#me making album mock ups and concepts in class

[starstaiined]

yellowjackets band au, my beloved

[miraculouscontent]

Hi, Adrien is handed things on a silver platter whereas Marinette has to work for them.

First thing’s first is just the concept of the love square. Chat Noir gets to interact with Ladybug no matter what because they’re heroes. Ladybug - who carries the weight and responsibility of heroism without getting benefited from it - is required to go to every battle due to her purification ability, and Chat Noir of course is going to show up because he loves both flirting with Ladybug and the freedom of being a superhero.

In addition, Adrien got his miraculous by helping Master Fu up (something that would be expected out of any semi-decent person; by the way, yes, I know the “””significance””” of the action, and it’s silly), whereas Marinette saved him from being hit by a car.

Adrien was allowed back in school with still no explanation from Gabriel (especially since he’s Hawk Moth) as to why he thought it was a good idea to send his son to a school where the very first akumatization had happened. It was Adrien’s goal for the episode alongside making friends, and Nino offered him friendship out of pity when Adrien sulked about how Chloe was the closest thing to a friend he had.

Chat crushes on Ladybug because she stood up to Hawk Moth in a speech dripping with confidence, caught what seemed like hundreds of akuma, and came up with a plan quick enough to save Mylene and Ivan from falling to their deaths from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Marinette (who Chat fell in love with one side of first, mind you, so already this is to his benefit), meanwhile, crushes on Adrien because the narrative gave her a falsehood about him never having any friends (i.e: no Chloe) and he gave her an umbrella while he was ten meters away from his actual ride (like with Fu, again, any decent person--).

Chat’s crush on Ladybug makes things harder for her because it causes him to throw tantrums mid-battle, get distracted and distract her because he’s busy flirting, all of which make her feel guilty for not returning his feelings. Marinette’s crush on Adrien makes things hard for her again because it causes her to embarrass herself while virtually everyone who knows teases/mocks her for it, their opinions of her even being dragged down due to the crush (see Alya with the Lila situation).

Chat is shipped with Ladybug by Parisians everywhere and Alya delighted in taking a picture of them kissing (that got posted on the Ladyblog without Ladybug’s consent). Likewise, the other LadyNoir kiss (that Ladybug had to do to free Chat from Dark Cupid’s control) was shown on live TV for all watching to see. Marinette’s kisses with Adrien, however, were either wiped from the timeline (in which Adrien got to keep a secret from her so he could date “””Ladybug”””) or used to humiliate her because Adrien was attempting a prank.

Ladybug realizes that Chat is in serious about her, not because he told her himself, but because he relayed it to Marinette who happened to be Ladybug. Marinette, on the other hand, has spent 3+ seasons attempting to confess her feelings to Adrien or make advances on him, all of which ended in some form of failure and some of which through no fault of her own.

Chloe shoved her in “Bubbler” (Adrien didn’t even check on her) and then Nathalie crushed the note she’d written on a scarf that Marinette put tons of time and effort into, leading to Adrien thinking it was from his dad.

“Copycat” was accidental and came on too strong, requiring its deletion.

She got distracted by Alya and forgot to write her name in “Dark Cupid,” her letter only further solidifying Chat’s crush on Ladybug.

She kept getting interrupted in “Gamer” after Alya chided her for using the event to get with Adrien (despite Alya doing the same thing for Marinette during the film in “Horrificator” while Mylene was MIA).

She wasn’t able to tell Adrien about Lila’s thievery in “Volpina” because the grimoire had to remain a secret.

The hat in “A Christmas Special” got given away within minutes and then not even brought back on-screen by Miraculous Ladybug (Adrien never even thanked Marinette personally for it).

Kagami came out of nowhere to take the fencing spot in “Riposte.”

Deciding not to make schemes only led to her embarrassment in “Gigantitan.”

She got made fun of and the notes all conveniently looked the same in “Backwarder,” leading to her mixing them up.

The macaron for Adrien (that Marinette would prepare every week) never got eaten by him and ended up causing the akuma after Chloe had emotionally manipulated Marinette into scheming with her.

Practicing on a statue (as per Tikki’s advice) in “The Puppeteer 2″ humiliated her when Adrien revealed himself as the statue.

She was embarrassed during the party in “Party Crasher” because she was pressured into dancing without her consent.

The timeline had to be reset in “Chat Blanc” and she had to lie to her friends that she hadn’t given Adrien the gift even though she’d actually succeeded, while the hat she made just for Adrien got written off as a gift from a random fan (which is an even worse fate than the scarf).

The confession in “Felix” was deleted by Felix himself before Adrien could see it.

And Adrien, meanwhile? Ohhhh boy, lemme tell you about Adrien.

He gets put into suggestive/close positions with Ladybug on many, many occasions, all for “free.”

He got a kiss from Ladybug in “Dark Cupid” that, remember, got photographed and put on live TV.

He got to goad the audience without consequence about he and Ladybug potentially being in a relationship eventually - gaining the knowledge that all of Paris was invested in LadyNoir to thoroughly stroke his ego - and then Ladybug had to act like they were a couple in “Prime Queen” to the point of holding Chat’s hand and saying that they were in love.

Likewise, “Glaciator” featured Ladybug having to act like a couple with him again, now to the point of kissing his cheek, and then Chat got a blush from her after he’d spent a good chunk of the akuma battle pouting that Ladybug didn’t come to the date he set up (that she hadn’t even known was a date because he purposefully withheld that information) despite her telling him that she’d have to see about it because she had plans.

He was reassured in “Anansi” on being “irreplaceable” after he made an unnecessary comment about being replaced by a turtle (Carapace).

He got to carry Ladybug around bridal style and also save her in “Sandboy” and “Reverser” respectively because she was rendered essentially useless without him, then got to save her again in “Frozer” after giving her the cold shoulder for rejecting his feelings.

He’s the one who got told by Marinette’s own parent not to apologize for how he feels in “Weredad” (note that Marinette herself never got this talk from Sabine, nor Tom, which very much could’ve prevented “Crocoduel”).

He got a cheek kiss from Ladybug in “Desperada” after getting to undo the very-much-against-the-rules identity reveal he made to her via Second Chance.

He got to look good in “Gamer 2.0″ when Ladybug was seeking advice from him despite the fact that her and Chat’s situations hero-wise are absolutely, completely, 100% different and he didn’t even try to take that into account.

He got Ladybug resting her head on his shoulder because of what she saw in a deleted time in which he - unbeknownst to her - lied by omission.

A fake Ladybug tried to kiss him on two separate occasions, “The Puppeteer 2″ and “Ladybug,” much to his delight (something to note is that the fake Adrien who went after Ladybug in both “Chameleon” and “Felix” tried to force themselves on her).

He got the “jealousy” moment from Ladybug in “Heart Hunter” and then a hug from Aquabug in “Miracle Queen.”

He received no repercussions for taking Ladybug out on a date (that she wasn’t aware was going to be a date) in “Gang of Secrets,” at best having to apologize for her behavior to the people around them.

He got reassured that Ladybug “couldn’t do this without him” in “Guiltrip,” even to the point of being told that she “probably doesn’t tell him enough.”

He got told by Ladybug that she would never abandon him in “Hack-San” because he was guilting her sulking about how his not knowing her identity would mean that he’d never see her again if she left him somehow.

And before you think this only extends to the romantic aspects of love square, let me tell you now that it definitely doesn’t.

Marinette entered the bowler hat competition and had to defend her own work to the judge.

She ran for class representative and had to earn the trust and faith of her class in “Darkblade” when put up against Chloe’s bribery.

She did whatever she could to make sure Juleka got her picture taken in “Reflekta.”

She had to actually craft a pair of glasses suitable for Jagged Stone in “Pixelator” and then make a gorgeous album cover for him in “Guitar Villain.” (note that this partially led to “Troublemaker” where she was just happily wanting to advertise her parents��� business, and the writers multiplied her Adrien pictures for the sake humiliating her when it was caught on live TV)

She had to work to get ungrounded by improving her attendance in “Simon Says,” because she had been busy being a hero.

She worked to try and get Nathaniel and Marc to get together on a project, knowing it would be good for both of them.

She set up an entire celebration for her bully to try and make said bully feel good about herself in “Malediktator.”

She did Kitty Section’s designs and costumes in “Silencer” and then had to go protect them from being stolen, along with her friends’ music.

She had to wear multiple miraculouses in “Kwamibuster” in order to go against Kwamibuster and get back both the ladybug earrings and the cat ring.

“Gamer 2.0.” Just... “Gamer 2.0.″

She made a whole complex lockbox to protect the Miracle Box in “Gang of Secrets.”

She worked to reach out to Zoe in “Sole Crusher” even after Zoe trashed her in front of the school, going as far as to try and comfort Zoe’s akumatized form.

She had to stand up for the movie to be fixed in “Queen Banana” because no one else would.

She has to work each and every akuma battle as Ladybug, figuring out Lucky Charms that can range from simple to complicated, while simultaneously dealing with a partner who relies heavily on her plans and will occasionally make things harder by either throwing tantrums mid-battle or distracting her.

And meanwhile...

Chat Noir got to throw the blame onto Ladybug for Theo’s akumatization in “Copycat.”

Marinette covered for him in “The Collector” when he was the one who recklessly lost the grimoire by not being careful with it.

He got handed Fu’s identity in “Syren” after whining to Ladybug, throwing blame on her and trying to bribe Plagg so they’d tell him, threatening to quit while Paris was underwater, and all of this while Marinette herself only got to meet Fu because she had the grimoire on her.

He was given the moral high ground in “Malediktator” despite not having to actually care about Chloe enough to call/check on her.

He got to sit back in “Chameleon” and not concern himself with judgment or comment on the situation with Lila, even going into “Ladybug” where he continues to inform no one about Lila (including Marinette, who briefly believed that Lila came to her senses and was willing to make amends) after Lila got Marinette expelled, despite the complete lack of risk on his part considering who his father is and how harshly Lila would be dragged through the mud if she dared to trash his reputation.

He clumsily trips in “Captain Hardrock” in a fashion that reveals an instrument he happens to play, leading to him getting invited to join Kitty Section within seconds of being on the Liberty. (so when Adrien is clumsy, it’s to his benefit, and when Marinette is clumsy, it’s to her detriment)

He never got called out for distracting Ladybug and digging for details that could relate to her identity in “Kwamibuster” (which, again, forced Marinette to do all the work to fix things).

He got a party thrown for him in “Party Crasher” by Nino, and also guys that Adrien had never put forth effort into interacting with or befriending (Marinette had also been through more with all of them sans Nino).

He got to force Ladybug’s favorite traits of his out of her in “Truth” because she was under the influence of Truth’s powers.

He got off the hook for sacrificing himself in “Lies” by flirting about Ladybug’s “irresistible angry little pout,” and also never got repercussions for flirting with another girl while dating Kagami.

He never had to face consequences for smashing a chimney in “Sentibubbler,” even as he was dismissing the gesture because he knew Miraculous Ladybug would fix it.

He didn’t have to apologize for his behavior in “Hack-San,” whereas Ladybug "had to” for telling someone else her identity (the details of why - i.e: that she was having a mental breakdown and needed a release from it - being completely left out) and not telling him that she was leaving (when she literally hadn’t had time to tell him anything; do note as well that Adrien didn’t have to do the same in either “Backwarder” or “Startrain”).

He received no consequences and was in fact rewarded for allowing the akuma in “Wishmaker” to hit him, a choice that Viperion has to live with because it caused him to see both Ladybug and Chat’s identities (meaning now Luka - someone who, like the guys in “Party Crasher” - Adrien has done virtually nothing for - can support Adrien since he knows).

And I could go on, I really could, but my point is that Adrien is given all of the sympathy and sad points while Marinette basically never is. Just like how he was born swimming in money, fame, and adoring fans, the show hands out praises and all the things he’s ever wanted because he’s sad.

He doesn’t have to try. He can whine and complain and vent to Plagg about how “replaceable” he is because the show will mollycoddle him to the moon and back. They’ll put his crush on Ladybug’s shoulders to make her feel guilty while Marinette is over here having to bust her butt just for a chance at Adrien recognizing any semblance of her feelings, and he goes on being blissfully ignorant of them so he doesn’t have to suffer like Ladybug does.

In addition, Marinette has to either be “““making mistakes”““ or embarrassing herself in order to get screen time because the burden of lessons fails upon her, whereas Adrien can be name-dropped without even doing anything.

It’s not just the love square that’s unbalanced, it’s everything between these two. Ladybug is scolded and punished for the slightest act of selfishness while Adrien is encouraged and rewarded for being selfish and demanding things. Marinette has to work to be noticed (and sometimes won’t even get that much) while all Adrien has to do is put on his best sad face and the show will bend over backwards to either give him exactly what he wants or make him the sympathetic one through the narrative.

Even if Adrien had known about Marinette’s crush at the time that Ladybug knew about Chat’s, it wouldn’t matter, because the tipped scales in how they’re treated would still make it so Marinette is the one at fault for “dumping her feelings onto Adrien” while Ladybug is still forced to interact with Chat even if his advances make her uncomfortable.

[lost-in-the-80s]

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Pairing: Axl Rose x (fem) reader

Words: 2,546k

Requested by: @sugwinter

Summary: You, one of the most prestigious actresses in Hollywood, meet Axl Rose at a party and the two of you just can’t stay away from each other. 

A/N: I’m sorry Tarantino, but the title fitted too well for me not to use it. Thanks for the request, darling! I LOVED this concept!! I hope you like it 💗

Note: This is the second version of it, since I didn’t like the first one. Tell me what you guys thought of it :)

Tag list: @roger-taylors-car @ladieswttda @teasid @metalheartofgold @slashscowboyboots @ginny-rose-sixx @rumoured-whispers @normatural​ add yourself to my tag list :)

Once upon a time in Hollywood, there was a smart young woman named Y/N. She had always been ambitious and very determined so she knew she wanted to be an actress at a very young age.

When she was 16 she started running after her dreams. Coming from a poor neighborhood in Los Angeles, she’d take the bus every day after school and go to Hollywood, distributing resumes at every set she could find, hoping to get any type of work that could bring her closer to her dream.

The chance came a few months later when she was hired to be the director’s assistant. Her work consisted of getting coffee, organizing his table, staying with him while filming and distributing the scripts to all the cast members.

He was directing a sitcom and one day the main actress didn’t show up for the filming, realizing that the two of them looked alike, he asked Y/N to take her place during that day.

She did such a good job, that the following year he called her asking if she would be interested in taking part in a movie.

That was the first of many jobs, 10 years had passed after that. It was 1991 and Y/N was one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood, any movie with her name on, joined countless people in cinema lines just to see it. 

She didn’t just make movies and series, but she extended her career,  taking part in some modeling jobs for major brands and appearing in video clips.

That’s how she met Steven Tyler, the infamous vocalist of Aerosmith. She had said in an interview that Aerosmith was one of her favorite bands and got surprised when the band’s manager got in touch with her a few days later asking if she would want to take part in a video clip of theirs. 

Doing small talk before the footage they found out they had the same zodiac sign, Aries. After that the two of them got really along, Steven invited her to have dinner with him and his wife and soon all of them became good friends. 

That’s how she ended up here, on March 26th in front of his mansion, a bottle of expensive wine wrapped as a gift in one hand while the other rang the doorbell. 

“Y/N! Come in!” It was Steven’s wife.

“Hello, Teresa, how are you?” She hugged her.

“I’m fine!” She smiled tenderly at Y/N.

There was rock music blasting from the speakers sprawled around the living room, where lots of people were dancing and having fun together. Steven was known for having many friends.

“Ste!!” She shouted, lifting her arms to get a hug from the man.

“Y/N! I’m happy that you came!”  He hugged her while smiling.

“Happy birthday!!” She let go of him. “Here, I brought you a gift.”

“Ohh, this is one of my favorites!” He smirked checking out the bottle. “I’ll take it to the wine house before someone decides to drink it.” He gave her a small smile, turning around. 

That’s when she saw him. He was talking to some people, his hair half-covered by a blue bandana. He was already looking at her, smiling in her direction when their gazes met. 

A shiver ran through her body at that moment. He was beautiful, an adjective she hardly used with men. But damn, she had never seen a man like that before. Everything on him looked perfect, his beard, his hair, his eyes and the shape of his face. 

He lifted his beer in her direction and she gave him a small smile, contemplating if she should go and try to talk to him. However, a friend of hers showed up, blocking her plans.

After a few minutes of talking her friend walked away, but the ginger man had disappeared. Walking towards the kitchen she got herself a beer and went to the backyard where some people were smoking, including Steven.

“Can I have one?” She asked, stopping beside him.

He handed her the cigarette, without saying anything. The two of them just stayed there, looking at the night sky in silence. 

“What’s up?” She frowned, turning to look at him.

“What do you mean?” He looked down at her.

“You’re quiet tonight.” She drank from her beer, still looking at him.

“That makes two of us.” He smiled at her.

“Fair enough.” She grinned. “You go first.” Y/N pointed at him with the bottle while taking the cigarette to her lips.

“I was just thinking… I’m already in my forties.” 

“Annd?” She prolonged the question, raising an eyebrow.

“I thought I’d be dead by now.” He said giggling, making her laugh as well.

She shook her head. “Quit using it and I’m sure you’ll live a very long life, Tyler.” 

“I’ll try, I’ll try.” He puffed some smoke. “What about you? What’s going on that little head of yours?” He touched her forehead with his index finger, giggling at his own gesture.

“There’s a guy inside…” 

He raised an eyebrow, instigating her to keep talking.

“He seems familiar.”

“How does he look like?”

“He’s ginger, with a bandana and leather jacket.” She dragged some smoke.

“Oh, that’s Axl. He’s from Guns n Roses.” He threw his cigarette on the pavement, stepping on it.

Realization took hold of her face. “Oh yeah. Paradise City! I remember now.”

“Did he catch your eye?” He asked smirking.

“You know how I am. I’m weak on the knees for a ginger.” She smirked back.

“Let’s go inside then, I’ll introduce the two of you.” 

She followed him inside the house, putting out the cigarette in an ashtray she found on the way.

They found him in the kitchen, putting some punch on a red plastic glass nearby the counter. 

“Axl!” He shouted over the music, stopping nearby the man. “There’s someone here I’d like you to meet..”

Fuck, Steven. You really know how to be discreet. She thought to herself.

“Axl, this is Y/N.” With a hand on her back, he led her closer to him. “Y/N this is Axl.” He grinned at them.

“Nice to meet you.” Axl said, extending his hand for her to shake.  

She shook his hand giving him a small smile.

“I was just telling Y/N that you guys released a new album this year…” Steven looked at her. 

“There’s two of them actually.” He answered while taking a sip from the punch.

“So I’ve heard! But I didn’t get the chance to listen to them yet.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty recent… Did you listen to the previous ones?”

“I did! They’re quite impressive, I must say.”

He smiled at her. “I’ve seen some movies of yours too.”

“Oh, did you? What did you think of them?”

“They’re… quite impressive.” He mocked her while grinning. 

She giggled. 

“Ste, can you help me with something?” Teresa showed up, hugging Steven from the side.

“Of course my darling.” He hugged her back. “Sorry guys.” Giving them a small smile he left with Teresa. 

“Punch?” He asked seeing that her bottle was empty. 

“Yes, please.” She placed the bottle on the counter. 

Axl handed her a glass, their fingers brushing against each other when she took it from his hand, making a strange electricity run through their bodies.

“Do you live here? In L.A I mean.” She asked before taking a small sip of the beverage. 

“I do, even though I’m never at home. I’m out on tour now, came back just for a few weeks.”

“It must be really tiring to be always traveling.”

“Well, it is, but it’s worth it. After all I get to do what I love.” His eyes shined while he spoke and she smiled at his passion. 

A tall guy came to the counter trying to get some punch for himself, making the two of them move.

Starting to lead him towards an adjacent living room, she asked. “Have you always wanted to be a singer?”

“No really, my family is very religious so I started singing in the church’s choir. Then someone told my mother that I could sing and she made me take classes almost every day. It was very exhausting, but it made me realize that I actually liked to sing.”

Arriving at the room, nobody was there and the music made itself lower, allowing them to talk in a normal volume. They sat on the purple velvet couch. 

“I would’ve never guessed. And are you still religious?”

“I mean, I don’t go to church anymore, but yeah, I’m still very religious.”

She nodded drinking from her glass. 

“What about you? Have you always wanted to be an actress?”

“Yes! I remember being 3 or 4 and sitting in the living room, I’d point to the TV and tell my mom that I wanted to do that.” She smiled with the memory, her eyes getting a different glist. 

