#i wouldn't say it if it wasn't true

[sinceileftyoublog]

Steve Wynn Interview: A Working Musician

Photo by Guy Kokken

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Make It Right (Fire) isn't your standard issue singer-songwriter record, even given the history of its creator, Steve Wynn, best known as the leader of legendary neo-psychedelic band The Dream Syndicate. Each song references, lyrically and/or aesthetically, something about Wynn's past, moments in his life and sounds he dived into throughout his long career. Peppy album opener "Santa Monica" is named after the city and boulevard where he was born. The drum machine-addled, deadpanned "What Were You Expecting" and slinky slow burn "Cherry Avenue" loosely connect with a time in his life where he was no longer bright-eyed and idealistic, learning the rules of a cynical world. The jangly "You're Halfway There" and proto-punk-funk of "Making Good On My Promises" soundtrack a perspective shift, where Wynn realizes that conquering antagonism can breed strength. "Scars, scars / I've got them pickled in a jar / Fables and warnings / I eat them for breakfast," he cheekily sings. The album ends with a strummed, yet distorted track named after where Wynn lives today: "Roosevelt Avenue". You can pick apart Wynn's life and point to exact moments where these songs might have taken place, but Wynn would rather you do something else. "You can just put on Make It Right and use it as the catalyst to create your own life story, dig into your own past," Wynn wrote in the album's bio. "It belongs to you now. Let it tell your own tale while I tell mine."

Really, if you want to know about Wynn's past, just pick up I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True (Jawbone Press), his debut memoir, released in tandem with Make It Right. Though, according to Wynn, one is not needed to understand the other, it does make the exercise of not just breaking down Make It Right, but applying its lessons to your own life, a little easier. We might not all have grown up in Santa Monica, gone to a high school that produced members of Germs, had our band signed to a record label in our early 20's, and had said rapidly successful band break up in our late 20's. (That's where the book ends.) But we can all identify with having periods of our life that feel like a whole lifetime, followed by times of languishing. Really, it's not just Make It Right but Wynn's life, too, where we see ourselves.

Sunday, at the Hideout, Wynn will make a tour stop--that's a book and album tour--where he will play on acoustic guitar some tunes from Make It Right, Dream Syndicate songs, and other covers. He'll intersperse the performance with passages from I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True. And he'll be joined by Eleventh Dream Day guitarist and vocalist Rick Rizzo, who will open the show, sometimes join Wynn in playing, and sometimes lead a Q&A session. Or, as Wynn put it to me over the phone last month, "asking me questions, calling my bullshit." Wynn's "foil for the evening" Rizzo was there for a lot of Wynn's stories, playing on the very song that inspired the book's name; he sounds like he'll be a proper, but friendly, antithesis.

Below, read my wide-ranging conversation with Wynn about his new album and book, his artistic process, and the difference between then and now when it comes to the music industry, scenes, and touring. One difference, according to Wynn, is that people plan far ahead now; Wynn let me know that the band's sophomore album Medicine Show will be reissued next summer! For now, immerse yourself in the world of Make It Right and I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True. It won't feel like a lifetime.

Since I Left You: You released I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True and Make It Right in tandem. You mentioned in the epilogue of the memoir that you got some external encouragement to write a book because Alex Abramovich liked what you had given him about The Velvet Underground for The New Yorker. The pandemic was as good as a time as any to start writing, but at what point did you realize you wanted to make a record alongside your memoir?

Steve Wynn: The whole time I was writing the book, which was over about 5 concentrated years, 10 years in total, I kept writing songs and recording material. When it came time to release the book, I thought it would be nice to have a solo record come out at the same time, just because I was gonna be touring the book. As much as I enjoy being an author, I'm primarily a musician. When I [looked at the songs] I had been working on, I realized they all completely reflected the memoir. Of course: I had been so immersed in writing about my life and things I had long since not thought about, the songs I was writing fit that same subject matter. I put [them] all together for a record that really fit the book. I contacted my label, Fire Records, and said, "Hey, I'm probably gonna press about 500 copies to have at shows," and they said, "It works as a cohesive, standalone record. We want to put it out."

SILY: When people read that the two are coming out at the same time, they might at first ask themselves to what extent the record is autobiographical. I like that you very much clarify that it's instead a parallel to your life, a collection of feelings rather than a collection of events.

