#nihilism is cringy

[the-real-hank-green]

Just saw a bunch of cows playing in a field, life is good and worth living. Fuck nihilism

[ohsu111c11d330-o]

Intro post

mimi/allison(?)

They/them/he/him (im tecnically a guy,don't treat me like a girl pls)

Asd+ptsd (STILL IN POSSESSI OF DIAGNOSIS)

Egocom/neolud/anticiv/post left

Into Pessimism and nihilism

Antinatalist

I post sensitive content.... sorry for it :<

Dni: cringy 13 old proshippers and variations/ save europe kids and variations + basic dni

[sillybond]

I feel like, I need to express myself a bit because there's an emotional bomb right inside me and It's tiking very fast!

Might get a bit cringy lol

Adventure Time brought many thimgs to my life. It has made me think, laugh, love, cry and adore all about it, the characters, story, the world, the art, the creators, everything! But the singular best thing about it has been the lessons it has taught me. I'm the same age as Finn was is CAWM I ended the show alongside him and, (despite not having been through quite the traumatic mind boggeling adventures as he has) I have learn a lot by seeing him and the people around him.

There's a lot of experiences that the whole AT cast have gone trough. Each one might affects people differently. Maybe you relate with Finn and Marcy for their strugglers with their fathers. Maybe you see yourself in Bonny, with her over controling-work focused mindset. Perhaps it's in Huntress Wizard and her inability to open to other people. Whatever it is, we all have at least a bit of thoose problems in ourselves. Thoose are our battles to fight for.

But once thing that stands above all and gives meaning to fighting thoose problems is the simple fact that whever, whenever or whoever you are your life is worth living.

And THAT is the key. We've seen time and time again how characters break down, have fights, loose people or whatever but what keeps them going is that they know their lives are not only worth living, but fulfilling pieces in a gigantic puzzle formed by all, moved by all forms of life, that they exist to love, to love others and to love life above everything else.

That IS the lesson. Yes! your life my life is worht living! Just because you are alive.

I belive that nihilism is a natural force inside of us. To ask ourselves the big questions (i.e. what is my porpuse, why am I here etc) and then realize that nothing that we respond will matter, cause nothing matters!!! I know captain obvious right here. But it does'nt have to matter to be meaningfull. Love is an end in it of itself, LIfe is and end in it of itself. You aren't alive to do anything in particular. My personal belife is that Life shouldn't be seen as a tool to acomplish anything (because again, nothing that you get will matter), life is tool to get itself. I'm not telling you to do nothing or not help people or don't do what you are passionate about. It's the oposite. I'm telling you to do all that, beacuse it's not only your life but it has meaning just beacuse it exists. As long as you are alive you should persue yourself , search for your life and love every part of the journey, even if it's bad. The trip is infinite, but beautiful and full of wonder and terrible and distraughtful at the same time. But loving it is the key and it doesn't matter it's all worth it cause YOU ARE ALIVE!!!

I'm getting kind of worked out, but I think you get my point.

Every time I think about this I remember both Astral Plane and The Comet. Two of my favourite episodes. In 22 minutes it sumarises everything that I've just talked about.

Previous to those episodes I ditached myself from everything in my life, pretty much. And I just wanted to go to Ooo beacuse it felt like it had a meaning, and there's was cool magic and everything. I'm sure some of you might have had a similar feeling.

But after thoose it made me realise that, no, that wasn't the point. Adventure time wasn't created so you could get hunged up on it and just wish everything was magical, (just like Fionna!!) AT exist so you can realise something much greater the same thing Finn realized when he pondered his existance.

In both episodes Finn choose to live. He saw the world around him, he saw pain, regret, beauty and in the end he choose his life, everything that he had experienced. It would have been so easy for Finn to go with the Catalist Comet and disapear. He wasn't in a good place. Everything had seemeangly gone to crap. He lost his arm, father, girlfriend. But even then he choose the pain rather than being detached forever. He has seen life and death, he has been the reincarnation of both thoose things. He choose life because it was simply worth living.

In a cold, dark universe life shines a glimps of light, a speck that lasts for a blink of an eye, even if it doesn't last it's worth experiencing it and protecting it.

Fionna understud this. Fionna was like me, wishing for her life to be different. But in the end. She saw that that wasn't the point. Finn would have choosen his reaity even if it was non-magical, or better, or worse than what it was, that doesn't matter. What matters is that you love where you are. Finn does, Fionna finaly learned that two. It's a long journey, but it has to be started. And I thank Adventure Time, the crew, characters and everything for this oportunity. To see life in a new light. To make the active choice to live and love and trust and die happily, because if I could be in any alternative universes I wouldn't wish to be anywhere else but in this one.

Thank you adventure time, you taught me to live again.

