#going for sort of a night vale vibe mostly

[valena-nedela]

Someone shared this AI generated yearbook in a Discord and ever since it's lived in my head and I started coming up with lore for the weird AI children.

Aiden in the dark green is the true Aiden. Aiden in the light green is his flawed clone, which came out too symmetrical. Although everyone who meets False Aiden experiences feelings of revulsion at his subtle inhumanity, all agree he's still a more pleasant child than True Aiden.

There were at one point many more Bortses in the class, but Grey Shirt Borts has been gradually consuming all the others. Red Shirt Borts is the last one standing but he knows his time will come.

Hunby knows.

Jort is Red Shirt Borts's brother. He looks like he's on the verge of tears because he noticed Grey Shirt Borts did not pack a lunch today, and he knows that means this is the day he goes home alone.

Chunus and Jorch are both actually too young to grow their own beards. The striking similarity in their facial hair is because both are hosts to the same species of hirsute symbiotes.

As Hobem grows, his neck is gradually being replaced by even more chin. No one knows what he is becoming, but he seems happy about it so they try not to worry.

Furus has seen where this all leads. Her smile is false. More false than any of the other students. She knows what they should all fear, but also knows there is no hope of escape. There is no light in her eyes anymore.

Hogby is not her real name. She adopted it to blend in. She doesn't know how she got here, or what the others will do if they realize she doesn't belong.

[fairy-verse]

Fairyverse is a world where I imagine that background music is always playing; ever so softly, that you can hardly hear it. This is because I personally must listen to music whenever I write, and that music needs to be cherry-picked to fit the theme of whatever story/scene/character I’m currently engaged in.

Now, there are a few tracks I will listen to when I write general information regarding Fairyverse (I have a whole playlist but there are a few musical scores I go back to all the time), and I thought I might share them with you all, so that you may hear the general theme/vibe I’m going for.

I think I will also add the tracks I have (sort of) given to some of my characters as their supposed theme songs in Fairyverse. Is it their actual theme? No, but it is the tracks that sort of just clicked in my mind as being “theirs”, so to speak.

Also, not all fairies will be listed here, mostly just because I haven’t found a specific track that clicks with them yet, but I’ll be sure to update this post when that day inevitably comes around.

˚ ༘ ⋆｡˚ ✧ ˚ ༘ ⋆｡˚

The music of Fairyverse

Harvest – ASKII

Like Leaves of a Lotus – Francis Wells

Windermere – Thomas J. Curran

Windswept – Dreyma

The Darkening – Dreyma

Forgotten Vale – Jeremy Soule + Dreyma’s version

Woods – ASKII

Sibelius: Lemminkäinen Suite, Op. 22: II. The Swan of Tuonela – Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra

Belshazzar’s Feast Suite, Op. 51: III. Night Music – Jean Sibelius, Slovak Philharmonic, Adrian Leaper

+ All the relaxing scores from Ori and the Blind Forest & Ori and the Will of the Wisps.

˚ ༘ ⋆｡˚ ✧ ˚ ༘ ⋆｡˚

Theme songs

Everdream (Remastered) – Dreyma (Lumin’s theme)

Starlight + Nocturnal – Dreyma (Nightmare’s themes)

Snow – ASKII + In Wonderment of Winter – Gareth Coker (Error’s themes)

Sea Storm – Dreyma (Dream’s theme)

Revelry – M.R. Miller + La petite fille de la mer – Vangelis (Ink’s themes)

The Weeping Ridge + Willow’s End – Gareth Coker (Horror’s themes)

The Windtorn Ruins – Gareth Coker + Northern Lights Alone – M.R. Miller + Orphanage – Hans Zimmer (Dust’s themes)

Light and Darkness – Dreyma (Uncorrupted Nightmare/Nightlight’s theme)

Reflets Du Soleil – Million Eyes (Valonia’s theme)

[bookgeekgrrl]

My media this week (25 Feb - 2 Mar 2024)

nancy is the superstar of this show. she's in it for 5 seconds, drops the best line, steals the scene

📚 STUFF I READ 📚

🥰 What I Used To Be (thepinupchemist) - 117K, stucky, omegaverse trauma recovery fic - a relatively light tone, mostly escapist fic focusing on the recovery, not dwelling overly much on trauma details, kidfic but I really dug it

😍 The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Amina al-Sirafi #1) (Shannon Chakraborty, author; Lameece Issaq & Amin El Gamal, narrator) - just gonna KJ Charle's review bc she's better with words than I'll ever be: "Good god, this was incredible fun. Absolutely cracking. A sort of take on Sinbad but with more historical accuracy (apart from the demons, marids, etc), with a middle-aged retired lady pirate getting the crew back together to take on a Frankish coloniser/sorceror/baddie. It's just fabulous exuberant fun." I cannot wait for more!

😊 The Werewolf Companion (MargaretKire) - traumatized derek hale, intriguing larger worldbuilding, hot, wet, messy sex that really leaned into the 'definitely not human' aspect of werewolf fucking without going full xeno. super enjoyable

🥰 My Man Jeeves (Jeeves #1) (PG Wodehouse) - our intro to Bertie & Jeeves 💖 [via Serial Reader app]

💖💖 +50K of shorter fic so shout out to these I really loved 💖💖

A Fine Cure from Fennel Seed (Lucius Parhelion (Parhelion)) - original work, 10K - absolutely delightful amuse-bouche of an original fic; short, hot, slapsticky hilarious, set in the '30s

📺 STUFF I WATCHED 📺

Matt Berry and Peter Capaldi read a FIERY letter exchange

Hot Ones - Quinta Brunson

D20: Adventuring Party - s3, e1-5

D20: The Unsleeping City: Chapter II - "The Mystery of the Haunted Subway" (s7, e3)

D20: The Unsleeping City: Chapter II - "We Need to Talk About Cody" (s7, e4)

D20: The Unsleeping City: Chapter II - "Trouble at the Tunnel" (s7, e5)

D20: The Unsleeping City: Chapter II - "Collaborators" (s7, e6)

D20: The Unsleeping City: Chapter II - "Parade of Peril" (s7, e7)

Ghosts (US) - s3, e3

Um, Actually - s9, e1

D20: Fantasy High: Junior Year - "Fracas at the Frostyfaire Folk Festival" (s21, e8)

D20: Adventuring Party - "I See Your Butt Plug and I Raise You a Fist" (s16, e8)

🎧 PODCASTS 🎧

Up First - The Sunday Story: The Diaspora's Troubled African Dream

How To! - How To Let Go of a Friendship

⭐ Switched on Pop - Beyoncé's Country

The Sporkful - Gary Gulman’s Ice Cream Joke Was A Cry For Help

Overinvested - West Side Story (2021)

Consider This from NPR - How The Underground Railroad Got Its Name

⭐ It's Been a Minute - Da'Vine Joy Randolph on 'The Holdovers' and becoming a matriarch

⭐ 99% Invisible #438 - The Real Book

⭐ Vibe Check - Be Forreal!

Pop Culture Happy Hour - Wendy Williams

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Jerry’s Hat Museum

Short Wave - Is It Possible To Feed To World Sustainably?

Decoder Ring - The Gen X Soda That Was Just "OK"

Off Menu - Ep 228: Ray Winstone

⭐ Twenty Thousand Hertz+ - All About That Bass

I Said No Gifts! - Oscar Montoya Disobeys Bridger

Throughline - The Right to An Attorney

The Assignment - Polyamory Is Having a Moment

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Black History in Plain Sight with Places Editors Jonathan and Michelle

Short Wave - Could Dune Really Exist? What Scientists Think of Our Favorite Sci-Fi Worlds

What Next: TBD - The Supreme Court Takes on Content Moderation

Dear Prudence - Am I a Bad Father If I Don't Want to Acknowledge My Kid Publicly? Help!

Welcome to Night Vale #243 - Lost and Found

You're Dead to Me - The Inca Empire

Today, Explained - It’s Shotime!

It's Been a Minute - Three ways to think about journalism layoffs; plus, Aaron Bushnell's self-immolation

Consider This from NPR - Are We Alone In The Universe?

99% Invisible - Roman Mars Describes Santa Fe As It Is

Under the Influence - Seeing is Believing: The Power of Demonstration Commercials - Part 2

🎶 MUSIC 🎶

CREDITS: Carole King

Chromeo Radio • Party

Pop Radio • 1990s

"Easy" [Commodores] radio

Steely Dan Mix • Focus

'90s Dance

Billy Joel Radio • 1980s

[inkofamethyst]

July 2, 2023

!!! Song of the Summer !!! On a Journey by Theresa Ambat (I’m in love with the vocals, I’m in love with the instrumentation, I’m in love with the production, I’m in love with the themes and lyrics, and that Night Vale episode’s weather (222 (which is my birthday which is kinda wild)) was so unbelievably timely for this mental space that I’m in right now (bonus: You Sure Are Something by Theresa Ambat has also been a favorite these past couple of weeks, got me kickin my legs like a romantic fr))

Rules for a good gelato place (as I learned from the best):

must not be piled high like a mountain in the tin!!!  that means there’s air in it.  the person must scoop downward into the gelato tin where the gelato is level or below the rim

several flavors available!!!  this probably means they know their stuff and aren’t just some random sweets place that decided one day to sell four or five flavors of gelato to attract a few more customers

non dairy in the fruit flavors!!!  fruit flavors should have no milk, just ask if they do and walk out if the person behind the counter admits to the crime

mostly muted colors!!! pistachio should be greenish-brown, not bright green.  brighter colors means they’ve likely added coloring artificially (though some of the fruit flavors like berry and mango tend to be brighter)

You know, I’ve never really put thought into decorating a room before.  Like, in both my childhood homes, I had purple walls but nothing hung on them.  I mean I have a dresser-vanity and some whiteboards, and I used to have a fishtank and for a short time some butterflies pasted around the place, but literally no decor of my own choosing.  When I moved into my dorm freshman year, I got some canvas prints from amazon and went with a gray/mint theme, and it was cute and pretty and looked like a lot of the other dorm pictures I’d seen online, but it wasn’t really me, if you know what I mean.  I remember a few months (a year?) into living in my apartment when I put up my red starfleet academy banner and stared at it for an hour in awe of how amazing it made me feel.  It remained my only piece of decoration for the entirety of the time I lived there.  I don’t want live like that in my next place, but I do want to expound on that energy.  

I have ~ideas~ both for common and personal spaces.  In common spaces, I know I want to have a fake bouquet on the table.  Maybe switching them out occasionally.  In my room, I think I want to go for a very specific theme: “starfleet ensign whose ship crashed on a presently uninhabited class-m planet several years prior and whose crew has been living off the land and uncovering the buried civilization that existed there eons before they were marooned” or “Explorer Vibes plus my star trek banner lol”.  I just.. Rachel Maksy said in a video once that she likes to tell stories with her outfits, and I sort of want to try that with my room.  I really love the “mosscore” and academic looks, with scientific drawings on aged paper, maps, vines and wisteria, knicknacks.. but I kind of want to make it my own, where if someone were to look closely they’d see all the treky things and it’d just be a little whimsical, like me.  I just want to make my room into a space that I love.

Oh my god wait it’s space academia is what it is.

