#i like sonic but my heart lies elsewhere

[st4rstudent]

Shadow the hedgehog but as a bunny for a friend. Shadow the bunny

[bambiraptor9blog]

Crush 40--On Shadow the Hedgehog, Keanu Reeves, and Grief

(and maybe an impending mid-life crisis)

I will be 40 years old soon.

Somehow, I feel like I am 40 going on 14. My obsession with the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise has yet again reached a zenith with the release of two amazing things: Shadow Generations, an add-on to Sonic Generations focusing on my favorite character, Shadow the Hedgehog, and Sonic Movie 3, one of the highest grossing video game films of all time.

I can’t stop listening to Crush 40, the band that plays for the 3D Sonic games (and whose song, ‘Live and Learn,’ was featured in Sonic Movie 3), and revisiting that back catalogue of songs and game titles. I feel like part of me has been revived—reawakened—as I let Sonic music, movies and games guide me on my own healing journey.

In addition to this, I have developed a crush on Keanu Reeves. At 40.

I know what you’re thinking: Whoa. Wait. What? I know, I’m going too fast. It’s kind of my thing. Let me back up a bit to give you some additional context. Just try to keep up with this stream-of-consciousness blog post in the meantime. 😉

I also know what you’re thinking: Hey. That was a bit from Ben Schwartz, the charismatic voice of Sonic the Hedgehog. Stealing others’ lines to write is the wo-o-o-o-o-rst!

Well, yeah. I enjoy using echolalia to communicate how I’m feeling. Deal with it. *sunglasses emoji, CGI explosion in the background*

*blows ash off the laptop screen, wipes keyboard with sleeve, keeps writing*

Silliness aside…it’s been a rough past few years for me, personally. I’ve experienced a lot of loss in a myriad of forms. And while I have managed to do some incredible things—I’ve self-published a dinosaur fantasy novel, I’ve solo traveled to Australia, and I’ve got 15+ years of teaching experience under my belt—writing and creating in general have taken a back seat thanks to anxiety and depression…and grief.

I’ve been in and out of therapy for years, I’ve been managing my symptoms with medication, dietary changes, journaling, even walking places when I have the energy. I have my beloved gray cat Mochi too, with her insistent chirps, yowls and purrs to help me feel present and grounded and most importantly, loved. And my online/offline friends and family—you know who you are—are here for me, too.

Still…I keep yearning for more in my life. For fulfilling my creative destiny, as it were. And my heart is begging me to open up again.

Is it gonna be alright? Therein lies the question that plagues me night and day.

After I finished my novel, I found myself in a creative rut, in a desert of epic proportions with a looming storm on the horizon. It’s like I’m sitting there in my computer chair, the dust swirling around me, and the Word document page is there on my laptop screen, bright white, screaming, For God’s sake, write something! I think I took the wrong pill, I want to tell whoever my Morpheus is. I think I don’t like this freedom you’ve promised me. So I sit and stare at the screen…waiting…waiting for inspiration to strike like a lightning bolt before the flash flood.

And…nothing. No white rabbit to follow, no magic to chase, no one has come to my rescue except me. Sitting there, some nights unable to sleep well, some days I struggle to eat. And yet, probably due to sheer stubbornness of will, I move on. I keep going, I keep trying, I keep putting myself out there on forums, on Discord, on so many applications and message feeds. I walk away from the computer chair out of frustration, because once again—my energy has gone elsewhere instead of the place my heart so desperately wants to be. Wherever that is, I am uncertain. And this uncertainty eats at me worse than the wind and water erodes the coastline.

I go to the beach on weekends, I feel the wind and admire the ocean, only to smell and taste the ash from the beloved towns near Hollywood burning, and again, I think in song:

Is it gonna be alright?

Instead of writing, I’d turned to Sonic video games and rewatching the first two movies to cope. This is a lifelong habit of mine, ingrained in me since I was young. When my world has crumbled to chaos, the only certainty I can salvage is in a blue blur and his black and red nemesis. The blue rat is a source of comfort, familiarity, and attitude that I deeply enjoy. Reciting the lines from Sonic Adventure 2 since its debut in 2001, bouncing joyously to the music, reveling in the teenage me that I never fully appreciated nor understood—these things kept me going at low ebbs in the tides of life.

I was binging Sonic and Shadow YouTube videos late at night when I saw it: a comic by a Sonadow shipping artist. A very well made comic, sourced from tumblr. And when I saw Sonic and Shadow kiss passionately, something stirred within me. Something was not the same. I was tired of playing by the rules of society’s game…

Unfortunately, I could not defy gravity, but I could decide to start somewhere with my writing.

And on hearing Shadow’s new voice, I felt a similar thrill. So I started again. I decided to write fan fiction based on the Sonic movies, in particular emphasizing Shadow from Sonic Movie 3.

I admit I didn’t think much of Keanu Reeves in a crush kind of way decades prior. Oh yes, I knew of his work—there was no doubt there—I, like Sonic, loved him in Speed, and enjoyed teasing everyone I knew when I took the bus back and forth to school and work that it couldn’t go faster than 55 miles an hour, thus the reason why I was perpetually late (ADHD? Pfft, what’s that?).

I loved his voice in Dracula and in Shakespeare’s works, because I too have the dreaded SoCal accent—what some typecast as Valley Girl or Skater/Surfer Boi—and I thought he was rather handsome then as well. I remember his smile, too, that brilliant grin that made me smile back.

But my heart in my teen years was stolen by an Aussie knight in shining armor—Heath Ledger—so I let Ted from his Excellent Adventure days slip from my mind. Yeah, I know—bummer.

The Matrix was a film I barely remember seeing, probably because the body horror still makes me squeamish—even though comics and writings with such scenes don’t detest me in the slightest. But I do remember the trenchcoats and the sunglasses, how popular that look became. I rewatched the film recently, and I enjoyed it, although its messages have aligned very well with my internal quicksand of existentialism.

I couldn’t place why I liked the toy stuntman Duke Kaboom when I saw Toy Story 4, but I really liked his character, and then I found out Keanu voiced him—well, shoot.

And when I learned about his personal tragic backstory, with glimpses in the entertainment media channels—well, this is interesting.

Why is it that people who create my favorite things—musicians, voice actors, writers—all share a similar trajectory traumatically with me? I’m sure there’s some psychoanalytical thing here. Maybe an energy thing, like a vibe check. Who knows—but oof. The resonance intrigues me.

Because Keanu, a very private man, embraces grief in every role, in every creative thing he does. It’s an outlet for his pain, for his personal growth. And he works really hard, too, to bring that message of hope in chaos. I admire that deeply. Because unlike Keanu, I tend to run and hide from my own healing process, tend to dismiss the impact grief has on me right now. And I struggle with channeling my grief into my writing beyond journaling and therapy homework.

An even more interesting parallel, is that Keanu is a writer too. He recently published a comic series and then a follow up novel about an ageless man who becomes a weapon of war, with…get this…a thirty-something scientist WITH MY RL NAME that revives his memories and well…!

Spider-Man pointing meme is activated!

And so too was my storytelling.

Days before Sonic Movie 3 was released to theaters, I challenged myself. At first, I thought, ugh. No one is gonna want to read my goofy Sonadow story. So I slept on it. And then, I thought, what the hell. And I published the first chapter to Archive of Our Own.

Within hours, dozens of kudos notifications hit my inbox. I had set off a deluge in my personal creative desert. And my heart began to pitter patter in a way I hadn’t let myself feel in years.

Holy shit. What have I done?!

John Wick: "Yeah. I'm thinking I'm back!"

The more I wrote the story, the more I referenced the Sonic Movie 3 actor interviews after seeing the film in theaters twice. Is that research? I guess. I don’t know, I tend to think of it as, oh look! Another form of my obsessions taking place—neat!

And I admit I love the Shadow the Hedgehog video game from 2005. Yes I played it, yes it was fun. I mean, come on, I get to be the cool guy on a motorcycle—which in reality, my ex was into that stuff for a time, to try and impress me I guess? Never me haha—with a gun—which I will never wield, I’m more of a pacifist than that—and I get to sass Sonic into submission while I kill aliens?! I mean, sign me up!

Shadow as a character is also meant to be voiced by Keanu Reeves. His gruff demeanor, his anger, his fear, the volatility of his emotions—it’s there, in his character arc, as well as held nicely by Keanu’s inflection. Shadow is the quiet rebuke to Sonic’s effervescent chatter, the sobering steel of his gaze and voice merging to tone down Sonic’s wild, rebellious, fun nature. While Sonic represents young boyhood—all over-confidence, bragadocious sass—Shadow represents maturity when he wasn’t ready for it. Shadow is suspicious of the world, and given his upbringing, he has every right to be. When we experience loss at a young age—before we can talk and think for ourselves—it makes healing from depression an arduous mountain to ascend. Add to that later moments of trauma, and it’s like you lose a foothold somewhere on the way up, only to land on your ass in the pouring rain, wondering why in the hell you decided this was a good idea in the first place. Get outside and see Nature, everyone says. Feel the sunshine! Touch the grass! All that stuff. Oh yeah don’t forget yoga, meditation—that will keep the internal horrors at bay. At least, for a little while.

What really helps in healing is connection. Connection in parasocial ways is just as valid as connection in the real world, though it is rare the two shall meet. I’m honestly just happy to be creating again, and finding meaning in my stories and making connections through it too. The connections I’ve made through seeing the Sonic Movie 3 actors, in seeing the passion the director and writers brought, ignites a fire in me that I’ve denied for a really long time. And for that, I thank them. Always.

My wish for the year ahead is to continue forging new connections, to strengthen the ones that matter most, and for me to continue on in my journey of self-discovery through creativity. Because at my heart, at my core, I am an artist.

And in connecting to my younger self, in writing again and seeing the response to my work, I’ve decided yeah.

It’s gonna be alright.

[tessiete]

This was for the prompt from @treescape who asked what would happen if Obi-Wan had taken Korkie back with him from Mandalore after Satine's death. I said, "Well, at the very least it would force him and Anakin to talk to each other, and maybe stop the whole Fall of the Republic from happening."

And she said, "They won't talk."

And I said, "I'LL SHOW YOU!"

But then, she was right.

I tried. THE PUNISHMENT OF SILENCE

She throws him on a ship, and says “This one’s yours,” and they’re already away by the time he comprehends she meant the pilot on board with him. 

He’s pale to the point of imagination, and trembling - a reflection of how Obi-Wan imagines he himself must look, bloodless and haunted. His eyes seem hollowed out from the shadows between stars, his hair lank and lifeless, his mouth a jagged streak of blood cut straight across his face as though his jaw has been neatly bisected, his tongue cut out, and silence fills the space between them.

But he steps away from the controls at Obi-Wan’s approach.

He says nothing to the boy as he staggers to the pilot’s seat, and straps himself in. He hears the sounds of violent retching being pulled, and pulled, and then replaced with shattered breathing, and he spares him a glance to shout, “Do you know how to man the cannons on this ship?”

The boy lifts his head. His hair has tumbled out of its militant lines to hang over his eyes like some wild thing hunted. 

“The cannons,” Obi-Wan repeats. “Can you use them?”

The boy nods.

“Then do so,” Obi-Wan says.

He turns his attention back to the front. They are approaching the edge of the atmosphere, but are still trailing the most dedicated of their enemy’s pilots behind them. He feints left, then swings back to the right, trying to shake their aim as his companion slides into the gunner’s seat, and places his hands on the controls.

A strange look falls over his face then - something cool, and placid - and Obi-Wan too feels himself steady. He ceases to think of the sweat trickling down his brow, or the ache between his shoulders, or the pounding of his heart. Instead, he is flying. They are buoyed by the wind, then freed of atmospheric friction, and at last, with a contemptuous spit of the cannons, loosed from their pursuers and the strangling grip of Mandalore.

