killed in a vampire's nest that they already half wiped out. He could've prayed to Jack, or taken his chances getting to a hospital. His death had no purpose, other than to forced Sam to move on without Dean.

4. Why didn't Jack bring Dean back? I get that he wants to be hands-off, but he brought Cas back, and if I know anything about Cas, he wouldn't want Dean dead/separated from Sam. I'm going to choose to believe that Cas, Jack, and Dean sat down together and discussed the pros and cons of bringing Dean back.

5. The dog died. We didn't see it happen, but it did.

6. Only Bobby is seen. If they're in Heaven, and almost everyone (I see you Kevin, living your best afterlife) Dean knew and loved is there, why doesn't he go see them? All the people he couldn't save or that he couldn't say goodbye to, and he just leaves it at that? What about Ellen and Jo, Dean? You're not even going to check on them? Pamela? Jess? No one?

7. Dean rides alone in the car. Even though his best friend, his son (Jack, not Ben or someone), his mom, his other friends, and both his dads are in Heaven (and closeby), why doesn't he take any of them along for the ride? Sam gets to raise a family, but Dean can't have a road trip buddy? Even if the Covid restrictions and stuff didn't allow Misha or Alex or another guest to come back on set, you'd think they could've put a body double for Cas (or whoever) in the seat for a couple of minutes. It just makes Dean's life seem less important than Sam's because Dean has to wait for Sammy, while Sam's free to hang out with others and socialize. Even if time works differently in Heaven or something (like 40 years on earth was only 2 minutes in Heaven), Dean could've found somebody to tag along instead of just being a loner.

8. Sam's wife isn't established to be Eileen. If Sam had like signed to her in ASL or something, or we could've had some clue as to her identity, that would have been wonderful. Instead, she was just a nameless means to an end (getting Dean II).

9. The beginning of the ep establishes that there are very few monster cases. So, does that mean Sam gave up hunting? Apparently not because his son has an anti-possession sigil tattooed on his arm (even though with Rowena in charge, those tattoos are super unnecessary). Sam hunting could've been another moment that would've been okay to see.

10. The ep had a noticeable lack of inside jokes. Normally tuning into a series finale means you're going to hear callbacks to other episodes and be able to reminisce on the past. Besides the pie part, I don't think there was much of that. No jerk, no bitch. Did Bobby even say Idjit?!?!

11. For an episode that supposedly was written to resolve their family arc, the boys were barely together, and their created family was almost nonexistent (other than Bobby and his mentioning of Cas and Jack).

12. The show forced family to end with blood. Dean drove off to wait for his biological brother, while leaving Bobby (and apparently Cas) behind. Sam, on the other hand, marries, has a kid, and lives a full life, but too doesn't have his family network outside of his nuclear family. There are many living friends that Sam has that we don't see him visit because all the time is spent on his raising of his son so that his death can parallel Dean's (someone the care about tells them it's ok).

13. Jared doesn't really look old.

14. During his death, Dean wouldn’t have wanted to Sam to be left alone. They were in a vamp’s nest, and Dean just decides that he’s gonna allow himself to die with no guarantee that Sammy is safe. There’s no way Dean would do this.

15. Gay love didn't pierce through the veil of death and save the day. Instead, Dean died and we all got was a lousy existential crisis. DISCLAIMER: I'm only writing about what happened in the ep, not what could have happened. Like, Sam could've had dinner with Jody and the girls every weekend and Dean could've made out with Cas offscreen, and I would be non the wiser. I'm going off of what I saw and heard in the episode. This was written on the 20th 15. Dean died young.

16. The forehead thing was a little weird, ngl

17. Sam didn’t even try to pray when Dean was dying. Did he believe that Jack just wouldn’t listen? His dad was dying, there’s no way he would’ve left him to die. And Sam would’ve tried anything. Why did he think their (Cas, Dean, and Sam’s) son wouldn’t want to help?

18. Sam burned Dean’s body by himself. No friends.

19. Chuck got to live his life, while Dean didn’t.

Pros, I guess? 1. Sam does get a dog.