SW: I always put my own feelings and emotions and judgements and takes on life in all of my songs, even if I'm writing about a baseball player or a killer or a character I read about somewhere. I still put my own stamp on it. On this record, most of the songs are about looking back on things that happened in your life, moments where you might have done something different, things you might regret. Time and time again, with all 10 songs, that's what's going on: "That's where I was, here's where I am now." That little path in between, would I change anything or just say, "Yep, that's what went down." That's me in all of the songs.

SILY: Sonically, the record seems to touch on different moments of your career, both with The Dream Syndicate and solo, and your different aesthetic inspirations. Was that a conscious decision?

SW: I don't think I thought about that much. The record [was made] in different sessions in different countries and with different musicians, [some songs] with longtime collaborators and some with people I had just met and said, "Let's try a song together." Like with every record, I went in and followed the other people in the studio, the songs, the mood at that point in my life, and what I was listening to, what it all pointed to. Even when I go into a record saying, "It's gonna be this kind of record," I roll with whatever happens.

There's a section in the book about jamming and how a lot of what I do is just respond to what's around me. That's my favorite thing and why I love new places on tour. I went on tour with The Dream Syndicate to play new songs [in preparation for] a record that became These Times, about six years ago. I was very influenced at the time by Donuts by J Dilla, which seemed very unlikely because of what I do. But I don't think it really was, because it's a record that has a psychedelic dream state collection of sampled music. It's someone saying, "This is my record collection processed through me." I thought it would be a fun thing to do in the studio, but by the time I got down to Virginia to do the record, with the other members of The Dream Syndicate, not only did it become a very different record, but they were the sessions that produced The Universe Inside. The surprises often outweigh what's premeditated. I'm fine with that.

SILY: In the book, you're very open about what songs in the past you've tried to rip off, because you think there's no way you'll get sued since the inspiration and your final product end up sounding nothing alike.

SW: [laughs] It's so true. If somebody says, "I love the reverb on that Yardbirds record," people now know how to get it. It used to be you didn't have a lot of choices or tools at your disposal to try to recreate something, so you'd get close to it. Now, you hear a record on Underground Garage on Sirius XM, and people have figured out how to do it. In my case, I loved this record by The English Beat, and [the song I made that was inspired by it] sounded nothing like that, becoming "Tell Me When It's Over". Before this book, I'd give $100 to any given audience member who could have [correctly] told me where I got the song from. I'd be saving my $100.

SILY: The book offers a window into your process without getting bogged down in it too much.

SW: I love stuff like that. A lot of books don't do that. I really try to do a fair amount of that in this book, and I could have done more. I really enjoy books where people talk about how they made the music. Not just, "I used this EQ setting," but where their mind was while they were getting there, why their favorite album became the way it was. Richard Hell writes about his sex life and psychological challenges: all great stuff. I chose to write about how I connected with music from age 4 as a fan to age 21 as a kid making his first record all the way through to the end of the book at age 28 when I became disenchanted and then regained the love for it once more. If I had to say the book is about something, it's about someone who loves music, embraces it, and gets lucky enough to make a career out of it.

SILY: Because a lot of the book takes place in and around L.A., every stranger you run into seems like a future star. One person turned out to be a young Hope Sandoval, and another "new band" you rejected for your label turned out to be the Pixies. Each reference one-ups the previous ones, and you can't help it, because that was the environment in which you grew up, and the time period seemed to be conducive to things like that happening.

SW: I think you're right. Most people who write a memoir who have "made it," you're going to run into people [in the book]. Most of my friends at this point in my life are other touring musicians. We can get together for dinner, like we did last night, and you're not trying to drop names, but the conversation is, "I ran into this guy." or "You know who I met last night?" It was a time where things were very innocent. You could meet Hope Sandoval as a 14-year-old kid star-struck at soundcheck who would later become frontperson of a great band. Even encountering Bono on that tour [where we opened for U2], we were all in our early 20's or younger, trying to figure it out. At the time, there wasn't as much of a developed scene for so many things that are taken for granted now. Before The Dream Syndicate, if you wanted to be a musician, if you wanted to pick up a guitar and make records, your goal was to be a star, to play the arena in town. There wasn't the idea, "All I want to do is make records and sell 2,000 copies, get some reviews, and be the coolest kid on the block." A lot of bands did that, like Big Star and The Modern Lovers, but that wasn't their goal. Even those bands thought, "Well, I'm on my way." Our generation, The Dream Syndicate and The Paisley Underground bands, was the first generation to say, "We'd like to make it, and it'd be fun, but we're emulating our other failed heroes." Some, despite that, made their way out of that. We did, kind of.