“That’s a sweet memory.” He smiled at her.

And so they carried on with the conversation, talking about their favorite things and their ambitions, never letting an uncomfortable silence fill in. Even if they were sure that if the silence set in it would not be uncomfortable. The two were too comfortable with each other for this to happen.

Axl was leaning against the couch casually, his legs spread open while S/N had removed her high heels and was sitting with her two legs sprawled on top of the couch.

“And how did you end up in Los Angeles?” She asked.

“Well, when I was 16 or something, this boy from my school, he’s my rhythm guitarist now, he started a garage band with some other dudes and asked me to be their vocalist.” 

He paused getting closer to her.

“In the beginning, I was very shy, there would be days where I’d literally leave before I could sing anything. But after some time I got used to it and eventually realized that it was nice to rehearse with them.”

“However the band didn’t work out and when Izzy graduated high-school he moved to L.A, he said he’d start a band here. He asked me to come with him, but I was kinda scared of coming to a big city like this, so I stayed in Lafayette.” 

He looked around, realizing that the music had stopped. Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t listened to anything for a good while. “I think we’re the only ones who are still here.” He giggled.

“No shit! What time is it?” She touched his arm, turning it towards her so she could see the time on his wristwatch. “Fuck, it’s almost 5 am.”

“Wow. We should go then.”

“Yeah!” Getting up she got her heels and purse and followed him through the house.

There were some people passed out in the living room and Steven and Teresa were in the kitchen, nearby the sink, talking quietly.

After saying their goodbyes Axl and Y/N exited the house. The cool breeze involved their bodies, even though they could see the sun starting to shine on the horizon. 

“Did you come driving?” He asked.

“No, I got a taxi actually.”

“Come, I’ll give you a ride then.”

They got into the car and Axl started driving slowly down the street. “Where should I take you to?”

“I live in Venice.”

“Alright then.” He turned right in a bifurcation.

Checking the interior of the car, Y/N realized it was a convertible one. She gasped. “It’s a convertible! Open it up, please!” 

He giggled pressing a button that opened the bonnet. “Why are you so impressed? I’m sure you have at least three of these in your car collection…”

“I don’t have a car collection. I don’t even have a car” She turned around on her seat. The bonnet was fully open and she enjoyed feeling the breeze on her hair.

“Why not?” He frowned, looking at her for a brief moment.

“You’re gonna laugh at me.” She sat still on her seat, placing her feet on the dashboard. 

“I promise I won’t.”

“Fine… I don’t know how to drive.” 

“Wait. What? But what about all those movies where you were driving?” He looked at her, trying to see if she was joking.

“I wasn’t really driving, silly.” She giggled.

He laughed along.

“Anyway, you were telling me about how you ended here.”

“Oh yeah! So, Izzy came to L.A and I stayed for two more years. I got a job and stuff, but I was always getting in trouble. I’d spend the night in jail and they’d let me go in the morning ‘cause it wasn’t a big deal. But then I got in trouble one more time and they told me they’d arrest me for real if they got me again. So I realized I should leave the city.”

“Hmm, so you’re a bad boy…” Y/N smirked.

“I guess so…. But you’re no saint yourself! You’re not best friends with the press…”

“Well...yeah! The problem is that I don’t know how to be politically correct, I just know how to be me, and people don’t usually like when you give them your honest opinion.”

He looked at her and saw that she was looking through the window.

“On top of that, I have a high tendency of not giving a fuck… I like to live, you know? I like to go out and enjoy every moment, I like to live in the present. But apparently, you’re a bad influence if they see you leaving a club at 3 am every weekend.”

With every word she said, the more he wanted to know about her. She was so much more than what he had thought. 

It was a long drive to Venice and accompanied by the soft music playing on the car radio they talked all the way, never getting tired of each other’s voice.

“That’s my building.” She pointed to a big white building in front of the beach.

“Fully delivered.” Axl said smiling, stopping the car in front of it and turning around to look at her.

“I really liked spending time with you.” She smiled.

“Do you think we could do it again on a date?” He asked expectantly.

“I’d love that! What about Friday?”

“Friday’s good for me. I’ll pick you up at 7 pm.” 

“Okay.”

The two of them just stayed still, looking at each other without saying anything. 

“Is it too early for me to kiss you?” He asked smiling.

“I don’t know. Why don’t you try it?” She smiled back.

And so the two of them leaned in, involving each other in a quick kiss that turned into a passionate one.

After a few seconds, she pulled away, catching her breath and opening the car door.

“Goodnight, Axl.” 

“Goodnight, Y/N.”

Little did they know that this was the beginning of a beautiful love story. Full of struggles and problems but that eventually worked out. They found a way of accepting their differences and getting along in a way that few couples could do. And after many years people still talked about them, after all, they became the most iconic 90s couple. 

[sanstropfremir]

So I have opinions on the other stages but like most of us I can’t stop thinking about the SF9 stage. Hanya said it really well in her response but I think we have to break up the members into the ones who tried to emulate Taemin’s androgyny and those who just flat out didn’t try. So in order I’d put it Taeyang, Jaeyoon, Zuho. Those three stood out to me the most as really pushing into more feminine ways of carrying themselves and dancing especially Jaeyoon-like where did that man come from it was very unexpected. Then Chani and Inseong were both more neutral. I can’t put Chani in the first category mostly because of the contrast between his dancing and style with the female dancers that made it obvious that he was still trying to be more masculine despite having certain moves that definitely lend to a feline style like all the hip movements(whether consciously or unconsciously). And last Hwiyoung, Youngbin, and Dawon. I think this is the distinction that some people were making with “sexy” and “Taemin sexy”. Like everyone just associates him with sexiness but opening your shirt to show off your abs doesn’t fit with Taemin’s usual sensuality. Taemin seems to be more focused on movement (throwback to your post on his dancing style) so in order to emulate him there a certain attitude and way in which you carry yourself through movement is necessary. Also youngbin’s rap part did not fit with the concept either-it was too energetic and chill (too much swagger?). Like the way he moved compared to say Zuho was more in line with his usual stuff rather than fitting the way he moved to the stage and song. It’s also interesting to see that the outfits seem to also keep in line with this. Zuho and Taeyang have their midsections showing in a way that’s more common in women’s fashion then in men’s, Chani and Inseong are almost completely covered (so neither in one direction or the other) and Hwiyoung has his arms bared to show off his manly, manly biceps. And of course there’s Dawon. It’s fascinating to compare the members with the more revealing outfits. Like they all have their midsections uncovered but to be more feminine it’s only just a crop top and to be more masculine you open the shirt up completely. It makes sense. Also I’ve been obsessed with Jaeyoon and I can’t exactly pinpoint why he stood out so much especially when Taeyang is RIGHT THERE (though I don’t really think Taeyang got a solo scene but rather was center on the group dances which kind of dilutes his parts). Like his outfit is pretty plain but I love the cutout and the fact that he has long sleeves but they aren’t mesh. It’s simple but effective. I kept thinking this was the Hetero man’s Move especially during Youngbin and Dawson’s parts.

ok this took a really long time because honestly i changed what i was writing about like four times in the middle of the process and i changed my mind like four times because this is a very complicated topic and i could not settle on what the best way to come at it was. tbh i dont think i did the best job even though this is over a thousand words but i have no clue how to make this any more coherent without re-reading all of my flatmate and i's gender theory books and that's just way too much. but here we go.

EDIT: here is hanya’s post about the stage for reference!

where i'm at right now is that i think we are overlaying taemin’s current gender antics with what the actual move was. move has transformed along with taemin, and as such we look back at it with the understanding of what it becomes, but if we take a moment to forget that context, well... let me show you. here’s the 171019 comeback stage. and the 171027. and the 171029. now, here’s the 190223 stage from sketchbook. and from almost a year later, at the 2019 mbc music festival. and now here’s it from a month ago on the tiktok stage. it’s changed a significant amount not only in how he performs it, but in how the costumes and his body affect what it looks like. the cutoff muscle shirt of october 2017 absolutely has a different connotation than the lace back and velvet princess glove and the diamonds of december 2019.

i still do believe that sf9’s cover is missing a huge dimension because it comes from a fundamental non-understanding of what people who present even the slightest bit outside of the gender binary go through, i don’t think they were wrong in interpreting it as ‘man doing non-aggressive but seductive dance moves’ because on the surface, that’s what it is. taemin has actually spent a significant portion of his solo career doing what you described as traditionally 'masculine' dressing; he did famously rip his shirt off for the first non-music show performance of danger, after all. what we associate as 'taemin sensuality' is relatively new for him, it's more prominently a post-want mannerism because pre-move (and for a lot of move itself) he was very focussed on being perceived as masculine.

if we look at sf9's costumes individually, the breakdown looks like this:

chani - skinny trouser, chiffon shirt, and a cropped wrap suit jacket with a tie back

dawon - straight leg trouser, open silk shirt

jaeyoon - asymmetric open shoulder mock turtleneck, wide leg trouser

taeyang - wide leg trouser, faux leather open shoulder crop top

inseong - silk/silk blend shirt, cropped asymmetric suit jacket with a crossover back, tailored trouser

hwiyoung - sleeveless mock neck faux leather vest, straight leg cargo pant

youngbin - mock neck asymmetric crop top with a mesh underlayer, wide leg trouser

zuho - skinny trouser, mock neck crop top, cropped suit jacket with a pointed front

taemin has worn most of these looks. cropped wrap jacket? ngda beyond live velvet suit. open silk shirt? the move album cover. asymmetric shoulder cutout? several want performances. the only exception is that he doesn’t often wear non-skinny trousers, but even then he did for his beauty and the beast moment with the jinro frog. and sleeveless was the whole costume concept for move in the first place. even youngbin’s look is very similar to this outfit from the offsick concert series. but silhouette is only one factor of a complete costume design - you have to take into account the performer’s body, and how that silhouette is perceived on that body. it’s interesting that you specify that hwiyoung’s biceps are ‘manly’ and grouped him in with the more ‘masculine’ of the sf9 members; as i showed at the beginning of this, taemin was at his most physically muscular for move promotions. hwiyoung has just as pretty a face as taemin, but we perceive him differently in this outfit because his body is categorized as more masculine because his muscles are bigger. and this is fundamentally a gender essentialist argument because bigger muscles are not actually ‘more masculine,’ muscles don’t have gender they’re just how humans move around. it’s just our societally impressed gender binary that makes us think that.

another costume point i want to make is how you describe chani and inseong as being completely covered so ‘neither one direction or the other,’ which i would like to break down a bit. for starters, jaeyoon is also essentially fully covered, but you perceived him as being one of the more androgynous ones over chani or inseong. why? because his silhouette was more form-fitted? because there was an uncommon area of skin showing? chani has a tightly fit silhouette as well, and you can see a fair amount of his skin because his shirt is chiffon. why is a suit neutral but something cut to follow the contour of a body not? the fact of the matter is, the suit is the most symbolically gendered garment in the world; it is loaded with western colonial and patriarchal implications. we just view it as 'neutral' because we’ve been normalized to see it as neutral. now neither of the suits chani or inseong are wearing are traditionally cut, and chani’s especially is quite subversive in its construction, but taemin is no stranger to using the implications of a suit for move, here’s the stage from 171105. grey double breasted pinstripe suits were the most popular style for businessmen in the postwar west, and still maintain a prominent indicator of class and power to this day.

you are correct in pointing out that the movements and mannerisms of the members don’t all match the same level, but i want to specifically talk about the intro moment with chani, because you mention him as trying to be more masculine, which i very much disagree with. chani actually does the best at retaining the body neutrality of the original choreo because the original choreo as a stand alone isn’t that seductive or ‘feminine.’ yea he doesn’t have the attitude down pat but the guy’s 20 and is clearly not as comfortable with being this kind of sexy. the reason why you’re perceiving him to be more ‘masculine’ in his movements is because the backup dancers are frankly, being pretty aggressively sexual in a feminine coded way around him. of course he’s gonna look out of place! part of what gives move its uniqueness is that the backup dancers are doing the exact same choreo as taemin, at the exact same intensity. not an altered version where they slut drop behind him.

like i said at the very beginning, i think taemin’s been tipped into the ‘feminine’ category under false assumptions, so it’s doing a bit of skewing of the responses to this stage. if i were to make a very reductivist diagram, i think a lot of responses have been (taemin) <- neutral -> masculine, with the implication that taemin is the feminine analogue, but in reality what taemin is and is aiming for is feminine -> (taemin) <- masculine. because we have been socialized to see things in such an aggressive binary, it can be very difficult to pick out what a true neutral is.

[fanfuckingfic]

You Move Like Real People Do

(Choreographer!Jimin x Ecologist!Namjoon x Singer!Reader)

Summary: Sometimes loving someone is just too easy. It just sinks into you so deeply or floats you away so high either way it shouldn't be hard to hold on to.

Wordcount: 2.6k

Warnings: (Sappy fluff, polyamory, lots of talk about bog bodies, excessive amounts of admiration, the songs are literally Hozier’s and you should listen to them if you haven’t, oh my god this is so self indulgent)

A/N: I haven't written in like 3 years and I've never tried bullet fic style so please be nice :( also I love Hozier so much oh my god I literally just built a whole universe in my brain around his music + bangtan and I think Movement fits Jimin so well and LRPD is a sick song and Joon is a just weird nerd but anyway please enjoy and lemme know what you think! 

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Namjoon is an ecologist and Jimin is a choreographer and Y/n is a famous indie-rock blues singer/songwriter (literally just fucking Hozier because I love that man with every bit of my heart).

You and Joon are early risers and spend mornings sipping coffee and reading together on the couch while you wait for Jimin to get ready for the classes he teaches alongside being a choreographer so they can kiss him good morning and wish him a good day when he leaves.

You’re sure to put extra honey in his green tea to-go cup, and he kisses you both quickly on the cheek before scurrying out the door.

They both kind of fiddle around with their day cause Joon is a professor at the local university and only has classes twice a week and finished grading that last assignment yesterday.

So now he's watering his plants and terrariums in the greenhouse porch you all have and your sitting there fiddling with your guitar, messing around with some chords sometimes writing them down sometimes not.

Casually you ask Joon which student had the best paper.

“One student went out of their way to be a kiss ass if that counts.”

You ask how he means with a chuckle.

“Well you know how I've been writing a thesis about bog bodies and what-not?”

“Yes of course, love, you only remind me of the phenomenon every chance you have.” You look up at him with mock disdain. 

His eyebrows furrow, “I thought you liked talking about the bog bodies” He pouts and you honestly can't even try to deny it.

“I do, I think it's kind of beautiful- not like dead people that's shitty- but when you describe how the swamps and bogs preserve them and how they’re found.” You take in a deep breath mulling over your words for moment.

“You make things like that sound so beautiful, Joonie. Even if I don't get half the big sciencey words you say. It sorta sounds like people falling in love with something they shouldn't but doing it anyway.” You smile to yourself thinking of him talking to (mostly at) you.

Namjoon still gets flustered easily by your and Jimin's creative ways of declaring your love.

He hears Jimin's tinkling laugh in your music and his own words in your songs, sometimes he feels like he doesn't love you both back enough but you both are quick remind him that he doesn't show love through notes and twirls

He shows them through flowers he picks and the way he's always willing to interrupt himself to explain something when he sees confusion in either of your eyes, because he knows you want to but wont stop his train of thought, you both want to understand what he's babbling on about because you love him.

(And he looks so fuckin hot when he goes on his passionate rants about certain bacteria being the back bone for an entire ecosystem how could you not?)

He blushes and clears his throat.

You always find the beauty in everything, can turn just about anything into a love story, a poem.

He loves that about you and Jimin you're both so able to make the world more beautiful with your bodies and minds. You both love that he adds so much sustenance to that beauty. 

“You're right, bog bodies deserve love, just like any real person does. But a student wrote their paper on them and used me as a source in their reference page.” He huffs, still amused by the students' tenacity. 

“Any real person, huh? You gave them an A didn't you?” You absorb his words before deadpanning.

Namjoon doesn't answer and instead bends down to kiss your lips then your forehead before he goes back to being very interested in how his Venus fly trap is doing.

Some days when your writer's block is extra bad and you've been struggling to come up with lyrics that mean anything or chords to go with them, Jimin asks if you want to come with him to the studio.

He's just experimenting with some new choreography so it's just you two. 

He notices when you get into these slumps you can't quite reach your way out of and staying in the house all cooped up trying to get inspired by the same things you see everyday isn't going to help. 

It's a classical piece a dance company hired him to choreograph, wordless dancing was always his forte.

Feeling the music move through him and around him, throw him to and fro. He likes to feel like a tool of expression- like an instrument to be played. 

You watch him work and think and move, over and over again, something just slightly different each time just slightly closer to what he wants. 

He's breathless by the time he comes to sit next you against the back wall he saw you staring the whole time and loves how he can still make you and Joon speechless and swooning even after all the years together. 

“Sometimes I forget you're real, you know, when you dance.” You murmur head on your knees still in a daze after watching him.

Jimin quirks an eyebrow and smirks.

“The hell does that mean?” He simpers, knowing you're probably about to say something that will completely floor him and make him fall for you even harder. 

“You just stop looking real I guess, you look like if I reached out to touch you, you would still just be barley out of reach, like driving towards a rainbow or a mirage, ya know?” 

He quirks his head, not really understanding what you mean but trying to.

“You're just so good at using your body to show a concept you almost kind of become one. I don't know, mostly, I just feel like I'd chase you forever if you really were unreachable like that, I don't think I'd mind.” You shrug and reach for his hand to fiddle with. 

He exhales in surprise. He was absolutely right. Floored.

“Would you dance with me? Running after me doesn't sound as pretty as us dancing together forever.” He asks twisting you fingers with his.

“I don't think I'd have a choice not wanting to dance with you would be like not wanting to breathe.”

He sighs dramatically. “Babe! How am I supposed to be okay after you say shit like that? Huh?” He laughs and shoves your shoulder playfully.

You laugh and fall over pulling him with you. 

Namjoon comes by later with drinks from the cafe he knows Jimin loves and finds you both slow dancing in the middle of the empty studio.

You both pull him in between you and continue to sway back and forth. It's sweet and romantic and your drinks go cold before any of you are ready to let go of each other.

Your latest album was amazing and you're about to go on tour and you're nervous to be away from your guys for so long cause last time you went on tour you weren’t as famous and such didn't go to different countries to perform. 

You're gonna miss them terribly and they miss you twice as bad and they definitely bawl their eyes out when your tour bus is out of sight.

They tried really hard to keep up the smiles for you cause you deserve the success and the recognition without guilt or reservations but wow the house is so quiet without your absent-minded humming and strumming and no knew pieces of paper with potential lyrics scattered around the countertops. 

You all keep in touch of course- face-timing at least once a day with both or either of them and you ask them not to watch any recorded performances cause you don't want them to spoil it for when you come back and do your final home concert. 

Your reason being: you left two songs off the album you wanted to perform on tour.

So now it's your last concert before you get to sleep in the same bed as your loves again, they arrive early but you're still too busy with sound check and your drummer having boyfriend problems to get more than a hug and kiss to each of them. 

They don't mind though they know how concerts are for you. You love them- you get to give your fans a bit of your soul and they all give a bit right back. 

They meander through the crowd towards the front not too close though. Your manager tried to get them to stay backstage but they both wanted to get the full experience since they did as promised and had steered clear of any footage of the concert. 

When you walk out everyone lights up and the energy in the whole concert hall shifts.

You smile so bright and they're close enough they can see the surprise on your face when you look down into the crowd and see them. Your eyes soften and get a little misty but ever the professional you trudge on. 

Song after song you work the crowd into the comfort of your melodies and words have people screaming, crying and eating out of the palm of your hand so easily. 

You get to the end of your set, Namjoon and Jimin know- you'd asked them for help when planning the show. They knew which songs you were gonna sing and when but it didn't occur to them it seemed just a bit short until now when you're clearly your throat and asking for the house lights to be brought up just a bit. 

“The next two songs are love songs, I would sing about political injustice and grieving a metaphorical loss all day if I could-” the crowd hoots a few times with their chuckles and Namjoon and Jimin feel surprised grins growing on their faces.

“but I'm just too in love to not write a song or two.”

You strum a tune he’s only slightly familiar with, its something he’s heard you tweak for the past year or so.

“The lyrics of this one are a bit odd and terribly specific to a certain person so bare with me.” 

The auditorium murmurs a laugh again knowing your lyrics more often than not are. 

“I had a thought, dear, however scary

About that night, The bugs and the dirt

Why were you digging?

What did you bury, before those hands pulled me from the earth?