Without thought, Obi-Wan primes the hyperdrive, sets a course for Coruscant, and presses them into the stars. The ship resists for a moment, unwilling to let go of the planet, but soon gives in, and they are thrown into the cosmic whirlpool of hyperspace where time and place fall silent. 

And Obi-Wan can think.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“It’s Korkie. I’m Korkie,” the boy gasps, his hands falling away from the console and his calm with it. “Kiorkicek Kryze. My mother - my aunt…”

He shakes his head, his mouth still open but his voice has broken into absence.

“Your mother?” Obi-Wan says. “Bo-Katan? She wanted you off the planet -”

But Korkie shakes his head harder. He swallows. He swallows again, still gaping. 

“My mother - she died. I saw - I tried to save her. I tried to help - she said you’d help her.”

He feels a creeping numbness spreading from his joints, like muscles stiffening in the wake of a blaster’s stun.

“Satine,” he says, knowing and yet unsure. “Satine is your mother.”

“Yes,” Korkie says. “We were going to leave together. She said - we’d leave together when you came.”

“Your father -?”

“No.” It falls from him like a single tear, stifled before the onslaught of grief.

This one’s yours, she’d said.

“No,” whispers Obi-Wan in kind.

And then Korkie is crying, desperate, greedy torrents of grief that stutter out between his teeth like laughter. He presses a hand to his mouth, and wraps an arm about his middle to barricade the doors, but they are flung open, and the vacuum of his heart is filled by loud, rushing sobs. 

Obi-Wan barely hears him, caught instead listening to the voices of the past. Bo-Katan’s. Satine’s. Qui-Gon’s. He unbuckles the straps from his waist, and his shoulders, and slips from his seat to stand. 

“I...I need to change,” he says. “You should get some rest. We’ll hit planetfall in about six hours.”

This ship is unfamiliar, but equally unimaginative in its design, and so he stumbles to the fresher without effort. The room is warm, but there is no comfort in sonics the way there is in a shower. There is no rhythm of water beating out its rage upon your skin, at first soothing, then numb, then painful in its insistence. There is no cleansing fall of rain, no slick of wet across your skin, no satisfying whirlpool of dirt and grit spinning out of sight down the drain. Instead, the detritus of battle falls from your body, settling like the dust of memory upon the floor.

He steps out of the fresher, and feels no different.

The cockpit is abandoned when he returns, and the galley too, and he thinks perhaps, somehow, he is alone again in space.

He presses his hand against the door to the officer’s quarters, and it slides open with a gust of wind. Inside, curled atop the coarse coverlet of an unforgiving bunk, Korkie Kryze lies asleep. His hands are tucked beneath his arms, and his knees drawn up as if he’s cold, but he does not shiver. He barely breathes. In his stillness, Obi-Wan studies him.

There is familiarity in his expression, his brow furrowed, plagued by worry even in dreams, his hair swept across his forehead. The slope of his nose. The bow of his lips, though the bottom one is red and raw as though he habitually frets at it. There is a deep, purple bloom around the orbit of his left eye, and the cracked seal of broken skin like the stain of a fist upon his cheek. Obi-Wan touches his own cheek, as though the blow might be reflected there as well, but it is smooth. His own injuries lie elsewhere.

For a moment, he debates waking the boy, debates ordering him to wash and dress, but he can’t think of seeing her again, or himself, or whichever ghost might be looking back at him from behind those eyes. So instead, he unfolds the spare blanket at the end of the bed, provided to compensate for the chill of deep space, and lays it gently atop the sleeping form.

He spends the rest of the trip in the cockpit staring out at the stars, and thinking of absolutely nothing at all.

They land on Coruscant in the middle of a beautiful day, and Anakin is there to meet him. 

“Another Council sanctioned secret?” he spits, as Obi-Wan stumbles down the ramp. “Another noble cause? What have you done with my ship?”

“I’m sorry,” says Obi-Wan, as Ahsoka shoulders her master aside to wrap Obi-Wan in a fierce embrace.

“We were worried,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” he says again.

She pulls away, or he does, and her eyes catch on movement behind him.

“Korkie?” Her voice rises with surprise.

The boy still wears the grey uniform of his insurgency, though it is bloodied and torn, and he hangs over himself with his arms clasped around his middle as though to keep from spilling across the docks. He looks up at Ahsoka’s call, and blinks in the light of the day.

She leaves Obi-Wan, and he falters as she goes, moving to catch Korkie as he falls apart in her arms.

“You went to Mandalore?” Anakin asks, his voice threaded with outrage at this hypocrisy.

“I had to,” Obi-Wan says. “I had to.”

“Where’s Satine?” demands Ahsoka, from a distance. “Where’s his aunt?”

“Dead.”

Ahsoka is the first to recover.

“We should take him to the Halls, master,” she says, appealing to an Anakin still frozen in scrutinizing his own master. “I think his arm is broken, and his eye -” 

“Yeah,” he agrees, and Obi-Wan feels the focus levelled upon him strain and snap like an elastroband. “Let’s do that.”

They move slowly, up the steps, through the hangar, and past the minor customs and hazard authorities, and through the grand hallways of the Temple. Ahoska keeps her arm around Korkie’s waist, and lets him lean upon her, limping with exhaustion. Beside him, Obi-Wan can feel Anakin hovering close, but not touching, as though one or both of them might shatter with contact. He doesn’t reach out, and he is unaware of anything else until they come to the Halls of Healing and are ushered inside.

Then it is all confusion.

Korkie is pulled away from Ahsoka with a small cry as his arm is jostled, and probing fingers are pressed to his cheek. He grips Ahsoka’s hand in his own, and holds on as she tells the healers the little bit she has managed to glean since their arrival. The healers, unsatisfied, ask question after question about Mandalore, about his injuries, about the time since their occurence. They ask what hurts, and where, and how they happened. They ask if this was a fist, or a stick, or the back of a blade. They ask if he fell, or was pushed. They ask if there’s anything else, anything more, anything he’s hiding from them.

And Bant is there, too.

He can tell by the faint scent of deep sea salt, and the coolness of her hands upon his skin as she turns his face from the chaos of Korkie’s arrival to focus on her, and her alone.

“What about you?” she asks. “Where are you hurt?”

“I’m not hurt,” he mutters, the words habitual though no sound comes to fill them with weight.

She shines a light in his eyes, and he winces, turning away.

“A concussion,” she says. “At least. And what else?”

“I’m fine,” he says. “I’m fine. What about -?”

“He’s being taken care of,” she replies. “Now, let us do the same for you.”

The little light goes back in her pocket, and she takes him by the hand like a child. He goes with her, willingly, casting only one look back to find Anakin, watching him as always, as he is led away.

__

The room she takes him to is small, and white, and the door shuts behind her keeping back the world with it. She guides him to sit upon a little bed that reminds him of the one he once had in Qui-Gon’s quarters, but when she puts her hands on his shoulders to lay him flat, he gasps, and resists.

“No,” he says. “No, I’m fine.”

“Okay,” she says, her voice calm. “That’s okay, you don’t have to lie down. Just look at me, okay? And we’re going to figure this out. Yes?”

He nods. He trusts Bant. “Yes.”

“Now, we know about the concussion. Can you tell me if you were hit, or struck by anything?”

“I fell out of a ship,” he says, and to her credit, Bant doesn’t even pause between this question and the next.

“Were you alone?”

“No. I was with Satine. We were shot down. The ship fell, and we had to evacuate.”

The way he says it, the way he looks in this moment...Bant remembers how it was when he first came home from Mandalore, and she pulls a stool close to sit as near him as possible.

“Where is Satine now?”

He inhales sharply, the breath catching on his teeth, and tears still trapped deep in his chest.

“Do you know, I think I’m rather tired? I’d like to return to my quarters, now.”

“Obi-Wan -”

“I’d like to return to my room.”

“I know,” says Bant, taking his hand in hers. “I’m just going to give you a quick check over to make sure you’re not bleeding out anywhere, right? We know that’s very much a possibility with you, don’t we?” She smiles, trying to nudge him into something safe and familiar.

Very briefly, he smiles back, and relents. “Alright.”

“So,” she continues, pulling a holochart from a nearby drawer. “When you fell out of the ship, how did you land?”

“Badly.”

“Like how?”

“I hit my shoulder. I rolled. I tried to protect -”

But Bant cuts him off before he is strangled by memory.

“Okay, your shoulder, your ribs. How do your hips feel?”

“Fine,” he says. “I could walk after. I could run.”

“Your arms?”

“I don’t know.”

She sets her chart and stylus aside. “Can I see?” she asks.

He shrugs, but makes no objection when she reaches for the thick layer of a Mandalorian flight shirt that shrouds his torso. She lifts from the hem, and pulls the fabric upwards. His arms ache as they are drawn above his shoulders, and the high neck of the collar squeezes some colour back into his cheeks. He flinches in the chill of the room, and Bant apologises, pulling a pale green blanket across his back.

She frowns as she examines the markings upon his skin.

“Obi-Wan, that must’ve been some fall.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

She doesn’t acknowledge this as she prods at him with impossibly soft, webbed fingers, frowning and tutting at each wince and grimace she elicits from him. 

“You’ve got some broken ribs,” she announces. “Some deep bruising. Let me see your hands.”

He gives her his left, and then his right when the first passes inspection. The second is not so lucky.

“This your saber hand?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve two broken fingers here,” she says. “Do you remember that happening?”

“No.”

“And bruising. Like a boot. Did someone step on your hand?”

“I don’t know.”

She taps the end of each, and he tries not to cry out, suddenly aware of the pain flaring there.

“The good news is, you’ve not lost any feeling,” she says. “The bad news is, you’re going to need a dip. I’m so sorry, Obi-Wan.”

“I don’t want bacta.”

“I know, but that concussion alone needs more sustained treatment if you don’t want to end up with some significant issues. And your hand…”

“I’m fine,” he says, pulling his hand away to hide it in the folds of the blanket. “You said I could go back to my rooms.”

“You know I didn’t,” she says. She knows him. She knows this dance, even if the steps are heavier and more fatigued than normal. She does not rise to his bait. She waits him out.

At last, his shoulders heave and droop, and he gives in. 

“Where’s Anakin?” he asks.

“Probably outside, half hysterical with worry by now,” she says.

“He hates me.”

“He doesn’t.”

“Where’s Korkie?”

“Who’s that?”

“The boy who came with me. He’s Satine’s - he’s Satine’s…”

She hesitates, not wanting to guess, but by his struggle she thinks the answer can only be one thing.

“Her son?”

He nods, a wordless gasp of distress breaking free of him. She wants to lean forward, to embrace him, but he’s still so distant that she knows he would not let her. So instead, Bant puts her hand upon his head, and strokes his hair over and over again from his crown to the nape of his neck.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I didn’t know she’d found someone else.”

But that’s not it. He shakes his head vehemently, as he clutches the blanket closer, and grits out a reply which Bant could not have anticipated no matter how many years of friendship lay between them.

“She didn’t,” he says. “He’s mine.”

And with that confession tumbling free, so too, comes grief, like huge rolling waves pulling him under, and spinning him upwards until he is disoriented and gasping for air. She doesn’t wait, now, instead reaching out to gather him in her arms, giving him something to hold onto, as the tides of anguish rise and rise, and eventually fall, and him with them, into a deep, exhausted sleep.

She eases him back onto the pallet, pulling the cover high, and dims the lights. 

In Admittance, she inputs her data into the medcomp, and makes a recommendation for immediate bacta immersion. Her face is somber, and stoic, showing nothing of what she feels or thinks of this turn of events. She doesn’t quite know, herself, in any case.

