#orange has been my favorite since 2013

[shi0n]

did you know that mafumafu actually covered my all time favorite song once upon a time but he has since deleted / privated it...

[love-anteros]

music taste of the ouran host club ᐟᐟ☆ .ᐟ

—personal ouran headcanons ♡ —some taylor swift hc inspo from @cold-heart-warm-writings

haruhi fujioka

definitely a mitski girlie.

fav songs off mitski’s discography: “my love mine all mine,” “first love / late spring,” “class of 2013,” “once more to see you”

tamaki always recommends taylor swift songs to them; ends up enjoying folklore (“invisible string,” “august”) 

hc from tiktok (@/gyuldangie): tamaki told them that “when emma falls in love” reminded him of their relationship, and haruhi says that the song’s just ok. he later sees the song saved on her favorite playlist … :)

also enjoys ichiko aoba & lamp

tamaki pays for their duo spotify premium account ♡

exchanges song recommendations w kaoru; definitely has a few phoebe songs on their playlists

listens to red velvet w hani on occasion 

tamaki suoh

hardcore swiftie. definitely bought front row seats + backstage passes for the eras tour and begged the entire host club to accompany him.

speak now + lover stan, loves a few songs off rep, 1989, & fearless 

“haruhi, do you think taylor thought of me when she wrote ‘king of my heart’ & ‘gorgeous’ ?~ “

“i absolutely believe that taylor pictured our beloved romance when she wrote lover, haruhi .ᐟ~”

fav songs off taylor’s discography: “lover,” “paper rings,” “you are in love,” “speak now,” “enchanted,” “love story”

also likes other pop artists: katy perry (“teenage dream,” “california girls”) harry styles (“adore you”)

a bit of classical piano mixed into his playlist; immediate jump from taylor to chopin when his spotify is on shuffle

he is absolutely a laufey fan .ᐟ (dedicated the entire bewitched album to haruhi … )

listens to a bit of mitski b/c of haruhi: “ hm … i think that ‘my love mine all mine’ reminds me of you, my lovely haruhi :) “

enjoys tv girl & ricky montgomery recs from haruhi: “lovers rock,” “mr. loverman,” “my heart is buried in venice,” “boy toy,” “line without a hook” ♡

hani introduced him to kpop, & he absolutely loves a few svt, nct, & txt songs .ᐟ — “perfume,” “to you,” “imperfect love,” “light a flame,” “way home”

hikaru hitachiin 

frank ocean, tyler the creator, the weeknd 

“white ferrari,” “are we still friends,” “ivy,” “super rich kids,” “new magic wand,” “escape from la,” “foreword” .ᐟ

kaoru introduced him to rex orange county; likes “corduroy dreams,” “uno,” “open a window”

that one scene where hikaru comforts haruhi during the thunder storm? his headphones were def playing “sunflower” by rex orange county 

kaoru hitachiin

phoebe bridgers, gracie abrams ☼

“i know it won’t work,” “i know the end,” “kyoto,” “motion sickness,” “garden song,” “where do we go now?”

likes a few taylor songs from red + folklore

a sucker for “all too well” — 10 minute ver.

absolutely sobbed to “i guess” by mitski; recommended by haruhi °˖➴ (“i guess this is the end / i’ll have to learn / to be somebody else / it’s been you and me / since before i was me / without you, i don't yet know / quite how to live”)

kyoya ootori 

matt maltese .ᐟ

tamaki learned how to play the piano part of “when you wash your hair” for kyoya’s birthday ♡

fav songs from matt maltese’s discography: “as the world caves in,” “everyone adores you (at least i do),” “krystal,” “smile in the face of the devil,” “little person”

definitely does NOT cry & think about tamaki when he listens to “wish you’d ask me” .ᐟ

… secretly enjoys twice & attended a concert w hani + mori; mina bias 

small crush on yeonjun from txt

listens to mac demarco w haruhi (“one more love song,” “for the first time,” “heart to heart”)

a few classical piano songs recommended by tamaki on his favorite playlist ♡ 

mitsukuni "hani" haninozuka 

diehard twice stan.

