#like it’s sorta incredible just how many of the lyrics fit now

[foxtrot-broadcasts]

Spoilers for the latest Limbus story update

Mostly of the very last level

Me before the Canto 6.2 update: You know what would be fun? “Against the Kitchen Floor” by Will Wood animatic but with Heathcliff as a way to show Heathcliff’s guilt for abandoning Cathy, even if it doesn’t fit one to one haha~

Me now, especially with 6-34: … Holy fuck-

[itrustmydiscoverweekly]

I guess there is a reason people like Billie Eilish

this week I listened to HIT ME HARD AND SOFT by Billie Eilish

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️(4 out of 5 stars)

I had never really been interested in Billie Eilish, but I felt that I should give her album a shot this year since so many people seem to love her stuff—and now I see why! This album is full of incredible songs, and I liked it a lot more than I was expecting to.

Although not shocking to anybody, the mixing is incredible and Billie is an amazing singer. I seem to be just about the last person to realize that her music is good so ignore my raving. I truly hadn't really heard any of the songs off of this album aside from small clips online and was shocked at how much I loved this album.

This album sits at 44 minutes but it really feels a lot shorter so I can't say I wish there were more songs but that's just how I felt. The songs all fit together, making the whole thing feel way shorter.

OPINION TIME!!! (as always, not opinion order, just album order)

"BIRDS OF A FEATHER" STUNNING, no notes, amazing song. Believe me or don't, I had not heard this song before, and wow. I love it so much, it deserves how well it has been doing 1000 times over. It gets right to business with no intro. The lyrics are sweet and her singing is GORGEOUS. I heard her song that was in Barbie last (?) year and this song elicits a similar feeling in me. It is stunning. The beat is catchy and augh, what a song.

"THE GREATEST" As much as FINNEAS is a great producer/mixer, I love the more stripped-back songs. The start of this song has just Billie and guitar and then builds to a higher production sound. I love the guitar loop, it is simple and gets the job done beautifully. The climactic "Man am I the greatest" cueing in drums and strings, laugh I wish I could hear that for the first time again. When I heard that for the first time, I knew this would be top 3. I will say it again, the drums and strings on this song are AMAZING. I will also add that this song is almost everything I wish "L'AMOUR DE MA VIE" was, but I'll get to that later.

"THE DINER" is very much more of what I thought most of Billie Eilish's music was before going in. The beat is catchy even if it sorta sounds a lot like the Kahoot theme... I'll ignore that, this song is cool. There is a lot of cool layering going on with the vocals. This song does a really good job of sounding really creepy and I love it. The chorus is catchy and her singing is amazing here.

Honorable mentions!! 🥳🥳🥳

"WILDFLOWER" I love the stripped-back sound, her voice is gorgeous, and I love the guitar even if it is simple. The vocal harmonies at the end are stunning, I love all of the layering so, so, so much.

"L'AMOUR DE MA VIE" I love the sound of the first part of this song. I really just don't get the aggressive shift after the bridge. It feels like two songs and I really wish this was two separate songs because I like them on their own but I don't like them being smashed together. It is able to build without the electronic section, the part with the drums is so much fun! If the song ended at 3:35 I would be so much happier. I like the electronic section but it really doesn't feel like it belongs. But what can I say, I don't have a Grammy and she does.

"BLUE" I just think this song did an amazing job wrapping up the album. The song is catchy and honestly very nearly made my top 3 if it wasn't placed last on the album (I don't like to pick the first/last songs because I'm usually paying more attention and don't wanna be biased). Unlike "L'AMOUR DE MA VIE" this song is able to switch between ideas very well without a feeling of whiplash and I think it works very well. Ending your album with strings will always make me so happy.

[gaybosposts]

Ok Orchestra Album Review

I’m fucking bored. So I’m gonna talk about this terrible album. If people think I don’t like this kind of music, let me bring up Beyoncé’s recent album COWBOY CARTER. That album is so incredible and it’s country. My actual least favourite genre of music. No matter what genre it is. There is something in that genre that will be different and something for you. Moral of the story: any genre of music or film that you don’t like can always surprise you. So if it’s actually good, then I’ll enjoy it. But this is not good. And I like a few of AJR’s songs. I just hate this album. And one of the songs on this album with a burning passion. AJR fans, STAY AWAY IF YOU DONT WANT TO HEAR MY HATE!

1. OK Overture

OK… this ain’t that bad? It’s still not all that good either. It’s big, ambitious, and the song to say “Hey! This is going to be a wild ride!”. Man… how right am I? lol. 3/10.

2. Bummerland

This is about how he gets too many haircuts… I’m not fucking joking… the chorus has potential. But the meaning ruins any chance of it being ok. 1/10.

3. 3 O’Clock Things

The vocals are not good. They are fucking atrocious. This is not good at all. “If you’re fucking racist, don’t come to my show” 1/10.

4. My Play

To the guy who told me that this was about the band’s parent’s divorce, thank you, bro. I respect everyone’s opinions. But I still think the song has a childish tone that I can’t take seriously and ruins a pretty serious topic. And the lyrics don’t do it justice. If that dude didn’t tell me the real meaning of the song, I would’ve still thought it was about the lead singer really wanting to show his play. Lyrics suck on this one. 1/10.

5. Joe

It’s about the lead singer’s bully in high school and him saying “well, look at me now.”. Kill me… 0/10.

6. Adventure Is Out There

The idea for this is sooo good! the final product is so disappointing and boring. The beat is ok. But I’m just super disappointed by this. 2/10.

7. Bang!

It’s better than World’s Smallest Violin. But it’s still not good. I just don’t really care for this song. Is it better than Weak? Absolutely! 3/10.

8. The Trick

*gags* the high pitched voice is not it. This is forgettable and straight up shit. How is this squished between two decent to good songs? 0/10.

9. Ordinaryish People (feat. Blue Man Group)

I an album full of slop. This is the only light shining through the darkness (sorta). This is not a 10/10. Hell no! But I like it more than Karma. AJR isn’t bad on this song, but the main star of the song is The Blue Man Group. They absolutely make the song worth listening to. I love the instrumental break they do near the end. I genuinely love this song. It doesn’t get any better than this. 7/10.

10. Humpty Dumpty

No. Just no. 0/10.

11. World’s Smallest Violin

I think this is their most popular song. But it’s also a bad song. The ending is kinda cool. If you don’t listen to the lyrics. Or the song at all. 1/10.

12. Way Less Sad

This is on the same level as Bang! and OK Overture. It’s ok. 3/10.

13. Christmas In June

My actual least favourite AJR song ever. I have a burning hatred for this forgettable, shitty, snooze fest of a song. Before you start commenting, saying “do you even know what the song is about?”. Yes, AJR fan. I do know what it’s about. It’s about how jack is too busy for time with his girlfriend. But it’s done so half assed that it’s not fun to listen to. I genuinely questioned why Jack would have a choice to continue his work or go to his FUCKING WEDDING! If you choose work over the love of your life, you are not fit for any relationship. Plus, celebrating Christmas in June is pointless because you would already be half way through the fucking year. Like, you should’ve took a break from work and had Christmas with your girlfriend. But if he wanted to have a kid, why June? Of all things? I know it’s to rhyme with or something. But we know this band don’t be making the most deepest songs in the world. I hate this shit so much, I think I hate it more than anything else. This shit doesn’t fucking deserve a 0/10. It’s a fucking -10/10.

Overall: This album is even more childish and bad than the previous album. It’s so bad, I wish I had never listened to this shit in the first place. It’s a fucking 0/10 for me.

[nerdygoth77]

Okay so! I love the music in Fallout, I really do! But I just feel like metal would fit in so well! I know rock/metal can seem more "Mad Max" but a lot of things in Fallout really give me that vibe! Raiders and a few other groups especially. Like you cannot look me in the eyes and tell me that Porter Gage wouldn't love Five finger Death Punch or something else angry like Pantera.

Before I get into the music in the wasteland I have to tell you how metal formed in the first place! So metal and all forms of rock, all the way to punk and goth, started with old fashioned rock & roll. Music that developed in the 1950's from game changers like Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, and many many others. The Fallout universe is very different from our world, but it still has some of these stars like Elvis and Buddy Holly. So this means the foundation for metal was already beginning.

Now I know most branches of rock and metal began in the 70's and 80's, the first real rock bands beginning in the late 60's early 70's. (Led Zeppelin in 1968 and Black Sabbath in 1970 are great examples) A lot of the subgenera's like punk, goth, glam, folk, power, and nu formed later on. These rang anywhere from glam hairbands in the 80's to the Nu metal wave of the late 90's and early 00's. There is just such an incredible amount of variety in the world of rock and metal. The Fallout world may have a bit less variety but the idea of punk and heavy metal in the wasteland is just so perfect to me.

The Fallout universe has a wildly different timeline and series of events from our world; but this kind of music formed from civil unrest and tensions. Like shortages and war. The fallout universe, both pre and post total atomic annihilation, is full of unrest and war. So to me it would make so much sense for their to be metal in fallout.

A lot of raiders and similar groups give me major heavy metal punk vibes. The brotherhood even has heavy metal vibes! A lot of music and instruments get lost in time in Fallout, but people can get quite creative. A great example is the Nu metal band Slipknot! They use an old beer keg and a baseball bat to add a unique sound to their music. I could see raiders, and really any wastelands coming up with new creative ideas for instruments.

I really dig the idea of Ghouls and anyone else who survived the war having lots of information and skill when it comes to some instruments and music. Maybe some even share their information and teach others. I also just really enjoy the idea of a punk ghoul, dressed head to toe like they're on their way to the heaviest concert of their life. Like an original punk, one who hates the government and likes leather.

A great example of how rock/metal could fit in the wasteland perfectly is Redeye in Nuka World. Sure, he sorta kinda sucks, but the potential is there. He really reminds me of some of the old 80's hairbands. The lyrics aren't that strong and the singing isn't the best, but damn it sure is catchy. Redeye really reminds me of some certain rock songs. There is a song called Teas'n Pleas'n by a rock band called Dangerous Toys. They mostly make songs on the more humorous side and a lot of their songs seem to fit well with raiders personalities.

I love the cowboy vibes that Fallout has, especially when playing New Vegas. I really love the cowboy songs, but I also love metal. I feel like the two kinds of music would have major crossovers into one another, especially in the wasteland. Folk rock seems very much like Fallout to me.

A song that would fit so well in Fallout is the Black Sabbath song "War Pigs."

I have a lot of songs in mind that I think would fit Fallout if you guys want me to include them!!

If you have any thoughts please share!

I have so many ideas and headcanons about rock/metal music in the Fallout universe

Would anyone like to hear about it 👀

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

yknow while this hellsite continues on the whole religion discussion thing, i’d like to jump in on it with my experience particularly with leaving catholic school.

like aside from my angsty pop-punk/emo etc teen phase (which’ll obvs be weaved into story later on) that led me to have different views from the church and aside from the whole sexism thing that i endured over my year 10 formal/junior prom in 2010 and 2011 from staff there….. i found it within myself incredibly hard to leave there… mostly because i’d known literally 1/3 of my year group at catholic school since kindy/kindergarten or some other point in primary school.

this affected my choice to leave and it was quite tumultuous inwardly. knowing the safety and predictably of the people i was with for all those years was a comfort to me. i knew their parents due to parent mixer bbqs that we’d have after mother’s day and father’s day liturgies- although i hated the mother’s day ones mostly, due to personal reasons. but to leave that comfortable place for overly loyal, kinda sorta shy (although everyone who knew me at that school wouldn’t’ve described me as shy bc i was a very loud show off because of drama class 😅) and by year 10, very lonely, highly socially anxious and depressed, teen me was terrifying. it meant losing her friends and stability and she obvs hated that thought. it meant leaving the one one place she ever felt good at something, drama class.

obviously, after she did leave for public school, she visited the catholic school on a few separate occasions, to try and keep the connection “alive” or whatever the fuck she wrote in a fake deep status on her fb (that i now get in my fb memories every year lmao). but it all ended pretty badly, when everyone from that school stopped talking to her once high school finished. no one invited her out. or if people did try to invite her out, like a couple of people did, it always fell through…. and it made her feel like she was just a bad luck charm or whatever other low self esteem talk she was telling herself. there was quite a few moody statuses around that too lmao.

but yeah. leaving catholic school was a massive thing for me back then, because even though i hadn’t gone to church on sunday for literal Y E A R S at that point; i still had a strong pull to that school because i’d known SO MANY kids at that school from primary/elementary/grade etc school, regardless of their year group level. because if there’s one thing catholic school was good at, it was networking 😂. you knew everyone, and everyone knew you. it was safe, it was sound, so i didn’t want to leave.

but once you leave, you lose your friends and what almost felt like an extended family (although they obvs weren’t). but at the same time, i’d grown to hate the safety and almost insularity of the school, because as i mentioned earlier, you felt like you could predict how people would react or behave in class/events etc.

i felt the above distinctly, because as i’ve mentioned plenty on here, from years 7-10 i was a very emotionally demonstrative kid. in some classes (mostly religion and PE when i was bothered to participate) i’d end up in shouting matches with the teacher or other students…. or y’know just have a casual meltdown in the middle of class, which many people saw as “attention seeking” behaviour. i felt watched, i felt ready to snap, and to quote the ever present All Time Low i felt like the bridge lyrics from “therapy” (which was/is quite obviously somewhat partially about the price of fame and hollywood imo- but that went over teen me’s head at the time lmao):

“arrogant boy, love yourself so no one has to, they’re better off without you (better off without you). arrogant boy, cause a scene like you’re supposed to, they’ll fall asleep without you; you’re lucky if your memory remains”

like yes. i’ll admit those bridge lyrics being applied to this time is rather overdramatic, in hindsight, but hey. that was teen me for ya lmao. and don’t even get me started on applying ATL’s song “sick little games” to this at the time as well 😂😅. anyway. from all the “lms and i’ll tell you what i like about you” trend statuses that people were doing back then on fb, i’d gained the tag of “cool/chill girl”, my crush rich boy, once called me “outrageous” because of how loud i was and how willing in years 7-9 to scream out stupid song lyrics like “i want to fuck dog in the ass” by blink 182, fight song by marilyn manson and then idek probably my humps by black eyed peas at the top my lungs through the very few halls that that school had 😂😅. i was being purposely and annoyingly offensive most of the time.

but eventually, once it came to things like one of the girls in my group wanting to run for vice school captain and the other girls in my group A L W A Y S being given leadership positions (LPs)….. while i always had to apparently “repent” my behaviour by being made (in theory from my teachers) to sit alone at lunch because of my “embarrassing” and “unseemly” behaviour at the so-called “training”/ “retreat” days we had for things like being peer support leaders for the new cohort of year 7s etc etc. i felt like everyone was just waiting for me to leave…. and that they couldn’t stand my “embarrassing” presence and that i’d ruin my friends chances of being selected as co-captain or whatever other bullshit LPs they wanted to run for. but still. i felt like i couldn’t leave. just. how do you leave a bunch of people that you’ve known for so long???

