#mutated void

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 10, Number 9

Photo of Aerial M by Tim Furnish

We’ve got a couple of Peel Sessions in this month’s batch, and it makes you think about how people can go on shaping the taste of millions, finding new bands, bringing up worthy underdogs for decades, and then stop. We come to rely on these people—John Peel for sure, but there are others—but they’re not here forever, and who will step up when they’re gone? Well, we’re not saying we’re John Peel, not by any stretch, but we’re still here at Dusted, still digging the obscure and overlooked, still operating in more or less a vacuum. We don’t make Dusted for the clicks or the acclaim and certainly not for the cash (there is none). We do it for each other. We do it for the bands. We do it for you.  

Anyway, we hope you enjoy this iteration of Dust. Jennifer Kelly, Christian Carey, Bill Meyer, Jonathan Shaw, Tim Clarke, Bryon Hayes, Ian Mathers, Andrew Forell and Jim Marks contributed.

Aerial M — The Peel Sessions (Drag City)

This three-song EP collects the output from Aerial M’s only Peel Session, recorded on March 3, 1998 (it was broadcast about a month later). Here in the interim between Slint and Papa M, David Pajo lays down an extended version of “Skrag Theme,” an alternate version of the single “Vivea,” and “Safeless” from the 1998 Vivea EP (which, very curiously, did not include a version of “Vivea”). Although Aerial M is largely considered a solo effort, Pajo was accompanied on this occasion by a crack Louisville post-hardcore ensemble: Tony Bailey, a veteran of more than 40 Kentucky underground bands, on drums; Cassie Marrett, who would later be known as Cassie Berman and a member of Silver Jews; and Tim Furnish of Parlour, Crain and the For Carnation. That band knocked Pajo’s Aerial M songs for a loop, pushing the woozy guitar tones of “Vivea” with a gut-checking drum beat and shading it subtly with either a keyboard or a melodica. Still moody, still layered with guitars, but subtly more physical, the track is the stand-out of the three. Likewise “Skrag Theme” fills out with a live band, its cerebral guitar lick anchored by the weight of drums and bass. “Safeless” spins out lyrically, meditatively, from a guitar line too chilled and thoughtful for rock, but not exactly jazz either. It’s all enough to make you wonder how things would have turned out if this band had kept at it, pushing at the boundaries of rock and noise and psych together.

Jennifer Kelly

Franco Ambrosetti — Sweet Caress (Enja)

Flugelhorn player Franco Ambrosetti brought together an all-star cast to record at Skywalker for his latest Enja release, Sweet Caress: pianist Alan Broadbent, guitarist John Scofield, bassist Scott Colley, and drummer Peter Erskine, with a generous string section alongside. Broadbent is also arranger and conductor. They dig into an estimable list of standards such as “Soul Eyes,” “Old Friends,” and Charlie Haden’s “Nightfall,” the latter of which sent me right to the piano to learn it. Ambrosetti has a rounded tone and enjoys adding fleet runs to his solos. His colleagues are equally fluent, and a solo violin introduction on the title tune underscores the album as a whole’s suavity.

Christian Carey

BassDrumBone — Afternoon (Auricle)

If you don’t know anything about BassDrumBone, after one look at the cover of Afternoon, with its image a many-ringed tree stump,you’ll have a pretty good idea of what they play, as well as the band’s collective sense of aging. And you’d be right, twice over. Mark Helias plays bass, Gerry Hemingway drums, and Ray Anderson is on trombone, and they recorded this album 46 years after they first got together. What you won’t know until you play it is how comfortable they are with each other, not as in “let’s kick and blow some old tunes,” but in the “I’ve got your back and I know you have mine, so let’s see what happens” sense. They alternate between written tunes that exploit the line-up’s potential for turning tight angles and improvisations that journey from eerie chamber abstraction to robust swing on a path pocked with aside-inducing holes in the road.

Bill Meyer

Black Mold — In the Dirt of Oblivion (Hellprod)

Grim, grotty blackened punk from somewhere in Portugal, released for your unpleasure on a shitty-sounding cassette. That sort of willfully outmoded packaging is the sort of thing that the hipster kids in the various undergrounds love to pieces — but the technical atavisms are unironically earned here. How else should we listen to a song called “Faint in Obscurity”? Turn that tune up loud and you’ll hear all the tasty, weirdo guitar tracks churning and distending under the mix’s buzzy, brittle surface. Is it frustrating that Black Mold seems to care about how their music strikes your battered, beleaguered earholes, and the indifference to anything resembling recording fidelity turns that care in on itself? Is that punk perversity? Kvlty authenticity? When the music is this raw and exciting, does it matter? In any case, the tape closes with a song called “Futile Purpose,” so fuck it, and fuck us all for giving a shit in the first place. Black Mold doesn’t.