Anyway I’ve started filling up a new pinterest board and while it’s a bit of a mess I’m kind of in love with it.  Now, as I’ve been going through this thought exercise, I get this pervasive thought about how there’s no permanent sense of self and for that reason it’s foolish to try to chase the whims of my own style which may change with the next passing fad.  But.  I look back on the years when I was obsessed with my galaxy jeans, and I’m happy for that Nina, even if she’s not me anymore.  And I think maintaining that outlook is better than expecting to shame my current self in the future for doing something that’s with or against the grain.  So as someone with not much money, I think I’m going to look into getting furniture pieces that are stylistically modular, at first, which I could add a covering to (or make a covering for?  hm..) to match my most recent whim.  Like getting a black saucer chair but crocheting a green granny square blanket to cover it, like otherworldly moss (to fit in with the ~bedroom story~).

So last thing, I’ve been on a bit of a mild movie binge these past few days.  Shazam 1 and 2 were alright, nothing too terribly innovative for the genre, but I really did love the diversity all around.  Airplane 1 and 2 were literally hilarious.  I don’t know what kind of genre it is exactly, but they made me laugh and giggle aloud so many times, I mean the wordplay and physical humor were golden.  Superman: Red Son was an unexpectedly good WB DC Animated Movie.  It interesting all the way through, Travis Willingham made an appearance, the animation style/character design was good... honestly it had the intrigue and impactful climax I was looking for but found lacking in the Injustice: Gods Among Us movie.  Now, I fully recognize that there was a pretty pro-American lean to it disguised under those pro-communism plot points, but I’ll let it slide.

Today I’m thankful for graduation gifts.

[itsybitsylemonsqueezy]

Really depends what kind of narrative you're interested in. There's actually a lot of options these days!

Welcome to Night Vale has a fun, weird vibe that occasionally dives into horror, the supernatural, political commentary, and heartfelt messages about the nature of humanity. Narrative arcs are very fulfilling and you'll know right away if it works for you or not. Much of the series is locked to Cecil, especially in the early seasons, we occasionally branch out to new narrators later in. But broadly, if you don't like Cecil, you won't like the show. Strongly recommend trying the first episode and if it's not hitting you right, try the next thing.

There's a lot of horror lovers out there who will sing the praises of The Magnus Archives. While it's a bit of a gateway drug to horror, it's not my favorite tbh. So I'm going to make a pitch for Old Gods of Appalachia. If you're from the United States, I think this podcast is a must listen. If you're not from the US, I think it's still great, you just may not enjoy it as much. The Old Gods of Appalachia is horror, yes, but it's also fairy tale and myth, it's historical fiction, it's an examination of some of the most tragic and ugly roots of US culture. There are some pretty rough descriptions here, a lot of nasty looking monsters and violence, I won't lie. But it has powerful, fulfilling narrative arcs and if you're at all interested in magic, there's a pretty compelling magic system here. I have a personal fascination with some of these foundational stories, reworked in this eldritch setting. I think it's doing great work, but some of the bloodier chapters are not for everyone, that must be admitted. I'd try the first season to see if it works for you. The first couple of episodes set up a pitched overplot that surfaces from time to time as more linear plots take up season arcs. I do recommend, even if horror is not typically your bag.

Also gotta give a shout out to Malevolent, if you're a horror lover. Malevolent is loosely based on The King in Yellow by R. W. Chambers, but so much more than that. I can't say very much without spoiling, but if you like your stories dark and twisted, look no further. Also, it's voiced almost exclusively by one guy, did I mention that? Harlan Guthrie is a powerhouse if you want to see some excellent voice acting.

Moving on to lighter fare, the Amelia Project has recently become a love of mine. Boisterous, delightful, funny, it's about a death-faking company whose clients will never be as bizarre as the staff. It's really funny, especially in the first few seasons which are mostly self-contained episodes, sort monster of the week except it's a client with a dumb problem that our eccentric Interviewer must solve. There's cocoa, champagne, and a much longer story than you probably expect. There's eventually a turn as world governments begin to investigate our little gang of criminals and our stories, while still about death-faking, become ever more about the people who perform these services. There's a lot of meditation on what it means to die, what it means to live. I'd say if you like parts of Doctor Who, up to you what that means, or if Night Vale was working for you, then this will probably be your jam. Much like with Night Vale, try the first episode and you'll probably know right away whether this works for you or not. Oh, and for reference, the deaths are never cruel or grisly, this is a comedy; the more unlikely and ridiculous the disappearance, the better.

Those are my favorite currently producing shows. I'm also a big fan of Within the Wires, Stellar Firma, and It Makes a Sound but there's no new episodes for those and there's unlikely to be any for awhile, if ever. But it can be nice to experience something that's over.

Within the Wires is a woman-centric story about an alternative 20th century. It even has a novel end cap, You Feel It Just Below The Ribs, that hits like a hammer blow. Each season is a discrete story which can give you a chance to sample 1 or 2 to see if it's something you like. I recommend starting with season 1, it's still my favorite, but after that you could kinda listen to any season you liked.

Stellar Firma is... a disaster. The Brothers Meredith, of Magnus Archives and Rusty Quill fame, put together a screwball comedy about a planet terraforming service in the distant future starring Trexel Geistman an extremely entitled idiot whose parents never loved him and his long-suffering clone servant David 7 who does his best to keep the whole place from burning down in one of Trexel's tantrums. It's fantastically funny and largely improvised except for general plot threads.

It Makes a Sound is about living with dementia, losing your mother, your identity, your sense of the world and the struggling connections that make all of it bearable. It's about being willing to see the beauty, even if it's cringe, even if you look like a dork and feel like a dork. The music, and there is much music, is excellent and the story is heartfelt. There are no spooky monsters or wacky hijinks, just a lot of people doing their best. I have cried listening to this and I will again. It's a sweet, funny, sad story and it makes me feel very, very alive.

So there's a lot of different flavors out there. Eventually you'll find yours. Happy listening!

So I now have a >1hr commute 3-4x a week. I need narrative podcasts and I know nothing about podcasts.

I'm considering getting into WTNV? I guess? It's literally the only one I know of with a narrative.

Suggestions????

[equalseleventhirds]

@femmedionysus mentioned needing lighter, fluffier, less-ultimately-tragic podcasts than the magnus archives, and do u kno what? i think a lot of ppl can benefit from this. and i can help! a little! maybe!! generally these have at least some emotionally difficult moments, but they are lighter and appear to be heading towards a not-too-tragic ending.

(sorted into categories and lists, bcos who am i without categories and lists?)

podcasts i am fully up to date on and can vouch for up until their current end point, altho most of them are not quite done yet (there's like, potential for them to turn super sad, but in general the direction they're going in is Not That Tragic):

unseen (a series of one-character episodes all taking place in the same universe, a magical world hidden behind ours. a couple of eps are linked character-wise, but a lot of them are unrelated, individual stories. fairly gentle, tendency to end eps on a high note, cohesive & interesting worldbuilding.)

wooden overcoats (a funeral home sitcom. no, really! the funn siblings run the only funeral home in their village, until charismatic golden-boy chapman shows up with his own, better funeral home. lots of morbid humor but usually humor, altho a few episodes ARE sad and hit hard. those sad arcs do resolve with eventual happiness and found family stuff tho.)

victoriocity (features one of the actors from wooden overcoats! an alternate steampunk reality where queen victoria, um, never dies. ever. and london gets some seriously weird tech! follows an inspector and a reporter trying to solve Mysteries. there's like murders & death & stuff but the main characters do wind up safe & more or less content, even tho fleet's grumpy. kind of like, Extremely British, with the colonialist issues that 1800s london implies, but like, they try to address it sorta? it's not a major plot point)

welcome to night vale (i know i KNOW everybody knows this one....... but Things Are Generally Fine, u kno. i mean there's the occasional upsetting part. but things are fine. do skip 'a story of love and horror' to avoid what imo was one of the MOST upsettingly tragic things tho.) (confession: i have two episodes of this to catch up on, but i'm not actually THAT far behind, so i'm comfortable with its place here)

midnight radio (this one's all done actually! there is a ghost on the radio, and she starts receiving letters from a living woman. and yes ok it STARTS with a dead woman with a tragic past. HOWEVER it ends hopefully so like!!!) (in good conscience: not fluffy or funny at all. gets very serious at times. but goes towards a genuinely hopeful ending, which was why it's on here.)

the strange case of starship iris (found family revolutionaries in space!!!! shit gets heavy but they! get! through it!! i like when they get through it.) (to be super clear, it does get VERY serious, but they do get through it and judging by the narrative vibes and how the creators discuss it, they’re gonna be okay by the end. and they are mostly okay now.)

khôra (based on greek mythology, but In Space! the witch medea is... recruited by the hero atalanta to find the golden fleece, which her dead husband jason hid. once again we start with tragic pasts, but it is heading so fast for found family, and given that the premise of the show is giving women from greek mythology better than what they had in myth..... I Think It Will End Happy)

kaleidotrope (college radio hosts talk about love on their possibly-slightly-magical campus. god it's so. it's so fluffy. full of fluff. like, legit i think the least serious audio drama i've ever listened to, it's simply just. soft. very romantic. occasionally embarrassing. FILLED with fluff.)

time: bombs (a three-episode podcast made by long story short productions after w359 as like.... an experiment? i think? about the shenanigans of a bomb squad, who are remarkably funny for... a bomb squad. there's literally bombs & stuff and some injuries, but nobody dies, nobody is tragic, one guy does not get to beat a record he rly wants to beat but he learns stuff abt Being A Better Person or w/e so that's nice.)

podcasts i am NOT fully up to date on but what i have listened to is not too horribly tragic:

inn between (fantasy found family! you know how d&d podcasts are? well, between adventures, d&d characters rest and recuperate; this is those between adventure moments, taking place in a lovely little inn.)

sir rodney the root (once again fantasy! once again found family!! funny & sometimes kinda weird podcast about some folks on a Quest that goes off the rails, god i need to catch up on it...)

interference (oh hey another d&d-inspired fantasy podcast....... huh. but! one side of the podcast happens in a reality not unlike our own! that and a d&d-ish world are colliding, and we hear two women talking to each other as their worlds connect...)

the amelia project (there's an agency that will fake your death, for a price.... no, not money, they want an interesting story! and oh boy do these clients deliver. last time i was listening there was some hubbub about secret government agencies spying on the amelia project itself...... hm.)

alba salix (okay yes another fantasy podcast......... it's a comedy, with occasional drama, abt the physician for a magical kingdom and the shenanigans of her and her two unruly assistants, and also the royal family, and also....... i was actually v fond of the mini-series between seasons, abt an orc who runs a pub, more than the main story? altho i am not caught up on either so it's possible this could reverse.)

there's also a few from the podcast marathon which, if ur not aware, was me running through the first episodes of a bunch of podcasts to see what sounded good (i will get back to that eventually....), but this means i cannot vouch for them past the first episode. nevertheless, from general tone they seem to be Not Very Tragic, so.

saffron and peri

the godshead incidental

the one stars

solutions to problems

the rest is electric

the prickwillow papers

and 195

sidequesting

come on in, the water's fine

[tracle0]

WIP Bops Tag

So I got tagged for.... two music/listening related games in the span of two days so I will. Do both in one to save myself idk making another post lmao

First one: I think you just list things you’ve been listening to. Maybe the last ten things you listened to? I don’t know man. Tagged by the wonderful @kaatiba​ thank you boo 

I have been listening to...