and even when my teachers were nice enough to give me a chance in a leadership position once; in that dastardly bullshit internet safety workshop thing that they should’ve literally just hired a professional workshop co. to do….. but to save money they used students in my year group instead. so, instead of being marked by my teachers on this program; i was marked by the catholic education office. they had a lady come in from the ceo to judge/mark us while presenting…… and this lady went off at teen me for “not being professional, responsible and respectful” or whatever the fuck the woman told 15/16yo me…. which teen me then fired back with “i don’t have to be fucking professional and responsible!!!! IM FUCKING 15!!!!”.. so from then on i was never given an LP or any other type of “peer support” role against my friends who were littered with offers for them. mind you, i did call a whole room of 14 year olds “a bunch of cunts” or the like and then stormed out thinking that i’d made a solid point, so the CEO woman had a good reason 😂😅….. again in hindsight.

of course there was also the bitterness of teen me being angry at the english dept for not giving her a spot in the top class of english in her half of the year. but as i’ve said previously on other posts, i’ve forgiven this because i did essentially fail one shakespeare in class assessment in year 8 or year 9 😂. but i strongly felt this during my time at catholic school bc my friends believed that i should’ve been in the top english class too lmao.

but aside from those troubles and foibles, i still found it incredibly hard to leave. to leave the perceived closeness of that group of girls, who would sometimes walk me down to the office and sit with me in “purple room” while i waited for the teacher that had to act as my therapist almost lmao. even though i always told my friends to leave me be and go back to class bc i felt bad about dragging them out of class for so long.

but yeah. with all the above behaviour, the song lyrics to me at the time made sense bc teen me just felt so pressured to fit into the whole “funny, cool, outrageous girl” bs box that people had put her in…. but at the same time she wanted to escape it bc she was just *flyleaf voice* SO SICK of being laughed at instead of laughed with (atl weightless reference here kids) just because… like she DESERVED to be taken seriously for fucks sake, and not a be a “monkey do funny dance” person… she obvs felt this the most in drama class. where in the shakespeare unit, she picked a medley of romeo and juliet and taming of the shrew monologues to do for her monologue. although she nearly did lady macbeth throwing herself off the tower, to be hella edgy…. but she opted not to do that in the end. but she picked serious pieces bc she was sick and tired of being classed as the one trick pony go-to funny person.

okay. this really went off topic. but y’all get the point??? the decision of leaving catholic school was a hell of a ride for little 14-16yo me. it was confusing, terrifying and tied up in years of being overly judged and feeling like people wanted me to leave bc they were sick of me. it was tied up in years of mid-class meltdowns that had become kind of routine for me to have, and that people were just brushing me off as “attention seeking”…. but also ironically waiting for me to snap at any second for another wild shouting match or walkout; which would then make me look like i was “unruly” or “untameable/unmanageable” or whatever the fuck….. but i couldn’t take that anymore, for the final senior years. i HAD to leave it.

again it was hard to leave for loyal little teen me, despite how lonely and isolated she felt. why leave your friends when you’re comfortable??? but also: why stay in this toxic environment where people are just waiting for you to either shut the fuck up and put up with it or just blow up and absolutely lose your shit??? that’s just unhealthy asf. and the only unruly thing that’s happening here is the complete lack of mental health help or management in the aussie education system; but most especially in religious schools.

[ranvwoop]

TALK ABOUT AMERICAN HEALTHCARE I HAVE AN IDEA OF WHY IT'S THERE BUT I WANNA HEAR THE EXPLANATION ALSO THE ONLY HOUSE THAT"S NOT ON FIRE (YET) FOR THE SAME REASON I JUST WANNA SEE THE ANALYSIS:TM: IF U WANT I WANNA SEE IF I GOT IT RIGHT :D

Hi :DDD. Thank u for asking,,,, I have many thoughts. I am sorry in advance. This is one of those things I will put under a readmore because I am into rambling. IT GOT A LOT LONGER THAN ANTICIPATED IM SORRY. Like. a lot. It was 4 pages in google docs because i dont trust tumblr to save my drafts

Okay a lot of my Ranboo thoughts are about the syndicate / boreal trio / peerpressure duo. But you’re probably aware I am a Them enthusiast first and both a dsmp enjoyer and person second. Because. I really like the syndicate. I also don’t have too too many thoughts on the more recent lore past the experiments. Once the in character monologues stopped, so did my brain. I communicate through monologue to monologue communication.

American Healthcare is actually gonna be the main reason why this is so long bc it works Very Much for like three different reasons. One sorta niche and abstracter reason is a stream that was basically never elaborated on back in March, either the day after or very close to the peerpressure Egg confrontation stream. The egg called him a coward (for some reason my brain can Only come up with the “stop saying i look like chicken little. he’s dumb, and a coward, and i am NOT a coward” vine), and he is not a coward, so he decided to make an action plan to bring the server together by acting as a mediator for all parties and try to make sure that everyone is happy, because he’s the only one that can see all sides, or something. This was where he said the big happy family™ line but other than Ranboo Become Dream?? analysis nothing else really happened and everything went along as normal.

(I also always held a little bit of suspicion on this stream actually and thought it might be the influence of the egg, because it says it can give one whatever they want, and ranboo wants to make everyone happy and this was a totally foolproof way of doing that. Sort of in a similar way that BBH is convinced that his plan will totally make Skeppy happy. But also Ranboo is just like that, but this felt a little more on the nose than usual and he did fall into the egg and made his decisions after being egged on by it, buT WE’LL NEVER KNOW, WILL WE?

… also I really wanted to see more egg conflict at the time. Peerpressure rlly got involved in the egg plot for cameos at the banquet and nothing else. I do not blame anyone and respect the ccs for all of their attempts to weave plots together but also. also…. we.. we coulda had so much…)

That was a little off topic from the point, but�� he really just thinks he can save the sick… he can see that everyone on the server is unwell and is wrong but, y’know, look inwardly, the unwell is coming from inside the house. And an inherent problem of the way that the server runs. And if this is still lowkey in effect or not (idk man a) ranboo has monologued a lot I simply chose a one off from march to grow emotionally attached to and b) i think that my brain has shut off once ranboo stopped solo lore streams), it would probably go the way that most choosing to change the system from the inside goes. Which is the point of the song and stuff! He will inevitably decide what’s too far, whether he will either admit it’s a choice or just feel that it’s what he has to do. The, uh, dealing with the devil, to be polite.

in conclusion (but we are not close to done here i’m holding you for a bit longer), i think a lot about that stream and i think that shows what he wants to be, at the very least, and continuing down that path would definitely go into being far more trouble than just a noble goal of wanting to help people, from negotiating with corruption (The lobbyists, the Congressmen and lies bit) and that the server can’t really be brought together and saved like that (When things are more and more this way / Sometimes it's like they'd rather die)

THE LESS. vwoop why have you written an unnecessarily long post about one stream in your playlist character analysis reason is both more literal and piece by piece and also Syndicate, My Beloved, you know the drill. We are going line by line because I have a lot of feelings about American Healthcare, apparently.

This also comes back to that everyone on the server is doing Really Badly, all of the time, but mostly his time in L’Manburg. For one, he is pretty complacent in everything and doesn’t really accomplish much in terms of actual change, so like Well people die every day / I wouldn't have it any other way / I just think they should feel good while they are alive. An example of this is Exiled Tommy — who I’d also metaphorically put as the dead man just for funsies, since Tommy’s whole exile thing was one of the first things Ranboo experienced on the server—as he did try to be friends with Tommy and keep him company with his letters, but he still has no power over the actual issue at hand. Just trying to make it a bit more bearable. Similarly is Techno, while Ranboo still participated in the butcher army that was trying to kill him, he helped in the meantime until he “died”.

And then it’s the Realization that participating in the system doesn’t really help much, and the subsequent Everything. It could be getting mad at the whole government system and that he didn’t mean to contribute to the harm, or how he fought with Fundy using hs ideology but not in the way that Ranboo thought. It could also be standing up to his hallucination Dream, in that he doesn’t try this hard to be a good person just to be accused of helping with all of the things that he may or may not have helped with. (That is… a discussion for not right now, I don’t know.) And I think this sort of area is also where it’s like they’d rather die is also relevant, cause Doomsday. Nobody could just set aside their governments and just get along, though Ranboo had his own solution to fighting and things.

And then he joins the Syndicate! And the lyrics of the song are directly Government Bad, because government bad. Canon anarchist, has done things that he’s not proud of as a part of the government. The lines it was the government / … It got louder over the years / Until all that I could hear was flies and all.

But honestly I think in the Syndicate he’s still trying to “save the sick”! Because the Syndicate don’t All fit eye to eye either. He’s the token pacifist, and a vote against violence whenever it comes down to it. Not all anarchists are violent but Techno and Phil will probably react strongly when provoked, due to All the past events, and I live in a world where their trauma and issues get talked about as much as everyone else’s. Since everything is decided by vote it’d probably be split between them and Ranboo + Niki, who is in her healing/no longer resorting to murder arc. He’ll help them negotiate and then everything will Be Okay, ideally.

(Also I just like the idea of Ranboo believing that he is helping the people he’s living with because canonically cc!Ranboo has said he just really cares about his family and the syndicate are included in his family shut up but they also just believe they’re helping him and yes it’s self indulgent. I care them. Particularly Endduo, actually, or whatever they're called, I am not bold enough to think Ranboo looks at Techno and thinks I Can Fix Him, but. Philza Minecraft will one day talk about his feelings. One day.)

There’s also radioduo and beeduo as of recent— really I’m just saying I think that Ranboo constantly has a Need To Help People, believes he can do it, and it will come back to hurt him in the end (except for the Syndicate because I’m in denial. The Syndicate can’t fall out if they never stream together :) ).

THIS CONCLUDES THE AMERICAN HEALTHCARE PORTION OF OUR SHOW.

The Only House That’s Not on Fire Yet !! I like this one. This is also blatantly there cause Syndicate. They are the only faction that is not actively falling apart, and this could absolutely be because they never stream together. But I do not care. However we are also going to go through this one piece by piece because we’re nearing 1500 words here and I might as well embarrass myself more. I am writing an incredibly informal essay about Ranboo My _Beloved (i assume his middle name is My, and he’s just one of those people who write his full full name) and this is the third page. If you’re still reading this, I’m sorry. Here we go.

There are lines that just seem like an unwell but recovering person, and I like to sort of think that way about Ranboo in the arctic during the down time. “I feel knotted up today / But in a most exquisite way” and “I feel strangely regular / But honestly I prefer it to / The usual bizarre” are just! He’s just hanging out. He’s doing good. There is the acknowledgement that he’s usually not doing well, and all of the episodes that he’s had in the past, and it’s probably strange to be doing well in the midst of everything, and there’s probably something impending, but now? He’s doing good!

The verses directly after both of those ones are about uncertainty and trust and such, and I feel like that’s not necessarily about just One relationship but all of them. Will cause problems as long as he has an accomplice. He is not confident but he trusts and loves people.

“This suit doesn’t fit me / I made it conterfeitly” I just like to think about Ranboo in his fancy suit, but it’s just a little wrong because he actually has no idea what he’s doing. I also like to think about Ranboo in a cape to fit in with boreal trio and later the syndicate, and emerald duo had matchy blue outfits from the Antarctic Empire… and trying to fit in with them…. or maybe They make him something.. You know. Much to think about.

“Killing me with déjà vu” I think is like. A little less fun, because despite how well things are going, the enderwalk is still not resolved and he had even less answers when I started thinking “this is a ranboo song”. Just as it relates to having a strange sense of reality and stuff, which goes into specifics of enderwalk headcanons, which would make this far longer. Even though I’ve framed it as a negative, there is also the more positive note of “Oh! I just thought of how to change all the hate / Into love with the old switcheroo / Dancing in my déjà vu / You'll be dancing too” which I’d rather explain broken up but I feel like as it’s a full verse it should be together. The first part is connected to my general thoughts of him explained earlier tbh, he’s trying Very Hard to make everyone happy and fix things. And adding the second part to it is just like! He is trying to make sense of everything, and it’s not so scary as time goes by. Since the experiments where he’s been (questionably) trying to be more comfortable and get more answers.

This was very long. I am sorry. I am ending it here and probably not going to do much formatting to make it readable because it is very late o’clock and also this is four pages and 2000 words I am so sorry. But if you read this far then. Uhhh thank. ^v^.

[skenpiel]

Wait yes hello I would love to hear about your interpretation of that lemon demon song?? I have never heard that song before but pretty much all I ever listen to is love songs they’re my fave kind of music ever so like please I’d love to hear about your fave one ESPECIALLY if whether or not it is a love song is a question :0

oh i am SO FUCKING GLAD you asked this song means a TON to me so get ready for a fucking paragraph 

*ahem*

the real like, storyline of the song ancient aliens is a caveman meeting an alien who shows it fire, and the caveman is so revolted by this new strange unexplainable creature that it develops some sort of hatred almost. i dont really think its a secret that the songs in spirit phone are connected at least in some way, thats why i believe many of the songs (the ones ill talk about are eighth wonder, ancient aliens, touch tone telephone, and no eyed girl) are also sung from the perspective of the same person. in this sorta timeline ive managed to piece together, the first song is eighth wonder. the meaning of the lyrics in that song really arent that hard to figure out, its from the perspective of someone (ill call them the mongoose!) whos been an outcast for all their life, being bullied and excluded and whatnot, and their way to deal with that is by boasting in order to feel superior instead of left out. they sing the entire song with the attitude of “im a genius and none of you are even close to understanding me, im practically a different CREATURE than you guys” which is a HELLA common way for (especially children) who feel alienated from society. so, that song is about someone showing great confidence to hide great loneliness, great. 

now, we get to the meat of the matter, so to speak, which is the mongoose falling in love, (even though it isnt really love at first) and that takes place in ancient aliens. this being who has never felt any sort of connection to anyone, always under the impression that their entire EXISTANCE is on a pedestal much higher than everyone else, ALWAYS looking down on everyone but them, finally meets someone they admire and look up to instead. and the mongoose absolutely fucking hates it. these feelings of admiring someone or liking someone are completely new to them, and since they dont know what those feelings are their only logical conclusion is that this is a whole new level of loathing. theres a lot of lines that stick out to me in this song, i think the first one being “these creatures ive seen / some of them edible, some of them mean”, and to me thats in reference to other people in this persons life. theres never been any NICE ones, theyre either harmful or defenseless. then obviously theres the chorus which i also believe is a metaphor for this person feeling all alone for like, their entire goddamn life and the line “but you, you fly, you burn my eyes / you speak in my mind, you seem surprised that i dont hear you” means that this is also probably the FIRST person EVER to just like. be nice to the mongoose. but then comes what i think is the most interesting line in the song, and that is “i cant help you / youre not human / youre not animal” and THAT i think is the mongoose, after a ton of consideration and trying to understand these new feelings for someone, coming to the conclusion that “theres no saving you, youre beyond help and there is something wrong with you” (or something along those lines). so, in conclusion, ancient aliens is about someone experiencing positive feelings for the first time in their life and are so confused their only way to deal with it is to decide that that person sucks ass and they dont want anything to do with them.

