#it's giving em and sunny being separated so long post em's first death

[chayannesegg]

im so glad empanada, even after a tough day, got to have that talk and hug with richas and then bagi where em got some lovely advice about dealing with grief from richas & talked about what went wrong during the day

but i can't help but contrast this with sunny. sunny who empanada still hasn't seen. sunny whose been alone for days. sunny whose talked with almost no one. sunny who doesn't know bad is dead. sunny whose pretending tubbo isn't dead. sunny who got no goodbye. sunny who got no long talks about grief. sunny who got no explanations. sunny who no one visited today. sunny whose birthday is tomorrow. sunny who no one will wake up for first tomorrow

[meirimerens]

If you're accepting fandom questions could we have some elaboration about those mgs jupiter family alaskan daydreams please? Also your amazing TEW art got me into the series so thanks, I'm liking it a lot!!

first of all, i’m so deeply honored that my art could get you into a game, and also : god i’m fucking sorry lol

second of all

oh god oh fuck alaskan daydreams time

okay so long /, the read mores don’t work, you’re gonna have to bear with it

so tldr i have… EXTENSIVE imaginated stories about dave, hal and sunny living in a little remote cabin in alaska. 

BACKSTORY 

i’d imagine it’d come somewhere post-mgs2 even though sunny is already a bit grown so maybe like just disregard canon OR imagine a different timeline i don’t know, and it’s from a place where hal and dave don’t have anything to do after the mgs2 incidents (so no mgs4 and love of god NO accelerated aging i can’t deal with this), and there is this atmosphere of… “we’ve been sticking together for so long, i can’t see ourselves just parting ways (plus we have a kid to raise and i can’t imagine raising her alone) so how about we make the rest of our lives together” and dave is just like… “hey, we’ve been running all across the country, jumping from shitty motel to shitty motel to shittier apartments, and i have this cabin i once lived in, how about we just all move into it and re-inhabit it” and that’s just how it starts. 

THE CABIN

it’s a cabin i have extensively thought about (because i’m obsessed with cabins and being a hermit, so that helps). it’d be near the shore of the Twin Lakes, Alaska (taken from the canon fact that this is where snake lived pre-MGS1), so they’d live off-the-grid and in almost-self-sufficiency (they become more and more self-sufficient as time goes on and they make more adjustments to the cabin). 

i imagine it would look similar to Proenneke’s cabin (which incidentally is also near Twin Lakes), maybe on the other shore, all wood with a vegetation/moss roof + a slight porch/elevation to protect the entrance from a bit of the snow. it’d be surrounded by wooden little dog kennels/crates for the huskies (more on that later) similar to the ones in [this video] around the 0:59 min mark (warning for animal death/general stuff that goes on in a trapper’s lifestyle for the vid).

it here’s a floor plan of the cabin, not to proportions because i’m just shit at it :

(good luck reading that)

not pictured : when sunny was smaller (before the addition), her bed was like a little shelf just above the big bed (that hal and dave share) with little like “walls” so she doesn’t fall and a thick mattress, which was discarded when she got her new room.

later would be added an outdoor kitchen and a chicken coop (more on that…….. later)

EATING THERE

as i said, they’d first be living in semi-dependency : every ¾ weeks they’d have to go to Port Alsworth/Anchorage or somewhere else to stock tf up. Snake would fish (you can fish for subsistence if you’ve been living in Alaska for over a year according to law) and hunt (seems to be the same type of law when hunting for food, YES i’ve researched this, leave me alone) for food. As he has done odd jobs to afford his cabin, I imagine he’d have done crabbing, and would show up to help on crabbing boats from time to time to get some of them crabs.

later, I imagine they would get 4 rescue hens to get some of them fresh eggs. snake would build a chicken scoop from forest wood. 1 of the hens wouldn’t be able to make eggs because she was traumatized from the industry but they still took her in because she was close friends with the other hens and they didn’t want to separate them. 

I imagine Snake had been growing his own herbs in the kitchen but maybe they’d get a greenhouse ready.

they’d go foraging for berries, fruits and mushrooms according to the seasons and make a SHITTON of jams and preserves.

LIVING THERE

i imagine there would be a lot of solidarity with the surrounding populations. for exemple, Hal would help set up and manage online dictionaries for Iñupiat, Yup'ik or Alutiiq languages with the local communities, maybe help wire up some schools, things like that, and as thanks some people would go check on them and give em veggies or something.