2. Dean really wasn't okay. He wasn’t coping well with Cas’s death and Jack’s leaving. That’s the only explanation for why he’d be willing to die. He was depressed, or at least hopeless.

3. They're all together at the end, even thought it isn't shown. And by all, I mean all: Jack, Cas, Bobby, Rufus, hopefully Ellen and Jo...

4. Dean likes Kansas

5. Dean finally got a kid named after him.

6. The Hunter Corp. Sam and Dean are somewhere, living their best lives.

7. The movie is possibly happening in 5 years

[inafternoonair]

Top 51 albums of 2020

I listened to a lot of albums this year.

[Previously: 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011]

51. Thurston Moore -- By The Fire 50. Kacy Hill -- Is It Selfish If We Talk About Me Again 49. Machine Gun Kelly -- Tickets To My Downfall 48. Cloud Nothings -- Assorted Bandcamp EPs 47. Sea Wolf -- Through A Dark Wood 46. Christine and the Queens -- La Vita Nuova

45. Beach Bunny -- Honeymoon 44. Grimes -- Miss Anthropocene 43. Bullion -- We Had A Good Time 42. Ratboys -- Printer’s Devil 41. Trace Mountains -- Lost in the Country

40. Katie Dey -- Mydata 39. Hotboii -- Kut Da Fan On 38. Magdalena Bay -- A Little Rhythm and a Wicked Feeling 37. Frass Green -- Death of Pop 36. I’m Glad It’s You -- Every Sun, Every Moon

35. Woods -- Strange To Explain 34. Carly Rae Jepsen -- Dedicated Side B 33. Porches -- Ricky Music 32. Widowspeak -- Plum 31. Soccer Mommy -- Color Theory

30. The Goodbye Party -- Beautiful Motors 29. Cloud Nothings -- The Black Hole Understands 28. Yves Tumor -- Heaven to a Tortured Mind 27. Washed Out -- Purple Noon 26. Selena Gomez -- Rare

25. The Beths -- Jump Rope Gazers 24. HAIM -- Women In Music Pt. III 23. Mary Lattimore -- Silver Ladders 22. Khotin -- Finds You Well 21. Bartees Strange -- Live Forever

20. Slow Pulp -- Moveys 19. Caribou -- Suddenly 18. Megan Thee Stallion -- Good News 17. Night Shop -- The Fountain 16. Double Grave -- Goodbye, Nowhere!

15. Tycho -- Simulcast 14. Cave People -- Looking 13. Jam City -- Pillowland 12. Mac Miller -- Circles 11. Charmer -- ivy

10. Dogleg -- Melee 9. The 1975 -- Notes On A Conditional Form 8. Andrew Cedermark -- Fort/da 7. Waxahatchee -- Saint Cloud 6. No Age -- Goons Be Gone

5. Lil Uzi Vert -- Eternal Atake 4. Kevin Morby -- Sundowner 3. Real Estate -- The Main Thing 2. Kevin Krauter -- Full Hand 1. Charli XCX -- how i’m feeling now

[read more about it here]

[abubblingcandle]

NADDPOD Last Lines

Emily mentioned a compilation of all the last lines before “And that’s where we end our session” and so I thought why not! 

Spoilers of course if you are not up to date 

Ep 1 - Oh my god there's so many knots, it's so knotty

Ep 2 - Moonshine immediately goes over and starts skinning some of the scales off so she can make a cute bandana

Ep 3 - And is that the Bullywug royalty? 

