#love beach 1978

[riddlesrhymes]

revive!!!!!!

[yourfavealbumisgender]

Love Beach by Emerson, Lake & Palmer is Pangender and Pansexual!

requested by @juanathefunkyfish

[hongjoongspoetry]

Celebrating 200 Followers!

Thank you for two hundred followers! 🥹I'm so happy there's so many of you appreciating and liking my fics enough to stay around and follow my writing journey. As a thank you, I've put together a list of fics I re-read every once in a while because they are that good. Of course, all of my favorite fics couldn't fit or the list would be endless... but as for the tagged authors, do check out the rest of their works!

KIM HONGJOONG

⋆ Your Hands Are Mine To Hold - @curanonemu 5+1 oneshot, strangers to lovers, slowburn, fluff

⋆ Crystal Clear - @ennysbookstore Free spirited!Hongjoong x Uptight!Reader, smut, angst, fluff, heavy topics

⋆ Kindergarten Love Story - @xomakara Kindergarten teacher!Hongjoong, Dad!Hongjoong, Police Officer!Reader, non-idol AU, fluff, slight angst

⋆ 7:34 PM - @minghaoslatina fluff, snowball fight, established couple, drabble

⋆ 1978 - @silverdune Rockstar!Hongjoong, set in the 70s, rock music, slice of life, multiple parts

PARK SEONGHWA

⋆ Paradise - @blossom-hwa Fantasy AU, magic, reincarnation, angst, fluff, multiple parts

⋆ Cold Snap - @ennysbookstore Ski lodge AU, enemies to lovers, slice of life, angst, hurt/comfort,, fluff, slow burn, multiple parts

⋆ Champagne Problems - @mingigoo Forbidden love AU, fake dating, idol/trainee AU, love triangle, smut, angst, fluff/comedy, on-going, multiple parts

⋆ Obliviate Me - @bvidzsoo Harry Potter AU, lovers to enemies, tragic love, angst, hurt/no comfort

⋆ Where Water Turns To Flame - @sungbeam Dragon shifters AU, friends to lovers, urban fantasy

⋆ POV: You’re a Stereotype Stuck in an 80’s Classic - @atozfic The breakfast club AU, high school AU, strangers to enemies to lovers, slow burn, angst, fluff

JEONG YUNHO

⋆ Summer's Dive Part 2 Part 3 - @santheestallion Summer romance, brother's best friend, angst, fluff, smut

⋆ Dance For You Part 2 Part 3 - @santheestallion Dancer AU, rivals to lovers, smut, angst

⋆ Above The World - @bvidzsoo Spiderman AU, superheroes AU, strangers to lovers, high school AU

⋆ Forget Me Not - @seongwars Non-idol AU, supernatural AU, angst, multiple parts, on-going

⋆ Here In The Rain, Will You Smile Again? - @skrrts Non-idol AU, old high school sweethearts, romance, angst, hurt/comfort

⋆ Drunk - @sweetiesicheng Extreme fluff, drunk!reader, drabble

⋆ Lesson Plans - @callmeagardengnome College AU, teacher x student AU, slightly suggestive, romance, slow burn

⋆ Spiderboy, King Of Thieves - @livsateez Spiderman!AU, mutual pinning, fluff, drabble

KANG YEOSANG

⋆ Operation: Passanger Princess - @sungbeam College AU, frateez AU, another cinderella story AU, strangers to lovers, humor, fluff, minimal angst

⋆ Letters To Cupid - @byeolbeloved 18th century AU, childhood friends to strangers to lovers, angst, fluff, slightly suggestive

⋆ Sk8erboi!Yeosang x Ballerina!Reader - @ateezmakemeweep Angst, fluff, smut, implications of an eating disorder (one of the first ateez fics I read)

CHOI SAN

⋆ Champagne Problems - @mingigoo Arranged marriage AU, fake relationship, enemies to lovers, angst, multiple parts, on-going

⋆ Serve and Set! - @vampzity Volleyball AU, fluff, beach AU, drabble

⋆ Sweetest Lies - @atxxzist Angst, smut, romance, fluff, multiple parts, on-going

SONG MINGI

⋆ We Fell In Love In August - @mingigoo Best friend's brother AU, summer AU, beach house AU, smut, fluff

⋆ Preying On You Tonight - @bvidzsoo Non-idol AU, academy AU, werewolf AU, vampire AU, enemies to lovers

⋆ One Step Closer - @realityinsuspense Strangers to lovers, fluff, angst, multiple parts, on-going

⋆ Mother's Day - @vampzity Husband!Mingi x Female!Reader, fluff, just very very cute, drabble

JUNG WOOYOUNG

⋆ Heart Swindler Part 2 Part 3 - @lilhwahwa Conman AU, enemies to lovers, angst, fluff, smut, multiple parts, on-going

⋆ Heart Receipt - @skrrts Non-idol AU, slice of life, fluff, coffee shop AU

⋆ Don't Be A Stranger, Stranger - @wemustgatekeepwooyoung Strangers to lovers, romance, fluff, smut, a bit of angst

⋆ Loving You - @yizhou-time Angst, hurt/comfort, fluff

CHOI JONGHO

⋆ In My Head - @callmeagardengnome  Soulmate AU, idol!Jongho x music producer!bartender!Reader

⋆ Where Did You Go? - @solaris-amethyst Non-Idol AU, Ikea AU, fluff, best friends

⋆ Fairy Flower - @woncon Fantasy AU, royalty AU, fluff, platonic, Knight!Jongho, Royalty!Reader

[katelynnwrites]

Got My Mind On Your Body (And Your Body On My Mind) | Ona Batlle

warnings: mild smut

word count: 1978

summary: you’ve constantly got ona’s body or more specifically her abs, on your mind and neither of you would have it any other way

chosen song: cool for the summer by demi lovato

a/n: requested, bonus chapter 4 of you were bigger than the whole sky (you were more than just a short time)

You run your hand over Ona’s abs, feeling the way her muscles tense as you do so. The both of you were lying on her bed, you reading a book and Ona studying for an upcoming test.

As you continue to absentmindedly trace the contours of her abdomen, your girlfriend lets out a shaky breath, (slightly) regretting her decision to let you freely touch her body.

She loves having your hands on her but it was making it really really hard to keep her composure. Ona just wants to kiss you silly.

Except that she couldn’t right now because she had to concentrate on her studying. You were unintentionally making it so difficult for her and she sighs, stopping you gently.

‘I’m sorry.’ You say immediately, pulling your hand back and staring at her with wide eyes.

Your girlfriend is the most important person in your sixteen year old self’s life and you hated to think that you had somehow upset her.

Ona shakes her head.

‘Don’t be sorry. I love it but you’re making it really hard for me to concentrate.’ She apologetically tells you.

The brunette bites her lip, ‘Can I make it up to you later amor?’

‘You don’t have to.’

You smile and kiss her lightly.

‘Focus on your work, I’ll still be here to cuddle you later.’

Ona returns your smile, ‘Gracias mi amor.’

******

The very first time you notice that Ona has abs is from the quick glimpse you get as she changes out of her sweaty jersey and into her clean shirt.

You swallow hard and try to focus on anything other than your girlfriend’s very very hot body.

It’s an entirely unsuccessful attempt (that results in you nearly knocking over a water cooler because fifteen year old you was not very smooth) and when Ona affectionately wraps her arms around you, planting a sweet little kiss onto the top of your head, you blush furiously.

Ona kisses you again, this time on your cheek before she whispers, ‘You’re so cute when you blush mi cielo.’

******

After Ona finds out that you have a (pretty big) thing for her abs, she does more core exercises.

She also wears more cropped tops.

You think she’s trying to drive you crazy.

And Ona is. She is rather impatiently waiting for you to break.

It happens after she asks your opinion on which bikini she should wear for the team bonding at the beach.

You had come over to her house to do homework and when you walk into her room, it’s to find her standing in front of her mirror, in a white bikini.

‘Ona…’ You gasp, eyeing her figure appreciatively immediately.

You can feel your cheeks heating up and you need to touch her. (you always craved the feel of her skin against yours but now it was overwhelming).

‘Do you like it?’

You shake your head slightly but before Ona’s expression can fall, you place your hands on her waist.

‘I love it. You’re so gorgeous.’

Ona smiles and leans in to kiss you before suddenly pulling away.

‘Wait I got to show you the other one! You have to help me decide which one to wear tomorrow!’ She excitedly says.

‘The other one?’

There’s panic in your voice and you’re the epitome of a gay mess as you watch Ona go into her bathroom to change. (you can’t see her so you don’t know that your girlfriend is smirking, knowing exactly what she’s doing to you).

Ona’s abs are almost always on your sixteen, nearly seventeen year old self’s mind.

But after Ona comes out of the bathroom, you know you’ll never be able to get the image out of your mind ever again.

‘Fuck.’ You breathe (it’s honestly a miracle you were able to breathe).

Your girlfriend looks so proud of herself and she does a little twirl to show off for you.

‘Can I kiss you?’

It’s a rather desperate question from you but the brunette’s face lights up.

‘Please.’

Ona fights back a smile so that she can kiss you back properly. It’s a good decision because you refuse to break the kiss, eagerly and passionately kissing your girl.

‘Bebé.’ She moans, catching onto your plan quickly.

You up the intensity of your kisses and Ona whimpers, bringing her hands up to your chest to stop you for a brief moment.

‘Got to close the door mi amor. Joan’s home and I don’t want him to come in.’ She breathlessly explains.

‘I’m not stopping you.’ You tease, slowly bringing your lips down to meet hers again.

Ona lets out a rather undignified noise (more of a squeak really) and tries her best to kiss you and rush to lock her door all at the same time.

As soon as the door closes and the lock clicks, you press Ona against the door.

She moans, tilting her head back with closed eyes.

You kiss and suck on her neck, hands running over the exposed skin of her waist.

‘Mi amor.’ Ona pants, bringing her hands up so that she can tangle her fingers in your hair.

She tugs on it none too gently and you whimper her name softly.

There’s a moment where you and Ona just stare at each other, breathing heavily but with big cheesy grins on both of your faces.

Your girlfriend catches her breath first and with a mischievous look, starts to kiss you again.

She slips her hands under your shirt, stroking your skin and making goosebumps appear.

‘I love you.’ She murmurs, in between kisses and you moan her name.

‘Take your shirt off. Please mi amor!’ Ona begs.

The Spaniard needs more skin to skin contact with you, she just needs to feel your skin on hers.