THE DOGS :

Snake is getting them.

since we don’t know what happened to his huskies around mgs1, i suppose/guess they were at some time confiscated from him, so first, he’s get a lovely husky female from a shelter (i also have long thought about how he’d never go to a breeder and only adopt, because the whole “creature created with a man’s ideal in mind” hits a bit too close for him you feel) that would later be revealed as pregnant with like 5 puppies (it will come back later as relevant as promise). Then he’d do his best to regain contact with his huskies, maybe setting up a call on social media (THIS WILL BE PART OF A BRAIN ROTTING DEGENERACY I WILL EXPAND ON IN A MINUTE) to find them again. i imagined he would get to see one of his old huskies, who has well aged, who was adopted by some nice nice people. then said nice people, after his visit, insisting on him getting his husky back because “since you left she hasn’t been herself, she refused to eat. we think she misses you too much. we love her tons and it breaks our heart to let her go, but we think she would be so much happier by your side” type of deal, i’m fucking crying just thinking about it.

of course, once his team is back in shape, he’s run the Iditarod again. Hed keep contact with hal over walkietalkie during the race. hal would jump in his arms when he crosses the finish line, the pic would circulate in the news. it’d be cute i’m saying.

THE HENS :

as I said, adopted, in a little scoop snake built himself. they give eggs. sometimes they let them roam free and they bully hal when he peels vegetables (i’ve drawn smth about this). sunny feeds them in the mornings. things are good.

MORNING ROUTINE :

Snake wakes up around 5AM because he don’t need no sleep and goes to his huskies. feeds them. then make them run. when he gets back around 8 to 8:30, hal is still asleep. snake makes breakfast. the scents wake hal up. things are good.

SUNNY?

Sunny is taught by snake how to chop wood. he makes a tiny axe for her tiny hands. he and hal teach her how to swim in the Twin Lakes. the waters cold but she grows immune to it, strong and stronger. she learns how to differenciate which mushrooms and berries are edible.

they try to send her to school but she’s WAY too advanced and is bored to death. she stays at home. she’s outside all day or she learns astrophysics with Hal, who’s taking online classes in his free time. she learns some Athabaskan languages at a community class once in a while, she makes some friends.

HOW’S THE WEATHER

They go on hikes a lot. Often, and long ones. At first, sunny is in a little baby back carrier (i have drawn about this), then she walks just right. Alaska has gorgeous national parks, they explore them, year after year. They arrive in a town, exhausted and beat, they find a hotel room. It has a bathtub and warm water. Hal is OVERJOYED.

in the earliest hints of spring, snake takes them to Fairbanks through the beautiful alaskan railroad. they see the most beautiful and powerful of northern lights during the full season. hal and sunny can’t tear their eyes from the skies.

THIS IS WHERE I GO CRAZY GO STUPID.

ok…. so bear with me.

i mentioned an internet/social media presence.

it’s because in a deviation of this daydream, snake has a little youtube channel (and an instagram to go with it).

it’s not much. it’s really not, but hal has a few cameras and more that he finds and fixes.

it’s mostly lowkey, chill vlogs. stuff like 

“slow alaskan winter day (no talking)” 

“sprintime berry picking ( + jams recipes!)”

“alaskan summer outdoor fire cookout ( + wild moose and caribou near the lake)”

“denali national park hike (day 1)”

stuff that like you know. as well as some more…

“i ran the iditarod (and won)”

“we got hens (building a chicken scoop, meeting the rescue hens and more)”

“musher’s morning routine (i’d recommend you didn’t try this at home if you are not the genetically engineered clone of a super-soldier, for your sake)”

and as you guessed…

“so our rescue husky was pregnant… (i’m an idiot who didn’t notice, trip to the vet, building a whelping pen, whelping, bottlefeeding tiny pup + all the puppies’ pictures!)”

where dave would teach hal how to bottlefeed a puppy and you’d be able to hear hal’s “oh god oh god oh god oh god”s from out of frame as the camera focuses on dave’s hands holding his to have him perfectly cup the puppy in his palm and carry the bottle. this type of deal.

then follow-up videos of the puppies climbing the bed where hal is, playing on his gameboy. he chuckles nervously and then heartily when a puppy licks his face.

some winter days, the videos have snake bringing all the huskies in the small cabin. some of them sit calmly on the wide bed where hal studies his astrophysics.

and an instagram with wilderness pictures… all except a few taken by hal. some of snake posing in front of the snowed in cabin. some of warm drinks made on winter days. you know the deal.

and they’d have such a nice… positive… lowkey and easy-going comment section. dave would reply to a lot of them. 

he’d get quite a share of “hey man, i love your vids so much, thank you for posting this content. i was wondering, sorry if it’s a bit too personal, are you and your roommate dating? you two seem very close, but i don’t want to assume anything 😅 absolutely love your content either way, you’re the only youtuber i have notifs on” to which he’d reply “thank you so much, really appreciate it. and we’re not, we’ve just known each other for a long, long time. we’re aware two straight guys raising a child and living together isolated makes for a bit of confusion, but it’s totally platonic between us. thanks for sticking around.” but one day he uploads a vid that’s like 