NEXT (and these will be shorter, i promise) is touch tone telephone (i think). thats the mongoose coming to terms that this other person is instead THEIR only hope at feeling connected to someone, even though it definitely isnt a love song. this is the mongoose trying to get through to the alien (thats what ill call them), and trying to explain that theyre just as brilliant and unique as them, and that they *need* to stick together (see the line “im an expert just like you, and like you im a genius before my time). again i wanna make it very clear that touch tone telephone is NOT a love song, but the mongoose has come far enough to realize that if THEYVE lived their whole life on this pedestal above every other person alive, then the alien is the only other person who shares that platform with them, even though they dont seem to agree.

lastly in this little timeline ive made up (theres probably more songs that fit into this, but whatever) is no eyed girl, and that DEFINITELY is a love song. the mongoose has realized theyre in love, they feel the alien is even MORE amazing than they are, and this feeling is later reciprocated! how nice! this song is their final step in realizing that perhaps they arent so alone after all (according to my short song story at least). there arent many lyrics that stick out to me in this one since the whole song is basically “youre beyond human comprehension thats how incredible you are” except for the very last lines which are “right before the kiss i noticed something in the air / molecules existing when there should have been none there / chemical reaction with the surface of your skin / some will say my actions let the no eyed people in / and id do it all again”. i dunno what half of those sentences even fucking mean but what i think is that, when the mongoose says theyve let the ‘no eyed people’ in, that means that through this alien theyve opened the door to a new world to them, where there arent just two kindred spirits who are above everyone else, but that there actually are people who will understand them, and that the world maybe isnt as dark and cold as they thought. 

so! thats my lemon demon journey thanks for reading dont forget to like and subscribe 

[echodrops]

Hshshsnansna seeing that ask got me in a HUGE HaaH mood. Like, I went through and read a bunch of asks, and I'd probably go reread the fic itself if I had time. So!! Is there anything about HaaH you've always wanted to share but never had the chance to? Headcanons, worldbuilding, backstory, hidden details- anything at all??

Oh friend… There is so much. I have a Word document that’s like 17k of JUST headcanons and world-building for this fic kghsdkjhdkfg I’m not crazy, I swear.

It took me a while to respond because I had to comb through and find stuff that wasn’t spoilery, but tada, have some Home and a Half Hunk and Shiro (and Matt) headcanons and backstory under the cut!

Also, as for hidden details… Same as the Garrison professors in the show were named for staff members, Neuhahn and Ania are named after IRL contributors to the Voltron animated series–Chris Neuhahn was a producer and Ania O’Hare was the casting director.

And here are some Hunk, Shiro, and sorta Matt headcanons/backstory that shapes their characters in HaaH. (Please note, these headcanons ignore absolutely everything from about season 6 of the actual show and on. I stopped watching Voltron after Season 6 because I just couldn’t handle the writing anymore. T_T)

Hunk:- He’s mixed ethnically, and although his parents are from Samoa, his family tree actually spans many different countries, mostly in Polynesia, including Tonga, but even places as far away as Malaysia.- His parents were converted to the LDS church by Mormon missionaries in Samoa. A few years before Hunk was born, his parents moved to Utah to be closer to the church, so Hunk has only ever been to Samoa once, on a vacation to visit family.- His first name is actually “Hyrum,” and until he met Lance at a Garrison-sponsored summer astro-camp when they were nine, everyone just called him by his real name.- Lance actually meant to call him “Incredible Hulk” at camp, butttt to nine-year-old Lance’s utter mortification, it came out “Incredible Hunk” instead. “Hunk” stuck.- He has a little sister who is even more sensitive than he is.

- Although Hunk’s parents originally agreed on the plan to move to America, after the family arrived, they experienced difficulty fitting in with the very selective Utah culture, and Hunk’s mother grew disenchanted with the church. Employment was difficult to find in their small, rural town, and Hunk’s parents both struggled with being isolated from their extended families. Tensions over whether or not to remain in America, as well as over money, led to some miserable fights that contributed to Hunk’s aversion to conflict when he was younger.

- Hunk sometimes had to play the role of family peacekeeper, working hard to make sure that his youngest sister wouldn’t notice the strain.

- Nevertheless, despite their share of troubles, the family is extremely close-knit. Hunk values his family and their opinions more than anything in any world.

- Which is how he ended up agreeing to go to Garrison, even when he really just wanted to help his parents kickstart the restaurant they were planning to open. His mother felt that working in a family restaurant, even if Hunk is a great cook, would squander his incredible academic and engineering talent (which Hunk thought of as just a hobby), so she begged him to go and continue his schooling instead. Hunk couldn’t say no to his mother, even if the thought of being shipped off into space terrified the living daylights out of him.

- Hunk doesn’t curse and is somewhat uncomfortable with people cursing, at least in front of him. Although Lance used to have a pretty colorful repertoire, when he learned that cursing made Hunk uncomfortable, he immediately adopted all of Hunk’s weird Utah replacements instead. “Holy crow” and “let’s kick some trash” are things they actually say seriously.

- Hunk is always down to cuddle and is never embarrassed by asking for or giving cuddles to anyone. He would 200% cuddle Shiro if he thought Shiro would let him. (Shiro would, in fact, let him.) Hunk’s favorite person on the team to cuddle is actually Keith, because Keith (who was taught to comply by Garrison scientists with all unexpected/unsolicited touch) will just sit obediently for hours letting Hunk hug out all his stress. Hunk knows that something is off about Keith’s behavior, but his leading theory—that Keith allows the hugs because he’s touch-starved—is unfortunately false.

- Hunk knows the lyrics to every Disney song EVER.

- And he’s like a dog with a bone when it comes to secrets. Once he discovers that someone’s keeping something under wraps, he goes a bit crazy with curiosity and cannot stop thinking about what they might be hiding. The rules of privacy go totally out the window when he gets like this, but time and again, Hunk’s adage that it’s always better to tell the truth bears itself out.

  Shiro (and Matt?):

- Shiro is the only member of his immediate family whose first language was not Japanese. His grandparents on both sides immigrated to the US from Japan due to work transfers relatively late in life, when their own children, Shiro’s parents, were already young adults. As the first family child to be born in America, Shiro’s parents strongly emphasized the need to learn English well, which unfortunately resulted in Shiro being pushed away from learning Japanese when he was young. Even though he’s a capable conversationalist now, he’s struggled his whole life with regret over not learning the language when he was young and could have picked it up easier.  

- There’s a running joke in his family that he’s actually an ogre in disguise, given that he is much taller than many of his other family members. Tradition demands that the first photo of every holiday gathering is a joke group shot in which Shiro’s posed so his entire head is outside the top frame of the picture.

- Shiro was mercilessly bullied as a child because of his height. The other children frequently suggested that he didn’t belong in their grade because he was too big and that the school must held him back multiple times for being dumb. (Shiro was never held back. In fact, he had excellent grades from kindergarten to the day he graduated from Garrison—and no, not because his parents forced him to study; in fact, throughout his schooling, they often ended up having to force Shiro to go to bed already instead.)

- On top of being teased for his looks, Shiro was naturally shy. He barely spoke, even to his teachers, and would stumble miserably if he was put on the spot in class, contributing further to the rumor that he was stupid.

- Shiro loved learning, but he hated everything that happened in school and didn’t have a single real friend outside of his cousins until he went off to middle school and met Matt Holt in sixth grade.

- Barely two weeks into their first middle school year, and it was already obvious that Matt was the school’s biggest nerd; he’d been bumped up two grades because of his obvious genius and was the textbook definition of an alien conspiracy theorist (It’s not a conspiracy if they’re REAL, guys!) But the strange thing was that no one bullied Matt—he was just so quick on the sarcastic (and biochemical) comebacks that teasing him wasn’t even worth it. Instead, the school’s resident assholes took it out on targets a little less likely to corrode their homework with miniature magnesium bombs—read as, they picked on polite, well-meaning Takashi Shirogane instead.

- Out of pity more than anything else, Matt finally stood up for Shiro one day and ran off the assholes. (It was not, as Mrs. Shirogane insists, with a home-made taser. It was not.) After something like that, well… You sort of feel obligated to befriend a guy, don’tcha?

- Becoming friends with Matt Holt transformed Shiro’s life. Even if Shiro wouldn’t originally speak up for himself, he was ferociously proud and supportive of his first real friend, and learning to be bold for Matt taught Shiro the value and meaning of standing up for not only others, but also himself. Being friends with someone as off-the-cuff and tricky as Matt helped Shiro grow more spontaneous, less self-conscious, and ultimately much more confident—even if, to this day, most of that confidence is still focused on helping others, rather than on being self-assured.

- It was Shiro admiration for Matt’s father, Sam Holt, that led Shiro to take his childhood obsession with military history a step further by actually joining the military. Shiro and Matt enrolled in Garrison together, although Matt was part of the research rather than the combat division.

- Matt was the one who convinced Shiro to get his hair styled in an undercut. It was originally just a dare, but Shiro ended up loving it afterward. The “Undercut Incident,” as it has come to be known in the Shirogane family, was the official straw that broke the camel’s back and resulted in Mrs. Shirogane declaring Matt Holt a “bad influence,” the only impact of which was that Matt had to sneak in through Shiro’s bedroom window instead of coming to the front door when he wanted to hang out.  

- Shiro has received two separate Medals of Honor for making dangerous supply deliveries to war-torn countries across the globe, delivering the vital food and medicine that helped save hundreds of lives. He has also been part of several missions to save stranded astronauts from failing international space stations.

- Shiro is actually a giant memelord, but his crushing sense of responsibility keeps him from indulging in quality shitposting in front of anyone he actually knows. He had a ridiculously active secret Vine account before leaving on the Kerberos mission. His snaps are legendary. Deep down, Shiro dreads the inevitable day someone connects him with his cringey social media accounts.

- Literally the worst at adulting. His mom still filled out his tax forms for him and booked his dentist appointments. He has no idea what the hell he’s doing leading Team Voltron when he can’t even remember which of his clothes are machine-washable and which aren’t.

- When they were in their third year at Garrison, Matt conned Shiro into volunteering as a camp counselor for Garrison’s summer astrocamp program, even though Shiro had minimal understanding of how to take care of children and mostly just BS’d his way through, hoping that none of his campers had anything close to a serious issue.

- He won “best camp counselor” the very first year he volunteered. Mostly because Lance cheated and voted for him 23 times, but still.

[putschki1969]

H-el-ical// Music Explanation

Notes: These short comments from the pamphlet provide a lovely insight so I thought I would translate them for you. Please enjoy!

pulsation

Hikaru comment 

The song conveys a strong sense of sprinting forward and since I knew that it would be my first song, I wanted to make it feel like a powerful beginning. At first I was really worried because I had no idea what I was doing but then I realised that if I kept worrying I wouldn’t be able to come up with anything good. That’s why I focused on my feelings at that time and the way I had been dealing with music so far. I just put all of that into words. For me as Hikaru// this song is about finding the strength to get up again when you are down, how to move on when you are depressed. It’s not something that simply passes by, from my experience so far it’s a conscious decision, “all right! I will try again and persevere!” It’s that kind of feeling I wanted to put in my lyrics. “Let’s live in a way that makes it possible to come to terms with the meaning of life!” That was going through my mind while writing the lyrics, I felt very much alive during that time. Perhaps I have already conveyed these feelings little by little to all my fans who have continuously supported me but when I actually put them into words I think it became a very strong message.

Gushimiyagi comment 

Of course I had known of Hikaru//-san's previous activities for many years so initially I felt a bit lost when trying to write a song which would suit Hikaru//-san's vocals. I wanted to do my best, after all I had to create a song that would perfectly fit the image of Hikaru//-san. I think I was quite reckless when I made it. The first time we met, I brought a short demo tape with me and told her, "this is more or less the direction I wanna take and we will expand it from there...” The song gradually took shape. It was supposed to have an image of “presenting/announcing H-el-ical// for the very first time”, so I was very adamant about having a lively chorus and a sense of moving fast. I tried to make it sound catchy and impressive. Back then Hikaru-san didn’t really tell me what she thought of the song so I would really like to ask her now *laughs*.

Avaricia

Hikaru comment 

Transitioning from “pulsation” to “Avaricia” I really wanted to have something different. I didn’t want to stick to just one genre, I wanted to sing songs with many different elements so when I first heard the song I immediately thought, “ohh, I like this!”  In the case of "pulsation", I think it is a rather straight-foward song since I am expressing my life experiences and thoughts but when it comes to this song, it is very vague, indirect and between the lines, it can have various meanings depending on the listener. "Is it meant this way or that way? This kind of interpretation doesn’t apply to me but it might apply to someone else." So depending on the audience, the song can come across as very sexy or you can interpret it as having a strong message. I also used this song to play a little with words. When I started writing the lyrics I wrote the following line for the first verse, “ひと時だけのアイズ/hito toki dake no aizu”. アイズ written in katakana was supposed to have a double meaning, it could have been understood as “eyes” or “cue/signal”. But since we also had English translations for all H-el-ical// songs I eventually settled on “eyes” to make the translation less confusing.

Gushimiyagi comment 

I made this song at the same time as the first song but since that one had a rather normal beat and a sense of sprinting I wanted a big change for the next song. I composed this with a quintuple/triple measure. Its tricky acoustic sound makes it sorta feel like jazz but I guess it ended up being more along the lines of folktronica. The song has both a digital as well as an analog feel to it. I pretty much created this song to be the exact opposite of “pulsation”. When I gave the song to Hikaru//-san I feared it would be hard to find lyrics that suited the beat but to my surprise she really enjoyed playing with the words. Her lyrics combined with the melody really add to the atmosphere, they left a lasting impression on me.

Splendore

Hikaru comment 

The first thing that came to mind when I listend to the song was “fantasy”. That’s why I added some fantasy elements to my lyrics. For a period of time, I was working part-time at a nursery school for some social studying. The children I worked with were honestly a ray of sunshine, they were shining so brightly and they all lived in the here and now. When we grow up we always worry and think ahead, our dreams and hopes become goals that start to feel real. So for a moment, let’s not do that, let’s just live life and enjoy ourselves in the present! I wrote the lyrics with this sort of fantasy element in mind, “I want to fearlessly grab the sparkles in front of me and hold onto them forever.” That’s the image I wanted to convey. Also, this song was written during an extensive back and forth between Gushimiyagi-san and myself.