SILY: I always have to remind myself that a band's ascent and descent happens these days more gradually. Back then--and you give Creedence Clearwater Revival as an example in the book--not only were bands putting out multiple records a year, they were putting out multiple records a year we now consider all-time greats. The way the industry works now, with record release cycles, it seems like labels want to milk as much as they can out of one piece of music. A band that's been around for 20 years might only have 4 records.

SW: I find that to be not the case now. What you're describing was very much the case in the 80s, which I and so many musicians found frustrating. You'd make a record, and you were not expected to make one for another two years. What you're describing is probably true for the biggest artists, but what I really love these days is you can make 10 records a year if you feel like it, under different names and expectations. A band like Wilco can release albums, and Jeff Tweedy can make solo records and records with his sons at the same time. You can have your big label release and a record you put on Bandcamp. If somebody wanted to be the new Creedence, they could. They may not sell a million records, but who does these days? It's kind of come full circle to what it was before I was born, where the records are just something you use to get attention for your tour. That's okay, too, because I like touring. But yes, you do raise a good point: There were times when you were discouraged to be prolific. Now, if you want to be [prolific], knock yourself out.

SILY: Touring-wise, nowadays, you can still be the scrappy band coming up and playing for not a ton of money but touring cheaply. You can be an arena rock band, too, of course. But it seems like that mid-sized band, who might be signed to a major indie label, seems to have trouble staying afloat when it comes to touring, balancing their expenses with their revenue. In the book, you mentioned some touring struggles, too, playing to half-capacity crowds in rooms you sold out the prior year, perhaps due to oversaturation. What do you feel are the differences between touring then and now?

SW: There's a lot of truth to everything to you just said. We just had this meteoric rise, and before we knew it, we were on tour buses opening for two of the biggest rock bands in the world. I was staying in nice hotels and had a four-man crew catering my every need. I thought, "I guess this is how the world works." Luckily for us--even though it seemed unlucky at the time--we had a quick comedown after that. By age 25, I thought, "All I am is a working musician," and not in the way an arena rocker is. I learned early on that what I do is not that different from what John Lee Hooker did or what Dexter Gordon did, or all of these people who were not rock stars but jazz, blues, and folk stars. John Fahey went from gig to gig. Where it's all leading is two hours down the road where somebody is paying me $375 to play to 40 people, and I'm pretty damn happy about that, because that's the next stop. It's very rock and roll to say, "I'm building this," but we're working musicians. You hear people say, "Why is Bob Dylan touring? Doesn't he have enough money? Doesn't he want to take it easy?" No, because Bob Dylan is cut from the cloth of, "This is what I do. I play music for people and keep moving on. I'm a troubadour." I play in the band The Baseball Project with two people who don't need to tour, Mike Mills and Peter Buck, who have done very well for themselves with all the success they've gotten with R.E.M. They could live out their lives on some beach, but they love playing music. They love their friends and being on the road and having adventures. That's why they do it. For a lot of musicians like myself, that's more important than the end goal. My end goal is to continue to do it for the next 10 or 20 years. [That's] more important than strategizing.

SILY: I wanted to ask, since The Dream Syndicate and them seemed to have similar ascent and descent paths: Did you ever cross paths with Pylon?

SW: I was a big fan. In the days before The Dream Syndicate, I loved their first album and saw them at a club in Hollywood. I'm still a huge fan. I've met [vocalist] Vanessa [Briscoe Hay]; I wouldn't say I'm a friend. It's funny: These people were our heroes two years before we started, which at the time it seemed like they were so much older, like they'd been around. "We can only dream of some day living a life like Pylon or The Soft Boys." The next thing you know, you're playing the same clubs and talking about the same things in the bar after the shows. All roads lead to the same place.