Ep 4 - And Moonshine dives in Baywatch style

Ep 5 - You guys get off into the swamp with the Green Teens

Ep 6 - And as you say that, it cracks

Ep 7 - I bend this guy over and knee him in the face

Ep 8 - BT: Guys I think the Jamboreen's cancelled. HS: Its definitely cancelled

Ep 9 - You see he's already working on something else, just reading a book and ignoring you

Ep 10 - Skulus we hardly knew ye 

Ep 11 - Skunkbug waves goodbye to you guys and you ride out of town as this giant building explodes and the bubble knights rush to it but you guys use the cover of night to escape and leave the city

Ep 12 - As Tonathon is being thrown like a baby you guys kinda comfort mutilated and depressed Beverly 

Ep 13 - I drop the three coffees I am holding

Ep 14 - That's your mum kid

Ep 15 - You can also see torchlight coming from the castle and torches all around the ruins

Ep 16 - I jump in and buckle myself in infront of his lap

Ep 17 - DM: I spared you Elias. HS: Oo you son of a bitch

Ep 18 - Like two rival gangs you guys stare each other down

Ep 19 - He gives you the crick water and you guys share a drink

Ep 20 - Hardwon takes the wheel as you guys fly off, I would say into the night but it is daytime, you fly off into the day

Ep 21 - In stark contrast to the west, where something clearly ain't right 

Ep 22 - I am Elias Stormborn, aka Hardwon Surefoot, bastard of the mountain, pride of the dwarfanage, the heart of Irondeep and I need your help

Ep 23 - But you see Cobb held in this mini tornado which then hovers over the open sky

Ep 24 - You guys stand toe to toe, sizzling water underneath you

Ep 25 - You got that right... I spore her real quick

Ep 26 - Cobb lead it on a chase but bring it back here 

Ep 27 - I back up, I'm out

Ep 28 - Welcome home baby 

Ep 29 - Beverly fires up the grill, there's a big celebration and plenty of brown to go around 

Ep 30 - Later Jarn. Keep it sleezy

Ep 31 - Apple fucking drags all of these unconscious adventurers into bed 

Ep 32 - DM: No it didn't I assumed she had it. MC: Oh right, sweet

Ep 33 - If you could just send that in the mail later? 

Ep 34 - As you make your way through the strange, cold foreign city towards keep Vinril to attempt to infiltrate the wedding welcome party and find Gemma Bronzebeard

Ep 35 - She did kiss me 

Ep 36 - You see this kid with this skull mask and this giant hooked sword comes out and takes Beverly and him and all of these skeleton kids head into the chapel

Ep 37 - Hey I'd cry if I looked like that too 

Ep 38 - And then there will be chaos and we will bring order

Ep 39 - I'm gonna need to borrow your ship

Ep 40 - Brother Hirog, our leader, inspired us. He has the fire touch and he will lead us to greatness 

Ep 41 - The band of boobs heads off again into the tundra towards the valley of the frigid death

Ep 42 - Anyone else like kinda flattered by being called sweet meat so much? 

Ep 43 - I have the featherfall ring, if I hold hands with people does that help a little bit? 

Ep 44 - Dragon you say? Come again? 

Ep 45 - Let's go kill some chosen

Ep 46 - DM: Hardwon Surefoot is shrinking. MC: I'm not gonna tell him. BT: I tug on the rope. 

Ep 47 - She takes her axe and she starts sharpening her rapier

Ep 48 - I pull down my pants and throw a javelin at him 

Ep 49 - And the mastlift starts travelling to the gnome section of Freespire

Ep 50 - But on the wind you catch the faintest hint of baby's breath and lavender 

Ep 51 - You guys begin descending the steps towards the old Court, towards Beverly Snr, Queen Cirilla and angels? 

Ep 52 - Yo, my bag brother way to fucking go! 

Ep 53 - You jacknife through and Beverly Snr follows

Ep 54 - And that's kind of my fault, I pat Galad's head

Ep 55 - You guys see smoke and hear activity in the distance like there is a settlement, or a town, or perhaps a court

Ep 56 - Really wish I brought a jacket

Ep 57 - Ah shit we tackle him

Ep 58 - And Beverly cannonballs into the plane of shadows 

Ep 59 - Where'd the bullet come from? I trace the trajectory

Ep 60 - Can I borrow this pinstripe vest? 