“crabbing in juneau ! + life update (please read description)”

and the desc + the first 20 seconds of the vid is a text superimposed over embarassing pictures of hal and it reads “hey all / quick personal update, i’ll make it quick / otacon and i realized we loved each other / (as more than friends that is) / so if we seem just a bit closer in the videos from now on this is why / no idea how this is going to turn out for up / but yeah. if he seems a bit more affectionate it’s because we’re dating now, or something like that / and to everyone whom i told ‘it’s just strictly platonic between us’:  / well. ha ha. whoops. / anyway thank you for reading / enjoy the video” and all the comments would be like “that’s so dope i’m so happy for you” and other “tbf we saw that coming” and snake would smash that like button on these comments.

and he’d have a video of the whole iditarod race as taken from a camera on his jacket/on his sled… and he’d have videos of him filming hal film the landscape through the window of the train during their trip to fairbanks… and of hal and sunny in said train sharing a tangerine… and of him building a little axe for sunny…. and he’d always ask her if she is okay with being on camera, and when she’d say no he’d make sure she doesn’t appear on here or add a cute husky sticker on her face so she’s not seen.

just lowkey. chill. upbeat. simple life moments. he’d disappear off the internet for a month because he’s just enjoying the life and when he’d come back everyone would be very understanding and glad to see some cool pictures or vids. you know? just chilling. just chilling. just living.

one day before a “hiking through lake clark national park” he has the same little life update thing and it goes “hey / so otacon and i got married / sunny and aksinya [rescued pregant husky] were our flower girls / otacon cried / i cried / anyway, enjoy the video” over pictures of the tiny alaskan wedding. and it’s well.

[bran-writes]

Farm Boy Flashback Friday #1

Hey there! I’m trying to get back into the swing of things and I wanted to start by posting from Farm Boy Blues again! Every Friday I want to post a piece of Sunny’s past as a drabble or something, just to introduce you guys to some previous events and characters- some of which you may already know! This week is from Sunny’s past in New York before moving(or being chased) to the West Coast. Hope you enjoy!

A few months ago, someone could have looked Sunny in the eye and told him he’d end up in New York City working for a crime syndicate and he would have laughed them off. Now he wondered if he’d ever laugh again. There was a good chance that if he couldn’t do what these guys wanted him to, they’d put a bullet in his head and toss his body in the river.

“So, the ship from Luna comes in tonight,” explained the haggard, balding man in front of him in the diner booth. The man’s eyes were half lidded and predatory as he took a drag from his cigarette and set it in the ash tray between them. The diner around them was empty, but there was a low buzz in the air that made Sunny uncomfortable. It was either that or the fact that three mob trigger men sat at the bar to his right.

Stay cool, Sunny, don’t give em a reason to think you’re a flake, he thought to himself, fidgeting with the zipper on his jacket.

“We’ll take a van to the spaceport, and wait for this shipment to be offloaded. We follow them to the yard, and when they get it off the trucks, we jump the crew. We’ll separate the supervisor from the rest, and I’ll start asking him what the codes to the container are.”

Sunny glanced at the three other men who were staring him down from the bar while a very nervous looking waitress poured the men coffee. “Hopefully, he’ll just give it up. If not, I’ll start asking him harder,” the corner of the man’s eye twitched ever so slightly and Sunny instantly picked up on the micro expression. This guy was a sadist, he loved hurting people. “You’ll do your little ‘human lie detector’ thing and we’ll get it out of him before long. Got it?”

Fuck. “Yeah, I got it. No problem.”

“Great,” the man slapped the table and Sunny was thankful he didn’t flinch. The mobster stood up and pointed at Sunny, “Hang tight, I need to converse with my associates for a moment.”

“Sure,” Sunny sighed as the man went to talk to the other mafia goons. He noticed that the balding and irritable man, who the others called Greenly, had left his cigarette behind. Sunny wanted to take a drag but was scared of catching a bullet if he crossed a line. He’d fucked up pretty badly to get the attention of the syndicate- he was on as thin of ice as possible and he wasn’t going to do anything to piss these guys off.

Sunny was wondering why he couldn’t have just kept out of trouble in the first place-without getting caught up in this shit- when the front door bell chimed and a familiar figure slid into the diner. The man wore a suit- his jacket open and his tie loosened around an unbuttoned collar. Agent Ellis looked like shit, but it was him.