SILY: In the book, you tell the story of when your 5th grade teacher told your class everyone was free to do whatever they wanted for 15 minutes, so you decided to mess with a classmate who was painting. Your teacher scolded you for using your freedom to stop your classmate from expressing his freedom. You write about how that interaction informed your philosophy on playing music, that there is a language and, if not a structure, a ways of working to jamming. Is that something you take in to every recording session, even on a record like Make It Right that's comprised of short pop songs?

SW: I try to. That [section on improvising] was the last thing I wrote for the book. I [included it] because it says a lot about what we did and still do. [The teacher's lesson] was a good lesson. As a bandleader, and I'm a bandleader to different extents, because The Baseball Project has 5 bandleaders and I'm kind of the bandleader of The Dream Syndicate--I get a lot of welcome pushback from my bandmates. I try to be energetic and excited about the idea I have and what I'm doing while realizing the people around me are musicians getting excited about what they're doing, too. If somebody's playing a beat or a riff or sound that rankles me, when is the right point to say, "That's not what I'm going for," or, "Maybe they have something going here I'm not quite understanding. I should give it a second."? Believe me, my wife and drummer, who is two rooms away right now, would say, "Steve, you do not [do that.]" It's such a hard thing and one of the hardest things in life, if you're in a relationship, in a band, or President of the United States, to say, "Thank you for all of the advice, but I've gotta do it my way." There's no right answer. You can point to 10 different instances in your life where you should have taken more control, and 10 more where you should have let up the control. We're always trying to figure that out.

SILY: In the bio for Make It Right, you encourage folks to use it as a launching point to tell their own story. In the book, you mention how much you loved Once Upon a Time in Hollywood... and felt it very much captured the essence of where you grew up. I know people who have seen that movie, who remember Sharon Tate's grisly murder and hate the liberties Quentin Tarantino took with the ending. Are you one who pays more attention to narrative in terms of a feel that a linear story?

SW: Sometimes, yes, sometimes, no. I like when a record or a song or a movie leaves a little room for you to find your way in. Sometimes, you can spell it out too much, and [as a member of the audience,] you think, "You did all the work, I have no place in this." Randy Newman writes minimal words to make his point, and you come out thinking, "Is that irony? Is that what he believes? Do I really understand this character?" I like a little mystery in the writing. I don't like fluffy nonsense impressionistic stuff from all of the people who thought they could be Bob Dylan in the 60's but are just [making] word salad of psychedelic terms. If you write something that makes just enough sense to give you an image but doesn't quite take you all the way there, that's exciting for me. My favorite things I've done are like that as well.

SILY: Your memoir doubles as a story of how a scene was born. Do you find yourself wanting to explore scenes of music these days?

SW: I don't think about it as much. It's really different now than the days of the Paisley Underground, British Invasion, or even punk rock. Even far into the grunge scene, we were still working separately. In the pre-Internet days, Seattle was one scene and New York was another scene. Now, in a city, there might be a bunch of bands who hang out, but we're all unified. You know everything and connect with everything. You can be Facebook friends with someone in Slovenia who shares your taste, start collaborating, and find out what's going on over there. I don't think "scene" means [what] it used to. If I hear a band I like today, if it's current, sometimes that's enough. The great thing about streaming or blogs or YouTube is you can keep digging as deep as you want. That's exciting.

It's easy to say things were better then for this reason, or 50 years ago, 30 years ago, 5 years ago. It's just different [now]. I wonder whether we'll talk about bands who have come up in the past 10 years, 50 years from now, the same way we talk about the bands from the 60's like the Kinks, or Television and The Clash. Will it have the same longevity? Maybe, maybe not. Even the big ones, like Taylor Swift. Will we in 50 years say, "She's 85, better than ever, singing all the great hits!"? Things seem a little more disposable now, but I shy away from saying that. [After all,] "Tell Me When It's Over" is a song about a 23-year-old saying to someone, "I don't need you to tell me how it was or how it is. I'll figure it out myself."

SILY: It can make you feel straight-up existential when you think about how today's bands will hold up in the future. The only sure answer is, ironically, that we don't know. Certain things can shift the cultural consciousness to the point where something you never thought would be long-lasting or influential turns out to be so. Anyone who says, "I always knew this band would get its flowers," is probably exaggerating.