[us-the-voices-and-more-voices-2]

hot take, but most of black mirror sucks.

don’t get me fucking wrong the stories that land? LAND!

but then there’s like 12 other episodes that are like so trash and make me want to quit the show completely and I’m thankful that the show is actually just a collection of fables and parables!

Because if it was a serialised show it just would not work.

either way black mirror is a wonderful critique of modern technology and society!

but it isn’t a end all be all of shows, I love the idea’s it explores and the real world equivalences.

but some of the episodes just don’t land, they aren’t funny or insightful (even tho black mirror isn’t a comedy) just kinda bad.

Nosedive is high fucking art, I’d say the one where the convicted murder associate who replays the same day over and over in a eternal torture as penance for her misdeeds is fucking great too.

and the one about the comedian turned politician was high art as well!

the one about tokens and virtual money and this girl who is a great singer and this whole thing. It’s high art too.

but some of the black mirror episodes just flop, like not even in a nice blood curdling way just a cringy way.

the episode about the soldier with the augmented reality implant that gets broken, and sees innocent people and children who when the augmented reality implant was working literally looked like inhuman monsters instead of sad normal women and children.

that one hit fucking hard!

Again I like black mirror for its fun shit, it’s really fun.

it’s how tumblr says don’t build the torture nexus from the book don’t build the torture nexus?

it’s that.

I kinda hate the pessimism and nihilism of it all, like honestly fuck that noise. Optimistic nihilism sometimes please or we will be convinced we are doomed when we aren’t!

it’s modern tragedy, and it’s really fun! Depressing makes you want to die sorta fun. But fun!

honestly if you like black mirror but hate the depression of it all I suggest “Upload (2020)” it actually covers a lot of black mirrors stuff in a WAY less depressing and I want to die way.

black mirror is not something you watch when your suicidal it’s just not hopeful and just filled with this helpless tragedy of it all.

it’s super good and also trash at the same time, just pick a random episode I suggest nosedive

[megumean]

Ephemeral

It's already 5, it's already 6, the time is passing, your time is passing. But it's not only your time… It's everything's time. The universe will turn to darkness one day, and there won't be anything left to admire, to observe. One day, your parents will pass away, and so will you.

So, what's the point of anything at all?

One day the Sun will explode, leaving humanity, and the rests of what we have here… Obsolete. Destroyed. Not even the rests will be even found. Not the cringy song you made for your first girlfriend, not your first kiss, not even the day you graduated. Nothing will be left, and nobody will remember it.

What's the point, then? A bittersweet reality is that everything is ephemeral; something that lasts for a very short time. But what is a short time? Is it your teenage years? Is it your entire life? Your entire bloodline's life? The heat death of the universe, followed by complete darkness? It is really something interesting to think about, but at first, useless. Foolish? Maybe. Why do you do things, why do you crave love, why do you wake up…?

If everything's going to end up the same way? Personally, I think that's the beautiful thing. Your first kiss will be gone, right after you have it, but it will live forever in your memory. Those feelings will always reside somewhere. The thought of everything being pointless is called Nihilism. It has been explored by countless philosophers across the centuries. Nothing you will ever do will remain, and that's true, even if it's a hard pill to swallow. But… I think that's the point. Searching all your life for that person that makes you feel special, that makes you feel… Endless. That feeling that pushes you over the boundaries of the infinite, making you feel bigger than the universe, and at the same time, completely insignificant. I'm nothing at the sight of a pretty flower, or a band playing their songs. For me, it's bigger than anything I could imagine. At the end, we're all smaller than atoms, and at the same time, bigger than the Universe.

— Megumi Iwakura, 20/12/2022

[fipindustries]

i think that, while there are a lot of people who disparage homestuck because of unfair reasons, like the fandom being cringy or hussie making a fool of himself, there are also a lot of valid, object level critiques of the text that make it so that the story is actually legitimatly kind of bad in a way that feels justifiably aggravating.

because while it is indeed very meta-modern and steeped in new sincerity during acts 1-5, and probably even a portion of act 6. it seems like eventually it dips back squarely into old, passe, cynical post-modernism by the end of it. it has the alpha kids as a more bitter, cynical representation of what the protagonists of the comic are. john eventually reaches the conclusion that con air just flat out sucks. vriska gets a huge rant about how hussie is a terrible story teller with his fake outs and his sikes and what not, and everyone sounds so tired and done with it, and hussie himself sounds so tired and done with this story by the end of it. and the thing is you cant do that, you cant deconstruct your way into new sincerity and then take a step back and be like "but actually its all stupid and there is no meaning, fuck you".

all the emotional resonance of its new sincerity gets lost, is like it pulls the rug from under your feet. it feels like a slap to the face after the emotional resonance of the first half of the story.

to be fair, near the very end it does sort of try to recapture a feeling of optimistic "whatever we make our own meaning" happy nihilism, what with the sprites squared like jasprose and davepeta, or the character of calliope finding meaning and hope in the muse of space, but too little too late and in a way that feels halfassed and disharmonious with previously established themes and plot threads. much as it tries, it cannot recapture the magic lost.

and then come the epilogues that do go back to try and do the whole oscillation thing, and to their credit they do manage to ellicit genuine powerful, meaningful emotions but again, it comes after act 6, and even the epilogues refuse to give an actual conclussion to the story by ending on a cliffhanger which leads into "homestuck 2 beyond cannon".

and what better way to indicate that this is all a meaningless waste of time than that?