Ep 61 - With that you guys all begin heading towards Our Lady of Penance to talk to the revanants, the Knights of Penance

Ep 62 - You don't have long and you have a yapping bear cub possum Hardwon and your hands

Ep 63 - I'm so excited to finally have guests! 

Ep 64 - *sigh* It's good to come home

Ep 65 - He pulls you into the heavenly abyss

Ep 66 - DM: Suddenly a giant tentacle shoots up over the ship and a kraken emerges from below the boat. BT: They sold us a lemon! 

Ep 67 - You guys all take off towards Ember Heaven and Galad Rosel

Ep 68 - You see a lightning bolt come out of the sky and a few second later, thunder

Ep 69 - She brings you guys all in for a big group hug

Ep 70 - I have to look away so the tears don't ruin the pages

Ep 71 - You see sixteen teams left

Ep 72 - That's the symbol of the chosen

Ep 73 - You hear Akarot and his minions walking upstairs, waiting for you guarding the throne 

Ep 74 - You look out at the crowd, high elves and crick elves celebrating together and your father looking on at you proudly 

Ep 75 - Normally a two handed weapon, she easily wields one in each hand

Ep 76 - Moonshine, in this moment as she goes into the portal her eyes look clear

Ep 77 - On the fence, misspelled, is a sign that says Fort Rust 

Ep 78 - I'll keep my hair up just in case

Ep 79 - Who the hell was that? 

Ep 80 - You see he draws his sword, the same sword he used that day

Ep 81 - I don't think you are going to like this musk very much

[jq37]

The Report Card – Fantasy High Sophomore Year Ep 16

Into the Woods

We rejoin our Bad Kids (minus Riz, who we’ll get to in a bit) who are still on the Goldenrod while chaos happens around them. Fig adds to the chaos by successfully (with a 30!) pretending to be one of Goldenhoard’s minions to no real plot significant effect. I just feel the need to mention every time Fig rolls a 30+. The kids get Gilear out of his hiding place--a sarcophagus--right before it’s launched out as ammo. His safety proves short-lived however because, when Ayda pings that Riz is no longer on the same plane as them, Fabian recklessly sails the Goldenrod directly into Riz’s last known location, instantly killing both himself and Gilear. So he’s for sure back to his old self. 

Kristen brings them back up and passes some heals out generally while she’s at it. Meanwhile, with a Nat 20, Adaine fully Oracles out and knows exactly where Riz was being held. There, they find a smear of blood (which they taste???? even though they know the disease is communicable by blood???) and Riz’s briefcase, but no body. Plus Tracker smells Celestial energy and Ayda senses conjuration magic. But all that subtle sleuthing is made pointless by Kristen getting a Nat 20 (of course) to just stumble into the next room and find a room full of footage of exactly what happened. Wild. 

Bill can’t get them to where Riz is. The best he can do is get them to the Astral Plane. Fig remembers to check on the stuff she stole from Vraz. Baby just got a to-do list but Fig conveniently grabbed a scroll which will create a portal back to Arborly. Then, they cast Zone of Truth on Goldenhoard who gives them this information before they get to the Astral Plane:

Arianwyn was never working with him.

He repeats what we already knew about the NK giving him a coin as part of them working together in the past. He adds that his money being spent would mean it would come back to him 5 fold and also increase the spread of the NK’s power. 

He thinks the NK is a creep and says he never talks and only appears in weird dreams. At Fig’s prompting, he says he does look a lot like the skeletal figure in Adaine’s Scry on the Shadowcat. He also says he never dealt directly with the Shadowcat and can’t see her in the photo. However, the Shadowcat did put him in touch with Aelwen. 

The NK had more followers in Elmville but Goldenhoard doesn’t know who else was because he refused to join the Shadowcat network, which was a requirement. (I wonder if they include whoever the couple in Sandra-Lnn’s past was)

He let the NK have Sylvere when he was taking over the world because he didn’t care about it. 