SW: Big Star and The Velvet Underground are so fascinating. They weren't utter failures--they were more successful than people realize, as a touring band making records that didn't top the charts--but 50 years later, their music travels the world and is so beloved. If you're in your basement making music for 10 people on Bandcamp, you can say, "That will be me in 50 years," and maybe you will be. It's so hard to say, but it's great it can happen.

The one thing that's different is a certain type of music fan grew up in the glorious era of the 70's, 80's, and 90's where albums reigned supreme. The album was a great art form. This 45-minute thing, give or take a minute or two, was how we gauged great artistic achievement. We look at the Mount Rushmore records, the Exile on Main St.s, the Revolvers, the Blonde on Blondes, the Neverminds, the cherished great albums. [Like] before the 60s, [over] the last 10 years, albums [haven't mattered] as much. I wish they did, because it's a great art form, expressing a collection of songs. But I think we're back to the world where it's just a bunch of songs that show up on Spotify that make you happy for a few weeks. Maybe the next Jimi Hendrix will be a blogger. That's fine, too.

SILY: Recently, I interviewed a blues musician who said the sequencing of her records is not that important to her. She said, “But it’s important to me that they hear all the songs. They all fit on the record in some shape or form.” Pitchfork does a video feature where they ask musicians to name their Perfect 10 album, and a lot of them say, "It's great front to back, no skips!" Perhaps I'm an anomaly as a millennial, but I don't really skip songs on albums I don't like that much! I just listen through! It's what's intended. Even if I'm listening digitally, I think about it as if it's a record, where you can't just push a button to skip to the next song.

SW: Personally, when I hear an album, I still think about it in terms of side A and side B. I don't just think about sequencing, but I think about the spacing between the songs. When I go in to master a record, I don't want there to be a millimeter of a second too long. The space between song 1 and song 2 matters. If you're hearing an album as an album, that stuff matters. I'm a big movie fan. You know they're thinking about that stuff when they're making a movie. They cut the last 3 seconds off of a scene [to make it flow more.] That stuff matters. Whether it matters to a new generation, it may or may not, but it does to me. I'm making records for myself at this point, and luckily, enough people are along for the ride.

SILY: As much as I don't like to talk shit about Gen Z, because in many ways, they're the most tolerant, respectful generation yet, I saw the trend that some of them watch films sped up because their attention spans can't hold up.

SW: Wow. That's the first I've heard of that. The multi-tasking thing, "I'm gonna check my email, watch a movie, look at my phone every 10 seconds." It's just different. I don't want to make a judgement. When people get cynical or disdainful of a 7-year-old looking at the games on their iPad, I think, "Maybe we're just training a new era of humanity for what's next." Our great-grandparents had horses and buggies. We evolve. Maybe the way things are now is just part of the evolution. That's okay! Maybe there will be something fabulous. Maybe this is the next step to transporting into a new level of consciousness that will put us to shame. How do I know? It will be long after my time. I'm 64 now, and I think I've got hopefully a lot of years left of making records and not standing still. That's exciting. Maybe I'll make a record that will blow my current mind. That'll thrill me.

[adiradirim]

Sephardic Jews from Thessaloniki in their traditional costumes, in the city’s old cemetery, before the war // a contemporary photo that shows where the destroyed cemetery once was, which is now Greece's largest university, built partially on top of and with land and materials (particularly tombstones) stolen from the razed site.

Thessaloniki or Salonika, once referred to as “the Jerusalem of the Balkans” due to its Ladino-speaking Jewish majority, saw roughly 96% of its Jewish population murdered during the Holocaust. This mass destruction extended to the city's Jewish cemetery, which had been the country's largest, established in the 15th century and housing hundreds of thousands of Jewish graves until its razing by city authorities who had long desired to repurpose the land and resented the inconvenience of Jewish presence. Despite its large-scale destruction during German occupation in 1942, which was initiated and carried out primarily by Thessaloniki authorities with Nazi consent and arrangement, some parts of the cemetery survived intact as late as 1947. Many tombstones were subsequently appropriated and used by city authorities and the Greek Orthodox Church. After the war, people were still carrying away Jewish gravestones each day and regularly looting the cemetery in search of valuables. The city's officials, led by their mayor, completed the cemetery's destruction and sold the tombstones to contractors for use as building materials in various projects; as such many were and are still found in various walls, roads, structures, and churches around the city. A 1992 commemorative book pictures Greek schoolgirls playing Hamlet with skulls and other bones they found in the cemetery.