Ellis locked eyes with Sunny and sighed, weaving between the tables to approach the boy, who didn’t move a muscle. Sunny didn’t know what Ellis thought he was about to accomplish, but the rage in Sunny would never let him get around to it. He gripped the fork he’d stashed under his thigh when he sat down earlier and clenched his jaw.

Ellis stopped right next to the table and looked down at Sunny, who glared back up at him. “Come on kid, you gonna shank me? Let the shiv, or whatever that is, go and come with me.”

Sunny didn’t answer, but the syndicate guys, who’d watched Ellis like a hawk since he entered, seemed to perk up even more. Sunny glanced at them for a second before staring back at Ellis. “Go. Away.”

“I can’t do that, Sunny. Get up and let’s go.”

“I don’t know you,” Sunny shook his head slowly, “and I don’t go anywhere with weird old men.”

Sunny had just found his “out”. The syndicate guys were assholes, but they(like most criminals he’d met) hated creeps. If Sunny really thought about it, he didn’t want Ellis to get hurt, per se, but that was all up to the federal agent now. The man surely wasn’t going to announce his status as a Fed- the new government was still on rocky terms with the old crime syndicates. So he’d have to back off or a start a firefight in this diner.

Ellis was getting angry, his shoulders squaring and his face setting. The man obviously didn’t know what to do with his hands, which told Sunny was trying not to lash out. Ellis had chased him all across the country for weeks now, and he was probably tired and frustrated. But this wasn’t going to go Ellis’ way- Sunny would make sure of it. “I swear, if you know what’s good for you, I won’t have to ask again. Don’t make me do this, kid.”

Sunny clicked his tongue in defiance.

The diner was silent.

The cigarette between them burned.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Ellis sighed. He grabbed Sunny by the arm and the reassuring sound of three pistols being pulled from concealed holsters made both Sunny and Ellis stop in their tracks.

“Hey, friend,” Greenly leaned against the bar. “You got business with this young man?”

Ellis stared down at Sunny, and from the look in his eyes, his anger finally started to match the boy’s. “I do, actually.”

“You his dad?”

“No.”

“Brother? Uncle? God-father, at least?”

“Just stay out of it, gentlemen.”

“Hey, buddy,” Greenly was getting impatient. Sunny thought he live to smile again after all, “you know who owns this diner? Who we work for? Mr. Bendis doesn’t take kindly to children being harassed, especially on his property. Especially thirteen year-old boys minding their business. The kid’s under his protection.”

Yeah, that’s right, Sunny thought to himself.

Ellis’ eyes narrowed. “Oh you little shit. You dumb little shit,” the man hissed. “They’re gonna get you killed, you know that right?” Sunny pulled his arm away from Ellis, who cursed at him under his breath.

“Hey, creep,” Greenly croaked, taking a step forward. “I’m talking to you.”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard you,” Ellis sighed. He gave Sunny the once over with a look of weary disappointment. “I’m asking you one last time… Just stop this shit, Sunny.”

Sunny stared up at the man. Sure, the mafia was dangerous and might end up being the death of him. But this “new and improved” government had shot his friends. He’d seen Mike take a federal bullet to the head with his own two eyes. He’d been forced to leave his friend’s dead body behind, looking pitiful in the crossfire of Commonwealth and Feds.

Fuck ‘em all.

Maybe it was because he’d grown tired of running from Ellis, maybe it was because he was afraid to cry, but Sunny couldn’t bring himself to speak. So, instead, he reached down and picked up the half-burned cigarette, taking a long drag. “Kid, this isn’t you. You need a home. You don’t need this.”

In peak defiance that surprised even Sunny, he blew a long, steady stream of smoke into Ellis’ face. He finally allowed himself to smirk ever so slightly- just enough to let Ellis know this conversation was over. Sunny had won this fight, and he was reveling in it.

“Time to go, friend,” Greenly sighed.

Ellis straightened up but his gaze never left Sunny’s. “Alright… Fine. This isn’t over.”

Just as quickly as he’d swept into the diner, Ellis was gone. The goons put their guns away and Greenly whistled at Sunny. The man tossed him the pack of cigs. “We’re headed out to get the van. Stay here til the boss’s car comes to get you comes. They’ll take you to The Hotel, we’ll pick you up tonight.”

“Yeah. I’ll be waiting.”

_______________________________________________________________________

Tag List:

@writerinafury​ @oneleggedflamingo​ @carmina-solis​ @anomaly00​ @neirawrites​ @lnspired-insomniac​ @cluelessbuttercup​

[83gigsof90semocore-blog]

Bonus post: Everybody Hurts - Review

So the letter D is going along nicely, but before that I'm going to do something quite different, namely a book review.