Gushimiyagi comment 

When I started on this, I simply wanted to try composing a song with a four-on-the-floor rhythm but apparently I am not the kind of person that can write bright and lively music like that so instead of sounding like an exciting piece of electronic dance music the song turned out to have a rather quiet and  calm passion *laughs*. I was imagining a night and the starry sky. It's dark  but there is some sparkling, like seeing Peter Pan flying across the sky. When I read Hikaru//-san’s finished lyrics it all made sense to me, the way she created a sort of fantasy. The song does express all of that so she really managed to put everything perfectly into words with her lyrics.

Amanhecer

Hikaru comment

When I first received the demo tape for this song, I couldn’t help but think of “water” or the “waterside”. It has a slightly gloomy vibe. It left a strong impression on me so I wanted to write lyrics that did proper justice to the melody, I wanted listeners to get a real feeling for the sceneries and sensations of it. The song is pretty quiet but I felt like adding a certain youthful charm. Not a mature one nor a child-like one, I thought a lot about it but an adult view wouldn’t have fit the song so I settled for a feeling that’s slightly adolescent *laughs*. I created a bittersweet love story. In this kind of song the vocals stand out a lot so I sang it with a breathy voice and only let my voice become louder and stronger when I wanted to emphasise a certain word or line. I had to adjust a lot while recording the song.

Gushimiyagi comment 

Here I wanted to create a song that started with vocals. The first thing you hear is a breath, I wanted everyone to be able to enter Hikaru//-san's world from the very first second. I wanted people to immediately be smitten by Hikaru//-san’s voice. Just like "Splendore" this was originally meant to have a “night” theme but I eventually changed it to a dawn-like atmosphere. The acoustic guitar and drums feel a lot more understated compared to the previous three songs. The rhythm is very simple and clear. Usually during the recording you do a lot of takes in order to pick the best one but each and every one of Hikaru//-san’s takes was amazing, just the expression was slightly different. Each take had top-notch quality, it was refreshing but also difficult to choose one.

yolcu

Hikaru comment 

When it was time to make this song we were just starting to think about doing a live. So I asked for a track that would pump up the crowd during a live performance. This song has an exotic feeling so I wrote the lyrics while thinking of the Middle East. There is a bit of mystery, it feels like you are running through the streets of Aladdin’s town, making it past the crowds and eventually arriving at a plaza with a big fountain. I had these sceneries in mind so I put them into words. It was a lot of fun to write this song. However ... while it was fun to write lyrics for this sort of tempo, it is incredibly hard to remember my lines *laughs*.

Gushimiyagi comment 

The theme of the song was to create an exotic vibe. “What ideas should I apply to make it sound exotic?” This is what I kept asking myself when I wrote the song. I ended up with EDM which in this case stands for exotic dance music *laughs*. By the way, I made this with a lot of vigor so the tuning was quite special, while writing I had no idea what chords I was using *laughs*. The title of this song is Turkish, I think the title should always be chosen by the person who is writing the lyrics. All H-el-ical// song titles, including the title "yolcu", were chosen by Hikaru//-san.

Existence

Hikaru comment

The line "do you remember~" is repeated multiple times on purpose. When you keep saying the same words over and over again, they aren’t easily forgotten, instead they get imprinted in your memory. By repeating lines, I wanted to create impactful lyrics. Also, this was the first time I wrote proper English lyrics. When you have a song where the same melody gets repeated you need something that draws attention. I guess I could have written something in Japanese but I wanted the song to have a different feel. It's not uncommon for Western music to have repeated lyrics. So I wanted to try something like that for this song. The H-el-ical// project is produced by Japanese people of course but I want everyone overseas to listen to my music as well. I want to create music that can be loved and accepted by all kinds of people. I would be very much interested in continuing to take on such challenges.

Gushimiyagi comment

This is a nice guitar rock piece. I wanted to create something that would sound like a Foo Fighters song. When I sent the first demo to Hikaru//-san, I added a short note saying that this was like an American rock song.  Hikaru//-san wrote a big portion of the song in English and the title is also in English.

Fili

Hikaru comment 

I wanted to add an element that I had never used before, I wanted it to have a Northern European vibe with a somewhat grassy feeling. However, when I first expressed that wish to Gushimiyagi-san, he looked at me quite puzzled, “what do you mean exactly?” I tried to answer him as best as possible *laughs* “I guess something with an earthy atmosphere. Something that makes me think of grass-covered plains...”  When I got the song I thought a lot about it, I kept replaying it in my mind and came up with a few lyrics so I could try singing it. I started wondering whether it really had an earthy atmosphere. Eventually I realised that this song is not so much about the earth itself, it is about history. The history of each individual but also the course of history regarding our entire earth. "I'm alive right now because of the eternal flow of time." It’s this kind of image I had in mind when I wrote the lyrics. By the way, the title of this song means "poet" in Gaelic.

Gushimiyagi comment

This song sounds a bit Celtic doesn’t it? Hikaru//-san experienced many different world views as part of Kalafina, there were quite a lot of exotic and oriental elements in their music. For the H-el-ical// project I did my own interpretation of that by trying to find the best way to convey this image as a solo artist. It is quite celtic but not too ballad-y. I am once again using a triple measure and even though it technically qualifies as a ballad, the drums, percussion and timps are heavily accentuated. Hikaru//-san’s previous activities very much align with my own vision and world-views. It’s not about holding on tight to that old image but there is certainly no need to throw it away completely. I'm sure fans will treasure it as something that has become part of Hikaru//’s image.

Tsumugu

Hikaru comment 

The title for my concert is also "Weaving/Spinning ~TSUMUGU~" so I decided I wanted to create a song that I could sing at the end of the live. That's the reason why we tried to make a very simple song. All the thoughts and feelings I experience when I get to meet the fans, when I get to communicate with them... Having that in mind I wrote the lyrics. This interview is being done before my concert so I haven’t had the chance to be on stage as H-el-ical// yet but when I wrote the lyrics I tried to imagine what the live performance would be like. I also wanted to remove any sort of extra filter when I wrote them. Typically when you are talking with someone, you want to look your best, maybe even show off a little but in this case I didn’t want to think or worry about any of that. I really expose all of myself in these lyrics so the song is quite embarrassing for me *laughs*.

Gushimiyagi comment

This was always intended to be the final song of the live so I made it with that in mind. “What would be a suitable climax for the concert?” I kept asking myself this question while composing the song. I consulted with Hikaru//-san so she could share her personal opinions and views regarding the previous seven songs as well as the upcoming live. When I made the song I thought, “yes, I think this track will be appropriate for the occasion”. It was quite easy to write it since I had a clear vision.

[emilyblame]

Let’s start with fandom

ok. this is gonna take forever.

Cherry Red.

i think this song is pretty straightforward. and since the main theme across the album is grief (surprise, surprise, it ain’t fandom), i think it pretty much represents the beginning of grief: the defeat after being beaten one too many times. first by his break-up with Ciara, and then their old label (Equal Vision) keeping all the rights to their music and original art. also, i think the name comes from Awsten’s synesthesia, and then he stuck with calling Ciara “Cherry Red” because it either sounded cool, or it was something that he actually called her, we’ll never know.

Watch What Happens Next.

this one is extremely straightforward too, there’s really not much room for interpretation. just read the lyrics. this song is a fucking kick in the nuts not just to the fandom in general, but to the music industry too. it’s a big FUCK YOU to everybody who wants something from them without giving anything in return. and also to everybody who thinks they’re entitled to tell them how to create their art.

Dream Boy.

i mean, we’ve been here, we’ve talked about this. Awsten’s talked about this. this song is about being put on a pedestal so fucking high, he’s gonna crack his skull when y’all inevitably feel like he’s not worth it anymore. it’s about confining Awsten in this little fucked up box where you like to believe he’s perfect and flawless, but the second he does something ‘wrong’ (aka: something you believe it’s out of character for him, or something that doesn’t fit with the image you have created of him) you wanna toss him out and ‘cancel’ him. i’ve said this so many times before but: kids, don’t let Awsten let you down. he’s just a guy.

Easy To Hate.

this is obviously a break-up song. but it’s not your regular mopey-break-up song. it’s about the exact moment when he realized, “you know what? i loved you, but what we had was toxic as fuck and i’m glad it’s over.” like that moment when something stops hurting, and you don’t have the strength to be mad about it. don’t worry, he’ll be mad about it later in the album… because grief is a loop, apparently.

High Definition.

long story short, the first half of this song is about Awsten realizing how non-functional his relationship with Ciara was, you know? in hindsight. about staying away, knowing that’s what’s best for him, but still missing her. and the second half is about how much it sucks to be a touring musician, in every aspect of his life. sad patch in the grief path. low, low point.

Telephone.

this one is about having a crush on someone but doing nothing about it because you’re not in the right mental state to be in any sort of relationship. it is like a little cloudless patch in an otherwise stormy sky. a ray of sunshine. a spike of joy when you thought all was lost. continuing on in the path of grief. it’s the Waterpark’s version of Paramore’s Crushcrushcrush, someone had to say it.

Group Chat.

Aawsten worded it better (obviously), but the idea of Awsten’s voice being all fucked up is that you’ll never know how the other person is feeling just by reading them on social media. and also, about the fact that grief and pain is not something that happens once and when you’re 'fine’ or you’ve 'moved on’, you’re happy again and back to normal. it’s meant to represent how the pain, and depression, and anxiety, and every shitty thing that happens to you stays with you forever. and just because you can’t see it, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there (yeah, i just totally stole Chester’s words for this– god, i loved that man. and i miss him everyday.)

Turbulent.

i feel like this song is Easy To Hate’s angrier sister. like, it’s still about his break-up and it’s still about him realizing how much better off he is now, but… angrier. he’s not just, “what we had was toxic as fuck and i’m glad it’s over,” it’s more like, “what we had was toxic as fuck, and i’m tight as fuck, and you should be so lucky, lose my number.” angry patch of grief.

Never Bloom Again.

and we’re back to sad. but it’s not please-take-me-back-i’m-nothing-without-you sad. it’s an i-know-i’m-better-off-but-i-can’t-help-but-still-miss-you sad. and also a kind of i’m-broken-beyond-repair sad (which makes me incredibly sad.) but i mean, the lyrics pretty much speak for themselves. one thing that i really love about this song is something that Travis also pointed out, and it’s that the line “all the girls in Los Angeles look like you from a distance,” has that dual interpretation of meaning that he either sees her everywhere or that she’s not special at all, that she’s just like every other girl in L.A.

I Miss Having Sex But At Least I Don’t Wanna Die Anymore

again, pretty straightforward lyrics. again with the anger. this is more like, sad angry. frustrated angry. i’m-sick-of-this angry. again touching the main theme of Dream Boy and maybe mixing a little bit of High Definition, i feel like this song is about everything he hates about the way his life was the moment he wrote it. like, all the cons of every aspect of his life. the cons of being popular on twitter, the cons about getting bigger as a band, the cons about living with the fact that he put his heart in someone’s trust and she shattered it like it meant nothing. i love the ending, when he starts repeating, “But I guess its fine, it’s cool,” and it gets progressively more frustrated and agressive, like he’s trying to convince himself that what he’s saying is true. like, if he keeps repeating himself that he’s fine and that things are cool, he might end up actually believing it.

War Crimes.

so, much like Watch What Happens Next, this song is really straightforward. actually, i like to think of it as WWHN’s b-side. like, they’re different sides of the same coin. because where WWHN criticizes the fandom and the music industry, War Crimes is a critic on how fucked up his own peers are too. like, the other bands, instead of becoming allies in the 'fight’ against the industry, they stab each other in the back to get to the finish line first. it’s about knowing who your real friends are; and how far he’s willing to go to ‘make it’.

[Reboot].

this one is a little on the sad angry side. but lyrics are also pretty straightforward; they’re about his break-up with Ciara, there’s not really much to read into.

Worst.

this one is angry angry, kinda like Turbulent. like, [Reboot] sorta states the way he feels about the relationship now (aka: when he wrote the song), and Worst is like, “And this is exactly how you broke me.”

Zone Out.

the reason i think this bit is here is to say, “am i still the boy you dreamed of?” like, after hearing all of this, after hearing how broken i am, do you still think i’m perfect? do you still think you want me?

I Felt Younger When We Met.

lyrics speak for themselves here. and we’re back to defeat… because grief is a loop. and so is the album. literally. i fucking love that so much. stupid sexy Awsten with his talented brain, i wanna kick him and hug him…

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 107: Mindful Education

“But it’s not, but it’s not, but it’s not, but it’s not, but it’s not.”

Here Comes a Thought is anything but a bad song. I can’t think of any songs I dislike from this show, but if I did, Here Comes a Thought wouldn’t be one of them. It’s a simple and moving ode to calming down, and Estelle and AJ Michalka elevate its message through their otherworldly voices.

But I do think it’s the most technically flawed song on Steven Universe. Which is a real bummer of a way to start this review, but I’m about to heap a ton of praise on this episode, and I don’t think the lyrical flaws ruin the song, let alone the overall story, so let’s just get my issues out of the way. If Mindful Education is about anything, it’s about confronting problems head-on!

Here Comes a Thought is a general song about a general problem, which I appreciate. I don’t need it to be specific to Connie’s dilemma, and in fact I think specificity would hurt the message. But my biggest gripe is that even though it speaks in broad strokes, none of the scenarios listed apply to Connie. “What someone said, and how it harmed you”? Connie wasn’t hurt by words. “Something you did that failed to be charming”? Connie wasn’t attempting to be charming. “Things that you said are suddenly swarming”? Connie didn’t say anything. We’re all the way to the refrain, and Garnet has yet to address the actual situation Connie is dealing with.

The closest we’ve got is “failed to be charming,” which again, implies that Connie was trying to impress someone rather than just going about her business and hurting someone by instinct. The phrasing is clumsy in a way Rebecca Sugar’s songs virtually never are: what I love about her lyrics is how natural and effortless they seem, which I’m certain comes from quite a bit of effort on her part. The sentence structure of “Something you did that failed to be charming” feels strained and unnatural, but the words must be said in this order for the rhyme and meter to work.

Which is doubly frustrating because the alarm/harm/charm series ends with swarm, which does not rhyme with the former three words in any dialect of English I know of. I’m not even a stickler for rhymes: for instance, “alarm me” and “charming” technically don’t rhyme either, but they sound similar enough that the pattern holds. But swarm uses an entirely different vowel than most other English words ending in -arm. I majored in linguistics and can get into serious weeds here with the International Phonetic Alphabet, but to make a long ramble shorter, the ‘w’ preceding the vowel alters it, which is why wart doesn’t rhyme with art and war doesn’t rhyme with bar and warn doesn’t rhyme with yarn and so on.