Cloud Cult - I stand by the fact that Cloud Cult 500% have the best bops for apparently all my wips. ‘Time Machine Invention’ is peak Leon, don’t try and tell me otherwise. ‘It’s Your Decision’ gives me big Percival vibes. ‘Good Friend’ apparently works for every single WIP I have because I write about friends too much.

Night Vale - I missed Night Vale ok. I’ve listened to it all already, but I wanted to hear the Strexcorp arc again, and the liveshow and Carlos man. Carlos. 

I’ll Follow You Into The Dark - isolated song, but I have been listening to it over and over again, because it’s somehow playing my heart strings rather than a guitar. I am obsessed with this song. I learnt it on the ukuele as soon as I could. Major Mika vibes. Made me realise ‘ohhh he’s Catholic ain’t he’ and also made me figure out his friendship with Lynne more. Thanks, song.

Vienna Teng - someone else mentioned her recently, and I went ‘oh yeah I used to listen to her I should do that again’ the only memory I have of hearing her songs is. Not good. So I’m trying to get other memories down lmao.

I need to listen to...

Jake Parker Plagorised My Book which is a very cheerful subject. Quick run-down; Jake Parker is the creator of the yearly Inktober challenge. He plagorised the book of a black artist. I figured I should understand the Drama and then decide what I’ll do in October if not Inktober. 

Okay that’s like five, good enough. Next tag game;

Rules: Share some songs that have inspired your WIP or characters, then tag some people to play! - tagged by @albatris​ thanks homie and I’ve decided I’m going to jump around between WIPs becuase I want to. 

So first off I feel like the songs that first made me go ‘oh I could make a story out of this’ - DIAS spawned from ‘Hopeless Opus’ by Imagine Dragons. I got the idea for like. Two characters who were seperated for some reason, both regretting something, and went ‘okay! How.’ and my brain spat out Leon and Ant.

Whereas wip4 sort of spawned from both ‘On Melancholy Hill’ by Gorillaz, obviously, and also ‘Light a Roman Candle With Me’ by fun. And I cannot tell you at all why this story spawned from these songs. I think it was mostly... for Melancholy Hill, it gave me isolation vibes, and Roman Candle was more... a desperate reach for connection. wip4 has a focus on friendship. I guess that works? 

DIAS again - ‘The Cave’ by Mumford and Sons is. Peak DIAS, not gonna lie. I have officially storyboarded out an entire animatic that is just the entire plot of DIAS to this song. Every verse sort of follows each act of DIAS and uhh

So make - your sirens song and sing - all you want I will not hear what you have to say

I can’t say why because major spoilers, but that lyric. Fits. Very well. 

I mentioned ‘Time Machine Invention’ by Cloud Cult being a major Leon song, because it is, so I’ll talk about that here; Leon gets blown up at one point, and loses his leg. This, along with the fact he thinks Ant is dead, makes him Very Depressed. Vincent comes along like ‘hey dickhead stop being depressed’ except said in a slightly nicer way, and gives him a vote of confidence he needs to get up and try and fix one of the problems he has, that being the leg. 

If we give this moment our fullest attention, we’ll just keep moving forward, with no need for going back.

Which is honestly, just really good life advice, but is also kinda Leon finally starting to let go of the guilt he has over possibly killing Ant and starting to live life without any new regrets. 

wip4 again because this is getting long but I still have things to talk about; ‘Turn The Lights Off’ by Tally Hall is big It vibes, and I cannot tell you how but it does. I’m delighted to put ‘Holding Onto You’ by Twenty One Pilots as a major Keaton song, for the simple reason that Holding Onto You has tried to be a wip song for EVERY SINGLE wip, but it finally actually fits. Heck,

I’m taking over my body, back in control, no more shotty,  I bet a lot of me was lost,  t’s uncrossed and i’s undotted

is like. The first verse, and is also major Keaton being like ‘WOW WHAT THE HELL I WASLITERALLY DEAD UM WHAT’ and also the entire struggle against It. Fun times. 

‘Hello, My Old Heart’ by The Oh Hello’s is a Big Percival Mood, and I can’t really explain why - extreme protectiveness over himself and trying to save himself??? Maybe. Uhh. I’ll give you an Abby song and then done with wip4 - ‘Icicles’ by The Scary Jokes fits her freakishly well. I just found out the artist is nonbinary, which is cool, but I’ll talk about that another day. 

I can only be forgiven if I'm givin' myself up to you  On a silver serving tray  Must I bare myself to the stabbing of your knife and gnashing teeth  While our lovely company appears so entertained?

I think Abby recognises that she is in the wrong for a lot of the story, but also thinks that admitting this to Percival would sort of... reverse their roles? That he’d want revenge and would inflict the years of pain she’d put him through onto her. He wouldn’t but she doesn’t realise that. So ‘must I bear myself to the stabbing of your knife and gnashing teeth’ is just. What she assumes she’d have to deal with. 

Okay! Final song and it’s for DIAS and also for Simon cause we’re talking about villains okay. He’s got ‘The Greatest Show’ but specifically the cover by Panic! At The Disco. Simon is, to quote the lovely Summayah, ‘a dramatic fuck’ and this song is dramatic as fuck. 

Don't fight it, it's comin' for you, runnin' at ya It's only this moment, don't care what comes after Your fever dream, can't you see it gettin' closer? Just surrender 'cause you feel the feelin' takin' over 

Which is a pretty good way to explain Silvertongue commands and his general attitude to them, don’t you think? 

I’m done now. I have more songs and entire playlists but I’m done, I’ve rambled enough, this is long. I will tag: @joyful-soul-collector @druidx73 @petrolstationflowers @scmalarky @the-starlight-chills and you sir, over there, please, tell me about songs.

[mallowbees]

So do the people from tma and wtnv actually have more eyes or is that just the fans aesthetic?

The eyes in both fandoms aren't like,, physical things?? It’s kind of somewhere in between?

For Welcome To Night Vale it’s mostly because Cecil always seems to know more than he should be able to just sitting in his radio booth about whats happening, and also the straight up actively narrating people existing in real time like in a story about you and a story about them so everyone was like ‘yeah this dude definitely has some sort of third eye thing going on’ plus the logo is literally has an eye so like,, aa

And then for The Magnus Archives like,, everyone at the institute serves the beholding,, the eye,,, the watcher, whatever you wanna call it! Big ol’ fear god of being watched but yeah and the eye is a huge vibe that’s constantly going on and also Jon gets his Archivist powers with the whole ‘compelling people to say stuff’ ‘knowing things you shouldn't be able to know’ all those fun things plus Elias knowing what everyone was up to all the time via eyes (Other things eyes, for clarification, not just his, but also his too i guess) it was like ‘Yeah eyes!’  and then as Jon turned more and more into the Archivist everyone was like ‘hell yeah monster Jon’ which lead to ‘YEAH EYES!’ so! Spooky eyes!

Basically yes kinda but physically no I don’t think anyone is actually has multiple eyes, though maybe Cecil because that would be pretty normal for Night Vale, but he’s not described so- But there's definitely Something There! It’s both the show and the fan’s aesthetic kinda but there’s definitely a Vibe

[albatris]

Hey hello I sent in an anon about starting tarot a while ago (I do not know when I know it was post quarantine starting but...time is wild) and i was wondering if you answered it? This isn't at all me trying to pressure you please please don't read it that way, i totally get it if you didn't! I just know that tumblr's search function is very broke and I'm scared I missed your answer, which would be sad. (I hope this doesn't sound like a bother it's genuinely all good if not I'm just checking!)

YES oh my gosh holy shit hello hi yes hi anon my dear I did in fact completely fucking forget to actually answer your original ask I am so sorry lmao

thank you for reminding me ajhdfgjhsdfg and again I’m so sorry it took me forever anyway I’m gonna just uhhhh look up your original ask real quick

OKAY so resources and starting decks! there are lots and lots of people who know more than me so I feel a little unqualified to answer this but I can tell you my thoughts?? but I definitely recommend looking into what other folks have to say on starting out, I’m sure there are lots of different opinions and ideas! :D

also sorry, it’s me you’re asking, so you’re not gonna get nice neat dot points and I’m not great at being concise, I’m just going to ramble if that’s ok, very sorry, very sorry

under the cut rambles

so........................

for learning meanings........ it’s a lot of work, there’s a lot of detail and a lot of different things to think about during readings, I’ve been learning tarot for around seven years on and off and I still don’t remember everything! 

so IMO it’s best not to come at tarot with the intent to Learn Everything before you start! it’s the perfect thing to learn as you go! my advice would be to just kinda throw yourself in. when you first get a deck, go through the cards and vibe with them some and look at their meanings, but mostly just kinda contemplate them, don’t try to memorise everything at once. start doing readings, look stuff up as you go............. I would recommend keeping a journal where you document your readings............ which will help you with memory and picking up on patterns and connections....... uhhhh

I really like using apps as a companion as well!  they can be a super good resource even if you don’t want to use them FOR readings necessarily

I use Galaxy Tarot as a convenient way to look up meanings and summaries of the cards when I just need to kinda jog my memory (though the descriptions aren’t super detailed), and it has a function where you can either do a reading with the app or you can do a reading yourself and then plug the cards you’ve drawn into the app, and it can help you with pointing out recurring themes and symbols and connections between the cards, which can be handy when you’re first starting out and maybe feel a little overwhelmed by the Amount Of Information you’re trying to take in

uhhhh another one I’ve used in the past is Labyrinthos Tarot, which is an app to help you learn and memorise the cards and their meanings., from what I can remember there are sorta, games and exercises to help with it, I forget exactly how it works since it��s been a while since I used it! but maybe that’s a good one to check out too?

I feel like apps is something i should’ve mentioned at the end but anyway moving on to the rest of it

most decks will come with a guidebook of some sort! so you’ve got the traditional rider waite tarot deck (which is probably the default deck most people think of when they think of tarot), and there are plenty of resources online such as Biddy Tarot which can give you a fairly detailed rundown of the card meanings! these meanings can be applied to variations of the rider waite cards, but lots of decks are a little wild and a little funky and are off doing their own thing while still following the basic rider waite structure, and if you receive a guidebook with a deck, that’s definitely an invaluable resource!! ‘cause it’ll give you the artist’s kinda interpretation and their meanings, their own personal touch, even if you then look up the card in more detail online