You’re more than happy to please her, raising your arms up so that Ona can tug your shirt off.

The brunette fullback practically throws your shirt across the room and that makes you giggle.

‘I’m enthusiastic okay?’ She defends.

You laugh harder and Ona rolls her eyes, pressing her lips onto yours to shut you up, in the best way possible.

‘Te amo.’ You gasp, the intensity of Ona’s kisses building the warm feeling in your stomach.

Ona pulls you towards her bed and with a smirk, pushes you onto her bed.

She straddles you and you moan. The combined feelings of her body weight on you and her long hair tickling your cheek as you smell her perfume, it makes you feel like you’re in heaven. Being under Ona further builds the warm feeling in your stomach and you buck your hips upwards uncontrollably.

Your girlfriend whimpers into the shared kiss and you turn your head to the side to break it, gasping, ‘Stop. I-I need to stop.’

Ona sits up immediately, running a hand through her tangled hair.

Her lips are kiss swollen, like yours and she reaches out to hold your hand.

‘Are you okay?’

Worry is evident in her voice and concern etched all over her features.

‘Sí. I just had to stop because if we didn’t, I don’t think I would have been able to stop.’

Ona’s eyes widen and she whispers, ‘You want me that much?’

‘Of course mi Oni.’

The blush on your cheeks darken, letting your girlfriend know that you meant what you were telling her.

Ona grins, pressing a gentle kiss into your forehead.

‘Well I can’t wait for the day my parents and my brother aren’t home so that we don’t have to stop.’

Your cheeks are tinted pink but you manage to answer, ‘I promise that when that does happen, I’ll make sure I wear something a lot nicer than this for you.’

Ona frowns slightly, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. You look beautiful just like this.’

‘Gracias mi amor. But I’ll still pick out something more appropriate.’

‘You don’t have to but whatever you choose, I will absolutely love on you.’ Ona promises.

******

‘You are drooling.’ Lucia teases.

You panickedly straighten up and wipe the back of your hand across your mouth immediately.

‘I was just kidding.’ The Manchester United forward laughs, making you flush a bright red.

She looks across the gym at Ona for a moment before remarking, ‘She does have an amazing set of abs though.’

Your gaze is drawn back to Ona who is casually wiping the sweat off her face with the hem of her training jersey, exposing her toned stomach.

‘She really does.’ You mumble.

Lucia laughs again, louder this time.

‘Okay little miss gay panic. Focus more on your weights and less on your fiancée.’

******

‘You’re insatiable.’ You moan as Ona puts a hand under your shirt, palming your breast immediately.

‘I need to make up for lost time.’ She cheekily says.

You’re so glad that she has forgiven herself that you can’t even be mad at her.

‘Ona. Ona babe we’re gonna be late. We c-can’t.’

Your breath catches on the last word, Ona clearly having an overwhelming effect on you.

‘We can be late.’ Ona whines but you firmly shake your head.

‘We were already late last time and I really don’t want to have to put up with our teammates’ teasing all night again mi amor.’

Ona uses her thumb to stroke your skin and it’s so sensitive that you shiver.

You bite your lip, not wanting to give Ona the satisfaction of hearing you moan her name while partially chiding her for her actions.

Your wife sighs.

‘Fine.’

She takes a step back from you, fixing your clothes so that you look presentable again and less like you just had a teenagers’ makeout session.

‘Gracias mi amor, I promise to be naked for you all night okay?’

Ona’s eyes light up and she nods eagerly, rushing off to go and change into the outfit she had chosen for the team dinner.

******

Having finished touching up your makeup (Ona had smudged your lipstick with her earlier activities), you’re sitting on the kitchen counter, waiting for the brunette when she calls out, ‘Close your eyes.’

‘Why?’

‘Trust me amor.’ Ona says, an undercurrent of laughter in her voice.

You do as says and eventually hear her footsteps come right in front of you before she says, ‘You can open your eyes now.’

From the way she’s grinning at you, you just know that she had chosen that particular outfit to make sure her (absolutely glorious) abs are on full display for you.

A tube top and tailored trousers paired with a blazer you were sure she had stolen (Ona would say it was borrowed) from you. Her signature hoop earrings completed the look.

‘Mi amor…’ You groan, reaching for her eagerly.

Ona steps back with a loud chuckle.

‘No. No touching. You said no making out so that we won’t be late.’

‘Ona come on. Just one kiss por favor.’ You plead.

‘Nope. You have to wait till we come back.’ She sings, already making her way to the door.

Your wife gives you a teasing wink and you make a frustrated noise, hurrying after her and desperately willing the hours to pass quickly, just so you could be back home with your love again.

******

There’s a tiny smile growing on Ona’s face as she feels you slip a hand under her shirt to rest on her stomach.

Her smile widens when you subconsciously flatten it to get the full effect of her abs.

‘T’estimo.’ She murmurs, pressing a kiss onto your shoulder.

You’re still asleep and Ona gently pulls you a little closer, reveling in the feeling of being able to hold you.

It’s fairly early, the faint sunlight coming through the curtains not quite enough to wake you yet so Ona kisses your shoulder again and closes her eyes, content to fall back asleep with you in her arms.

Spanish Translations:

amor - love

gracias mi amor - thank you my love

mi cielo - my darling

bebé - baby

mi amor - my love

te amo - i love you

sí - yes

Catalan Translations:

t’estimo - i love you

[dresden-syndrome]

26/VII-1978. State Security department No. 64, Burgas region, People's Union Republic of Bulgaria, EESU.

"Full name?" Iva Kostadinova Milcheva.

"Date of birth?" 7th of April, year 1950.

"Registration place?" City of Burgas, "Prvi Internatsional" street, **** **** **.

"Ethnicity, citizenship?" Bulgarian, citizenship of EESU.

"Employment?" European Communist Party, chairman deputy of Burgas municipal committee.

The same unchanging questions and answers, learned by heart and thrown in an emotionless bureaucratic manner. Who knows how many thousands of them Iva had to fill before; in this country, it's just a part of life. Only this time she was made to sit in what looks like interrogation room, the guards standing besides and the light of table lamp straight to her face. Trying to keep calm and still, like she always used to, just as if today is not the most horrible day in her life.

"What did you bring me here for?"

During her Party career Iva managed to cooperate with State Security quite a lot; although wary of them, she viewed them with respect rather than fear. This day, when they called her to get in the black Volga for a visit, she didn't think anything could go wrong - saying no to State Security invitations has never been an option anyway - until they cuffed her hands and turned to the unknown direction.

"You've been accused of assisting in a right-wing revisionist conspiracy against the socialist regime. Did you know that?"

Arrested. Arrested for political crimes.

It's somewhat like an accident; nobody is safe from it, everyone prays it doesn't hit close to home yet it feels like it won't happen to you right until it does. As experienced as she was, Iva couldn't yet believe that. Isn't it that only the spies and enemies end up there? How could she, who always loved her motherland more than life itself, become one?

"No. I didn't participate in anything."

There were no answers in her head, no time to plan what to say or do for a better outcome. Only one task of immense willpower. Not to cry. Not to scream out loud. Not to think of her breaking future. Stay calm. Do what they say. Even if it gets worse. Even as she feels the cold steel lock on her wrists and her eyes cover by a thick cloth.

"Take that one to cell 2-18."

As Iva exited the main hallway, held by guards by each side, into what seems to be a staircase, a horrifying scream struck her ears from below. It sounded like someone cried out in pure agony, abruptly ending with a sound of doors locked at that lower floor.

"Just what they deserve."

After a long disorientating walk through quieter upper floors, the blindfold falls, the cuffs unlock and the door shuts with an unpleasant metal bang. A cold lonely prison cell, for a couple of weeks or for the rest of her life. Nobody knows.

The nice summer day which began with a cup of strong coffee, two cigarettes and a nice walk along the beach filled with Soviet tourists and ice cream shops finally comes to an end.

Art tag @painful-pooch @prismpanic @generic-whumperz @suspicious-whumping-egg @onlywhump @whumpedydump @whumpthefifth @monarchthefirst @sunshiline-writes @project-xiii @3-2-whump @unforgivenn

[lafamilledelioncourt]

New Chapters! Devil's Minion and Lesmand? Is it my birthday?

A Deal of Consequence || writerformanymuses

Chapter 27: But It's Not Real, and You Don't Exist

Summary:

Lestat and Armand have it out at long last, Claudia sinks into her despair, and Daniel begins to fight for his memories and his future with the new unholy family.

EXCERPT:

“For how long?” Daniel whispers, his throat growing more and more raw as emotion creeps up. Armand leans over, his lips pressing into Daniel’s hair, and he strokes his cheek before pulling back to regard him. “I don’t know. I never know, and you know that too.”  “No, Armand… I mean this. How long are you going to keep doing this? This game you play with me as if I’m some-- some fucking toy. Is that what I am? Am I just a toy for you to play around with?” His voice trembles, and he’s unable to do anything else as Armand holds his face with the utmost care. His eyes move over his features, reading him so plainly even if Daniel never dared to realize it then. How unfeeling, he remembers thinking of him. How utterly maddening and cruel.   “I would never think of you as such,” Armand murmurs, and he leans in once more to press his lips to Daniel's brow. “You are a precious thing, Daniel, and I haven’t the heart to let you go just yet.”  It stings. This realization stings, and it is worse than the seductive pain they shared in the quiet dark. To be a mere bug trapped in the web of some indomitable creature. To think, if not for the whims of Armand, Daniel could also be a dead thing. Sucked dry of hope, ambition, wit, and warmth. Every defiant bone within him crushed to dust, and every quivering vein dried into fragments of meaningless waste.  The words ‘just yet’ echo through his mind like a hurricane bashing onto a shoreline. He’d reported on a hurricane this very year, hadn’t he? 1978? 79? He remembers one, at least. He remembers standing on a veranda of some exotic location, a camera in his hand, as he furiously tried to capture the bowing and buckling of trees on a beach.  Daniel never had a problem with facing death. No, he was almost always chasing it. What was it Claudia said? “You were so in love with death that I was starstruck by you.”  Only death was not a time, not a sentence, was it? It was him, it was Armand. 

[palmtreesx3]

As my header states, I'm too old for this. But here I am anyway. If you're here you're gonna watch me embarrassingly lust over every version of Steve Harrington (who am I kidding, just Joe Keery in general) and while I mostly just react to other people's tremendously talented work, I occasionally dabble myself.