My hope is that my pseudo-academic academic style will be complemented nicely by exploring what other people have written on the genre. I hope to do more of these eventually, but probably not at a too steady rate because I can be rather lazy when it comes to reading.

Everybody hurts is a book published in 2007 that was written by Leslie Simon, who at the time worked as an editor for Alternative Press and Trevor Kelly who worked as a staff writer, also for Alternative Press. The book is actually quite different from my blog in many respects. Aside from the obvious ones, it isn't specifically focused on 90's emo but instead on what in 2007 was considered contemporary emo. Also unlike my blog it's focused on emo culture (the cover says "an essential guide to emo culture") as opposed to just music.

Some background: The 4th wave, Real Emo and the death of Scene culture

Part of what makes this book interesting to me is that it's very much a product of its time. The story that it tells about the music and community surrounding it is incredibly different than what would have been told in the 90's and even more so today.

So, first some basics: Emo is a very broad term that at many points have meant different things. One popular way to categorize it is by splitting it into 4 (or 5) waves. We have the first wave which refers to the offshoot of hardcore-punk that is the origin of the genre. The second wave is much more influenced by indie, alt-rock and pop. It's much less overtly punky, depending on where you draw the line between first and second wave. The third wave (which corresponds to the time period when this book was written) consists to a large degree of pop-punk and poppy post-hardcore. This is the period of time in which emo music was the most commercially successful and emo culture was properly cemented in the public conciousness. Finally, we have the fourth wave also known as the "emo revival". Now, this is where things get interesting.

As the name implies, emo revival was a movement concerned with bringing back emo to an earlier stage, namely the second wave. As such, many people associated with the revival where to some degree self-concious about the way "their" genre was misinterpreted as being about something else, namely third wave emo. Emo culture at the time was often mocked and the more commercial emo music wasn't looked upon favourably in underground circles. Fourth wave wasn't just a re-embrace of the values of the second wave but a rejection of the third wave.

I should also mention that this isn't nearly as true as it used to be now that enough time has passed for people to be nostalgic sooner than derisive, although it's an assumption that is very much woven into contemporary emo culture.

The history of emo as told from a fourth wave perspective would generally look on the third wave as an embarrassing parenthesis that we'd be better of forgetting. Some people have even gone as far as referring to the bulk of the third wave as "fake emo", being emo in name only while failing to embrace the core values of the genre sufficiently to be considered part of it.

So, this is where this book comes in. Being written in 2007, instead of viewing third wave emo as a heretical misstep, it's treated as the logical conclusion of the genre.

Emo as an identity

Another contrast with modern-day emo culture is it's treatment of emo as almost more of an identity than a music genre. This is also very typical of the time period. I'm born in the mid 90's, and my first exposure to the word emo (as I remember it) was when I was perhaps 10 or so and a friend told me about "a group of mentally ill people who dress in black and self harm". Not even a mention of the music! From then on my pre-pubescent self was mostly exposed to Emo as an identity. Sure, they had a special type of music that they listened to, but it wasn't any more integral to their emo-ness than their fashion for example.

Fast forward to today and I would never unironically call myself or anyone else "an emo", and I don't think almost anyone else would either. The understanding of emo that you find by modern fans is of something that might have cultural connotations, but is ultimately a style of music at heart.

While the authors where a lot more familiar with what emo in general than my 10 year old self and also saw music as a more central part of it, it is very informed by the view of Emo as a broader identity and only a small part of the book is actually about music.

My impression

The book starts of with a foreword by Andy Greenwald, author of Nothing feels good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, And Emo, a book that I'm hoping to eventually cover on this blog.

Then we get to the first chapter, titled ideology. For a second I (foolishly) thought that it would be a Žižek-style examination of pop-culture or something, and got very exited. Reading a few words below, we get a faux dictionary definition of the word:

ide•ol•o•gy n a body of ideas and social needs that separates you from your parents, the pep squad, and Dave Matthews Band fans.

Žižek was never this snarky.

After appropriately adjusting my expectations, snark is a constant background noise in the book. It's sometimes funny, sometimes making fun of a target that deserves it, sometimes an excuse to not treat a subject seriously and sometimes something that has aged quite poorly (ableist slurs stand out like a sore thumb, something it generally didn't in 2007).

The book is divided in 9 chapters, discussing everything from emo ideology, emo fashion, emo literature to emo eating habits and oh right, actual emo music. I generally found that the book was quite well researched (although it is an entertainment book, so it's not exactly done with any academic rigor) and that the authors where happy on going in to detail on most of the subjects they brought up. The facts and anecdotes that make up every chapter are accompanied by either helpful advice ("Don't put on a band shirt right after buying it from the merch table, you'll look like an emo novice") or snarky commentary ("Let's say that a guy and his crush watched One Tree Hill a week earlier with a group of seven of their friends. Never mind that there where nine people in the room. In emo terms, this was a date.")