Jonathan Shaw

Broadcast — Distant Call: Collected Demos 2000-2006 (Warp)

Following May’s 36-track Spell Blanket, a sprawling, varied and intermittently brilliant collection of Broadcast demos dating from 2006 to 2009, Distant Call is now the final release from Broadcast. It’s a much more succinct and consistent collection of songs, most of which are spare voice-and-guitar renditions of tracks that made their way onto Haha Sound, Tender Buttons and The Future Crayon, including essentials such as “Tears in the Typing Pool,” “Where Tears and Laughter Go” and “Pendulum.”To anyone familiar with the band, it’s not only striking to find that much of the character of these songs resides in Trish Keenan’s unique songwriting style and vocals, but also how much the full album arrangements and production contribute to their vivid realization. I can’t imagine wanting to hear any of these versions in preference to their album incarnations, but there are a couple of previously unreleased songs to sweeten the deal: “Come Back to Me” and “Please Call to Book.” The former’s sing-song melody over ripples of fingerpicked guitar is archetypal Broadcast, eerie and mesmerizing. The latter closes out the collection in a hushed, hesitant manner, with lovely harmonized vocals and a bright swell to the chorus: “When the sun shines inside the sun shines outside.” It’s a bittersweet send-off to one of the most beloved and influential bands of recent decades.

Tim Clarke

The Gabys — Self-Titled 7-inch (Fruits and Flowers)

The Gabys are from the U.K. but are sonically aligned with San Francisco’s bedroom pop scene. Stalwart Bay Area scenester Glenn Donaldson is a fan. His band The Reds, Pinks & Purples has covered “Molly” from the duo’s debut cassette, and he’s released two of their EPs on the Fruits & Flowers label he co-runs with Chris Berry. The Gabys’ music also runs parallel to the general sonic milieu of Paisley Shirt Records, another SF-based champion of fuzzy DIY sunshine. The duo pair the romantic and jangly edges of The Velvet Underground’s oeuvre with vocals eerily reminiscent of Young Marble Giants’ Alison Statton. Their home recording ethos lends their sound a hazy quality. On past releases, Matt and Natasha (the pair behind The Gabys name) have wrapped their harmony-filled song nuggets in clouds of lo-fi murk, but this latest EP polishes off their sound and reveals a quartet of brief and beautiful tunes. This additional clarity makes reveling in The Gabys’ jangly sound world even more rewarding, so hopefully the pair unveil more music soon.

Bryon Hayes

Christoph Gallio Roger Turner — You Can Blackmail Me Later (Ezz-thetics)

While the album name and certain of the track titles imply belligerence, this music steers clear of hostility. However, it’s perpetually tense and mercurial, with pungent horn phrases sharing space with featuring swift changes of attack. Swiss saxophonist (soprano, alto, c-melody) Christoph Gallio sounds exceptionally distilled, doling out pungent tones that gradually build in length and mobility. Englishman Roger Turner’s drumming is a master class in making each strike count and using shifts in volume to shape the music. The duo struck up an ultimately robust partnership when Gallio moved to London for a six-month sabbatical with the express intention of studying London’s improvised music scene. A single gig launched a sequence of private, recurring encounters, during which they hashed out the shared language heard here.

Bill Meyer

Gleaming Shard — Mirrors in Light Diamonds (Balance Point Acoustics)

Gleaming Shard is an improvising duo based in Chicago. Both of its members, prepared guitar player Da Wei Wang and percussionist Jerome Bryerton, have shared stages with musicians you might follow if you’re into that scene, but on Mirrors in Light Diamonds they clear a zone of their own. The instrumentation — mainly a couple guitars on a table and an array of gongs — has some precedent, and so does their sound. But connecting tools to output is a bit harder to do. The album’s six pieces sound like field recordings made at noon in a town comprising nothing but churches. Tom Verlaine once sang about walking around in the ring of a bell, but these guys have set up shop and spent so much time there that their postures have been molded to fit the furniture. It’s a marvelously engulfing racket.

Bill Meyer

hkmori — in search of a life worth living (self released)

How you feel about the work of enigmatic producer hkmori can probably be summed up by how you feel about the genre name “depressive breakcore.” Incomprehension and/or revulsion? Well, there’s plenty of music out there to check out instead. But if instead you’re intrigued by the idea of melding one type of sonic extremity to a different type of emotional extremity (kind of similar in spirit if not at all in sound to depressive black metal, actually), c’mon in. The four EPs hkmori has posted on Bandcamp in 2022 and 2023 are all strong examples of the form, and now their first 2024 release feels like it widens the scope just a little bit. Yes, you’ve still got songs like “tearsoaked pillows” hitting that sweet’n’sour spot, but on “What even is b@#$%core?” and “unrequited meaning” you start getting some new tones and timbres introduced (emotionally and sonically). Still not for everyone, but if you’re on this wavelength it’s another solid transmission.