nayeon + momo bias 

also likes loona (esp chuu .ᐟ) & txt

♡ “blue hour” (& the other songs on minisode1: blue hour), “pop,” “heart attack,” “love countdown,” “chocolate” (day6), “polaroid love”

definitely doxxed a 12 yr. old b/c they said that nayeon flopped w her solo debut °˖➴ (he already didn’t have enough sleep that day after trying to get twice concert tickets all night … )

tried listening to kanye during his middle school “tough guy” phase … hated it.

listens to taylor every now & then w tamaki; fearless & speak now stan

takashi "mori" morinozuka 

looks like he’d be the type of guy to listen to frank ocean & tyler the creator … listens to the most basic music in existence. (still love mori, though .ᐟ )

… imagine dragons 

listened to “high hopes” by p!atd on loop.

probably likes some drake songs 

listens to kpop w hani though & takes him to concerts; hani would sit on top of his shoulders so he could see the stage

—+ regardless of their diverse music tastes, they all bond over olivia rodrigo & definitely had a sleepover where they listened to the entire guts album ♡

—+ also, ik that ouran takes place in the early 2000s & they definitely wouldn't be listening to modern western music + kpop, but oh well .ᐟ (this is just a reflection of my own music taste, i think ... )

[lskisms]

THE FEAR AND THE FIRE (OF THE END OF THE WORLD), J. MILLER

synopsis — or you have seen the end of the world once and you feel you’re going through it a second time.

genres &&. warnings — apocalypse, (minimal) romance, (potentially mutual) pining, (un)requited love &&. canon typical violence (gore, weapons, wounds, etc.), canon compliant, illness.

word count — 2.4k.

note from r — the last of us has had a hold on my heart since 2013. i have vivid memories of watching youtubers play it, of discovering one of my favorite video game voice actors of all time through it, of falling so deeply in love with joel miller (who was, at the time, old enough to be my father and still is, honestly). it was a game i thought about every so often, but still felt deeply impacted by and connected to, and when i heard that it was getting a television adaptation, i truly could not have been more excited.

i’m no longer the sixth grader i was when i discovered the last of us for the first time and i’ve changed so much in so many ways, but that initial devotion to the series still holds true in my heart. seeing the game that made me love storytelling get the love i feel it deserves on a much grander scale is a beautiful thing. i’ve been meaning to use this account to write fic that isn’t related to my main interests and what better way than to christen it with a tlou fic with the title taken from my favorite song by one of my favorite musicians (“wasteland, baby” by hozier, for those who don’t know).

honestly, i’m more of a pedro!joel girlie, but this can be read as either game or show joel. i tried to keep the descriptions very general and vague so that your favorite version of joel fits in just perfectly. enjoy to your heart’s content. reblogs are appreciated, comments encouraged. ask box is open if you feel you need to yell at me directly anonymously.

in the hours after the last real day of the world, everything went quiet. the soldiers had been bussed out, survivors having either been lucky enough to go to the emergency quarantine zones with the military or having been turned on by their own government, left dead or dying on street corners, on front lawns, in fields. there was crying, screaming in the streets, fires blazing and glass crashing out of frames, shattering on abandoned sidewalks.

but the world was silent to you as you sat comatose underneath your bedroom window, aching knees pulled tight against chest, arms cradling head, gun sitting askew on the floor. flames across the street cast burnt orange shadows across the floor, both comforting and petrifying. your roommate lay dead in the doorway to your room, her eyes cold and empty and forever staring intently, blood pooling and staining your carpet, the rug, the stray dirty clothes you’d told yourself you were going to pick up after you got back from classes but hadn’t, in the end. the glock 19 your father had insisted upon getting you for college, finally finding use only to be cast aside once more.

you’ve never quite remembered standing and throwing together a backpack stuffed as full as possible with clothes and food. or stepping out over the body of your roommate, the beginnings of light gray fungus creeping out of the wounds you’d caused to take her down. the halls and stairways of your apartment building littered with the bodies of people you’d asked for laundry detergent and tutoring and rides to work when it was too cold or rainy or you just didn’t feel like walking or catching the bus.

an entire life uprooted in one singular moment.

from the blood-soaked streets of an austonian suburb, fire lapping buildings and shattering glass, you’d eventually found a group of survivors on the outskirts, people who had managed to hide from or stave off military men. a dead person can’t be infected, someone had reasoned to you upon your protest, but we weren’t going down without a fight. and here we are.