I will not ask you where you came from

I will not ask you, neither should you

Honey just put your sweet lips on my lips

We should just kiss like real people do”

The piano sounds and the haunting harmony from your back up singers makes Namjoon’s heart race. 

He knows what you're singing about, Jimin knows too he might not get it as well as Namjoon does right now- some of the things Joon talks about are just slightly too icky for him- but he does know that if he could dance about Joon’s brain he would. 

He smiles when Namjoon's hand squeezes his, his eyes unable to look away from you and the little story being told between you two right now. 

“I knew that look dear, eyes always seeking 

Was there in someone, that dug long ago

So I will not ask you, why you were creeping

In some sad way I already know

I will not ask you where you came from

I will not ask you and neither would you

Honey just put your sweet lips on my lips

We should just kiss like real people do”

Noli timere Namjoon hears the words being dragged and stretched in your vocals and his heart clenches.

“I could not ask you where you came from

I could not ask you, neither could you

Honey just put your sweet lips on my lips

We could just kiss like real people do”

Your voice tapers off and the strums slow as you open your eyes and hold his gaze meaningfully. 

Namjoon is left feeling like he's floating.

You wrote a song about something he cares about, you wrote him a song about one of his favorite things even if it is a very creepy weird thing.

You took all the thoughts he poured into your ears and made it something people could love just a little bit easier. He almost thought he couldn't love you more than he already did.

“This next one might be a bit less niche but if you've ever seen your lover dance you would know exactly what its about.” 

The heavy dip of bass vibrates their feet and a resounding clap comes to fill the air as the surprise and tears come his eyes. 

“I still watch you when you're groovin'

As if through water from the bottom of a pool

You're movin' without movin'

And when you move, I'm moved”

Jimin’s hand comes to his mouth and you smile mischievously into your mic.

“You are a call to motion

There, all of you a verb in perfect view

Like Jonah on the ocean

When you move, I'm moved

When you move I'm put to mind of all that I wanna be

When you move I could never define all that you are to me”

You look directly at him making sure he knows this is his song. 

“So move me, baby

Shake like the bough of a willow tree

You do it naturally

Move me, baby

You are the rite of movement

Its reasonin' made lucid and cool

I know it's no improvement

When you move, I move”

Jimin laughs wetly at your joke. You’re wrong- he thinks- your body is absolutely and improvement of any situation. 

“You're less Polunin leapin'

Or Fred Astaire in sequence

Honey, you, you're Atlas in his sleepin'

And when you move, I'm moved

When you move I can recall somethin' that's gone from me

When you move, Honey, I'm put in awe of somethin' so flawed and free

So move me, baby

Shake like the bough of a willow tree

You do it naturally, move me, baby

So move me, baby, Like you've nothin' left to prove

And nothin' to lose, move me, baby

Ooh, ooh, ooh

Oh baby, oh baby

Move like grey skies

Move like a bird of paradise

Move like an odd sight come out at night”

The sudden crash of the band coming together to put music to your declaration makes goosebumps rise on Jimin's skin, Namjoon looks between you both and his heart melts softly in his chest. Just the admiration between you both enough to make him fall all over again.

“Move me, baby

Shake like the bough of a willow tree

You do it naturally, move me, baby

So move me, baby

Like you've nothin' left to lose

And nothin' to prove, move me, baby

So move me, baby

Shake like the bough of a willow tree

You do it naturally, move me, baby”

The calls and hums of you and your back up singers echo quietly before applause assaults their ears, the cheering nothing short of deafening. 

You bow and wave backing away from the mic for a few moments- taking in the last show you'll be doing for a while- before walking off stage.

Namjoon knows he should be pulling Jimin with him towards backstage so they can smother you with love properly but hey can't move Jimin has tears streaming down his face and Namjoon is too awestruck about you remembering him going on about the last words of a poet who had written about the bog bodies and how you always just cared so much about him and Jimin.

Eventually they do move through the leaving crowd towards security, the guards already aware of their faces escort them.

They knock on the green room door with your name next to it. 

It swings open so quickly they flinch back and the woman barreling into their arms throws them back at least a foot. 

“I missed you so much” you all but sob into their chests. Clinging tightly to their shirts.

They share a look over your head all too endeared with your clinginess having missed it terribly for the past months.

“We missed you too angel.” Jimin sighs into your hair, much closer to your head than Namjoon. 

Namjoon hums in agreement then sniffles making you both turn your faces up to look at him, Namjoon crying was a really rare thing well maybe in comparison with you and Jimin who will cry at an emotionally manipulative commercial without hesitation. 

You're both slightly shocked to see tear tracks on his adorably reddened face and him struggling to control his breathing.

“Ooh Joonie.” You coo then pull them both into the green room and start wiping at his cheeks. He sniffles again and it's absolutely precious.

“Y-you sang about b-bog bodies!” He sobs hauling you off your feet pushing the air out of your lungs. 

Jimin laughs and sniffs wiping at his now wet face too. 

“You guys liked them? They weren’t corny?” You wheeze as he sets you back down between them.

“Are you kidding?! You referenced Sergei Polunin, that's so corny, babe.” Jimin pets your cheek and kisses it tenderly. “Of course we loved them.”

“I'm gonna put my song in my thesis, its gonna open a whole flood gate for the romanticism of them.'' Namjoon says, mostly to himself, still shaky with tears.

Jimin pulls you both in for another hug and in a similar state to Namjoon says, “I’m gonna choreograph both of our songs. I’m dropping all my projects for it- right now.”

You laugh and shake your head before pulling back to take them both in again still not over how long it’d been since you got hold them. 

“You wanna go somewhere? Get a welcome home drink or meal or candle or something?” Jimin asks, putting your hair back into place as best he can. 

“That diner with the shakes on 5th is probably still open-” Namjoon starts but you shake your head.

“Can we just go home? I missed you so much.” They both nod with the softest smiles and each grip a hand.

Your tour bus dropped off most of your stuff at home earlier that day so Namjoon just takes your backpack and Jimin pulls your guitar over his shoulder. But not before asking with a smirk-

“Did you say Fred Astaire in sequins?”

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Thank you for reading <3 Please like and reblog if you enjoyed reading this! It’ll lets me know if I should write more or not

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

What My Thoughts On Morrissey Today

In response to my writing idea someone gave me I picked this.

So basically, Morrissey’s nationalism in recent years has gotten in the way of me being able to appreciate much that he comes out with. This is wild because a few short years ago, I stood up for Morrissey and actually still feel very moved by a portion of his music. It got me through some really rough patches in my twenties.

I realize he’s human and has faults and I don’t know him completely but just eh, living in Portland and having seen the stuff going on I’m kind of not in the place in my life right now where I want to even try to dissect him. It’s not just a fact that he’s wrong, but that it seems altogether very much in rejection of the things that made his music so special. It was difficult for me to come to terms with it or fully make sense of why someone who’s unashamed expression of witty despair in the 80’s and 90’s, someone who was outcasted from the overall closed mindedness lower working class post ww2 world of northern England, unafraid to be gay and completely the antithesis of some Tory ideal could be bought by some tired nationalist agenda. It’s even more difficult to realize where his alegianced lie in a world that is starting to reject democracy, embrace anti intellectualism in the guise of some form of selective politically motivated skeptism, and I see the world move farther and farther into fascism.

Margaret Thatcher attacked The Smiths. Morrissey was taken in for questioning more than once out of fear for what he represented. Morrissey and The Smiths has some subversive element that really did threaten the establishment and cultural norms, in a way that I feel was a little more multidimensional than even a lot of bands in the English punk scene. I guess for me, even though I grew up in the Inland northwest of the US, I felt there was a lot of parallels in common. I too detest a culture based around animal consumption, was really not a part of the world I grew up in and didn’t want to work in the factories, I liked art and music and nobody around me was really into that stuff.

I still like the Smiths and most of Morrisseys old music. I read his autobiography. I know he is a dramatic self involved individual but I did feel that up till somewhat recently his heart was in the right place and he just liked to be controversial, which is somewhat true still, but now I think there was more to it, some nationalistic self preservation instinct kicking in. Its actually more prevelant than I even realized and I honestly think it’s getting the best of anyone with money or power, even those who once stood for something counter culture. It’s hard to think of him as racist in the traditional sense with his adoration for Latin America, but he might just be so self involved that his popularity in those regions gave him a bias. He probably separates the racism from the nationalism, blindly not wanting to see how the two concepts are quite inseparable. Falling right into it.

Him saying “everyone prefers their own race”, is kind of wild to me. I genuinely even try to entertain this as a possibility like a philosophical thought experiment or a deep dive of some kind into my own subconscious part of me I am avoiding somehow, and it’s not true for me or a lot of people. Who the fuck is he to say who prefers who, and how backwards and dehumanizing. It’s pretty repulsive, and being he is bisexual and felt the discrimination of homophobia growing up, I’m inclined to think he’s not able to see that he’s become the enemy he once represented the antithesis of.

The guy I’ve kinda been with is Mexican. I totally love him. I look into people’s eyes and I talk to and open up to people and if I connect with them I connect with them. Not like I’m trying to play the I gotta friend who is this or that as some kind of example of much, or that I don’t see color or some faulty implication, but I have been in situations where I’m the only white person at a party and I prefer them because they are my friends and I love them, and the idea of classifying who I prefer is to imply that the white race should be my main concern as they are the same as me and therefore superior and they aren’t. There is nothing inherently special to me or a kinship felt with other white people for either their appearance or cultural background. It’s nice to compare notes of pop culture but a lot of stuff people go through is universal. I don’t take too much issue with multiculturalism. My white skin is meaningless to me. I can’t imagine being so inept as a person that the color of my skin actually defines my identity rather than my autonomy or ideas or relationships and what I stand for and my ability to appreciate and connect with other people.

What gets me is that in his support of the far right is not even in line with his hatred of police, or the hatred he had a few years ago. I mean, he has always gone on and on about police brutality, he’s been harassed by them on multiple occasions. He shows them on giant projectors at his shows. Police are a very important staple for fascism and nationalism, and he is now on their side after all this time? What changed? The lost young man he once was in 1981 feels very very different from who he has become and piecing together that transformation has been something I’ve been trying to do for awhile. I try to embrace both but they seem like similar but different people at odds with one another, like an uncle and nephew.

Here is what I imagine happened, and I could be wrong about that but I was a Morrissey fangirl for quite awhile. I literally had his signed autograph above my bed with dried flowers around it like a shrine for a few years, and got a grasp of Morrisseys personality in some ways.

To start off, Morrissey is a very poetic and sharp guy but he’s very miopic about his interests and has always had the tendency to see the world in a black and white framework. This in and of itself is not necessarily bad, but it’s the core framework of who he is as a person. When he was young it was very much more a reflection of his hatred for authoritarianism and deceitful people and phony artists. It’s not bad and it contributed to his music and lyrics and became the thing he was loved/hated for. The way he goes about it really has always been the double edged sword of his charm and vileness all in one and something people have mocked time and time again. He likes to be the guy in the corner that looks fine and smug and believes he sees the virtues/dispicable attributes of everyone in the room and there have been times in his life where he was, and though he won’t ever attack anyone face to face he’s quick to speak his mind about it.

Morrissey is also a very vain person. It’s subtle but he is very singular on certain aesthetics. At times it made him brilliant and poetic and a visionary. The Smiths album covers are beautiful. His look is both elegant and absurd in its grasp for purity. It also makes him seem like a twat and a pretentious prince. The fact that he seems to be these two things at once is what gave him that kind of controversial star quality at times.

Those are just two natural traits he has always been obvious with. And he struggled with it and focused on his passions and dealt with depression in the 80’s. Then fame happened and the smiths ended. He kept to himself more or less in the 80’s and 90’s aside from his disdain for Margaret Thatcher, but he kinda lost his mind a bit when his drummer took him to court in the nineties. Right or wrong he fought for two years and lost a good chunk of his money from The Smiths and when that happened he kind of was forced to start again. He lost his home. He developed that early personalized sense of self preservation and victimhood. I think he lost faith in many of his more naive ideals when he was younger. When you read his autobiography and know what happened it’s like he had to step out of his old life and into something else.

Then, he’s always been a vegetarian superiority type. I liked that he calls it as he sees it but because of his need to black and white think everything he came off as deluded and smug. I mean, to be fair you can’t seem to win with people who want to eat meat and I agreed with a portion of his message, but he never questioned himself. He’s not good at that, or doesn’t appear to be. My personal interpretation of him was to agree with part of it and give him the cred for being not afraid to be a dick and say it, but to see also that he was so dramatic and self absorbed about it to also laugh at him and the way he said it.

Now to go into fascism and why it grew on Morrissey. I see the world as kind of falling into polarization and flux because of the failures of neoliberalism. It’s a long political explanation, but essentially the systems that are in place do not provide answers to a lot of catestrophic issues. Democracy, though the best thing we have, is flawed. I really like philosophy and have studied this and the various arguments that are made, and I don’t have the answer either but fuck if I will ever side with nazis.

People are seaking solace in new ideas that are actually quite old, namely socialism and fascism that provide answers that democracy fails to. Capitalism eats itself and created monopolies and unfair wealth distribution, technology is making human labor obsolete and therefore not a stable means to base our economic system on, those with wealth are hoarding it and trying to separate themselves from the world they helped ruin. We are destroying the planet, running out of natural resources, many of our leaders in the last three or for decades have been flawed, there isn’t a universal safety net for things like natural disasters and pandemics and there are still places stripped of their natural resources where human slavery is prevalent and children starve to death. Neoliberalism has promised some great answer but has actually been the contributor to this entire mess.

We are seeing the beginning of the end now, and I am sure Morrissey isn’t going to waste that without putting himself in the victim shoes, the white traditional quintessentially Englishman of wit, who sees his beautiful world he grew up in disappearing in multiculturalism and seeing himself and the culture of old England as a dying breed, that needs to be preserved at any cost. He probably was on the fence about it for some time, weighing out his disdain for authoritarianism, having a bougouis experience with the seemingly left leaning media that he never managed to win over and called him out for his every misstep. I bet he had a friend who opened him up to the idea that we don’t know about who changed his mind. I bet cuts in taxes for the rich helped him preserve his wealth that he definitely feels entitled to after losing the first portion of it in the court case. He’s rich, famous and old and often times that leads to being quite out of touch, even to the best intellectuals. He lost his mother who was dear to him and I can imagine, even though it’s not political, it created a deep sense of emptiness and dis ease. Nationalism often times gives people a sense of security and identity and purpose. And the idea of having an unpopular opinion excited him just as it always has, gave him the opportunity to be the smug poet in the corner of the party, and he sold out. Hard. And he’s probably proud of it.

He’s irrelevant now. Honestly his latest album wasn’t good, and I like later Morrissey. He doesn’t have the same energy. I just feel like he’s grasping at something that he never fully ever had. What’s weird to me is that I’m writing about him like this when honestly, I could also easily write about how beautiful and meaningful the Smiths and Morrissey has been to me. I can’t explain how it cut through the extreme isolation I’ve been in, not to mention how the Smiths really changed music for the better. There’s always going to be a part of me that wants to defend him. I’m not saying we cancel him. I kinda think he canceled himself. I’m not going to try to not enjoy the smiths or morrissey when I hear him, and I will still hear it and enjoy it but I’m not ever going to spend my own money on filling his pockets. I still nostalgically enjoy the person he was a very long time ago and what he used to represent. I realize at the end of the day he’s just a flawed person. But also fuck fascism, and fuck Morrissey for caving into it.

I mean, at the end of the day the hardest part is that I made him a part of my identity and I just had to stop doing that in a simplistic way. I tossed out a morrissey shirt I had (it’s was a cheesy shirt anyway), and I found new genres of music and while I still love the smiths it’s not like I can’t do without them every day. I break down and listen to them sometimes. I know the songs so well. I listen to Xiu Xiu which is a modern day similar equivalent in some ways but is absolutely better and the singer Jamie Stewart is fucking gold.

[soundofseventeen]

Three’s a Crowd (Yoon Jeonghan)

Hello! This is another requested one! I hope I did it justice!! Thank you! Happy New Year everyone!!! -Erin

Requested

“Okay, I promise this will be quick.” Jeonghan said, Joshua following along. 

“Dude, it’s honestly fine. We can stay as long as you want!” Joshua grinned, patting his friends shoulder. 

“It’s just that this is one of my best friends from before and they’re never in town so I just-” Jeonghan continued to explain, Joshua shaking his head. 

“Seriously. I don’t care if we spend the whole day with this friend of yours. It’s still going to be fun.” Joshua said, turning the corner towards the restaurant. 

Meanwhile, you sat at the table, tapping your foot on the ground. You hadn’t seen Jeonghan in a very long time. Part of you was very excited, the other part of you was very nervous. You wondered how different he would be. You knew he wouldn’t be that different, this was Jeonghan you were talking about. Would he think you were different? You had changed your hair recently… 

You looked up as you heard the door open, which you had been doing for the last 20 minutes (the curse of arriving extremely early to things). This time did not disappoint, as you saw Jeonghan’s familiar face looking around. You grinned to yourself, noticing that you weren’t the only one to change your hair. His was long, halfway between blond and blue. You started to wave a hand to catch his attention, seeing the grin on his face when he finally spotted you. 

“Y/N!” Jeonghan quickly walked through the restaurant to your table, immediately hugging you. It wasn’t until he let you go that you noticed another boy, with much shorter hair, had followed him in. You couldn’t help but notice how adorable he was, quickly pushing that thought out of your head. This was one of Jeonghan’s new friends. “Right, okay. Y/N, this is one of my members, Joshua. He’s actually from the US.” Jeonghan said, pointing at who you assumed was Joshua. “Shua, this is Y/N, who was my best friend growing up.” 

“Was? Oh, I’ve already been replaced, huh Yoon?” You said, mocking offense at Jeonghan. 

“Well excuse me, someone stopped contacting me every day.” Jeonghan pouted at you, only causing you to pout back. 

“Well someone was busy trying to become an idol.” You turned to Joshua now, replacing the pout with a grin. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m sorry you have to deal with him.” 

“I’m sorry you had to deal with him.” Joshua said, Jeonghan looking between his friends. 

“Okay, this was a mistake. You two should not have met.” 

“Oh come on, we love you Hannie.” You smiled, sitting back down. Jeonghan sat next to you while Joshua sat across from him. 

What was supposed to be a quick lunch between old friends turned into a multiple hour event. Jeonghan and Joshua told you a million and a half stories about their group and made you watch their most recent video (which you had somehow missed was released, and explained the hair on Jeonghan). You also filled Jeonghan in on stories of what happened outside the idol world, Joshua following along as best as he could. 

“So, when do you leave?” Jeonghan asked towards the end of the meal, looking at you a little sadly. His eyebrows raised as you grinned, tapping all of your fingers on the table. 

“Actually… I’m not.” You grinned, Jeonghan and Joshua staring at you. “I got accepted into the university here. I just moved into my new apartment last weekend. So, I’m kind of here now.” 

“Are you serious?” Jeonghan asked, you nodding your head. “Oh my god! Listen, I better see you at every Seventeen concert, okay? That’s your payback for missing the last comeback.” 

“I missed one comeback, Hannie.” You laughed, Joshua chuckling with you. “But I will do my best. I have to support the best boys.” You looked between them, shaking your head. 

“I’m so excited to have you here!” Jeonghan said, hugging you again. You laughed as Joshua shook his head, a grin on his own face. 

“This could be interesting.” Joshua commented, grinning at you two. “Wait until they meet the rest of the guys.” 

Interesting was the right word. It took a couple more hangouts with Jeonghan, some including Joshua, before you officially met the rest of the group. It was pure chaos meeting them, some being much louder than others. Luckily, you were able to recognize most of them from the music videos, and were slowly able to put names to faces. 

As time passed, you spent a lot of time around the boys. Sometimes it was the whole group, sometimes just a few of the members. Everyone noticed one thing though, most of the time it was you, Jeonghan and Joshua. As time passed, that remained a constant. 

Through the different eras, the different concepts, the different hairstyles, it was the three of you. Jeonghan was thrilled that two of his best friends got along so well. You made it to every Seoul concert you could (only managing to miss one due to being sick, which Jeonghan yelled at you to stay home). You brought merch for both the boys, unless it was close to another boys birthday, then you went full out them. You even started collecting their albums, keeping them up to date on who you had the most photocards for (Jun was currently winning). 

Jeonghan and Joshua even tried to come to some of your school events when they could, at least earlier on. Your school friends all stared wide eyed as you casually approached the boys, showing no confusion that two idols were at this event. 

The three of you became a set, and everything was perfect. Until Jeonghan started to notice something. 