Ian Mathers

Hubbub — abb abb abb (Relative Pitch)

abb abb abb, the fifth album by Hubbub, was recorded in 2019. This makes it an unofficial 20th anniversary observation by the French electro-acoustic improv unit, which comprises Fréderic Blondy, Bertrand Denzler, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Jean-Sébastien Mariage and Edward Perraud, released just in time for its 25th. Sometimes good things take time, and while the ensemble’s music is created in the instant of performance, it’s informed by a lot of history and takes its time manifesting. While its line-up (reeds, electric guitar, piano, percussion) and component personalities differ, there are aspects of 1990s AMM in the tension that Hubbub obtains from the tectonic friction of sonic layers. However, the music’s silence to event ratio is never so large, and the saxophonists stand ready to switch into close, prickly interaction, which combine to give the music an austere muscularity.

Bill Meyer

Hybrid — Movable Objects (Self-released)

Hybrid is New York tenor saxophonist Adam Larson’s trio with Chicago bassist Clark Sommers and Kansas City drummer John Kizilarmut. On Movable Objects they take a low key but sophisticated run through a 40-minute set of original material. As soloists they favor oblique melodic and rhythmic approaches to passionate intensity and technical fireworks and their interplay has a complexity and depth that reveals itself beneath placid surfaces. On “November to March” provides the template as the trio move from a simple opening motif into deft improvisation with deceptive ease. Sommers’ solo seems to slip sideways before you realize it, darting like a hummingbird from idea to idea. Kizilarmut makes fine use of his rims playing with a relaxed feel that seems to shrug at his inventiveness. Larson is likewise an agile presence, his tone sharp and he invests his runs with both emotional depth and satisfyingly unpredictable turns.

Andrew Forell

Isik Kural — Moon in Gemini (RVNG Intl.)

Isik Kural presents a different kind of expression than that of previous recordings on Moon in Gemini. Gentle lullabies and dulcet vocals provide a mood that transcends mere ambience into back to the womb sound bathing. “Almost a Ghost” is affecting, with hummed backing vocals, plucked acoustic guitar, synth harp, and field recording snippets supporting a laconic lead vocal. “Behind the Flowerpots” has dulcet upper register singing accompanied by scalar pitched percussion and a repeated chord progression in synth strings. The final track, “Most Beautiful Imaginary Dialogues,” quotes a Silvina Ocampo poem, convincingly summing up a warm outing that is compelling rather than cloying.

Christian Carey

LDL — In the Endless Wind (Wide Ear)

in the endless wind by LDL (Leimgruber - Demierre - Lehn)

LDL is soprano saxophonist Urs Leimgruber, (mostly prepared) pianist Jacques Demierre and analogue synthesizer player Thomas Lehn. Originally Barre Phillips held Demierre’s space, and for a time they were a quartet. Years of improvising together have resulted in a shared language that is simultaneously distinctly tripartite and irretrievably blurred; Lehn and Demierre can each run the other’s signals through their respective instruments, and Leimgruber’s high, lacerating shards of pitch come startlingly close to those of Lehn’s synth. Thus, the action often comes from sounds pixilating, flickering at the edge of silence, combining into dense blocks that are decayed around the edges, or snapping back into conventional voices. Their interactions mutate and reconfigure, inviting the listener to follow them on a trip that’s unfailingly alien but never gratuitously weird.

Bill Meyer

loscil // Lawrence English — Chroma (self released)

Colours of Air, last year’s debut full-length collaboration between loscil (Scott Morgan) and Lawrence English, did so much with its pipe organ source material that it’s not shocking that Morgan and English might take another kick at the can. If anything, the surprising part is that while Chroma is identifiably part of the same overall project, it does have a distinct identity, one even gentler and quieter than its predecessor. It also, in the form of “Vermillion,” has an example of how the duo’s live shows went, presenting a gorgeous excerpt from their set at the Vox Organi festival in Vancouver. Fittingly enough, “Vermillion” is the track across both LPs that most clearly sounds like a pipe organ (which was played live by both human and computer). The result is not quite as striking as its predecessor, but it’s hard to be upset with 32 more minutes of this particular good thing.

Ian Mathers

Love Child — Peel Session (12XU)

Peel Session by Love Child

Love Child’s Never Meant to Be is one of 2024’s best reissues, compiling both full-lengths, singles and radio appearances for these NYC-based purveyors of lo-fi post-punk. It’s a comprehensive survey of the band’s 1988-1993 run, but not exhaustive. This four-song EP adds two never-released songs to the catalog and reprises two from the main retrospective. All four come from a December 1992 Peel session that, sadly, never aired. They catch the band at a loosely slung, wildly energetic peak, months before they broke up for good.