Post-postmodernism in Pop Culture: Homestuck’s Revenge

I recently saw an excellent video essay titled Why Do Movies Feel So Different Now? by Thomas Flight. Though the title is opaque clickbait, the video is actually about major artistic zeitgeists, or movements, in film history. Flight describes three major movements:

Modernism, encompassing much of classic cinema, in which an earnest belief in universal truths led to straightforward narratives that unironically supported certain values (rationalism, civic duty, democracy, etc.)

Postmodernism, in which disillusionment with the values of modernism led to films that played with cinematic structure, metafiction, and the core language of film, often with more unclear narratives that lacked straightforward resolutions, and that were skeptical or even suspicious of the idea of universal truth 

Metamodernism, the current artistic zeitgeist, which takes the structural and metafictional innovations of postmodernism but uses them not to reject meaning, but point to some new kind of meaning or sincerity.

Flight associates metamodernism with the “multiverse” narratives that are popular in contemporary film, both in blockbuster superhero films and Oscar darlings like Everything Everywhere All at Once. He argues that the multiverse conceptually represents a fragmented, metafictional lack of universal truth, but that lack of truth is then subverted with a narrative that ultimately reaffirms universal truth. In short, rather than rejecting postmodernism entirely, metamodernism takes the fragmented rubble of its technique and themes and builds something new out of that fragmentation.

Longtime readers of this blog may find some of these concepts familiar. Indeed, I was talking about them many years ago in my Hymnstoke posts, even using the terms “modernism” and “postmodernism,” though what Flight calls metamodernism I tended to call “post-postmodernism” (another term used for it is New Sincerity). Years before EEAAO, years before Spider-verse, years before the current zeitgeist in pop cultural film and television, there was an avant garde work pioneering all the techniques and themes of metamodernism. A work that took the structural techniques of postmodernism–the ironic detachment, the temporal desynchronization, the metafiction–and used them not to posit a fundamental lack of universal truth but rather imbue a chaotic, maximalist world of cultural detritus with new meaning, new truth, new sincerity. That work was:

Homestuck.

That’s right! Everyone’s favorite web comic. Of course, I’m not the first person to realize the thematic and structural similarities between Homestuck and the current popular trend in film. Just take a look at this tweet someone made yesterday:

This tweet did some numbers.

As you might expect if you’re at all aware of the current cultural feeling toward Homestuck, many of the replies and quotes are incredibly vitriolic over this comparison. Here’s one of my favorites:

It’s actually quite striking how many elements of the new Spider-verse are similar to Homestuck; aspects of doomed timelines, a multiversal network that seems to demand certain structure, and even “mandatory death of parental figure as an impetus for mandated personal growth” are repeated across both works. The recycling and revitalization of ancient, seemingly useless cultural artifacts (in Homestuck’s case, films like Con Air; in Spider-verse, irrelevant gimmick Spider-men from spinoffs past) are also common thematic threads.

As this new post-postmodern or metamodern trend becomes increasingly mainstream, and as time heals all and allows people to look back at Homestuck with more objectivity, I believe there will one day be a rehabilitation of Homestuck’s image. It’ll be seen as an important and influential work, with a place inside the cultural canon. Perhaps, like Infinite Jest, it’ll continue to have some subset of commentators who cannot get past their perception of the people who read the work rather than the work itself even thirty years after its publication, but eventually it’ll be recognized for innovations that precipitated a change in the way people think about stories and their meaning.

Until that day, enjoy eating raw sewage directly from a sewer pipe.

(Side note: I think Umineko no naku koro ni, which was published around the same time as Homestuck and which deals with many similar themes and then-novel ideas, will also one day receive recognition as a masterpiece. Check it out if you haven’t already!)

[kindasortasalty]

Ghost as dumb pinned messages from friends discord

[the-nameless-art-blog]

Please excuse the terrible quality. I just really wanted to get this blog up and running.