One section of the book is about emo blogs. Just for fun, let's see how my emo blog measures up:

[From the section "how to emo-fy your blog" [...] you're going to want to look over your text and ask yourself a series of questions before hitting the "submit" button and releasing your deepest, most intimate thoughts into the world. Those questions are as follows:

Does this read well?

Am I making my points in a clear and efficient way?

Did I use actual paragraphs?

Did I capitalize all the words that need capitalisation?

Is this what my life is actually like?

Ok, 5. doesn't really apply but for the others it seems like I'm doing fine. So far, so good.

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you should probably scrap your post and start over. Ideally, a good emo blog post should be over dramatic and a bit abstruse. You know the magnets you see on fridges that people sometimes assemble into bizarre phrases? That's what emo posts are supposed to look like

Well, fuck.

Chapter 6: Music - a review

While it can be anywhere from amusing to interesting to read about everything from proper show etiquette to Emo porn sites (yes, seriously), this being a music blog first and foremost I'm gonna give some extra attention to their taste in music.

They have a section titled "Essential Emo Records 101". So what does it consist of and what do I think of it?

Rites of Spring, S/T

Embrace, S/T

Sunny Day Real Estate, Diary

Jawbreaker, Dear You

Lifetime, Hello Bastards

Texas is the Reason, Do You Know Who You Are?

Weezer, Pinkerton

The Promise Ring, Nothing Feels Good

The Get Up Kids, Something To Write Home About

Jimmy Eat World, Clarity

So far, so good. Lifetime is almost never talked about these days, but Hello Bastards is still a solid record. Mineral, American Football and Cap'n Jazz are all absent, although American Football and Cap'n Jazz weren't very popular until a long time after they split, so it's not that strange I suppose. They would be impossible to not include had the list been written today though. All the bands are accompanied by some text. For the first two albums they snarkily remark that they're not so much good as important historically. I believe that this comes from viewing the history of as stepping stones to what it was when this book was written and not with an attempt to see emo as it was at the time which I think is disappointing although not very surprising.

Saves the Day, Through Being Cool

Glassjaw, Everything You Ever Wanted

At the Drive-in, Relationship of Command

Bright Eyes, Fever and Mirrors

Thursday, Full Collapse

Dashboard Confessional, The Places You Have Come To Fear the Most

Taking Back Sunday, Tell All Your Friends

The Used, S/T

The All-American Rejects, S/T

Brand New, Deja Entendu

Coheed and Cambria, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3

Yellowcard, Ocean Avenue

Hawthorne Heights, The Silence in Black and White

My Chemical Romance, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge

Fall Out Boy, From Under the Cork Tree

Panic! At the Disco, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out

There are a couple of albums that I personally don't really think qualify as emo even from a third wave point of view (although, maybe I'm just too poisoned by 4th wave elitism) namely Fevers and Mirrors, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 and A Fever You Can't Sweat Out. I do still think that at least the first two at least are quite good so it's more of a matter of being overly loose with the genre. Although, maybe it's worth interpreting this list as more "music that emo people like" rather than "emo music" in line with the rest of the book. I did honestly think that it would be a bit worse in terms of including "non-emo" music so I'm honestly positively surprised. The authors do in my opinion manage to escape with a good amount of emo cred.

One thing that I'm disappointed in is the complete absence of screamo music, although this is once again more disappointing than surprising really.

Final verdict

One helpful question to ask when reviewing any piece of media is "who is this for?". My impression is that it's mostly for people who are already immersed in Emo culture who are interested in laughing at themselves. It is a very silly subculture in many ways (particularly in 2007) and the authors poke fun of this many times. If you can take it in stride, this book might be a pleasant read. You might also learn some things that you have missed.

For people such as me who are trying to puzzle together what emo culture actually was like at the time I find that the snark gets in the way of actually learning things, and I wish that they had taken a slightly more serious approach. The book could also have done with a lot more interviews.

Ultimately I think this leaves the book with a quite narrow audience in the present day, but that's fine maybe. At the time it came out it was actually commenting on something culturally relevant and might have served as a decent primer to the subculture.

Today however, I think that I can only really recommend it to the unhealthily obsessed (like me) and the nostalgic.

[apostateangela]

LIGHTSWITCH LIVING

In April of 2018 I had a life altering experience. I attended a production of The Book of Mormon musical. I hadn’t been to church for over a year. I thought I had pretty much separated myself from that world- at least in my mind and heart.