So if you are lurking, enjoy and leave some kisses 💋

(18+, don't be cunty, yada yada yada)

🔥 Spicy/Smutty 🚨 Cannon/Cannon Adjacent ❤️ Fluffy/Boyfriend-ism 😩 Angsty

Get Off (Series) 🔥18+ - SexShop!Steve x Reader : SexShop!Robin x OC (7/9)

Summary: Steve and Robin have about had it with Hawkins, so on Robin's 25th birthday, the pair decides that there's nothing holding them there anymore and they start packing their bags. The friends move to Chicago and quickly find an apartment to call their own. As luck would have it, within hours of arriving to the city, Robin stumbles on a no-strings-attached job offer for both of them - what could be better?! Now just to break the news to Steve…. This multi part story will both explore their platonic relationship and their chaotic experience working at the sex shop together as well as their own paths of self discovery as they plant their roots in their new city and finally deal with the invisible baggage they drug along with them when they moved. Act 4 - Out Now :)

Prologue || V-Card || Act 1 || Act 2 || Act 3 || Act 4 || Act 5 || Act 6 || Epilogue

------------------

King of Wishful Thinking (Series) ❤️ Fluffy but eventually 🔥 18+ and marked as such because I'm a hoe - Steve Harrington x Reader (2/?)

Summary: Steve has been in love with you for his entire life. He has always wanted to express his feelings and do nice things for you, but every time he tries to come up with new and creative ways to show you how much he cares, but it seems like fate is always against him. Even though he shallowly convinces himself that you’re just meant to be friends and despite these setbacks, Steve remains determined to keep trying. He still holds onto the hope that someday he'll be able to express his feelings to you and maybe, just maybe have them reciprocated. Paused but not forgotten

1974 || 1978 || 1980 (coming soon)

Joe Keery Photo Drop Support Group A place to gather when he sends us into a tizzy. This support group was started in response to the Behind the Blinds Photo Drops but can and will be revisited anytime this man rocks our world like that again....All are welcome. Judgement Free-zone. Cake ALWAYS served.

Birthday Cake Train 🍰 A communal space to celebrate birthdays and serve up a slice of Cake....you know which kind. Join the thread when it's your turn. There's enough to go around.

Seeing Stars 🔥18+ The crew finally decides it's time to start celebrating the 4th of July again, but Steve Harrington finds he can't stop himself from staring.

A Girl Like You (PT 2 to Seeing Stars) 🔥18+ In the aftermath of the 4th, embarrassment and emotions are flying, tables turn and shit gets figured out. Read Part 1 to see how exactly we got here.

Deeper for You 🔥18+ It's your annual beach trip with the crew from Hawkins, something you've all been doing together your whole adult life after life forced everyone to part ways. You're all close, but this year, an accidental encounter in the outdoor shower makes you get a little closer with one person in particular.

Jealous Friend One Shot 🔥18+ ask Watching your friend, Steve Harrington, go on Kamakazi Mission dates over and over again was getting kind of old. You’re always there to listen, comfort and pick up the pieces but what if this time it’s just too much? What if this time you’ve had enough and something that feels a little bit like jealousy rears its ugly head?

Firefighter!Steve One Shot

Taking Care of Steve (Road Head) Blurb 🔥18+ ask

Vampy Steve Blurb ask

Fool in Love Blurb (King of Wishful Thinking inspo) ❤️

Stevie Takes Care of You When You're Sick Blurb ❤️ ask

Joe Keery as Steve Harrington Micro expressions

Steve Harrington Smells Like head cannons

Cozy Cardigan Steve (Joe Keery Dork Mag inspo) ❤️

Ok maybe I'm being overdramatic, but please also consider reading these fics or series I feel like I'd lay down my life for because they have become a visceral part of me and changed the fabric of my being and I think about them all the time. They are all *chefs kiss* and written by amazingly talented people who also have deep Masterlists that also deliver. So wake the fuck up and read em! Again, most (okay fine, all) are 🔥 18+ ...again, because I'm a hoe

Into Open Flames 🔥😩🚨 on AO3

Midnight City 🔥 by @superblysubpar

We'll Call it Love 🔥😩 by @superblysubpar

If Tomorrow Never Comes 🔥😩🚨 by @sweetsweetjellybean

All I Really Want is You ❤️🔥 by @loveshotzz

Whatta Man (Steve's Night) 🔥 by @loveshotzz

New Years Eve (Steve & Eddie)🔥😩 by @loveshotzz

Beyond 🔥 by @abibliophobiaa

We Tried the World 🔥😩 @upsidedownwithsteve

And I Snuck in Through the Garden Gate ❤️🔥 @upsidedownwithsteve

Don't Call Me Baby 🔥😩 by @katyswrites

Aftermath (Steve & Eddie)🔥😩🚨 by @sweetsweetjellybean

Daisy 🔥 by @thyme-in-a-bubble

PSA: Don't steal my shit. Don't repost my shit. Don't steal other peoples shit. Don't use AI. Don't feed my shit into AI. Don't feed other people's shit into AI. Just come here, read about this sweet piece of a man and live on our fantasy island together in lust and in peace.

[siriusly-rem-writes]

Where Will We End Up? (Headcanons/Context)

In honor of the resurfacing of JATP S2 rumors, here's some context set in the WWWEU? Universe.

Warnings: mentions of absent fathers, relationships with parents, implied hostile home environment, use of Y/N, Alex is Catholic, implied homophobia, female reader (Let me know if I missed something!)

Luke Patterson

Born November 25, 1977 (13 at the start of the story)

The oldest of the group

Born and raised in Canada

Moved to LA when he was 12 for his 8th-grade year

Only child

Lives with both his parents

Has a good relationship with both but struggles to communicate with his mom more

His dad plays guitar and taught him how to play

Has ADHD

Has a slight accent 

And a stutter

Started cutting the sleeves of his shirts because too much fabric bothered him 

Was overstimulated on the first day of school 

He bumped into Alex in the cafeteria causing both of their trays to fall down

It was his last straw and he exploded

“Hey! Watch where you’re going!”

Y/N put him in his place after he yelled at Alex

He looked for them a few days later to apologize

“I uh, brought cookies?”  

He brings cookies every time he messes up

Doesn’t have physical boundaries with his friends 

It took getting smacked on the forehead by Bobby many, many times for him to understand not to hug him unprompted

Emily loves hosting 

The group used to sleep over at Luke’s a lot 

The more serious Luke got about music, the more arguments he had with his mom

It got so bad he eventually ran away from home

He actually wasn’t allowed in Alex’s room alone anymore after they got caught kissing

Every time he went over to Alex's the air was tense

He stopped showing up the way he used to, instead opting to sneak in

He picked up a job as a waiter at a local diner

The group loves to go in just to terrorize him

Firmly believes that you choose your family and he chose his

Isn’t bad at school, he just can’t focus on it for the life of him

Gets detention a lot because he gets caught not paying attention

The reason they have a zero-tolerance after 3 tardies rule 

He takes boxing lessons with Jose Camacho to release his pent-up energy 

Forgets he knows how to fight

Reggie Peters

Born May 06, 1978 (12 at the start of the story)

Third oldest of the group

Born and raised in LA

Lives by the beach 

Likes to sneak out and listen to the waves 

Can surf

Lives with both his parents 

But he doesn’t have a good relationship with either 

He doesn’t hate them nor have they directed anything at him, he just wishes they’d listen and spend more time with him

Only child

But he babysits Diego Miller, the little boy next door who he decided was his little brother

He’s not as dense as he makes himself out to be 

He just doesn’t like to think about things too much because it stirs his feelings 

Really good at Math and Science

He likes that it's logical thinking, not emotional

Doesn’t like English because it requires him to tap into emotions and he really doesn’t want to 

He doesn’t like History either because it leaves him bothered by the shitty and unfair past

Has selective mutism 

It kicked in badly during one of his parents' fights 

The longest he’s gone mute was 2 months

It kicks in every now and then but not for as long and not around everyone 

He learned ASL because of it 

Sometimes he uses it outside of an episode just because it’s easier 

Everyone else tries to pick it up, levels of proficiency vary

He found “Wright’s Domain” a comic book shop one day after he had walked out of his house

He spends most of his Summers there

He sits in the same bean bag

The more time he spent there, the more he found himself doing random things 

He’d reorganize comics, reposition figurines and when someone asked him where they could find a specific section he pointed them to it 

The couple that owns the store started to notice him

They left snacks by his bean bag chair with a note thanking him for fixing up

He wrote back a thank you with a doodle of himself holding two thumbs up and an arrow pointing out his name was Reggie 

The snacks waited for him every visit

His voice did come back, at the shop 

He spoke to the owners, Donna and Michael, quite often, they love hearing about his day 

He eventually got a job there

Ended up bringing everyone one day

He was a little nervous because the shop was his safe space but so was the group

The owners loved the group too

Donna and Michael live in THE house

Alex Mercer

Born August 23, 1978 (12 at the start of the story)

Second to last youngest

Lives with both his parents 

The eldest

He has a younger sister named Sophia 

Had a good relationship with both his parents up until he came out

Always watches out for his sister

He plays tea party and dresses up with her

His dad made a comment about it and Alex stopped doing it so frequently

Grew up Catholic 

He never really thought much of it until he noticed he looked at boys a lot for being a boy himself

He’s not the biggest fan of it anymore

Was already an anxious kid but as he got older; his religious background, his dad's expectations, and being more aware of the world's problems made his anxiety skyrocket

He fidgets by tapping his fingers on a surface or hitting his thighs with his hands 

His parents got him a drum set to help ease it

He met Y/N when they were 7 

He defended her against a bully

He got detention

She walked home with him that day and they realized they lived 3 streets down from each other

Really wants to make his dad proud 

His dad has a lot of traditional views of men which contradict with Alex 95% of the time

His first crush was on Ryan, a boy he went to church with, but he didn’t know it yet 

His stomach dropped when he saw Ryan and another girl share a quick kiss at the park

Developed a crush on Luke  

His first kiss and boyfriend was Luke 

His dad opened the door to Alex’s room and caught them kissing 

His dad stood there, closed the door and walked away

His dad didn’t speak to him at all through dinner

The next day, his dad told him he’d take him to church to repent

Alex said no and came out when he was 15

They got into an argument

His dad didn’t kick him out (to save his image) but told him that until he repented, he wasn’t his son