I will reupload this, eventually

[fucked-up-mover-shaker]

nihilism is cringy and fake edginess unless you're noel gruber then it's gender as fuck

[dekusleftsock]

I saw your post about Bakudeku and Horikoshi's use of romantic tropes. I wanted to add a couple of my own thoughts. Bkdk also use the trope of "impress the girl" a bunch. In stories the mc often has a crush and wants to impress the girl, but she's just not interested. As he progresses in the story, the two of them start to interact and flirt more. In a lot of ways, bkdk reminds me of Astrid and Hiccup. Both of them

1: use the Impress the girl trope a lot

2: have a nerdy and emotional mc

3: have a beautiful bad tempered warrior blonde as a love interest.

4: mc knew said love interest even as a kid.

5: Said love interest disliked them and considered them a rival before finally befriending them.

This is also what I often want to say to bkdk haters. We've basically already seen relationships very similar to Bkdk on screen before, they just weren't gay. But in terms of dynamics and canon trope use, both of these couples share multiple romantic tropes. People argue that bkdk is toxic, but Astrid/Hiccup also had a rivalry and bullying going on. People say they are childhood friends and brother-like, but Astrid/Hiccup grew up in fairly close company to one another. I haven't seen many people mention the similarities between the two couples so I figured I might as well.

Definitely! The thing that’s so weird about bkdk is that it’s like this.. idk.. “cringe” queer ship. That bc Katsuki bullied deku it is automatically both toxic/abusive, and also that it is the “cringy, girl who likes gay ships way too much”. In a weird way, it’s trying to say that it IS the queer ship for straight girls, completely ignoring the many other people (99% of the time queer writers) that ship it!

It’s kind of like seeing bkdk as competition for izuocha in a weird way. Because, yeah, bkdk DOES fit a lot of romantic tropes, and the only reason it’s not seen as both a valid and possible ship, all circles around homophobia and the alt right.

Cringe culture was born out of the alt rights nihilism (that’s why the indomitable human spirit trend is so interesting to me personally) and that nihilism stretches to everyone. Queer, leftist, liberal, or even down to who ships what and how much they expect it to happen.

Let’s be honest here, if izu//ocha becomes canon then it’s bad writing. Simple as that. Bkdk has followed romantic tropes, had more development, had more screen time, his LOVE INTEREST has another love interest that better compliments her, (toga and possibly tsu) and it fights what makes a shonen well, shonen. The parody of the stereotypical shonen, but when you look under the cracks nothing really follows the normal tropes. From something as minuscule as an unwise mentor (all might) to the love interest of the story.

I have many, many thoughts on this subject, (my absolute monster of a meta post that’s in the works and thankfully almost done can attest to that) because I truly do think it’s deeper than people not understanding how shipping and fandom works. There’s more to it. Could be due to horikoshi making a character driven shonen over a plot driven one. (Another example of breaking the tropes of a normal shonen) Could be general homophobia in the anime community. We just, don’t know.

Kiri//Baku is also an interesting character in this whole idea of shonen. And that’s because of the fact that Katsuki not only doesn’t have a female love interest and therefore has to have a male one that’s closest to them and not Izuku (ofc without destroying the carefully built system straight love interests, like Mina for kirishima, jirou for kaminari, etc) because Izuku has ochako.

That’s why people always say that the ship is the “most straight queer ship”, even if there’s a lot of queer people who do.

Sorry kinda rambled a bit bdisndidkdji I just have a lot of thoughts on how shipping works culturally in a fandom. Super interesting.

Anyway, how to train your dragon was a great example and I’m glad you brought it up!

Btw I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this but just in case, please don’t harass anyone who ships anything. Block them if they’re attacking you in any way that genuinely hurts you or your mental health. It’s just better if we all stay a little more positive in general. Starting a nonsense argument in a tag? Ignore it. Block it. You’re only giving them your platform which is exactly what they want. The attention you’ll give them and the argument you’ll start. Also if it’s just some guy being a mild dickwad, don’t harass him. Please.

Like I say this every once in a while just so everyone remembers that being positive and creating art out of crappy things people have said (but keeping them anonymous) is infinitely better than giving someone your platform. (This isn’t targeted at the person who asked this btw, you’re all good this is just a general positive message I talk about sometimes hedjidndl)

Be safe, be happy, and let’s uplift each other than being crappy people down. That way, we’ll always go higher :)

[grey-sorcery]

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[suppenzeit]

beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Favorite Actor(s): Tom Nihill literally the only man ever!!!! Also Terence Uphoff, Gary Sheridan and Dan Ellison too I guess they're good too lol

Favorite Song/Scene(s): Wide Smile baybeeee. Also him in the bg of Pumping Iron

Favorite Costume: He's only had one but I love love love the two-toned gloves more than the pure red ones.

Favorite Ship(s): Beelektra, BrakeBox and Steam Press

Headcanon: He can whistle but he doesn't like to because his whistle is high-pitched, annoying and cringy (according to him).

Unpopular Opinion: I have opinions about how some people characterize him but hm..