Meanwhile, our little Angel Riz is en route to heaven with his dad who is happy-shocked to see him. Pok calls in that he’s coming in with a “good aligned, possible CI,” and it’s immediately clear based on the reaction of the person on the other side of the call that Pok talks about Riz all the time in glowing terms. They arrive in heaven and Riz sees that he has a little chair set up at a copy of his grave so he can sit and listen when Riz and Sklonda come and talk to him. Ally is almost crying. Lou is almost crying. I’m almost crying. 

Heaven--or at least this version of heaven--is set up like an office but outside. I’m picturing the classic Window’s XP background. We learn that Pok is a part of a special force called the Lower Planar Recon Task Force. Basically, it’s full of traditionally evil aligned races (like goblins and gnolls) who are perfect for infiltrating places like Hell. We also see that Pok has a plaque for getting his death avenged by his son.

Anyway, we see where Riz gets his attitude from when Pok kicks puts his gameface on (“Clues first, friends later.”) and has an extended puzzle solving scene with Riz (sprinkled with some father/son stuff). Highlights:

Heaven actually didn’t know about the Kalina=Disease thing. Riz and the gang cracked that for them. Kalina doesn’t ping a Detect Good/Evil but Pok thinks she would ping a Detect Poison/Disease.

He started seeing Kalina about 22 years ago after a mission with the Third Ring (see below). No, he didn’t cheat on Sklonda. If it happened via sexual contact, it would have been pre-meeting her.  

Kalina can’t pick things up but she can create the sensation of weight and substance by hijacking your nervous system. So, to his knowledge at the time, Pok had touched her.

He was introduced to Kalina by someone he already knew and trusted from the Third Ring (Falinel government agency). 

Kalina doesn’t have godly intelligence or omniscience. The way she blew her cover was accidentally mentioning seeing something firsthand she would have had no way of seeing (a river being in a certain place). He didn’t call her out then but he clocked it and started looking into her extra-governmentally.

Kalina got Sklonda her job in Elmville--which directly put Pok in the path of Goldenhoard, who ate him. He also strongly suspects that he got Pok’s citizenship revoked--an action that allowed Goldenhoard to harm him.

Pok thinks that, despite the Bad Kids’ focus on the sex aspect of the Shadowcat plague, it’s a lot more general than that (see eg: the life transference spell moving it from Sandra-Lynn to Tracker). 

Father/Son Interlude #1: Riz mentions that all of his friends are super horny all the time and he’s not about that. Pok says that he was a super late bloomer so it’s fine if he’s not into that now or if he’s not into it period--though he selfishly does want grandkids. 

Father/Son Interlude #2: Pok also shares a story about his own relationship with his superficially distant but actually loving 1st gen immigrant dad the twin theses of which are “People show love in different ways,” and “Work is an act of love,” a sentiment that workaholic Riz appreciates. 

Most demons can see Kalina. 

Pok was in hell undercover to try and figure out how devils had been successful in keeping Kalina at bay. He showed up in the Bottomless Pit but he was trapped there for a while--presumably because Gorthalax was in a gem at that time (also Riz mentions for the first time that Sklonda is dating him which he takes OK). 

Pok has a new body so Kalina can’t tap into it. Kalina must have learned where Pok was because Sklonda infected Gorthalax once they started dating and she got the info from him. And since Kalina spurred him to come rescue Pok than she probably wanted him to blow his cover. 

Kalina avoided having her picture taken. Once it was taken, she wasn’t able to do certain things she was able to before.

Pok says that Riz probably won’t be able to visit him again without pretty powerful magic, but Riz isn’t too concerned because he has some pretty powerful friends. And, with that, Pok offers to hire Riz as a consultant for heaven which, you can imagine, he is very here for. He takes his son to get suited up. 

Back with the other Bad Kids, they look at the assorted things Bill has looted and find some Holy Water, which they pocket, and a birthday present for Fig, which she is pretty easily convinced to open early. It’s a sick new bass which doubles as a literal axe (OK, not an axe, it has serrated edges, I just like the idea of an axe-axe) and can shatter rubies. They then say bye to Bill and get back to Arborly (with the Hangman who is still knocked out, but not destroyed like before).