He was the first to meet Reggie 

They’re in the same Math class and the teacher asked Reggie to tutor him 

They met up after school twice a week

Alex wasn’t looking for a friend but Reggie being the social butterfly he is, didn’t care

The more times they saw each other, the more Alex got used to him and his antics 

He actually understood Math the way Reggie would teach him

One day Luke didn’t want to go home because he had fought with his mom and Y/N was busy, Alex found Reggie to tell him he had to stick to Luke 

Reggie told him Luke was welcome to join their session

Luke sat across from them and wrote in his journal but was still fidgety 

Reggie cut the tutoring session short and invited them out for ice cream

Alex questioned his life choices as Luke and Reggie’s loud personalities mixed

He initiated his and Luke’s first kiss 

And then immediately panicked before Luke laughed and pulled him back in

He was the one who broke up with Luke

There was an awkward air for like 2 minutes before they talked about everything and went back to being best friends

Bobby Shaw

Born March 16, 1978 (13 at the start of the story)

The second oldest of the group

Never knew his dad

Lives with his mom and grandma

Has a good relationship with both

Only child (not really but we'll get into that later)

Keeps to himself mostly

Skates

He paints, though he doesn’t like people looking at his art 

Took an art class during his freshman year 

He never did anything in class

He’d do it at home and sneak in the assignment the next day, nameless

His art teacher caught him one time and told him he’d leave the art room open for him to do his assignments so as long as he starts signing his name

He spends a lot of time in the art room

Close to the art teacher, Mr. Cervantez 

He was the first positive male influence in his life

Befriends Y/N first, she takes an art class with him

He’s actually not sure how to handle social interactions 

He’s pretty awkward 

He helped Luke on their first week of high school

Luke was being picked on and they had taken the beanie off his head 

He stopped Luke from launching himself at the other guys 

“Come on guys, give it back.” 

One of the guys looked at him questioningly 

Bobby stood his ground

The guys tossed the beanie back at Luke and Bobby walked off as soon as they left

Luke approached him weeks later and he internally panicked the whole time

Has problems with authority 

That guy that will touch something after you said not to 

His grandma hates that he does that but he can’t help it

He’s respectful to both his mom and grandma, no one else really

Lacks a filter, has accidentally hurt people’s feelings because of it

Not a big physical touch guy 

He has to be very comfortable with you to initiate touch

All talk 

Like he can’t fight

He’s gotten by on physical appearance alone 

The guys hide behind him all the time and when Y/N needs him, his tall looming presence behind her has people running for the hills

He’s punched one person and one person only

It was Alex’s dad

Y/N Y/L/N

Born September 01, 1978

The youngest of the group

Only child

Lives with her mom

Dad walked out when she was 7

Her mom started drinking, causing the mother-daughter bond to break

Spends the night at Alex’s a lot

The first time, her bed was set up in Sophia’s room 

After everyone had gone to sleep she snuck into Alex’s room 

The next day, his parents found her sleeping at the edge of his bed with his blanket draped over the edge also to cover Alex who slept on the floor

After it happened 3 more times, they stopped trying to separate the two 

She has clothes in the bottom drawer of Alex’s dresser

Alex’s number 1 protector

They made friendship bracelets, purple yarn for her and blue for Alex 

Luke and her = sibling energy 

Likes to wear other people's clothes

Makes her feel like they’re with her and she’s not alone

Literally carrying their love with her

It started with one of the shirts her dad left behind 

She likes Alex’s hoodies, Luke’s beanies and in the Summer she’ll snag one of his sleeveless tees, Reggie’s flannels and in the Winter his leather jacket, Bobby’s t-shirts and vests

The guys knock on her door when they can’t find the item they want to wear because they know she has it

She and Alex remade their friendship bracelets to include Luke (Orange)

She made them remake them later once Bobby (Green) and Reggie (Red) became part of their little group

All 5 of them wear it no matter what

She likes to draw

Was the first to befriend Bobby in art class

She admired him from afar (because look at him) and wondered what he did, given that he always slept in the class

One time while waiting for Alex and Luke to get out of detention, she walked around school and caught Bobby in the art room

His back was to her and he wore headphones as he painted

She loved his piece and wondered why he never did anything in class

Wrote him sticky notes encouraging him to show his work

Eventually, he wrote back saying he’d reveal his work if she revealed who she was

It was a deal and they started talking more afterwards

Luke was upset when he learned she was friends with Bobby 

Mostly because he thought Bobby was a dick (a dick he tried to be friends with first but failed) 

TEASER

[hometoursandotherstuff]

Nastyblasty found this unique home in Virginia Beach, Virginia. It was built in 1978 by the architect who has lived in it for over 40 yrs. $499K.

The home is full of interesting angles, beautiful wood and brick. 

This is so interesting- a large built-in seating area. 

What a lovely enclosed porch- that window gives a panoramic view, and look at the overhead roof.

Here’s a fireplace that wraps around to the kitchen, and on the other side, a wood burning stove is vented thru that same fireplace. This home is full of unique features. Look at the pretty tile flooring.

The partially rounded kitchen has a beautiful bank of windows over the sink and counter and an opening that resembles the shape of a brick oven in the common wall between the kitchen and living room. 

The dining room has shelving for dishes, etc. 

A wavy bath has an ocean theme that matches the floor tile.

Look at this home office with a curvy built-in desk.

The angles in this sitting room. Look at this. 

Stairs to the 2nd level. Notice the unique shelving on the left.

Have you ever seen a main bd. like this?

Here’s a sleeping loft- this house is crazy-cool

And, here’s a child’s bd. There are 3 bds. in the home.

This bath has a sunken tub.

How incredible are these rooms on the uppermost levels?

The patio and yard.

There’s also a guest cottage.

This home is so unique, I’m thinking that he built this shed this way.

It’s on a nice green plot of land, too.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1976-Munden-Point-Rd-Virginia-Beach-VA-23457/60726568_zpid/

[tinybrightthings]

24 More Classic Films to Give You Vintage Summery Vibes

Some more films to invoke vintage feelings of running through fields, having picnics, enjoying some time at the beach, and more.

*I went for anything pre-1985 for those who were looking for something more on the vintage/retro side. I also tried to pick from a selection of different genres to suit whatever mood you might be in.

--------

Animated:

It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown (1969)

Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown (1977)

Comedy:

American Graffiti (1973)

California Dreaming (1979)

The Heartbreak Kid (1972)

The Miller's Beautiful Wife/La Bella Mugnaia (1955)

Paris When It Sizzles (1964)

Some Like It Hot (1959)

Drama:

Big Wednesday (1978)

Lifeguard (1976)

National Velvet (1944)

Pollyanna (1960)

Summer of '42 (1971)

Summertime (1955)

Horror:

The Funhouse (1981)

Summer of Fear (1978)

Musical:

Blue Hawaii (1961)

Carousel (1956)

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)

Fun in Acapulco (1963)

Hello Dolly! (1969)

The Music Man (1962)

The Sound of Music (1967)

Summer Love (1958)

[therecordchanger62279]

MY 200 FAVORITE ALBUMS OF ALL-TIME

(Revised 2024 Edition)

To my way of thinking, a list of favorite albums changes over time. At any moment, there might be as many as 300 or 400 albums that are good enough to make a favorites list of 200. Where and how to cut is the question. I do a new list whenever the old one feels outdated to me. The criteria I use is pretty basic. I choose my favorite records to listen to, and those that get played more often are ranked higher. But my listening habits change from time to time, so when an album I love doesn't get played as often because I'm getting tired of it, it falls to a lower spot on the list, or disappears altogether. If I haven't played it in awhile, and it sound fresh to me, it goes back into regular rotation, and subsequently climbs higher on the list. I go through periods when I listen to one genre more than another, and that can also affect where the album lands on the list. Playability is the most important factor. That's why an album that has one great side that gets played all the time while the other side is ignored, won't rank as high as one that I enjoy playing from start to finish. And critics lists are things I often read, but completely ignore when it comes to doing my own. My list reflects my tastes, and my biases only.

This is my first revision since March of 2023. There are 28 new additions to the list this time marked with an asterisk. And, in case you're wondering, there were five artists that placed at least five albums on the list. They were The Rolling Stones (13), The Beatles (8), and The Beach Boys, Steely Dan, and Tom Petty each had five (though four of Petty's were with The Heartbreakers, and the fifth was a solo album). Here's my list, and I hope it encourages you to explore something you might not have heard, or to pull something out you may not have played in awhile.

    1. All Things Must Pass – George Harrison (1970)

    2. Revolver (UK) – The Beatles (1966)

    3. The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle – Bruce Springsteen (1973)

    4. Blood on the Tracks – Bob Dylan (1975)

    5. Sticky Fingers – The Rolling Stones (1971)

    6. Close to the Edge – Yes (1972)

    7. The Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd (1973)

    8. L.A. Woman – The Doors (1971)

    9. Surrealistic Pillow – Jefferson Airplane (1967)

  10. The Who by Numbers – The Who (1975)

  11. Help (UK) – The Beatles (1965)

  12. A1A – Jimmy Buffet (1974)

  13. Bitches Brew – Miles Davis (1970)

  14. Kind of Blue – Miles Davis (1959)

  15. Pet Sounds – The Beach Boys (1966)

  16. A Tribute to Jack Johnson – Miles Davis (1971)

  17. Pat Metheny Group (1978)

  18. A Hard Day’s Night (UK) – The Beatles (1964)

  19. Aftermath (US) – The Rolling Stones (1966)

  20. The Division Bell – Pink Floyd (1994)

  21. Heavy Weather – Weather Report (1977)

  22. Bridge Over Troubled Water – Simon & Garfunkel (1970)

  23. Sweet Baby James – James Taylor (1970)

  24. Surf’s Up – The Beach Boys (1971)

  25. Exile on Main St. – The Rolling Stones (1972)

  26. At Fillmore East – The Allman Brothers Band (1971)

  27. Born to Run – Bruce Springsteen (1975)

  28. The Hissing of Summer Lawns – Joni Mitchell (1975)

  29. The Doors (1967)

  30. Highway 61 Revisited – Bob Dylan (1965)

  31. Rust Never Sleeps – Neil Young & Crazy Horse (1979)

  32. Let It Bleed – The Rolling Stones (1969)

  33. Astral Weeks – Van Morrison (1969)

  34. (Untitled) (4th) – Led Zeppelin (1971)