Anakin is waiting, his elbows braced upon his knees, one leg bouncing, standing out like a bruise against the ceramplast white of the hall.

“Where’s Obi-Wan?” he demands, rising to meet her as soon as she steps away from the monitor.

“Asleep,” she says. “We’re waiting on a dip. Where’s Korkie?”

“Ahsoka’s with him,” he says. “Did he tell you about the Duchess?”

“He did.”

Anakin nods. She watches as his jaw clenches, and the muscles there leap as he chews up the marrow of his thoughts.

“Kriffing idiot,” he spits. “I would have gone with him, if he’d asked.”

“Does he know that?”

“He should,” Anakin insists. “But he doesn’t trust me.”

“He doesn’t want to hurt you.”

“Well, great job,” Anakin says, a bark of laughter punctuating his words. It rings through the vaulted ceilings of the hall, a clarion of upset. “Now he’s hurt, and his girlfriend is dead.”

“Anakin!”

But Anakin’s outrage is mounting, and gathering like an Alderaanian storm falling off the mountains.

“Oh, don’t defend him,” he says. “Don’t pretend this isn’t on him, because it is. Just like the Hardeen thing. It was his choice to go alone. It was his choice to turn his back on us. It was his choice to leave me behind. I don’t feel sorry for him, Master Eerin. I don’t. He’s done this himself.”

Bant stares at him. She says nothing. She only waits until the impact of his words rebound from the blank slate of her response and fall back on him. She waits for him to hear himself, and she knows he does when his mechanical hand forms a fist, and his shoulders turn him acutely away from her gaze. Anakin sighs, his voice turning soft, his words clipped short.

“Just comm me when he’s out of bacta,” he says. He stalks out of the Halls without a backward glance.

Bant sighs, her guard dropping just in time for her to hear the soft click of another door closing from behind her. She turns with an admonition on her lips. If Obi-Wan has roused himself to chase after his padawan, he’ll have no help from her.

But instead, it is Anakin’s padawan she meets.

“Master Eerin?” she calls, slipping out of the room behind her. “Did Anakin talk to you about Obi-Wan?”

Bant frowns, then turns a rueful eye on Ahsoka, a smile twisting at her lips.

“In a manner of speaking,” she says.

“Oh,” says Ahsoka. “He’s still mad about the Rako Hardeen incident.”

“So I gathered,” says Bant. She flicks through pages of data on her holochart, idly reminding herself of the litany of abuse Obi-Wan had come to her with following that particular debacle so recently ago. 

Ahsoka watches her intently, her head cocked. She runs her hands nervously over a lekku before she speaks again. “Aren’t you still mad?” she asks.

“No,” says Bant, looking at her again, and seeing only youth where the Republic sees a Commander. 

“Why not?”

“A healer learns only to be grateful when someone comes back from death,” she says. “It doesn’t happen often enough to grow bitter for it.”

Ahsoka nods, and frowns again. It is clear that there is more she’d say, and more she’s considered in the weeks following Obi-Wan’s undercover mission. Things that she cannot say to her master, who is still angry, or to Obi-Wan who is still too lost to guide anyone with authority. So Bant sets her chart aside, and sits against the wall, gesturing for Ahsoka to join her.

“I wish they’d talk,” she says, as she drops into the seat next to Bant. “I mean, they do talk. We had that whole mission to Onderon, and everything was fine. I mean, mostly. But then...why wouldn’t Master Obi-Wan have come to us?”

“I don’t know, Ahsoka,” says Bant. “But I do know it was never meant as a slight against you. Whatever is between Obi-Wan and your master has nothing to do with how Obi-Wan feels about you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve known Obi-Wan since the creche, and I can tell you: he’s always been like this.”

Ahsoka is silent for a moment, considering this, but before her contemplation can slide into brooding, Bant intervenes, tapping her forearm with the stylus to draw her back to the present.

“What about that young man you carried in here? Korkie, was it?”

“Yeah,” she says. “He’s the Duchess’ nephew. We worked together the last time I was on Mandalore. The Prime Minister was establishing a black market, and he helped catch him.”

“By yourselves?” she asks, caught somewhere between surprise and a familiar chagrin.

“Well, with friends,” she says. “And his Aunt.”

“Sounds like a good kid,” says Bant, then laughs at Ahsoka’s grimace of distaste. “Tell me about him.”

“Oh, I don’t know him that well,” she replies. “He was really interested in the Jedi when we met, though. Kept asking about the Temple, and lightsabers, and Jedi philosophy. He’d mentioned something about Master Seva once, but I don’t remember enough about the Old Age philosophers to know what he meant.”

“I suppose philosophy and literature classes have somewhat fallen by the wayside in the past couple years,” Bant says. 

“I guess,” says Ahsoka. “But I don’t think I’d have time to write essays while in the middle of a dogfight, you know?”

“Tell me,” she says, pushing just a little further than is probably wise. “Did Korkie ever mention anything about his father?”

“No,” says Ahsoka. “Just that the Duchess was like a mother to him. That she raised him, and he grew up mostly in the palace. I assume he’s an orphan. Maybe he doesn’t remember. Or maybe it’s too painful to talk about. I didn’t ask.”

“No, no,” Bant assures her, patting her hand fondly. “Of course not. Do you think he’d mind if I went in to visit him?”

“Korkie? He was asleep when I left.”

“That’s for the best. I just want to give him a quick check up. Make sure nothing was missed. You’d better go after your master - make sure he doesn’t blow up something we can’t replace.”

Ahsoka smiles at that, and springs to her feet eager to be directed towards some useful task.

“You mean himself,” she says. “Anything else he could probably fix.”

“Or improve.”

“Or that!” Ahsoka agrees, laughing now. She gives Bant a quick bow, then exits the hall with a quick, and sturdy step while Bant slips silently into the room at her back.

It’s quiet inside, the air is warm, and it may as well be the same room she’d vacated earlier for all the similarity of the figure on the bed. He looks like Obi-Wan - the way she remembers him. He looks like he did in those in-between years of childhood and adolescence. His hair follows the same line, his brow furrows the same way, and in the soft light she takes a small sample of his blood and confirms that which she already knew for sure.

__

Anakin is waiting for him when he wakes. He sits at his bedside, and watches as he rises up through the fathoms of sleep, buoyed to the surface by piercing shafts of light, like a diver on Mon Cala. Anakin can feel his muscles twitch as consciousness returns in the dry warmth of the palm pressed flush against his own.

“What time is it?” Obi-Wan asks, blinking him into focus.

“It’s late,” he replies.

Obi-Wan relaxes, his head rolling back to settle against his pillow. “You should go to bed,” he says, and Anakin huffs with laughter.

“We’re way beyond that, old man.”

“Are you okay?” he asks, and that’s just so typical that Anakin smirks.

“I’m fine,” he says.

“Good.”

“Are you?”

The pleasant warmth of drowsiness is stripped away in his next breath, and Anakin can feel the  air turn so cold that it raises gooseflesh across his arms, and freezes against Obi-Wan’s lips. His fingers flex against the sheets, and Anakin’s hand tightens in response, keeping him there when he’d rather turn away.

“Don’t -” he warns, but Anakin doesn’t listen. He never does.

“You were in bacta for three days,” he says. “You could have died. All because you couldn’t bear to come to me first. To ask me. To trust me.”

“I do trust you, Anakin.”

“Don’t lie to me, too,” he says. 

“It’s the truth,” he swears. “I couldn’t - The Council -”

“I don’t care what the Council said,” Anakin protests. “I would have come for you, master.”

Obi-Wan blinks rapidly up at the lights overhead. Anakin can feel as he grasps clumsily at the insubstantial wisps of the Force, cloudy and distant with sedation, and grips his hand more firmly still. He, at least, is solid.

“What of Korkie?” Obi-Wan asks, at last.

Anakin slides his hand free.

“The kid? He’s fine. A little beat up, but nothing a couple of bacta patches and some bone knitters couldn’t fix. Ahsoka’s with him now.”

“Good,” says Obi-Wan, his breaths coming more and more easily. “That’s good.”

Anakin licks his lips, and sits forward, accepting of but not resigned to the fact that he will never get an admission from Obi-Wan that isn’t first willingly proposed. He knows this. It’s fine. They can talk about the kid.

“Why’d you bring him?” he asks. “What happened on Mandalore?”

“There was a coup,” says Obi-Wan in a tone like the salt flats of the Jundland Wastes. “Satine fell, and her government was usurped.”

“By who?”

“Maul.”

Anakin spits a curse like acid, but Obi-Wan scarcely seems to note it. Instead, he keeps talking as though Maul is the least of his story.

“But he wasn’t alone,” he says. “He had his brother. And Death Watch turned the people. The city was lost. I only meant to get her out.”

“And Korkie.”

“I took him because his aunt told me to.”

“Satine did?”

“She’s not his aunt,” his master says, the admission coming like a weary sigh. “She’s his mother, and I...he’s my son.”

There are many things that Anakin feels in this moment. There is a nasty, vindictive kind of ache that licks at his throat like flames when he hears that Maul had brought his own brother, when Obi-Wan had not. There is sorrow for the Duchess, and righteous indignation on her behalf at the perfidy of her people. There is a whipping cyclone of confusion and disbelief as Obi-Wan refers to a second woman whom Anakin doesn’t know, and then a son he’s already met, but who should be impossible. And an anger as this settles in, and he realises the depth of his master’s betrayal.

“Your son,” he repeats, and Obi-Wan only nods. He rises, having nothing more and far too much to say, and palms open the door. He spares Obi-Wan only a single moment from the threshold. “You should have told me,” he says.

And Obi-Wan, still gazing at the ceiling, still gripping the pleats of bedsheets in his hand, just shakes his head. “I didn’t know.”

[gojira007]

I don't know if you're still doing the ask meme, but if you are: 2 and 100!

I am indeed still doing it!  I’m only sorry it took me so long to get around to it!  ANYWAY!

2.)  Pick a villain, any villain. You are now that villain. What are you going to do and why?

I’m going to fly all the way up into the upper atmosphere and contemplate whether or not I am actually alive, because it’s 2020 and that’s just sort of How We Do these days.

100.) Ramble about anything that’s Sonic-related! :>

I’ve found myself thinking an awful lot this year about how much I’m really a “Sonic the Hedgehog” Fan generally VS. how much I’m really a fan of the SatAM/Archie continuities specifically.  Because it’s not like those are the ONLY Sonic things I enjoy!  I’ve become very enamored of the IDW universe, I still play and enjoy most of the games themselves, and most of the fans I’m friends with and interact the most with are, I think it’s fair to say, DEFINITELY fans of “Sonic” broadly more so than they are attached to a specific VERSION of “Sonic” (though i can definitely think of a couple for whom that ISN’T the case, to be sure X3).  But I do also realize, more and more, that the “core” of my Sonic experience, the thing I most fundamentally come back to when I think of the “Sonic” things that most interest, engage, and entertain me, the prism through which I view the whole thing even all these years later, really is SatAM/Archie more so than anything else.  And in fairness “Archie” being in that mix is a bit of a cheat on my part, since that universe wound up encompassing Basically Everything Sonic eventually, to the point where it’s rather natural to imagine even those elements of the series that DIDN’T make their way into the book in one form or another at some point fitting in relatively easily.  But even so, there really are ineffable things about those particular interpretations of the universe that you don’t really find elsewhere in the franchise, but which also remain, even now, the things most central to my own “Sonic” experience.  Characters, concepts, tone, theme...I can ENJOY other “Sonic” stuff just fine, but in terms of what will always be my greatest LOVE with the series, I think I’ve realized that’s really where my heart lies.