I was wrong.

The leaving of a religion and culture is not as easy as cutting an umbilicus.

It is more like the unraveling of a tightly woven tapestry. In my case a tapestry I had been weaving for almost a half of a century. While it is true, I had torn large holes in the fabric that had surrounded me and shrouded every part of me.

I still stood in the tatters, unable to shed them completely.

I felt naked enough, as I have described. So much so that I didn’t notice that a great deal of the LDS church and its teachings still clung to me.

I don’t know how much is there still.

It’s difficult to rewrite your DNA.

There are moments in your life where you know an impetus has been reached.

Personal iconic moments that change who you are forever.

A handful of happenings that can be listed as pivotal and undeniably valuable, priceless even.

The night I experienced The Book of Mormon musical was one of these moments.

Understand, I have almost died in a roll over car accident, I have been married only once, I have given birth to four children; I do not classify this night lightly.

The evening began having dinner with two people who have deepened in value through the previous year or so and who I’ve come to rely on and love. They have supported me in my journey and maintained their interest through the challenges I’ve faced trying to find myself and in shedding my dogmatic skin.

While we ate dinner, I ended up sharing some cultural stories, one of which had to do with the day I said ‘fuck’ for the first time; I was 45 years old.

(maybe I’ll post that story later, as language is interesting to me, and all culture has language)

We laughed and enjoyed the food and made our way to the theatre.

I should say that I had been prepping for this experience for some time. I had been exposed to and enjoyed other film and media by the creators of BOM musical.

I had been overjoyed at Orgasmo (I was seriously, Lisa).

I had watched a fair amount of South Park, including the Mormon episode, and was convinced that Matt and Trey were the Shakespeares of our time.

(Shakespeare critiqued his society and did it in the language of the masses)

But no amount of prelim could prepare me for the unraveling that was to occur.

The first thing I encountered as we approached the theatre were the real Mormon missionaries handing out Book of Mormons and offering to tell, “The real story of the Book of Mormon.”

This made me laugh as well as feel some kind of transferred shame as my oldest son had served a mission, and the silliness of the juxtaposition was not lost on me.

Little did I know how deep that shame would go.

The musical is outlandish and poignant.

That is an incredible combination.

The provocative, set against the innocent ignorance and pitiful reality, creates a mirror with the clarity of 4K.

Looking at the sharp edges of my life performed on stage, well…

I wept through the whole thing.

It was such a cutting revelation;

the places in my psyche held in the dense ideological fabric shredded.

I sat sobbing, fibers ripped from the lungs of my identity,

gulping fresh outside air and asking myself,

“How did they know?”

I really can’t do a play by play, there’s too much.

But there are two pieces that are important to recognize as they pulled out so many threads embedded deeper than I knew.

Two songs: Turn it Off, and I Believe.

The Turn it Off scene is set with the group of young Mormon male missionaries talking about their struggle and failure preaching the gospel in Africa. The lead in to the song is that any negative thoughts are not valuable or valid and should be simply “turned off.”

Here is a portion of the lyrics:

I got a feeling

That you could be feeling

A whole lot better then you feel today

You say you got a problem

Well that's no problem

It's super easy not to feel that way

When you start to get confused

Because of thoughts in your head

Don't feel those feelings

Hold them in instead

Turn it off, like a light switch

Just go click

It's a cool little Mormon trick

We do it all the time

When you're feeling certain feels

That just don't feel right

Treat those pesky feelings like a reading light

And turn 'em off

Like a light switch, just go "bap"

Really, what’s so hard about that?

Turn it off

Turn it off

I hunkered in my balcony seat, clinging to the arm of the dear man beside me, shook at the cultural distillation of one of over sixteen million people’s core perspectives, myself included. That’s the current Mormon membership worldwide. But, that may not totally track as many are converts because of the barrage of missionary work the Church puts forth and as such may not have this perspective.

Narrowing it down, I’ll just say, four and a half million people in the western states Mormon corridor where settlements were directed in the early days of the church (Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, California, Colorado, and Montana). Here is where the culture of the Church is the strongest and so these people would be impacted by the specific concept of turning off your feelings. (to say nothing of the generations past)

This story is about me, but I wanted to give you some scope.

As I listened to the words of that song my emotional life flashed before my eyes.

That life was dark, because it was all kept inside.

What I heard and saw in my mind were the phrases and faces holding me to task and forcing my hand to the lightswitch.

Early memories of my father refusing to speak to me if I were crying.

Berating me and sending me from the room if I exhibited any emotion of any kind besides happiness.

Sitting in my bedroom or going on long walks as a teenager and talking to myself out loud, trying to sift through the feelings I wasn’t permitted to voice.