“[T]he ‘rape’ of the cemetery escalated, marble flooded the market, and its price plummeted. Jewish tombstones were stacked up in mason’s yards and, with the permission of the director of antiquities of Macedonia and overseen by the metropolitan bishop and the municipality, used to pave roads, line latrines, and extend the sea walls; to construct pathways, patios, and walls in private and public spaces though out the city, in suburbs such as Panorama and Ampelokipi, and more than sixty kilometers away in beach towns in Halkidiki, where they decorated playgrounds, bars, and restaurants in hotels; to build a swimming pool – with Hebrew-letter inscription visible; to repair the St. Demetrius Church and other buildings...” Devin Naar, Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece

Most of the efforts to return found tombstones throughout the city are led by Jews, particularly Jacky Benmayor, the curator of the Jewish Museum and last Ladino speaker in Greece, who has personally recovered hundreds of tombstones including his own family's. Surviving Greek Jews never received compensation for the confiscation of the land under the destroyed cemetery, upon which now partially rests Greece's largest university, Aristotle University, which also used Jewish gravestones as building material for its long-coveted expansion finally made possible by the dispossession and annihilation of the city's Jews. In 2014, 72 years after the cemetery's destruction and appropriation, a small memorial was established on campus grounds to acknowledge the Jewish cemetery the school is built on and with; the ceremony just 10 years ago involved the first-ever acknowledgement of the atrocities and apology from a Thessaloniki mayor. The memorial has been vandalised multiple times since its establishment.

[somegrumpynerd]

Actually it turns out I had more thoughts about that post that I forgot about lol

Would Nightmare actually give up his boys? Yes and no

If it was just a black and white situation of they're miserable, they don't wanna be here, they have somewhere better to be, then yes. He would leave them out to wherever they needed to be despite his own feelings and very quickly realise afterwards just how much he'd gotten used to the noise and company. I think he would get a little clingy with Dream about it, which I'm sure Dream would find very weird after everything but not unwelcome, he did miss his brother after all.

(If he couldn't attach himself to Dream's side for whatever reason, I think he might just sit in his castle and go insane. Or maybe he'd just spend all day at Ccino's trying really hard to project that he just likes the atmosphere and isn't lonely as hell)

But the thing is, most of them don't have somewhere better to be. Horror has his au, and Nightmare would keep up the supply of food even if Horror said he wanted to quit at this point, so he would understandably let him return home. Killer, Dust and Cross effectively don't have aus anymore though, and they tend to get into self-destructive habits when they're left to their own devices. (Obviously bringing Color and Epic into the mix to make sure Killer and Cross are taken care of eases matters, but Dust doesn't really have any friends outside their group he could go stay with - that Nightmare knows about at least).

The flipside of this is that his boys may not necessarily want to be given up. I think if Nightmare got really in his head about this he could easily end up convinced this is the right thing to do without ever asking them if it's what they want, with potentially terrible results. He's established such a pattern of always returning to find Killer when they get seperated, that if he never showed up Killer might just keep sitting there and waiting for him greyfriar's bobby style, refusing to leave because he's certain his boss is coming back.

[gachagon]

@ Your analysis about how the P:EG cast is full of hypocrites:

Another huge contrast I thought of between them and the casts of the Danganronpa games is that with the DR casts I could see certain scenarios where all of them make it out alive. But with the Eden's Garden gang it feels like a murder was bound to happen.

And a big part of that in my mind is because the majority of murders in Danganronpa are due to the characters being manipulated by Monokuma & the Masterminds. Even Korekiyo who didn't even kill for the Necronomicon motive was still manipulated by Team Danganronpa into being a serial killer.

With the first case of Eden's Garden though that isn't the case. The motive didn't even factor into the case other than Eva stealing the taser gun from Desmond's room. Yeah Eva was on a time crunch because of the Traitor Perk but she was already planning to commit murder beforehand due to being worried that someone will kill her. The perk just made her quicker to put her plan into motion.