The group collectively decides to leave Gilear in Arborly for both his safety and the safety of Kristen’s high level spell slots. Adaine takes some of his blood so she can Scry on him if necessary. Sandra-Lynn and Gilear exercise their parental rights to make their daughter feel awkward about her love interest. Speaking of said love interest, we learn what Ayda was working on in secret: a spell for Adaine! It’s called Adaine’s Furious Fists and it essentially lets her magic punch people. Adaine can punch people now! I mean, she’s been doing it since S1 but now she can do it effectually! Love that for her!      

Back to Riz. He’s in with an angel called Isosceles (think quasi-eldritch horror Biblical angel, not Halloween costume angel) who is like the Q of the squad. Riz gets hooked up with some new gear:

Trick bullets (like how Green Arrow has trick arrows)

A grappling gun attachment for his gun

Arcadian Watch: Equipped w/ a saw, laser (1d4 radiant dmg) and lockpick 

Seraphim Vest: Basically a wingsuit (temp fly speed of 40 but only laterally and down, not up)

Gregorian Tie: Equipped with a spy camera 

Once he’s suited up, Pok calls up a door that will get Riz back to the moment in time it was called. But, since they’re in no rush now, he asks Riz to take a walk with him and fill him in on some of the boring, mundane, unimportant stuff he missed from RIz’s childhood. It’s very sweet.

Afterwards, Riz pops back up in Arborly and everyone is super happy to see him. Riz almost blurts out what he learned about his dad but wisely moves the conversation to the Van where he tells them everything except the personal family stuff. Based on the info from Riz, Adaine thinks that Kalina was probably introduced into eleven society a couple hundred years ago by Landrynn Lear (fake cleric spreading the Kalina virus they learned about a few eps ago) so it’s not super weird Aelwen and Arianwyn would have been working with her. It’s less weird than Pok working than them. 

Kristen latches onto the part about the picture being taken of her taking away some of her power and they all do checks to puzzle that out. Adaine (with Arcana) realizes that Kalina has to maintain herself in all these people all the time and, if a picture is taken of her--has to make it so that she can be seen by all of those people at all times which is a permanent spell effect which is-as we learned earlier this season--very hard to pull off. Her not being able to do certain things once the pic was taken was probably just her losing power from the strain of this extra magical effect (my takeaway: don’t let her destroy that photo--or, use it as a bargaining chip). Kristen (with Religion) thinks the 4 transubstantiations (familiar to plague and spellbook to curse and so on) are curses which overlap and create synergy (my takeaway: take them out one by one and watch them exponentially drop off in effectiveness). Gorgug (with a Tinkerer’s check) surmises that the way to take the most pics of Kalina and weaken her would be to take a video of her and broadcast it to as many people as possible.    

Gorgug also has another thought: He wants to know if them having and spending their cursed money is actively endangering him. At the prospect, he decides to give all of his money away to the Tinkerer’s Hall (without telling them it’s dragon money, which means the curse won’t get passed on). Kristen, Fig, and Riz follow suit, much to Fabian’s shock and horror. Adaine opts to keep her money since she has no caring family to fall back on. 

They also--I’m just gonna bluntly say this insane thing that Ally conceived of--have another shrimp party which they livestream in hopes that it will go viral, gain a following, and then when they have video of Kalina, they can get lots of people to watch it. And you know what the craziest part is? It’s not a bad plan. It’s c r a z y, but not illogical. To quote Mr. Lee Mulligan, “The charity shrimp party goes super viral.” Amazing. 

The next day, Adaine brings back Boggy (who poofed in the last fight) as an owl so he’ll be a little safer while in Sylvere. Don’t worry, he’s still spherical as ever. The Hangman (now healed) stays behind, as does the Van--but they do take it actual gem out and take it with them. Baby is there and does come with them. Ayda and GaF also come at Fig’s request.