ALSO tarot is just a whole fuckin tonne about intuition as well though! so as much as it can feel like something where you need to focus on all the details and try and keep them all rigid and by-the-book, you might do a reading and feel yourself drawn in a certain different direction or just get a “feeling”, so you should definitely be open and flexible and listen to what your gut tells you as far as meanings go! plus, you will develop your own relationship to the cards and maybe draw your own personal meanings and associations! that’s definitely not something to fight against and don’t worry about whether that means you’re doing it “wrong��� - you should listen to those feelings, those r important!! :D

lastly I will say, it can be helpful to have someone who is more experienced with tarot around who you feel you can ask for advice from or get second opinions from if there’s something you’re confused about! or who can give you tips and tricks from firsthand experience. like, it doesn’t have to be something you learn alone, and having a teacher or companion can be really helpful in terms of bouncing ideas and getting new perspectives! I throw this out there because I always forget to say things like this, ‘cause I forget that other people Are Not Me and other people like being around people lmao rip

and as far as starting decks go........... it really depends so much on what you want and what’s important to you! some people will say start with the traditional rider waite tarot, and if you decide to do that, you will certainly have a lot of resources at your disposal! it’s a valid place to start for sure

but there’s also SO many different decks out there with all sorts of themes and art and personality, and IMO......... I’d kinda urge you in the direction of choosing something you’re personally interested in and engaged with! it can make connecting with a deck easier and can help you stay interested and engaged during learning! but that’s just me

when I got my first deck the lady in the store kinda just took me to the collection of decks and just asked me which ones I vibed with and which one kinda called out to me or one I was drawn to, then she let me take a look at some of them and she showed me how to handle them and use them!! this was my first experience, n I was told just to go with what Feels Good And Right

n there’s so much cool art out there! and many interesting themes! you might not know which one you’ll latch onto until you see it, so take some time to look around and see what speaks to you c:

for instance, certain themes like cats or flowers, certain art styles, maybe certain series you’re into (I have two welcome to night vale decks n the raven’s prophecy by maggie stiefvater), or queer friendly decks! I have the Numinous Tarot which I ADORE, which is a deck with gorgeous artwork and extremely queer, all gender neutral language and lots of diverse designs, etc

so it depends what you’re into! take some time to feel it out, my friend

I would also like to throw out a mention to oracle decks as well! I actually started with oracle decks long before I used any tarot decks c: 

I am................... very tired. and blanking on the best way to explain the difference between oracle and tarot decks, but you can look into this if you’re interested! lots of people use both or use them in conjunction with each other and there’s benefits to both n so on and so forth........

but in terms of Starting Out, and getting comfy with doing readings? they can also be really helpful in this regard! I found since oracle decks can have any number of cards and are less “structured” than tarot decks in a way, it can be really helpful as a way to get comfortable with things if you find, just, the Amount Of Detail that is involved in tarot decks overwhelming!!

it was something that helped me get the ~feel~ of doing readings and sensing with the cards and vibin and such, n get some practice drawing connections between cards and deriving meanings from the stories the cards present! but in a way that’s not quite as...... overwhelming?? as traditional tarot decks?? I was SUPER intimidated by just how extensive tarot decks were when I first started and I thought I’d never figure out what I was doing HAHAHA

but again, it’s just practice, I think!

where tarot will follow the same 78 cards and structure and is very traditional and I guess “rigid” is not exactly the right word?? but yeah?? oracle decks are a lot more flexible in what they represent and a lot more loose in the structures they can take

I do love oracle decks because of how varied they are!! each one is its own little system and its own unique universe and it’s really quite lovely, even if you aren’t into Actually Doing Readings with them, y’know?

but then, I find tarot decks the same way, what will all the different art styles and different people’s interpretations and renditions of the same story, like, it’s really fascinating!! 

this has just turned into me rambling about how cool they are now

point is, do a little research into what sorts of decks and themes you might like to buy, when you get a chance I thoroughly recommend visiting a store so you can speak to someone who has some experience with tarot decks, they can help guide you when it comes to picking one and giving you some tips!! remember that it’s about intuition and following your gut as much as it is about memory and precision, so you should pick a deck that Feels Right

and uhhhhhhhhhhh

just kinda throw yourself in!! that’s literally my best advice!! you’re never gonna memorise everything beforehand (I’ve been learning on and off for seven years and I still often have to consult guidebooks and webpages) but you WILL absolutely learn as you go

it might feel very clumsy starting out, but as with any craft, you will improve with practice and begin to feel more comfy and confident with it as you go!

I hope this helped out some!! maybe!! possibly!!!!! ok goodnight!!!

[sauntering-down]

i’ve never listened to a single episode of tma because i hate podcasts (yeah, just say things at me while i zone out or get distracted and hear 0 of it, there’s a recipe for success) but it’s all over my dash and i’ve passively absorbed random bits of info.  so i see An Art and start sifting through the mental filing cabinet like ‘okay, which character is this’ and so far i’ve got

Jon: the protagonist?  he shows up a lot in everything.  asexual and that’s fuckin gr8, got eaten by worms or something which is where all the scars come from, can maybe read minds.  makes statements.  gets shipped with a bunch of people but mostly Martin.  i think he ended the world, but like, not really???  also he’s the Eye, in a proxy sort of way

Martin: Big.  every art of him makes him look extremely cuddly but rumor has it he’s secretly a little shit.  burns things?  loves Jon?  Jon causes the apocalypse and then they go off to the countryside to raise cows, which is giving me some very Agron-and-Nasir-from-Spartacus vibes.  he’s the Lonely which may or may not be a metaphor for depression.  i feel ya, dude

Michael: the Spiral.  people call him Fuckhands McMike, which made me laugh the first time i read it but then i saw art and WHAT IS WRONG WITH HIS FINGERS???????  get that fucking Slender Man bullshit out of my face

Mike Crew: NOT the same guy as the other Michael, took me a while to realize that.  tiny?  he’s either the sea one or the storm one idk

Peter Lucas: i get him mixed up with Mike Crew a lot.  might be the Vast if that isn’t Mike.  one of them has a boat

Basira: i think she’s the one with the hijab and also possibly girlfriends w/ Daisy?

Daisy: yeah see above i know nothing

Elias and/or Jonah Magnus: they may be the same person.  only thing i know about either of them is they’re basically the series’s Xanatos because they’re bad, but also most of the fandom wants to fuck them

Sasha: used to be Sasha, isn’t Sasha anymore

all the entities: creepypasta

the plot: i genuinely have no idea. this might be more incomprehensible than Night Vale, another podcast i never listened to

[hero-deku]

My Hero Academia / Monster Hunter World / How to Train Your Dragon

*rubs hands together*

Going based off of what I think when I first see the character, whether this be through personality, looks, vibes, etc. Also on mobile and I should get to sleep so I apologise if I miss anyone.

Midoriya: Rathian

A powerful queen. Protective of her family. Familiar to all. Midoriya's Rathian has adapted to his curiosity about the world and to his kindness. She is very protective of him, and she thinks of Midoriya as one of her young.

They met after she was gravely injured by none other than Midoriya himself. He shot her down from the sky and tracked her down himself, wanting to be a great hunter like his idol, All Might. She gave up and stretched her neck out for easier reach, the net taught around her body. Midoriya breathed and put his dagger to her jugular vein. Sweat began to run down his face and he tried to force his hands to stop shaking. All it would take would be one thrust, and the monster before him would bleed out.

A sudden snap of a stick broke his concentration. He threw himself away from the monster and tried to take several deep breaths in. He overheard some hunters talking about a nest nearby. They were going for the Rathian's eggs!

Midoriya groaned. The Rathian's eyes flew open as she heard the 'shk shk shk shk' sound of a knife cutting rope. Midoriya freed her from her restraints. He watched as the monster rose to her full size. "They're going for your nest. Go protect your family." he said. Before hobbling away, she roared viciously in his face. Midoriya watched her leave in both shame and frustration, but with hints of some strange connection pulling at his heart.

Midoriya snuck out and found her lying in his nest. He tried to be stealthy, but his attempt was futile. She stared at him with amber eyes that were laced in anger and sadness. She had been too late. When she finally got to her nest, her eggs were gone. Hurt from the fall, she didn't even attempt to chase after the thieves.

Midoriya wouldn't stop apologising. The monster didn't understand this human boy. He wasn't like the other hunters that came around. No... this human was too kind.

Midoriya hadn't even noticed in his rant that he had gotten closer to the monster. His eyes went wide and the Rathian bared her teeth as him. He yelped and jumped back. A rumble sounded in the Rathian's throat. Was she... laughing at him?

Over the next few weeks, Midoriya brought her meat and fish as she rested from her injuries. Even though she couldn't talk back, Midoriya told her about himself, about his mom, about his friends, and about human life in general. He thought it would be best to leave out information about All Might, as killer as that was for him.

They continued to bond until Rathian was fully recovered. Midoriya was sad to part ways and he even prepared a speech. Rathian had other ideas, though. In the middle of his speech, she picked him up by the collar of his jacket and took to the skies. She flung him up onto her back and flew with him for the rest of the day.

They have an unbreakable bond to this day.

A bit too HTTYD-ish? I like the idea. Midoriya will probably be the the only in-depth story-ish character.

All Might: Rathalos. The king himself. The greatest warrior needs an equally 'mighty' partner. So why not with his good ol' monster rival, Rathalos?

Bakugou: Bazelgeuse. The explodey Bagel in the scale. The dive bombing had never met a human who actually *challenged* it before. Of course, leave it to Bakugou to try to square up with a monster.

Todoroki: Teostra/Lunastra. A young man of higher blood got the attention of two certain equally royal feline monsters. He's the star child of the number two hunter and his renounced researcher wife. He's the combination of brawns and brains. His father has high expectations for this young man.

Bakugou: *points at Todoroki* "Haaaaaaah?????" *thrusts his finger continuously at him* "Why does he get to have TWO dragons?"

Uraraka: Paolomu. Flying balloon squirrel? Yes. It was love at first sight for Uraraka. She loves her rat monster. Paolomu and Uraraka have a trick where Paolomu takes a big breath in and then pushes the air out while underneath her. The air pressure makes Uraraka look like she's floating!

Iida: Legania. Swift and regal. Iida takes pride in his monster. It is his pride and joy as both a hunter and as a rider. Coming from a line of hunters, Iida had a hard time switching over to the idea of not hunting monsters. Legania was his family crest so it was only natural he would seek out one to ultimately befriend.

Kirishima: Lets face it. He has a monster friend in basically every locale. His buddy is a Barroth that has an equally (surprising) friendly disposition as its trainer. Kirishima is also friends with a Radobaan and an Odogaron. His laugh and smile is contagious.

Denki: Tobi-Kadachi. Lighting flying squirrel. Doctors can't explain why Denki is immune to thunderblight. It works out, though, because Tobi-Kadachi loves rubbing its trainer up and down. In its excitement, Tobi often forgets that the contact releases his stores up electric shocks...

Mina: Pukei-Pukei. Mina loves her googly-eyed poison bird. She takes personal offence to anyone who calls her partner ugly, and more times than not, the offender usually ends up with a black eye or two.

Tokoyami: Nargacuga. They were practically meant to be together. Both are masters at hiding in the shadows. They're also both mostly active at night. Not many other creature are active during this time, so they keep each other company.

Tsuyu: Jyuratogas. Tsuyu loves fresh-water swimming, so what better partner to have than a fresh-water monster? Because of its slimey texture, it often throws others off. Tsuyu doesn't mind, though!

Sero: Tigrex. Sero is fairly gangly. Tigrex is also fairly gangly. Sero created his own special bridle to ride Tigrex. He took inspiration from grabbing hooks and clutch claws.

Sato: Uragaan. Uragaan found its way to Sato by following the aroma of his baking. Now Sato has something that loves baked goods as equally as he does!

Jirou: Black Diablos. Both are weak to loud noises. They both stay in their own lane for the most part, but both are known for sometimes being hot headed. Despite their weakness to loud sounds, both find great joy in music.

Koda: Dodogama. Both are very good boys. Dodo's calm disposition is on the same wavelength as Koda's. They made a great team together.

Aoyama: Tzitzi-Ya-Ku. Aoyama loves showing off and loves being in the spotlight. Tzitzi can provide that spotlight. They were literally made for each other.