Honestly if one of the students had tried to say that "the one to blame for Wolfgang and Eva's deaths is Tozu" like what's usually done after executions in Danganronpa I feel like Tozu would have an actual leg to stand on unlike Monokuma.

He didn't start anything, he was merely fanning the flames that the students started.

I agree with this too because even though the rest of the class didn't take Eva seriously, when she was ranting about how "Any of you would've done what I did!" I kind of believed her. They're already so distrusting of one another, and them pretending that everything's okay while holding onto this serious distrust amongst each other is just fueling the Killing Game. If Tozu had left the puzzle for Desmond and it was a bullseye or something, would Desmond had shown anyone as well? If it was some special law puzzle that only Wolfgang could decipher, would he have shared it with the rest of the class?

I truly don't think so. I also noticed they blamed Eva for a lot of Tozu's actions, like when Tozu introduced the motive, Grace said "So we're in this mess because of the math girl? Typical..." because Tozu said he became inspired by Eva's outburst in the pharmacy over the watches.

But it's NOT Eva's fault, she's not the mastermind after all, she's in the same boat as them. But they still put the blame on her instead of being mad at Tozu for spying on all of them. I think the motive itself not factoring into the murder is a good plot point in the story, because you at first think that someone will kill to keep their secret hidden. Or maybe someone has a terrible secret that they don't even want another person knowing about.

I remember hearing that this is the type of Danganronpa where only 2 survivors will make it out, and usually that's not the case but I can definitely see it happening with this group. They're not killing each other or hating each other over the motives the Headmaster gives, it's because of how they treat one another instead T_T

[dxxtruction]

"Louis acting like a pimp to Armand" And what is a pimp exactly? Quickly. And, oh so sexual trauma survivors can't engage in kink now without it being all about that? Pet names? They can't be submissive anymore? Consensually? Sexually healthy? Be serious. I'd hardly say there's much power difference between them during all this anyway, except that Louis is freer than Armand and it's been putting a strain on their relationship. Louis wants more from Armand, and less of this 'being his past' for them both, and so helping Armand with this could fix that. It's healthy to want to help your partners get out of a rough patch?

I mean, the whole exchange was very clearly set up as a "I want to help you" after such a great moment of vulnerability Louis feels just how much Armand is desperate for it. Louis called Armand so they could work out a plan together.

And the bit with the umbrella was Louis' way of asking 'are you willing to listen to me?' and Armand said yes by unfolding it. Louis goes on and explains, Armand is allowed to argue against it, but Louis makes his point. And then he gives Armand a way to make his own choice in it too. Armand's already decided 'I want you, more than anything else in the world', but Louis still asks after if he's sure of his choice, and with a name, Arun, that is the one of his fullest agency, running the point home. Honoring the situation Armand calls Louis Maitre - as a way of being like 'I'll do as you've said then'. To make this work he's going to have to give Louis some of the control, yes. But it's the first time such a role is ever established, and it was his choice to do it. So so what if they do it in a very suggestive way? They can't like doing that? I think it's them having fun.

I struggle to find how Louis is being overly domineering here when really he's giving and offering Armand the most agency he's ever had. Same with finding it manipulative. The manipulation was more earlier in the episode I think, when he was stringing him along, giving mixed signals. He's no longer toying with him like that. Louis might be pushing Armand, leading him on to make a decision, but he doesn't mean bad by it.

But back to this pimp thing. I find it frankly offensive that this is where people are going with this. I get it, but to run with it being the case is, on many levels, wrong.

Louis told us episode 1 this was the only sustainable line of work to support his family and keep their standing, at the time. It was never his choice to be doing this either but his blackness allowed no other options. He did what he did so his family could stay in that house and maintain all their same comforts. It gave him privileges most black men didn't have at the time that he wanted to maintain and even have more of. Anyway, it doesn't and had never defined him the way 'being good at running things' had. And in that case he just likes having that kind of control where he can get it, which makes sense.

The world is what placed that kind of role onto him of what he was allowed to be able to run, not himself. And on that he actually treated the sex workers he employed well and respected them enough to give them more opportunity.** He recognizes they don't have much in the way of options either.