the willingness to not only kill, but to openly admit to doing it without holding an ounce of shame had scared you. it made you wonder if you could trust them, if they were safe to be around, but then you had killed, too, in an effort to protect yourself. and it hadn’t been a nameless, faceless individual, someone following orders, no matter how immoral; it had been your best friend. in reality, you were the one who shouldn’t have been trusted, the one unsafe and unstable.

but they had trusted you anyway, some semblance of a found family. sneaking through texas as it slowly went silent, scouting for food in grocery stores not yet scavenged, finding nooks and crannies to camp out in at night. and you came to trust them and yourself the way they trusted you. they protected you, expected you to protect them in return, helped you feel steady in a world that was falling apart in a way that was wildly different from life-changing events that had come before.

they had helped you through the end of the world.

twenty years later, the composition of your group has changed quite a bit through death and family reunions and simply separating. by the time you made it to the boston quarantine zone years into the apocalypse, only a few of the original group members remained, including yourself.

life has a strange way of making time feel simultaneously fast and slow. with none of the amenities of your life previous, you’d felt that the world trudged on at a snail’s pace. in the early years, you had none of your old books, no journals, no hobbies that you had been able to pack up in your backpack when you walked out of one life and into the next. every waking moment, every shred of brain power was relegated to staying alive and nothing more.

but then, life couldn’t move fast enough for the simple fact that you didn’t want to live in this world anymore, either through the invention of a cure that would miraculously fix the world or what could only be the sweet release of death. it wasn’t that you wanted to die necessarily, but the idea of of living through the apocalypse, never knowing when you’d eat next or get murdered by a raider or, undeniably the worst of all, when (or if, though that has always been stupid at the very least) you’d get infected, stuck in your own body and unable to ask for the mercy of a bullet in the head.

boston had been good for you, still is. you’d arrived about five years ago, fresh off the road and an exhausting separation with a few of your group members you’d been with for a couple years. they’d decided to take off in favor of other settlements, tired of trekking fruitlessly towards a fedra qz that wasn’t guaranteed to still be standing. but it was there, teeming with so many lives, and after the obligatory infection check and a further interview, you and the remaining scraps of your group finally had a home. a permanent one, at least for the foreseeable future.

a few months following your arrival, joel miller rolled into town, tall and stocky and going gray at the temples and across his jaw. he was quiet but opinionated, hardworking but standoffish. the younger people in the qz went out of their way to avoid him, the older people too, because he was so unapproachable. your friend, tiy, who had joined your trekking group a few years prior, mentioned once that they liked him well enough, but “found him aloof and too stubborn.” nobody liked that he’d made it clear he wasn’t looking to make friends.

but you had been intrigued by joel’s stiffness or maybe it had been that he reminded you of yourself in those early days when you’d found it difficult to connect with people. sure, it had been years since then and you’d adjusted as well as you could, but there was still a learning curve to find the right balance of trusting but skeptical, getting close without investing too much, what with death waiting around every corner.

so you’d made it a point of trying to get under his skin, at least a little. you trailed alongside him as he walked laps around town, insisted on hanging out in his apartment when you were bored and couldn’t stand the silence of your own lodging, even followed him and tess when they slipped outside the fence to go scavenge for better supplies than fedra could (or would) offer.

of course he’d been resistant at first, but tess found it funny. she liked having you around; a breath of fresh air, she called you, someone she could talk to and actually expect responses from. in those early days, she said that joel was a brick wall and he’d never truly given it up. he might let you around more often, but to anticipate anything more than a glance or a glare was asking too much. it had all been said in jest, lighthearted in tone but there was still a truth to it.

and almost five years into your weird friendship with joel miller, he really hasn’t ever given it up. it’s doesn’t feel like the cold shoulder it had at first, but he’s never stopped fixing you to the spot with those icy stares and keeping his responses clipped. it’s grown on you a lot over the time you’ve known him because he doesn’t sugarcoat his words, never beats around the bush. you can always trust him to tell it like it is, even if it hurts your feelings.

which is why you don’t say anything about the thoughts about him that have been popping up unannounced as you lay in bed at night and mourn a life that has been out of reach for twenty years. this whole thing started when you were fresh into your twenties, college and parties and looking for love to get your parents off your back about when they were going to have grandchildren in their future. when the world had ended, you swore off anything more than tentative friendship because what use was a best friend or a lover when you never knew what could happen.