  35. Teaser & the Firecat – Cat Stevens (1971)

  36. The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967)

  37. On the Road to Freedom – Alvin Lee & Mylon LeFevre (1973)

  38. Tea for the Tillerman – Cat Stevens (1970)

  39. The Complete Africa Brass Sessions – John Coltrane (1961)

  40. Holland – The Beach Boys (1973)

  41. Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs – Derek & the Dominos (1970)

  42. Heartbreaker – Free (1972)

  43. Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, Jones, Ltd. – The Monkees (1967)

  44. Beggar’s Banquet – The Rolling Stones (1968)

  45. III – Led Zeppelin (1970)

  46. Seventh Sojourn – Moody Blues (1972)

  47. Forever Changes – Love (1967)

  48. My Favorite Things – John Coltrane (1961)

  49. Meet The Beatles – The Beatles (1964)

  50. Can’t Buy a Thrill – Steely Dan (1972)

  51. Beautiful Vision – Van Morrison (1982)

  52. Days of Future Passed – Moody Blues (1967)

  53. Setting Sons (US) – The Jam (1979)

  54. The Captain & Me – Doobie Brothers (1973)

  55. The Dream of the Blue Turtles – Sting (1985)

  56. Willy & the Poor Boys – Creedence Clearwater Revival (1969)

  57. The Way It Is – Bruce Hornsby & The Range (1986)

  58. One Fair Summer Evening – Nanci Griffith (1988)

  59. The Beatles Second Album -The Beatles (1964)

  60. Who’s Next – The Who (1971)

  61. Idlewild South – The Allman Brothers Band (1970)

  62. Beatles ’65 – The Beatles (1964)

  63. Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes featuring Veronica - The Ronettes (1964)

  64. Chuck Berry is On Top – Chuck Berry (1959)

  65. First Circle – Pat Metheny Group (1984)

  66. The Allman Brothers Band (1969)

  67. Young Americans – David Bowie (1975)

  68. The End of the Day – The Reivers (1989)*

  69. Visions of the Emerald Beyond – Mahavishnu Orchestra (1975)

  70. Will O’ The Wisp – Leon Russell (1975)

  71. 461 Ocean Boulevard – Eric Clapton (1974)

  72. Band on the Run – Paul McCartney & Wings (1973)

  73. It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll – The Rolling Stones (1974)

  74. Manassas – Stephen Stills & Manassas (1972)

  75. Pretzel Logic – Steely Dan (1974)

  76. Peter Gabriel (3rd/Melt) (1980)

  77. Made in Japan – Deep Purple (1973)

  78. Where Have I Known You Before – Return to Forever (1974)

  79. Green River – Creedence Clearwater Revival (1969)

  80. Making Movies – Dire Straits (1980)

  81. Rock ‘N’ Roll Animal – Lou Reed (1974)

  82. Selling England by the Pound – Genesis (1973)

  83. Heroes – David Bowie (1977)

  84. Afro Blue Impressions – John Coltrane (1963)

  85. Some Girls – The Rolling Stones (1978)

  86. Diesel & Dust – Midnight Oil (1987)

  87. Mysterious Traveler – Weather Report (1974)

  88. Blues from Big Bill’s Copacabana – Various Artists (1968)

  89. Modern Times – Jefferson Starship (1981)

  90. Blow Your Cool – Hoodoo Gurus (1987)

  91. Ram – Paul & Linda McCartney (1971)

  92. Caravanserai – Santana (1972)

  93. Odessey & Oracle – The Zombies (1968)

  94. Black Market – Weather Report (1976)

  95. Heart Like a Wheel – Linda Ronstadt (1974)

  96. 12X5 – The Rolling Stones (1964)

  97. Santana (1969)

  98. In Concert: Live at Philharmonic Hall – Miles Davis (1973)

  99. Bridge of Sighs – Robin Trower (1974)

100. Pirates – Rickie Lee Jones (1981)

101. Benefit – Jethro Tull (1970)

102. Madman Across the Water – Elton John (1971)

103. Countdown to Ecstasy – Steely Dan (1973)

104. McCartney – Paul McCartney (1970)

105. Yesterday’s Wine – Willie Nelson (1971)

106. Howlin’ Wind – Graham Parker & The Rumour (1976)

107. Voice of America – Little Steven (1984)

108. Out of Our Heads (US) – The Rolling Stones (1965)

109. Blow by Blow – Jeff Beck (1975)

110. Robbie Robertson (1987)

111. Gaucho – Steely Dan (1980)

112. Desire – Bob Dylan (1976)

113. Vol. 4 – Black Sabbath (1972)

114. Abbey Road – The Beatles (1969)

115. Aja – Steely Dan (1977)

116. Yessongs – Yes (1973)

117. Rickie Lee Jones (1979)

118. Bare Trees – Fleetwood Mac (1972)

119. Something/ Anything? – Todd Rundgren (1972)

120. After the Gold Rush – Neil Young (1970)

121. Physical Graffiti – Led Zeppelin (1975)

122. Rock ‘N’ Roll – John Lennon (1975)

123. Abraxas – Santana (1970)

124. Hard Promises – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (1981)

125. A New World Record – Electric Light Orchestra (1976)

126. Ghost in the Machine – The Police (1981)

127. The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys – Traffic (1971)

128. Dreaming My Dreams – Waylon Jennings (1975)

129. We’re an American Band – Grand Funk Railroad (1973)

130. Chicago Transit Authority – Chicago (1969)

131. What’s Goin’ On – Marvin Gaye (1971)

132. Don’t Cry Now – Linda Ronstadt (1973)

133. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road – Elton John (1973)

134. Jaco – Jaco Pastorius (1976)

135. Peter Frampton (1975)

136. Prisoner in Disguise – Linda Ronstadt (1975)

137. El Mocambo 1977 – The Rolling Stones (2022)

138. Document – R.E.M. (1987)

139. Harbor – America (1977)*

140. Love’s Melodies – The Searchers (1981)*

141. Doll Revolution – Bangles (2003)*

142. Learning to Crawl – Pretenders (1984)

143. Black & Blue – The Rolling Stones (1976)

144. The Yardbirds (Roger the Engineer) (1966)*

145. Lifes Rich Pageant – R.E.M. (1986)*

146. America (1971)*

147. Wildflowers – Tom Petty (1994)*

148. Aladdin Sane – David Bowie (1973)

149. Dusty in Memphis – Dusty Springfield (1969)

150. Everything – Bangles (1988)*

151. That’s Why God Made the Radio – The Beach Boys (2012)

152. Stephen Stills (1970)*

153. On the Border – Eagles (1974)

154. Baron Von Tollbooth & The Chrome Nun – Kantner, Slick & Freiberg (1973)

155. The Pretender – Jackson Browne (1976)

156. Under the Big Black Sun – X (1982)*

157. Stand Up – Jethro Tull (1969)

158. Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (1987)*

159. London Calling – The Clash (1979)*

160. Live at The Star Club – The Beatles (1977)

161. The Joshua Tree – U2 (1987)

162. Eat to The Beat – Blondie (1979)*

163. One of These Nights – Eagles (1975)*

164. Scarecrow – John Mellencamp (1985)*

165. Live – Bob Marley & The Wailers (1975)

166. Tattoo – Rory Gallagher (1973)

167. Orange Crate Art – Brian Wilson & Van Dyke Parks (1995)

168. Damn the Torpedoes – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (1979)*

169. Hard Again – Muddy Waters (1977)

170. Valley Hi – Ian Matthews (1973)

171. In the Court of the Crimson King – King Crimson (1969)

172. One Live Badger – Badger (1972)

173. Automatic for the People – R.E.M. (1991)*

174. Trilogy – Emerson, Lake & Palmer (1972)

175. Sunflower – The Beach Boys (1970)

176. 80/81 – Pat Metheny (1980)

177. Moving Pictures – Rush (1981)

178. Blue and Lonesome – The Rolling Stones (2016)

179. You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw – Spooky Tooth (1972)

180. Quadrophenia – The Who (1973)

181. Go for Your Guns – Isley Brothers (1977)

182. Hearts of Stone – Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes (1978)

183. Get Happy! – Elvis Costello & The Attractions (1980)*

184. Long After Dark – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (1982)*

185. Master of Reality – Black Sabbath (1971)

186. Led Zeppelin (1969)

187. Sign O’ The Times – Prince (1987)

188. Ambient 1: Music for Airports – Brian Eno (1978)

189. Liars – Todd Rundgren (2004)*

190. Electric Ladyland – Jimi Hendrix Experience (1968)

191. Blonde on Blonde – Bob Dylan (1966)

192. Tattoo You – The Rolling Stones (1981)*

193. My Generation – The Who (1965)*

194. Going For The One – Yes (1977)*

195. The Tortured Poets Society: The Anthology – Taylor Swift (2024)*

196. Bloodletting – Concrete Blonde (1990)*

197. Fear of Music – Talking Heads (1979)*

198. English Settlement – XTC (1982)*

199. Brain Salad Surgery – Emerson, Lake & Palmer (1973)

200. Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols – Sex Pistols (1977)

[haggishlyhagging]

Jan - Jun 2023 Reading List:

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Dear Ijeawele, or, A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017.

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. We Should All Be Feminists. New York: Vintage Books, 2014.

Bartky, Sandra Lee. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Bittel, Carla. Mary Putnam Jacobi & The Politics of Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

Bolen, Jean Shinoda. Goddesses in Everywoman: A New Psychology of Women. Perennial Library, n.d.

Brownmiller, Susan. Femininity. New York: Open Road Media, 2013.

Chesler, Phyllis. Women and Madness. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2018.

Christ, Carol P., and Judith Plaskow. Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979.

Daly, Mary. The Church and the Second Sex. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1975.

Davis, Elizabeth Gould. The First Sex. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1971.

Doyle, Sady. Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers. Brooklyn: Melville House Publishing, 2019.

Dworkin, Andrea. Intercourse. New York: Basic Books, 2007.

Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Deirdre English. For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1978.

Firestone, Shulamith. The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1970.

Gowrinathan, Nimmi. Radicalizing Her: Why Women Choose Violence. Boston: Beacon Press, 2021.

Hawthorne, Susan. In Defence of Separatism. Mission Beach: Spinifex Press, 2019.

Jeffreys, Sheila. Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution. Spinifex Press, 1990.

Jeffreys, Sheila. The Spinster and Her Enemies. Chicago: Spinifex Press, 1997.

Johnson, Sonia. Going Out of Our Minds: The Metaphysics of Liberation. Freedom: Crossing Press, 1987.

