#if y’all yell at me for not gatekeeping or saying that meanings are set in stone I swear to god

[rotteneldritchhorror]

Favourite part of dipping into witchcraft is that there’s literally no rules cause it’s literally whatever you think helps the universe or yourself to meet your goals/wants

Like sure there are graphics of like “this is what candle colors mean” “this is what all the herbs mean” “this is what all the cards mean”, but you can just do what feels right, make shit up if it feels correct, it’s literally just about following intuition so your personal ideas of what the candle colors mean or whatever can be the total opposite of everyone else’s and you’re both correct

Anyways, I’m finally collecting all my witchy ideas of things into a notes app note for my brain :)

[jakeh2987]

Yellowcard- Ocean Avenue 20th Anniversary Retrospective

I’ll be honest with y’all; I never thought I would be writing about music again, at least not like this. Music is one of the things I’m most passionate about, and I love yelling very loudly about what I’m into at any given time or a new discovery I just made. But, actually sitting down to talk about music in a more in-depth and introspective way is something I thought I had left behind. From 2012 until about 2016, I used to write album reviews, and it was a lot of fun! I loved having an outlet to really dig deep into this love for music that I had, especially when I often couldn’t do so in other spaces in my life. Unfortunately, the music reviewing/critic community I fell into during that time became increasingly toxic and gatekeepy, which led me to step away from writing, and I’ve had a much less stressful relationship with talking about music since. It’s been really freeing to just be able to yell about whatever I love most, and I’ve found a lot of really wonderful communities who are fiercely anti-gatekeeping and encourage being unapologetically passionate about what you love, music or otherwise. 

So, that leads us here, the 20th anniversary of the release of one of the most important things of my life, Yellowcard’s album Ocean Avenue. I realized about a month ago that this utterly wild milestone was coming up, and Yellowcard had also recently reunited after what was expected to be a permanent breakup to announce a new EP (which is now out as of finishing this piece, and spoilers, it’s wonderful) and a tour in celebration of this anniversary, so this got the wheels turning for me. Ocean Avenue is such a special collection of songs for me, and I feel like I could have a lot to say about the album and my memories with it, so I thought it might be fun to take a crack at writing again.

Let’s go back to the summer of 2006; I just recently graduated middle school, and I was spending time with my grandparents at our summer cabin. I remember waking up early a lot of days that summer to catch the music video block on MTV before they’d switch over to their reality shows, and one of my favorite videos to watch was Yellowcard’s “Ocean Avenue.” I really loved how catchy that song was, how fun the video was, and I also really enjoyed hearing that sort of guitar and drum sound in music. Plus, they had a violin player in the band! How cool was that?!  I grew up around a lot of 80’s hair metal, and my younger sister later roped me into the boy bands of the late 90’s/early 2000’s, but there was something about Yellowcard’s sound that grabbed me and became the first kind of music that was really “mine,” for lack of a better term. So, we take a trip to Walmart one day, and I take a look at the CDs that are in the electronics section. I saw a copy of the album Ocean Avenue, and knew right then I had to have it. After a little convincing, I was able to get my grandmother to give me some of the spending money I set aside, and I don’t think I’ve ever ran to the checkout area faster than I did that day. Even better, I happened to have a portable CD player in the car with me, so I opened it as soon as we left and popped the CD in for my first listen. Little did I know just how impactful that day would be.

I could talk about how this album is a classic in the pop-punk scene, how Yellowcard has managed to have staying power for the last twenty years for so many people (despite a couple of hiatuses and albums that fans weren’t nearly as high on), so on, and all of that is very true, but I mostly wanna talk about what it meant to me then and what it means to me now after all this time. Ocean Avenue was the very first album I ever bought with my own money, and it was the album I really credit with lighting the spark that was my love of music. Without it, I absolutely have no idea where my journey with music would be, and that’s a scary thing to think about. I also vividly remember hearing the first notes of “Way Away” on that car ride back to the summer cabin, and despite it being my first time hearing the album, I remember instantly feeling this warm, comforting feeling, like it was something I had always known and was there whenever I needed it. And twenty years later, I still have that feeling. 

When I listen to this album now, no matter what I might be going through or where my life is at, I have this sense of reassurance that everything’s gonna be alright, that I’m gonna get through it and come out the other side of it. And that just means everything to me.

Thank you, Yellowcard, for the last twenty years of incredible music, the memories, and the reminders that yeah, no matter what life throws at me, I got this. Here’s to the next twenty <3 

[paris-geller-was-straightwashed]

hello friends I have returned from gay camp! it was awesome and v gay, but I missed y’all here on the internet. here are my highlights, or at least interesting points of the event:

all the various cabins were named after some group, usually an animal. we were the polar bears. when gathering your cabin for meals, people made up homing calls, like the sea serpents made hissing noises or the crows made cawing noises. nobody in our cabin really wanted to approximate a polar bear noise, so instead, we would just yell ‘EXTINCTION’ at the top of our lungs to each other

a bat, or possibly bird, attacked our cabin. I was dead set it was a bat, another cabinmate swore it was a bird. we settled on batbird.

I made friends with another canadian in my cabin, where we would reveal we both had a crush on the same person lmao

whenever fall out boy, paramore, or p!anic (specifically, ‘high hopes’) came on either at dances or from someone’s speaker, everyone, and I mean everyone, would collectively burst into song with every word to a t (All Queers Are The Same)

I saw and actually spoke to gaby dunn, and she even signed my copy of ‘I hate everyone but you’ and was so amazed/psyched I brought it all the way from canada, which’ll remain one of the highlights of my life

I also attended a workshop by matilda mara wilson, who was super lovely

you’ve never seen so many patches and pins in your life. honestly. I swear queers are just like crows, collecting and hoarding shiny/pretty things to decorate themselves with. also, related: So Many Undercuts.

all the gatekeeping and slur debates are truly just wrought from political tumblr bullshit. not once, in the five days I was there, did I hear a debate about who gets to say queer. who gets to use butch or femme by how masc/fem you were. whether asexual/aromantics got to be a part of our community. NOBODY GAVE A SHIT. queer was used frequently and positively, regardless of a person’s background with the word. we were all just happy to be there together, with one another, supporting and being queer together. there was a collective understanding that being queer wasn’t about nitpicking who got to be included or not; we’re here for each other, not to tear each other down. so, if anyone tries to police or gatekeep you, know they have no idea what it actually means to care about our community, even if they pretend that’s what they’re doing this for

and, the most important thing that I really wanted to tell y’all,

I actually had the nerve on the last day to send a anonymous confession crush note to a pretty girl (and also my cabinmate) using the cubbies they had where you could leave a note for someone if you wanted, and then when I heard her talking about it to another cabinmate and that her reaction to reading it was ‘please come up to me at the dance!’, (the last night/homecoming dance) actually had enough nerve left to find her at said dance and confess it was me, where, though it wasn’t reciprocated, she was very happy to have received the note/compliments and told me so which is more then I could’ve hoped for really