[primeministerofantarctica]

6, 19, 29!

6. What is your darkest fear about writing?

that my parents will find it. lol.

29. Where do you draw your inspiration? What do you do when the inspiration well runs dry?

I have NO idea, they just come to me ig

19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

this is gonna be long so i'm gonna put it under a cut

So I always liked reading(shocker), and elementary school was VERY contributive to "staring at the wall and making up imaginary scenarios while everyone else learns maths", but I think it was my fifth grade teacher saying "hey, you know you're really good at this" that really solidified that oh, this is what I want to do with life. I'm going to be world-famous. The next Tolkien. I'm going to have an apartment in the City (tm) with a tiny office in the closet under the stairs covered in whiteboard and post-it notes.

It was around that time I discovered fanfic. Then everything went downhill. Jk jk. I wrote and posted one chapter of a thing. It was a self-insert fic. Basically a beat for beat retelling of my favorite movie, except I was there, and I had blue hair. Basically the definition of cringe. It's still up on FFN because I forgot my password and had to make a new account years later. If you find it please just put me out of my misery.

I wrote several more fics through middle and high school, but I didn't post anything. Was it anxiety and latent perfectionism issues? Possibly. There was an epic slightly less blatant self-insert smurfs saga (I thought it was a saga at the time, but looking back it was probably like 20k words. I don't have the files anymore, but I still remember a lot of it). There's a bnha fic that I still have but won't post because it is glaringly self-indulgent (and as of now, contradictory to canon. You snooze, you lose ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). There's several other stuff too; ideas that started but went nowhere, forgotten one-shots that just weren't working out.

ANYWAYS. We were talking about anxiety right? Yeah. So the REAL first fic I posted was in 2017, in my first year of college, and I can directly credit the ability to do that to reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Because Hitchhiker is ALL ABOUT POSITIVE NIHILISM. Basically "you are a tiny insignificant speck in the vast endless cosmos of the universe, so at the end of the day, who the fuck cares if you post a cringy fanfic". I still have anxiety, admittedly - it's not like it goes away overnight - but those feelings are becoming more and more tempered with years and, more importantly, practice.

So this is where I'm at now? I don't have any concrete plans for the future, I just want to keep writing. Maybe one day I'll solidify one of my half-formed original ideas and put that out too! I'm far past the belief that I can make a living off of it, but that doesn't really matter anymore.

[your-lips-are-very-red]

St. Vincent x Emma Madden Interview

This is the text from the St. Vincent interview that Emma Madden was asked to not use. Since Miss Madden has decided to take it down, I wanted it to be available somewhere online - in case she manages to get all the cached versions taken down, too. 

SOURCE: https://archive.is/wFkLN

About a fortnight ago I was commissioned to interview St. Vincent, an artist I have been inspired by, impressed by, turned on by, compelled by, curious of, in awe of, occasionally suspicious of—for the better half of a decade. I try not to think about other journalists too much, but St. Vincent has developed a reputation for intimidating us. For her last press cycle, she made her interviewers crawl into a pink box; she would play a pre-recorded message on a tape recorder if a question bored or irked her. I found that quite funny—irresistibly imperious—but I considered it an act of degradation rather than an interesting switch of power. I love famous people but I also find them quite silly, like a Schnauzer wearing a bowtie.

  I didn’t know why, but for around two hours after our call ended, I was reeling with nervous energy. I was vocalising it and trying to get to the other side of it, the way I sing songs when I’m walking through a haunted house. I woke up the next morning with a voice message from the editor who assigned this piece. I am fond of this person and I will not name them. MBC, the team in charge of St. Vincent’s publicity (which is helmed by Barbara Charone, who also works for Madonna, and is considered one of the more powerful and intimidating publicists in the industry) had been on the phone to this editor, demanding the piece be pulled. My editor’s words: “They said she’s terrified of this interview coming out.” The publication didn’t have a leg to stand on.

"Terrified"? That word didn't seem to square. I thought I had done a not-so-good job the night before. I ended the call thinking I hadn’t asked the right questions. St. Vincent and I didn’t feel like a good match in conversation (or at least not in this conversational setup set-up, for which I was given thirty minutes, and continual reminders from the person on St. Vincent’s team, who remained on the call with us, that we’d need to wrap up well in time for St. Vincent’s Instagram Live session with Paul McCartney, which directly followed our interview.) St. Vincent tended to interpret my questions in bad faith. I assumed she believed me to be a Bad Reader; presumptuous, judgemental, simple, anti-curious—all qualities that her latest album ‘Daddy’s Home’, which I’ve interpreted as a counter to the folly, inadequacy and meretriciousness of moral purity—counters. Anyway, she read me wrong. I love Lana Del Rey.