Shoji: Diablo. Both are strong, and both are just sort of there. Shoji acts as the eyes that Diablo doesn't really have. They have a solid wavelength with one another. Shoji is the only one able to keep a grip on Diablo when it charges.

Hagakure: Kushala-Daora. Hagakure is a master of the illusions. She's able to mask her presence from those around her. Similarly, Kushala is able to hide itself in the wind. The only thing that gives Hagakure away is the mantle that she always has on that protects her from the razer sharp gusts Kushala can create.

Mineta: Kulu-Ya-Ku. Both of them are just kind of there. Kulu loves its shiny objects like Mineta likes his playboy magazines. Its kind of hand in hand. Or talon in talon... Hand in talon?

Momo: Vaal Hazak. Upon first glance, one would assume Momo would be accompanied by a more... lively monster. Nobody really expected her to bond with the queen of the Rotten Vale. A powerful monster with an equally powerful trainer. Momo's inventor brain and her quick thinking allows her to create objects from what she is given in a pinch. This also means patenting her own face mask to be used when entering her monster friend's home. Vaal's back is more boney than fleshy.

Ojirou: Deviljo. Ojirou doesn't look like the type to be partnered with a toothy pickle. But wow, can that tail pack a punch! Once you get past the initial phases, Pickle isn't too bad. Except don't call it Pickle to its face. You might get launched a solid 50 meters away if you do.

[podcastsmakemecry]

And lots of people don't realize it's still ongoing! [Spoilers: Cecil and Carlos are married and have a young son, angels are fully acknowledged, Cecil and Steve Carlsburg are friends, Khoshekh the station cat has an absolutely wild backstory, Night Vale is canonically in our world now and Joseph is stuck there, time works correctly, and MORE!]

Welcome to Night Vale is the Foundation of every queer audio drama, and for good reason. It was revolutionary to have that kind of explicit, loving, gay relationship with the main character - I've had the "I know two things" audio post pinned to my blog since 2019 for good reason, because every time they reaffirm their love a part of my soul heals.

Because I saw Cecilos content everywhere on tumblr, and naturally assumed that it was the popular non-canon ship that had subtext at best but was mostly exaggeration - because anything more than that was unthinkable at the time. And nothing prepared me for Cecil dropping the BOMB of "He grinned, and everything about him was perfect, and I fell in love instantly." in EPISODE ONE. And as the podcast went on and it developed from a crush to a flirtation to dates and them moving in together - it took a long time for me to be completely confident that yes, they are serious about this. They aren't teasing, they're not going to take this back by breaking them up, things are sometimes rough but it only gets better and the love keeps growing.

Cecil Baldwin, an HIV+ gay man, said that the character Cecil Palmer should be gay, and Joseph and Jeffrey agreed, and that was an Enormous risk to take before their story even started, and long, long before they built up a brand and a fanbase. They were pioneers in the early days of audio dramas and established that podcasts as a creative medium didn't have to be restricted by the same conventions of TV shows run by corporate overlords. Their success set the precedent that's allowed so many queer stories to flourish.

And the validation is only one part! The story itself has an easy-to-understand premise and framing device: a small-town radio show, something that built off the tradition of actual radio shows that were popular before TV. (Video killed the radio star, but podcasts brought 'em back!) What passes for a plot often seems completely nonsensical - and sometimes it just is! Not everything has a reason to exist. Especially in the beginning, the writers were just throwing spaghetti at a wall, but pretty much everything introduced in episode one ended up getting expanded on and contributing to the story of the town. It builds on itself and grows and feels like a living, breathing town. It's designed so they can pluck any one-off weirdness and turn it into its own story, because the possibilities are quite literally endless. This show is why queer horror audio dramas is a weirdly popular niche.

I lost the post, but someone talked about how the increasing quality of the show can be read in two ways. From a Doyalist perspective, our protagonist Cecil goes from purposefully neutral to full of personality as the writers and actors settle in and figure out what they want the show to look like. Cecil doesn't even have a name for the first few episodes! But from a Watsonian perspective, Carlos, our inciting incident, fills Cecil's life with joy and made him come alive. Early Cecil sounds like NPR, a faceless narrator that's bored of the weirdness that's become mundane, and current Cecil is vibrant and opinionated, engaged with life and his town in a way he wasn't before, because a particular beautiful scientist came to town and started asking questions. That progression was amazing to watch unfold.

It's fine if WTNV isn't your cup of tea. Surrealist horror with an extremely loose plot can be a bit of an acquired taste. If TMA is your frame of reference and season one was your least favorite, you probably won't vibe with it. There aren't neat categories to sort Night Vale phenomena into. If your first podcast was something that's a tightly written story, WTNV might seem boring and hard to follow at first and takes a bit to pay off.

And I also understand that it's intimidating to get into when there's more than a decade of content! But you don't have to know everything or memorize the life story of every side character. Most of them come with a moniker to tell you who they are ("John Peters, you know, the farmer") and ongoing stories are often prefaced with a short summary - because like in real life, these things happen over a period of weeks, months, and sometimes years. It's not something you can or even should binge all in one go. It's not about devouring the content so you can "keep up" and making a spreadsheet to keep track of everything, and it's not a book with a set beginning, middle, and end (though it does have its long-term arcs). It's more like receiving a postcard twice a month, it's a walk through downtown, it's checking up on the neighbors, it's visiting a hometown you've never been to.

I'm not gatekeeping audio dramas from you if you haven't listened. It's not required listening by any means. I'd just like people to understand and appreciate the roots of this community and why WTNV is so popular and ongoing and fandom olds won't shut up about it.

But I still encourage you to give the show a try! If you want a taste of a complete story arc (though be prepared for plenty of "filler"), Episode 19A: The Sandstorm kicks off the Strexcorp arc that runs through Episode 49 - although loose threads left from that kick off their own stories and the cycle continues. And if you're an old fan that fell off the bandwagon - it's never too late to get back on.

Anyway, that's my WTNV manifesto. TL;DR: WTNV was revolutionary and helped kick off the queer audio drama trend, the show was and is still good, there's a lot of content but you should have fun with it, these characters have been my friends for years, and I look forward to every 1st and 15th of the month to see how their lives are going.

I'm not even that old but it's strange that wtnv is not everyone's first audio drama anymore. And even the older people I talk to aren't caught up or stopped listening a long time ago.

We need to bring wtnv back into the limelight because it did not fucking FLY for the rest of your podcasts to run.

[ernmark]

Juno Steel and the Time Gone By (part 1) reaction

Here there be spoilers.

If you haven’t listened to the episode, I highly recommend you check the trigger warnings before you do. There’s some disturbing stuff in this one, visually and thematically.

First of all, I’m super stoked that it came out a day early, so jot that down.

I have a love/hate relationship with Clippy!THEIA, particularly Juno punching his own face just to get back at it. If that ain’t our lady in a nutshell, I don’t know what is.

Juno said “Do whatever you want, just save my life.” Are they still active? Is that how the THEIA was able to identify Juno’s location as being a peeper breeding ground? Is Ramses actually tracking him right now?

I love the idea of the peepers as a monster. 

Is The Man In The Brown Jacket a reference to Night Vale’s Man In The Tan Jacket?

Also, I kinda love him. 

Also, is the “he’s not interested” that Buddy gives us a reference to him being our official Ace?

So I see indentured servitude is the theme of the hour. 

Just taking a second to bring up a little thing of plots in longform series: typically there’s a major overarching plot that spans the entire season, along with all its ongoing subplots and themes. The smaller plot of each episode is often a sort of microcosm of one of those subplots/themes, which helps to bring it into sharper focus. And yeah, I am definitely seeing that here: a rich and powerful person sweeping in to “save” the victim of circumstance with medical technology that’s wired right into their body and way more invasive than it has any right to be, and all it costs is their soul? Yeah, a little bit.

This raises another question: is it just the refugees from the Outer Rim who wind up living longterm in the Cerberus Province? Is this what lies in store for the citizens of Hyperion City that Ramses displaced with his real estate scheme? Don’t get me wrong, it is utterly horrific no matter what, but I’m curious whether this is going to hit Juno’s “I must save Hyperion City” button.

The radiation burns are absolutely horrific. Just… *shudder*

But also: the people with these burns cover their faces with masks, and that’s not the first place we’ve seen people do that. Is this where Miasma got her assistants? It makes a grim amount of sense– these are people who are desperate enough to sell away their autonomy and their voices, many of whom have medical and academic skills that Miasma would have found valuable. And it isn’t as though she ever respected their personhood, or anyone else’s; I don’t think she’d be above buying people. It just adds another layer of horror to what happened to them down in the tomb.

I feel like a dog perking up every time I hear footsteps outside. 

Slight figure covering their face with a scarf? IS IT PETER?

A criminal who missed his flight to Mars? PETER?

A heist on another planet? IS IT MY SWEET KNIFE BOY?

So we now know that the Outer Rim was a confederation of sorts, and that they had too many languages and cultures to be mutually intelligible. (Did I ever post the thing about the Outer Rim being allegorical to the USSR? If anyone remember reading it, please let me know because I can’t find it.)

During the card game, Engstrom had to ask Peter’s place of origin; is that because Peter doesn’t have a noticeable Brahmese accent, or just because there are too many languages for his accent to be identifiable? I personally suspect it’s the former, since there’s clearly a good deal of discrimination and hostility toward people from the former Outer Rim, and that would cause professional problems for Peter. Still, I have to wonder.

So I’m a fan of Buddy. She and Valles Vicky seem like they walked out of the same gangster flick, and I’m all about that.

Also, I’m all about mob bosses who go out of their way not to make their underlings do things they don’t want to do– it’s tactically important, because it builds respect and loyalty. Hazing and abusing your underlings may be effective ninety-nine times out of a hundred, but you can bet that last one’s planning on stabbing you in the back. 

Also, “his Buddy” sounds awfully romantic; I can see how that would be hilarious if they’re decidedly not into each other. From the cues I’ve gotten so far, I suspect she’s a lesbian and he’s aro and/or ace, but those are mostly guesses and vibes more than anything super conclusive.

The fact that Buddy’s been scouting Juno for this long– and that Juno’s walking into the desert fucked up her timetable– suggests that she wants him working for her long term. Why? Why him? Did she hear about him from Vicky? Did she want to snipe him out from under Ramses? 

The fact that the planet is called Baldur (Baldr?) is entirely too entertaining to me, because that’s the name of my dog. So every time they mention the planet, I picture this ridiculous boy:

So what is the CureMother?

Is it something that could potentially save the indentured servants? What makes it so valuable? The fact that Juno didn’t see it is clearly important, so what’s going on?

Vespa’s been in servitude for five years, and she’s clearly fried enough to be regularly hallucinating Buddy, but people’s faces get fried after living in the Cerberus Province for two. Where has she been in all of that time?

When’s the last time that somebody thanked Juno for following his conscience and not firing a gun?

So that monologue about finding peace in lost hope, and the pain of getting that hope back. What exactly is this referring to in the grand scheme of things?

Is this about Juno getting back his will to live and his sense of purpose after he’s given them up for dead?

Is this about Ramses, the man who is hope incarnate? 

Is this about Peter (I wasn’t kidding earlier), who made Juno feel hopeful against all odds?

I suspect we’ll find out in two weeks.