Johnson, Sonia. Wildfire Igniting the She/volution. Albuquerque: Wildfire Books, 1989.

Lerner, Gerda. The Creation of Patriarchy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Love Your Enemy? The Debate between Heterosexual Feminism and Political Lesbianism. London: Onlywomen Press, Ltd., 1981.

Miles, Rosalind. Who Cooked the Last Supper?: The Women's History of the World. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001.

Reed, Evelyn. Woman’s Evolution: From Matriarchal Clan to Patriarchal Family. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1975.

Sjöö, Monica, and Barbara Mor. The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering The Religion of the Earth. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2013.

Smith, Joan. Home Grown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists. London: Riverrun, 2019.

Solanas, Valerie. SCUM Manifesto: With an Introduction by Vivian Gornick. London: Olympia Press, 1971.

Spender, Dale. Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them. London: Ark Paperbacks, 1983.

Srinivasan, Amia. The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.

Stone, Merlin. When God Was a Woman. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.

Ussher, Jane. Women’s Madness: Misogyny or Mental Illness? Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992.

West, Lindy. The Witches are Coming. New York: Hachette Books, 2019.

[mogwai-movie-house]

The Best Album Per Year for Sixty Years

No-one asked for it, of course, but I do like making lists, so here's me pondering what have been the best Long Players in the album artform the past 60 years. I originally tried to keep it to just one per year, but many years that proved impossible: when listing multiple albums I have tried ranking them with the one I feel narrowly edges out the others first, and I use lower case to indicate an album that is not at the same level as others on the list but was the best I've heard from that time.

Feel free to have fun with the list and make up your own.

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1962 Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan 1963 The Freewheelin' - Bob Dylan 1964 another side of - bob dylan 1965 Highway 61 Revisited - Bob Dylan 1966 Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys / Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan / Revolver - The Beatles 1967 Magical Mystery Tour - The Beatles / The Velvet Underground & Nico / Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme - Simon & Garfunkel / Safe As Milk - Captain Beefheart 1968 Astral Weeks - Van Morrison / The White Album - The Beatles / Bookends - Simon & Garfunkel / We're Only In It For The Money/Lumpy Gravy - Frank Zappa 1969 Let It Bleed - The Rolling Stones / Abbey Road - The Beatles / In A Silent Way - Miles Davis 1970 Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon & Garfunkel / Plastic Ono Band - John Lennon 1971 Imagine - John Lennon / Blue - Joni Mitchell / What's Goin' On - Marvin Gaye/ 2 - Moondog 1972 Exile On Main Street - The Rolling Stones / Discover America - Van Dyke Parks / Clear Spot - Captain Beefheart / Ege Bam Yasi - Can 1973 Raw Power - Iggy And The Stooges 1974 Blood On The Tracks - Bob Dylan 1975 Horses - Patti Smith / Discreet Music - Brian Eno / Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd / Velvet Donkey - Ivor Cutler 1976 The Ramones - The Ramones 1977 Low - David Bowie / New Boots & Panties - Ian Dury / Marquee Moon - Television / 77 - Talking Heads 1978 Music For Airports - Brian Eno / This Year's Model - Elvis Costello / Third (Sister Lovers) - Big Star / More Songs About Music & Food - Talking Heads 1979 Unknown Pleasures - Joy Division/ Fear of Music - Talking Heads / Into The Music - Van Morrison / Sheik Yerbouti - Frank Zappa / Rust Never Sleeps - Neil Young 1980 Remain In Light - Talking Heads / Closer - Joy Division / One Trick Pony - Paul Simon / Common One - Van Morrison 1981 Faith - The Cure 1982 Thriller - Michael Jackson / 1999 - Prince / 4 - Peter Gabriel / Too Rye Ay - Dexys Midnight Runners / Big Science - Laurie Anderson / Nebraska - Bruce Springsteen 1983 Swordfishtrombones - Tom Waits / Murmur - R.E.M. / Hearts & Bones - Paul Simon / Off The Bone - The Cramps 1984 Purple Rain - Prince & The Revolution / Hatful Of Hollow - The Smiths / Various Positions - Leonard Cohen / Reckoning - R.E.M. / The Unforgettable Fire - U2 1985 Don't Stand Me Down - Dexys Midnight Runners / Rain Dogs - Tom Waits / Around The World In A Day - Prince & The Revolution / Suzanne Vega - Suzanne Vega / Hounds of Love - Kate Bush / Hunting High & Low - A-ha 1986 Parade - Prince & The Revolution / So - Peter Gabriel / The Queen Is Dead - The Smiths / Graceland - Paul Simon / Steve McQueen - Prefab Sprout / Blood & Chocolate/King of America - Elvis Costello 1987 Sign O The Times - Prince / The Joshua Tree - U2 / Strangeways Here We Come - The Smiths / Actually - Pet Shop Boys / Tango In The Night - Fleetwood Mac 1988 Irish Heartbeat - Van Morrison & The Chieftains / Green - R.E.M. / Viva Hate - Morrissey / The Serpent's Egg - Dead Can Dance / Surfer Rosa - Pixies / Naked - Talking Heads / Introspective - Pet Shop Boys / I'm Your Man - Leonard Cohen / Blue Bell Knoll - Cocteau Twins 1989 Disintegration - The Cure / Technique - New Order / Doolittle - The Pixies / Oh Mercy - Bob Dylan / Avalon Sunset - Van Morrison / Rei Momo - David Byrne / Behaviour - Pet Shop Boys / Candleland - Ian McCulloch 1990 Extricate - The Fall / The Good Son - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds / Songs For Drella - Lou Reed & John Cale / Jonathan Goes Country - Jonathan Richman 1991 Screamadelica - Primal Scream / Achtung Baby - U2 / The Bootleg Boxset - Bob Dylan 1992 It's A Shame About Ray - The Lemonheads / Henry's Dream - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds / Automatic For The People - R.E.M. / Good As I Been To You - Bob Dylan / The Future - Leonard Cohen 1993 Debut - Bjork / Dubnobasswithmyheadman - Underworld / Exile In Guyville - Liz Phair / Neroli - Brian Eno / Come On Feel - The Lemonheads / Zooropa - U2 / Vena Cava - Diamanda Galas

1994 Selected Ambient Works Vol. II - Aphex Twin / Toward The Within - Dead Can Dance / Let Love In - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds / Dummy - Portishead / Autogeddon - Julian Cope / Vauxhall & I - Morrissey 1995 Anthology - The Beatles / The Ugly One With The Jewels - Laurie Anderson 1996 Boys For Pele - Tori Amos 1997 Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space - Spiritualized / The Boatman's Call - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds / Time Out Of Mind - Bob Dylan / Vanishing Point - Primal Scream 1998 Up - R.E.M. / I'm So Confused - Jonathan Richman 1999 Play - Moby / I See A Darkness - Bonnie Prince Billy 2000 XTRMNTR - Primal Scream / All That You Can't Leave Behind - U2 / The Marshall Mathers LP - Eminem / Kid A - Radiohead / KY - Lemon Jelly 2001 Vespertine - Bjork / Love & Theft - Bob Dylan / No More Shall We Part - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds 2002 The Eminem Show - Eminem 2003 Room On Fire - The Strokes / The Man Comes Around/Unearthed - Johnny Cash / The Wind - Warren Zevon 2004 Has Been - William Shatner / How To Dismantle An Atom Bomb - U2 / You Are The Quarry - Morrissey / The Milk-Eyed Mender - Joanna Newsom / Smile - Brian Wilson 2005 Another Day On Earth - Brian Eno / Le Fil - Camille 2006 Modern Times - Bob Dylan / Surprise - Paul Simon / Love - The Beatles 2007 for emma, forever ago - bon iver 2008 vampire weekend - vampire weekend 2009 No Line On The Horizon - U2 / The XX - The XX 2010 show me the face - michelle gurevich 2011 Angles - The Strokes / So Beautiful or So What - Paul Simon 2012 Life Is People - Bill Fay / Old Ideas - Leonard Cohen 2013 Comedown Machine - The Strokes / Crimson Red - Prefab Sprout 2014 Ghost Stories - Coldplay / 1989 - Taylor Swift 2015 ★ - David Bowie 2016 Lover, Beloved - Suzanne Vega / Stranger To Stranger - Paul Simon 2017 American Dream - LCD Soundsystem / antisocialites - alvvays 2018 music for installations - brian eno 2019 weezer (teal album) - weezer 2020 rough & rowdy ways - bob dylan 2021 happier than ever - billie eilish 2022 dragon new warm mountain i believe in you - big thief

[ayearoferewhon]

ayearoferewhon

Richard Kalvar

FRANCE. Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur. Marseille. Sugiton calanque. Nude bathing. A calanque is a sort of fjord, not easily accessible by land. 1978.

—

This photo is like a really good memory for me. I’ve lived in France and one of my best friends is originally from Marseille. He’s gay and I’m a big friend of the gays - he took me to his favorite nude beach, well, actually several of them! He loves to bring his American and British friends, girls and guys, gays and straights, to the nude beach with him. He’s naked all the time, basically! Even when he comes to visit, or when you visit him at home, even when you visit his mom’s home in Marseille! He’s so much fun really, and I miss him. One summer long ago, we stayed with him mom in Marseille and he took me to Sugiton. Not this long ago! But a while ago now. He and my girl and I took a bus from the city of Marseille. I think we had to climb up and up over a big mountain pass and down the other side into the calanque of Sugiton. We wound up, after scrambling and scrambling, on the beautiful beach you see in this photo. Why do us nudists have to suffer so to reach our beautiful spots? But this beach is worth the trek. It was mostly men, but not only men, so my love and I felt welcome. We had a beautiful day in the blazing sun and sea. We gorged on seafood later that night in the port of Marseille, drinking bottle after bottle of chilled Provence wine.

I sent this photo to my friend after finding it online a few weeks ago. It made him sad, as he says almost no one goes to the nude beach at Sugiton anymore.

[talenlee]

Story Pile: Elfen Lied

Back in 2006, Kim Manning, the programming director of Adult Swim, said that there was an anime she was an avid fan of, had watched all in one sitting, and wanted to know if they could air it on Adult Swim. Adult Swim, an adult-oriented channel for adult-oriented animation, resolved that under Broadcast Standards and Practices, the series would need to be so extensively edited that it would be rendered unintelligible. According to Kim on a now-missing messageboard, the series ‘would have been cut to shreds.’

That series was Elfen Lied.