  I got a call from MBC later that morning by a man who sounded quite nervous. I told him I was confused, I asked him what the matter seemed to be. He wasn't totally sure, he said, "she found the interview aggressive." Aggressive? I complimented her and cowed to her and laughed at her jokes. "Well, the message has been passed down a line of many messengers, she might not have actually said that." The man on the phone said that this—one of his artists demanding an interview to be pulled—had never happened to him before. It hadn't happened to me either. I felt annoyed by how easy it was for St. Vincent to kill something I had researched and expected money for. But the interview started to seem valuable to me after I was told that she didn't want it out in the world. "Can we draw a line under this and just kill the piece here?" said the man on the phone.

Below is the full transcript of my interview with St. Vincent (save for a short and-forth about Tool which didn’t make sense when turned into text). My questions are in bold, her responses are in italics.

**for the sake of this post, Madden’s questions are bold and Annie’s answers are not** Hi, how are you? Good how’s it going?

Not too bad. What’s your mood for today? My mood for today, well it’s good, I’m getting on an Instagram Live chat with Paul McCartney in a couple minutes so my mood is a little bit nervous but good.

I’m excited to talk about this album, I think it has a sick sense of humor that I appreciate a lot. I’ve had a really fun time listening to it.

Oh I’m glad, thank you.

I’m sensing there’s kind of a 70s trend at the moment in terms of fashion and the ways some other bands are presenting themselves. Is that something you were anticipating, is that something you feel you belong to, or was it just kind of accidental?

Accidental.

Do you feel bummed about that? No I don’t, I always just kind of do my own thing.

Do you think there’s a reason why people might be inspired by the 70s today? Do you see an analog with our world today and with the 70s? I guess this album is based in 1973, right?

Between ‘71 and ‘76, so post flower children idealism, post the Summer of Love hangover, but pre escapism of gay disco and pre nihilism of punk. Life was bad but music was good, kind of vibe.

Kind of when the trash aesthetic was taking hold, especially by Andy Warhol. Does trash inspire you? Um like literal rubbish?

No like the trash aesthetic, I guess in the PR you call it sleazy, grimy. Yeah but the difference with sleazy is that sleazy tries to present as glamorous but there’s something off, trash is just trash. I don’t know if trash pretends to be anything other.

  Can you have glamour without sleaze? Sure, absolutely. I mean, like the 20s Greta Garbo way, I would say Golden Era Hollywood, I mean behind the scenes it was probably a nightmare but you look at it and it is very genuinely shiny and beautiful.

I love the sitar on this album especially on ‘Down’, the riff is so sick. How did you get to the sitar? Well it’s not a sitar per se, it’s a choral electric sitar guitar and so it was I think George Harrison made them kind of popular in the ‘60s, I think the one I have is from ’67 and it plays like a guitar but it has a resonating body on it so it sounds sitar-esque. It was made very famous in the Steely Dan Do it Again solo.

  I guess the main PR bulletin point of this album is about your dad coming out of jail. Why did you want that to be the main way that people might read this album? More like an entry point, the title Daddy’s Home to me I mean one, it is literal but also it’s funny and cringy and pervy and also I think more than anything kind of refers to my own transformation into Daddy as it were. Yeah it’s probably not anything I would’ve really thrown out there except that it was made public without my consent but I didn’t really get to tell that side of the story and I don’t bring it up for sympathy. It simply is my story, it’s not intended to be indicative of necessarily anything, it’s just my story and I was gonna tell it with humor and compassion, all of that.

Did you anticipate a lack of sympathy for your dad’s crimes and the subject matter of this album and did that factor into how you shaped this record? That’s the tail wagging the dog my dear. No, no. A lack of sympathy, well, which crime would be the most sympathetic? I didn’t do anything, I’m simply writing about something that I think on some level everyone who’s ever had a parent can understand in the sense of you’re often going “How much of you am I?” and we kind of do identity projection through all these things so no, it’s again, it’s not really there for anything other than my own anecdotal story.

At what point did you transform into this daddy character? For how much of your adult life have you been the daddy? Oh I would just say over the past few years, I’ve just been quite a bit more leaned back and shoulder shrug and say let’s just sit down in the old beat up leather armchair and have a tequila and chat it out you know. Life is complicated, human beings are complicated and I wanted to just write stories about flawed people. There’s a whole lot of judgement going around and not a whole lot of understanding. And judgement is anti-curious. There are some people, perhaps the more sanctimonious and morally pure, who might not be interested in an artist’s reflection on their father’s white collar crimes. Do you have much sympathy for those kinds of people? I mean I think I can get sympathy for all people. If that is the reason why they decide not to spend 46 minutes with my work then I’m sure there’s plenty of other work out there for them that they can enjoy that is morally pure. They should find pure work from pure people and enjoy it.