The band, if you’re just checking in, featured Alan Licht on guitar, Rebecca Odes on bass and, by that point, Brendan O’Malley, who had replaced founder Will Baum on drums. Their version here of “Asking for It” is careening punk rock, with Rebecca Odes spattering the walls with indignant verses and Licht executing tight repeated squalls on guitar. If you think you’ve heard it before, you have. It was the lead-off track to Never Meant to Be. You might also be familiar with closer “Greedy,” with its seething guitar and candy-coated vocal (Odes again), and for the same reason. But two of these tracks are new to almost everyone, and they capture the band moving in a welcome but unfamiliar direction of droning psychedelia. “All Is Loneliness,” for instance, has approximately 0% of Love Child’s early brat-punk vibe, instead it flickers and builds and howls like an outtake from Bailter Space or, possibly, Bardo Pond. “Slow Me Down,” lurches forward on blasts of heavy metal guitar, tamping the riff down just enough to reveal the song’s indie post-rock heart. A guitar lick that reminds me, no kidding, of the Wrens, coincides with brutalist assault, and it might have been interesting to hear more of that if the band had stayed together a little longer. Oh well.

Jennifer Kelly

Mahti — Konsertti I (VHF)

Konsertti 1 by Mahti

Mahti is a Finnish instrumental quartet with ties to their compatriots Circle, but you wouldn’t know that by listening to them. There’s no heaviness and virtually no rock in their music. Electronic percussion percolates more than it propels, trading off the lead position with a clean-toned electric guitar like a couple of geese swapping a flock’s point position, and synths move volumes of sound like lassoed clouds. A fourth member plays kantele, a Finnish folk zither, but it tends to blend with the other instrumental voices rather than assert one of its own. The music was recorded live, but audience noise and room town are so absent that you might never know. To perky to be ambient, soothing but busy, this music feels familiarly krauty without ever adopting anyone else’s guise.

Bill Meyer

Mutated Void — Listen to the Struggle (Unlawful Assembly)

Listen To The Struggle by Mutated Void

Depending on your tolerance for feral, freaked-out skate punk, you might wish to paraphrase the title of this new tape from Mutated Void: Listening is the struggle. Others among us will be as happy with Listen to the Struggle as we have been with the Nova Scotia band’s previous output. Ugly, stoopid riffage; indifferently bashed percussive elements; harsh, hoarse croaks that have a vaguely humanoid quality — good times, galore. It’s the sound of several layers of skin being peeled off by sunbaked concrete; or maybe, given the Nova Scotia provenance of these noises, a rain-slicked quarter-pipe slowly falling to pieces. In any event, these tunes will scar you, or at least leave you with some nasty splinters. Cassette-closer “Zombie (Mecht Mensch)” is the main attraction. Like a moldy hunk of ambulatory undead flesh, the song really stinks, and it’s just wonderful.

Jonathan Shaw

Meshell Ndegeocello — No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin (Blue Note)

After records celebrating Nina Simone and Sun Ra, vocalist, bassist and songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello commemorates the centenary of author James Baldwin on No More Water. Staceyann Chin’s passionate readings and synthetically treated spoken word treated synthetically are interwoven with song structures. Vocalist Justin Hicks provides an often angst-laden delivery, and Josh Johnson adds saxophone and synths to the mix. Ndegeocello’s adroit bass-playing and low voice anchor the other disparate elements. The mood vacillates too, with elemental fury succeeded by exceeding tenderness. The album doesn’t reflect the music of Baldwin’s time, instead mixing R&B, funk, and electronica. This makes it no less potent an homage.

Christian Carey

Nidia & Valentina — Estradas (Latency)

Italian percussionist and multi-instrumentalist Valentina Magaletti and Afro-Portuguese beat-maker Nidia Borges combine forces to produce a set of rhythmic improvisations on their debut collaboration Estradas. Magaletti is best known as a member of London based dub trio Holy Tongue and here uses marimbas and found objects and synthesizers to complement Borges’ Angolan kuduro beats. Their music has the spatial feel of dub but concentrates on African polyrhythms and melodies. With elements of high life and gnawa thrown in, the duo concentrates on making you move as they explore their intersecting influences. The music itself is hugely enjoyable although at times find yourself wishing the songs were harder, faster, less polite. Minor quibbles about a collaboration that feels it has more to offer in the future.

Andrew Forell

Oliwood — Anatomy of Anarchy (Jazzwerkstatt)

Anatomy of Anarchy by Oliwood feat. Evans, Mahall, Landfermann

German drummer and composer Oliver Steidle is constantly searching for new means of musical expression. Each of his projects showcases a fierce resistance to standing still. Genres bleed together in joyous cacophony and each release boasts its own lineup of collaborators. Anatomy of Anarchy is tame in comparison to some of his other work, being firmly rooted in the jazz idiom. Yet it certainly moves quickly, drawing energy from a cadre of high-octane collaborators. Steidle works alongside experienced players from both sides of the Atlantic: trumpeter Peter Evans, clarinetist Rudi Mahall, and bassist Robert Ladfermann spar with him across this lengthy song cycle. Tracks such as “Freaks” and “Bling Bling Frogs” swing with a sense of unison among the team, while much of the other material strays far outside, exploring group improvisation territory. This crew are not afraid to wander, and Anatomy of Anarchy benefits from this adventurous approach.