but then you’d gotten older and older and suddenly you were closing in on an age that had seemed so out of reach in that carefree, college student life of yours. and you’d started to realize that you’d missed out on so much. you began to grieve the loss of romance and happiness and comfort, but without an end result of consolation, you couldn’t write the elegy you wanted.

one day a few months ago, you’d been walking with joel at dusk, the sun casting the sky in that burnt orange hue and the complementary pinks. you were doing all the talking and joel wasn’t offering much in the way of response, but it didn’t matter. and then when you’d broken past the city into the more remote parts of boston, the two of you had come to a stop, admiring the sunset in silence. and you’d looked over at your companion and god, the sight of his profile against that pink velveteen and orange creamsicle sky, he looked like the most beautiful person you’d ever seen.

and everything had changed for you in that moment. in recent weeks, as you’ve lain in bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for sleep to come, you’ve been waylaid by thoughts about what it could be like if you let it happen. if you and joel let it happen.

when you look at him now, you see possibilities, a chance to not spend the rest of your life completely alone, isolated from human touch. someone to share your bed at night, to wake up to in the morning, kissed by dawn. if you close your eyes, it feels warm, you can feel that dawn sun on your skin, joel’s arm draped haphazardly over your waist, his breath stirring the wispy hairs at the nape of your neck. it’s a weird sort of comfort to have as you close your eyes at night, willing yourself to succumb to rest.

but at the same time, it feels wholly terrifying, dauntless, completely impossible. because truthfully, after so long without a connection that extends past that surface level acquaintanceship, anything deeper feels crushing. it is a weight that rests upon your shoulders like the rock upon sisyphus’s, something you are bound to bore for the rest of your life and eternally thereafter.

it feels like a second coming, the second apocalypse. when you ponder the idea for longer than a few seconds, it feels like you’re going through the end of the world all over again and you sit there, paralyzed. when you were younger, romance was easy to think about, to fantasize about; you spent many a night slumped in bed, stuck between drunk and sleep, thinking about the boy you’d been iming for the last three weeks. then, it had made you giddy, reduced to giggles and blushing as your friend yelled responses from the kitchen.

now, though, your heart stops, your mind stutters, you feel nervous and excited all at the same time. it’s like being on the precipice of something and waiting for the tip over the edge, to plummet head first into the darkness, anticipation and fear mixing into something wholly indistinguishable. you look at joel and you fantasize about flashes of a domestic life. you stand in the kitchen together and you think about resting your cheek against the broad expanse of his back, that welcoming place right between his shoulder blades. your knees brush as you sit on the couch and you freeze like a deer caught in headlights.

you want it and reject it all in the same breath, fingernails biting into the flesh of your palm as you will the ideas and the fantasies away. he, in all his gruff salt and pepper glory, always looks at you in these slivers of time together, the worry lines deep between his eyebrows, his way of asking whether you’re alright. and you look back and shake your head and offer a smile because you can’t bring yourself to tell the truth, the thoughts that plague your late night reveries, brought on by the silence and the darkness coalescing. you can’t do that to him or to yourself because you’ve known joel for too long to ever think it’s something that could ever happen.

but at two in the morning as you lay sick in bed, weeks after your realization, joel sleeps on the ratty couch in your living room, just feet away. you are hyper aware of the fact that on the other side of the wall, he slumbers after having insisted earlier in the day that he stay with you for at least the night so that if you needed help, you had someone there with you. it had surprised you then, but with the silence and the knowledge of him sleeping in your apartment, it starts to mean something more.

you’ve come to learn that joel shows his appreciation in nontraditional ways, methods that aren’t as confrontational and obvious. he’ll walk you home at night, straight to your door, even though he complains about his knees aching afterwards. he’ll ask, rather gruffly, if you’ve eaten. he chiefly looks out for himself, but he makes sure he takes the highest paying jobs and what he doesn’t need, he passes on to you in return for you checking the radio when he’s away.

and you realize that this is just a new iteration of that, the fact that he sleeps in your crumbling apartment while you’re ill with the flu just so you aren’t alone. maybe it’s a remnant of that instinct he had as a father or maybe it speaks to something more, an evolution in your relationship that isn’t as unrequited as you so thought. it fills your heart with a warmth unlike any you’ve felt in a long time and it makes you feel human again, capable and deserving of that love that you haven’t let yourself approach in so many years.

you’ll let yourself hope, at least for now, in the heat of your illness. it feels like the end of the world, the idea of it all, but it feels less daunting when it’s joel you’re thinking about.