If you’ve never watched it, you probably know Elfen Lied as a punchline mentioned by other anime commentators, of a needlessly gory anime series, constructed of the nastiest edgy excesses of early 2000s anime.

It is one of my favourite anime.

Content Warning: Elfen Lied is a horror anime from 2004 that includes themes of gore, child endangerment, public incontinence, childlike minds in mature bodies, a form of incest, cruelty to animals, pet death, parental neglect and child sexual assault. This anime starts — more or less — with a nude woman wearing a metal mask decapitating another woman to use her body as a human shield and it gets more or less worse from there. This is an anime that wants to consider racism and genocide from the perspective of a Japanese author in 2003. I cannot stress enough that this is an anime that has a bunch of nasty stuff in it and that nasty stuff is not being obscured by inference, but rather explicitly focal. This series is a big fucking downer.

Spoiler Warning: I’m going to talk about events that only come to meaning in the whole of Elfen Lied which necessitates spoiling the whole series, and particularly a part of the mystery narrative the story keeps obscured until the last episode.

Alright, plot in summary. First things first, we have Kouta, a boy, returning to a rural part of Japan to live with his cousin as part of his studies or whatever, a pretty common trope from anime at the time, with the abundance of Ronin harem anime inspired by Love Hina. While he and his cousin Yuka are walking the beach, they find an unconscious girl with horns, or cat ears, in the vein of the popular Catgirl Outsider that’s been popular in anime since… jesus, Urusei Yatsura was 1978, anyway. The cute girl, seemingly incapable of meaningful conversation, says only the word ‘Nyu’ and they take her home with them to care for her, whereupon they go through a range of very common ‘mysterious girl from nowhere’ tropes you saw in anime in the time.

Except Nyu is really quite helpless compared to the standard style and instead of things like comically eating soap or whatever, she demonstrates a near inability to do anything, including holding her bladder. They have to teach her how to eat food, they try to teach her about bathing, and clothes, and then Nyu breaks a momento of Kouta’s (since it made him sad and she wanted to stop him from being sad), prompting him to yell at her, and her to run off into the night.

And then the completely unhinged government assassins get involved.

The lede I’m burying and the lead this series is loading, though, is that before all those events are shown we see a government facility where Obviously Nyu was being kept before all this. She was being suspended in a metal cage and kept from contacting anything, in a big metal mask that kept her from seeing anything, and there were rules about never letting anything enter that space, nothing ever to be dropped on the ground. One day, someone dropped something and she proceeded to kill them, then use them as a tool to break out, and in the process got shot in the head with a Barrett 50 cal gun. That is to say (checks notes) a big gun.

They’re doing this because Lucy is a Diclonus, a human variant with uh, psychic powers? She has multiple extra, invisible arms, with hands and all, that are super-powered and super fast, that she can use to wreck shop around her. Bulletproof at range and deadly within two meters, Lucy is an unprecedented and impossible monster who is hard to affect because she can treat even small mundane objects as immensely dangerous. In her escape there are numerous shots of her using pens to kill people, for example.

She survived the shot in the head, but the damage basically gave her Split Personalityism where one part of her was an infant that needed constant babying and one part of her was uh, the walking apocalypse. Kouta and Yuka, at first unaware of her other half, Lucy, try to care for Nyu and rescue her from growing complexity of their lives that grow to incorporate a runaway child, and the various attacks on their home and life that come from housing Nyu.

I’m simplifying.

Through this story, Kouta and Yuka and Lucy and Nyu have various interactions that involve getting frustrated with one another, building up problems, then resolving them and the tension in the series that it’s ramping up to is that this is all while more of these Diclonuses (Diclonii?) come out and we see more of how this facility has been trying to contain this situation. The Diclonus are an existential threat to humanity, since they can contaminate non-Diclonus humans to have Diclonus children. Those children, known as Silpelets, are always girls, and sterile. The only Diclonus capable of diverting non-Diclonus reproduction into making more Diclonus is Lucy, a Diclonus Queen.

What’s more, all these special babies being born with superpowers, aside from the ones that were being killed shortly after birth after confirming they were Diclonus, all grow up really messed up and violent and hostile. Which the doctors assume must be because they have no proof of any Diclonus growing up as anything but a horrible monster person. Based on this, the researchers assume that all Diclonus are fundamentally bad, genetically even, and must be exterminated for the good of humanity, no matter the cost of other human lives.

But what if, eh.

After all we’ve tried isolating and murdering them and they all wind up really bad, what other options do we have?

Anyway, flash back to Lucy’s childhood! And this is where things get fucked up because we get to see that Lucy was a pretty nice little kid who got bullied for having horns. Then she got isolated and put in an orphanage and bullied, and when that wasn’t enough, a child from the orphanage beat and killed her pet dog, which was her tether to trying to be kind. This is the kind of anime where you cheer for when the monster kills a room full of children, by just making sure it’s very clear that these children are committing a very normal kind of cruelty and think they’ll get away with it.

Lucy then runs out into the wilds to live as a wild child where she makes a friend and surprise! It’s Kouta! This is all building up to the big twist of the series where the reveal is the reason why Kouta’s family are dead is because Lucy, as a child, known at the time as Kaede, saw him with his cousin, and immediately lashed out as a girl who kinda sorta liked a boy but also had the powers of a person-sized woodchipper, and turned his parents and little sister into a milkshake, so abruptly, so wholly, that she 404’d Kouta’s memory of the entire traumatising incident. And what were people around him going to say? “Sorry kid, your family were made into a special effect by an angry ghost while a little girl hollered at you about you lying to her about your cousin being a hot girl.”

Oh, the pieces at work here.

I’m told the manga Kouta doesn’t forgive Lucy-Nyu, but anime Kouta does.

Anyway, Kouta remembers this when he watches Lucy kill someone else, and suddenly has a big ole flashback and this is all happening while the initiative sending soldiers to kill them all has popped their own baby dangerous Diclonus (a Silpelet technically) out of storage and wants to use her to kill Lucy. The finale involves whole missiles being launched around as two terrible Diclonii have a war in the name of responding to an emotional need (approval from a father figure, revenge against that abusive father figure, or protecting a love interest), and in the end, pretty much everyone is dead or missing. The initiative kinda fails, with an open ended question of what comes next for them, Nyu is missing, and Kouta, Yuka and Mayu (the little girl from earlier) are living together as uni students.

Then Kouta opens a door and hears Nyu and the series ends.

Alright, that’s a lot, and it might be at this point you’re left wondering: Hey, Talen, this all sounds like it makes the experience of watching this horror anime really shitty. Like this isn’t just material that’s distressing and horrifying within the general play boundaries of horror media, but there’s a bunch of stuff in here that’s genuinely triggering, and one might imagine, unnecessary to the story.

And like, I skipped over a lot of things. Like, I skipped over the way that one of the ‘heroic’ characters of the story, Bando, introduces himself by gleefully punching a defenseless woman in the face. I didn’t talk about Nana at all, as a Diclonus struggling for parental approval while being functionally dumped in a box on a street corner, and the repeated abuses she suffers at the hands of both the Initiative and Lucy. I didn’t even talk about Mayu’s involvement in the story which starts with her on the run from her sexually abusive stepfather, and all of those things are part of the broader complexities of the middle of the story. Mariko was completely absent from my summary. I just gave you the premise and the button, really.

Sometimes when I talk about Anime, I use the phrase ‘Anime Bullshit’ to refer to a general collection of tropes and choices that are common to the Anime genre that I don’t necessarily like but it’s easy to disregard or discard as part of the overall whole. Part of the problem with Elfen Lied as a discussion, in that unlike other anime which are, for example, heavily fanservicey or silly about ages, or an excess of tits, or the way that the anime just has a character who’s a sex pest the story treats as a delightful comic relief, the elements here are not really readily discarded or put under the heading of ‘bullshit.’ It isn’t something you just flip past to get to the ‘real’ story, because like it or not, the horrible and triggering and transgressive elements of Elfen Lied are part of the story. It is a work of horrible events and abusive violence, and it shows that as part of the story, because that’s what the story is about.

The two particular points that I think cross where I think most of my friends’ lines are that the pet abuse sequence, and a direct reference to child sexual assault. The latter is handled reasonably tastefully for what it is: We see silhouettes, it’s made very clear what’s happening, and we see a reaction. It’s presented in bright, contrasting shapes and it’s not presented to titillate. The pet abuse sequence is however treated like another story might treat the tragic death of a person. In this sequence, a bully kicks a dog across the room into a wall, then uses a vase to beat the dog to death off-screen. We don’t get to escape that, though, just as Lucy-Nyu-Kaede — the dog’s caretaker! — is restrained in place.

And then she uses the power she already had and knew she had and kills the bullies, who again, are orphan children.

This is a pretty interesting challenge point in that it’s kind of hard to pitch ‘this series legitimately made me feel good about the murder of orphans’ especially when in hindsight well, yeah, what was in place to stop these orphans bullying other orphans and how do we address this problem? Yes, the orphans were terrible little shits, but what made them bully? What made them feel they were free to bully? What left them with the means and opportunity to kill a dog in a classroom? None of these factors are the orphan’s fault. This is a failure of the world that was something people chose to make, and the orphans are responding to the factors around them reasonably, as is Lucy in that moment.

But god damn.

Okay but why do I love it?

There is a purity and intentionality to what Elfen Lied is doing, even as an anime. The creator, Mamoru Kanbe, who seems well on the way to being a patron saint of challenging manga being impossible to properly convert into anime, bemoaned cutting a character from this manga, and the way that the story needed to be changed to make it ‘work’ in the time and budget necessary. That means that whatever Elfen Lied the anime was going to be, from the start, it was never going to be Elfen Lied, The Manga, The Anime. Thanks to that choice, then, the anime had to be its own thing with its own reasons for things, its own choices that still involved the same or similar story pieces moving in the same way with the same general direction.

There’s also something to be said for the way this anime can do things that you just can’t do with other media forms, not at this price point and not in this form. There are scenes of special effects that can be rendered only because this is an adult animation, a series of drawings that don’t need to worry about safely handling things like guns or stunt actors or even just the sheer unfeasibility of showing some of the spectacle of meat, blood and metal violence it does. This anime gets to look amazing at what it’s doing, even as a modestly budgeted show with a lot of limitations on what they could execute on from the director’s vision.