[podcake]

Podcasts & Genre: Noir

When one thinks of the noir genre, the most common association is film noir, a style of film making sparking in popularity many, meany years ago but still carries some relevance today. Though no one really makes genuine noir films anymore, unless you count a few with noir inspired elements, noir mostly lives on strictly as short parodies while mystery stories stay as mystery stories without the usual aesthetic qualities you’d identify a noir film with. 

Noir brings up ideas of stylishly produced, sexual, and cynical stories sparking during the 1940′s that normally focus on a detective that one might describe as hardboiled, a femme fatale or two, and some type of mystery plot to tackle, often involving murder. 

One of the core reasons noir is mostly treated with a certain level of parody in modern work is due to how dramatic these productions could be. The whole vibe of theatrics that came from these productions could be perceived as laughable nowadays. Though much like Broadway musicals could be given a massive reboot through the success of Wicked and later the phenomena of Hamilton, the same could be said for noir that will occasionally slip its way into more modern interpretations while still maintaining an authentic narrative. 

While this is fairly evident in film, we all know that things with more than one picture attached to it isn’t really my specialty. You’re here to hear things and then read about the things you heard. How can sound effectively get an idea across when we only have our imaginations and common sense to tell things apart?

As a whole, this article will be delving into the complexity of translating genre through sound with noir being the main focal point due to its rarity and presence in a different medium of entertainment. 

This might just be a theory though I believe that noir managed to flow pretty well into the audio drama realm mostly because one of the most vital parts of these films is a consistent narration. This aspect alone is oddly enough the real driving force behind noir getting a second life.

And yet I do realize that noir is a kind of genre that is very selectively put to use. It’s relatively rare for a new noir show to pop up, only ever making common occurrences around early to late 2016. Rex Rivetter: Private Eye and Neon Nights: The Arcane Files both debuted the same year with only a few months difference between their publications. 

The same could be said for The Penumbra that came out in March. If this is merely a coincidence or not is on the table as all of the shows came from different producers and are essentially different products in their entirety.

These shows are not the only podcast noir shows in existence, though it’s hard to ignore just how few their are in comparison to the abundance of horror and sci-fi shows that come out every few months.

Among these, The Penumbra and it’s tales of private eye Juno Steel are the most openly successful. The Penumbra takes a creative approach to both the noir genre, with a helpful touch of sci fi, and the fantasy-adventure genre in their Second Citadel series. But if we are to focus on Juno Steel stories in particular, it’s not hard to see why it’s gotten such positive press.

Normally taking place over the course of two part episodes, Juno Steel delivers some strongly written individual mysteries that work their way up to being a whole story with recurring characters and an intriguing central plot. We get some colorful one shot villains, a likable though also dysfunctional lead, and a touch of romance that works to reveal the character’s personal insecurities. 

The Penumbra’s specialty is to remix and retell classic story genres with a touch of modern edge and originality that lets them stand as great individual stories and joins The Bright Sessions and Wolf 359 as some of the most well known modern fiction podcasts. 

A little while later came Neon Nights and Rex Rivetter that I combed through back to back to form a proper opinion on. Though they’ll most definitely be the topics of some future reviews, I do enjoy the air of the occult with Neon Nights which gives it a sort of Dresden Files vibe and Rex Rivetter that’s a touch more old fashioned through presentation which gives it a certain air of glamour that is sometimes delightfully camp. 

The newest contender for the noir genre is What’s The Frequency? which has already made quite the splash in this mostly independent art community with a strong first episode that left a lot to the imagination. Though I’ve always liked the level of absurdity that the noir genre can dig up while still maintaining an air of mystery, What’s The Frequency? is one of the most downright bizarre products to come out in recent memory that’s equal parts eerie and engaging. 

What’s The Frequency? truly commits to the style with its innovative use of static and the inclusion of voice work that invokes just the right vibe of psychedelic 1940′s it’s aiming for. It truly does feel old unlike the usual crisp and clean audio we get from the previously mentioned work. 

Something that has fascinated me is that when you take the film out of film noir you still get a genuine experience. Even without the gray scale, even without the crafty use of silhouettes and dramatic framework, noir has managed to ooze itself into the crevices of fictional podcasts from a purely audio based perspective.  

This I perceive as interesting as noir is noteworthy for its creative cinematography-Dutch angles, night-for-night shots, and silhouettes being the most common. Not to mention clothing like the iconic trench coat and hat approach, women with lipstick we could all assume was red, and people in formal dress for the sake of making every second look as classy as the last.

With podcasts, we only have so much time to get a visual across to listeners without loading them up with pointless filler, most of the run time consisting of dialogue meant to push the story forward to a conclusion. Though audio drama certainly isn’t limited to a purely linear story structure, it does have to pull through a bit more in certain aspects such as writing, sound editing, and acting to hold someone’s attention.

While film gives us more visual shorthand and generally does the settings and characters for us, audio drama leans heavily on getting its story out first and letting the listener fill in the blanks. In audio, visuals are an afterthought but imagery is still roughly where half of the writing effort goes into. It is much easier to look pretty than to sound pretty and this is why podcasts tend to be more ambitious since they can do more with less.

All of these individual shows have some sort of unique quality that gives it its rightful spot as separate stories, and yet you’d be hard pressed not to describe them as noir. Noir is so grounded in film that the idea of translating it to a purely audio based format almost seems to go against what noir is supposed to be, and yet we never run into these complications when we stumble upon them.

We can still identify a horror show without visual blood splatters and can still consider a sci-fi a sci-fi even if we never actually see the interior of a space ship we’re inside of. For example, Wolf 359 is very much science fiction with some strong comedy writing, though it’s also an entirely different beast than Hadron Gospel Hour that may be in the same boat but clearly going up a different stream. 

Audio Diary of a Superhero and The Bright Sessions both tackle ideas of disability outweighed by extraordinary power, and yet it’d be near impossible to get the two mixed up. Presentation and packaging can really make or break a show and how one plans to get these ideas across is the real definitive element at hand. 

While, let’s say for now, horror and science fiction don’t have any definitive visuals, only some recurring ones, noir is different in that it’s almost entirely built on a very specific list of cliches for it to be truly considered part of that group. You kind of need murder, you kind of need a detective, you kind of need a morally ambiguous seductress-so in that vain, noir can very much exist without the usual attributes as long as the audio can get these ideas across.

But let’s say, hypothetically, that these tropes aren’t being put to use. How exactly does one gain the right to consider their story a noir? Well from my understanding, these shows have leaned on a few common trends: a deep voiced protagonist with a definitive, world weary perspective, a jazz score, and taking place in a stylish but troubled city where all the conflict boils. 

It’s truly here that the idea of style and substance, narrative and aesthetic, play into one another for the better. 

Since this article is one part history lesson and another part describing things that are barley a year old, I do feel the need to dig up some facts. A detail many tend to forget is that audio drama was a vital form of entertainment years ago, it getting its start on nighttime radio broadcasts that were tuned into the same way we would watch prime time TV. 

Though this type of entertainment hasn’t entirely died, the radio part of radio drama has leaned more towards desktop computer drama or smartphone drama if we’re going to be taking about technology specifically. 

The thing is that podcasts got a hard reboot when Welcome to Night Vale reminded people how cool that was and everyone followed Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor’s breadcrumbs to make their own stories that were slightly less time consuming than writing a book and less expensive than making a movie. 

The strive for authenticity is strong in any artistic medium and podcasts are no exception. We may have our trends and sometimes repetitive structures and dynamics surfacing every few years, though the final product is what really gives anything its identity. What we consider truly authentic for anything or anyone can be boiled down to aesthetic value, narrative value, or something else entirely depending on your perspective. 

The same could be said for me as the whole purpose of Podcasts& is essentially to cover topics with a little more complexity than I’m normally able to. Reviews are restricted to whatever podcasts I managed to finish and pair up on slim similarities, Teatimes have the creators do most of the talking, and Palettes, one of the main support beams of the PodCake empire, are the equivalent of a “best of” reel-a first impressions, if you will. All the while I keep things interesting with flower emoticons and some cute girls over a pink backdrop. These are certainly accessories to my persona, though not the entirety of my work. 

With Podcasts&, we’re given just a little more time to look back and breathe in just what audio drama is capable of. If there’s anything about this medium that has fascinated me it’s the way it can transcend the typical confides of storytelling to still give a satisfying and unique experience. Many audio dramas exist in the same subgroups but I’m hard pressed to find any that are near identical to one another. 

Be it The Penumbra or Neon Nights-they may be fruit bared from the same garden, but their taste and textures are clearly being grown from different kinds of people. What makes each one interesting is that while noir is normally considered an exercise in creatively crafted footage, audio still manages to capture its identity and mood nonetheless. Noir audio dramas have to flex a little more muscle to really get their aesthetic qualities to matter since that is what defines their genre in the fist place.

Interesting how these articles tend to tie into one another. 

As I get to the conclusion of this editorial, I realize I have opened up a whole new can of worms when dealing with genre construction that is such a broad topic that I’ll need more than one text document to talk about it. Maybe some other day in some other month when all the Palettes and reviews are done and I can work up something proper worthy of being the first article of the new year. 

We can discuss comedy and horror and science fiction and surrealism. We can talk about all that has come of it and how there is no one way to tell a tale or represent a genre. 

So consider this little piece a...prelude for what is to come. Let’s talk about history, let’s talk about audio entertainment in its entirety, let’s bookmark Wikipedia articles, because the topic of genre is barely even at its peak when it comes to noir, though the fact that it exists at all says something about what just a few sounds are capable of.

[sinceileftyoublog]

Pitchfork Music Festival 2019: 7/19-7/21

Stereolab

BY JORDAN MAINZER 

You’ve heard it by now: The weather was mostly shit. Triple-digit-feeling temperatures for a day and a half, a torrential downpour that had half of the security guards incorrectly telling people the fest was cancelled for the rest of the day when it was only Kurt Vile for the 50th time. Those who came back were rewarded with Stereolab, those who left hopefully came back for a beautiful day on Sunday that was also unexpectedly the best day for music. After all these years, Pitchfork is still full of surprises. Here are some of the sets that surprised us.

Great Black Music Ensemble

Part of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the Great Black Music Ensemble were a bold choice for the festival to choose as the kick-off performance. In the past, equally far out acts like Sun Ra’s Arkestra and Irreversible Entanglements have at least played early on the third day of their respective years. But this year’s group started out undoubtedly captivating, starting chanting backstage before entering, continuing to chant while filling up the stage, their backs turned to the audience. When they turned to face us, saxophonist Ernest Dawkins, the animated maestro, led the band with finger-pointing and swooping direction through grooves and scatty jazz, backing off for percussion solos and swells of horn. As hot as it was, it was an invigorating set to start the day.

MIKE

Whether or not you were familiar with New York-based MC MIKE, it was easy to be swept up in his infectious energy and positive vibes. For one, before he rapped any words, he humbly shouted out the Great Black Music Ensemble that had just finished, along with future performers that day Standing on the Corner, Rico Nasty, Valee, and Earl Sweatshirt. Then, with family members in attendance, he delivered a lyrically dexterous, no-bullshit set that nonetheless left room for him to show his appreciation to the crowd. “Y’all ready for bars?” he asked before showing off his spit skills. “Make some noise for yourselves,” he repeatedly demanded of the crowd; when he spelled out the first three letters of his name and the crowd responded with a loud “E!!”, he laughed, “Y’all could have said anything...but you said ‘E!!’” The bouncy beats got the crowd in the mood to move and yell even as the weather continued to scorch.