[classicdaisycalico]

Shadouge 19~!

fifty ways to kiss someone.   send me a 💏 and i will randomise a number in order for my muse to kiss yours…

Ooooooh this actually gives me some really good fodder for my Team Dark longfic I haven’t worked on in a while! Thanks for sending me this!

Shadouge #19: “For Luck”

It had been half an hour since the Ultimate Life Form slipped away from the Resistance HQ, for the most part undetected. The rest of the team were busy discussing rebuilding strategies after the War to Take Back the Planet had since ceased. It appeared that Sonic was on his way out, too, already eager to take on the last remaining hordes of badniks that strayed elsewhere. Shadow, on the other hand, was pursuing a different target, which was why he was heading right back to the Imperial Tower at Eggman’s base of operations.

It was the last place Infinite had been defeated, but Shadow was absolutely certain that somehow the jackal in question was still alive. Weak, of course, but nevertheless, very much alive.

Before long, he had reached the entrance of the base. After speeding through several winding floors and crashing through every last hunk of scrap metal on two legs, he had conquered the labyrinth that was the fortress. From there, all he needed to do was reach the top of the tower.

The aforementioned building stretched up to obscenely high heights, reaching past the clouds. Scaling it from the outside was impossible for any normal being. Thankfully, he wasn’t normal. Moreover, he didn’t even need to do that, thanks to a little bit of reinforcements he had on hand. “Chaos control.”

In a brief flash of light, he warped away from where he stood before. Not even in the blink of an eye, he reappeared again, at the overlook where Sonic and Infinite stood off for the last time. He dashed around the rest of the overlook surrounding the top floor, scanning the perimeter. Surely, he had to be somewhere.

He slipped in through a broken window. The rest of the facility was completely dark. The electricity must have died after he crashed into that generator back at the bottom of the fortress, he thought to himself.

“I know you’re here…Shadow the Hedgehog.”

The Ultimate Life Form’s ears twitched at the remark. Infinite sounded different than normal…weaker, perhaps. He whipped his head around, searching for any source of the jackal nearby. Suddenly, a loud crash came from close by. Distracted by the noise, he hadn’t noticed Infinite zip around and deliver a blunt kick to the chest. The impact sent Shadow soaring across the room until he fell into a scrap heap.

“Yes…I’ve been expecting you.”

“That’s why I’m here,” the hedgehog replied as he stumbled back to his feet. “To finish you off…Zero.”

He was met with a sharp punch to the jaw. Even through the pain, he smirked. “Did I strike a nerve?”

“NEVER address me by that wretched name!” the jackal exclaimed furiously as he delivered another blow, then another, then a fourth, and continued as he seethed, “Zero is dead. Zero is long gone, never to return. There is only…INFINITE, the true Ultimate Mercenary…no, the true Ultimate Life Form.”

As Shadow struggled to get back on his feet, a Chaos Emerald clenched in hand, Infinite smacked him, a hit so devastating that the hedgehog crumpled to the floor at his feet, dropping not only the gem in his hand, but the remaining two he had hidden in his possession.

Underneath his mask, Infinite couldn’t help let out a condescending snicker. “What’s this?” he mused aloud. “These must be the elusive Chaos Emeralds the good Doctor was rambling about for so long.”

He plucked the red one from its spot on the ground, inspecting it carefully. There was not a scratch or a blemish in sight. At its core, brilliant sparks of energy pulsed, like a heartbeat. “He mentioned something once before…that there were seven altogether. And when all are in hand…the wielder possesses unimaginable power…truly a magnificent sight to behold.”

He looked back down at the green and cyan emeralds. “How lucky am I to have been gifted three at once.” He bent down and picked up the remaining two. “Halfway there, pitiful creature,” he spat in Shadow’s direction. “Your lifeblood now lies in my worthy hands. And with this much power alone…my reliance on the Phantom Ruby is now completely obsolete.”

Upon realizing what the jackal’s intentions were next, Shadow strained to stand back up again. “You’ll…never…find them…” he stuttered.

“I don’t need to,” the masked menace answered nonchalantly. “They will come to me…almost as easily as you will come to your demise…right here, right now.”

He summoned a flurry of energy cubes, no longer just a swarm of plain red, but accompanied by an electric cyan and a neon green. As he readied his attack, he glared directly at his target: the Ultimate Life Form.

“Sayonara, Shadow the Hedgehog.”

Before he could strike, however, a laser blasted right at the jackal’s back, and the cubes dissipated into nothingness as quickly as they were summoned. He growled in anger, turning to face his mystery attacker. “How dare–”

He was met with a swift kick in the face before he could unleash his fury in full force. The impact sent him flying into the same scrap heap as Shadow, but the latter already evaded the impact, instead sprinting towards the rest of his team. “What are you doing here?” he asked as Rouge floated gently back down to the ground. “This is not your fight. It’s mine.”

“We got word from Sonic that he saw you heading towards the Imperial Tower, so we’re swinging by to investigate.”

His red eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘we’?”

“PHASE 1 OF REINFORCEMENTS: TEAM DARK. ACHIEVED SUCCESSFULLY,” Omega beeped. “PHASE 2 OF REINFORCEMENTS: RESISTANCE LEADERS. WORK IN PROGRESS.”

“You brought along the entire Resistance?”

“We had to,” the bat answered matter-of-factly. “If Sonic couldn’t do it alone, then neither can you. It was his idea.”

“How close are they to the fortress?”

“RESISTANCE LEADERS LOCATED,” Omega boomed, as if on cue. “SONIC THE HEDGEHOG AND COMPANY SITUATED AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE FORTRESS.”

“And that’s not all we have on hand,” Rouge grinned. “Omega: Initiate Phase 3 of Reinforcements.”

The entire back compartment of the Ultimate Robot popped open. Shadow peered into the machinery and his jaw nearly dropped. Within Omega, the remaining Chaos Emeralds were placed neatly into 4 slots, out of 7.

“Tails tinkered around a little and found some extra use for one of Omega’s compartments as a storage space,” Rouge explained. “Now let’s go kick some jackal behind and put this guy out of business for good. Where is he now?”

She got her answer as she heard a growl of resentment coming from the scrap heap. From the hunks of rusting metal parts in the pile, a hand shot up balled into a fist.

Hastily closing Omega’s back, she readied herself into a fighting stance. Shadow followed suit as he hurriedly made his way next to her. “Ready when you are, Rouge.”

He froze as he felt something press against his cheek for a quick second. Almost immediately, his muzzle flushed a deep red as he realized what happened, something that finally confirmed his suspicions for quite some time now.

Rouge the Bat had finally kissed him.

It appeared that she was feeling rather embarrassed after the fact, as well; her muzzle was just as red as the color for which she was named. Her eyes were solely focused on the jackal in front of her emerging from the debris. “For luck,” she choked out, trying not to lose her cool in front of him.

Her hands were balled up into fists, shaking vigorously. The shaking stopped only when he placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Nothing she could do would stop him from taking her seriously. After all, she had already earned his respect after stealing many things in the past.

His heart, he just now realized, was quite close to the top of that list.

“Let’s get moving.”

Together, they launched themselves at the jackal, who was already out of the scrap heap, making his way towards Team Dark. The true final battle, at long last, had begun.

[newmusickarl]

Album & EP Recommendations

Album of the Week: Bright Magic by Public Service Broadcasting

For anyone who loves or has an emotional connection with music, it is not uncommon to be instantly transported to a completely different place when listening to a song. Often it will evoke a feeling or a memory, taking you right back to the moment in time when you first heard it play, when it first moved you, or when your life changed significantly, or even insignificantly, in some way. This is the feeling and magic upon which the trio of J. Willgoose Esquire, JF Abraham and Wrigglesworth thrive – however not in the way to which you might be accustomed.

You see with Public Service Broadcasting, the power of their music comes from transporting the listener to a specific time and place in history. So far throughout their career, they have taken some amazing sonic journeys to the first expedition of Mount Everest, the invention of colour television, the creation of the Spitfire plane, the Apollo Moon landing and the sinking of the Titanic. Most recently, they even explored the rise and fall of the Welsh coal mining industry. Their music is an incredible way to experience modern history and now with their fourth album, Bright Magic, the PSB trio are taking listeners into the heart of one of Europe’s most vibrant musical cities – Berlin.

Now firstly there is a noticeable difference between this PSB album and their previous work. Where previously the band would incorporate samples and archive clips into their music, this has now taken a backseat with their moody instrumentals coming to the foreground and the band opting for collaborations with various vocalists instead. Although this is something they had started to do in part on their last two records, the fact this is even more apparent on Bright Magic may be to do with the fact that this is a more personal piece, with Willgoose stating on the album’s press release:  

“I knew the album was going to be about the city, and its history and myths, and I was going to move there. So it’s quite a personal story. It’s become an album about moving to Berlin to write an album about people who move to Berlin to write an album…”

And you can certainly hear that German electronic sound of the 70s and 80s influencing every inch of this record, with various moments drawing shades to the likes of Depeche Mode, David Bowie, Kraftwerk, even composer Giorgio Moroder.

The album opens on the ominous pulsation of Der Sumpf, a track with a similar aura to that of the Stranger Things theme tune, before the vocoder vocals and dazzling keys of Im Licht take over for one of the album’s many highlights. From there, the band move onto the industrial guitar sound of Der Rhythmus der Maschinen before some bold German vocals towards the outro then lead into one of the singles of the year, People, Let’s Dance. With funky guitars and an irresistible groove, it is without a doubt one of the band’s finest tracks to date.

Blue Heaven, the band’s collaboration with Gurr’s Andreya Casablanca, then follows, which is another career-best track that offers up a brilliant, guitar-driven slice of indie-pop. After these two big hitters, PSB take things down a notch with the stunning Gib mir das Licht, where the angelic vocals of EERA take centre stage over a beautiful arrangement of twinkly guitars and bluesy horns.

The Visitor is then another neon-drenched instrumental that leads seamlessly into the grand three-part final - Lichtspiel. Culminating to around 15 minutes in total, Lichtspiel is nothing short of a glorious synth-soaked symphony, an incredible piece of music that will have you dancing one moment and then standing back in awe the next. A smattering of rainfall then signals the arrival of German actress Nina Hoss, whose spoken word piece Ich und die Stadt works as a cinematic epilogue to proceedings.

Ambitious, triumphant and just utterly mesmerising from beginning to end, this is right up there with The Race For Space as my favourite PSB album, and also a late contender for the top half of my Albums of the Year list. With grand instrumentals, masterfully crafted arrangements and pitch-perfect collaborations, Bright Magic lives up to its name by being simply magnificent in every way.

Listen here

Lifeforms by Angel & Airwaves

Elsewhere this week, Tom DeLonge’s Angel & Airwaves made a triumphant return, releasing their sixth studio album and their first in seven years. With DeLonge best known in recent years for his research into UFOs and alien lifeforms, this latest offering channels that cosmic spirit, delivering a mightily fun slice of pop-punk built around some quite galactic synths.

Listen here

And Then Life Was Beautiful by Nao

There’s a definite space connection to my album picks this week, with British singer-songwriter Nao releasing the follow-up to her critically acclaimed sophomore album Saturn. Now on her third album, Nao is sounding more confident and polished than ever, soulfully singing of break-ups, femininity and motherhood alongside some smooth and melodic R&B grooves.

Listen here

Tracks of the Week

LOVE by Grimes

On the tracks front this week, Grimes released a surprise new track on her Instagram, accompanied by a homemade selfie-style video. Speaking on the track, which she wrote and produced following the breaking of the news that her and Elon Musk had separated, Grimes said it is “in response to all the privacy invasion, bad press, online hate and harassment by paparazzi I’ve experienced this week.” Although crafted in a short time span, it is quite amazing and here’s hoping it gets an official release soon.