Bryon Hayes

Ivo Perelman / Chad Fowler / Reggie Workman / Andrew Cyrille — Embracing the Unknown (Mahakala)

Embracing the Unknown by Ivo Perelman

There are plenty of prolific improvisers, but Brazil-born, NY-based tenor saxophonist has earned the right to have his face in the dictionary next to the word’s definition. Embracing the Unknown is one of eight albums released in 2024, each made with a different line-up. The quartet that made Embracing the Unknown is the largest, and it includes some heavy company — Mahakala proprietor Chad Fowler on stritch and saxello (a straight alto and curved soprano saxophone, respectively), and octogenarians Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille on bass and drums. Each has a hand in forming the music’s character. Fowler brings a bag of blues everywhere he goes, and while Perelman favors more abstract pathos, the music’s sentiments are darkly shaded; Workman contributes both propulsion and harmonic dimension; Cyrille’s short bursts of sound give the music a floating quality, articulating its progress without tethering to metrical time.

Bill Meyer

Laurence Pike — The Undreamt-of Centre (The Leaf Label)

Drummer Laurence Pike has been a name to watch for nearly two decades now, first in experimental jazz group Triosk, then in explosive synth-rock band PVT with his brother Richard, and more recently backing Angus Andrew in the latest iteration of Liars and as one-third of the drums, synth and sax trio Szun Waves. The Undreamt-of Centre is Pike’s fourth solo album, which arrives with an intriguing premise: what would a requiem sound like constructed out of drums, electronics, and choral voices? The results are often deeply arresting and affecting, especially the opening two pieces, “Introit” and “Orpheus in the Underworld,” in which the wordless vocal tones and swells of rhythm seem to carry an easily digestible internal narrative. The balance between the voices and drums seems to be key to the varying success of the pieces. The cantering beats of “Mountains of the Heart” don’t leave much space for the voices to steer the music, and the queasy ululations of “Universal Forces” are crying out to be ushered into form by the sparse, pattering drums. Thankfully the album’s longest piece, “Requiem Aeternam,” brings a sense of resolution with its sustained ambient tones, driving synth arpeggios, and washes of cymbals and toms.

Tim Clarke

Saccata Quartet — Septendecim (We Jazz)

Septendecim by Saccata Quartet

There’s an observable phenomenon in which the outernaut members of revered legacy rock acts will let their freak flag fly and get substantial audiences of folks wanting the parent band to show up and play a secret gig. Saccata Quartet (Nels Cline, guitar; Darin Gray, double bass; Chris Corsano and Glenn Kotche, drums) is just the sort of ensemble that could lure a Wilco fan out and then drive them back to the bar, grumbling and disappointed; Septendecim was even recorded at The Loft. Improv heads might come with their own set of expectations; this writer has distant memories of a multi-drummer concert at Chicago’s Hideout that involved Corsano trying to curl up inside a bass drum, and Gray and Corsano have played plenty of volcanic free jazz in the company of Mars Williams and Akira Sakata. But if you put aside expectations and put up your active-listening antennae, something else takes form here that is very good on its own terms. The quartet eschews rock gestures and gonzo energy that diffuses individual identities in favor of a more texturally derived intensity that is generally pretty quiet... until it’s not.

Bill Meyer

Shredded Sun — Wilding (Self-Released)

Wilding by Shredded Sun

Shredded Sun has been at it for a while now, first in the jangle-punk Fake Fictions and now four albums into their current iteration. A lifer vibe of the best sort, then, hovers over these punchy, vulnerable, pop-punk songs. They sound like reticent, literate Yo La Tengo crashing into the Pixies at a four-way stop. When bass player Sarah Ammerman sings, as on caroming “Shake the Clouds,” a warbly, Muffs-style enthusiasm bubbles over. When Nick Ammerman, the guitarist, takes over, a tremulous Feelies-into-Jonathan-Richman aura creeps in. The music pummels and jangles and struts no matter who’s in front, with excellent, energetic drumming from third member Ben Bilow. It’s excellent stuff, creative but crafted with care, occasionally humorous (see final track, “Another Song Called Mirror Ball,” but never silly. It’s what might happen if you just keep doing what you do regardless of whether anyone’s paying attention — you keep getting better and more yourself.

Jennifer Kelly

Luís Vicente Trio — Come Down Here (Clean Feed)

Come Down Here by Luís Vicente Trio

Back at its dawn, free jazz was supposed to change the world. The first changes were mainly technical — can we please untie this chordal straitjacket? — but it was soon aligned in the minds of both audience and practitioner with a broader array of personal and societal liberties. Half a century on, the music endures because in part because it gives musicians the freedom to interact in ways that are uniquely joyous and thrilling. Luís Vicente Trio taps into such opportunities. The themes that trumpeter Vicente brings are skeletal, but just enough to invite a collective act creation that pulses with momentum, expands and contracts like living architecture, and sings with palpable toughness and vulnerability. Sure, you can connect some of this music back to the music of Don Cherry and the Art Ensemble of Chicago on account of its expressive qualities. But within that formal framework, deeply personal shapes and interactions bloom like desert flowers, as vivid as they are time limited.