(c) lskisms, 2023. do not repost, translate, or otherwise plagiarize my work. the only official versions of my work are available on tumblr and ao3 under the name lskisms.

[comrade-margot]

A Kentucky of Mothers By Dana Ward (posted for posterity)

As i had to go to the wayback machine to even find this poem. one i find extremely pognient and important to my transition. im posting it here for the sake of posterity. remember the secret of Primative Accumulation. and the fruits of labor and culture will be perserved with the proletariet. -Comrade Margot. Today in the PEN Poetry Series, guest editor Maggie Nelson features a poem by Dana Ward. About Ward’s work, Nelson writes: “It’s not an exaggeration to say that encountering Dana Ward’s poems cleaved my life in two. Before, I had the occasional flickering doubts about contemporary poetry—what it could do next, what sounds/ forms of address/ ranges of interests/ combinations of talky/  political/ confessional/ sublunary/ metaphysical/ gossipy/ unabashedly gorgeous/ profoundly intelligent, rushing, and WILD poetics was still possible. After, I knew I had nothing to worry about. This poem, “A Kentucky of Mothers,” is one of my favorite poems ever. I hold it close to my heart, and encourage you to read it, then read everything Ward has written, which includes the books This Can’t Be Life (2012) and The Crisis of Infinite Worlds (2013).”

A Kentucky of Mothers

Derek what’s Kentucky for you? 

An orange rubber globe? A jagged blue shoe, Paducah-toed, & heeled somewhere near eastern Tennessee? A place with dirt in mouth & blood on hands & prettiness all over in its undulance & peaking. Where Marshall Allen’s lips & lungs began to kiss & breathe. Where, through Wes Unseld’s divinity of play, physical reality was altered by his Balanchine.  Where the laureateship of Cassius Clay began, in the poem of changing his name to Muhammad Ali. His tonal university of butterflies that sting as those similes collapsed the float of puncture into me. 

“I’m so bad I make medicine sick.” he once said. Really that’s as well as one can write. 

But Derek, since you’re from there too, what is that place for you, Kentucky? 

I know that you can’t answer me this morning though the golden-Sharpie’d Peyton you made me keeps watch here while I type this down in our world. It’s coke’d up nose still bleeds. So there’s always some wilder night in the memory of the picture, an invisible tincture of bumps for me, awakening the implants in the archive of my body. 

Fill its search field with some bluegrass. Press return.

Kentucky is mainly a myth I abide because I learned to love inside its stories. 

For me it’s a maternal place but not the mother-land.

It’s where my heart when it was young & small & lacked impressions

took its wealthy shape in songful opulence 

of birthdays. 

Who were they? All these mothers who seem mothers to me still? 

My father, who mothered the concessions of mortality by dying in my childhood, giving birth to me in hospice care, two floors above the maternity ward where my mom, eight years before, saw me into the world.

So her of course. But she is where this poem’s going. 

June, who was someone to watch over me, desirous of children but childless, she & I lived in a mutual surrogacy. She died with my mother as her daughter, & I as her grandson, recipient of doting forgiveness, flawed inheritor of her one conceptual novel, consisting of the Golden Rule repeated to infinity. Her being was the hotel in The Shining had it been enlivened by impossible benevolence instead. By which I mean she was so nice that it was weird.

One year older than me, next door, there was Jessica, by whom I was both brutalized & cherished. She showed me how I was mere thing in the world, another doll absorbing storms of affect. The porcelain heart my other codlings yielded was for her an invitation to explore just how much cruelty could be managed before I ran off sobbing to more empathetic mothers. Her tough love was econ 101.

Then the Barry Manilow mother-hood records in the living room which bore my dependence on preposterous emotion & show. His nurturing colluded with the neediness of children as it lived & lives in me. It nursed some pleading chintz my art relies on even now. Julie Andrews mom of me as well when I go big & sweet to get my way. 