(This obviously doesn’t make Sugar a bad songwriter, any more than William Blake was a bad poet because he rhymed eye with symmetry in The Tyger. Nobody’s perfect, but that doesn’t mean nobody’s incredible.)

Anyway, I might be fine with this imperfect rhyme it if it was absolutely essential for the song, but the structure is so forced already to fit with this poor fourth rhyme that it sorta falls apart for me, especially because swarming comes at the moment it becomes clear that this song has said nothing about the issue Connie is personally dealing with.

Ugh. I’m losing sight. I’m losing touch. All these little things seem to matter so much that they confuse me. This song might lose me!

So yeah, I’m not insane enough to think that Here Comes a Thought was engineered to irk me just so the beautiful refrain can be a self-demonstrating affair in not letting small things like rhyme schemes get to me, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t work. The song builds and builds and builds the stress by presenting bad situation after bad situation, and right when everything seems like it will fall apart, Garnet has the answer.

This is a highly quotable song and episode, so I had a lot of great lines to choose from for the header, but I don’t think anything matches the sheer relief that ironically comes from Garnet’s repeating a negative phrase. She usurps the power of “no” away from anxiety by chanting that no, nothing bad is going to happen. Her knowing smile on the last “but it’s not” seals the deal. She’s not just a teacher here, she’s a sage.

This is Estelle’s first full song on the show since Stronger Than You, and she pulls off subdued chill just as well as glorious anthem without losing an ounce of her commanding presence. But now she's fully matched by AJ Michalka, another professional singer that doubles as a voice actor. Unlike Estelle, I hadn’t listened to any of Michalka’s music before watching Steven Universe, so despite knowing she wa a singer, the sheer power of her pipes came out of nowhere for me.

I honestly don’t know what it is about Michalka’s voice, but I’m lousy at crying even when I really want to because it would make me feel better, and that voice doesn’t just choke me up. It makes me weep. The quavering vulnerability in “I’m losing touch” destroys me no matter how many times I listen to this song. Just writing about it makes me emotional. Michalka tells a story not just with her words, but the tone and levels of confidence of her voice, and the lesson is learned by harmonizing with the master herself. On the one hand, I’m glad her voice’s heartbreaking purity isn’t diluted by constant performances, but on the other, I’m not sure it’s possible for something so intense to be diluted. Add in the prominent harp, a fusion of the plucking from Steven’s ukulele and the gravitas from Connie’s violin, and I’m done for.

(My tendency to cry whenever Michalka sings might have to do with how well she’s primed on both occasions in the series: Estelle is a hell of a lead-in, while Escapism is introduced by a stirring callback to Greg’s guitar from Lion 3. But it’d be stupid not to credit the source, considering she’s the one that gets the waterworks going and she’s been spectacular at voicing Stevonnie from the start. It’s a damn shame Catra doesn’t get a song in She-Ra, but at least Michalka does a cover of the theme song.)

I haven’t even talked about the animation from Takafumi Hori, who gives a unique but familiar flair to the mindscape of Garnet and Stevonnie and their components. The facial animations and body language are given extra room to breathe, and the use of butterflies as symbols of fluttering stresses (butterflies in your brain are so much worse than butterflies in your stomach) pays off huge when we see them explode from Connie’s backpack. The unspoken story of Ruby focusing too hard on a single problem while Sapphire is overwhelmed by possibilities works wonders, and the fact that Connie’s problems are initially hidden hints at Steven also hiding problems, seeing as the kids are mirroring the Gems. Colin Howard and Jeff Liu would’ve been more than capable of crafting such a sequence, but bringing in a guest animator makes us pay special attention to this pivotal song.

Because yeah, this is an important song for Connie, but this is still Steven’s show, and it’s a huge song for Steven. In a brilliant development, it turns out his strangely normal behavior after the salvo of traumas at the end of Act II was intentionally strange, and Here Comes a Thought drags him kicking and screaming towards the true path to inner peace. You can’t, as he advises Connie right before Garnet steps in, “just try not to think about it.” The only way out is through, and it’s not gonna be easy.

Every fantastic aspect of Mindful Education benefits from fantastic pacing. Connie’s bad mood is established immediately, but so is Steven’s straining to be fun and upbeat. A series of questions pull us along: “What is Connie upset about?” becomes “How is Garnet going to help?” becomes “What is Steven upset about?” becomes “How is Connie going to help?” without missing a step. Both kids make us so worried, because Connie’s bad mood is out of nowhere, and Steven’s acceptance of his suffering is long overdue. Both sensations are heightened by the preceding episodes, as Steven has been acting way too okay with his mom being a killer, and we know Connie was enthusiastic about school in Buddy’s Book. So it’s such a relief to not only see their worries addressed, but to have an entire episode about addressing worries.

After three goofy episodes, Mindful Education transitions us into a more serious mood with a similarly goofy opening. Sure, Connie’s attitude is cause for concern, but we still get Garnet’s enthusiasm and sign-making skills, Stevonnie’s newfound ability to do a Yoshi-style flutter kick hover, and the most glorious fusion dance ever depicted on screen.

Here Comes a Thought is a showstopper about calm meditation, and while it obviously soothes Connie’s anxieties, it also quiets down the silliness without making a big deal of it: there isn’t a single gag in the episode during or after the song. This is a show that can and has pulled off humor during dramatic moments, but we go full sincerity mode for Connie and Steven working through their emotional turmoil, and considering how big of a turning point this is for Steven’s arc in particular, I appreciate the restraint.

It’s perfect for Steven to only realize he has a problem when Connie is so open about hers, because Connie has always been a catalyst for change, and Steven is more concerned about others than himself. It also serves for a checkpoint for their mutual character growth: we’re a long way from the open-to-a-fault Steven and pragmatic-to-a-fault Connie of Bubble Buddies, and their series-long balancing act continues to bring their attitudes closer together. This isn’t the last we’ll see of Sullen Connie, and it’s nice to see that Steven isn’t the only kid on the block who’s becoming more of a teen. 

Another sign of their growth is shown in the fluid action of Stevonnie’s training; even when they’re not on the top of their game, Steven and Connie’s developing physical skill is on full display as their fusion weaves about the battlefield. Stevonnie’s ambidexterity functions well as a signifier of which kid is in a healthier state: Steven’s shield is in their right hand in the first training session, while Connie’s sword takes its place in the second.

(Oh, and on the subject of subtle visual storytelling, don’t think we didn’t notice the damaged pink diamond floating above the Sky Arena.)

The first two acts of Mindful Education tell such a complete story about Connie that the appearance of a butterfly for Steven almost comes across as a twist: again, his terrible advice about bottling up emotions upon accidentally hurting people is a pretty big hint that he’s pushing down his feelings, but this is such a satisfactory episode already that its conclusion feels like a bonus. 

It’s harrowing for Steven to start working through how much horrible stuff has happened in such a short amount of time, but it’s oh so satisfying for us to finally see him process it. The transformation of Holo Pearl into Jeff (who I’m sure is named for Mr. Liu) was a neat way to show Connie’s guilt, but it’s complemented by a punch to the gut as Stevonnie impales an image of Bismuth instead of just getting thrown off by the illusion. And because Steven has let his problems pile up, the rest of his ghosts flood in. I love the inclusion of Eyeball, the foe that Steven logically should feel the least amount of guilt about (Bismuth was a friend, and Jasper refused help while blaming him, but Eyeball was an enemy actively trying to kill him). It shows that he really does care about everyone, and that the compounding problems only make the guilt worse: Bismuth and Jasper begin in their normal sizes, but Eyeball is massive in Stevonnie’s imagination. And then, as a horrible distortion of her theme heralds her arrival, we get the most important ghost in the series.

Obviously Steven isn’t able to deal with the Rose factor right now, but acknowledging that there’s a problem is the first and hardest step. And despite how talented Aivi and Surasshu are at enhancing the mood with music, there’s nothing like the stark silence that follows Rose’s theme to bring the impact home.

AJ Michalka once again shows off her talent for voicing Steven and Connie separately as Stevonnie has an internal conversation; it’s such a seamless interaction that it’s easy to forget that this scene shifts from one actor voicing these two characters to two different actors voicing the same two characters as Steven and Connie plummet to the ground. I mentioned in The Answer that my favorite Miyazaki movie is Castle in the Sky, so I’m thrilled to see another reference to two heroes falling hand in hand before slowing to a safe landing.

Our conclusion isn’t about Steven coming to terms with three failures in a row and a life-changing revelation. It’s about him realizing that it’s okay to admit that everything isn’t okay, and that he doesn’t have to put on a bald cap and be a ham to make everyone else more comfortable. This is something that friends can help with, but that he ultimately has to figure out for himself. Still, it’s beautiful that by working together, he and his best friend become strong in the real way.

But of course, they had help. I mentioned in Back to the Moon that our Big Three Crystal Gems each get an episode that acts as an epilogue to their Act II arcs, and it’s Garnet’s turn. Garnet begins Act II as a leader who’s quiet about being a fusion and who has a hard time understanding the anxieties of her less confident teammates. By the end, she transforms into a leader who’s more open and willing to share her own vulnerabilities, and a loud and proud fusion no matter whom she’s interacting with. Mindful Education leans in hard on her expertise in fusion, but just as importantly shows that she’s willing to coach others by revealing how Ruby and Sapphire work through struggles. Her growth is less overt than Amethyst and Pearl overcoming more obvious hurdles, but it’s still hard to imagine Garnet being this capable of helping Connie and Steven fifty episodes ago.

Garnet is also the source of two intriguing callbacks in the form of quoting past lines. The first is the wonderful “Hold the phone. Now give the phone to me,” which Steven tells Greg in The Message as a means of interrupting his song about Lapis Lazuli being a super mean riptide queen (sidenote: I’m sure Lapis would be flattered by Greg’s assessment). Garnet repeats this phrase right after Steven suggests that you can get used to not thinking about your guilt, and it’s a brilliant way of gently putting a stop to this bad idea.

The second is a pointed “that is to say” as she explains the importance of harmony within fusion. This is a common enough phrase, but it was so prominent in fellow sparring episode Sworn to the Sword that I can’t imagine it’s a coincidence. It connects Garnet to Pearl’s role as a teacher to both Steven and Connie; fortunately, this time the teacher is instilling a message of self-reflection instead of self-sacrifice.

I call these callbacks intriguing because Garnet herself wasn’t present for either scene containing the lines she’s quoting. And sure, this could just be standard screenplay magic without an in-universe explanation. But to me, it enhances the sense of Garnet as an all-knowing mentor, at least as far as this episode is concerned. Her wisdom is absolute, and it might be pretentious for a show to claim such certainty with its message, but Mindful Education has an outstanding message, so I’m all in.

But back to that ending for a second. It, like Here Comes a Thought, provides a calming answer to a scene of turmoil. It’s obviously a quicker moment of relief: just a glimpse of Stevonnie laughing, catching their breath, and reassuring Steven and Connie. However, like Here Comes a Thought, the episode keeps going. This time, in the form of the end credits. 

Since Bubbled, we’ve heard nothing but ambient waves as the credits roll, bereft of the comfort Love Like You has provided after nearly every prior episode. But now we begin the reprise, and this first segment is such an eerie departure from the norm that serenity once again takes a backseat.

With time, it’s revealed that this song is just more Love Like You. But in this period of uncertainty in Steven’s life, I deeply admire the decision to keep us lost in the woods for a while before figuring out that it’s something we’ve known all along. Just a thought.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

Remember my gripes with Here Comes a Thought, way up there at the beginning of the review? Yeah, they don’t keep this out of my top ten.

Top Twenty

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Mindful Education

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Earthlings

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Bismuth

When It Rains

Catch and Release

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Chille Tid

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Monster Reunion

Alone at Sea

Crack the Whip

Beta

Back to the Moon

Kindergarten Kid

Buddy’s Book

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Greg the Babysitter

Gem Hunt

Steven vs. Amethyst

Bubbled

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

Know Your Fusion

No Thanks!

     5. Horror Club      4. Fusion Cuisine      3. House Guest      2. Sadie’s Song      1. Island Adventure

[happymetalgirl]

5 Albums I Missed in 2017

I was pretty pleased with the thoroughness with which I covered the output of metal in this blog’s first year last year, all other obstacles that popped up considered.

This year has already been better; I’ve covered more music and in more depth, and I’ve had less in my way this year it seems. I was trying to do this piece in a more extensive series, or just one monster post, around June. But metal had a substantially prolific mid-year and my own academic obligations of course reared their head again, so after pushing it out again and again, I decided to just trim it down to one regular post.

These are just a few albums from last year that I either didn’t hear or just didn’t didn’t get around to writing about.

Steel Panther - Lower the Bar

I was kinda-sorta planning on giving the album a listen. I had always respected Steel Panther for their commitment to their very comedic act of satirizing one of metal’s most widely acknowledged embarrassments (80′s hair metal), but I never really followed them too closely because I thought their act wouldn’t be around for long. And the repeated release delays their fourth album suffered from cast an unfavorable light upon it and led me away from it.

Buuuuuut, fast forward to this year and the band’s guitarist, Satchel, has the joke police knocking on his door for naming a guitar effects pedal the “Pussy Melter”, and simply out of principle for my not wanting to see comedy needlessly suffer, I decided to listen to Lower the Bar, with my expectations exactly where the album told me to place them. And honestly, I was pretty entertained throughout the course of the album. Yes, the subject matter is obviously juvenile, but that’s kind of the point: to take the piss at all the dumb hedonism and comically goofy masculine posturing that metal likes to not talk about having happened 30+ years ago. And the piss the band takes is an accurate, no-spray stream right into the bowl; the mockery they make of hair metal is clearly a loving one, a parody coming from fans, well aware of hair metal’s ridiculousness, of the groups who spearheaded the genre. The performances are tight from the glamorously narcissistic guitar solos to the glorious quasi-operatic vocal highs, and the consistently well-constructed lyrics that take the band’s light-hearted joking beyond toilet humor and middle-school-tier sex jokes and into a condensed comedic embodiment of all that was wrong, and all that was intoxicating at its time, with hair metal.

Adrenaline Mob - We the People

Post-Portnoy Adrenaline Mob still aren’t exactly hard rock or classic heavy metal heavyweights at this point, but We the People was an album whose strongest moments (“Til the Head Explodes”, “King of the Ring”, the indulgently heavy “Ignorance & Greed”, and the extremely Dio-esque “The Blind Leading the Blind”) have stuck with me since its undercooked political message left me with simply not enough I felt like I wanted to say about it. The band have MVP Russel Allen’s emphatic vocal presence to thank for what character this album does have, despite its basic and often formulaic writing (especially in its first half). I had seen so many people hail this as a stunning ascension from what their first two albums brought, but I honesty didn’t hear what was so special about this album, and I still don’t really. After the death of bassist David Zablidowsky, I just didn’t feel like detracting from what silver lining of critical praise the band could look to for comfort after losing Zablidowsky so tragically.