Listen here

As I Try Not To Fall Apart by White Lies

Alongside the announcement of their sixth studio album, British post-punk outfit White Lies released this wonderful title track for that forthcoming new record, built on their signature mix of pulsating synths and a big singalong chorus.

Listen here

Livestream by Oscar & The Wolf

It’s not too long now till Belgian indie-pop sensation Max Colombie drops his third studio album, and this latest single builds the anticipation to next month’s release nicely, with its quite hypnotic end-of-summer vibes.

Listen here

Lover (Don’t Let Me Down) by Palace

Also readying their third album are London-based blues-rock outfit Palace, with this second single from their forthcoming album one of their most instant tracks to date, built on dreamy, meandering guitar riffs and soothing falsetto vocals.

Listen here

Dad Vibes by Limp Bizkit

And finally this week, after sending the world into a meme frenzy with their Lollapalooza performance of this track, Nu-metal legends Limp Bizkit finally dropped the studio version of what is their first new music in almost 10 years. As ever, it’s a great bit of fun with their sound these days offering quite the nostalgia trip.

Listen here

[bringinbackpod]

Interview with Madeline The Person

We had the pleasure of interviewing Madeline the Person over Zoom video!

Imagine a world where pain dissolves into pops of color and trauma transforms into art meant to be passed along like a smile. Alt-Pop wunderkind Madeline the Person unlocks that world on her debut EP, CHAPTER 1: The Longing, out today on Warner Records.

Sonically and visually, “I Talk To The Sky” brings listeners right into the heart of Personville—her rainbow-colored art emporium where all humans and all feelings are welcome to express themselves. In the clip, she bounces on a trampoline against a clear cloud-less blue sky. The video jumps from her in a valley ensconced by mountains to sitting on a bed in the middle of a field, clutching her teddy bear as she sings. The earthy beat underscores an emotionally charged elegy as she confesses, “I write down the things I wish I could say to you. I talk to the sky.”

Of the song, she recalls, “I wrote ‘I Talk To The Sky’ a couple of weeks after my dad passed away when I was 15. It felt really weird to want to talk to him about the fact that he had died, but he was the only person I actually couldn’t talk to. So, at night, I told the sky everything I wanted to tell him, and I imagined the sky as the perfect messenger. The sky became my really good friend. Talking to the sky got me through the hardest point in my life, so I hope this song encourages others to try their own version of it. Talk to anything or anyone about your feelings, and you will be set free.”

Elsewhere on the EP, soft acoustic guitar wraps around her warm delivery on “Going Home.” The project concludes with the standout “Gladly.” As strings uphold delicate piano, she reveals, “So I’ll tell you the secrets to survive, you just laugh and cry harder and scream to survive.”

Madeline the Person feels everything at once. Bright and colorful on the outside, the Houston, Texas native uses her music to express the more painful aspects of her world. Having built a substantial following on TikTok (nearly 500k followers) with covers of Frank Ocean, Phoebe Bridgers, Harry Styles, Lizzo, Joni Mitchell, Queen and more, the 19-year-old makes her first foray into original music with the release of her EP, ‘CHAPTER 1: The Longing,’ which includes the somber & evocative "As a Child,” as well as “I Talk to the Sky,” both deep reflections on grief & the loss of her father. With several more heartfelt releases in store for 2021, Madeline the Person is already shining as bright as the future that lies ahead.

Now, Madeline The Person speaks for countless fans with CHAPTER 1 and much more to come…

We want to hear from you! Please email Tera@BringinitBackwards.com.

www.BringinitBackwards.com

#podcast #interview #bringinbackpod  #foryou #foryoupage #stayhome #togetherathome #zoom #aspn #americansongwriter #americansongwriterpodcastnetwork

Listen & Subscribe to BiB

Follow our podcast on Instagram and Twitter!

--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/bringinbackpod/support source https://anchor.fm/bringinbackpod/episodes/Interview-with-Madeline-The-Person-e10c0os

[callmestp]

Tagged?

Tagged by @glassestouchdown​.  Thanks for considering me!  It’s been ages since I’ve been tagged on anything (big surprise there), and I like thinking up answers to the questions.

Rules:

1. Post these rules

2. Answer the questions given by the tagger

3. Write 11 questions of your own

4. Tag 11 people!

1. If you could change just one thing about the world what would it be? To take some lyrics from the Creed song “Higher”: “The only difference is to let love replace all the hate.” And that would be it.  Christ asked his followers to love their enemies and pray for those who would injure or persecute them (Matthew 5:44).  And 1 Peter 4:8 states that love covers over a multitude of sins.  Many other problems in this world, I feel, would be resolved in a few generations if people stopped their hate and loved instead.

2. Name a song that regularly gets stuck in your head. A song that has been stuck in my head lately is “Come for Us” by Evan Wickham.  You can listen to it here: https://youtu.be/Jen0s9V4e5Y A friend of mine called the melody “majestic” and I’m inclined to agree.

3. What was the last movie you watched at the cinema and what did you think of it? That would be “American Made,” starring Tom Cruise.  I was surprised to find out that it was based on a true story.  I had known of the historical events mentioned in the film -- the drug cartels in Colombia, the Sandinistas in Central America and the Contras fighting against them -- but didn’t realize there was one person who was getting involved in all those areas.

4. If you could take some time off and just go study in a foreign country for a while, what would you study and where? I had to think about this one for a bit, but then the answer hit me in the face like a ton of bricks.  If I could go abroad to study something, it would be to Israel, especially Jerusalem.  It’s such a hub of cultures, and it’s steeped with history, Biblical and otherwise.  Part of the reason I would go, would be as a pilgrimage to see the places where Christ lived and taught, and where he met His end.

5. What’s a skill that you don’t have at the moment that you would like to have? There are several ways I can approach this question.  I can think of it in terms of a skill I would like to have but don’t really need, or a skill I really ought to have.  In terms of a skill I’d like to have, I’d like to know how to play certain instruments: a steel guitar, a steel drum, and a church organ.  In terms of a skill I ought to have, it would be public speaking.  (It’s difficult for me to think up responses on the fly, making spoken conversation awkward for me.)

6. Who is the first fictional character that you felt really connected to, and who you still feel connected to today? It’s possible that there may have been someone different when I was younger, but in terms of what I can remember today: Sonic the Hedgehog was a video game character I connected to, from the first time I played one of his games, ca. 1996.  Without saying any words, I saw someone with a sense of adventure, traveling all over the place, fighting for what he thought was right.  I’m still a fan of the franchise and I still enjoy Sonic, but with all the other characters that have since been added to the cast, I adore the ancient Tikal the Echidna.  She was a girl after my own heart: spiritual, compassionate, nurturing, almost motherly.

In terms of something a little more contemporary, I quickly gravitated to Toriel Dreemurr in the 2015 video game Undertale.  I saw an older woman with a good heart, compassionate, protective (almost to a fault), left alone to wither away in the Ruins with only a few small monsters for company.  I felt so bad when I had to leave Toriel behind, and nearly cried when she hugged me and walked away.  Thankfully, in the Pacifist story arc, she got a chance to fulfill her dream of becoming a schoolteacher.

7. Are there any particular types of stories that you find yourself always drawn towards? I enjoy mystery stories, trying to piece together the clues before the protagonists can.  I also really enjoy underdog stories, where one or more “small time” people work to achieve what others would have dismissed as impossible.  These are probably why I love the movie Zootopia so much.

8. If you could meet a fictional character and spend a day with them, who would it be and what would you do together? To build upon my answer to question 7, I would like to meet and spend a day with Judy Hopps from Zootopia.  Though the movie shows a bit of her back story, I’d love seeing a day in her life right now: how things are going with her partner Nick, how she’s treated by Chief Bogo and the other cops at the ZPD now that she’s definitively proven her worth, and how she spends her free time away from work.  I’d also ask for more of her back story: exactly what age she decided she wanted to be a cop, what she did in pursuit of her dream between ages 9 and 24, and whether she’d have done anything different with her life if she had the chance.

9. What are three things you would never want to go without? Family, the Bible, and a means to connect with other people.

10. List three things about yourself that you take pride in. I hesitate to use the term “pride” because, while it’s good to have a moderate degree of self-esteem, runaway pride can be one’s downfall.  But in terms of things in my life that I’m glad are true:

A. I earned my Professional Engineering license in 2015.  By far, that is my crowning achievement in my career.  I’ve been wanting that ever since I was in college, and I put in the long hours for 6 months, studying for that eight-hour exam.  And I certainly make use of that license in my job, though sometimes I get the feeling that it’s being taken for granted.

B. Since 2011, I’ve been able to express my ideas through creative writing.  If I remember right, I’ve completed 11 fan fictions (plus one currently in progress).  The writing has gotten progressively better (and usually longer) with every new story I compose.  Regrettably, I’ve made little progress in this area during 2017, for all the other demands being made on my free time.

C. I’m glad that I’m at a point in my life where my circumstances are stable enough that I can help out others in need, whether that’s offering my time or my financial resources.  For years, my sister has come to me for help on her university coursework, and this week, I learned that she trusts no one else (not even her own classmates) to give her advice and support she needs to succeed.  I suppose I’m a victim of my own success, but still, for someone to actually say that I am valued that much...

11. What are you looking forward to in 2018? I am looking for a change in my life for the better.  As of right now, every day, my evenings and weekends are occupied by one of three things: I’m either working late into the night (as part of my job’s on-call rotation), filling out applications for a new job, or helping my sister.  If I was to get a new job -- and by tomorrow, I pray that some very good news is coming my way -- it would remove two of those three drains on my time.  Thinking more long-term, moving into a new apartment closer to where (I hope) my new job is located, because this apartment has all the memories associated with my current employer.  And maybe I can even work on other areas of my life I’ve been neglecting: finding friends, maybe even getting into a relationship.

The following questions are what I’m writing for this assignment.

1. If you could change one thing about yourself, whether it’s your body, your mind, or your life, what would it be?

2. (This is a morbid question, but it’s been on my mind since All Saints’ Sunday) If you died tomorrow, who do you think would attend your funeral?  What do you think people would say about you, good or bad, if they were being honest?

3. Name your favorite thing about where you live right now.  This could be in reference to your actual dwelling place, or the geographic location thereof.

4. What was something you had said or done when you were younger, that you now look back on and cringe?

5. Name your favorite hobby, and briefly explain what got you interested in it.

6. Your Tumblr blog: how’d you come up with the name?  How long have you maintained it?  Have you ever moved or changed names on Tumblr, and if so, what was the reason?

7. Christ Jesus once said that wherever your treasure lies, your heart will be there also (Matthew 6:21).  What is it that you treasure most in your life?

8. If you could step into the life of any other person, living or dead, for 24 hours, who would it be, and what would you do with the time?

9. Describe your preferred platform for video games.  Why do you prefer that platform over others?

10. If you had the option to be born into any time period, any place, where/when would it be and why?

11. What would be your thoughts of a world where humans co-existed on Earth with some sort of non-human sentient beings?  They could be existing Earth species (feral or anthropomorphic), they could be extraterrestrials, or they could be non-organic robots.

Usually, for me, the most difficult portion of this activity is finding people to tag.  On Tumblr and elsewhere, I tend to be a dead-end for most content.  I don’t follow many blogs.  Many are run by bots, and the ones that aren’t, I don’t know their authors personally.  The only blog I follow, whose author I know, would be @glassestouchdown, and for that, all she would have to do is answer my written questions.  Of course, anyone reading this, who follows my blog or otherwise, is welcome to try this themselves.