He started to notice a lot more glances between you and Joshua. A lot more quiet moments between you two. A lot more conversations between the two of you than the group chats you had set up. A lot more situations where it was you and Joshua, rather than you and Jeonghan or all three of you. 

Then everything started to seem a lot less perfect. 

It’s not like you stopped with the three of you all together, but it really started to bug Jeonghan. He felt like he was losing his two best friends, and he wasn’t even sure how to approach it. He didn’t want to bring it up to you two and have you both become defensive, or even worse confirm it. 

But he couldn’t ignore the times that Joshua would smile at his phone, knowing that he was talking to you and Jeonghan’s phone wasn’t going off. Or the times that Jeonghan would get back to the dorms and you would be there hanging out with Joshua, laughing as some joke he told. He couldn’t even ignore the times that Joshua would come back and say he was out doing something with you before heading to his room. 

He didn’t know what scared him more about this: him having to bring it up to you and Joshua, or having the two of you bring it up to him eventually. 

His fears came to light when Joshua sat down with him one day, letting out a huff. 

“Okay, I need to talk to you.” Joshua looked at him, Jeonghan looking at him. 

“Okay?” Jeonghan said, turning to Joshua. “About what?” 

“So uh… Alright, you know Y/N?” Jeonghan blinked at him, slowly nodding his head. 

“My best friend since childhood? Yeah, I am aware of their existence.” 

“Oh… Yeah, right.” Joshua said, letting out a chuckle. Both boys were tense, and both noticed it about the other. “I just… I wanted to talk to you about them.” 

“...Okay…” Jeonghan said nervously, Joshua taking another breath. 

“Look, I just… Okay, Y/N and I have kind of been… Trying out… Dating… Lately.” He said, eyeing Jeonghan a bit. 

“...Really?” Jeonghan said, still anxious. 

“Yeah. We didn’t say anything to anyone because if it didn’t work out then we didn’t want it to be awkward around everyone and just wanted to make sure that it would be something that could work and that we both wanted to do this…” Joshua looked at Jeonghan, who just stared at him. “...So… Yeah.” 

“Wait so… You guys… Like each other?” Jeonghan finally asked. Joshua took a deep breath, nodding his head. 

“I like them a lot, Jeonghan. And they feel the same way.” 

“I mean that’s great for you two-”

“Nothing’s going to change, Jeonghan.” Joshua blurted, Jeonghan blinking at him. 

“What?” 

“Between you two or between me and you. Nothing’s going to change, okay? We’re still best friends and you guys still have your whole long relationship. We just…” Joshua leaned back, still looking at Jeonghan. “We don’t want you to think that you’re going to lose us. Y/N is really concerned about it. I mean I am too, but they’re really worried.” 

“Oh…” Jeonghan said, completely unsure what to say. 

“You’re also the first to know. Y/N and I agreed that before anyone else knew you should.” 

“...Okay…” Jeonghan said, Joshua feeling ever more panicked. “So… How come you are the one telling me?”

“They won rock, paper, scissors.” Joshua said, the start of a grin on his face. “And Y/N is in class right now and wouldn’t be able to do it in person until later this week when they saw you, so I was the next best option. Actually, recruiting Dino to do it was the next best option but then we’d have to tell him before you and then it got messy.” The grin spread on Joshua’s face as Jeonghan let out a laugh. 

“Okay that’s fair.” Jeonghan said, leaning back next to his friend. “I gotta say, I don’t know which of you to wish luck more to. You’ll both need it.” Joshua chuckled next to him, nodding his head. 

“I think they’ll need it more.” 

“Yeah probably, you’re a lot to deal with.” Jeonghan joked, Joshua shaking his head. “Thanks for telling me…” 

“Dude, we were always going to tell you. You know that if it didn’t work out and we decided to tell no one, at least Y/N would have told you about it. You know that.” 

“Yeah…” Jeonghan let out another sigh. “You do realize that if you hurt them, I’m obligated to fight you, right?” 

“Oh yeah, I would be disappointed if you didn’t try to.” Joshua looked up at the ceiling. “You’re stuck with us bro. Get used to it.” Joshua said, nudging Jeonghan’s shoulder, causing Jeonghan to chuckle. 

“Yeah, I guess so.” Jeonghan looked up at the ceiling. “So, have you kissed yet?” He heard Joshua chuckle, knowing his cheeks were turning red. 

“...Once.” 

“Ew. Gross. Stop. I do not want to picture that.” Joshua full out laughed now, causing Jeonghan to let out a laugh too. 

“So... Are we okay?” 

“Yeah, yeah we’re okay.” Jeonghan said, patting Joshua’s hand. “We’re okay.” 

[hawkinspostbite]

BURN THE WITCH - chapter one

Words: 4,926

MASTERLIST BURN THE WITCH

A/N: I do not claim to, nor do I own Stranger Things; the concept, characters, plot, etc.

Sunlight peered through the cracks in the curtains, Anna opened her eyes, groaning. Her back was sore and her left leg was numb from hanging off the edge of the couch all night. Eleven had a bad night, which forced her out into the living room yet again. The light above the stove turned on. “Another night on the couch?” Dad asked.

“I need my own room.” Anna groaned yet again, sitting up.

“Well…”

“Yeah, I know, “this is only temporary”, “eventually she’ll stop having nightmares”, “you’ll get your own room soon”.  May I ask, when is soon?” Her father had began making breakfast for himself, as Anna folded the blankets that she used that night.

“Soon… soon is…” Of course he couldn’t answer. “Soon is when it’s safe.”

Anna rolled her eyes, placing the blankets in the basket next to the television stand. “Okay, whenever that is.” She mumbled.

“Will you please get dressed? And get the kid up too, while you’re at it.” Anna shook her head, walking over to her bedroom door. She knocked gently before turning the handle and going inside. Against the wall, curled up into her pile of blankets was Eleven, for once, looking peaceful.

Anna walked over, sighing as she tapped on the young girl’s shoulder. “Hey, El, it’s time to get up.” Eleven groaned, rolling over to look at her. “I have to get dressed, and Dad’s making food.”

“School today?” She asked, sitting up slowly.

“Yep. It’s Thursday.” Eleven got out from under her covers, turning the lamp on the bedside table on. She walked across the small room, to the calendar that hung on the wall. Anna quickly made up El’s bed, smoothing the covers.

“Thursday.” El read aloud, using her red marker to put an X over the day’s date. “October three-zero.”

“October thirty-ith.” Anna spoke. “It’s the thirty-ith, not three-zero. Okay?”

“Thirty-ith?” El replied.

“Yeah, thirty-ith.” She smiled. “Now go ahead out, I have to get dressed.” El left, closing the door behind her. Anna quickly dressed, finished making her bed, and joined her father and Eleven in the “kitchen”. They ate their breakfasts, Dad gave Eleven her word of the day, and then he left for work.

“Have you seen Mike?” Eleven asked quickly. Anna knew she had been patiently waiting to ask until her father was gone.

“Not since Saturday, but I might be going over to Nancy’s tomorrow.” Anna pulled her coat on and grabbed her keys. Eleven sat on the couch, sadness washing over her. “I know you want to see him.” Anna walked over, sitting down next to her.

“But I can’t.” Eleven mocked Jim’s tone of voice. “That’s stupid!” She whined. “Can’t I see him? With you?”

“No, no- El, you know that’s not up to me.” Anna raised her hands in defense. “Dad’s rules are dad’s rules, they’re there for a reason.”

“You break rules, all the time!” El interrupted.

“I do not!”

“Yes. You sneak out after dark, you open the curtains when he isn’t here, and you never enter with the secret knock.”

Anna was shocked. There were two ways to handle this; pick a fight, and anger the teenaged-girl with psionic powers, or get up and walk away. She chose option two. “Here’s the remote.” She grabbed it off of the coffee table, tossing it at El. “I’m going now. Eat some real food today, make sure your dishes are done, and change out of your pajamas. I’ll be home at four.” And with that, she slammed the door behind her.

From outside she heard El groan in protest. On the walk to her car, Anna was careful to avoid every one of the traps her father had set, in paranoia of trespassers. Seeing her car was never easy, every day it was like a kick in the face with embarrassment, and it took everything in her to remember why exactly she had to drive an old squad car (still painted), to and from school every single day. Why? Due to the addition of Eleven into the Hopper family, Jim decided it be crucial that no other living soul, save for the three of them, could have even an inkling of knowledge as to where they lived. And because the car was registered to the police station, no one would be able to track them back to the cabin.

Anna hated her car. It was ugly, annoying, and embarrassing. The heat worked in the winter, but the air didn’t in the summer, and the radio antenna got snapped off on a chase back when it was a useful police vehicle, so the radio didn’t work. The only form of entertainment she had was her tape player, which lucky for her, had a tape stuck inside of it. Not that she was complaining, for it had Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumors” album. She and her dad tried everything, the eject button, digging it out with a butter knife, and just shaking the entire radio column (that was her father’s work), before giving up.

The ride to school was the same boring one, only about fifteen minutes. She passed the station, at which she gave two presses on the horn, to alert her father of her passing by. Then made a left at the library and was welcomed into another marvelous day at Hawkins High School. She parked in her usual spot, noticing that there was a new car parked next to her, a blue Camaro, with California plates. In her rearview she could see Carol, Tina, and Vicky congregating outside of Carol’s car.

Anna got out, walking across the lot to greet her friends. “Morning ladies.” She slapped her palm onto the hood of Carol's car.

“Jesus!” Vicky squealed. “Morning.” She rolled her eyes.

“You just missed a new kid by like, five minutes.” Carol winked at her.

“He’s totally hot.” Tina grinned.

“Nope.” Anna shook her head. “I don’t need a boyfriend.”

“Oh come on Anna, why not?” Tina asked.

“Seriously, a new kid would be perfect for you. He doesn’t know anything about your troubled past-“ Carol said.

“Okay, I am not the one with a troubled past, that’s my dad, and I am not taking the fall for it either. I’ve just spent the majority of my life cleaning up his mess.” She turned to walk towards the school. “I’ve got a lot of shit, that goes on at home, you don’t know about. I don’t have time for a boyfriend, but thanks for the concern. See you at lunch.”

Inside, Anna attended her morning classes, followed by lunch, where she was given an invitation to Tina’s Halloween Bash, and finally introduced to the new kid, to whom she showed no interest. “This is Anna Hopper, her dad’s the Chief of Police.” Tommy grinned from the other end of the table.

“Way to scare him off!” Carol swatted at his arm.

“There’s nothing to scare him away from, C.” Anna glared at her friend. “Look, I’m not interested in a relationship, or anything actually at the moment, so if that’s the only reason Tommy dragged you here, you’re free to go.” She snapped at him.

“My name’s Billy. Billy Hargrove.” He held his hand out for Anna to shake, to which she didn’t comply. “So that’s your car, parked next to mine?”

“Yes.” She replied, not looking up from her food.

“How comes you drive a cop car?” Billy asked.

“Her dad’s paranoid.” Vicky chimed in.

“Bitch!” Anna called to her.

“So you’ve been friends with her all these years, and never been to her house?” Billy asked, curiously.

“Anna moved here four years ago with her dad, and they lived in a trailer, which was kind of dumpy, let’s be real.” Carol explained.

“Seriously?” Anna gasped.

“Well!” Carol defended herself. “We used to go over there all the time, but about a year ago she moved, where? I don’t know, but none of us know where she lives, and none of us have been there.”

“Told you, her dad’s paranoid.” Vicky sighed, poking at her salad.

“So you live a life of secrecy?” Billy asked.

“Not by choice.” Anna replied. “If I had it my way, we’d still be living in New York.”

“She comes from a broken family.” Tina explained.

“Jesus Christ, Tina! It’s his first day here, do you think it’s really appropriate to be telling him my entire life story? Especially if I didn’t explicitly agree to it?”

“Sorry. You’re right, I’m sorry.” Tina looked down at her tray of half-eaten food.

“Yeah, sorry A.” Carol added.

Anna sat down, and the group carried on with lunch as if nothing had ever happened. The rest of the day went by uneventfully, and as the final bell rang, Anna made her way out to the parking lot. Across the way she saw Nancy getting into Steve’s car. They waved at each other, and that was that.

Anna’s friendship with Steve and Nancy, and Jonathan Byers was on the down-low. The four of them had shared an exciting experience the previous year.

Anna had been at home when her dad told her that Will Byers had gone missing. She wasn’t upset, she didn’t have a specific attachment to him, or anyone he was linked to, sure it was sad, but the kid went missing and that was that. A few days later she came across Jonathan in the red room, developing his photos, and that’s when the investigation began. She and Jonathan teamed up to try and find out what happened to his brother, Anna used what information she could find from her father’s work, and Jonathan used what information he could find from his mother’s ramblings. Eventually teamed up with Nancy, and the three discovered where to find the faceless beast. That was also when she had first met Eleven, who had been living in Nancy’s basement, and was hidden by her younger brother Mike and his best friends Dustin Henderson, and Lucas Sinclair. Eleven’s existence opened up the discovery of the alternate universe right beneath them, which the boys had dubbed “the Upside Down”, the monster which they had been seeking “the Demogorgon”, and Eleven’s constant running away from “the Bad Men”. While her father and Mrs. Byers performed Will’s rescue mission in the Upside Down, the kids stayed out of sight with Eleven at the middle school, and she, Nancy, and Jonathan went back to the Byers to kill the Demogorgon. In the end, accidentally assisted by Steve, they rid both worlds of the Demogorgon, Will was rescued, but unfortunately, Eleven had disappeared. Cut to two months in the future, Eleven showed up in the woods, right outside of the trailer, and the rest was history, and life as Anna knew it now.

Since Will’s disappearance and reappearance, the small circle of people that knew about the otherworldly happenings in Hawkins had become a secret society of survivors, sworn by the government to never speak about what happened, to anyone. In school, her relationship with Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan was a “Hello, goodbye.” type, and they never stayed in the same area for too long. On the weekends, she would spend what time she wasn’t with the girls, with Jonathan, working on photos and keeping a watchful eye on Joyce and Will for her dad. Anna was instructed by her father to steer extra clear of the kids, for fear of letting Eleven’s presence in the Hopper home slip. Mike had formed a unique bond with her, and quite frankly, his heartbreak over her being gone was hard to watch.

On the way home, she noticed her father’s truck was still at the station. Hopefully he would be home on time, so that she would be saved of having to deal with Eleven’s trust issues with her father.

She pulled off into the dirt path at four o’clock exactly. And reached the house shortly thereafter. One knock, three knocks, then two. “You’re late. It’s four, zero-eight.” Eleven spoke from the kitchen.

“I never promised four, exactly.” Anna stepped inside, Eleven locked the door and turned the sink water off. “Just doing your dishes now?” Anna kicked off her shoes. “What’d you have to eat?”

“Sandwich.” Eleven replied, sitting on the couch.

“PB&J?” She asked, hanging her coat on the coat hook behind the door.

“Yes.” Eleven’s eyes followed Anna as she walked towards their bedroom door.

“You changed out of your pjs. Nice.” El nodded. “I have homework, am I good to go inside for awhile? Dad should be home around six.”

“Yes.” El replied again.

Dad wasn’t home around six, but Anna made dinner anyway. She took her’s into the room, because Eleven promised her that she would eat everything, vegetables first. At seven thirty Anna got a shower, and El followed shortly after. Dad did get home around eight fifteen, El sat at the table with him while he ate, and Anna fell asleep, so deeply that she didn’t wake until the next morning.

The next day was Halloween. “October thirty-first.” Eleven stated. The pair had woken up long before dad, and were already dressed when he awoke. “Boo.” El surprised Anna in the kitchen, wearing her bed-sheet as a costume. She had cut two eyes in it, to be a ghost.

Anna flipped the piece of French toast she was cooking. “Nice.”

“Trick or treat?”

“Not my choice kid.” From the other side of the tiny cabin, Anna heard her father’s footsteps. “You’d better hide now if you want to scare him though.”

Eleven retreated back to their room, shutting the door just enough. “Morning.” Dad cleared his throat, inspecting what his oldest was making for breakfast. “What’s cooking?”

“French toast.” Anna could hardly suppress her laughter.

She heard El’s footsteps from behind them. “Oh, Jesus!” Dad turned around, slightly spooked by the young girl’s presence.

“Ghost.” El replied.

He rolled his eyes at Anna, walking over to the table. “Yeah, I see that.”

“Halloween.”

“Sure is.” Anna plated each of their food and sat it on the table. “But right now it’s breakfast, okay? Come on, let’s eat.”

Anna grabbed a cup for coffee for her dad, and two glasses of juice for her and El. “They wouldn’t see me.”

“Who wouldn’t see you?”

She sat down across from her father. “The bad men.” She spoke at the same time as Eleven.

“What are you talking about?”

“Trick or treat.” El replied.

“You want to go trick-or-treating?” He looked between Eleven and Anna.

“She’s never been.” Anna shrugged, taking a sip of her juice. Eleven nodded, and Jim shook his head in response.

“You know the rules.”

“Yes, but-“

“Yeah, so you know the answer.” He got up and guided her to her seat next to Anna.

“No, but, they wouldn’t see me!”

“No. Hey, I don’t care.” He attempted to take the sheet off of her. “I don’t care, alright? You go out there, ghost or not, it’s a risk. We don’t take risks, alright? They’re stupid, and?”

“We’re not stupid.” Eleven huffed, looking at Anna for guidance.

“Exactly. Now, you take that off, sit down and eat. Your food’s getting cold.” El shrugged the sheet off, leaving it on the floor. Dad poured syrup onto his food, handing it back to Anna she did the same to her’s and then to El’s, who had no syrup-portion-control. “Alright, I’ll tell you what. How about I get off early tonight, and I buy us a bunch of candy, and we can sit around and get fat and we watch a scary movie together? Anna, you’ll be home at the same time, right?”

“Actually, I was going to go to-“ She began to explain that she had plans to go to Tina’s Halloween party, but her father gave her “the eyes”, so she stopped herself. “Yeah, I’ll be home.”

“How’s that for a compromise?” Dad asked.

“Compromise?” Eleven replied.

“C-o-m, promise. Compromise.” Anna sounded the word out for her. “That can be your word for the day. Okay? Compromise, it’s in-between, it’s like halfway happy.”

“By five-one-five?” Eleven looked over to him.

“Five fifteen. Yeah, sure.”

“Promise?” El looked at him, then at Anna.

“Yes.” Dad replied.

“Of course.” Anna sighed.

“I promise.”

“Halfway happy.” Eleven said.

The trio finished their breakfasts together. Jim did the dishes, while Anna helped Eleven make their beds. “I’ll walk out with you today.” Dad said, waiting by the door for his daughter. Anna nodded, pulling on her boots and coat.

“Good food today, dishes done by four.” El nodded from the couch. “And if you put that sheet in the laundry basket I can show you how to sew patches onto it tomorrow, okay?” Eleven jumped up, rushing to put the sheet in the laundry area. “Lock the door!”

She and her father walked down to their cars in silence. “So dad, about that party tonight-“

“No.”

“Dad, please.”

Jim opened the door to his truck. “No means no. You promised El that you’d hang out with us tonight, and promises are promises. She really counts on you kid. Besides, what’s gonna happen at that stupid party anyway?” Anna rolled her eyes. “A bunch of kids in stupid costumes are gonna drink themselves silly until I have to send Callahan in there to break it up.”

“Yeah, because we know that’s always successful.” Anna muttered.

“I’m sorry, kid. But there will be other parties.”

“I know.”

Jim opened his arms, and Anna stepped inside, the two of them embracing for a moment. “See you at five fifteen.”

“See you then.” She sighed, getting in her car and watching as her pulled away.

Anna pouted all the way to school. She had spoken to Nancy a few days before, after she had learned that Nancy might have convinced Jonathan to go to Tina’s party. “Come on Jonathan, it’s perfect!” Anna had exclaimed.

“Jack and Wendy Torrance?” Jonathan asked, suspiciously. “But we aren’t married.”

“Yes and we’re not dating either, but two friends can go to a Halloween party as Jack and Wendy Torrance if they want to.” Anna sighed. “The costumes are very functional. Guaranteed, we both already have everything we’d need in our closets, right now. Plus, they’d be super warm.”

“I’ll think about it.” Jonathan sighed, knowing that if he could make Anna happy for even one night, he would consider it a win.

“Yes! Thank you!”

So she had her costume, she just needed to think of her escape plan, and execute it. Tina’s party started at eight, by then, they should be well onto their second scary movie, Anna could complain that she got a stomach ache from eating candy and then “go to bed” for the night. Then after El and dad were asleep, she could sneak out. The plan was perfect, considering that El got tired by seven on even a weeknight. Foolproof, immaculate, fabulous. She would return in the morning, showered and in-bed, in just enough time to get a good amount of sleep for Saturday chores.