Venenum - Trance of Death

I arrived about a year late to this debut album’s party, and it was the first album that made me want to really make this piece, not because its a particularly ground-breaking piece, but because it fills the space it does so thoroughly. 

Trance of Death is a mostly blackened death metal project, but with its black metal influences coming largely from nihilistic ambient black metal and DSBM. Taking death metal into more depressive territories without diluting its power, Veneum debut with one of the most oddly ambient death metal pieces I have ever heard, and they make their appeal not simply on the tokenism or mild novelty of the sound. Trance of Death is magnificently written and complete with strangely eerie black metal ambiance that sounds more rooted in death metal grandiosity than psychological torment, readily armed with fierce riffs that jolt away from the dark serenity of, and even proggy pieces like the instrumental second installment and the sprawling third installment of the titular trilogy of songs that comprises the album’s second half. There exist even hints of doomy sludge at some moments on the album. It’s a perplexing, but thrilling listen, and I wish I had heard it sooner, because it has distracted me from many albums this year. 

This is the kind of debut most bands hoping to carve out their own niche hope to achieve, one that both presents their sound in a fascinating manner, but without expanding all their creativity and leaving plenty to be explored on what’s to come, which I will definitely be looking forward to.

Ne Obliviscaris - Urn

I had heard so much ranting and raving over Ne Obliviscaris in the years before this album, and I decided to see what all the hype was about earlier this year after seeing the accolades Urn had received. So when I heard what I thought was some pretty standard progressive metal with flashes of black metal on Urn, I had to figure out what I was missing, it had to be something.

After repeatedly not being convinced of its apparent genius I took a lot of time away from it and came back again earlier this year, ultimately to similar results. Not entirely as epic as it’s convinced it is, Urn is certainly not short of theatrical bombast and instrumental proficiency, but it throws all its ingredients in the same bowl at the same time and mashes everything together in a recognizably messy and undazzling soup of proggy bits and death metal with a dry personality. It reminds me of Rivers of Nihil’s new album this year, minus the thrilling energy and the emotional diversity that helped a physical copy of that album into my collection. Urn is like the shy version of that album. The two-part song that leads the album exemplifies the album’s dilemma, reeling in hazy progressive death metal strangely droning and devoid of direction. And it only gets a little bit better on the closing song pair.

Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper

I wanted so badly to discuss this album when it came out, but October was a turbulent enough time for me last year, and being that Mirror Reaper was born out of and mournfully embodied the tragic loss of drummer Adrian Guerra, and in such a unique way, I had to give it time and even by the end of the year I hadn’t really found the word for it. And to a great degree I still don’t. It’s a slow and incredibly sorrowful album that doesn’t necessarily cultivate a type of patience while listening, but demands it. It’s a single 83-minute opus and one built of solidarity and fortitude in the face of grave tragedy. And in a fitting manner, its lyrics don’t gush tears theatrically or even turn Dylan Desmond’s focus inward. Its melancholy and its focus on the slowness of time that the music matches and the coldness that brings all to a frozen standstill of mournful petrification reveal an honesty in the approach to this album’s creative process and Dylan Desmond’s approach to Bell Witch’s present and future.

On one hand, I grappled with feeling like I was disrespecting this album by relegating it to this list, but on the other I wanted to express how much it’s come to mean to me now. The death of a bandmate is a traumatic moment for nearly every group that experiences it, but in a band of only two members, the casualty that leaves the other alone yields a different aftermath. I wasn’t really much of a Bell Witch fan before this album, but the strength with which it stood its ground in tribute to Guerra was something I couldn’t ignore and eventually became enraptured by. Having already been on the creative trajectory of focusing on mourning through funeral doom metal, having a close and personal real life experience of loss has certainly made Bell Witch’s already-somber dirges more gut-wrenching to the point of being uncomfortable. But the strength with which Mirror Reaper approaches such a close death, it’s impossible not to admire and I can’t say enough to do its solemn beauty justice.

[sunsetinmyvein]

Bandom One Shot POV... Things - Grand Theft Autumn - Patrick Stump

A/N - Trying something a little different from what I normally do while Key of Reason is kind of at its midway point, something less sarcastic humour and romance and more serious/angsty. I felt like exploring various character traits I found interesting, and thought a good way to do that would be to write a random one-shot sorta thing about various band members, from their point of view. Also I felt like using various lyrics as dialogue puns/story points... I possibly used too many.

As of yet I've only written about a couple of members of Fall Out Boy but I also have intentions of writing about Panic! At the Disco and potentially maybe others. But there are definitely 2-3 more Panic! ones on the cards, one day in the distant future. 

Want some totally irrelevant songs to listen to while reading this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZb_mqH2zJY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbrUzJlTffs

“Pete, that’s the third time this week you’ve missed practice.” Patrick grumbled into his phone as the bassist apologised.

“I know, I know, but I really can’t make it. On an unrelated note: are you doing anything tonight?” Pete’s voice crackled through the phone.

“What? You know I’m not, you literally just cancelled on us.” He answered with frustration.

“Awesome, there’s a party tonight down the road from me and I want you to come.”

Patrick took a long pause, trying to compose himself before outright throwing his phone at the wall. “Pete… are you telling me… that you cancelled on band practice tonight so that you could go to a party?”

“So that we could go to a party.” He clarified.

“PETE!”

“’Trick, you’ve done nothing but work since we got signed; you can’t stay holed up in that studio forever. I think it would do you good to get out.”

“WELL I’VE GOT NOTHING BETTER TO DO NOW, DO I?” He shouted back.

“Good. Then I’ll meet you at mine at 8.” Pete answered calmly as the line went dead.

Patrick knew being angry would get him nowhere, and to be honest he didn’t mind the idea of going to a party. Truth be told, the reason he had busied himself with work was so that he didn’t have to be left alone in his own head for too long, so he’d rather go to a party than be left alone in his empty apartment. Ever since they got back to Chicago after their first tour things hadn’t felt right, and he was pretty sure he knew why. He just wasn’t ready to have to face the facts yet. So, he didn’t.

He cleaned himself up, neatened his sideburns, and tried to look his best for this party. Everyone in town knew who they were now, and this was the first time he’d be seen since they returned. They weren’t just those annoying kids who hand out fliers for their 3am, dingy bar gigs on street corners anymore, now they were signed. They were attached to a big-name label now, and even if the four of them didn’t feel like anything had changed, it seemed to everyone else that it had. He adjusted the cap on his head, taking one last look in the mirror before starting the walk to Pete’s house. It wasn’t a short walk, but the Autumn air didn’t quite have that Winter-y bite to it yet.

When he arrived, the bassist was impatiently waiting on his front porch, car keys in hand.

“Where have you been?”

Patrick checked his watch in confusion. “It’s only 7:30?” He asked as Pete grabbed his shoulder and all but shoved him into the car. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s the rush?” He asked as his friend climbed into the driver’s seat.

“They cracked the keg over an hour ago.” The older man grumbled as he fumbled with his keys.

“Okay? We don’t drink?” Patrick questioned as the car struggled to bring itself to life.

“You three might not, but I do.” He answered with a roll of his eyes. The party wasn’t far from Pete’s house and Patrick was not entirely sure why he had wanted to drive. With how much time Pete spent trying to get the car working, they probably could’ve walked and gotten here in much the same time. They exited the car and stood on the front lawn, taking in the scene before them. According to Pete the party had already been going for over an hour, but it looked like maybe it had been longer than that. The heavy sound of the bass on a stereo turned up way too loud could be heard coming from the front of the house, various screams and loud laughter could be heard from the backyard, and a kid was already passed out next to the front door next to what Patrick hoped was their own vomit.

“All right, so should we-” Patrick turned to ask, only to see that Pete was gone. He let out a frustrated sigh. “Typical.”

He pushed his way through the crowd of people until he found the kitchen, the hub of every party that was ever held. Searching through fridges and pantries, he aimed to find something non-alcoholic that he could drink. After shoving a couple who were making out on the bench top out of his way, he was finally able to retrieve a mixer that someone had left unattended and claim it as his own. He made his way into the backyard, seeing Pete standing next to the keg on the back porch, talking to some girl. She seemed his type. Patrick figured he probably wasn’t getting a lift home. There was an above ground pool at the back of the grass, and too many people were already crammed into it. Probably more than what they advised was maximum capacity on the warning labels. But as the guitarist had learned from his career in music, alcohol can make people do some impressive things. Like fit thirty people into a pool that should hold ten. Nobody had recognised him yet. Which he was perfectly fine with, if it stayed that way it was his excuse to begin the walk home early before he had to watch his bassist drunkenly make out with yet another fan. As he began making his way back into the house a hand landed on his shoulder.

“Patrick!” Andy grinned at him.

“Hey, man! What are you doing here?” He asked as he spun around to face him.

“Got dragged here by a friend.” He shrugged casually. “You?”

“Same. Except that friend was Pete.” He huffed.

“He gave up band practice for this?” Andy asked as he looked around, feeling incredibly out of place.

“More specifically for that.” Patrick replied as he gestured to the girl standing next to Pete.

“Ah, yes… Our Pete was never one to shy away from a good time.” He noted. “C’mon, we don’t have to watch that.” He said he led Patrick back through the house.

They weaved through the party-goers until they found a quiet corner in the house to sit down.

“So how have you been? I haven’t seen you outside of practice.” Andy noted as he took a swig from the cup in his hand. Patrick had offered to share his secret stash of unattended soda that he’d found in the kitchen after noticing that the drummer didn’t have anything to drink either.

“Yeah, fine.” He said instinctively. Andy waited for him to continue. “What?” Patrick asked with a frown.

“Are you sure? You’ve never been quite this invested in your work. Someone might think you were… avoiding something.” He shrugged, trying to not come off as prying for information.

“I…” Patrick sighed deeply before glancing around the room, seeing nobody he recognised. “I haven’t been keen on coming home.” He admitted as he started into the contents of his cup.

“Why? You’re no Pete, you love Chicago.”

“Chicago, maybe, certain people though…” He trailed off. As if on cue, a familiar voice suddenly ran through the air, dragging his eyes to the top of the staircase. All his efforts came crashing down around him, all his time avoiding people in his room, all the hours poured into the studio in the week they’d been back. Because there she stood, her hair falling around her shoulders, her bright eyes sparkling in that same way he’d never shake from his memory, and just as he had feared, with some strangers’ arm wrapped protectively around her waist. “Fuck.” He muttered under his breath as his eyes shot back to the floor, hoping she hadn’t noticed him. Andy had pieced together what was wrong at this point, but he knew there wasn’t much he could do.

“’Trick, you’re better than that shit. You deserve better.” The drummer tried to reassure, but he didn’t hear anything over the racing of his pulse in his ears.

“Patrick!” He heard her voice call, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He couldn’t deal with this, not now. He wasn’t ready. He didn’t want to come home to this. He pushed past Andy and deliberately made himself lost in the crowd, shoving his way past people. The air in the house suddenly felt suffocating, and he needed much more distance than what this room allowed. He finally made it outside, looking around in a panic for his friend.

“Pete.” He said as he approached the half-drunk bassist.

“Mm?” He mumbled without tearing his attention away from the girl batting her eyelashes at him.

“PETE.” He repeated louder, finally getting him to turn around.

“What?” He asked in frustration.

“I need your car keys.” He said as he reached into his friend’s jacket pocket.

“What? Why? I need them!” He answered as he pushed Patrick back from him.

“No, you don’t; you can walk home. I need to leave.”

“Why?”

“I just do, okay? Just give me your damn keys.” He answered through gritted teeth, holding his hand out expectantly. Pete didn’t budge, he only stared back, eyelids drooping slightly under the influence of the alcohol. “Argh! You drag me to this party and now you’re gonna make me suffer because of it? Fine!” He trudged off into the night, wrapping his jacket tightly around himself and making his way home.

Unfortunately for him, his plan was not as clever as he had hoped it might be. As he came around the side of the house into the front yard he stopped a few inches short of slamming into someone, only to find it was exactly who he didn’t want it to be. His face fell as their eyes met and his stomach fell to the floor. He wanted to disappear.

“Patrick, I thought you might be here tonight! I missed you!” She said happily as she pulled him into a tight hug. He didn’t hug back, but that didn’t stop the scent of her familiar brand of shampoo washing over him, making him feel sick.

“I was just-” He started as he tried to look anywhere but at her.

“How was the tour? Your new album sounds great!” She questioned, standing far too close for comfort.

“It was… fine.” He swallowed hard, finally daring to look at her properly. He hadn’t seen her in months now, but that hadn’t changed a thing. She still looked the same, still looked at him with that same smile on her lips, and still made the butterflies in his stomach do somersaults. He hated it. At the start things had been great, hell, at the start he was pretty sure his feelings were reciprocated. But gradually it became apparent that her affection was just empty words said to make him feel better. All she offered him was pity while she went off and dated other guys, told him about how she worried for her future with them. Why wasn’t he worth that? When was he going to appreciate in value enough to be considered an option? If that’s what she needed, he could be that. If she’d give him the chance. “Where is your boy?” He asked, waiting anxiously for the guy to round the corner and punch him in the face.

“Ryan? He was here a minute ago.” She said as she turned to look behind her. As soon as she took her eyes off of him he was able to compose his thoughts, and took the opportunity to escape.

“I hope he is a gentleman.” He grumbled bitterly under his breath as he walked away quickly, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

“Wait! ‘Trick!” She shouted as she tried to catch up to him. He shuddered at the use of the nickname only she called him, it forced him to slow his pace. “What’s wrong?” She asked from behind him.

“You! You are what’s wrong!” He spat back, venom lacing his tone. He stood there in the cold, waiting for her to catch up, but she had stopped a few feet behind him. He spun to face her, seeing the look of confusion on her face. “You were all I wanted in this damn town, you know that? The record deal, the album, the fans, it meant nothing compared to what that would’ve. What we would’ve. And I feel like I’m the only person here who knows that.” He explained, taking a few angry steps towards her.

“Patrick, I-”

“No! I’m not done talking. Do you realise how many nights I’ve spent awake mulling over crap you’ve said to me? Over the ‘I miss you’s? Bullshit you fucking miss me. You never try to call when I’m on tour. Remember all those nights when I told you I loved you? And you’d ‘never forget it’? Well… forget it.” He let the words hang in the air, staring down at the concrete between them. It took a long time before she decided to speak.

“I’m sorry, ‘Trick. I didn’t realise.” He stood there looking at her like she’d just said pigs could fly. She didn’t realise?