[cutegirlmayra]

This idea would not leave me alone and I really need to get it outta my system XD Amy's dreams gets possessed by a spirit who claims to have fallen in love with her ever since she bought his house. He's the 'Sonic' in her dreams till he gets sick of it & tried to get her to fall for the real him. Even going as far as threatening to hurt those she loves. It's up to Sonic to save her! It's up to you how this goes, what the genre is, if you wanna tweak it, etc. Let your imagination take place~

Omg, I’ve had a similar idea to this but about a Spirit whose been looking for his long lost love, and she happens to look like Amy. I’ve done the idea before but I’ve wanted to rearrange it into a siren-spirit like thing, where he takes form as Sonic and drains Amy of love to keep himself alive. Sonic and the gang then- Oh wait, I should just write it, huh? lol! Thank you! I’ll do my best! :D

Prompt:

“I can’t!” Amy grips the wall behind her, as the three turn to one another and back to her. “I can’t face him again, I can’t!”

“Amy, you know it’s not the real Sonic now.” Tails stepped in, trying to help calm her down and ease her tension. “Honestly, you said you would beat him up if you ever got the chance for invading your dreams, right?”

“That’s not-! W-well, yes, but-!”

Sonic looked away, this was already as awkward as awkward gets…

He remembered having to leap into Amy’s dream and found her and him cuddling, before he defeated the siren and pulled Amy out of a coma. That’s when Tails figured out this certain village held a shrine where legend said the spirit would feed off of romantic desires…

This whole adventure he has felt nothing but anger and awkwardness, and poor Amy would notice him turn away sometimes to try and avoid it all, and it pained her heart, because she thought he did so out of betrayal.

“Of course I want to prove to the REAL Sonic that I’m not that shallow! But I’m worried he’ll pull a fast one like last time and I won’t be able to wake up again!” Amy pulled away, walking to the exit before stopping in her tracks, gripping her arms. “You… you don’t know what it feels like… knowing you’ve been lied too…”

Knuckles groaned, “Not this stuff again…”

“Shut up, Knuckles!” Amy swung around, looking ticked.

“Amy, calm down! The only problem is… this spirit only goes after people with strong hopes for love… we… we don’t necessarily fit that description…” Tails sweat dropped. “And since it knows you and all… you could lure it to it’s physical form and we can nab him in this!” Tails excitedly pulled out an urn that had many beautiful designs all around it. “Apparently, A jealous boyfriend of a maiden in the past once sealed away the spirit before with this thing! I got right to fixing it and it actually carries some technology that captures energy. Think this ‘spirit’ is something else, since I don’t really believe in ghosts.” Tails then proudly gestured to himself, as if the true intellectual, before Sonic and Knuckles smiled to one another, unfolding their arms and slowly creeping up on him.

“Either way.” Tails put the urn away behind him, and smiled reassuringly to Amy. “All we need you to do is pretend your still in love with him, and falling for his allure. Once he takes form, you’re completely safe! We’ll pounce him! And then you can hit him as much as you want before we seal him in the urn!”

“TtaaaaaAAAiiillLLLLSss…”

Tails suddenly shivered from the soles of his feet to the tip of his head and tails.

He spun around, “K-knock it off!”

Sonic and Knuckles were making faces and trying to act spooky, as he just pouted at their childish antics.

“Y-you guys are giving me goosebumps!”

“WwwiiithhhHHH wwHHHAAaat?” Sonic motioned like a ghost in the air, though he was just balancing on one leg.

“I thoughhhht you sssaiiiIIIIDddd yoUUU DDDoonNN’TTT BBeeeliiieve in GhhooooOOOOOooost~”

“You two are ridiculous.”

“Asking Amy to flirt is ridiculous.” Sonic dropped the act and gestured to Amy, who suddenly froze up in spot. “I mean, we all know how that goes.” He then patted Tails’s shoulder and headed for the shrine.

“This guy is by far a con artists. All we have to do is con him and we won’t even need Amy to-”

“I’ll do it.”

“You will!?” Tails flung around, arms behind him, leaning forward as his feet’s tips sprung up too. “That’s great!”

Sonic flinched, turning back to the group, he looked…. worried…

Amy huffed towards Sonic and then folded her arms, turning her head high and away from him.

“Perfect! Then we’ll leave ya too it, Amy!” Tails flew up and outside the shrine, gesturing to Knuckles to follow him.

“Are you sure about this, Amy? I thought you said you-” Knuckles, as he was walking by her, tried to ask for clarity on her almost rapid turn around from before, but she just brushed him off with a quick, ‘It’s fine’ and he left it at that.

He was… a little scared at how she snapped that reply back.

“You can’t be serious.” Sonic strode up to her, challenging her position as she gave him a disdainful frown.

“You said you didn’t want too a few seconds ago. Getting fickle again?” Ouch!

“Urgh!” Amy swung her arms down to her sides, leaning up pretty close, directly to his face. “I already told you! I thought it was you!”

“Heh. Like I’d ever hold you like that creep!” Sonic pulled away, folding his hands and turning his glare elsewhere… “What if you fall for his pretty facade again? Can you resist a little better this time?” He really did seem pretty upset over this… didn’t he?

“Why you-!” Amy held it together, though her arms quaked with wanting to hammer him into oblivion.

She took a few breaths and pulled back. “I have to do this.” she spoke much more sincerely now, and sighed.

She turned to look back up at him, her expression full of sorrowful regret. “I have to prove to you that I’m not what you thought that was.”

His expression softened.

He then turned away quickly, desperately hanging on to his anger. “Hmph. You looked pretty happy in his arms before…”

“He had your face, you jerk! I thought it was-!”

“Is that all you notice? A face?” He turned back to her, “Honestly, Amy. If you’re trying to prove you’re not shallow, you might as well get on with it!” In a rush of furious wind, he was gone.

Amy felt her heart crack a moment, and wobbled back, deeply offended by what he had said, but also blaming herself that he felt that way…

Of course there was more she loved about Sonic than his appearance… but at the current moment… she couldn’t figure out any other way to prove it than to dupe the siren spirit!

She took a deep breath, and narrowed her eyes… walking forward…

She got deeper into the shrine, and started to talk to herself out loud.

“Alright, Amy. Remember why you’re here…” she could hear faint echos and ghostly swishes of air, before she tensed up and pulled out her hammer. “Just stay calm… just stay calm… he wasn’t that irresistabl-Offph!… Eep!”

She bumped into something and suddenly froze up, rolling her eyes up, she gasped at the face she saw.

A tender hand lifted one of her quills up, and gently put an arm around her, keeping her up against him.

“My… most don’t come back once I’ve been unmasked.”

The voice was Sonic’s.

The face was Sonic’s.

Even the charming smirk was Sonic’s!!!

She shook her head, closing her eyes.

‘Remember! It’s not him!’

He could feel the energy from her body spike and smiled, pulling it out from her forehead, and sucking it into his mouth.

“Yum~ You could keep me alive for a couple centuries more with that powerful of desires…” he circled around her, but she quickly got away from him, charging forward to where she almost stumbled and tricked down.

“Ah-ahhh… n-no! I-I came for another reason than for you to fool me again!” she pulled out her hammer. “You’re coming with me!”

Pointing her hammer at him bravely, he suddenly put a hand up to his face, leaning on it, and smiled. “Oh, you are cute.” he smirked again. “And what? You think you can resist … me?” he walked forward, confidently.

Amy knew that’s not how Sonic acted..!

But… but something inside her longed for him to be a bit more forward…

“But not like this!” she shook her head, and rolled before his outstretched hand could caress her chin.

He followed her movements with his eyes and turned his head. “Heh. At least you’re proving you can dodge.” he laughed.

“Ugh.” she glared, “Look! I want a battle! C-…Come follow me!” she tried to sound convincing, and slowly walked backwards towards the opening of the shrine.

“Hmm?” he seemed amused at her request, and started to follow her. “To the ends of the earth… my darling.” he bowed himself, before looking up with such fixed poison in his words and eyes that Amy fidgeted, and shook her head.

“Quit it! I know you’re not Sonic!”

“Does your body know that..?” He mused, chuckling under his breath.

“W-what?” her eyes shook in puzzlement and she suddenly lost her form.

“Got’cha.” he sped forward, a ghostly speed as he caught her and held her tightly as she struggled.

Leaning up to her ear, he breathed out everything Amy would ever want to hear, but each word was like a knife in her heart, remembering what Sonic had said…

I’m not shallow…

She kept struggling, as he tripped her down to the ground.

My love for Sonic isn’t just this! It’s real! It’s true!

She kept struggling under him but he had the upperhand.

He leaned down to kiss her, trying to suck anymore energy he was pulling out of her through these actions.

She felt her body pulse under his touch, a touch she heard from Tails was his unique power to draw feeling from the body, but that the mind could overrule it.

She just.. didn’t know… how to…

She felt herself start panting, and a faint blush came across her face.

“Now… you’re mine. Heh-heh. Silly girl. You can’t deny your own body!” he moved in closer….

“She was never yours to start with.”

“Huh?”

The siren spirit turned around, as Sonic’s foot collided with his face, and sent him halfway across the shrine, banging his physical form into the wall and having it’s ancient stones crumble and crack from the impact.

He fell to the floor and spat out some of the pain. “What!?”

Sonic stepped forward, as Amy rose up, gripping her chest as her heart was pounding fast.

“Sonic.. Sonic that’s not me! That’s-!”

“I know. Tails explained how he manipulates the body. It’s not your fault, Amy. I… understand that now.” Sonic didn’t look at her, but gestured his head back to address her, before looking to the siren spirit, slowly getting to his feet.

“I… I was better lover to her than you ever could be.” he smirked, and straightened himself out. “You’re only second best to her now.”

Sonic let out a silent scowl across his face, before tightening his fists.

Suddenly, Amy’s arms went around Sonic’s side, as she gripped his arm and shoulder, moving close and keeping her eyes down.

Sonic turned to her, looking her over.

“W-what!?” The siren suddenly flared his true ghostly colors, his appearance only slightly changing from that of the blue blur. “What is she doing!?”

She slowly took a deep breath, having gained control of herself, and leaned up to kiss Sonic’s cheek, before turning to the Siren.

“He’ll always have more of my heart than you ever will!”

“Grrkk…!” That seemed to sting, as the siren shook his arms around wildly. “I haven’t found a energy source like yours in a millennium! I won’t let such a rare vessel escape me!” He charged forward, as Sonic pulled Amy behind him.

“Jealous, much?” Sonic suddenly moved the urn in front of himself.

The siren’s eyes widened, and he tried to stop himself. “N-no! It can’t be! The Urn-!!!”

“Of one ticked off boyfriend!” Sonic twisted the top, and a huge gust of wind started to pull the siren spirit in.

“N-nooo!!!” he flailed against it, but Amy slowly creeped behind him, and leaned up against his ear.

“Boo.”

“Urk!”

She slammed her hammer down and thrust his being into the urn, as his ghostly mist began to quickly get sucked in.

“You can’t trap me in here again! He could never love you! Never!!! AHHH!!!!”

Once the last gloved arm flailed into the urn, Sonic twisted the lid again, and huffed, his nose twitching.

“Phew…” Amy slumped down. “Finally… that’s over with-”

Her eyes widened as Sonic dropped the urn and moved over to her, raising a hand to her head.

“S-Sonic..? W-wh-what are you!?” She stepped back, but he was too fast.

He pulled her head down, and gently…. as if it never happened… lightly leaned his muzzle upon her forehead.

A second went by of complete silence, all but the urn bouncing a bit and the echos of ghostly hauntings before Sonic pulled back.

“…I… Well, you know.” he suddenly turned away and walked back.

Amy held her hands together and over her heart, feeling a much stronger beat than anything that Siren had conjured up in her before. It took over her whole being with a pleasant, not odd or scary feeling... and comforted her so much.

That was her Sonic.

The real Sonic she truly loved.

This was what real love was meant to feel like.

The only one who could ever make her heart race so fast! And no one, not ever! could ever change that!