I guess last year’s riots brought abolition towards the mainstream, during the time you were making this record, which is partially about your father’s time in prison. How did that square with your thoughts on prison and the US carceral system? Well I have plenty of thoughts on it, I’m not totally sure how it’s relevant to this.

Well I was wondering if you have a standpoint on it or if you’d rather just be ambiguous? I have so many thoughts and opinions, I don’t presume that my thoughts and opinions are relevant on every subject though. I don’t have that much hubris.

I understand. I was wondering about the Candy Darling inspiration, how does she come into the fold? Oh I just, Candy Darling to me is such a beautiful heroine in that she came from Queens and went not geographically far but worlds away to Manhattan and became her true self and in that particular kind of combination of glamour and toughness, where you feel like her name should be on the marquee and yet she could stick you with a shiv if you said the wrong thing. And I just find her inspiring and really beautiful, and I didn’t know but I found out a friend of mine was close with her and was at her bedside when she died so I was just picturing Candy Darling’s ascent to heaven as taking the final uptown train.

Wow. Did you feel like you were embodying her on this album or presenting as her? No not as such, but definitely taking inspiration from some of her energy for sure. I do hear a bit of her voice on the title track, I was wondering if you were kind of modeling your voice after her? On Daddy’s Home? Oh, no.

I love the sultriness of that song, even though it’s just about signing autographs in prison. I found it really funny. Yeah it’s definitely again, I’m writing about my own story with humor and compassion and self-effacement, all that.

Do you see this album as a movement, does it have a narrative? Yeah. It’s a full story, it’s a full collection of short stories. It has a shape and everything.

That’s just how I listened to this album, as a series of short stories. I was wondering how they interlink in your mind? I guess you have the person on Broadway, you have your dad, you have the person who’s maybe thinking of having a baby or not having a baby. I just could write stories of flawed people doing their best to get by because I’ve been most of the people on this album at one point of my life or another. And again I could write about them without condemnation and judgement just, here we are.

Are you a nostalgic person? No not generally.

Not even during the creation of this album? I’m thinking of the humming tracks, your mum cooking in the kitchen. Not exactly, I think that this particular kind of music with its sophistication and some of the jazz language in the harmony and its sense of time, it was a kind of music that I’d loved for so long but never really dipped into myself, and I think we kind of learn things a lot of times when we’re ready to, and I think I was kind of ready to learn some of the lessons that this kind of music had to teach me.

Do you think about shame a lot? Um, I think that shame is the reason why most people do the violence that they do. I think violence is an expression of impotence.

What was it about the post-idealist era in particular that you were drawn to, why not go through the flower power utopia sort of 60s route? I think that there’s an intellectual orthodoxy that is involved in utopian thinking and a lot of times it doesn’t allow for either a complex set of incentives or it doesn’t allow for the totality of human nature in its equation, and then it fails and because the structure of any kind of power is really complicated so I think in general the desire… and I understand that we’re living in, in some ways, I think just with the internet part of it, in some ways unprecedented times. And I understand people’s desire for certainty in times economic strife, cultural upheaval, all this stuff. I completely understand the desire for certainty. But I don’t think it’s as simple as demanding moral purity and punishing anyone who doesn’t fix the orthodox criteria. I understand the desire but I’m not sure it’s gonna get to where I think we want to be, which is just general more equality, whether it’s wealth equality, wealth disparity, all that kind of stuff I just think the matrices of power are really complicated.

You were saying earlier about Daddy and how you were thinking about your dad and the overlap between you two and how we all possibly become our parents. I was wondering how you consolidate the influences of your parents? I don’t know anything about them obviously but I know that your mum was a social worker, your dad was an entrepreneur, and those seem like two totally opposing worlds. Yes, my mother is a social worker and she instilled in all of us I think the idea that the work we do should be meaningful and she’s definitely really humanistic and that kind of thinking I think, that had an impression on me. My dad wasn’t an entrepreneur, my dad was a stock broker I think? But I grew up with my mom and my stepdad and my stepdad was a very different kind of guy, just was an army brat and grew up really poor, and was just coming from a different mindset and they’re just very different kinds of people. Not a judgement thing, just very different. Yeah my mom definitely errs on the very humble side. And yeah, my dad is a complicated, charismatic person who’s also very intelligent, and who went down a path that was full of consequence. Yeah they’re really, really different people so it’s funny to kind of square who was who.

What does your dad think of this album? Oh he loves it!

Yay, that’s good to know. Did you ever rebel against your dad’s lifestyle growing up as a teenager? I didn’t grow up with him, and he was in Tulsa Oklahoma. I don’t know what lifestyle you’re necessarily presuming but..

No I’m not presuming, just wanted a little background on your relationship with him I guess. So he wasn’t in your life that much where you were younger? I would go and we would spend summers there and Christmas, but I grew up in Dallas for the most part with my mom and my stepdad.