“Well at least I’m still fucking trying! That’s more than I can say for the majority of the notches in your bedpost. Or… I was trying.” She looked back at him, looking hurt in the cold. “I’m done.” He said, watching her face fall. She tried to reach for his shoulder but he quickly shrugged it off, turning to walk home. Andy was right; he was better than this. He never thought he’d see the day that he finally walked away. But tonight, he appreciated in value.

[lovejustforaday]

Album Review - You Forgot It In People by Broken Social Scene

You Forgot It In People - Broken Social Scene

Main Genres: Indie Rock

A decent sampling of: Post-Rock, Chamber Pop, Noise Pop

WARNING: One of the tracks on this album features prominent usage of the F slur and themes of self-harm.

Something that only the nerdiest of music nerds care about, which naturally I think is pretty interesting, is the difference between “alternative rock” and “indie rock”. Both are scenes that basically came out of a counter-cultural reaction to the over-produced world of 80s radio rock and hard rock. There’s definitely a lot of overlap in terms of bands that fit well into both categories, so they’re best understood as two scenes inside of one larger movement. But still, I would absolutely make the case that “alternative rock” and “indie rock” represent two distinct things when it comes to sound and approach.

To me, indie rock is the world of mature, often bittersweet, slightly weirder/dorkier rock music that’s ideally made best to be enjoyed by introverts and college students, even though anyone can love indie rock. There’s also a distinct DIY ethos and aesthetic to most of the indie rock scene that really defines the name.

Meanwhile, alternative rock is smart and subversive but still largely accessible, radio-ready, and flashy. In my mind, alt rock embodies a lot of the rock-star image that hard rock, glam, and heavy metal conjure up, just with a little more introspection and down-to-earth-ness.

Anyhow, the only real reason I mention any of this at all is because when I was a teenager in high school, it was mostly all alternative rock for me. I was into Garbage, The White Stripes, and Smashing Pumpkins. Bands that were subversive and challenging, but also huge successes with a clear rock-star appeal. Sonic Youth was one of my early loves too, and they sorta bridged the gap between ‘indie’ and ‘alternative’.

But if I’m being honest, Broken Social Scene and their enthralling 2002 LP You Forgot It In People was my gateway drug to the world of indie rock.

Like many of my first indie records, this was an album that my older brother passed down to me, and likewise this album in particular represents how important his influence was in helping me to discover so many great bands. It also represents the last days of my senior year and the fleeting summer of transitioning to university that followed, which is a time in my life that I deeply cherish.

Truthfully, a lot of the albums that I loved from those years have worn off a tad bit as I delve deeper into their influences and more music in general. But this still totally holds up as one of the best things I’ve ever heard from start to finish. You Forgot It In People is one hell of an ambitious record, and I have a lot of favourite moments on this album. But first, let’s take a look at the “band”.

Broken Social Scene are a Canadian indie rock ensemble that formed at the turn of the millennium. Spearheaded by Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, other members of the group are rotational and the band regularly has upwards of seven members at a time. Broken Social Scene has hosted some of the most successful creative minds in the Canadian indie scene at early points in their careers; You Forgot It In People alone features Feist before her big breakthrough, as well as Emily Haines the lead singer of Metric who would go on to drop their first LP a year after this record.

Essentially, You Forgot It In People is a legendary piece of 21st century Canadian indie rock lore. Everything here is so ridiculously tight, so brilliantly conceived and crafted with care, and yet you can also totally feel that it’s a bunch of indie kids throwing stuff at the walls and seeing what sticks. This might sound pretentious, but I think I can honestly just feel how important a moment this record was whenever I listen to it.

It all starts with “Capture The Flag”, a short two minute instrumental opener of building ambient suspense, like a far away twinkling object in the night sky getting closer and closer.

This leads into “KC Accidental”, a sublime burst of rock instrumentation and fresh morning air that, incidentally, makes for a great alarm clock on your phone. But in all seriousness, this track is one of those moments of pure musical euphoria that feels like it could encompass the entire world.

“Stars and Sons” is so slick and smooth, I feel like incredibly hot stuff every time I listen to it, and it’s one of my absolute favourite tracks on the album. Brendan Canning’s cool vocals and the guitar riffs here both remind me of a cold glass of water, so clear and refreshing. I also just really love the laid back but propulsive feeling of the song and those claps get me every time. Seriously sexy production, an incredibly satisfying auditory experience.

“Almost Crimes” is a triumphant noise pop jam session of guitars, saxophones, drums, and synthesizers that makes me wanna jump up and flail around until I get dizzy and throw up. Kevin Drew and Feist make a wonderful duet - Kevin’s laid back slacker vocals are swallowed by the chaos while Feist’s melodic shouting becomes part of the chorus of noise.

This LP features quite a few instrumental tracks but “Pacific Theme” is definitely my favourite of them. True to its name, the lead guitar riff sounds like it’s floating lazily along a gentle ocean breeze while the rest of the music bubbles beneath the surface of a lively blue ocean. I wanna lay in a hammock by the beach with this song playing in my headphones as I stare up at a cloudy blue sky. Seriously, this track genuinely sounds like the colour “blue”, maybe even “ultramarine”.

“Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl” is the signature song of You Forgot It In People and it’s one of if not THE essential bittersweet teenage indie anthem. The song is a heart-wrenching chamber pop ode that vocalist Emily Haines dedicates to her teenage self, a sad reflection on how society forces you to suppress your free spirit and act a certain way when you grow up with the simple refrain “used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that / now you’re all gone got your makeup on and you’re not coming back” being repeated again and again over pained strings and a sad-happy banjo riff until you’re probably left in tears. This might be my one true favourite song on the LP, but then again You Forgot It In People is such a varied experience that it’s hard to pinpoint just one song.

“Lover’s Spit” is the other emotional core of You Forgot It In People, a grand and swaying chamber rock ballad that paints an oddly dramatic and emotional scene of oral sex with its lyrics. It’s not that erotic at all really, kind of sad sounding actually as if it were about having sex right before the end of the world. The backing band on this track sounds like it’s absolutely drenched in some kind of rainstorm. I know this sounds like a really weird combination of moods and ideas, but it actually works really well and I think this track is one of the most quirky and charming “sad” indie songs I’ve ever heard.

Meanwhile, the follow up track “I’m Still Your Fag” is warm, soothing, and folky, but the lyrics are downright miserable. The song is a story of two former same-sex lovers from the perspective of a gay man who was left in the dust by his closeted ex who left him for a heteronormative family life with wife and kids. The lyrics reference the narrators feelings of betrayal and abandonment, as well as self-harm and the narrator’s hesitant participation in his ex-lover’s kinks.

To be honest I don’t know this for certain but I don’t think Kevin Drew is even gay or bi, but the emotional delivery is incredibly sincere and I’m personally not offended by his usage of the “fag” slur because contextually I think it captures a really poignant aspect of internalized self-loathing that many gay men including myself have experienced. This is still a very bitter track for me to listen to even now, but it’s oddly comforting and beautifully poetic.

The album closes with “Pitter Patter Goes My Heart”, a small stripped-down instrumental reprise of the strings on “Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl”. I think it’s a really excellent choice to reuse the signature musical motif of one of the most feelsy songs on the LP, especially right after the complete downer of the lyrics on “I’m Still Your Fag”. It leaves you with these little traces of tender memories and I think “Pitter Patter Goes My Heart” solidifies the emotionally rewarding experience of the LP.

It’s pretty obvious that a lot of really talented and creative people came together to make this project when you listen to it. Broken Social Scene really captured something spectacular on You Forgot It In People. I’m really glad I was able to first hear this LP at what feels like exactly the right time in my life, but truthfully I’ve only come to appreciate it more with time.

There’s a few tracks I didn’t mention here, but I should really reiterate that nearly everything on this album comes together in such a grand, perfect way and its one of the best flowing albums I’ve ever listened to. Seriously, if you’re someone who is at all into indie rock and you haven’t already heard this one, do yourself a huge favour and go experience You Forgot It In People for the first time.

10/10

highlights: “Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl”, “Stars And Sons”,  “Lover’s Spit”, “Almost Crimes”, “Pacific Theme”, “KC Accidental”, “I’m Still Your Fag”, “Cause = Time”, “Capture The Flag”, “Pitter Patter Goes My Heart”, “Looks Just Like The Sun”

[theeurekaproject]

Mutata Fatum

The Revelation was beautiful from its perfectly-polished floors to its inexplicably high cathedral ceilings, which was precisely what Athena didn’t like about it.

First of all, it was made with taxpayer money, like everything else Acidalia owned. So, in a way, the Revelation should be Athena’s and everyone else’s—its cost had come out of their paychecks, after all, and from what Athena could see, it was probably not cheap. It had top-notch shielding and cloaking systems, and way too many onboard weapons for a luxury spacecruiser, but even that wasn’t really the problem. The problem came with the frills around the edges—the completely unnecessary, inane decorations that turned every piece of the ship into a shiny, sharp work of art.

It was maddening, really, the thousands of credits that had gone into designing this thing. It had floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out into a starry nothingness, bisected occasionally by the laser-light glow of another distant starship. It had glitteringly clean floors polished by a staff of needlessly adorable white robots that skittered around the place like dinner plate-sized mice. It had art, mood lighting, chandeliers, centerpieces at every table, gourmet food, feather-stuffed pillows, stocks of makeup and inordinately fancy dresses, and a collection of shoes that probably could have made Athena a multi-millionaire if she had the courage to steal and pawn them. Honestly, she could probably make a killing easily by selling all of the Imperatrix’s junk on the black market—Acidalia was rich enough not to notice. “How much do you think this costs?” she asked Carina absentmindedly, balancing a silver-colored decorative hair comb between her fingers. It had about two dozen little pearls, but she had no idea if they were genuine or not. But would someone as important as Acidalia even own fake pearls?

“Stop it,” Carina said. “She lost her brother less than an hour ago. Now is not the appropriate time to steal her things.” “She’s a multiquadrillionaire, it’s always an appropriate time to steal her stuff. Eat the rich, right?”

“That’s mean.”

“You don’t understand my desire to be edgily controversial at absolutely all times,” Athena replied, pocketing the comb anyway. Even if Acidalia eventually emerged from the massive, overly elaborate museum-with-a-bed she called a bedroom to come collect her belongings, she wouldn’t care that Athena had taken one small thing. Not if she was at all unlike her mother, at least. From the corner of the room, Carina shot Athena a death glare.

“This is my ship, sorta,” Athena said defensively. “It all comes from taypayer credits, you know that?” “That isn’t how taxpayer supported things work,” Carina retorted.

“Why not?” “I don’t know. I just know that stealing is impolite.” “The Imperial family stole my money.” “Taxes aren’t stealing.” “They are when they benefit rich individuals instead of society as a whole.” Carina groaned. “Where did you even learn about politics? I asked you who the Proregina of the Lunar Colonies was last week and you couldn’t even give me an answer, but now all of the sudden you know about taxes?” “I’ve always known about taxes. Or, more specifically, how to commit tax fraud.” “That is astoundingly illegal and stupid.” Athena gasped in mock offense. “Don’t speak to me like that in front of my 27 dependents!”

Carina didn’t even bother to dignify that with a response. She turned away, rolling her eyes, while Athena giggled just out of her view. She didn’t feel that bad about stealing from Acidalia—the staggering income inequality on Eleutheria was enough to displace any feelings of guilt she may have ever held. Dead brother or living brother, money was money, and Athena going on an impromptu vacation to wherever this resort-with-an-engine starship was heading would almost definitely cost her a job. She didn’t particularly feel like being strapped for cash again—especially not while surrounded by some of the most excessive luxury she’d ever seen in her life.

Actually, no, scratch that. The most excessive luxury anyone could ever see in their lives, period. Acidalia was rich beyond anyone’s wildest imaginations. The amount of money she had was too large for human minds to even comprehend. Quadrillions of credits. Quadrillions. She had more credits to her name than there were stars in the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy combined. This was fuck-you money of the highest order, and most of it came from citizens like Athena—citizens who stressed about rent and affording necessities and paying off bribes and medical debt. Why should Acidalia get to have fancy pearl-encrusted hair combs while ordinary Eleutherians grasped at straws to afford basic cybernetic implants? That was bullshit, Athena thought. So it really didn’t matter if she stole stuff from Imperial cruisers or committed tax fraud every single Aperire; her crimes were all victimless.

*** Two hours later, Athena was dressed in an incredibly fancy dressing gown that looked like exactly the type of thing the Imperatrix would wear to bed. It itched—a lot—and she never would have thought to put it on if there wasn’t such an abundance of hidden pockets beneath the fluff and diamonds. (Who sleeps in diamonds?! she thought.) Her plan was to pretend she was cold, and hopefully Acidalia would let her borrow the stupid bathrobe and never question the fact that all of the beauty products and jewels were missing from her vanity. Honestly, judging by the thin layer of dust that sat over everything not clearly accessible to the cleaning robots, Athena assumed Acidalia hadn’t used this ship in a while, and would thus be unfamiliar with where things were stored. And, even if by some misfortune she took notice of all the mysteriously vanished valuables, Athena could just blame it on ‘staff.’ The Imperatrix had to have staff, right? “Do you think this place has maids?” Athena asked absentmindledly. “Or butlers?” Briefly, she pictured rows upon rows of frozen maids packed into storage like Han Solo in carbonite, just waiting to be woken up. The royal family seemed like the type of institution that only gave people human rights when it was convenient for them.

Carina looked up from the magazine she was reading—some sort of science-y looking journal on biology. “No,” she said. “Acidalia doesn’t like them.” “She doesn’t like… servants?” “She likes robot servants because they’re more private. I kind of understand—having actual humans hovering everywhere and watching you constantly could get kind of annoying after a while, I guess. But Aleskynn used to make fun of her for it all the time—normally they don’t really view the help as ‘people,’ so to speak, so she doesn’t understand why anyone would be disconcerted by the constant presence of Ministratoras.”

“That’s kinda messed up,” Athena said.

“A lot of things in Aleskynn’s life were kind of messed up.” Carina thumbed through another page, looking bored. The magazine was marked 4045, so all of the articles were probably outdated already. Part of Athena wondered why someone as wealthy as Acidalia Cipher would still use print media, but the other part of her already knew the answer: aesthetic and pretentiousness.

Another few minutes ticked by, punctuated only by the sound of Carina lazily turning pages. The rest of the ship was suspiciously, worryingly silent, and if Athena didn’t know better, she would have assumed that she and Carina were the only two people aboard. Maybe it was because the Revelation had some kind of fancy noise-cancelling technology, or maybe Acidalia’s injuries were worse than they seemed and she was either incapable of moving, or worse. Athena didn’t know how she felt about that possibility.