(Way AU. But it seemed like Modern!AmyxBoom!Sonic for some reason… just how I wrote the two, lol xD)

[christopherrichardpoir-blog]

Transformer Man: The Time Neil Young Got Sued for Not Sounding Like Himself

“They put me down for fuckin' around with things that I didn't understand - for getting involved in something that I shouldn't have been involved in. Well, fuck them.” -Neil Young, Shakey: Neil Young's Biography (2003)

“Sometimes in a bar, you will hear someone try to defend Neil Young's '80s albums. This is technically known as a 'desperate cry for help.'” -Rob Sheffield, The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004)

A process server arrived at Neil Young's door in early November 1983. It was several days shy of the artist's birthday, and he was visiting on behalf of Geffen Records, but he wasn't there to deliver royalties. That's not how royalties are delivered, and that's not what process servers do. He was there to serve Neil Young with a $3.3 million lawsuit, and in that moment, Neil Young became the first artist ever to be sued for not sounding enough like himself.

Filed by Geffen, which had signed Young less than two years prior, the lawsuit accused the artist of having produced albums deemed “not 'commercial' and … musically uncharacteristic of Young's previous recordings.” His most recent flop had been Everybody's Rockin', a goofy-eyed 25-minute jaunt through the rockabilly '50s. But the conflict really stemmed from a series of misadventures set in motion by Trans, the artist's intensely bewildering excursion into Vocoder-voiced electronica, which then proved to be his most alienating release to date - literally. By that, I mean it sounded to most listeners as if Young had replaced himself and his backing band with a small army of Martians, beaming his tunes down to Earth by way of some cosmic transmitter he had probably concocted on his California ranch, knowing him. Certainly that was what the campy, sci-fi album cover seemed to suggest.

No one at Geffen - or elsewhere, for that matter - could have known that Trans, in all its neon-tinted, spacey fancy, was an intensely heartfelt project for Young, one that he would later describe as “an expression of something deeply personal.”

How could they have? In the first of many strategic miscalculations, Young kept it all a secret.

Here's how I discovered Trans: I couldn't find it.

Thumbing through my father's sizable collection of Neil Young vinyl as a teenager, I somehow noticed that Trans was missing. Pretty much everything else up to and including 1987's Life was there and accounted for, as I recalled in a 2011 essay, even the forgotten Time Fades Away LP and the Journey Through the Past soundtrack, out-of-print rarities that have never been issued on CD and are more likely to be spotted in Graham Nash's attic than at Amoeba Records. So, why not Trans? If not for my Musichound Essential Album Guide book, I probably wouldn't have even known that Neil Young had released anything in 1982.

But he did, and as soon as I read some review or another referring to it, dismissively enough, as “Neil Young's techno album,” I knew I'd end up tracking it down.

So, I hunted it down. I found it used on Amazon, a dog-eared vinyl copy shipped from God knows where, and I was immediately charmed by the album's geeky song titles, which read like Prince-speak poisoned by some digital totalitarian nightmare, as well as its eerie, synthetic veneer, which is never quite thick enough to obscure Young's trademark melodicism. I was confused, probably, by the presence of three tracks that didn't trade in Kraftwerk rhythms and bleepy textures, but maybe I didn't mind the respite from the Sennheiser Vocoder VSM201 that otherwise swallowed up Young's vocals whole.

  I didn't, at any rate, know about the son who had been unable to communicate verbally with Young because he had been born with cerebral palsy and quadriplegia, and so I didn't know about the 15 hours a day Young and his wife Pegi spent in therapy programs, grueling work that would first channel into the pounding, repetitive crunch of 1981's Re-ac-tor. I didn't know that the synclavier and vocoder that subsume the record were meant to signify Ben Young's inability to vocalize in ways comprehensible to those surrounding him 24 hours a day, and I didn't read between the lines of songs like “Transformer Man”, in which alien-voiced Young bemoans that there are “so many things still left to do/ But we haven't made it yet.” Nor did I know about the music video Young envisioned for the record, which, in Young's words, would depict “a lot of scientists and doctors trying to unlock the secrets of a little being who had so much to say and no way to say it.” That video was never made.

I didn't, in other words, realize that Trans was a concept album about messages lost in translation whose message had been lost in translation.

Not that its themes were entirely without precedent. Like so much of Shakey's best songwriting, it concerns itself with a break in communication - but this time not with a love interest (“Will to Love”) or a dead junkie friend (“The Needle and the Damage Done”, “Tired Eyes”) or a shallow, posturing celebrity culture (“On the Beach”). It's a failure to communicate, in the most literal of ways, with one's young son, which somehow makes it all the more personal and all the more devastating. “That's why, on that record, you know I'm saying something, but you can't understand what it is,” Young would later explain to Mojo. “Well, that's the exact same feeling I was getting from my son.”

Except, of course, that the message was lost on pretty much everyone who heard it in 1982. That's probably because the record was drowned by its own obsessions, an LP about miscommunication that happened to be garbled and choked on the way to its audience. Young used every instrumental tool at his disposal to channel disconnection to his listeners, and in 1982, those instrumental tools had become all too heady for a popular audience that had been weaned on the pastoral tones of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and the even-footed country-folk of Harvest, an audience that thought Kraftwerk was a type of salami, not a musical outfit of any consequence. Too heady, too much, too soon.

That the artist responded to calls for a rock 'n' roll record in the most caustic and sneering possible manner - by throwing together a jokey '50s-rock outing - did little to improve the glass wall that had emerged between Young, his audience, and his increasingly impatient record label.

But it made for a thrilling contrast. Everybody's Rockin', for all its grinning, old-timey spirit, turned out to sound a hell of a lot colder than the LP that was designed to sound like a bubble bath with robots. Trans, by comparison, was a disarmingly honest, if excessively weird, statement. Ignored by thousands and despised by many others, it contains some of the most unusual, inventive, and even catchy material of Young's career.

So, here's the thing. Neil Young was sued - made a “Prisoner of Rock 'n' Roll”, as he would joke on 1987's Life LP - for making music deemed “not commercial and … musically uncharacteristic of Young's previous recordings.” But it wasn't. Well, sure, it was uncommercial. Of course it was. Synthpop hadn't yet broken through to the mainstream, and even if it had, Young hadn't the foggiest idea what it was supposed to sound like, a fact that gives Trans its distant, alien edge. But it wasn't unrepresentative of the impulsive, follow-every-rabbit-hole spirit that had characterized the artist's tireless and careening muse since well before 1980. Consider the ditch trilogy (Time Fades Away, On the Beach, Tonight's the Night) or the odd country excursion (Comes a Time).

All of which is to say, Trans wasn't “musically uncharacteristic of Young's previous recordings,” not really, not unless you focus only on the bewildering sonic properties that overwhelm the songs, which is a preposterous distinction to make because of course you are going to focus on the bewildering sonic properties that overwhelm the songs; that was all anyone focused on in 1983, how could it not be, who the hell am I to suggest otherwise?

Look: Imagine you are the process server guy made to serve papers to Neil Young in 1983, the hapless nobody tasked with rapping on a Real Live Rock Star's door and meekly informing him that he is in trouble - label trouble and maybe also legal trouble - because his records are getting too freaky. Imagine being that guy. He must have known who he was speaking to, what sort of bewildering message he was delivering. How do you do that? Did he prepare for this meeting, rehearsing his lines in front of a mirror? Did he take a mental inventory of the look on Neil Young's face, the artist slack-jawed, waving a joint, let's imagine, smoke curling in circles around his flannel shirt, and did he carry it with him for three decades so that someday he might relate it to his grandchildren? “I was the one,” he might boast, “who put Neil Young under arrest” - come on, you have to exaggerate when you are talking to children - “for not sounding enough like Neil Young.”

Now imagine that the case wasn't settled and here we are in court and I am the defense attorney. I am the one who goes before the judge and endeavors to defend Trans - not Everybody's Rockin', only Trans - against charges of uncommercial villainy and treason or whatever. I don't have to prove that it is perfect, because of course it's flawed; it's a messy and confusing record, but that never was the impetus for the lawsuit. I just have to prove that it isn't altogether uncharacteristic of Young's career, that beneath the alien-voiced specter lies genuine melodicism and heart, that some of its songs might even contain traces of what might modestly be called commercial potential.

Anyway, that's sort of what this essay is. So, here we are. The defense rests his case.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: The Intentional Fallacy Is Evil: Festival Anthems, Fifty Shades Darker, Workout Motivation, 35 Hits from the ‘70s & ‘80s

Critics argue over rockism and poptimism, but critical errors pop up in every taste ideology — belief in literalism, authenticity and the like can apply no matter the music in question. One unfortunate critical tendency is only to cover music intended for coverage. With any number of structurally noncanonical, shelf-filling product albums released on the market every day, many of them compilations, the failure to cover these makes sense, as they’re rarely any good, but rarely doesn’t mean never. Below find four compilations of various sorts hardly intended for critical scrutiny.

Festival Anthems 2017 (Enhanced)

As corporate trend genres go, I can think of worse options than EDM. Rollercoaster dynamics and bang-boom-pow electrohooks — so delightfully abrasive in their momentum — beat limp, wet power ballads any day.This compilation, associated with no particular festival but recommended for generic events, typifies the genre’s ghastlier tendencies.

I don’t trust complaints that dance music is “site-specific” and thus fails to parse outside the context of dancing at a club or an outdoor festival. Plenty of dance music sounds terrific on headphones, and besides, all music is site-specific — a point I would direct at alternative rock bands who make albums designed to be dissected by critics wearing headphones but fall apart when played outside, in the car, at a party, etc. Calling music site-specific politely masks disapproval for a particular site; I’ll gladly admit my distaste for the scripted modes of reception prevalent at EDM festivals and the music designed for them. These songs aim to inspire large masses of people to jump up and down and scream in unison about how good it is to be alive. Bland singers bellow inspirational platitudes before the drop — as the crunchy instrumental megahook providing a song’s climax and bliss point is called — drowns them out. Received melodic conventions make one song blur into the next without bothering to differentiate itself. Theoretically dancefloor escapism gratifies, but these rhythmically topheavy odes to maximalist kitsch suggest a caricature of catharsis, an empty decontextualized uplift. Tight vacuums of electronic compression, intended to carry the sound through large open spaces, produce loud, blaring ear candy that sounds equally tiresome no matter the environment.

Except possibly for Noah Neiman’s “Make It So Good,” whose sampled high-pitched squeal distinguishes it from the crowd, not a track departs from a formula where the drop in the middle lets you know that now is the time to pump your fist. Triumphalism has reached a nadir.

Fifty Shades Darker: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Universal)

Whatever the merits of the Hollywood blockbuster, the professionalism involved ensures certain degrees of visual sleekness and consistency, and when the soundtracks to such blockbusters eschew genre-hopping, their uniform aural signatures translate those virtues into music. Like the franchise’s first installment, this album apotheosizes the streamlined, downtempo, “dark” style that captivates a generation of moody millennials, and it crackles with spooky excitement.

I won’t comment on the franchise itself, whose films I haven’t seen, except to hazard uninformed suspicions of lousy gender politics and, as with the Twilight films in whose shadow they bask, the cold, drained, affectless failure to qualify as sexy. The soundtrack doesn’t entirely qualify either — slow R&B burners with muted textures and solemn, scowling melodies are arousing only once one has equated sex and pain, sex and emotional trauma, sex and epic struggle. But anyone who cares about romanticism in its modern incarnations must reckon with the prevalence of this ethos in the ears and hearts of young people, and this album is prime erotic melodrama. This stuff is marketed to adolescents for a reason — the stark sonic template, providing a correlative to the danger implicit in romance, matches a romantic spirit of black roses and white dresses that signals a presexual perspective; neophytes on the cusp are most acutely aware of desire’s risk. Thus the best of this music projects generosity as well as a veritable nervous thrill, an aesthetic coldness that dovetails with impressive formal mastery. Where the Weeknd, say, struggles over the course of an album to convince you he believes in self-expression, the multi-artist compilatory format guarantees shtick as its operative mode while proceeding with restrained, deliberate command of tropes and genre. Among other highlights, Kygo’s yearning “Cruise,” Tove Lo’s sly, soaring “Lies in the Dark,” and Halsey’s breathlessly grand “Not Afraid Anymore” flash, glimmer, and ache, subsuming the weepier ballads and orchestral interludes into an extended exercise in softcore theatricality.