Also the Ella Fitzgerald cassette in the Honda, the mother one reveres. Pristine her voices feel for how ebullience to gutter grief & every nuance in between was waiting to be coaxed from the material of life (I mean its music) if intelligence & discipline were paid. To her I would remain a disappointment, & she remained remote in all her generous perfections. 

Ft. Thomas where we lived, a nursery of whiteness, so plain in being racist it was clear. You could see the white & hateful core through every opaque surface. These orders of transparency were births in their malignancy, of what to be against in one’s becoming. A feel for the structures of division how we’re cut by race & class & sex so then The Father in his local form of hoarding. 

Chapman, Rex, who I loved with the fervor of a Bieber-ite, who bore what’s called the ‘girl-ish heart aflutter’ in my body. It beat its wings in frenzy as I idolized him so. I wanted to cry like Beatlemania  when he dropped 25 on U of L his freshman year. No one told me my performance of idolatry was femme. 

The boys who were my friends found me so weird in this I wonder now if they thought making fun of me redundant. Some of those boys were my mothers as well. 

Blake so pretty, shy & duty bound. Jacob von Gunten. He mothered sanity & keel, & too their limits, revealing the harm of normed wellness in the bedtime stories we told one another, 9 or 10 in bed together, mother & child & child & mother. 

Geoff, the mother I would bury in his youth, though then, in the time of his maternity, he gave me life as if he’d stolen it from god on my behalf.  His delight & his approval were my joy & aspiration. His charms surpassed the mesmerism Orpheus possessed, deployed in service of whatever’s endless lulz. He had some Mary Poppins & the rarest bedside manner, Lake District with his bandages & ornery soups for spirit.  I loved him past the tragedy of Oedipus in puppy ways & chastity still later, sitting shiva with the future we were going to spend together. His mother love was funeral & teen. Now there’s nothing left to know of its exhaustion. 

Some mothers only last a season. Or a day. Or the life of the party. There were only two more mothers in Kentucky left for me. 

The first was Allen Ginsberg, who arrived by way of that cultural line I had followed form the Beatles, on to Dylan where I found him, this sort of interesting guy at Bob’s side, sensing he’s the guru but not being quite sure how. Already invested in what I took to be the outlaw canon, Allen was skeleton key, giving not only his art, poetics clear in DIY articulation, & too the queer in factuality, modernity, it’s cosmopolitan glory, experimental & demanding no more fealty to its aspects than what could be accessed for our survival, & the suddenness of vision & of pleasure. Blood & shit were on the table near a leaky Hebrew Bible. The incense stick puffed Leaves of Grass in scented smoke around the angel head of someone who would soon be in his bed & plainly naked as the ethics of the muse should govern flesh. His motherhood awakened all my senses.  

He asks a wild question of himself there in Kaddish, musing over whether he should try & do it with his mother, right there in the infirmary, just to see how that would feel. You laugh because it’s funny then you laugh like woah, it’s heavy. He seems really free inside his mind! It’s excessive yet from him it sounds so healthy. It’s why so many people have him as a mother they remember. So many inhibitions shattered—for the fervor & the humor of the quest. 

Geoff & I went to see him give a reading in Kentucky, in Lexington, in 1993. Geoff was no longer my mother by then. We were both still Allen’s children en extremis. He read & sang & chanted. We were joyous gathered round him, beamed & smiled in our nearness to the body of our mother, needy, anxious to go even closer still. 

So Geoff & I stood there, in the long line with our books, waiting for his dedication’s kiss upon our pages, swooning sons with steadfast City Lights. I went first, & Allen asked my name, but barely met my gaze. He lingered though with Geoff, meandered in his beauty, these two mothers of mine, flirting in a way that felt like watching boyish pulp of the initial batted eyes behind my body’s constitution. They seemed to wink & dare & coo for several hours.   

Geoff rejoined me & he showed me his inscription.  Allen had addressed him as angel boy & done a little drawing. What’s more he’d invited Geoff to his hotel! We were seventeen. We hadn’t been this far away from home, not by ourselves, ever before in our whole lives.  90 minutes by car from our parent’s front doors. We were fucking Sam & Frodo in the morning of the ring, two bumpkins all mixed up in grander magic. 

Now, which mother were we going to run to?