“So, you gonna make it to the party?” Tina asked, upon Anna’s arrival.

“Yes, why do you ask?” Anna shut the car door behind her.

“Because you pulled in about five minutes ago and didn’t even realize it. I figured you were planning how you’re gonna get there.”

“Yeah, well my dad wants me to watch scary movies with him and eat candy all night, so I have to figure something out between now and then.”

“Nancy said you were going with Jonathan Byers as the couple from “The Shining”… I didn’t know you were friends with him.” Tina said, kicking a rock while they walked towards the school.

“Um, yeah. Childhood friends, we talk here and there. But that’s if he even shows up.”

“So if he doesn’t, you’re just gonna come as Wendy, without her husband?” Tina stopped.

“Yes, you and I will understand it so what else does it matter? Everybody will be drunk anyway.” Anna began walking again, a blast of warm air hitting her as she stepped inside the school.

“You’re right.” Tina sighed. “Besides, you’ll look cute no matter what you’re wearing.”

“Oh, my dear. So sweet to me.” Anna laughed, kissing the tips of her fingers and pressing them to Tina’s cheek. The pair walked to their lockers, and began their day.

School let out at three-thirty, as usual, and Anna wasted no time throwing all of her things into her locker and making a beeline to her car. If she had to suffer through a scary movie marathon with her dad and El, she wanted it to happen quick and painlessly. Maybe if she was lucky she’d fall asleep during the movie, and miss the whole thing.

At home, Eleven unlocked the door after hearing the secret knock. Anna discarded her shoes and coat and went into the bedroom to lay out her costume underneath her covers. Granted, her outfit wasn’t exact, because she had to do with what she had laying around, but she made it work. She had denim overalls, a multicolored flannel top, and a tan turtleneck sweater underneath, and for footwear, her brown workboots would have to do.

Anna joined El on the couch, the pair flipping through various television stations and stopping to watch a show occasionally. Five o’clock came and went, as did six, and seven. Neither of them had eaten, for they knew they would fill up on candy. Anna sighed, getting up. “El, do you know how to keep a secret?”

“Yes. Why?” Of course, El was a secret herself.

Anna looked at the clock. “Dad’s not coming home early, clearly. And I have somewhere to go.”

“Friends?”

“Yes, with my friends.” Anna walked over to the back of the T.V. “I want to go hang out with them, but dad wouldn’t let me. Now that he’s not coming home, it will need to be a secret. I’ll help you wheel this into the room, and make you food before I go. But you can’t tell dad where I went. Promise?”

“Promise?”

“I don’t break my promises El, I never break my promises.” Anna held her pinky out for El to grab with her’s.

“Promise.” El linked her pinky with Anna’s.

“Alright, let’s get moving then.” Anna unplugged the television and she and Eleven wheeled it into their bedroom, positioning it just right, so that El could watch it comfortably from bed. “I’m gonna get dressed, go ahead and pick out what you want to eat.”

Eleven shut the door as she left, allowing Anna to get dressed. She joined El in the kitchen, heating her food up in the microwave. “See you in the morning.” She smiled as Eleven locked herself and her food into their room.

“Goodnight Anna.” Eleven called as she left.

From the porch Anna could hear the locks click, and she carefully made her way through the woods and into town. At the corner of Trestle and Jojo she came upon the payphone, and quickly sliding to quarters into the slot, she dialed Tommy’s house-phone. “Yo, Tommy speaking.”

“Hey, it’s Anna. Can you pick me up?”

“Well, well, well, managed to break out of prison tonight?”

“Yeah, for one night only. Now can you get me or not, I’m right down the block from the station and I’m gonna get caught!”

“Sure thing Hopper, I’ll be there in ten.”

“Make it five-“

“Five! I’ll be there in five!” Tommy sighed, hanging up.

Anna kept her head hung low while she waited for Tommy, becoming paranoid that every single passing car would be her father discovering her escape. If the party was at Carol’s, she could’ve walked. Carol lived on Pine Street, which was only a ten-minute walk from the cabin. Or even Tommy, who lived in Loch Nora. But Tina lived around the corner from Steve Harrington’s house, which meant a perfect party house, surrounded on two sides by woods stretching for miles, and very few neighbors to be found.

Tommy came, music blasting, and Anna quickly climbed inside. “No Carol?”

“Nah, she went to Vicky’s after school.”

“Thanks for the ride.”

“No problem. Last thing I need is the chief’s daughter pissed at me for no reason. You’ll be having your dad pull me over or some shit like that.” Anna and Tommy laughed, and they chatted the whole way to the party.

Inside, Tina was surprised to see Anna in attendance. “They said you wouldn’t make it!” She pointed excitedly over to Carol and Vicky. “But I knew you’d get out!”

“You look warm.” Carol snickered, handing Anna a cup.

“It’s cold outside?” Anna said, taking the cup.

“Drink up, it’ll only make it worse.” Carol patted her on the shoulder and guided her friends outside.

The girls mingled here and there for a bit, Vicky and Tina found random boys to scamper off with, Tommy was off bullying people with new kid Billy, and that left just Carol and Anna. “So Tina told me you were supposed to have another half to your costume? Jonathan Byers?”

“Yeah, and? Like I told her, he’s a childhood friend. Who cares, he didn’t show up anyway.”

Through the window she could see that Steve and Nancy had just arrived, and Billy and Tommy were already taunting them. She rolled her eyes, downing the rest of the liquid in her cup. “Want another?” Carol asked. “I’ll go get.”

Anna nodded. “Thank you.” That would be three drinks, and then that was it. She needed to be able to sneak into the house with a still-functioning motor system.

Tina had made a Halloween mix specifically for her party, adorned with all of the girl’s favorite songs on it. The portion that was currently playing must’ve been mixed for Anna, because all she had heard in the past ten minutes was Fleetwood Mac, not that she was complaining. “Drink for you.” A new voice came into play.

Anna turned around, coming face to face with Billy. “What’s your costume?” She laughed, taking the cup from his hand.

“Don’t know, but my shirt got wet.”

“So that’s why it’s off?”

“Yeah. Carol told me to give you that.”

“Thanks.” Anna took a sip, nodding her head to the music.

“You like Fleetwood Mac?” Billy scrunched his nose.

“You don’t?”

“No, just never pegged you for a hippie.”

“I’m not a hippie.” Anna turned back to watch the trees. “Maybe a spiritualist, but not a hippie. I’m going for a walk, you coming?”

Before Billy could reply, Anna was walking into the woods. “Are you sure this is safe?”

“I’m not afraid of a few trees Hargrove. Come on.” Anna assumed he was following her, by the sound of his heavy footsteps behind her. “You know, they say that Stevie Nicks is a witch.”

“You believe it?”

“I don’t know. But I’ve read a lot about her, and witchcraft. Even have myself a few crystals-“

“Are you a witch?” They came to a small clearing in the woods.

“No. Just curious.” She finally turned to face him again. “But things like that aren’t totally impossible… Not around here at least.” Anna sighed. “Hawkins is tainted.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Weird things happen around here. Random power surges, stuff you can’t really explain with common knowledge.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“My dad.” Anna dumped the rest of her cup onto the ground. “And first-hand experience. But there are some things you should know about this place. Things that will keep you safe. If you’re smart.”

“So what are they?”

“Never leave your house after dark, alone.

Always lock your doors.

Leave the curtains closed at night, and make sure there’s at least one light on in your house. Just incase-“

“Incase what?”

“You would know it if you’d seen it.”

“And stay away from government facilities.”

“What’s wrong with the government-“

“Sworn to secrecy.” She held her hand over her mouth. “It’s all for the safety of yourself. You can ask anybody, but not many will tell you the rules because everyone’s too afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“What’s in the dark.”

Billy’s eyes widened with fear. He couldn’t quite find the right words to respond with. “I think I’m gonna head back now.”

“Be careful.” Anna called.

“You’re not coming?” He turned to look at her.

“No. I’m gonna hang behind, take a long walk back. I’ll meet you back in ten, promise.” Billy nodded, smiling back at Anna.

She watched as Billy’s shadow faded into black, the moon and stars providing little to no light for her to walk. She began to follow him, taking her time, enjoying the stillness of the woods. She tripped on a fallen tree, falling and slicing her hand on a broken branch. “Shit!” Anna cursed, sitting on her knees. She couldn’t see her wound, but from the wetness that she felt in her palm, she figured it was pretty deep. She wiped her palm onto her pants-leg, the material becoming stained with blood. Anna began to walk again, more careful of her surroundings.

Behind her she heard a snap. It was most likely Billy, trying to come around a tree and scare her. So she stopped and stood. “Very funny Hargrove, but your cover’s been blown.” There was no response. “You can come out now.”

She was met with another twig snap.

“Hargrove? I’m serious, come out now!”

Another snap.

“Billy?”

Another snap, closer.

And then the world fell away.

[kuntquats]

What Does Fatty Boom Boom Even Mean?

In May of 1990, Bush gave a speech at the University of Michigan which prompted a nationwide debate on political correctness and it’s importance (The Bush Library 1991), yet in South Africa, the apartheid’s end and the first multiracial elections were to arrive 4 years after that time.  The apartheid viewed an individual’s race as fixed and rigidly categorized:

A white person is one who in appearance is, or who is generally accepted as, a white person, but does not include a person who, although in appearance obviously a white person, is generally accepted as a Coloured person.

A native is a person who is in fact or generally accepted as a member of any aboriginal race or tribe of Africa.

A Coloured person is a person who is not a white person or native person.

(Schmidt 2014)

Once the apartheid was dismantled, these discriminatory structures were eradicated and the idea of racial fixity, that regarded the Coloured person in completely negative terms, were dissolved; compared to America, biology was not the soul identifier of race, but rather how society perceives the individual’s appearance relative to their biology.  The dissolving of race as essential to the identity of an individual made way for progressive social transformation, but with race still being perceived as a societal adjudication, race became a contingent and performative aspect of one’s identity (Schmidt 2014): This shift in social politics is a very prominent concept in the music video “Fatty Boom Boom” by Die Antwoord, and by analyzing it’s trans-racialization, gender/sexuality politics, and the critique on western virtuosity, it can be realized that using race contingent free speech to express and artistic project may present many diminishing returns.

Fatty Boom Boom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIXUgtNC4Kc&frags=pl%2Cwn

The “Fatty Boom Boom” music video aims to present the dichotomy of the world’s “haves” and the “have-nots”: Signifying those who “have” it are traditional heteronormative virile non-white South Africans, while the “have-nots” are represented by promiscuous homosexual white Americans.  Representing the posterchild of white neoliberal American media (ask the Republicans about the source on this one), they use a transvestite Lady Gaga in a meat dress to position their outgroup firmly as apathetic American tourists.  To juxtapose, she and her body guards roll up beside the group (local musicians) on the street:  Yolandi in black body paint, Ninja in white body paint, and a black man (representing DJ Hi-Tek who is a white man) in a KKK robe (covered with positive words).  This scene instantly draws attention to the dynamic between rich and poor, privileged and unprivileged, white tourist and non-white local, but draws upon harsh stereotypes that risk the quality of affect their message has.

Using race as contingent, the opening scene allows the audience to instantly locate the “haves” and “have-nots”, portraying local buskers as hopeful underdogs compared to the spoiled brat voyeur celebrity.  The issue that arises in this scene is the disregard for the intersection race has with gender, sexuality, and class and how the “white” and “non-white” characters were sorted into these categories.  Mocking Lady Gaga by portraying her as a transvestite while at the same time using ass shakes and crotch grabs to express heteronormative hypermasculine/feminine virility marginalizes trans identities that are present in non-white culture while at the same time harmfully exaggerating the sexual physiology of non-whites.  They further mock Lady Gaga by showing a scene that is an imitation of the piece “Black Gynecologist” by Anton Kannemeyer, showing a black doctor inspecting a white woman’s vagina with malcontent.  Though this scene is reflecting the sense of perpetual service non-whites deliver to neoliberal whiteness, the insect ejecting from Gaga’s vagina subtly highlights society’s perspectives on homosexual promiscuity/depravity and heteronormative virility (Schmidt 2014).

Die Antwoord @ Lady Gaga Diss: https://twitter.com/DieAntwoord/status/258686551234576384

By transforming race as essential to race as contingent, this music video clearly displays how stark stereotypes of race, gender, sexuality, and class can create a compelling narrative and draw attention to the structures of oppression but fails to express a unifying perspective or spark useful theory or idea on artistic free speech.  “Fatty Boom Boom” proves that an artistic project addressing the marginalization of peoples with trans-racialization as the centre point of discussion is unproductive seeing as past examples of trans-racialization (black face in America/Europe) never had to question the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and class.  The lack of perspective Die Antwoord had before this project was ultimately it’s downfall, but it stands as an interesting piece to analyze considering it was halfway through the Obama era during the intensification of the political correctness debate.

To counter Die Antwoord’s “Fatty Boom Boom”, Blood Orange’s “Charcoal Baby” effectively uses race as essential to strip the idea that non-whiteness is to be associated with performance.  In this video, two different black families enjoy each other’s company.

Charcoal Baby: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIlauccaH88&frags=pl%2Cwn

 Intro Monologue:

“You asked me what family is And I think of family as community I think of the spaces where you don't have to shrink yourself Where you don't have to pretend or to perform You can fully show up and be vulnerable And in silence, completely empty and That's completely enough You show up, as you are, without judgment, without ridicule Without fear or violence, or policing, or containment And you can be there and you're filled all the way up So we get to choose our families We are not limited by biology We get to make ourselves And we get to make our families”

Dev Hynes describes newest LP Negro Swan: “[Negro Swan] is an exploration into my own and many types of black depression, an honest look at the corners of black existence, and the ongoing anxieties of queer/people of color. A reach back into childhood and modern traumas, and the things we do to get through it all. The underlying thread through each piece on the album is the idea of HOPE, and the lights we can try to turn on within ourselves with a hopefully positive outcome of helping others out of their darkness.”

Works Cited

 Schmidt, Bryan. 2014. “Fatty Boom Boom an the Transnationality of Blackface in Die Antwoord’s Racial Project.” The MIT Press. Last edited May 12, 2014. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/DRAM_a_00351

The Bush Library. “MT1832 Commencement Address at University of Michigan – 04 May 1991.” Presidential Library and Museum. Archived May 4, 1991. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6kW4aPJ4js

[aion-rsa]

Aqualung at 50: Jethro Tull’s Half Concept Album Hits Half a Century

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

“In the beginning Man created God,” reads the back cover of Jethro Tull’s Aqualung. “And in the image of Man created he him.” The album came out 7 million days later, on March 19, 1971. We’d only recently been told God was “a concept by which we measure our pain,” by John Lennon.

Aqualung is framed by two halves of a concept. The first songs on the first side tell the stories of the outcasts, those out of sight of the eyes of the man who created god. The B-side explains why organized religion blinds us. In between are songs which have nothing to do with either theme. First off, for those who don’t know, Jethro Tull is not a person, but a band. The songs on Aqualung were written by Ian Anderson, bandleader, singer-songwriter, guitarist, occasional saxophonist, and heaviest metal flutist to make Bach swing. Anderson maintained, throughout numerous interviews, Aqualung was not a concept record. He would go on to mock the very idea of it with the satirical prog masterpiece Thick as a Brick.

The Beatles suffered the same misnomer dilemma. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band wasn’t a concept album. Paul McCartney got the idea the band would play the album as if they were this other band. The concept lasted two songs and a reprieve. The rest of the album is a full immersion into the possibilities of the studio under the steady gaze of George Martin. Aqualung opens with songs inspired by true life candid shots Ian’s wife Jennie Anderson (now filmmaker Jennie Franks) took while studying photography. One was a homeless man, another an under-age prostitute. Other than that, the first side includes a beautiful love song, and hard and soft confessional pieces.

The first concept album is Woody Guthrie’s 1940 album Dust Bowl Ballads, which stuck to one theme: the economic and ecological fallout of the devastating 1930s drought. Frank Sinatra explored loneliness and late nights on a pair of classic concept long-players unified by mood. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s Freak Out!, from 1966, is the first concept album, as well as the first double-album, of rock, although every song on the Beach Boys’ 1963 album Little Deuce Coupe is about a car. The Who’s Tommy, Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Superstar, and Pink Floyd’s The Wall are rock operas which tell full stories. Bands like the Kinks tried unifying songs with imperceivable segues and tone.

Aqualung delivers a consistent tone. Sometimes the songs fluctuate between soft acoustic and hard rock, other times the individual pieces grow through progressive layering. The harder and more social pieces employ metric modulation, and the religious ones dabble in the chordal modulations of spiritual music. The acoustic songs are less folk than singer-songwriter stylings. The album revels in its contrasts. We get riff-rock ready-made for Madison Square Garden, and intimate nylon string fingerings to burn toast to.

Ian Anderson’s lyrics are filled with rich, detailed imagery, regardless of how pretentious critic Robert Christgau found him. The band mix progressive rock, hard rock, folk music, jazz, classical, and even medieval and pagan music, along with what Anderson would call “ugly changes of time signature and banal instrumental passages” on the Thick as a Brick album notes.

This Was

Jethro Tull formed in 1967, the same year Anderson took up the flute, on a whim. After realizing as a guitarist, he “was never going to be as good as Eric Clapton,” Ian “parted company with my Fender Strat, whose previous owner was Lemmy Kilmister, who was then the rhythm guitar player for the Rockin’ Vickers,” Anderson told Classic Rock. He then “bought a flute, for no good reason. It just looked nice and shiny.” Energized by Pink Floyd’s The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper, the band was able to drop the twelve-bar blues songs which led to non-pop record deals in London.

Anderson got the name Jethro Tull from the 18th-century agriculturist who invented the seed-drill, which gave birth to modern agriculture. Their first album, This Was, was blues, but the band distinguished itself, especially live. They were the first band to perform at The Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus, though their part was mimed, with Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi on guitar. Martin Barre took over for the band’s original guitarist, blues specialist Mick Abrahams, and on their 1969 album, Stand Up, the band stood out, sounding unlike any other band. It was eclectic, incorporating Western classical, Asian music, English folk, and harder rock. The band continued experimenting melodically and rhythmically through 1970’s Benefit, which just failed to make the U.S. Top 10.

Jethro Tull has become known as a band of ever-changing instrumentalists. Aqualung was the bridge album towards reassembling one of Ian’s first bands. Anderson was 23 when he led Jethro Tull through Aqualung. When he was young, Anderson could be found in Dunfermline, Scotland, where he was born on August 10, 1947. But he was packed off to school in Blackpool, where he sang and played guitar and harmonica for The Blades in 1963. John Evans, who joined on piano, organ, and mellotron, had been a guest musician on Benefit. Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond, who’d been mythologized in the songs “Jeffrey Goes to Leicester Square,” “Song for Jeffrey,” and “For Micheal Collins, Jeffrey And Me,” replaced Glenn Cornick on bass. Both had been in the Blades. Barriemore Barlow, also from the early sixties band, would replace Clive Bunker on drums after Aqualung.

Tull mythology says Hammond-Hammond didn’t know the instrument and had to be taught on a note-by-note basis. He may very well have had to have been coached through each specific part he was playing. They are often incredibly intricate runs, and often go against the grain of what is expected from the bass. He had to have been familiar enough with the instrument to click in with both Clive Bunker and Barriemore Barlow, each were virtuosos with vastly different approaches to rhythm. Bunker never met a beat he couldn’t undermine for unexpected force and dynamic. Yet, he could make a 5/4 song danceable.

The ensemble playing is tight, the players moved easily through more intricate arrangements. The orchestrations are done by Dee Palmer, who later joined as a full-time member.  The British press coined the term “progressive rock” to describe bands like Frank Zappa, Yes, King Crimson and Genesis. Tull was prog, but more accessible than classical music enthusiasts Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

Guitar Gods and Flute Solos

Jethro Tull is probably best known as the classic rock band with the lead flute. “Aqualung,” possibly their best-known song, has no flute. Martin Barre’s guitar solo was rated #25 in Guitar World‘s “100 Greatest Guitar Solos” reader’s poll. But it could just as easily have been a whirl of woodwind. “In those days, if you didn’t get a guitar solo in one or two takes, it might become a flute solo. It was, ‘Go in there and do it or else,” Barre told Guitar Player in a 2015 interview.