Bill Meyer

Woody Yang — apple red/dots (Mt. Hazey Records)

apple red//dots by woody yang

Woody Yang delivers a short but solid set of acoustic guitar originals in the Takoma school tradition. Switching between 12- and six-string, he doesn’t break any new ground, but there’s no reason he has to, and his take on the tradition is compelling. Yang certainly knows how to build these kinds of compositions. One of the tracks features his reedy vocals, and another features bongo accompaniment by the audio engineer, but the focus is on Yang’s deft fingerpicking. An auspicious debut.

Jim Marks

[stylized-corpse]

Happening now!

[theslyvoid9]

First snow of the year holiday gift to @canadiankakashi for @mcytblrholidayexchange ! hope you enjoy!!

bonus lineart + some etho concept doodles bc i like em

[mayhemleyhem]

Meow meow I love drawing traumatized Leo’s💋 credits to @eternalglitch for lfls green and thanks @sugarpasteltmnt for neon void and the other one doesn’t have tumblr (I don’t think) so…?🤷‍♀️ so go follow @shruute_ on insta edit: SHRUUTE DOES HAVE A TUMBLR LOLL @shru-ute

THESE ARE ALL ON AO3!!

[kariachi]

Midnight Rant #5 billion and 12 on Charmcaster and Kevin- That woman's fucking AF premiere.

Because we have Kevin, very obviously in a very bad place. He's being retraumatized, his girl's cut back hard on spending time with him with no explanation, our boy is going through it. And then he makes a friend, according to WoG over the course of a few months, in a grown woman. And it's great, it's fine, and then she starts macking on him. And then she plants a kiss on him despite him shutting her down. And while doing that she literally takes control of his damn mind, just fucking harpoons that poor boy's bodily autonomy, forces him to turn against his loved ones. All because she never actually gave any sort of shit about him and from the very start was using him to get to and hurt his girl. This relationship that he thought was forming for months was all a ruse, her using him and then abusing him. And this is

So painful for poor Gwen. Can you believe that Kevin didn't have faith that her pulling back with no explanation meant she was working hard to fix him, after the whole three-odd months they'd been together? And to have Charmcaster come back starting problems. Oh poor Gwen, everyone is so mean to her.

And it's not just in the fucking show, it's in the fandom as well, this idea that the shit Kevin goes through matters in how it affects Gwen and not in how it would have to affect him. Just, that had to be such a fucking painful if not straight up traumatizing event. Charm fucked with his goddamn mind. She made him think she cared about him only to hurt him.

Congrats, Charm, I'd say you were only a few steps below Servantis but he at least let the kids have a degree of autonomy and wasn't on screen macking on them. Slow clap, you're even keel.

Just, I sometimes remember that we have a whole episode surrounding Kevin, already openly in an awful headspace, being groomed and straight up mindcontrolled, and the big take-away is how much the situation hurt Gwen and how bad a boyfriend he is for not reading her damn mind. And it drives me up the fucking wall.

Especially when you remember that he spends that season in his underwear, I'm sorry but the parallels to the treatment of imperfect SA victims write their damn selves.

And when you also keep in mind that when Mike is pulling the 'charm them and thrall them' bit it's treated, by the show and fandom, as him being an irredeemable predator and his victims have every right to hate him forever and wish horrible things on him, but Charm gets to have the 'oh poor Charmcaster' treatment and Kevin's thinking she can go fuck herself is treated as a flaw in his character by the show and ignored by fandom.

Because in the end the disparity comes from the same place as the repeated physically abusive acts Gwen commits against Kevin, as Looma's threats being treated as humor, as Gwen's thinking they're romantic being treated as humor- plain old misogyny. Mind the misogyny isn't all of it, but the age old belief that this sort of shit committed by women against men isn't a concern, and in fact may even be treated as ridiculous, because women are too weak to hurt men plays a big role. Doesn't matter if it's a grown woman grooming a mentally ill teenager or a teenage girl shoving her boyfriend into freefall- she's just a girl so of course what she's doing isn't actually dangerous or harmful, because women aren't capable enough for such things. Which then plays into the age old sexist bullshit that men are simply too strong and rough to be hurt, and to be hurt by a girl especially- physically, mentally, however- is funny because it means they're weak.

And that's not even getting into the 'a guy is always eager' bullshittery.

Just, for the love of fucking christ...

[calamarispiderart]

sorry for homestuck. it will keep happening

[actual-changeling]

honestly there's nothing worse than purposeless suffering. like there just wasn't a fucking point to it. no one cared enough to actually look at what was happening and it wasn't malicious, it was just people being people, and yet here i am with the fucking consequences.

here i am completely fucked up and ruined as a person and the only answer to why she didn't get a divorce or do anything at any point/at all i get from my mother is "i don't know".

i would have preferred every other answer to that. at least there would be something. but there's fucking nothing and there never has been.