Fig is able to open a passage into Sylvere and they can instantly feel the ambient badness. They decide to start looking for the three things they need to make the Kalina Vaccine: Starmoth chrysalis, Herrowgray nectar, and Lundgreen pollen. The jocks and Boggy go for the chrysalis, Sandra-Lynn, Fig, Adaine, and Ayda go for the nectar, while Kristen, Riz, and Tracker look for the pollen.

The boys don’t find anything but, suddenly, there’s an image of a super creepy witch’s cottage in the gem, and Zathriel (the Celestial inside) bugs out before the gem goes dark. And Ragh is suddenly gone.   

In her group, Sandra-Lynn flies off on Baxter in search of the nectar but the flapping noises that should be happening suddenly stop. Ayda offers to fly after her but then also becomes distressed, asking why they’re in a house (the others can’t see it) before also vanishing.  

Kristen, Riz, and Tracker are looking around stagnant water for the pollen and they see Kalina’s reflection in the water. Kristen starts to film her on her crystal. Kalina (who they can all see at the same time for once) says that in Sylvere, nightmares are real, something demonstrated when Tracker fully wolfs out without the presence of an actual full moon. Kristen tries to Dimension Door out but they're too far in. They try to subdue her but Trcker vanishes into moths (?). Kalina says that Tracker is chasing down what she thinks is Kristen to kill her (which would make sense as being her nightmare). She says that she said she’d kill them if they got into the forest and here they are. She does a little damage to Riz to underline the statement and Riz starts recording her secretly. Kalina is doing small bits of damage (like 1-4 I think) but it’s enough that it will kill them before they have the chance to make tinctures. 

The jocks find the chrysalis and then look for the others. Fig tries to use Ada’s feather to find her but, like the sapphire, it’s dead. Through Boggy, Adaine can see the jocks are flipping out and find the nectar and go find them.

Kristen casts Greater Restoration of Riz and tells him to find Tracker. The attacks stop on Riz and double on Kristen. She’ll be dead before she can employ any kind of healing mojo than can help significantly and the other healer is MIA. Everyone is running to find each other and then they suddenly hear, emanating from every corner of the forest creepy laughter and they all see a crowned skull. Concerning! 

Detention

Fabian for Crashing the Goldenrod

This was almost like the ribbon dancing sequence except Kristen had something to potentially gain from that and this was an absolutely insane course of action for no particular reason. 

Honor Roll

Kristen for Using Her One Greater Restoration on Riz

What a quintessential healer move. Having one heal and giving it away to your party member. Listen, she may have rejected Helio, but he picked her for a reason. Girl is a BAMF.  

 Random Thoughts

“You can't make these things up. You can. We did.”

Actual Crazy Person Bill Seacaseter: I had to kill Gilear as a matter of course but I love Gilear!

Bill tells Gilear to kill any man who looks askance at Hilariel. Fig (mirroring a comment to Bill from last season) questions what he should do if any woman looks at her. An enthusiastic, “Dealer’s choice!” is the answer.  

"If you die in hell do you die in real life?"

Is the message of this season just “Vaccinate your kids”?

Fabian offers to threaten someone who’s bullying Gilear. You know what that is? Growth.

Bill brought the Bad Kids to the Astral Plane but they wanted to get back to Arborly ASAP. I wonder if there was something Brennan expected them to do there and they didn’t.

Fig ripping the scroll was wild but, honestly, I might have thought that was how it worked too. It’s for sure a thing sometimes. But, in a similar vein, very concerned Fig is going to accidentally shatter Gorthalax’s gem prematurely with that bass. Feel like she’s not 100% clear on how that works.   

“I don’t have a crush one anyone. I just want to be rich.”

Riz took over from Adaine this episode in unpacking my high school experiences, lemme tell you.

Wondering where Baron fits into all this. It seems like the kind of effect that Sylvere would be able to produce but he wasn’t in Sylvere when that happened and I feel like that wouldn’t be Riz’s nightmare (unless it represented anxiety about his not dating or s/t like that). What was that about? Who exactly caused it and with what ability? Is that just a standard demon power?