Standing on the Corner

Like their jazz brethren Great Black Music Ensemble, Brooklyn-based experimental collective Standing on the Corner consisted of a bevy of musicians, orchestrated by a leader, Gio Escobar. Unlike the soulfulness of GBME, SOTC were noisy, their jazz venturing as much into surf punk and neo-classical music as it did hip hop. In the quieter moments, you could hear Rico Nasty booming across the park, but for the most part, the genre-bending crew held their own, never descending into chaos. Collaborator Earl Sweatshirt, standing on the side of the stage, looked impressed.

Valee

If you’re gonna wait this long to appear on stage and pump up the crowd for minutes, you better as hell bring it. About the only thing Valee brought on stage was his dyed red Chihuahua. Whether “I’ve Got Whatever”, “Juice & Gin”, “Extra”, or “Miami”, the local rapper’s set embodied the most disappointing of what rap sets can be: lazy and overdependent on the backing track disguised as some semblance of “chillness.” (See Earl Sweatshirt below for how to do that well.) By the time he played his beloved banger “Womp Womp”, you wished he had pulled an ILoveMakonnen and played it twice instead of something else.

Sky Ferreira

In a career filled with missteps, Sky Ferreira has managed to release just enough brilliance to not just stick around but become an anticipated artist. Friday’s set was that quintessential mix of misstep and perfection. Her follow-up to 2013′s Night Time, My Time has been in the works for the better part of the 2010′s but has only yielded one comeback track: “Downhill Lullaby”. She didn’t perform that song on Friday (it was sound-checked); in fact, she didn’t perform many songs at all. Teasing the crowd with audio of untouchable classics like Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams”, Talking Heads’ “Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place)”, and David Bowie’s “Fame”, Ferreira walked out late. By that time, her band members had already been on stage taking pictures of the crowd and each other. With a deadpan “Hi”, she launched into “24 Hours”, “Boys”, “Ain’t Your Right”, and the powerhouse “I Blame Myself”. Unfortunately, that’s when the technical issues started. Backing tracks of her voice started prematurely playing, inadvertently revealing her cover of choice, an otherwise flawless rendition of Til Tuesday’s “Voices Carry”. “Everything that’s gone wrong has,” she told the crowd, unable to hear herself sing, the band trying to start the shoegazey new song “Descending” multiple times before she just decided to do “Everything Is Embarrassing”. She and her band were eventually abruptly cut off by an impatient Earl Sweatshirt, leaving her set in the same thematic category as The Avalanches: Legendary performances that never were.

Earl Sweatshirt

As I was saying: This is how you use the crippling heat to your advantage. The slow, cloudy, warbling production of all of Earl Sweatshirt’s songs is as perfect for barely swaying and slightly nodding as it is hands-up palm pumping. Starting off with the gentle surf-and-horn tones of Some Rap Songs’ “Riot!” and getting the one sexually aggressive remnant of his pre-I Don’t Like Shit days out of the way (Doris’ “Molasses”), Earl delivered standouts with no fanfare: “Grief”, “December 24″, non-album tracks like “Wind In My Sails”. And while he began the set with Some Rap Songs’ closer, he finished it with his latest masterpiece’s opener, the soulful “Shattered Dreams”, as if to emphasize that his music puts you in such a haze, that it becomes cyclical, never-ending, never-beginning. It just always was, and that’s not sun poisoning.

Pusha T

The excellence of Daytona aside, a Pusha T greatest hits set--solo standouts, features, Clipse--was always going to be the best festival move. He delivered, and then some. Barging onto the stage with full force, speedily spitting the entire first verse of “If You Know You Know” sans backing track, Pusha relentlessly burned through song after song of dragon fire. My Name Is My Name highlight “Nosetalgia” and banger “Numbers on the Boards” and King Push’s hard-nosed “F.I.F.A.” proved to be the show-ready hits we always knew they would be. It’s hard to believe that My Name is technically Pusha’s solo debut, since his rapping often dominated both features and Clipse, so when he dedicated a string of songs to those who had “been with him since the beginning,” I did sort of a double-take. What he meant was his verses on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’s “So Appalled” and “Runaway” as well as--wait for it--Clipse’s immortal “Grindin’”. By the time he got to the original Drake diss track, you didn’t even care whether he would follow it up with “The Story Of Adidon”. You were already out of breath and in awe.

Mavis Staples

If you had told me that a singer’s new album contained the line, “All that we are is the living ghost of our youth,” Mavis Staples would have been my last guess as to who that singer was. Then again, the reflective, often somber nature of her latest great album We Get By makes sense: her sister Yvonne passed away last year, and she’s only six years removed from the death of her other sister, Cleotha. As such, she’s mourning again the absence of both of those women and her father, Pops. Combine that with the current political climate, one that Staples has spent her entire life fighting, and you start to become surprised that the album’s not straight-up dour. But Staples doesn’t do depressing: She finds beauty in the darkest moments, using them to raise up both herself and others. It was this spirit that pervaded her Friday evening set. “I’m a fighter, I’m a lover, there is no other way,” she admitted on “Anytime”, “Could be one or the other on any given day.” The ambiguity of the title track, meanwhile, paying tribute to the power of a relationship that could be a lover or a friend--really anyone--meant that the difference between the Ben Harper-featuring album version (he wrote and produced the album) and vocal presence of one of her singers was negligible. It was the emotion that counted.

But what made her set brilliant was that in the context of her new album, the songs chosen outside of the album fit its themes of political urgency and self-improvement. “I’m working on me,” Staple sang on “Take Us Back”, her voice as gravely and powerful as ever. The necessity of change detailed on “Build a Bridge” mirrored that on the first track of We Get By where she asks, “What good is freedom if we haven’t learned to be free?” To Staples, freedom means the constant improvement of society, a sentiment as far-reaching back as The Staples Singers’ “Touch a Hand, Make a Friend”. She could have performed more from We Get By--album closer “One More Change” is Staples’ promise to do everything she can to get us out of this current shitstorm--but a quick sign-off of “No Time For Crying” is just as effective. Staples’ set was the rare one that made her new album AND old albums even more affecting.

Album score: 8.5/10

Lala Lala

Mid-day heat was not enough to offset the whispery voice of Lala Lala’s Lillie West combined with the dreamy instrumentation of her band of Chicago all-stars, which included V.V. Lightbody’s Vivian McConnell, Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, and Sen Morimoto. West and company played largely from last year’s breakout album The Lamb, but the true standouts were “Siren 042″, her collaborative track with WHY?, the band’s sweeping, blistering cover of Perfume Genius’ “Slip Away”, and statement of identity “Lala Song”. “Do you guys like screaming?” West asked the crowd, sure of the answer. The propulsive, saxophone-filled dirge consisted of wordless harmonies and the increasingly loud repeated mantras of “I’m not even listening / You’re not even nothing,” an anthem if there ever was one. Oh, and unlimited props to the band for donating all merch proceeds that day to RAICES.

Ric Wilson

Like MIKE on Friday, Ric Wilson brought the type of set you could walk into with no prior knowledge and leave a huge fan, almost entirely due to his charisma. It’s not just that he knows how to make a crowd feel good. He knows how to make a crowd feel good about themselves without sacrificing what makes him unique. Sure, on the surface, leading off with a song called “We Love Us” could cause some curmudgeons to walk away for a beer. But Wilson came to play not for those people but to pay back to the crowd of the first music festival he ever attended, delivering a positive mix of hip hop and soul: “Black art, not bad art,” he proudly declares on “Banba”. As such, he brought out Kweku Collins and the Lane Tech Marching Band and led what his band claimed was the world record for the largest soul train, jumping in the crowd to dance during it. He channeled D’Angelo on the funk of new song “Yellowbrick”. Oh, and nothing to bring a crowd together like rapping about traffic on the Dan Ryan, right?

CHAI

The Japanese quartet CHAI believes you can be Kawaii while still subverting standard definitions of beauty and femininity. Or really, they argue that there’s no such thing as the “standard.” They exist somewhere between individualism--arguing that you’re a “Fashionista” as long as you’re dressing the way you dress--and collectivism, donning a band uniform of an orange top and pink pants with white stripes, tightly harmonizing and chanting with equal pitch. That dichotomy in and of itself is unique, especially in Japanese culture. They call it PUNK, their terrific second album. From freedom anthem “CHOOSE GO!” to the propulsive beats of “THIS IS CHAI”, the band’s instrumental variation (the funk of “FAMILY MEMBER”, banging dance of “Curly Adventure”) is always tied together by the four women and the spirit each of them brings to the performance combined with the sum of parts that the band CHAI represents. And their radicalism is present in songs like “GREAT JOB”, a reclamation of housework as therapeutic, but it’s never so strong as when they shout their simple proclamation: “We are CHAI!”

Album score: 8.1/10

Cate Le Bon

“It has got to be hot in that long purple dress,” I thought looking up at Cate Le Bon. A few songs later, she admitted it. Thankfully, many of her songs are low-energy, and a set comprised entirely of Reward and Crab Day material suited the weather. She started with the first few songs of Reward, showed off her immaculate guitar tones on “Love Is Not Love”, extended a jam on “Mother’s Mother’s Magainzes”, and ended with the krautrock of “What’s Not Mine”. Perhaps she would have been ideal at the shadier, notoriously more chill Blue Stage, but Le Bon made the most of her time and location.

Parquet Courts

Entering to The Skatt Brothers’ “Walk The Night” seemed appropriate for the new version of Parquet Courts that released the funky, Danger Mouse-produced Wide Awake! last year. Yet, the band played a (storm-shortened) set full of songs that reminded you why you fell in love with them in the first place: the classic one-two punch of “Master of My Craft” and “Borrowed Time”, “Donuts Only”, “Dust”, and “She’s Rolling”. The songs they did play from their latest record for the most part were ones that could have fit on past records: “Total Football”, “Almost Had To Start A Fight / In And Out of Patience”, and “Freebird II”. The standouts, then, were the ones whose style is unique to Wide Awake!, the political “Before the Water Gets Too High” and the dance-punk of the new album’s cowbell-laden title track, a perfect party before the park was evacuated due to oncoming storms.

Stereolab

"This is French Disko,” is never a sentence I thought I’d hear Laetitia Sadier say. Not because I didn’t expect to ever see Stereolab live; rather, the nonchalance with which she introduced one of the band’s most beloved songs was striking. I don’t blame her: Since the band’s 1st North American festival appearance in 10 years to be rain-shortened, she wanted to play as many songs as possible. It was everything I wanted it to be: Emperor Tomato Ketchup hits “Metronomic Underground” and “Percolator”, “Miss Modular”, “Lo Boob Oscillator”, fucking “Infinity Girl”!!! Besides occasional guitar issues preventing Tim Gaine from shredding into oblivion, the band sounded perfect. Spotted at the side of the stage enjoying it: the Savage brothers from Parquet Courts, Jay Som’s Melina Duterte, and a stoked Kurt Vile who didn’t seem to care at all that his set was cancelled.

Belle and Sebastian

For one of the trademark albums of 90′s indie rock, Belle and Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister is generally pretty quiet, which made their grand, orchestrated performance of it Saturday night even more impressive. From the start of “The Stars of Track and Field”, it was apparent that even non-fans or even detractors would appreciate the band’s live presence. The chaotic harmonica playing of usual set closer “Me and the Major”, bouncy pop of “Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying”, and climactic “Judy and the Dream of Horses” offset the preciousness of songs like “The Fox in the Snow” and the title track. They played the record so fast that they actually had time for an encore: Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance’s “The Party Line”, which saw Stuart Murdoch enter and dance in the crowd, and Chicago-appropriate “The Blues Are Still Blue”.