It’s not hard to draw a connection between my love of Elfen Lied and my love for the Yandere archetype. I mean, one of the pictures in that article is from Elfen Lied. It’s a tiny bit of a misnomer there, though, because in that article I praised the Yandere as a violent, dangerous person who has it under control, and Lucy very much does not have it under control. There’s a voice in her head telling her to kill everyone, which rings in my mind of the challenges that people who hear voices have to deal with when they want to be taken seriously — that it’s something people who struggle with have to struggle with alone because the mere presence of the problem is treated as a sign of its inevitable victory over one’s own control. I really like Lucy, and I understand that feeling of containing violence at all costs while still recognising that there is an unfairness in the world that you have an obligation to act on.

Once upon a time I imagined part of what Elfen Lied was ‘doing’ was a deliberate attack on what anime at the time was doing. To me, it represented a sort of deliberate, antagonistic attack against anime tropes of the 00s that were either stale or deployed thoughtlessly. I don’t know how true that is now, and I don’t imagine it’s anything I could ever actually prove. That’s not even important any more; the fact that I saw it as a sort of attack on Love Hina and similar anime isn’t any less true now that I recognise that it doesn’t have to be intentional.

This series is by all accounts, a commercial failure. It only screened on ‘Satellite’ in Japan, which I understand to be a less financially rewarding avenue than broadcast TV. Its manga never got an English translation, until 2019, 15 years after the series was well out of the public mind. It is a bloody, gnarly little gem of its time and it doesn’t even have the luxury for a lot of transgressive, violent, gory, sexualised media of its time for being what people might call ‘a good time.’ It is a tortured story about suffering and part of its endurance, I fear, is just in how unpleasant it is in all of its parts.

Man, I even went the whole thing without really underscoring the way that the whole Kouta/Yuka incest thing is just positively boring in the greater context of the story. I mean, c’mon, the Queen of England was fucking her cousin a few short slutty years ago, it’s hardly a scandal if these fake adults do it.

Anyway, the OP is amazing, the ED is a banger, and it’s possible that media can do things that are bad and transgressive and shocking while still being excellent works that connect to us very deeply. Maybe it’s okay to look at a gory murder story about bad things and not try and find some way to reinvent Catholocism to justify enjoying it. It’s possible that media can feature terrible things and even consider whether or not they’re good and if they feel good, and how they can feel good even if you can maintain your sense of reality outside the story and recognise that hey, maybe I can handle the idea of media not 1:1 representing what I think should be normal!

This is an anime about committing genocide. Successfully! By the end of the story, the Diclonus are definitionally a fundamental danger to humanity, as a byproduct of all the ways that humans dealt with that first encounter. The Diclonus, very seriously, are an endangered species that has every reason to treat humanity as an existential threat, which means, from humanity’s perspective, that’s what the Diclonus are now. A self-made self-justified genocide and the genesis for all of it is that these Diclonus were bullied in a way that is, in the setting, completely normal, completely natural, and nobody even wants to try and address it. In the world of Elfen Lied, the society is set up to make monsters out of people who are born with power, because they are different, and there is no imagined way to guide that power away from existential violence.

It is a world where it is easier to genocide a human species than it is to emotionally care for your daughter.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[tilbageidanmark]

MOVIES I WATCHED THIS WEEK (#196):

4 UNUSUAL DOCUMENTARIES:

🍿 KEDI (2016) is a love song for a beautiful city and its wonderful stray animals. Istanbul is known for its millions of street cats who peacefully co-exist with the humans who manage to feed and care for them. [With one glaring negative: There's no mention of any attempts for spaying and neutering the huge population!]. (TRAILER ABOVE).

It's a very simple film, basically shot after shot of different people petting a lot of different cats. So it's charming and calming. 7/10. [*Female Director*]

🍿 JOE HISAISHI IN BUDOKAN, 25TH ANNIVERSARY STUDIO GHIBLI CONCERT, was unexpectedly my happiest movie experience of the week. It is my second real-life affair from Sunada Mami (After her other Ghibli bio-pic, 'The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness'). A magnificent 2008 concert with full orchestra and 2 large choruses, (with as many as 400+ musicians). They played for 2 hours bits from the many scores which Hisaishi had composed for the films of his friend Hayao Miyazaki. Simply magical. 9/10. [*Female Director*]

🍿 BALLYMANUS (2022) is an Irish documentary about a German sea mine that exploded on a remote beach in 1943 and which killed 19 youngsters of its small community. It's interesting mostly for the feel of the rustic village and its people, gently-told.

🍿 YOOPER CREOLES: FINNISH MUSIC IN MICHIGAN'S COPPER COUNTRY (2019) is about old traditions of folk music, which were developed by the many ethnic communities in the upper peninsula in Michigan. Part and continuation of the Alan Lomax archivist projects.

🍿

SPRING IN A SMALL TOWN (1948) was voted the best Chinese film of all time by the Hong Kong Film Critics Society. It was made during the Chinese Civil War, but was a surprisingly modern, feminist tale of an unrequited love in a village setting. It's a love triangle with an obedient but unhappy wife, a bed ridden husband, and his doctor friend who comes for a first unplanned visit in 10 years. It's a small lyrical and intimate miracle, worth discovering. It reminded me very much of David Lean's simultaneous story 'Brief Encounter'.

🍿

CONTINUING MY OCCUPATION WITH ISABELLE HUPPERT X 2:

🍿 My second film by Jean-Paul Salomé (after last week's 'Mama Weed'), THE SITTING DUCK (2022). Based on a true story, it's a feminist corporate thriller about a steel-willed top executive whistleblower, who was viciously attacked for her steadfastness. It's basically Huppert's movie. 7/10.

🍿 LOUDER THAN BOMBS, my 3rd uninspired drama by Joachim Trier, his first outside of his native Norway. It's a family drama about widower Gabriel Byrne, and his two sons, who are trying to come to grips with the suicide-by-car death of Isabelle Huppert, playing here a scarred war zone photographer. Unfocused alienation, dislocation, and miscommunication, it's about the difficult dynamics of feeling lost. 5/10.

🍿

"A doctor?... The boy is drunk!...

YOU ARE NOT ALONE was a landmark coming-of-age story about 2 boys who fall in love at a Danish boarding school in 1978. It was controversial in that the relationship between the 12 and 16 year old boys were shown honestly and naturally in a Scandinavian style (nudity, kisses, genuine affection - but no explicit sex). Olsen Banden's Ove Sprogøe plays the strict 'bad guy' headmaster.

It gave me a shot of sentimental nostalgia for that exact time and place. Even though I was 12-15 older than the boys, it rang so true: I remember the clothing, hair styles, cars, roads and ice cream shops, the Kim Larsen songs, the moods and attitudes of that time. It's like re-living it again. Wow! 7/10.

🍿

SORRY WE MISSED YOU (2019), my 6th (and probably last!) powerful gut-punch by British socialist Ken Loach. A fantastic piece of Neo-realist social drama, but one which is so-so depressing that it took me about a week to sit through it. I doubt I'll be able to follow up with more of the same. A working class family struggles mightily to stay floating above water, and is constantly defeated. Since the Reagan-Thatcher Axis of Evil, the infrastructure in England had been degraded as thoroughly as the one in the US, and the only option left for the ordinary poor is to go and fuck off. It's a dreary, anxiety-inducing nightmare of train-wrack coming toward us, unstoppable, merciless and uncaring. 8/10.

🍿

2 FROM BRAZIL:

🍿 THE END OF MAN (1971) is an unusual and bizarro Brazilian low-budget religious fairy tale. A naked stranger with very long fingernails emerges out of the sea, 'Messiah'-like, to influence everybody he meets. It's made by a pioneer of Brazilian horror genre, in the local B-movies style called 'Mouth of Garbage Cinema'. It's like an early Jodorowsky but without the drugs and the philosophy and also without Alejandro's considerably-mad talents. 3/10.

🍿 ELETRODOMÉSTICA (2005), my 3rd by Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho (After 'Bacurau' and 'Neighboring Sounds'). A stay at home housewife is going about her day, taking care of her 2 kids, cleaning and cooking, while also finding time to toke a hit of 'Mota' and to ride the spinning cycle of the washing machine for a quick release.... It's easy to recognize the same town as his first feature. Cute.

🍿

First watch: Sam Packinpah's 1974 neo-Western BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA. A rough, desperate treasure hunter and his prostitute lover driving a beat-up jalopy to look for the head of a dead gigolo. Dirty Mexican mise-en-scène. Kris Kristofferson plays a raping biker-thug. 3/10

RIP, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON!

🍿

“I love you with all my love...”

Grandiose genius Coppola directed my all-time favorite film ('The Conversation'), as well as my all-time favorite trilogy, so I was looking forward to finally see MEGALOPOLIS, his new end-of-life Opus Magnum. But this bloated, didactic, "operatic" epic about Shakespearean "Great men" like Cicero and Howard Roark and Cesar Catilina passed over my head until boredom come. The bullshit metaphors about the fall of the Roman Empire were indulgent and excessive. I can't see where did all the money go. I liked that Talia Shire played again the power-hungry matriarch, and I liked that Dinah Washington started singing 'What a different a day make' at a certain point, but otherwise, I had a hard time just finishing it.

🍿

Stanley Kubrick directed only 12 features and 4 shorts during his 50-year career. FLYING PADRE (1951) was his second film. A documentary about a Catholic priest in rural New Mexico who flies his own Piper Cub plane to administer to his flock. It's told in voice-over, without actual sound.

🍿

2 CANADIAN SHORTS:

🍿 PEEP SHOW, an early short (1981) by Canadian Atom Egoyan. A man at a photo booth tries to take some snapshots, but the photo booth misbehaves...

🍿 THE RIDE (1963), a Buster Keaton inspired joke of a chauffeur dreaming about a toboggan ride, while waiting for his employer. 4/10.

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My 2nd or 3rd re-watch of the very last episode of 'Succession'. With Open eyes, which is recognized now on some lists as the 'greatest TV episode of all time'. It's brutal all right, and proves to show that shoulder-slouching Kendall Roy was indeed a loser all along, a permanent Don Jr. Noted: It's interesting how the opening credit scene had been expanded from season to now. Also, how fluid and jerky was the camera work, full of "unfocused" blocking and cinéma vérité tricks. ♻️.

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TIM WALZ IS WALKING HIS RESCUE DOG and being interviewed by the guy from 'We rate dogs'. 17 wholesome minutes of a guy who's not weird. Cute!

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(ALL MY FILM REVIEWS - HERE).