Its easy to forget what blameless ignorance can be because our culture calls it innocence instead. That heaps too much untrammeled snow & later says it’s sullied though the dirt was there from jump, & time refines it. Thusly unrefined I’m just not sure we understood. I know we didn’t understand what little sex we’d had, our bodies or the bodies of our lovers, young women lost in their way too, though smarter.  All we knew was hard-sold dude lore told through locker room & porn. “Big Titties” or whatever. Baseball diamond of erotic pilgrim’s progress.   

But we believed good heartedness would certify desire in eternity. The plebiscite of seekers was the carnival of night. The orgy a fait accompli. Now one of our moms maybe wanted fuck! She was making good on bodied promise. Here was the gift in the flesh. We were incandescent with the truth of her, & shared her honor there between us. Precious drug. 

First let me say we just went home. I don’t think we knew, in the end, at least not for sure, what the invitation meant for Geoff. If he’d gone to find out then where was I supposed to go? All we did we had to do together. Mom’s response to Geoff’s allure had made it true as cosmic fact. So we departed with our intuitions written in the stars. We needed nothing else for our fond adventure equation. 

But now? I think it’s a shame. We did it wrong. Geoff should have offered up his pretty body to our mother. We should have offered her one body. Ours.

Because us having two of them was waste of healthy matter. What I should have done was gone & donated my organs, then poured my excess ooze inside of Geoff; hold your nose & open up you fucking corpse my heart’s obsessed with, then made my was as slime into the womb-less space where I began as embryo of who I was that day. Then he could have carried me in utero to & Allen, & whatever he wanted would be his. Maybe lots of soulful talk for hours of suspense, & then to be joined in soft, passionate kisses, tingling caresses, dissolutions of the flesh at heights, mysteries, pleasures, trembling heavens, nerves made crushed velvet of pre-cum & spit. Pillows then, & slumbers, & a cigarette to meet our raptured soreness in the dawn. 

The reproductive algebra of “Veracruz” obtained. A child emerged from the absence of encounter. A darling little thing no more than myth in its material. As real as baby Allen was the day that he was born. Like the make-believe the commonwealth Kentucky is a passion play of mists & bloods & poverty & mountains. A baby like a state of love & nothing in its mother.

The three of us, by never fucking in Kentucky, made a child. Sometimes I always wonder where she’s gone. 

She’s in my ear as Cymbeline to listen for her nothing ghost whose youth has soaked the alphabet with music. 

But what’s the alphabet to music if it’s not a dead imaginary child people think they’re so in touch with

one another. What’s the internet, the people all keyed up on boards which really are a boneyard of such offspring of our fantasies efficiently arranged from Q to M. 

Because this isn’t writing. This is typing. 

& my mother’s an extraordinary typist by the way. The one who held me in her body, near her body, kept me fed. 

I’ll say more about her soon. What’s deep & simple? 

But now I’ll say I’d nearly left the nest. My last Kentucky mom would see me off into the poem. & though I met her long before I met Allen, the realization didn’t come until much later. That she, more than anyone else, was the matriarch that opened writing’s world.

O Veronica Sawyer, my mother. I was watching Heathers all the time. O Veronica you cared for me so well. Your affected monocle, the way you dove into your journal, an avenging angel coming back from hell at 3pm, flown into acerbic pique by spiritual distress.  

You were young to have been caring for a son three years your junior. You were little more than 17 yourself.

Lord I tried to mirror you. I failed. Yet there you were. As reliable as emptiness of metric on the testing day. As sharp as #2’s are for the throat. 

I loved the way your pen was always pregnant with your sword. All that social cruelty that your soul could not abide. All that degrading service you’d performed in employ of those tyrants who like school days come & go with common agonizing sameness. 

You could see the beauty of the omelet life could be! Soon you’d be persuaded to the side of breaking eggs. But tactical revolt was not enough for your dumb boyfriend. He was charming though, & sexy, so your heart kept coming back. With reservations. Although things kept getting hotter. Sex & crime make up the Reece’s cup for teens who hate the world. Everyone should eat up all they can!

But you opened up a breach old suave JD did more like blow. He was snorting up the Less Than Zero void & killing children. His moralizing started sounding hollow. You knew that you had to get out. When you faked your own suicide I’d never been more proud. I’d never seen my mother hang & smile. 