Aqualung was recorded in a large, cold-sounding studio that Island Records built in a converted church in London. Led Zeppelin were recording their fourth album in the moderate sized basement studio that had been the crypt. “The only thing I can remember about cutting the solo is that Led Zeppelin was recording next door, and as I was playing it, Jimmy Page walked into the control room and waved to me,” Barre remembered for Guitar Player. While there have been countless theories about why the players had the faceoff, both Tull and Zeppelin fans appreciate the dual pressure of the session. “And here was Jimmy, waving like mad – ‘Hey, Martin!’ – and I’m thinking, ‘I can’t wave back or I’m going to blow the solo.’”

The song “Aqualung” opens with one of the most recognizable riffs in rock, in the same league as Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water,” Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” and the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” It has been venerated and mocked in equal measure, but in all cases lovingly. It opens the song with the drama of the four-note opening to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and becomes a motif.

“Aqualung” is “a tortured tangle of chords,” according to Ian, with atonal harmonies, meaning the root is open to interpretation. The chords themselves are a journey to the acoustic segment of the song, which then builds, like most songs on the album, one instrument at a time. The audio effect on the later vocals is called “telephone burbles,” which happens when all audio frequencies are removed except for a narrow band around the 1,000 hertz mark, making the voice sound like it’s coming through a megaphone. The song has a cold ending rather than a fadeout, which makes it perfect for stage performances.

Bad Intent

Ian got the title for the album and song from the TV show Sea Hunt, where the main character, played by Lloyd Bridges, wore an Aqualung for underwater breathing. Aqualung was a brand name, and the Aqualung Corporation of North America took legal action after the album came out. Artist Burton Silverman, who created the cover portrait, also sued, saying the likeness should not be used on merchandising, T-shirts, and promotional materials.

Before the codpiece and the medieval minstrel suits and lutes, Ian performed in an overcoat, which had been stolen after a concert, but has been described as looking ratty. This led to further complications of identity. Because of Tull’s manager, Terry Ellis, Silverman’s cover portrait looks like Anderson, against the singer’s wishes. “I’m not this character,” he told Louder Sound. “I’m not a homeless person. I’m a spotty middle-class English kid. I’ve never had to sleep rough on the street, and I don’t want to be pretending to be that character.”

The character Aqualung, is a homeless man like the character in Pearl Jam’s “Even Flow.” Both characters are blank slates in everyday life and can have any association imposed on them. Besides inspiring the album through her photographs of homeless people living under the railway arches on the Thames Embankment in south London, Anderson’s wife Jennie also co-wrote the lyrics. “I had feelings of guilt about the homeless, as well as fear and insecurity with people like that who seem a little scary,” Anderson told Guitar World in a 1999 interview. The lyrics have more to do with the assumptions people make of Aqualung, like his predilection for little girls or frilly panties. But he also saw the angry man as “a free spirit, who either won’t or can’t join in society’s prescribed formats.”

She’ll Do It For A Song

“Cross-Eyed Mary” didn’t only capture the attention of Aqualung, she was one of the subjects in the photographic collection of the lesser people cast into the void: a child prostitute. The song transforms her into a squinty Mary Magdalene, whose jack-knife barber abortionist drops her off at school. In the lower income neighborhood Highgate, she’s a Robin Hood figure. In wealthy Hampstead Village, which was the site of the St. Mary Magdalene House of Charity in the Victorian era, she’s a business expense. The song opens with flute and mellotron rising in rhythm and pulse until the band kicks in. The interplay between guitar and piano is delicate, and the bass line buzzes with riff-worthy changes. Iron Maiden transformed the flute part into baroque metal guitar when they covered it.

“Cheap Day Return” is the first of three short acoustic songs on the album, each under two minutes. A “cheap day return” is a reduced-price round trip train ticket, and the song was written while Ian was waiting for a connecting train on his way to visiting his father, who was seriously ill in a hospital in Blackpool. In interviews, Anderson has said the song would have been longer, but the train arrived.

“Mother Goose” opens with acoustic folk guitar under Elizabethan madrigal sounding recorders played by Barre and Hammond-Hammond, who also provides harmony vocals. The electric guitar comes in late in the song, kicking the childhood Piccadilly Circus nursery rhymes into the adult playground of Johnny Scarecrow.

“It’s only the giving which makes you what you are,” Ian sings in “Wond’ring Aloud.” The second short acoustic piece is a simple love song made grandly beautiful by the piano and string arrangement. The longer version, “Wond’ring Again,” which appears on Living In The Past (1972), reached the opposite conclusion, but kept the idealistic romance at the center of the piece.  The third acoustic piece, “Slipstream,” from side two, presses Ian’s last dime on God’s waiter to pay the tab. The song is tideless, but the unreasoning strings paddle the way out of the mess.

“Up To Me” opens not with a recognizable riff, nor a classical piano twist, but a whole hearted laugh which is as contagious as the song itself.  

Praying ‘til Next Thursday to All the Gods that You Can Count

Side two, subtitled “My God,” deals with religious hypocrisy, golden cages, and plastic crucifixes. If Jesus saves, then he’d better save himself. The song “My God” had been kicking around since at least the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. The imagery recalls William Blake and the metallic break-in sounds like Black Sabbath, both the band and the dark holiday. Once again, the song uses progressive modulation beginning with a solo acoustic guitar introduction like Evan’s piano on “Locomotive Breath.” But when Barre’s electric guitar takes over for the nylon classical fretwork, the song is full-blown metal.

Ian’s voice drips with as much disdain for organized religion as his songwriting does for musical structure. The song goes through the arpeggios of classical guitar, through hymnal chord changes, a metallic flute lead back by instruments, another flute lead back by a chorus of harmonizing bishops, inverted chromatics, and comes to a dark Pied Piper ending.

“Hymn 43” is a piano-driven soul-stirrer with enough propulsive licks to set the white man free.  Ian’s preaching to the faithless on this one, though. He bears witness in the city, on the moon and on that bloody cross. The guitar and flute interplay works like a gospel call and response, and Ian’s voice stings with insinuation.

If you want to hear Ian play electric guitar, you should give another listen to the rhythm on “Locomotive Breath.” He’s also on the hi-hat and bass drum which he laid out for the basic rhythm, allowing Bunker space for tom-toms and the cymbals. The song opens with Evan giving a jazzy spin to dramatic classical concerto piano. The song, which is about overpopulation, rhythmically careens like a train about to derail. It is a concert favorite and frequent showstopper.

“Wind Up” asks this God a question and learns it’s “not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays.” The song is structured to grow on you, and age well. It begins with acoustic guitar and vocal, which is joined by the rest of the outfit until the climactic solos, and then reminiscences a second time symmetrically with piano grounding the build-up. In a fairly straightforward song, Bunker plays everything but a straight beat.

Anderson concludes, in the liner notes which are cast in liturgical-style Gothic lettering, the Spirit that caused man to create his God lives on, but goes unnoticed. He advises listeners, “for Christ’s sake,” to start looking. The album has been pilloried and praised by people of all faiths and none. The title song gave a face to the homeless and inspired grassroots organizations to create aid. Musically, it is a constant irritation to sitcom characters and an equally steady inspiration to players. In spite of having to explain how flute was a heavy metal instrument after winning the Grammy for 1987 Crest of a Knave, Jethro Tull was a huge influence on heavy metal and hard rock. Even the Sex Pistols’ John Lydon ranks Aqualung among his favorite records.

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It may be dinosaur rock to some, but Aqualung is far from extinct. Tracks like “Aqualung”, “Cross-Eyed Mary, “Hymn #43” and “Locomotive Breath” take up the bulk of Jethro Tull’s playlist on classic rock media outlets. After 50 years, Aqualung can still blow a wheezy breath of fresh air into stale misconceptions, even if he does have snot running down his nose.

The post Aqualung at 50: Jethro Tull’s Half Concept Album Hits Half a Century appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3bXGWyM

[thepermanentrainpress]

THE PERMANENT RAIN PRESS INTERVIEW WITH JOHN O’CALLAGHAN

“You can get so used to being in a bus and being in a band that brings people to shows – but it’s always just as easy to remember the times you didn’t have that stuff. I think that���s what is important to remember, for our sake. To stay humble, and at least stay hungry.”

It was one of several notions John O’Callaghan shared just a few minutes into our interview, and a few hours before he and the rest of The Maine took to the stage in Vancouver—their first time in nearly three years. “The shows are always sick,” he says, noting that while the movie theatre seats of the venue they’ve played on their past few visits impede the punk rock spirit, they welcome a greater challenge in engaging the crowd.

His only other recollection of the city? “I remember watching Interstellar for the first time,” he laughs. “That was a good film.”

For O’Callaghan and The Maine, longevity has served them well; an eleven-year tenure has seen the band traverse the globe and branch into other avenues of content creation. They recently celebrated the first anniversary of their latest record, Lovely Little Lonely. In contrast to past releases, its framework came together on O’Callaghan’s computer versus the piano, guitar, and voice memos he so often recorded on his phone. “I got Pro Tools and a bunch of the necessary materials in the digital world to make songs sound like songs, and not just a dude in a garage playing on the piano and recording it on his phone,” tells O’Callaghan. “I feel like there were a lot more structured ideas coming into the process.”

While the group has toyed with instrumental transitions in the past, LLL is their first album to incorporate formal interludes. The intoxicating “Bad Behaviour” falls into a placid “Black Butterflies and Déjà Vu” prelude; “Little” into deeply nostalgic cut “Sound of Reverie.” Sustaining that fluidity was a conscious effort on their part and, like the draw and release of a single breath, the record truly feels like less of a compilation and more of an experience.

Already in the planning stages of their next record, O’Callaghan assures new concepts will once again be brought into the fold. “I think it’s really important to change the process up every time… you’ll get too complacent if you don’t.”

At the time of this interview, the Fry Your Brain with The Maine tour had kicked off a week prior. And after each show – much like every show of past tours – they stay long after to interact with fans before retiring to a bus in which life is much less glamorous. “I got my first shower yesterday, which was nice,” says the frontman, adding that most venues don’t have the amenity. Hotel rooms are for the occasional day-off and primarily hygienic purposes; most days, like today, are spent in cozier quarters—"getting each other sick.”

Style and sound evolve, but the band’s passion for music remains constant—something they attribute to an earnest fanbase and staying true to themselves. “With art in general, I think you should be creating what it is that you’d like to see created,” O’Callaghan says of striking a balance between challenging oneself, and not trying too hard to be different. “We have the luxury of having a dynamic that won’t allow it to sound like something it’s not; we’re constricted and constrained by our abilities and our talents within the five of us. We can’t manipulate the guitar any other way than the five of us can, collectively. I can’t sing any better than I can actually sing.”

“That’s why we’ve always looked up to bands like the Rolling Stones – and I personally look up to Neil Young and Mick Jagger and Tom Petty – because there’s a big difference between a singer that hits all the correct notes and a singer that does what they can with what they have, and makes it their own,” he continues. “That’s not discrediting their talents or their abilities. But I mean, Mick Jagger… he doesn’t have a good voice.” [laughs] “He doesn’t. But he has an incredible voice because it’s so unique. I think that we’re in a position now where we won’t let it go to a place that doesn’t feel genuine and that doesn’t feel like us. That’s hopefully what people have respected about the process and attached themselves to.”

And what people have connected with is more than a band, but a community. Their self-run label and management team, 8123, supports volunteer initiatives prior to select show dates; Garrett and Pat host a podcast in which they talk to friends in the industry—or family, in the case of Pat’s mom. The Maine is the first serious band O’Callaghan has been a part of, with camaraderie dating back to middle school in Tempe, Arizona. “Jared and I had science class together… we’ve always felt that sense of community with one another,” tells O’Callaghan. It only made sense to extend that energy to their fanbase. “We are in such a position of privilege as opposed to other bands because we don’t just live and die by The Maine. The message is bigger than we are, and people are creating it as we’re going. It’s really cool to see it spread and go from a couple of guys smoking cigarettes on a parking garage to people all over the world, keeping that spirit alive.” He pauses. “Not the cigarette thing—don’t smoke cigarettes.” [laughs]

Following a quick stint in Europe, the band will be walking the line, slinging CDs all summer long on Vans Warped Tour.

Oh—and playing one of the main stages, too.

“Before I even had anything to do with music, I was a baseball player. I was just a cat in high school, listening to music first and foremost. That’s what I am – just a fan of music in general.” Even as the Arizona natives ascend in festival billing, they never veer from taking advantage of what it represents: an opportunity to spread their noise to crowds willing and eager to listen.

With their matching attire and ‘why would you pay money to meet a human being?’ tent turning heads in 2016, one wouldn’t expect anything less for this final cross-country run. “It’s this weird line… we don’t ever want to be pretentious, but we’re just so ‘meh’ about so many things that it’s important for us to make it known we’re comfortable with what we’re doing, and not affected by all of the other stuff,” O’Callaghan says. “So I think we’re just going to drive home that point and be bratty, but hopefully in a non-confrontational way. I’m sure it will be fun—we’re going to at least have fun.”

O’Callaghan has another project, John the Ghost, with a new book coming out in June. A Thought a Day is a year-long companion; 365 @johnmaine tweets, hand-picked and rooted in personal disposition. “I’m usually talking to myself when I’m tweeting, so it’s really important to have those to look back on for myself,” shares the frontman. “Nick Santino helped me design the inside and the cover, so it won’t be just a boring flip-it-and-there’s-text. I’m excited for people to see it.” As his stirring one-liners continue to amass thousands of ‘likes’ on Twitter, it felt appropriate to gauge his thoughts on the rise of the Insta-poet: commended for its unfiltered honesty and accessibility in today’s generation, others mock and critique the compositions for those very reasons. “It’s as simple as, turn it off if you don’t want to see it,” says O’Callaghan, voicing his support for the budding artist. “When I was growing up, that shit was just called being mean. If people are listening, keep doing it. Don’t be apologetic.”

For our signature ice cream question, O’Callaghan chooses butter pecan—a flavour he didn’t enjoy in his youth but has since warmed to. “It’s kind of like those old platitudes. You don’t think they make sense, or you think they’re corny ‘cause everybody says them, and then as you get older it’s like wait a second, there’s a reason this shit has been drilled and drilled into my head,” he tells. “My dad always loved butter pecan ice cream and I was like ‘ew, butter and nuts? You’re crazy.’ And then as I got older, I got over it.”

In many ways, The Maine is the same band they were eleven years ago—the same five guys, gripping guitar hooks and lingering nostalgia. But a natural progression in sound has given them a deep back catalogue to work with, their set list later that night ranging from 2008 ballad “Whoever She Is” to LLL’s breezy anthem “How Do You Feel?” O’Callaghan gave a couple shout-outs to concertgoers celebrating a birthday, and the band even improvised 20 seconds of the elusive, never-to-be-played-in-full-again “Give It To Me.”

There was no encore—unsurprising for a group that continues to challenge the norm in their laid-back interactions; charismatic live experience cherished as much by the band as it is by their spectators.

Reciprocity at its finest.

Written by: Natalie Hoy Photographed by: Jade Kenny

[rkwendy]

To The Sly and Cunning | Solo

Son Seungwan — Nova Ent Evaluation, November 2017 Mock Interview  

Wendy supposes that doing interviews when she was a competitive skater would come in handy at some point in her life. She likes to think she knows how to speak in front of a camera, and that this month’s evaluation should be one she can pass easily. She ignores the mischievous, almost evil glint in Coach Jisung’s eyes when she takes the seat next to him. She hasn’t taken that many variety workshops under him yet, so she isn’t going to be surprised if he went to Coach Seunghee and Coach Jaehwan for help when coming up with questions to ask her. After all, it is the singing coach and the instrument teacher who see her the most and know almost all her deep dark secrets. 

They keep their introductions simple. Wendy gives a pleasant smile, similar to the ones she has when she takes the ice. “Hello everyone, I’m Imperium’s maknae Wendy,” she greets with a polite bow, before returning to her seat. The group name has been a running joke among the Nova Girls for a while, especially with their Sailor Scouts dynamic. She smiles at Coach Jisung’s amused (at least she thinks he’s amused) eye-smile at her direction. She also mutters a quick “Thank you, Coach” while accepting the blanket Coach Jisung gives her to cover her legs because she’s wearing shorts today. 

Besides being the maknae, what is your position in the group? 

This is an easy one, Wendy thinks to herself. “I’m the group’s lead vocal,” she says with a smile. It’s not that she’s not dreaming big, but she has to be realistic. She’s aware that as long as Dawon unni is in the company, she’s not going to be main vocal. After all, Dawon unni’s been training in singing longer than she has and is capable of doing more vocal acrobatics than she can.

What was it like competing at the MGAs? Would you have preferred to be cast in some other way?

Wendy blinks at the question. After all, she wasn’t expecting this one. “I.... I have to admit that the MGAs were a rather difficult, but rewarding stage of my life. It was almost as intense as preparing for the Olympics, only with less time. I’m grateful that CEO Hyun Bin choose me to be part of Team Nova and for seeing potential in me, which I probably wouldn’t have realized. I’m also thankful for having both Ricky oppa and Seokjin oppa by my side, because their experience helped me immensely,” she says, choosing her words carefully. After all, one wrong word, and she’s done for before she can even begin. “I admit, I tried the MGAs because a friend dared me to do it. Apparently, my friend’s encouragement paid off, and I found myself in a career path far away from what I had initially planned! If not for the MGAs, I doubt I would have ever considered a career in music.”

What would you have done then, if not for the MGAs?

Wendy nods. “Music has always been a hobby and stress-relief for me. It was always a huge part of my life. But, even after graduating from SOPA, I never considered music for a career,” she admits, thinking that she should tell the truth. After all, not many Yonsei kids become idols. “I was, still am, a Communications student at Yonsei, so I saw myself working more toward either sports journalism or media law... or maybe I’d be studying to become a figure skating coach,” she says with a nod. She’s a diligent student, so she might as well show that part of her too. “I do my best to balance both school and schedules as much as I can, since being an idol and finishing my education on time are important to me.” 

Why does education matter so much to you? 

Wendy feels like she’s in a beauty pageant with this question, but she figures this will make her sound more intelligent in interviews. “My parents have always instilled in me the importance of a good education,” she admits. It’s not like she can say that she’s got a scholarship on the line. “There are lessons that are best learned in the real world, there are also lessons we can only learn in school. Having a proper education helps us interpret what’s going on in the world, and expose us to different worldviews.” Wendy smiles, because she sincerely believes in what she just said. She just hopes that she seemed intelligent without sounding like she was the next Miss Korea candidate. 

Coach Jisung nods, his eye-smile growing. Wendy hopes that’s a good sign that she’s doing well... She catches the playful smirk on his face as he reads the next question. 

When you first joined the company, who intimidated you the most?

Wendy lets out a loud laugh at that one. She knows the answer to that. She playfully looks around at her imaginary groupmates, as if they’re sitting next to her. “Min unni,” she says with a wink. She hopes that the change in honorific doesn’t get back to Min sunbaenim. Wendy isn’t even sure if she earned the right to call the senior trainee “unni,” but for the sake of the interview as a debuted member, she must maintain the charade. Spurned on by Coach Jisung’s ill-concealed laughter, she continues. “It was because she had this aura of seniority and other trainees spoke of her as if she was a legend!” Yes, this is a prettier way of describing what Min sunbaenim was like back then, but the dark clouds hanging over Min sunbaenim’s head no longer seem as dark as they were when Wendy first came to Nova. “I was right! She was a dancing legend. It was a struggle keeping up with her in dance classes.” She lets out a chuckle.

Coach Jisung nods with a snort. He knows what she’s talking about. After all, he has eyes everywhere in this company. 

Who are you closest to in your group?

“Waaaaaah~” Wendy says, sticking to her character. “This is difficult!” The way she says it sounds playful, but she realizes that Coach Jisung realizes how serious Wendy is. How is Wendy supposed to choose who she was closest to when she feels like she gets along well with everyone? Admittedly her best friends are outside Nova... “I’ve known Hyuna unni the longest,” she says. “But I tend to train more with both Dawon unni and Kaeun unni.” She thinks she dodged the question, and the raised eyebrow from Coach Jisung has her second-guessing herself. “I'm still working on getting closer with Min unni, Persephone unni, and Suji unni.”   

What’s your opinion on your debut concept? 

Wendy smiles. “I actually like the Sailor Scout theme we’re going with,” she says. Yes, it’s another Imperium shout-out. “People say that the magical girl concept might be overdone, but I have yet to hear of a group’s concept to revolve around Sailor Moon and the Sailor Scouts. I grew up watching Sailor Moon, albeit dubbed to English, back in Canada, so this concept is like a throwback to my childhood.”   

Can you explain to us about the Sailor Scout assigned to you? And how close is your Sailor Scout to your actual personality?