Louis employed sex workers, yes, but he didn't subject them to abuse, (like how Armand was)*. He didn't oversee things in a way that would go against their consent (see; episode 1 again)**. Sometimes a job is just a job. And Sex work is work.

Armand's particular past with sexual abuses may strike a particular cord with Louis, given all that, but the very last thing either is thinking is that Louis' pimping Armand out here. This is merely their decision as companions, and had nothing to do with adding another line in a laundry list of selling Armands body out to people at the command of someone else. Armand rescinds some of his control to Louis' wishes, because he wants him, and he trusts him, that's all.

If you aren't allowing Armand that choice, and are doubtful it's fully his, you're putting him right back in the box of being defined by his abuses. Putting him back into that space where he isn't given any agency over what he does. (Which is exactly opposite of what the intent of this scene is for)*.

*: (edit) added for clarity.

**: (strike through) numerous people are saying I'm misremembering these points so disregard it. (Thought he was siding with Bricks, it was the other way around). (Technically one aspect of those opportunities were for getting around the law). I don't have a perfect memory, it happens. Let's not get mad about it. Doesn't change much of the point which is that Louis, now, Louis then, was always considering more about the running things and for stated purposes. So I guess I'd say he may only have respected the SWers enough sometimes for what allowed him to do that, and there are moments he certainly expressed remorse over the fact, but he has a great deal higher respect for Armand that is genuine. It's incomparable. Please read my added notes in the tags, it should address most other concerns.

[aithusarosekiller]

Idk if I'm just on the worst side of tiktok right now but am I the only person who thought it was pretty damn obvious that the news clippings about voldy on reg's wall were a hint towards him researching/piecing together the secret?

Like is that not what everyone else saw? Bc I'm seeing people use that to argue that he didn't change his mind at all

I think some people are just too set on him being completely evil

He's an inherently grey character yk?

He was a stupid teenage boy who had just started to grow and see the truth

and then promptly died before he managed to finish that journey (while doing something really fucking brave and risky). I thought that was the ENTIRE POINT

[yunmeng-jiang]

that man does NOT think of wei wuxian as his gege

[suddencolds]

.~

[justalittlebluetiefling]

Something I've seen a couple people saying is that they want to make sure that Laudna understands that she's not the only one who has been through trauma. But like. Laudna is not the only one who needs to learn that lesson. Actually, it's not even that Laudna needs to learn that she's not the only one that's been through trauma at all, because they're all very aware of what they've all been through. This became an inevitable confrontation when Laudna decided to let Delilah back in, though, and after rewatching the scene, I actually think the only people who managed this situation correctly were Imogen* and Ashton.

Orym and Laudna are both more focused on their own pasts with the sword and not thinking about each other. Orym should have talked to the group and come to a decision with them about using the sword and Laudna should have talked to him about it instead of trying to steal it.

*my feelings about this are still up in the air don't read into this too much

[sciderman]

Sometimes i remember a comics moment i randomly came across somewhere, where Sam Wilson mentiones a musical and Steve Rodgers says he doesn't like musicals, to whitch Sam goes "Guess that means you really are straight" and even tho i don't care about Cap America or the Avengers, the moment stuck in me for that quote by Sam. And like....Sci, any ideas if straight men actually don't like musicals or is that bullshit?

actually i think i know more gay men who hate musicals than i know straight men who hate musicals. i've had a drag queen stop me point blank when i was about to sing a barbra streisand song, and i know so many gays who pointedly hate abba. so based on my experience i think the inverse is true. most of the straight men i know are kind of impartial about musicals, but gay men? hate.

my theory is that a lot of gay men don't want to fall into stereotypes, maybe. but thaaaaat's just a theory! a gay theory.

[tankgotstuckinthecircusgate]

if scars don't make man look good then being alive sure does

[emiliosandozsequence]

being immobilized by panic at the thought of talking on the phone really is fucking inconvenient

[floralovebot]

i think it's really funny when people look at Everything about riven and conclude that he just hates all rich people when his best friend is literally Rich Boy McGee

[girlivealwaysbean]

i want to be the strongest most unaffected aloofest person ever but im literally the weakest saddest cries at every inconvenience type of person and man.

[cubot]

I get alone with my thoughts for one second and then my brain goes to the VN love interest route I beat yesterday and I go, "jesus fucking christ what the fuck."