[shoecrabs]

i honestly don't think anyone will care but I keep brainrotting over the idea of a pjo/rainworld au

I've turned the Seven into funky slimy cats dealing w concepts far beyond their comprehensions lmao

[krampus-chai]

I made a drow/ orc hybrid character and I'm having a helluva time trying to figure out what he looks like

[ratigan-in-the-wall]

The identical twins Zinc (left) and Axel (right) and their little sister Elise (middle)! Link to the Picrew I used under the read-more :)

The twins are 100% true lycanthropes of the Red Werefox variety and they were born with partial melanism leaving them with black hair/fur instead of red. The two of them bleach and dye their hair completely in human form due to insecurities regarding how much they stood out in a family full of gingers.

Elise, who is around 80% human , is a dud lycanthrope of the Red Werefox variety and she was born with albinism and she regularly dyes her bangs a lavender/lilac color just for the fun of it. She still displays some outwardly non-human features stemming from what little lycanthropy DNA she carries passively.

[spearslug-box]

Writing is on deviant art! (Credit me if you use!:) )

[outofmymindbebacklater]

do you guys think, before the slow decline of the witcher population, that some of them were resentful or at least mocking toward geralt.

bcuz imagine if you had a classmate who started out a horse kid and then did so well in the first courses that he did some more, and now he’s enhanced above the rest of the school... i'd be like wow well aren’t you special...

[stylized-corpse]

Mutated Void @ Sitting on the Outside VI (Rideau Curling Club - Downstairs) - 07/06/2024

[nights-flying-fox]

He sees a chance to be a lil shit and jumps in it immediately, limited knowledge about competition won't stop him!!

@red-rover-au @lost-in-the-pink-mist

IF YOURE MISSING A TURTLE GO HERE

[eufezco]

BIRDS OF A FEATHER༄

the tva erased you from your timeline when logan died, you've been living in the void since then.

angst + fluff. no use of y/n. english isn't my first language (!)

you couldn't take your eyes off them.

you were at the table sitting next to logan, on his other side was laura. he held wade's dog while she played with it and you couldn't take your eyes off them. you couldn't believe it. you had to pinch yourself a few times to confirm that you weren't dreaming.

you thought you'd never see a scene like that ever again. the two of them together. how many times you had looked at the sky and cursed the universe for not giving the three of you more time?

when your logan died, the time variance authority decided that the sacred timeline didn't need you anymore so they erased you and sent you to the void. you preferred it that way, you didn't want to live in a timeline in which he was gone but you were also angry because they didn't have to drag little laura to that place with you.

you didn't remember how much time you spent in the void but seeing how laura had grown into a woman, you guessed that it had been a long time since you left your timeline.

when you got to that place, she was just a child. scared, angry, who had just lost the most important person in her life. and you were just the same, except that you were not a child and you had to take care of both of you. no matter how much you wanted to die, you had to stay alive for laura. but also for logan, for the way you both cried and held his bloody hands while he died and for not letting her be what they made her for.

and no matter how strong your mutations were, you didn't know how long you would have lasted there if it hadn't been for elektra, johnny, blade, and gambit. they found you when you were escaping from alioth and let you into their hideout. they explained to you how things worked there and eventually, they allowed you to stay with them.

until one day you walked into that same hiding place, and there he was, drinking gambit's alcohol and wearing a yellow spandex suit. you felt your heart beating so hard that it seemed to be fighting to get out and reach him. you brought a hand to your chest to feel it. it had gone so long without beating that way that sometimes you thought you left it buried with him in your timeline.

logan also felt his heartbeat accelerate but he quickly took his eyes off of you and drank a long sip from the bottle. he wasn't alone, a deadpool was with him, you recognized the suit, they were quite popular in the void. he shook his hands and gave little jumps of excitement. you looked at him confused, did you know each other?

—of course, you are here! there's no you without logan and there's no logan without you! do you know how hard it's been to find a proper wolverine? there are so many fucking timelines without one because you died! —deadpool exclaimed when he saw you. —and this one is not even a proper wolverine! you know they call him the worst logan? and he won't tell me why they call him that, can you believe it?—deadpool acted offended, you didn't know what to say. —wait... —he turned to look at logan. —was there a she in your timeline? i didn't get to meet her, they're usually nicer than you.

logan ignored the question and simply drank from the bottle again as he stormed out of your hideout.

he avoided you as much as he could. he did not look you in the eyes, he did not address you when he spoke. how could he? the last time logan saw you, your lifeless body was piled up next to scott's. shame consumed him even at the thought of just approaching you. his hands trembled, a knot formed in his stomach, his pulse quickened.

you came over to talk to him that same night.

logan was sitting in front of the campfire, alone, with a bottle of liquor in his hand. how many had he drunk? he saw you approaching and tried to convince you that he wanted to be alone but you still sat next to him.