Wendy nods. Coach Jisung seems to be onboard the concept... at least for this interview. “I’m Sailor Mercury, who is usually associated with wisdom, as well as having powers over water and ice,” she says. Wendy hums. How close is Sailor Mercury to who she is? “I like to think that we’re similar in the sense that we both have a passion for learning and an affinity with the ice. We also both love to read!”   

Despite the concept, your debut song isn’t exactly magic themed... but as the lead vocalist, can you sing a few lines for us? 

“Sure no problem!” Wendy says, as she vocalizes a little bit... using this time to think of a song she can sing. She suddenly remembers the song she and Dawon unni were working on together. She thinks that it makes an interesting song. 

(1:00 - 1:08)

꿈일까? 아닐까? 몽롱한 기분인 걸  Is this a dream? Or not? I feel hazy 네가 좋아한대 날  You say that you like me 어떡해 진짠가 봐 What do I do? I guess this is for real  

Coach Jisung exchanges a look with Coach Jaehwan (who is apparently watching the interview), and Wendy’s eyes nervously shift between them. After all, there’s no doubt Coach Jaehwan might have given Coach Jisung some material they can use as blackmail against her. 

I heard you've been composing and writing your own tracks. Is this one of them?

Wendy nods, feeling a lot more confident this time. “I helped compose the melody, produce the track, and write the lyrics for this song. I’m happy that I was able to contribute significantly to our debut single.” 

How would you rate your compositions? 

Wendy frowns as she thins of the question carefully. She’s not the best, but she knows she has to give herself a little more credit. If she doesn’t believe in herself, then how will she get the fans to support her endeavors in the future? “On a scale of 0 to 100, I’ll probably give myself a 75,” she says. “I’m aware that I’m still young and that there’s a lot more I can learn when it comes to both life experiences and music.” She catches Coach Seunghee’s approving nod from behind Coach Jisung. She supposes she answered that one properly. 

If you were to produce your group’s album, what genre would you like to do? 

This is a very good question if Wendy will be honest. She’s never thought this far since she doubts she’d get the chance to do so in the foreseeable future. Now there’s a chance... “Tropical House!” she says. “I think that’s the safest medium we can go as a group and it is the in-thing in music right now...” She also supposes that is the closest thing to compromise that she can get for all the girls. She almost wants to say that she wants to write the breakup anthem of the century, but she’s afraid Coach Jisung might catch on to the secrets she’s hiding. 

What inspires you to write your songs? 

This is a question that should be easy to answer, but it’s one where people can find holes in her defenses. She has to be careful as she navigates this one. “I get inspiration from everywhere. I draw from my own experiences, or my friends’ stories,” she says, with a nod. “Sometimes, I get inspired by things I read in the news or from lessons I learn in school. Maybe a random conversation I overhear gives me a good idea.” Wendy nods to herself, hoping that Coach Jisung doesn’t ask her to elaborate on these experiences she just mentioned.  

Who are your role models?

At least Coach Jisung went easy on her for this one. “Kim Yuna unni, definitely!” Wendy says without batting an eyelash. “She’s been my role model since I was a child. I trained with her for years, it was so life-changing to see how she was able to carry the weight of an entire nation’s, then an entire world’s, expectations on her shoulders. I also admire how she was able to transition from being just another skater to becoming the face of the sport, not only in Korea, but for the rest of the world. And now, even if she’s no longer competing, she’s still so relevant and visible. That’s the kind of longevity and legacy I wish for us in Imperium to leave behind,” she says, with a fond smile. “I want us to be that group to play a role in significantly shaping the nation’s pop culture history,” she opines, trying not to sound too passionate, but instead rather pensive. 

“As for musicians, I definitely admire Nell sunbaenim. It’s not just because they’re our seniors here at Nova, but because of their ability to tell a story through their music. In fact, Nell was actually the group that gave me healing during a rough time in my life. They’re one of the reasons I rediscovered my love for music, actually.” She opts to keep her answers public friendly. After all, post-injury depression is still a rough topic to talk about. Heck, any kind of depression is difficult to talk about, especially in a place where mental illnesses are considered taboo. “During the preparation for the ‘Love Wishes’ project, I actually stayed at the corner of the makep room where the Nell members were being made up just to get a glimpse of them!” She claps a little as she bends over in half laughter, half embarrassment.  

With a smile, she continues, deciding to make herself more unique. “I also admire the late Kim Kwangseok sunbaenim,” she adds. “I grew up listening to his songs in Canada, because both my parents were huge fans of his. The way his voice alone could convey so much emotion and his lyrics were introspective compared to the rest of his contemporaries back then.” She hums to herself. “In fact, the words he wrote back then still ring true even now, more than 20 years after his death. I think music critic Lee Joo-yup sunbaenim describes his music best... ‘The songs showcase the thoughts of those constantly wavering on the between pessimism and optimism, but they still sublimate the self-consciousness that never gives up the strain of facing reality.’ I’d like to be able to achieve something that impacts a nation as much as he did.”   

Sensing Coach Jisung’s judgment at her old-soul tastes, she decides to act her age. “If we will go with pop music, as I love all members of MYNAME sunbaenim, I will have to admit that Insoo sunbaenim is my favorite member because I like his voice best!” 

If you had to choose only one, do you want to be an idol or a singer?

This is a trick question Wendy has seen on previous idol survival shows. She has the perfect answer... which isn’t a complete lie. “I initially wanted to do music,” she begins, taking in Coach Jisung’s serious-looking eyes. 

Being a singer or an idol isn’t a permanent career. She has to think of the future, and where she goes once whatever career she has as an idol (assuming she’ll even debut) ends. Going solo is one thing, but Wendy is an educated girl, so she has to somehow aim higher. Seeing how CEOs Katie Lee and Baek Jiyoung were able to build up KT and Sphere from the ground inspired Wendy to dare to venture where no one else has. But so far, Nova is all she knows... hence...

“But later on, as I trained here at Nova, I realized that my dream is to inherit Nova Entertainment from CEO Hyunbin!” She smiles as she hears Coach Jisung let out an ill-concealed laugh disguised as a cough. When he’s done laughing, Wendy continues. “By singing, dancing, composing, and maybe dabbling into acting and hosting, it could contribute to my dream.” 

Coach Jisung openly laughs this time. “That’s a big dream, Wendy... Good luck with that.”    

With the Pyeongchang Olympics coming soon, we heard that you were a competitive figure skater. Why did you stop skating?

Wendy’s smile almost falls from her face, but she likes to think she has enough discipline to keep herself from looking like she has war flashbacks. She lets out a sigh. She should have known this was coming. After all, people are likely to dig up her pre-debut life and no doubt her skating videos are all over the Internet. “I used to skate competitively until 2014,” she says as evenly as she can. 

“However, I injured myself during 2014 Nationals, and the recovery for my hip and knee took too long, so I ended up giving up on the sport.” It’s not like she’s lying. Besides, she thinks she can throw in a sad story here and there... It’s not like she has to lie about her injury, but she doesn’t want to seem too pitiful or else she risks coming across as fake.  

Coach Jisung quickly asks a follow-up question, 

Do you miss the sport? Especially now that the Winter Olympics are coming?

Wendy nods. This is easy. “Yes, definitely. I sometimes wonder what life would have been like if I didn’t get injured that badly,” she admits. “I could have been the girl to help get us Olympic spots at Helsinki last March... Or maybe I could be among the girls who will be competing for the right to represent the country at Pyeongchang. I miss being on the ice and feeling like I can fly while I tell a story to the world.” 

Coach Jisung nods, exchanging a glance with Coach Seunghee who is watching close by. 

Can you still skate?

Wendy’s smile feels more genuine this time. “Yes! I can still do some jumps and spins, though I will need to be in the right condition to do triples.” She laughs, remembering how she fell on her attempt at a triple lutz last winter. Throwing a quick smile, she adds, “Maybe I can show you a few moves by the time the rinks open!”

Sphere’s Kang Seulgi is in almost half of your social media updates...  Who else are you close with outside of Nova? 

Wendy tilts her head at Coach Jisung, trying to keep the frown off her face. How did he hear about that? Then again, Wendy and Seulgi’s friendship is pretty much general knowledge to anyone who knows them both. “Seulgi’s been my best friend since I first moved to Korea for high school. She’s a sister and soulmate. I can’t imagine life without her,” Wendy admits. 

This question is pretty easy, considering she has lots of friends outside Nova.  However, she has to narrow it down or else they’d be here all day. “I’m friends with Joy Park from TRC. It was, and still is, hard deciding who among Jazz unni, Elly unni, Seolhyun unni, Soohyun, and Soojung to cheer for in Royal Survival since they’re all friends of mine.” Wendy chuckles. She can also only talk about the trainees who are publicly known... “There are also lots of other friends, but I’m not sure I’m allowed to publicly talk about them yet.” 

Any male friends?

Wendy openly widens her eyes at Coach Jisung, before schooling her face into a neutral, polite smile. This is definitely a way to try digging up issues on her and try creating some kind of dating scandal. She's sure that reporters in real life will be less subtle than Coach Jisung, so she supposes she’s grateful for the surprise question.

“Both Gary oppa, Jongsuk oppa, and Kangjoon oppa have been like older brothers I never had,” she says. “On the other hand, Jihoonie from Sphere is like my cute and talented little brother!” Whew! She had dodged that one easily. 

How would you describe your ideal type? Is there any celebrity who comes close?

Wendy makes sure her laughter come across as shy and flustered rather than fake. Why must they always ask this question? “Based on the people I admire, physically, I prefer them tall with a regal vibe and kind eyes. Bonus points if they can sing,” she admits with a smile. Minhyun oppa will never know she’s talking about him. She may prefer men, but she’s inclusive and isn’t exactly closing her doors to women... International fans expect idols raised abroad to be more inclusive, and so Wendy will deliver. “In terms of personality, I like someone who respects their parents and is God-fearing. I’d like to meet someone who will support me and I can support in return...” She lets out a short chuckle. “But I’m too young and busy to think about all that! I’m married to my career right now!” 

 As a girl, she will just be subject to hate from any male artist’s fans the minute she names a specific person... but she supposes she can humor Coach Jisung. “Were you asking for a specific person?” she asks with a chuckle. She smiles. “I used to have a crush on Lee Seunggi sunbaenim when I was younger, but then there’s Jung Sewoon who looks like him...” She hides her face as she bashfully laughs, after all, Jung Sewoon is one of her current favorite musicians at the moment. He is also close to her age and very cute. It would be an honor to get closer to him. “Jung Sewoon is my ideal type! He has a nice voice, plays guitar, and his eyes look kind to me... I’d like to get to know him better if I can get a chance~

As maknae, you have to be able to do aegyo. Please use aegyo to appeal to the audiences to support you!

Wendy resists the urge to hide her face in shame. Of all the final things he can make her do... it had to be this. There’s no doubt he saw her displays of aegyo during the June evaluation. She gives Coach Jisung a long-suffering look, deciding which aegyo to use. She chooses to go for aegyo that is rather popular among the kids today. “Hello everyone!” She says in the cutest voice she can manage. “You are saved in my heart!” She forms two L-shapes with her thumbs and index fingers from both hands and puts them together form a rectangle. Then she reverses them to form another rectangle. She throws in a wink for full effect. She lets out an agonized, embarrassed scream, which she will admit, was exaggerated for show, as she buries her face in her hands. 

The things she does for the public... 

[mi7005alexanderprice]

Post-Presentation Reflection

That went...well!

I spent a full week slaving away to make sure I was presenting my aesthetics in the best possible way. I knew from the start that me speaking to the audience was a bad idea, as my already poor ability to convey information concisely would have derailed into incoherence, and the class would grow bored and frustrated.

I was not expecting Paul to be so ecstatic about it, either way.

Some notes:

I deliberately did not include any direct imagery from Revolutionary Girl Utena (Utena la fillette révolutionnaire - I used its French title in the presentation as media and merchandise originating from its native Japan uses it) as I feel its worth and function is the opposite of the animation I showed prior (i.e. demonstrations of almost solely technical proficiency).

Presenting Utena was easily the most difficult part of constructing this video, but had the greatest payoff as a result. I knew I had to channel director Kunihiko Ikuhara’s mindset and approach to filmmaking if I were to pull this off and keep the audience engaged.

Utena is rarely a beautifully animated show (its few great cuts are reused in as many episodes as possible), but its theming, symbolism, and social commentary have given it considerable staying power among its late-90s anime contemporaries.

Instead of playing unedited footage and/or audio from Utena, I instead opted to construct and animate sequences loosely based on it. If anyone finds themselves interested in pursuing Utena, they can go in blind and watch it on their own terms, as I have not spoiled much.

The car seen in my Utena-centric animated sequences is loosely modelled after the car from Adolescence of Utena, a tenuous film adaptation of the base series narrative, but also takes compositional cues from scenes from the TV series featuring the contextually iconic 1957 Corvette.

Pictured: The aforementioned Corvette, as shown in The Rose Revelations guidebook (and sourced from, like most Utena materials, Empty Movement - shoutouts to Giovanna and Yasha for carrying this community on their backs for two decades).

In fact, I felt showing an image of Kunihiko Ikuhara (as well as the David Lynch connection) was more poignant in terms of leading the audience’s connected mindset to where I wanted them to think.

Some notes not concerning Utena:

The video Paul showed the day prior about remix culture probably went a long way to make my ideas more palatable. Maybe everyone in the class was already conscious of remix cultural development, but if they weren’t, then it laid the foundations for my presentation.

I deliberately did not use music directly from the three films I chose. The End of Evangelion got a MIDI synth banjo cover version to appear slightly mocking (I do not want to be associated with Evangelion fans), Speed Racer got a Daytona USA track to foreshadow the SEGA-centric music section, and Paris Is Burning got a NiGHTS Into Dreams track simply because I think it’s a moving song (and it’s also SEGA, again).

I included the King of the Hill clip at the end of the music section to briefly shine a light on detractors’ perception of the SEGA Mega Drive sound hardware (i.e. that it’s all FM synth twangy fart sounds), and also to provide some audience relief in the form of a brief jab at myself. 

However, the biggest audience laughter came from me displaying the Sonic and Daytona album covers on screen, combined with the Wallspin verse beginning. Whether that was the result of good editing or they just found the material funny anyway, I’m happy I elicited such a vocal emotion from the class.

I made an admittedly hasty animation of one of supernovaleslie’s art pieces mostly as visual stimulus. Not only would it match consistency with the animated intros for Bengus and Mucciolo, but it’d visually slowly steer towards my experimental work that would appear later (even if 2 minutes of anime break the two things up).

Maybe next time, I’ll work on my elocution and include some audio narration to break up the deluge of text. I struggled to balance a reasonable runtime with necessary clarity, though, honestly, several classmates went above the ten minute rule, deliberately or otherwise, so I should have stopped worrying and spaced my content out a bit more. The Anthony Fantano audio clips were something of a half-measure towards this.

I explicitly breezed through so many abstract social concepts at a purely surface level during the ‘pitch’ segment as my intent was to clue the audience on my project’s general direction. I made it clear that ‘self actualisation’ would be a foundation point regardless of how the final work ends up. There wasn’t enough time to go into detail on any of them, anyway.

I wanted each piece of music to channel a different feeling. Isolation, alienation, euphoria, discomfort, irritation, dissociation, resonance, remorse, and so on. My tastes and ideas are often linked to introspective feelings, so I wanted the audience to mentally join me in the moment.

[slrlounge1]

15 Educational Events Happening Before April 2019

Education is by far one of the easiest ways to challenge your artistry as a photographer and grow as a professional. By forcing yourself to get out of our comfort zone and learn new lighting & photo concepts, you will grow exponentially as an artist.

We’ve rounded up some special educational events taking place over the next couple of months to give you the opportunity to grow and learn from some industry greats:

February 24th, 2019 – Elevation Workshop, Las Vegas, NV

Topic: The Art of Dramatic Photography Speaker: Sean LeBlanc Where: Las Vegas, NV When: 2/24 Cost: $395 Register: Here

What Will He Be Discussing?

Find the right clients for your business

Pillars of becoming a full-time photographer

How to stay creative session after session

On location live shoot with real clients

Pose your clients for a relaxed and natural look

Transform the ordinary into extraordinary

Use natural light and off camera flash for impact

Simplify your workflow to get more time back

Prep your portfolio for contest submissions

Breathe life into your photos with Photoshop

February 26, 2019 – The Artisan Editorial Shoot Shop, Las Vegas, NV

Topic: Wedding Photography Techniques & Business Branding Speaker: Paul Von Rieter Where: The Doyle, Las Vegas, NV When: 2/26 at 11:00 AM – 4:30 PM Cost: $800 (15% off with code “ARTISANLASVEGAS2019”) Register: Here

What Will He Be Discussing?

The event is being held at a REAL wedding venue in Las Vegas, The Doyle. The naturally lit, loft inspired space is conveniently located only 10 minutes from the WPPI 2019 conference at Mandalay Bay. Upon organizing this event, Paul’s goal was to create an experience that sets a higher standard. “I wanted to create something uniquely different to the desert shoot outs typically offered during WPPI. It’s important to me that our attendees leave with knowledge of new shooting techniques while being provided with an incredible shoot space and visual content that will upscale their brand and help them get hired by their ideal client. I have hand picked only the best partners, design elements, and sponsors to bring this vision to fruition. It is sure to be an event unlike any ever offered in Vegas coinciding with the WPPI conference.”

6 shooting stations, 3 brides, 2 grooms

Mock ceremony setup

Fine art backdrops & luxury floral installations

Hands-on instruction by Paul Von Rieter & team

Time allotments and attendants at each station

Short talk on the Artisan method and upscaling your brand

Fujifilm gear demo & giveaway

Snacks & drinks, raffles & more

February 26-27th, 2019 – WPPI, Mandalay BAY, LAS VEGAS, NV

Topic: Speed Posing for Tight Timelines Speaker: Vanessa Joy Where: South Pacific AB When: 2/26 at 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM Cost: View pass options here Register: Here

What Will She Be Discussing?

As a photographer one of the main things you fight is time. Watch NYC/NJ Wedding Photographer Vanessa Joy as she poses her couples to get the most out of the time she’s given on a shoot. From varying poses, angles, and crops, you’ll learn how to maximize the number of quality images you get during a session, even if time isn’t on your side.

Solid posing strategies for individuals, couples, and groups

Easy ways to capture large bridal parties – fast

How to work through a family list in 10 minutes flat

Topic: Creating Dramatic Wedding & Lifestyle Portraits with Natural Light and Off-Camera Flash Speaker: Sean LeBlanc Where: Mariners B When: 2/26 at 8:30 AM – 10:00 PM Cost: View pass options here Register: Here

What Will He Be Discussing?

This photowalk is for wedding and portrait photographers looking to see the world in a new light and excel in their craft. Sean’s photowalk sold out quickly last year and he is back to take you on an honest and open behind-the-scenes tour of how to work with both natural light and off-camera flash while also opening your eyes to finding killer compositions. Bring your cameras because you will be putting them to good use experimenting with new techniques. Ultimately, this photowalk will give you the essential tools to push yourself while creating beautiful wedding and lifestyle portraits.

Topic: Mastering Your Ugly Environment Speaker: Justin Haugen Where: Mariners B When: 2/26 at 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM Cost: View pass options here Register: Here

What Will He Be Discussing?

Attendees will learn how to walk into a messy room or unfavorable lighting conditions and immediately identify the best light sources in the scene, as well as how to position and pose their subjects in great light. Justin will cover how to minimize the obstructions and clutter in a scene and how to tell the most important parts of a wedding day story or showcase the best features of a portrait client in the most unassuming of locations. Learn how your lens selections affect the impact of your images and how your subjects will see themselves in their photos. Once you’ve learned how to harness the best light in a scene, Justin will cover some quick off-camera flash tips to take control of the light in the scene.

Topic:  Off-Camera Flash for Natural Light Photographers Photo Walk Speaker: Vanessa Joy Where: Mariners B When: 2/26 at 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM Cost: View pass options here Register: Here

What Will She Be Discussing?

Learn easy setups and the first steps to adding off-camera flash to your natural light portfolio. It doesn’t have to be as hard as it looks and it can help you create a natural light look when it’s not golden hour and incredible photos in less-than-ideal lighting situations. Learn with Vanessa while she shows you how she eased into using OCF consistently for her natural light style portfolio and gives you tips and tricks to using it quickly and effectively in the field. Then, shoot alongside Vanessa as she demos all she’s taught you in applicable scenarios, going more in-depth on how to set up lighting shots, get the exposure, adjust for imperfections, play with coloring and much more. By the end of this photowalk, you’ll have the confidence you need to start implementing off-camera flash into your shooting repertoire with ease. You’ll learn: how to quickly set up off-camera-flash shots on location; what light modifiers you need to get the look you want (but still be portable); and tips on creating golden hour any time of the day.