She opened another drawer of a dresser that stood in the hallway. There was a crown in it, an elaborate headpiece too large to fit in a dressing gown pocket. Athena picked it up and appraised it in the light, wondering if she could pry any gemstones or shiny platinum pieces off and hold onto those instead. Then, with disappointment, she noticed that the jewels were brown instead of blisteringly white. They held diamond fire, but they were so discolored it was hard to believe they had any sort of value beyond industrial applications. Athena wondered why Acidalia would have a tiara like that, then she noticed the handwritten note attached to the brim with a curled-up white ribbon—I thought this would match your eyes. <3 Aleskynn. The metaphor was clear.

Bitch, Athena thought, and slammed the drawer shut. She had half a mind to send the spoiled princess a vial of cyanotoxins with the caption “I thought this would match your eyes.” It wasn’t even the fact that she’d insulted Acidalia that bothered Athena—it was the gossipy, too-cowardly-to-say-it-to-her-face passive-aggressiveness. Though, to be fair, she didn’t know why she expected anything more from Alestra’s daughter.

There was nothing much left in any of the other drawers—there were books, but none that looked valuable or even interesting to read. They were mostly indecipherable ancient texts and classics that nobody but Acidalia would even want, and though they had gilded edges and artfully decorated covers, Athena didn’t dare risk stealing them—they were all embossed with A.P.C. on the first blank page, and that made them traceable. Kalyn had taught her years ago that you couldn’t take anything if the police could trace it back to someone, and these books certainly weren’t worth that risk. Then there were piles upon piles of notebooks, all made of leather and filled to the brim with what looked like the ramblings of a madwoman—the same sentences and song lyrics, repeated over and over again—until Athena noticed that the penmanship improved between the first and last pages and realized they’d probably been used to practice Acidalia’s immaculate, looping calligraphy. Under those were datadrives, which Athena very clearly didn’t have the genome to open—they all had tiny iris scanners at the end, so only the Imperatrix would be able to view them. And, just when Athena was beginning to think this entire thing was worthless, her hand brushed against food packaging—which turned out to be concealing a small collection of healthy snacks that no person in their right mind would willingly consume.

“Look at this,” she said to Carina, holding up a shrink-wrapped package of very crumbly, grainy-looking pastries. “They took cookies, and made them healthy. Who does that?”

“People who want to cater to rich women who constantly think they need to lose weight.”

“Lose weight? Acidalia has the tiniest waist I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s the corsetry,” Carina said.

“Still, Jesus. Out of every person I’ve ever met in my life, Acidalia is the one who should be concerned about her body image the least. All of the uppercrusts are genetically-modified mutants with abnormal metabolisms; why would they of all people be concerned about dieting?”

“Aleskynn was eighty kilogrammos when I met her,” Carina shrugged. “Being raised by Alestra gives people weird views of themselves. Besides, how do you know they even taste bad?”

Athena tore open the package and took a tiny bite from one cookie. She wrinkled her nose. It tasted exactly like—no, worse than—straw. “Just take my word for it,” she said.

As she looked around for a garbage can, the sound of tiny, delicate footsteps echoed down the corridor, and she realized with irritation that they must belong to Acidalia. Carina instantly stiffened, standing up like a statue and brushing her hair behind her back so it looked neater than it was. As if Acidalia—Acidalia the high queen, Acidalia the almighty—would pause for a second to notice how tidy and organized Carina Stellara, random scientist with no clout, looked. She was so far above such things that even trying to make an effort felt worthless.

Still, for reasons she didn’t entirely know how to explain, Athena stood up at attention anyway. She stared at the door with strange fascination, wondering why her heart was pounding so quickly, waiting for something, anything to happen. And then, with an extremely anticlimactic swoosh, the door moved sideways, and the Imperatrix Ceasarina entered in all her glory.

If Athena was told that this was the same woman who’d barreled past her into this ship a few hours ago, bearing news of a dead brother and a murder attempt, she wouldn’t have believed it. This Acidalia looked astoundingly different from post-assassination-attempt Acidalia, yet so inexplicably like her at the same time, and it put a bad taste in Athena’s mouth. She bore such a strong resemblance to her late brother that their relationship should have been obvious in hindsight, but her face was utterly, completely neutral—almost relaxed—and she did not seem at all like someone who had just lost the closest family member they’d ever known. Judging by T’s impassioned reaction to his sister’s imminent demise, Athena had assumed they were very close; apparently, that assumption was wrong, because Acidalia clearly hadn’t shed a single tear. She looked every bit the put-together dictator the media liked to portray her mother as—the only thing missing was the scary blue eyes.

“We’re about two away from the Mare Acidalium Quadrangle,” Acidalia said softly, yet briskly. “The cloaking seems to have held up for this long, but I know that there are probably dozens of ships lagging just a few hours behind us. I will let you decide what you want to do when we land, but I want you to know that I cannot stay, and you will be targets if anyone ever finds out that you spoke to me.” Her posh, lilted accent and calm tone didn’t match her words at all,  which was almost more frightening than if they had.

“What do you mean, targets?” Athena asked. “Nobody saw us, we made sure of that.” She actually hadn’t made sure of that, but she’d taken the liberty to assume that nobody would question two young women dressed in gray wandering around a hangar at night. They were both wearing standard grays, common enough for them to be mistaken for practically any caste, and neither had any key distinctive features for anyone to remember them by—she hadn’t worried about their identities being revealed at all.

“Alestra sees everything,” Acidalia said, “and there is a very real possibility that you will be hunted down and imprisoned, killed, or imprisoned, then killed.” “What, no torture first?” Athena joked. Carina shot her a death glare, and she muttered a sheepish “sorry.” “If that’s a genuine question, then yes, they absolutely will torture you first,” Acidalia replied, utterly nonplussed. “I know you both came here to warn me, and that is an honorable thing to do, but it is incredibly risky, and now that you are here, you have my mother’s attention—or, at the very least, you will very soon. My plan is to rendezvous with David Seren—you wouldn’t know of him; he’s a reasonably high-ranking authority on Mars—and return to Eleutheria, hopefully with the Martians backing me and David and his family on their way to safety. I don’t know where you would like to proceed from there, but you need to understand that after what you’ve done today, there can be no return to normalcy for either of you.” “Yeah,” Athena said, ignoring Carina’s petrified look, “I kind of assumed that when I snuck out in the middle of the night to tell my best friend’s mom about my other best friend’s friend’s mother trying to commit—is it filicide or regicide? Sorry, I’m not too up to date on my murder terms.” “Stop trying to be funny, this is serious,” Carina hissed. Acidalia gave a humorless smile.

“So what you’re saying is we’re totally screwed,” Athena continued.

“No, not at all,” Acidalia replied, equally as casually. “Many people have committed acts of treason and lived.” “That’s not how the media makes it look,” Carina said shakily,

Acidalia sighed. “Always question the media. I don’t want you to think you don’t have options. You do—many of them. I just want you to know the gravity of your situation, and how impossible a return to what you might call ‘normal’ society will now be for you. I can give you a list of paths to choose right now if you’d like, but being regular caste Scientias again is not on it.”

“What if we don’t want to be regular Scientias anymore?” Athena asked.

A spark flared suddenly in Acidalia’s brown eyes. “Then you’re in a better situation than I predicted.”

Athena could already see where this conversation was headed. “This is going to end with an elevator speech recruitment pitch type thing, isn’t it?” “Do you want it to?”

Athena hesitated. Was this it? she asked herself. Was she really joining an anti-Alestra revolution? Two days ago, she’d been laughing at the excessive glamour of the Ciphers, who were nothing but glittering silhouettes in a far-away place on a television screen, and now she was standing right in front of one and speaking to her like this was all normal. A week ago, she was laughing in the break room about how much it must suck to be forced into the ridiculous life of ceremony and politics the ruling class set up for themselves, and now she was genuinely considering entangling herself in the complicated games they were playing. This was, in every sense of the word, completely insane.

But Eleutheria being torn in half was insane. Ciphers killing Ciphers was insane. Acidalia’s very existence as an Imperial dauphine and a traitorous bastard and a rebel leader was insane. Everything else in the world had lost its mind and any sense of sanity it might have, at one point, held, so maybe Athena could afford to go a little nuts, too.

“Yes,” she said, and with that, she could almost feel Morta raise her scissors. But, strangely, she didn’t much care.

[sadwriterperson]

November 14th, 2017

Just gonna throw out there that this is really long, so read on if you've got like 10 minutes to spare.

Alright, hello again, I'm writing this real early because I can't sleep. I work a lot of 3rd shift at my job, which is fine until I can't sleep when it's dark out, haha. Im starting this at 10 after 5am and I've checked all my social media, checked all the mindless games I keep on my phone for no reason, and now I'm here, still wide awake and bored as hell, and I could use this time to catch up on the nearly 12000 words I'm behind in for NaNoWriMo, only I'm so incredibly unmotivated that I thought, why not finally get around to writing about Tristan Haynes, my main character, and some overall backstory to how this novel came to fruition. There are a lot of ins and outs to this, a lot of pieces of my life weaved into this, so I'll try to make that all make sense.

So, Tristan, my good human, I hurt him more than I should, but, I'm hurting all of them more than I should. The character of Tristan goes way back into my past, starting when I was 6 years old. Growing up and even in my more recent years I would have these dreams that when I woke up I swore they were real, and a few I've had have actually happened, more than I'd like to admit. Some aren't as big, but, they still get kinda weird, an example of this is when I was in grade 8, just shy of 14, I had this dream that my best friend would buy this necklace, she was the definition of the goth kinda person, and it fit her, the setting was in our English class, the first class we would share that day, 3rd hour, so around the 10:30ish time frame and it didn't happen right away, it took a few weeks, but, she came to school wearing the necklace I had the dream of. That's just one instance in a long life of thousands of dreams, but, they still happen like this. So Tristan, he came way before that, and in this dream, I'm trying to find this white house over the hill, and I keep walking, the sidewalk is endless, and the grass on the side of me, my left side rises into a wall, a stone wall and then without explanation I turn around and there is Trit. That's what I called him, Trit, and I don't know who he is, why he existed, but, he was standing on the lower side of the stone wall, the grass was fake, turf, is what my brain supplied to me mid dream and under the corner of this turf, Trit points down and I follow his lead pulling out a red notebook, it wasn't an important notebook, just a regular red notebook, like you can buy anywhere for 94 cents at Wal-Mart. He smiled at me and even tho he was standing right in front of me, he sounded miles away and it was like the breeze was talking to me and I heard "you found it, you found it" I followed it, Trit at my side, following the breeze I would find the white house in the middle of a field of long grass swaying peacefully in the wind, Trit runs ahead and I follow him into it and then wake up.

Trit became this beacon, I've never forgotten that feeling of peace, and Ive carried Trit in my head for years, using pieces of that dream in countless stories I've written, but, I've never been able to describe it as well as my dream showed me. It will truly always be one of those things that unless you're in my head you will never be able to experience who Tristan is to me, but, I'm Trying.

So fast forward, people come and go, die, grow apart, and without going into to much detail because it's a time in my life I don't care much to talk about, i believed I was the reason someone died, and it genuinley broke my will to live, and I took that out on myself, Lord did I, and then after carving words into my legs and some other good depression stuff I adopted the phrase "My decision for living isn't mine to decide" a lyric from the song "Hole in the ground" by Twenty One Pilots, the band that's saved my life countless times, with lyrics I relate to on a molecular level, and decided that I was going to write. I had to live with my decision, i needed to learn to live with my guilt, and over the period of a year I got better, but, at times it would break me over again and while it's better now, it's still kinda raw. Anyway, so I decided I was going to write this story - Only the long grass remembers - and it was no debate who would be the star of this story. Deciding Tristan was my main character was the easiest part of the entire process, and I wrote the first chapter in 15 minutes, and thus the second character of the novel was born. Parker Middleton was born, and he plays an important roll in the novel that is important to many and I hope will be responded well too when someone finally reads this thing, but, that won't be until I'm at least 30000 words deep probably.

After writing the first chapter, and deciding that Trit couldn't just stay as Trit, i knew I needed to get a real name for him, and all of me couldn't bear to part with the name of him so I knew it needed to be as close to Trit as I could get it and that's how he got Tristan. Well, sorta.

HERE COMES MORE BACKSTORY

So August of 2015 I started watching the CW show: Supernatural. Binge watched it hardcore and later on would do roleplay as the characters on Facebook with a bunch of people and we were all super tight knit, not only because we bonded over the show, but, because most if not all of us were and are dealing with mental illness or some other physical ailment and we all used the RP and the community to keep each other alive . On top of that, there were the actors if the show, Jared Padalecki one of the main stars of the show suffers from mental illness, and so the actors all bonded together to make campaigns for people suffering, and they are along the lines of 'always keep fighting' and 'you are not alone,' and so it felt important to me to tie in these people with these great causes to this story that I'm writing for the same reason, you know? Its because of this mindset that I decided Trit would become Tristan. So Jared Padalecki, he plays Sam on supernatural, and he is who Trit is physically paired with for the novel, and it was in this I decided Trit would have a twin brother - Ross.. Trit didnt have family in the dream, but, it felt wrong to me to not include Ross, because Ross is based after Jared Padalecki's co-star Jensen Ackles. It would be wrong because they're currently on their 13th season of Supernatural, and a commonly used phrase is 'Family doesn't end in blood' and after 13 years, Jared and Jensen truly do see each other as brothers, and I wanted to incorporate that into the story, and wanted to link them both together in a binding way, and it worked out really well, all things considered. Their middle names are what binds them from my from the real world, to my mind to the page, respectively:

Jared TRISTAN Padalecki

Jensen ROSS Ackles.

Is this all making sense? Its a lot, or it feels like a lot at least to me, but it's 6:02am now.. So that may be something to do with it too.

I should probably try and sleep again, so I think I'll end this here, but, I hope that it makes sense why Tristan is so important to me, because he's been with me for 15 years.

Not only just Tristan, but, the dream is why the novel is called "The Long Grass Remembers"

It's all connected, and its important that I keep it as true as possible, to do justice for me, for the people I've met online, for friends lost, for the actors who gave them a name, for the musicians who helped me through for the musicians who breathe life into this story every single time I write, the people in my life who have shout outs, for the people in my life for as much as they may make me angry, ground me, for who they are, are motivation for me to be a better person then I was the day before, the story is for me, and no one else. To many times have I stopped writing out of fear that the people I know won't like it, because I'm revealing to much of myself. It's why I stuck in the horror genre for years, horror was easy to write, but, this, this is for me, and I am revealing all of it, and I'm ready, Trit at my side once more, only this time, he won't just stay in my head, now everyone gets to know him, and my heart is warm.

Thank you for sticking through this long winded, rambling, less than stellar wording from Bry, have a beautiful day or night.

Stay tuned, stay hyped and most of all, stay alive!

-- Bry