Was this album in any way an opportunity to get closer to your dad? Not in any way consciously, no.

  But are you finding with age and with time you’re getting closer to him? Well him being out of prison helps in terms of just proximity. Yeah, here’s what I’m finding. I’m finding that we live by the stories that we tell ourselves and that sometimes we realize that the story we’ve been telling ourselves for a long time was either wrong or lacked a certain amount of information, and then we have the choice of whether to reject the new information because it’s too painful to rethink the story that we’ve been telling ourselves, or assimilate the new information and go, wow life is complicated, this is an interesting wrinkle. I choose to do the latter.

  Yeah, it’s very easy to bullshit yourself, right? Yeah, it's true in all kind of ways you know?

This story, the story of your dad, it almost seems redemptive. I mean I would say so, and that’s not in any way what I intended and you know, a lot of times when you’re making something, I mean you’re a writer you know, you have the compulsion to make it but you’re not necessarily sure where it’s coming from or why or any of those kind of questions, but I think there is the possibility of redemption, I do, I think there is the possibility of people to change and I think there is a possibility of things like forgiveness and growth. And if I didn’t think that there was a possibility for human beings to change, to grow, to take in new information and then continue to write their story, then I don’t know what we’d really be doing, you know? And that’s not really the world I want to live in, we’re a moving picture we’re not a still photograph.

Do you want to try and change the world, do you feel like you have that power, do you feel hopeful that there can be a better future? Sorry for the cheesy language. No, I mean I don’t think that many people would accuse me of being an optimist in a lot of ways, and I don’t think in terms of my “power to change the world” I mean I think all I can do is try to study the human condition and write about the human condition in some way that resonates and then maybe people will hear that and that will resonate with them and I think that ultimately the best case scenario for music is empathy because it’s like psychologically this is why we like to listen to stories or this is why we like to watch movies is so we can go down the empathy exercise and you can see yourself as that person in the film, see someone who isn’t like you in any way, shape or form from a just box ticking kind of way, but then realize oh, we’re very similar in some ways or what would I do if I was in that situation, we do all these things and we live by these stories and I think those stories well-told can encourage empathy and empathy can go out into the world and have a kind of transformative experience. I don’t really think about, I mean I think once I make a thing and then it’s out in the world and it’s for other people to assimilate or enjoy or not, whatever, however they take it, is absolutely fine by me. But it’s for them, it’s not my place in any way to say how people should or should not enjoy it or assimilate it.

Yeah the reason I brought up prison abolition earlier is because that might be how some people contextualize this album. I would say that that’s one lens. That to me would not be the main lens.

[I’m told to wrap it up]

Yeah let’s wrap up. So Tool cover album next? No, I wish.

Someday I’m hoping. I love Tool.

I feel your Paul McCartney nerves Yeah, I’m gonna go shower.

That’s always a good idea. Okay take care, thank you again for you time Thanks, bye.

[compassionatereminders]

Being really passionate about something isn’t “cringy” or “stupid” or “immature” or “embarrassing” or “ridiculous” or anything else along those lines. Passion is beautiful and it’s brave and no matter what some mean people might imply, caring a lot is never worthy of ridicule or judgment. Don’t ever let sad people with sad lives who are holding themselves to sad standards of edgy nihilism, “maturity” and aloofness get in the way of you doing your thing and enjoying your life!

[creepypasta-mfs]

General Jeff the Killer hcs

× this man has not seen a shower since 2013

× peak laziness, refuses to see that showers are meant to be taken on more than just "special occasions"

× an absolute wonder his victims don't smell him coming

× the self proclaimed "master of stealth"

× says he likes parkour but lacks any agility whatsoever

× when he originally cut in his smile, the wounds got infected and left a nasty scar. Its pretty grisly

× won't reopen the wounds because he doesn't really need to - the smile is still in his skin - but also because he remembers the healing process hurting like a bitch

× (though he sometimes gets the urge to when he is particularly unstable)

× has no remarkable talents, unless throwing knives with incredible accuracy counts

× he's especially awful when it comes to music

× is tone deaf, knows it, and is low-key embarrassed by it

× though he's not going to admit that

× he'll occasionally read fanfics about himself when he needs an ego boost

× catch him adding "Jeff the Killer lemons" to his personal library

× 100% cringy nihilism

× can and will suck the joy out of anyone who dares attempt to have a conversation with him

× he's probably illiterate ngl

× hasn't picked up a book since the 6th grade and refuses to change that now

× he collects things from the houses of victims he seems "memorable". What qualifications t h a t takes, I dont know, but he keeps them all in boxes he has shoved under his bed

× he'll go through them every once in a while, his sick little way of reliving the event

× has most likely taken somebody's grandmothers urn don't @ me

× kinda just an asshole