Topic:  Free Your Expectations Speaker: Hiram Trillo Where: Tradewinds F When: 2/26 at 10:30 AM – 12:30 PM Cost: View pass options here Register: Here

What Will He Be Discussing?

Nowadays the word “Photojournalism” is of style, but how can we capture our clients in this light? In this class we will talk about Photojournalism, what is it really, and how do you have to work in a purist and real style? Capturing emotion among your clients cannot be feigned or recreated, Learn to lose your fear and get the free side of weddings.

Topic: Conversations About Workflow Speaker: Charmi Patel Peña Where: Photomechanic Booth When: 2/28 at 12:00 PM Cost: View options here

Topic: Buzzer Beater Wedding Portraits Speaker: Justin Haugen Where: Mariners B When: 2/27 at 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM Cost: View pass options here Register: Here

What Will He Be Discussing?

Attendees will learn what to do when things run late on wedding day and how to maximize the least amount of time to cover all your portrait bases and deliver multiple looks for clients that will make it into their wedding albums. Learn how to take command of any situation and confidently pose and arrange your subjects during each phase of the wedding day. Justin will cover rapid-fire methods for moving wedding party and family members in and out of your group arrangements and leave you with a routine that will cover any family’s list of must-have groupings. Attendees will also learn how to implement off-camera flash and how to judge when the situation calls for it.

Topic: Beautiful Quality Light Throughout the Wedding Day Speaker: Charmi Patel Peña Where: Nikon Theater When: 2/28 at 10:45 AM Cost: View pass options here or stream live.

Photographers: Amii & Andy Kauth Where: Fundy Designer Booth #1111 When: 2/27 at 12:30 PM

Where: Tenba Booth #1138, When: 2/28 at 11:00 AM

Where: JPEG Mini Booth #260 When: 3/1 at 10:00 AM Cost: View pass options here

Photographer: Jared Gant Topic: 10 Ways to use MagMod Where: Magmod Booth When: 2/28 at 12:00 – 1:00 PM

Additional Appearances: Where: Tave Booth When: 2/28 at 2:00 – 3:00 PM

Where: JPEG Mini Booth #260 When: 3/1 at 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM Cost: View pass options here

March 1st, 2019 – Leica Workshop, Las Vegas, NV

Topic: Intensive Wedding Workshop Speaker: Jay Cassario Where: Botanical Garden at Las Vegas Springs Preserve When: 3/1 at 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM Cost: Free! Register: Here

What Will He Be Discussing?

Learn how to stand out in the over-saturated and competitive world of wedding and portrait photography in an intensive photography bootcamp with industry professional Jay Cassario from Twisted Oaks Studio on March 1 at the Botanical Garden at Las Vegas Springs Preserve.

Surrounded by natural light and the rustic beauty of the Mojave-inspired gardens, this hands-on workshop features a mock engagement shoot with two models and is designed to help attendees define their “style” while exploring new photographic techniques. That will be followed by a portfolio review and post-shoot critique. Attendees are encouraged to bring their laptop for the image review. Belongings will be stored securely during the engagement shoot.

Directing artistic portraiture and editorial posing

Authentic storytelling

Manipulating natural light

Editing/post-production

March 14th, 2019 – Family Time Conference, Barcelona, Spain

Topic: How to Grow Your Social Media Platforms Master Class: The Power of Storytelling & Authenticity Speaker: Meg Loeks Where: Barcelona, Spain When: 3/14 Cost: 250€ Register: Here

What Will She Be Discussing?

An in-depth discussion of her storytelling images and thought process. The power of storytelling and authenticity within children’s portraiture. Learn how to be a creative storyteller. Learning how to find light and manipulate it to highlight and mask certain elements within your frame. Adding versatility to your portfolio utilizing all types of light including various forms of challenging light. How to work with low light and utilizing artificial light. Discussion on micro-composing and shooting with intention. Learn the meaning behind certain compositions and how to add versatility to your sessions. Study ways to enhance depth by use of layering and framing. Who is your audience and how to capture connection and emotion? The power of color theory and the use of color. Learn how to maintain consistent tones in every type of environment. Editing demonstration with outdoor and indoor images. Where and how to draw inspiration yet maintain authenticity and originality. Questions and personal portfolio reviews.

March 24th, 2019 – Lighting Bootcamp, Raleigh, NC

Topic: Off-Camera Lighting Bootcamp Speaker: Brian Mullins Where: Raleigh, NC When: 3/24 at 10:00 AM – 8:00 PM Cost: $400 Register: Here

What Will He Be Discussing?

In this class we will start off with a brief primer discussing shooting manually with your camera including the effects of shutter, aperture & ISO on flash and available light, color temperature, open shade and other available light sources before moving into flash photography. We will be talking about (and using) both on camera and off camera flash as well as learning how to blend the two together. This class is designed for the professional wedding & portrait photographer who have to produce high quality work in harsh, mixed or low light environments.

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[shelfcompletionist-blog]

#008: Cesár Aira

Let me say flat out: Cesar Aira became one of my favorite authors currently writing (and I mean currently quite literally, dude’s probably gonna finish three novellas before I finish writing this piece). This is largely based on the strength of one book: The Musical Brain and Other Stories. New Direction’s curated sampling of stories in this volume is just so good, such a delightful update of Borges, with every single story bringing fresh surprises. I know that it’s probably a greatest hits collection of the miniature master’s most microscopic work, but hey, fiction doesn’t have to play by the same disqualifying rules as music does (just think if someone said that their favorite album is the greatest hits comp of David Bowie, or The Beatles, or Kanye West. C’mon man, that’s not allowed.) The Musical Brain is a bit of an outlier in format (but definitely not in quality) for Airan texts, though. He tends to write a very specific type of book, one that doesn’t get a lot of play in contemporary English-language literature: the novella. Specifically, a novella between 85 and 120 pages long. This length of narrative has allowed for Aira to shape his entire career. Not only are they short enough that Aira can write them at an extremely quick pace (he’s published about 90 works or so in his career) but it informs the content as well. While there are a couple varieties of Aira story as I see it, the novella allows Aira to do a couple different things in each story. Simply put, the Aira novella is longer than a short story and can juggle a few different concepts or ideas. Look at How I Became a Nun, and how it perverts the general concept of a coming-of-age/bildungsroman but still has space for individual foibles and sustained deliberation. Or one of his marquee works in the English reading world, The Literary Conference, which is ostensibly a send-up of the social politics of the Latin American literary set, and specifically Carlos Fuentes,  but ends up as a apocalyptic sci-fi cloning story involving ancient riddles. See, there are multitudes at work. Aira often functions on the level of a trickster-semiotician, taking some of our more complex societal conceits and putting them on their heads. The shortish length of the novella, however, allows Aira to present these ideas and concepts, explore them a bit, but leave them unexhausted. He isn’t interested in really taking them as far as they could go, to the point of overexposure or triteness. Although I could read Aira for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t really want to read a 400 page Aira novel over one of his 90 page novellas.

In fact, Aira’s longer works tend to be his least interesting, and for good reason. In my reading of Aira, I think I’ve figured out a way to classify his particular interests; Aira seems to have three fairly distinct modes: the metapersonal, the generic, and the historical. I’ve included a graph of these above. Of works that I’ve read, by far the most populous (and also *maybe* successful) of these is the metapersonal. These are the narratives that are recursive to the author-figure of Aira himself; sometimes this means that the main character is an explicit and/or twisted version of Aira, as in The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira or The Literary Conference (in both of these instances there may be little to no relation to Aira in reality other than the name, but even that demands some metatextual consideration); sometimes they rely on autobiographical details, such as How I Became a Nun or The Seamstress and the Wind, which use stories, whether real or imagined, of Aira’s youth in Coronel Pringles (itself a name almost too much to be real).

Most of the novellas I would categorize as ‘generic’ aren’t in practice that different from those I would categorize as metapersonal; these two tend to operate as a spectrum. The main difference between them is that the generic novels take different pulp or pop genres as their referents moreso than the more conventionally postmodern trappings of the metapersonal stories. For example, Dinner starts out as a social satire on high-class dinner parties and quickly turns into a zombie-horror novel, and Shantytown works as a skewed version of the hard-boiled noir. Since these are a few more steps removed from Aira the author, I would think that they aren’t what people maybe consider the most representative of Airan specimens, but they may be a good entry point for introducing someone new to the author, as they have that pop-culture exoskeleton to latch on to.

The third, and least related (*and* least interesting, at least to me) type of Aira narrative is the historical. These tend to be the least elevated, least postmodern of Aira’s works. An Episode In the Life of a Landscape Painter, for example, is exactly that: a story about the 19th century landscape painter Rugendas. There’s not as much play as one would maybe come to expect from something like Conversations or Dinner. It’s almost as if Aira feels compelled, when he writes about these times of pre-(literary)-modernity, he has to forgo the types of metatextual and semiotic examination that he is usually interested in, which may be a useful exercise but doesn’t quite make for as compelling a read. These also tend to be Aira’s longest works (both Ema, the Captive and The Hare take place pre-1900 and are over 200 pages long, as if dealing with this removed setting forces him to fill his books with a more complete narrative, which is, to me, a bit unnecessary.

Now, after going on about this effort at categorization that I’ve made to make sense at Aira’s oeuvre, I get to one of his books on my shelf, the most recent (at this point) translation that New Direction has put out, a combined binding of two of his shorter novellas, The Proof and The Little Buddhist Monk. Lo and behold, they don’t really fit in any of my groups that comfortably. They are both strange little ditties, to be sure. The Proof tells the story of a timid girl accosted by some lesbians (the first line is: “Wannafuck?”) and eventually enticed into their group of sapphic criminals. The story ends with (spoiler alert) that group causing a bloody mess robbing a supermarket. The Little Buddhist Monk, on the other side, is about an actual little buddhist monk who takes a French couple, touring Korea, under his wing to show them the real sights of the country. Neither of these really come from a metapersonal angle (Aira himself is not to be found) and neither operate at an obvious generic level (although one could imagine a lesbian gang of criminals like in The Proof popping up frequently in grindhouses across America sometime in the 70s). Perhaps this is good, though; these two odd ducks become exceptions that fuel the rule. By getting rid of the overarching structure of his more genre-focused or self-referencing works, these two stories are able to get at the deconstructionalist heart of Aira’s writing, free of distraction. Not that I wouldn’t want to see him pop up again in his own work.

Other Books Read in the Interim

Ill Will, by Dan Chaon - One of the few true thrillers I’ll probably read this year (even if it is a ‘literary’ thriller), Ill Will did a number on me. Maybe that’s just cuz I know someone who died in the exact way described in the book: a mysterious overnight drowning in a river. Just as in this novel, when that person died, the conspiracy theories swirled around them, about the possibility of a serial killer targeting college age boys in the midwest. Ill Will supposes that the theory might just be true, which just made for an overall uncanny reading experience. The ending gets a bit too extreme for its own good, though.

Box, by Robert Wrigley - It may have a reputation as being one of the cornier iterations of verse, but reading well-done nature poetry aloud on a walk can be such a heartwarming experience.

Do Not Become Alarmed, by Maile Meloy - A slice of thick-cut cheese. Maile Meloy builds a hermetically plotted first-world deconstruction thriller, with pleasing results. Sure, pull apart the novel any direction and you'll see how constructed any of the action is-- nothing seems to happen organically, but every string of happenings is a contrivance for the larger plot. That being said, I couldn't help but keep flipping pages to see if any kids bite it in the end.

No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, by Naomi Klein

Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish: Essays, by Tom McCarthy

Walkabout, by James Vance Marshall - This is an interesting book that has a lot going on under the surface about white Americans' conception of race as it clashes with an Australian world, infused into what is basically a young adult survivalist adventure story. I liked the fantasia of Australian wildlife that Marshall presents here too, maybe because I always liked platypuses and such. It'll be interesting to compare this to the movie, which I hear goes in some, ahem, different directions.

The Teeth of the Comb & Other Stories, by Osama Alomar - I had a decent amount of fun reading these stories, basically short enough to be aphorisms, but they eventually become a little too wearing on me. I’m not sure if it’s the translation stripping some of the subtlety of the language, but Alomar’s stories came to feel like the kind of faux profundity mocked in an Andy Samberg sketch. You kinda expect that airhorn sound and someone bellowing “DEEP” at the end of them.

Stephen Florida, by Gabe Habash - Probably my favorite novel of the year. A masterclass in first-person narration.

Wolverine: Old Man Logan, by Mark Millar - Reading this comic really shows how accomplished the movie Logan, which takes loose inspiration from Old Man Logan, is at creating a mood, characters, and cohesive world without relying on worldbuilding. Mark Millar never seems to have gotten beyond his concept treatment for a superhero dystopia here, because he spends more time having characters deliver clunky exposition about how one character died or how another now rules the entire eastern seaboard than having them actually develop as characters we should care about. This really isn't about Logan; it's about being destruction porn, a kind that Marvel has been increasingly reliant on (basically since its conception, but gaining popularity from the 80s through the 2000s.) You have a thoroughly (if haphazardly) created universe of thousands of characters, and instead of dutifully adding to that universe, it becomes 'cooler' (read: edgier) to tear it all down. Yeah, you wanna see a giant Pym skeleton incorporated into the landscape, and a lonely Venom symbiote stalking the badlands, and President Red Skull. Millar uses Hawkeye basically as a snarky guide to this world of death and puts more effort into that than anything else, like an actually interesting arc for Logan. Yes, there is a certain base glee that you can glean from seeing these epochal heroes torn asunder (both figuratively and, well, you know) but the mood of the text is a little too convivial in that gleefulness, to the point that it becomes less of peek into another's vision of apocalypse and more a shared jerk-off session with someone you wouldn't want to be in a room with in any normal circumstances. But I do have to commend Millar for giving Mysterio the respect he deserves.

Made for Love, by Alissa Nutting - My other favorite novel of the year. A masterclass in subtlety of worldbuilding and thematics.

Mr. Mercedes, by Stephen King - I haven't read a King book in a good long while even though I just started a podcast on him (the movies, though, not the book) and while this has all of the weaknesses you might find in your average Stephen King horror novel, it still managed to scratch that itch. The detective thriller, while maybe not his best suit, still looks good on him.

Mae, Vol. 1, by Gene Ha - Wow, this was actually an awful reading experience for me. I don't really want to be brutal, but the characterization is nonsensical and weak (are they going for deadpan when Mae seems utterly nonplussed when her sister reappears after twenty or so years?), the plot makes weird jumps that keeps me uninterested in the story (it seems like the creative team behind this is just coasting between plot points, letting page breaks serve as inconsistent temporal jumps), the art is flat and uninteresting, and the deconstruction of tropes seemed pretty rote. That's a no from me.

Dear Cyborgs, by Eugene Lim

Circle M, by CA Conrad - CA Conrad's style continues to shine in these brief snippets. This is a minor work almost by designation, but a fun little look into creative restriction all the much for it.

Hard Child, by Natalie Shapero

Crazy for Vincent, by Hervé Guibert - A fragmented look back at the desperate feeling of gay lust in the 1980s, that keeps going further and further back. Parts of this story feel familiar, but as the years slip away, Hervé's longing becomes an unignorable force of emotion.

The One Inside, by Sam Shepard - What a magnificent, sorrowful, elegiac, and pained way to go out. Thanks, Sam.

Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash, by Eka Kurniawan - I found this to be very enjoyable, even if there are some misogynistic issues very close to the surface. The way Kurniawan is able to portray time here is masterful. Can't say I would need to recommend a book all about a dude's malfunctioning dick to anyone in particular tho

Before, by Carmen Boullosa

Terms and Conditions, by Robert Sikoryak - An interesting art/culture object that maybe doesn't say as much about the source material as it could have. Instead of Sikoryak aping and pastiching some of the most iconic comic moments of the past century, I would have actually preferred an original visual narrative that uses the Apple Terms and Conditions as an emotive pattern to follow. It's fun though.

Bodies of Summer, by Martín Felipe Castagnet - God, do I love Argentinean literature. This, a story about how souls move to the internet when people die, is probably the most Airean book I’ve read not written by the man himself, but it lives up to its influences.

Square Inch Hours: Poems, by Sherod Santos - My first read from the National Book Awards Poetry longlist. Sherod Santos's Square Inch Hours comes in a style of meditative prose poetry that I usually really like, but this collection didn't work that well for me. Maybe it is because each individual section is a bit too short for its own good, so it was hard to grasp on to something, whether it be a single line or an overarching concept, before Santos moved on. That being said, Square Inch Hours does capture that feeling of being inside one's own head, yet still processing what is going on in the perceptive world outside the self. Mark it neutral, I suppose.

Who is Rich?, by Matthew Klam - An ugly, misanthropic, and maybe also misogynist (what makes you think that?) howl of a novel, raging against the waves of capitalism ennui that the upper-middle-but-actually-financially-unstable-creative class lives in daily, Who Is Rich? is a campus novel in concentrate, containing all of the preoccupations of the genre in one potent dosage. I am mainly surprised that something so angry and Rothian could exist like this in 2017, but it seems that Matthew Klam, 16-odd years out from his debut collection, is a man out of time. Who Is Rich? is well-written enough, with an effective melding of protagonist and narration (something tells me it wasn't too hard for Klam to tap into that) but the emotional undercurrent of the novel leaves a rather sickening feeling.

Broken River, by J. Robert Lennon - A decent literary thriller -- literary here as distinguished by having an interest in the interiority of the characters and painting them with more than what's required of the plot, which Broken River does well enough. That being said, kinda bare bones as far as intrigue-- not quite conventionally thrilling enough, and not quite weird enough either. I don't think that Lennon uses the concept of The Observer in the best way, which would have set Broken River up to be a pretty good twist on the thriller but instead reads as narratively overbearing and thematically scant.

The Reconstruction, by Rein Raud - Should be made into a movie by some meditative Eastern European director. Bela Tarr, u up?

The Grip of It, by Jac Jemc - It feels like a breath of fresh air to read The Grip of It, a literary horror novel about a haunted house that doesn't get too bogged down in questioning the overt ambiguity of the narrative. By this, I'm calling out all those other literary horror novels (and films too, sure) that are way too preoccupied with that idea of "is it an actual haunting or are the characters just going crazy?" This may seem weird, considering The Grip of It is about that very question-- the central couple might just be losing their minds, or their house might be genuinely haunted. What Jac Jemc does, though, is avoid questioning the question, so to speak. The Grip of It blows through that central question and gets at the catastrophic decay going on in the middle of these structures: the house, the relationship, the individual brains. If there was even the slightest amount of remove in this narrative, it would fall apart under that regular horror story criticism that the characters are too thickheaded or stupid to make the obviously correct, obviously preserving decision. It doesn't matter so much if it's real or not. Jemc doesn't hold these characters at a remove; you feel like you are living through this nightmare with them as they get trapped in crawlspaces and finger rotting walls.

The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, by Jillian Weise - Bold, persistent poems that mainly focus on the lived experience of disability and the way the world tilts and pushes towards ableism, Jillian Weise's The Amputee's Guide to Sex is clear in its assertions and clear in its poetics. I think it's a very good starting point for people who are not natural poetry readers (yet) to see what contemporary poetry can do, who and what issues it can speak to, and how many emotions it can speak to.

The Book of Endings, by Leslie Harrison - Man, do I love poetry that cascades trippingly from line to line.

The Answers, by Catherine Lacey -  The Answers, by Catherine Lacey, is interested in the tough philosophical questions at the intersection of our modern conceptions of love and technology. The novel seeks to interrogate these questions from a boldly female viewpoint, featuring an obstinately disengaged female protagonist at the helm of the narrative. This alone makes it a nice pairing with another novel from this year, Alissa Nutting's Made for Love. Made for Love may have the slight edge up here, though, because The Answers' Mary Parsons is not only disengaged, but disengaging. There were a few times that her actions or behavior just didn't jibe (and even if that was intentional, it did hamper the environment of the novel). That being said, those character-based false notes didn't hinder the rich development of ideas at the heart of The Answers, making it a worthwhile read.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, by David Grann

Caca Dolce: Essays from a Lowbrow Life, by Chelsea Martin - Really good stuff! I think the last couple essays maybe jump a little far from the tempo established in the first 2/3 of the collection, which focuses on childhood and adolescence. I would have actually loved if there were two books here, the first focusing on childhood and the second expanding on the young adulthood stuff after moving away from her family.

[tosomeonefromawarmclimate]

I'm walking with you

yellowjackets band au, my beloved