The Isley Brothers

Are The Isley Brothers still good? Yes. Do they belong headlining a festival that prides itself on alternative music? I’m not convinced. Maybe Pitchfork isn’t that anymore, but seriously--you can see these guys play at casinos all across the country, and that’s exactly what the set felt like. Sure, it was immediately full of classics, many of which have gained second life as primary samples for famous hip hop songs, like “That Lady”, “Between the Sheets”, and “Footsteps in the Dark”. The Isley Brothers stay new actually by embracing that, having band members rap a verse or two from the contemporary songs, or Ronald Isley singing, “I love it when you call me Big Poppa.” Their choice of covers, including Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay”, “Twist and Shout”, Stephen Stills’ “Love the One You’re With”, and Todd Rundgren’s “Hello, It’s Me”, showed their versatility. But Ronald’s voice couldn’t hold its own compared to Ernie’s scratchy funk guitar riffing, and the dancers and backup singers changing outfits every other song was more distracting to the actual music than adding to it. I’d have loved to see The Isley Brothers as an earlier set, but as headliners, their bravado failed to make up for their lack of dynamism.

Black Midi

Another band who met at BRIT school who learned to play guitar from Franz Ferdinand? Yeah, but Black Midi transcend even the hype they deserve. The very fact that hours of jamming contributed to a few bars of songs on their instant classic debut album Schlagenheim is already legendary, and the band covers territory from noise punk to jazz to surf rock to Slint-esque post-rock to chaotically played and sung math rock and...I’m out of breath. “We won’t build to this code,” Geordie Greep sang on “Speedway”, a standout from Schlagenheim, the band’s statement of purpose denoting that they’re truly trying to do something new with all of the above. Album and set “953″ is as good of an offering as any of their palate, starting immediately with complex time signatures, morphing into straight-up grunge, giving way to circular riffs and rhythms as Greep sounds like a coked-up Daniel Rossen, ultimately ending with fast punk.

Out of context, a song like “Of Schlagenheim” might seem the only one on the album a product of men the age of the band members (19 and 20). In it, Greep acts like realizing the ideal woman doesn’t exist is depressing rather than a statement of righteous feminism. Its live performance was likewise the most masculine and primal. But in context of “bmbmbm”, you realize it’s an act. On that song, he impersonates an uncontrollable creep obsessed with a woman, and Black Midi are too smart to fall prey to the cognitive dissonance that would come with both songs being genuine statements.

The band didn’t play everything from Schlagenheim. The gorgeous, 8-minute “Western” wouldn’t have fit the energy of their set, though the blistering “Years Ago” would have. Still, since the album is perhaps the best debut of the year, Black Midi gave arguably the best set at Pitchfork. Yeah, better than Stereolab.

Album score: 9.0/10

JPEGMAFIA

The most energetic set at the festival? That belonged to Barrington DeVaughn Hendricks. Performing from his album Veteran, inspired by his stint in the military and growing up experiencing racism in the South, JPEGMAFIA didn’t rap so much as screamed to the point of coughing fits, especially notable over his off-kilter, slow beats. He’s also as much of a troll as Vince Staples, repeatedly referring to the fest as the Condé Nast Pitchfork Music Festival, and performing a song he purportedly had retired in the U.S.: “I Can’t Fucking Wait Until Morrissey Dies”. He jumped in the crowd so much that he rewarded himself at the end of the set: “I’m about to get high,” Hendricks declared in victory as he left the stage.

Amen Dunes

When we first saw Amen Dunes touring Love back in 2015, he probably wouldn’t have garnered a set at the Blue Stage so late in the day. This set was a victory lap for his most acclaimed album to date, Freedom, and apart from a cover of Tim Buckley’s “Song To The Siren” and Love standout “Splits Are Parted”, he stayed faithful to the album that got him here. The title track, “Blue Rose”, “Calling Paul the Suffering”, “Miki Dora”--they all sounded immaculate, Damon McMahon’s trademark sneer rising above his excellent band, which included Delicate Steve on guitar.

Neneh Cherry

“I’m an old bitch,” joked legendary singer-songwriter and rapper Neneh Cherry. It’s funny, but most of her set was her strong most recent album Broken Politics, “Shot Gun Shack”, “Deep Vein Thrombosis”, and “Synchronised Devotion”. The two best songs performed, though? The noisy Blank Project title track, and of course, her immortal first single, “Buffalo Stance”.

Charli XCX

Midway through her set, Charli XCX proclaimed herself to be one of the top 15 pop stars in the world. It seemed dubious; after all, this is someone whose biggest hits are merely songs she wrote or on which she was featured secondarily. Plus, what would that make headliner Robyn?!? Well, with a performance like the one she gave--alone onstage, save for two giant orange cubes, and one CupcakKe guest appearance--she made the case that she should have been the headliner. Opening with “Track 10″ from her best yet Pop 2, Charli delivered banger after banger, slowing down only for the undeniable “Boys”. “Gone”, from her upcoming Charli, held its own without Christine and the Queens’ Héloïse Letissier. Charli even made time for a little Spice Girls tribute. In a perfect world, she’d be as popular as they were.

Robyn

Perhaps the most anticipated set of the festival after Stereolab, Robyn finally answered the question everyone was thinking: What would Union Park look like filled with thousands dancing on their own? It was blissful, followed by “Missing U” and “Call Your Girlfriend”. But honestly? Before that, the set was...fine. Her vocals were turned far too down. The songs were good, the stage set and dancing artful, but it slowed down the festival experience, the party atmosphere everyone hoped the final headliner would finally deliver. The ending three, plus an encore of “With Every Heartbeat”, were worth it, but Robyn’s set capped yet another Pitchfork where the headliners were really not the main event.

[theseventhhex]

The Big Moon Interview

The Big Moon

London four-piece The Big Moon are pleased to announce details of their forthcoming debut album. Recorded in London throughout last summer, ‘Love In The 4th Dimension’ is a 11 track LP showcasing what this young band brimming with confidence is capable of. The band spent twelve joyous summer days in the studio experimenting, shredding and hitting things until all the right noises happened at once. The thrilling debut release showcases a wide-ranging dynamic that delivers a high energy, combining elements of punk-pop and grunge, alongside soaring guitar leads, alluring vocal harmonies and infectious melodies… We talk to Juliette Jackson and Celia Archer about working with Catherine Marks, performing for BBC Radio 1 and Pret a Manger…

TSH: During the forming of your debut record nothing felt stressful, rushed, or difficult…

Juliette: It was so satisfying to finally commit all our songs to record, knowing that the way we made them then would be the way they were forever.

TSH: From your point of view, how would you personally characterise the mood and intent of ‘Love In the 4th Dimension’?

Juliette: I'd say the mood of the album is energetic and passionate with occasional slow jams, plenty of mucking around and a lot of epic feelings. It's a box of Fox's family favourites. There's something delicious for all the family.

TSH: Talk us through the valuable nature of having Catherine Marks on board to nurture the sound…

Juliette: Catherine is just a fucking boss. Without her there'd be no album. Well, we'd do one but it'd be 17 times more rubbish.

Celia: Precisely 17 times.

TSH: What lead to the decision to playing with more dry and distorted sounds?

Juliette: Choosing sounds isn't really a decision making process, it's an instinctive thing, you just knob twiddle until it sounds good to you.

TSH: In what way was the track ‘Formidable’ an articulation of a feeling you felt you got right?

Juliette: I wrote that song in about 2 hours very late at night and it all just splurted out, those moments are so special and sort of divine, it's like you're not even there and all this stuff is just kind of travelling through you.

Celia: Getting that song from Jules was very exciting. We learnt it very quickly and it came together super naturally. The first time we played the whole thing all the way through and made all the right noises at the right time felt incredibly special.

TSH: With regards to ‘The Road’ – did you draw from certain time spent at parties and not feeling too good?

Juliette: Yeah, the end of the night and that moment when you have that realisation, like a revelation, you're drunk enough to feel bold and make a big decision, like, I'm done with this and I can see that clearly now.

TSH: What resonates with you most about a track like ‘Sucker’?

Juliette: The shredding.

Celia: Apart from our second gig, we've always closed our set with ‘Sucker’ and jumping around on stage with the others and playing the outro of that song live at the end of a show is one of my favourite things to do in the whole world and I feel so lucky that I get to do it all the time. I also love the way that even in songs where Jules is coming from a more vulnerable position, like this one and ‘Nothing Without You’, there's still this strength that comes out and she's still in control.

TSH: Did the tropical theme in the studio give out positive vibes?

Juliette: It was quite nice to cuddle the inflatable banana during times of anguish.

TSH: What kind of contrast do you gravitate towards with your songwriting?

Juliette: I think songs are all about contrast. A beautiful bit of harmony sounds ten times better if it's surrounded by a cacophony. And likewise, a beautiful quiet bit feels quieter next to a loud bit. Those kind of jarring moments make everything more potent.

TSH: What are the main incentives that you bear in mind with The Big Moon’s live offerings?

Juliette: We offer free dessert and BYOB with every show. Subject to terms and conditions.

TSH: Speaking of playing live, how was the experience of doing a BBC Radio 1 live session with Huw Stephens?

Juliette: So cool! It as a dream to go to Maida Vale and do that.

Celia: That was one of the coolest things I've ever done.

TSH: Moreover, what did you enjoy mostly in touring with Blaenavon?

Juliette: Ben's eyebrows.

Celia: Frank's bass face.

TSH: What kind of vibe did Kit Harrington give off after he walked past you in a bar after a gig?

Juliette: Brooding.

TSH: What was your reaction to hearing The Big Moon in Pret?

Juliette: I got so over excited the man at the counter gave me a free cup of tea and told me to sit down.

Celia: I haven't been lucky enough to experience it yet. I'll probably lose my shit though. Hopefully I'll be with a pal. Oh wait! A friend literally just texted me to say she's in Pret and they're playing us! We should totally get a discount. Do Pret have the equivalent of a Nando’s black card? If so, I would like that please.

TSH: Is unwinding via watching Bob’s Burgers satisfying during your downtime?

Juliette: Yes!

Celia: Very. Also, I'm also eagerly awaiting season 3 of Rick and Morty. That always helps.

TSH: What’s been getting played mostly on your YouTube binges?

Celia: I get into holes watching interviews on late night American chat shows - mainly with Emma Stone, Anna Kendrick and Jennifer Lawrence. I find myself laughing along as if we're actually friends or on a date. This is sounding much lamer now I'm typing it out in an interview. I probably should reassess this behaviour. But honestly there's this one segment from a Jenny Slate interview on Late Night with Seth Meyers that I've watched about a hundred times and every time I find it hilarious and am convinced that if we met in real life we'd really hit it off!

TSH: Finally, what’s the band ethos as you look ahead?

Juliette: I'm ready to grow out my fringe.

Celia: I'm hoping that this interview will circulate the internet in a way that enables me to get a Pret black card for free sandwiches and mac and cheese and also become best friends with Jenny Slate!

The Big Moon - “Formidable”

Love In the 4th Dimension