—what was i like?

logan took a long sip of alcohol when you asked. he said nothing, just stared into the fire, so you decided to take the turn. —you were grumpy, i guess that doesn't change in any of your variants, and you wouldn't have worn that yellow spandex suit in a thousand years.

he looked at you with a frown when you said that. the same way your logan would have looked at you. you continued talking. —you were stubborn, never asked for help, and you were tired all the fucking time because you worked your ass off to get us out of the shitty place we were living in.

he stared at you in silence while you talked. the person you were describing definitely sounded like a version of him.

—you always said that i didn't need to wait up for you but i know you liked it when you came home late at night and i was there and i know you hated the way i folded your shirts but you never said anything because you knew i didn't know how to do it any other way.

you felt a lump forming in your throat. you turned your head, hiding your face from logan so he couldn't see how you used your thumb to wipe away the tear rolling down your cheek. —but you were so brave, and caring, and i loved you with all my heart. you always looked after me even when you were fucking dying with each passing day.

by the tone in your voice and how well you remembered every detail, he guessed that your logan was suddenly taken away from you. oh, he knew that feeling so well.

you were about to get up and leave, you didn't want to bother him anymore and you had already overshared enough with him, when all of a sudden, he started talking.

—you were the sweetest. fuck, i never knew why you were with me. i always thought you deserved better, but there was no way to get you off my ass —. he closed his eyes and shook his head. —and i tried, i tried to push you away and get you to find a guy who deserved you, but there was no way. and i didn't really want you to do it because i was so fucking in love with you.

logan drank from the bottle, trying to let the alcohol sliding down his throat drag with it the tears forming in his eyes. —you liked to read in the garden of the mansion on sunny days and when it rained you'd open my bedroom window to listen to the rain and get into my bed while i was sleeping so i could keep you warm.

there was silence as logan took another sip, almost finishing all the alcohol. —and i left you to fucking die.

the worst logan. at that moment you understood why he was called that, you didn't him to explain it. wade said that in all the timelines he had visited, there was no you without logan and there was no logan without you.

however, in his timeline there was logan but there wasn't you.

he was called the worst logan because he was doomed to live in his timeline without you.

you grabbed the bottle from his hands and drank the alcohol left. —yeah, i couldn't save you either.

you kept each other company that night. most of the time in silence, watching the fire consume the wood, other times you commented on the situation, you talked about cassandra nova, the people you had met there in the void, he even asked you about laura. and at the end of the night, you were sitting next to him with your head resting on his shoulder and him watching you sleep peacefully.

the next morning you headed off to fight cassandra nova. you knew that logan would end up joining you, it was in his nature.

you and laura managed to remove the helmet from juggernaut's head and you ran to give it to wade. when cassandra opened the portal using strange's ring you were there, you could've left with wade and logan, but you couldn't leave laura there. cassandra's allies had pulled themselves together and she was struggling to fight back.

before you went to help her and logan jumped into the portal, he wrapped one of his big arms around your waist and pulled you into a kiss. you rested your hands against his chest and closed your eyes, enjoying those few seconds of your lips pressed together.

—oh, fuck. seriously now? i know how important fan service is for marvel but we literally have a chance to get the fuck out of here—. wade complained.

—i'll get you out. you and the kid, i promise i won't leave you here —. he said as he started walking backward towards the portal. you nodded, if there was one thing you were sure of, it was that no wolverine in the multiverse would break a promise.

and just as you were right about all wolverines being grumpy, you were right about that too. agents from the time variance authority went into the void to get you and laura that same day and now you were having dinner with him, laura, wade, and his family.

you couldn't take your eyes off him.

he had the same look in his eyes. that little sparkle in his deep brown eyes. he was happy, smiling as he played with the dog and laura, calm knowing that you were by his side. you looked away from him when he caught you staring.

—what is it?

you shook your head and pressed your lips together, showing him a little smile. —nothing.

—come on, spit it out.

—it's just... i feel i could fall in love with every version of you.

logan nodded slowly, his eyes were now fixed on yours. —i've had the same feeling.

wade, who was distracted with vanessa but not enough to not be paying attention to your conversation, decided to intervene. —oh honey, wait until you meet the crucified one. you will want to take that back.

you and logan looked at each other confused.

[lunarcrown]

time to rest milord

Since I usually design ren more huge/werewolf-y, I had a fun idea about his form getting all mutated, monstrous, manticore-ish and jacked up when his DNA got stuck mixed with Martyn’s and he became “martren”

He grew a third pair of limbs, his skin split during rapid growth and healed with purple listener/watcher style scars like martyn has, and some of his bones grew purple spurs and spikes that stuck out. Plus some blonde streaks, and suddenly missing the same eye martyn is missing in my design! (Shhh I know that not a DNA thing, this is block game)

He was in a lot of pain and confused, plus very alone and mourning martyn, so he spiraled right to his eventual exit from the game. And then he saw Martyn again in the void and he helped Ren finally rest and leave so he could go back home and be himself again :,,)