Not important but last week when Brennan said a halo formed around Pok he distinctly motioned around his head and not over his head so I felt happy to have interpreted that correctly when he said this ep that the halo was one of those you see in old pics of like the Madonna and Child and not a modern-traditional angel halo.

The idea of a lower plane task force is extremely dope from a world building perspective. Like, that makes total sense. 

“Don’t even talk to me until my death’s avenged.” I knew that was going to be a real mug as soon as it was said. 

The stuff with Pok and Riz was so unbelievably sweet. Him having a chair set up to listen to his family talk at his grave? Him clearly being the proudest dad and talking about Riz all the time? Him wanting to just talk about unimportant stuff with Riz because it’s his important stuff. Ugh, my entire heart. And Riz immediately reverting to full, “My dad could beat up your dad,” mode. I love them so much.  

I feel like Siobhan took coming up with a spell for Ayda as an actual out of game homework assignment which she should because Brennan *will* let her do it and then Ayda will save the party with it. That’s how D&D works baby I don’t make the rules. Hit me up with your best ideas.

Adaine actually asked Gilear for some of his hair in order to Scry on him and he’s the one who offered blood instead because he couldn’t spare any more hair. Feel like there’s gotta be a spell for that

Siobhan just casually says the phrase, “Mycelium web,” once again just being Adaine.  

Couldn’t Kalina just say, “Screw it,” and stop showing up in pictures if the strain gets too much? Like, if your cover is blown, it’s blown. Or is it set up in such a way that it’s gonna screw her before she has the chance to turn it off?

It’s funny that Zac is playing such a low Int character because he’s actually figured out a lot of stuff this season and he’s the one who remembered that dragon madness won’t get passed on if the person who gets the money has no knowledge that it’s dragon money. I wonder if we’ll get to see him play a non-Himbo next season.

Adaine, predictably, has no social media presence. Speaking of social media, I love the naming convention of just sticking the word “fantasy” in front of things like Twitter and Google--as in, “You guys are all over Fantasy Twitter.” Like, why even complicate things? You know what this is. 

Goodbye card for Gilear: Outside--Gilear I need you/Inside--to get me a cortado.

I had a stray thought that Riz could possibly use the door to come back after having done angel training for like a month but (1) that’s a little meta-gamey and (2) they were making an exception for him to be there that short time as it was. Anything else probably would have been pushing it. 

Is Pok’s heaven affiliated with any deity or is it just where all the good workaholic secret agents go? To me, it seems like it liaises with all the other heavens more than being it’s own main heaven, you know?

Oh man. Ayda disappearing and Fig clutching her powerful feather, begging her to come back after indirectly putting her the situation she’s currently in? Heartbreaking dude. 

I wonder why the people who disappeared disappeared beyond just getting rid of the NPCs.

Edit: Forgot to mention the part where Kristen rolled a -1 with her trash Dex so Ayda had to give her a portent roll to not instantly blow everything. 

The Bad Kids are in a very precarious position right now. If I trusted Kalina to be someone of her word, I might try to bargain with her--destroy the picture in return for letting us leave. From a DM standpoint, I think it’s probably a good time for an Abernant Ex-Machina. They’re in the forest too as far as we know and they gotta come back into the story somehow. This could be the time. 

Everyone going off about how Riz is a little angel and he could have told them if he was a Celestial and how much he loves Gilear while he’s not in the scene and can’t say anything is peak D&D. 

Bill Seacaster saying a bunch of insane nonsense and then Adaine being like, “Nice seeing you Mr. Seacaster,” is also peak D&D. 

This episode, Adaine, Fig*, Kristen and Brennan (as Sandra-Lynn) each rolled a Nat 20. Adaine and FIg each rolled one Nat 1 that was canceled by disadvantage and Riz rolled one Nat 1 that stuck. 

*I actually am not 100% Fig rolled at Nat 20. Kristen did for sure but I don’t have a Tally for her so I might have flipped those by accident.  If you happen to know for some weird reason, lemme know.