Then my mother eavesdropping at my bedroom door and confronting me with the implication that I was ‘crazy’ if I talked to myself and explaining for the hundredth time that I should simply talk to God; pray and hand my troubles over to Him.

That I should seek the blistering sunny side of every trouble, doubt, or powerful emotion because “Heavenly Father only gives us what He knows we can handle” and “Everything happens for a reason, we just have to have faith until the reason reveals itself”.

Remembering countless moments in church when any voice of dissention was silenced by similar instruction and an added challenge of repentance because, “If you are having negative feelings you must not be living righteously and need to fix that problem in order to be happy again.”

It seemed almost as if emotion had been attached to sin all my life.

There is a reason Mormons have the stereotype of being happy, nice people.

It is because they must learn to “turn off” every other emotion, impulse, or desire.

Everything else must be tempered, internalized, or fought against; anger, confusion, sadness, depression, lust, anxiety, and fear--to name a few.

One of my challenges and gifts is that I’m an empath.

I feel other’s emotions, and emote powerfully as well.

I’m a two way conduit of emotion.

Can you then imagine the pain, the shame, the harrowing binding this very Mormon concept caused me?

Add to the previous childhood examples my narcissistic husband’s constant critique of my emotional persona and his efforts to condition the “turn it off” in me.

He shushed me thousands of times.

He told me I was irrational and too much constantly.

His said there was something broken inside me way before he broke me himself.

And so I wrote all my feelings into poetry journals and cried myself to sleep thousands of times lying right next to him.

All these things and more exploded in my chest and raced through my mind as I listened and watched fictional Mormon boys sing about turning off their feelings about abuse, death, and rejection. An upbeat song about stamping out your very self, because the church told you it was wrong.

How did they get it so right?

How did they turn this thing that most outside people don’t understand into a catchy Broadway tune that tore my heart’s blindfold to pieces?

I reeled in my seat through the short remaining moments after Turn it Off until intermission. With the blindfold off I watched the ridiculousness of my church and culture pointed out through song and dance with satirical exactness.

But more than that, I felt the weight of millions of people who hadn’t been able to process or share their feelings.

And we had been taught that damaging practice in the name of God!

I didn’t move through the intermission.

I just cried and shook my head and was held and listened to as I tried to explain my distress.

One of the things I remember saying was, “But I believed. I really believed all of it.”

And I had.

I had deeply believed with all my heart.

I had proclaimed that testimony to others.

I had supported my son in the arrogant practice of Mormon missionary work; spreading the message that we know better than you and our truth supersedes your truth.

We had been wrong.

I had been so very wrong.

The first song out of the gate after intermission that hit me was, you guessed it, I Believe.

Being in the middle of that piece of my processing, ashamed and astonished and sorrowful at having believed it all, then being hit with a song that demonstrated both the deep devotion of Mormon belief AND the blindness of that kind of belief… How did you know Matt and Trey? How?

The music is perfect.

The refrain I BELIEVE is touching--sung out strong, the notes held.

The words are simple and use the exact phraseology that Mormons say to each other and themselves.

Here’s just a piece:

I believe that the Lord God created the universe

I believe that he sent his only son to die for my sins

And I believe that ancient Jews built boats and sailed to America

I am a Mormon

And a Mormon just believes

You cannot just believe part-way, you have to believe in it all

My problem was doubting the Lord's will, instead of standing tall

I can't allow myself to have any doubt, it's time to set my worries free

Time to show the world what Elder Price is about, and share the power inside of me

Unthreaded, the remnants of my belief were washed away by music and performance.

I was unbaptized.

The second half of the musical is everything that South Park is, offensive and wickedly funny and I could almost hear Kyle say, “You know, I learned something today…” when the show came to an end.

I wanted to say it too.

Yes Kyle, I learned something today.

I learned so many things.

And I unlearned some things as well, or I started to at least.

Satire is a mirrored sword that shows us the truth we are afraid to see as it cuts the fallacy away. That is why Mormons often walk out of The Book of Mormon musical.

Not because it is offensive, but because it shows them the truth behind the carefully constructed myth.

And believe me, that is not an easy thing to see.

It makes you want to run.

I felt that urge many times during the show.

Luckily, I had stopped running from the truth by then.

I stayed till the end.

And was transformed by it.

I walked out of that theatre stipped bare.

Able to move, able to see, able to feel,

able to better understand the unhealthy deception that had kept me bound.

I metaphorically hobbled away,

my spiritual feet unbound and ready for the next step.

If you are Mormon, or have ever been Mormon,

Please

Please

Please, I beg you,

Go experience the genius that is The Book of Mormon musical.

And turn on the light.

-Angela