Romanticism is best indulged occasionally, just often enough for some healthy fun, and this irresistibly dislikable album scratches the itch. Relish it to the fullest while acknowledging its depiction of romance as knowingly exaggerated for entertainment purposes.

Workout Motivation 2017 (Power Music)

Power Music Workout is one of many fitness-related companies releasing so-called workout mixes unto a market of gym rats eager to sync up their exercises with the beat on their headphones, and every now and then one proves genuinely listenable on its own terms as an album. This one should amuse fans of pop radio, absurd velocity, and the wonderful spirit of novelty.

Cartoon renditions of radio hits make for a weird sort of remix album, one where the varied bodily rhythms across a dancefloor are ignored in favor of incessant, irrepressible perk. The basic principle behind this music is that all songs sound better faster and dinkier; to realize this dream the masterminds in charge of making alterations speed up the songs in question about twice as fast, then substitute sharp, high sheets of keyboard texture for whatever the original instruments were, turbocharging the drums in the process. Often hookless songs are given one, big buzzing electrosaws totally absent from the original, cutting right through the middle of a song (see: Zayn & Taylor Swift’s “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever”); elsewhere already hummable earworms get augmented with extra layers of chewy bounce (see: Twenty One Pilots’ “Heathens”). Lame songs tend to remain so, but that doesn’t really matter because the end result presents less as a song than the musical equivalent of a caffeine pill, a shot of adrenaline to the head, a structure that happens to have lyrics and a tune ready to get kicked into hyperdrive. I suppose it takes a perverse kind of picky pop aesthete to enjoy the systematic fixing of radio hits, many of which desperately need it, but one needn’t know the originals to admire this album’s grace and energy. With catchy tunes and conventional song structures all but ensured by the source material, the big beat produces uplift that’s elegant enough to captivate. Displays of musical athleticism make for quite the show.

The masterpiece in this category is the same company’s Songs of Summer 2013, whose juicier bubblegum textures make the whole thing that much more ridiculous. This modest entry, if modesty is possible in this genre, delights in the way its percussive synthesizer punch renders several formerly irritating melodies palatable. That an album hardly meant for aesthetic contemplation turns out so pleasurable regardless is proof plenty that the intentional fallacy is evil.

35 Hits from the ‘70s & ‘80s: Unmixed Workout Music Ideal for Gym, Jogging, Running, Cycling, Cardio and Fitness (Power Music)

Different varieties of workout mix exist. For every take on contemporary chart hits there’s a genre-specific collection, or a tribute to the dance music of a particular city, or a period piece — that is, if “the ‘70s and ‘80s” counts as a period. This clumsy compilation by my beloved Power Music Workout illustrates the dangers of casting too wide a stylistic net and remixing everything within said net the same.

Modern Top 40 remix albums encompass a moderately wide range of styles while presenting a unified snapshot of pop radio at a particular time. But two decades is simply too long a span — I’d relish a summer ‘84 workout mix, say — and nothing about this sequence suggests commonalities between 0 (to choose the first three songs) Christopher Cross’s “Ride Like the Wind,” Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend,” and King Harvest’s “Dancing in the Moonlight,” beyond functioning as tokens of some conflated, unanalyzable, irretrievable past. Theoretically I’d enjoy the desecration of sacred cows, as when “Hallelujah” becomes a dance banger complete with Europop hook, but the song selection irritates not so much for projecting reverential nostalgia but rather for its treatment of the past as a monolith and its consequent failure to engage. Moreover, the album fizzles for mechanical reasons — remix techniques designed for digital sound do horrific damage to tracks from an age of predigital recording technology. The propulsion of modern dance music inflects many if not all contemporary chart hits and makes them excellent candidates for workout remixing. Hearing the relaxed shufflebeat in Steve Miller’s “The Joker” struggle to keep up with the bouncy caffeinated drum machine, while intellectually amusing, is actively unpleasant to listen to. Hearing several other incompatible styles of beat shudder at similar rhythmic simplifications and the imposition of aggressively eager dance synthesizers is to witness the most painful sort of historical anachronism.

Listen up, kids: this isn’t how you sequence a playlist. At the very least don’t stick “Purple Rain,” a song that works only in climactic position, in the middle between Orleans’s “Still the One” and Candi Stanton’s “Young Hearts Run Free”.

The post The Intentional Fallacy Is Evil: Festival Anthems, Fifty Shades Darker, Workout Motivation, 35 Hits from the ‘70s & ‘80s appeared first on Hyperallergic.

from Hyperallergic http://ift.tt/2rqJsHh via IFTTT

[newmusickarl]

Album & EP Recommendations

Album of the Week: Sometimes I Might Be Introvert by Little Simz

It is no coincidence that, when abbreviated, the title of the fourth album from British rapper Little Simz spells out her own name – SIMBI. This little fact should tell you everything you need to know about the thematic contents of this new record, which is undoubtedly one of the finest hip-hop projects to drop so far this year.  

Having transported listeners to the top of North London high rises where she grew up on her outstanding breakout third record, Grey Area, Simz now brings the listener into her world today, where she is found navigating an industry that isn’t built for a naturally shy person like herself. Where there is still the dazzling whirlwind of fierce lyricism and exciting eclectic sounds that made Grey Area such a success, here Simz also puts greater focus on the production and narrative too. 

Much like her contemporary Dave on his latest LP, the introspection and sharing of personal experience from Simz is gloriously backdropped by some stunning and ambitious cinematic presentation. This is highlighted in both the grand, orchestral moments found scattered across SIMBI, but also from the album’s interludes where The Crown actress, Emma Corrin, occasionally turns up to play a sort of Fairy Godmother role to Simz.

It is no secret that Introvert has been one of my favourite songs of the year so far, and you really couldn’t ask for a better opening track for this album. At six minutes in length, it is both epic and triumphant, with this majestic and operatic political anthem aiming to grab the listener by the collar and shake them awake, getting them prepared for what’s to follow.

What does follow is Woman, Simz’s brilliant collaboration with Cleo Sol that offers a chilled-out R&B groove with which you can easily sway along. At the core the song is about female empowerment and inspirational women within Simz’s life and, as Anthony Fantano said in his own review, “it’s as flawless as the women it describes.”

The other singles still stand out here too, with I Love You, I Hate You seeing Simz deliver her perfectly penned verses over some Bond Theme-esque orchestration and soulful production. Then there’s the swaggering Rollin Stone which sees Simz on top form as she spits memorable bars over some pulsing and spacey back beats.

Outside of the singles, the other highlights include Speed, which sonically draws comparisons to the cutting Grey Area opener and standout Offence. There’s also Simz’s own vibrant synth-pop number, Protect My Energy, and piano-backed soul closer Miss Understood. Which brings me to what is also amazing about this record and that is the fact that there is only one track, Two Worlds Apart, that features any sampling – for the most part, these are all original compositions and they are all just so expertly crafted.

Grey Area was a special record, making my own personal Top 20 Albums of 2019 whilst also earning Simz her first Mercury Prize nomination. However with SIMBI, I believe she has even surpassed that record, as the scope, ambition, artistry and lyricism have all been elevated to another level above that previous effort. Since Introvert dropped this was one album that I was anticipating being something special - and I’m glad to say it’s delivered on those expectations. From now on, we need to stop talking about Little Simz as the best female rapper around and recognise her for what she is – one of the best hip-hop artists, man or woman, making music today. Period.

Listen here

Trauma Factory (Live) by nothing, nowhere.

Elsewhere this week, two albums I have enjoyed throughout 2021 have had the repackage treatment, starting with Trauma Factory by Joe Mulherin, AKA nothing, nowhere. Trauma Factory is a wonderfully eclectic album that perfectly showcases Mulherin’s growing confidence as a songwriter and artist. Now released as a live version, it also shows how he’s maturing as a performer too, with these songs sounding as tightly put together as they do in the studio. The full live performance is available for free on YouTube, or you can simply listen to the live recording on the link below.

Listen here

Evering Road (Special Edition) by Tom Grennan

Evering Road is still one of my favourite “chart-friendly” records of the year, with singer-songwriter Tom Grennan having his own Amy Winehouse Back to Black moment by delivering a soulful, heartbreak record. Fresh off the back of his Man of the Match performance at this year’s Soccer Aid, Grennan has repackaged his sophomore album to include five additional tracks, including his fun collaborations with both Ella Henderson and Calvin Harris.

However, the best of these new tracks is new opener Don’t Break My Heart. Written shortly after the album originally came out when a friend of Grennan’s mother passed away, it’s about having one last moment with a loved before they go. A wonderful slice of anthemic pop music that’s also emotionally stirring.

Listen here

Mirrors by DJ Seinfeld

And finally on the albums front this week, DJ and producer Armand Jakobsson, AKA DJ Seinfeld, has released his brilliant new album Mirrors. One to file under ambient rave, it’s quite an enchanting front-to-back listen with Jakobsson taking elements of garage, disco and EDM and combining them into some trippy, chilled-out electronica. I Feel Better is one particular highlight, with a haunting vocal sample gliding over a spacey backdrop of strings, synths and guitars. Whether you fancy a dance in your front room or a quiet record to put on just as background music, this DJ Seinfeld record can be the remedy for either occasion.

Listen here

Tracks of the Week

If You Say the Word by Radiohead

Quite out of nowhere, this week the Oxford legends announced they would be re-releasing their two classic albums Kid A and Amnesiac as a new triple album called Kid A Mnesia, with the third part made up of rarities and demos from those back-to-back recording sessions. If You Say The Word is the first taste of the treasure we can expect from this new release, a brilliant and typically haunting number that simply glistens with the vintage Radiohead sound from that era.

Listen here

Don’t Shut Me Down by ABBA

Also completely out of the blue, Swedish pop legends ABBA have made a return, nearly four decades after their last official release. New album Voyage is on the way, with two new tracks giving the first glimpse at the reunion – both songs are quite theatrical, with Don’t Shut Me Down the better of the two thanks to its classic ABBA feel.

Listen here

Tell No Lies by The Slow Readers Club

Manchester indie rockers The Slow Readers Club have kept themselves quite busy over the last 18 months, releasing two fantastic albums already with another one looking likely to be on the way. Tell No Lies is their latest track and may just be one of their finest to date, with shimmering synths and a soaring, anthemic chorus. Great video featuring actor Craig Parkinson too!

Listen here

Metafeeling by Hayden Thorpe

Hayden himself describes this latest single from forthcoming album Moondust For My Diamond as “Music for the mountain top. When you’re suspended between rock and sky, there’s an explosion of senses. Translating just a fraction of that feeling is a lifetime’s work.” With funky guitars, some wonderful horns and his own signature falsetto, it’s possibly my favourite single yet from his upcoming second solo album.

Listen here

Uber by Don Broco

And finally, Bedford rockers Don Broco have been known to call out casual racism in their music and on the latest single from their forthcoming album Amazing Things, they do just that by turning their attention to taxi driver bigotry. With some acidy synths and scathing metal riffs, the energy, aggression and whole sonic aesthetic perfectly matches that of a hazy, and frustrating, cab ride home.

Listen here