Then after all the shit went down, & you blew off his finger, & he blew his body to bits on the steps, you came home bathed in soot & charring ashes of his body, that red ribbon spider cracked your eyes they were so blood shot, & your gaze was like the feel of someplace years of war had changed, there were ruins in it, smoke & haze, cadavers. We watched Breakfast Club with Martha Dunnstock twice that night. I’d never seen so many human tears. 

But really as my mother…it’s this writing thing you did, this fall & swoop into you journal, your motion made me think the heart’s confession’s were more real because they fronted, in their littleness, designs against the world as it is premised on unerring domination.   

The ruling cliques, the system’s ribbon gathering their locks & every two or four Novembers it’s some other fucking Heathers, other warlords, other bankers, mainly dudes. 

But it’s that way you said ‘dear diary’, like nausea was pining in intelligent exhaustion for the words that thrummed against them in the body of your mind. 

That sound was how I felt those years.  

It’s kicked me out of the house. The house of one feeling for developmental shelter. I started writing a novel. So I became the mother of a character, Veronica essentially, although I had named her Amanda. In my novel she murdered a teacher she hated. Then ran away from home to live in gladness in the basement of a woman she befriend. The woman was a poet who was making love for fun, stealing wine that she could pay for just because, & terrorizing her small town with that illegal mixture of the female & Rimbaud. 

The book was called Never Go Home. 

I wrote the thing on legal paper, longhand, during class, & then at night in bed, Sweet Valley High. I laugh but this was pre-Columbine. Sometimes I think if I were in school now & writing that? Shit. That kid might really be arrested!

God my poor real mom she would have died. 

But people say her eyes contain a twinkle they believe in. When they see it they don’t need a leap of faith. Although I was surrounded by hate, as the common disasters claimed our town as most are claimed, my mother barred that city with a pivotal insistence so the heart could turn away to meet new thought. My life is when critique feeds from the auras of her care, a violet glow that begs negation as a sharpening to yellow, or a deepening to red that means ‘the Real’ is not so cool that it is spared a mother’s love in its redout. The way these colors drink me is my sight. I have been inspirited to tesselate their spectrograph by singing so the 4th dimension flutters in their plane, the 3rd may bell the heart & move the blood to hear a ring, to honor lights in eyes that shine against imprisoned worlds & for her merry life of grief that rudder’d mine.    

For her my admiration & my love just can’t be typed.

These are my Kentucky mothers then. The mothers of my heart.  

& I’ve been reading that Yepez book on Olson, The Empire of Neomemory, & good lord it is astonishing. He talks about how Olson attempts to construct an alter-patriarchy on the ruins of an already false one. Part of his martial, nationalist project of mythos. Stacking universe & state & self on Pound-carved Plymouth Rock of cock & balls.  

Yepez says, in essence, Olson’s thing is an elaborate psycho-social misprision. No less interesting because of that, & perhaps a great deal more. It’s quite revealing.  

I thought about that some while I was writing this, & wondered, how might we construct a matriarchy of the world instead?  God knows for truth & world’s sake that we should. 

But what of this. What I’ve been writing. How to think it?  

Many gendered micro-lineage, 

the matriarchs of my Kentucky heart?

To narrate one huge part of one’s small life in one small state in one dead country so besotted by oblivion, through mothers.

But is ‘mother of’ precise? 

Should I say ‘singers of’ instead? 

The heart wants what it wants I guess

those metaphoric light years of itself are all it has—its flesh & blood

its Moulin Rouge

its basic make-up

doctored St. Theresa reputation & a problem like Maria for the discourse it keeps 

photo bombing like the sound of music.

Alive

in some pretty dead hills. 

O god save all the many gendered-mothers of my heart, & all the other mothers, who do not need god or savior,

our hearts persist in excess of the justice they’re refused.

& yo. I have nothing like Olson’s ambitions. But my source in varied care is something real in my song’s story. The way we have our source in locks & open endings, still

there was this thing I meant to say

way back at the beginning

of how the heart is dreamed by idiom

then seeps from out of speech & song to wet the feeling’s thought

Bullfinch’s water on the brain 

of love & when the floodplain dries

the myths have drowned alive in their reality of being

to haunt our body’s opera as the stories of our life.

That is no exaggeration

it’s just a penny on the ground

it’s just the repertoire in flight toward ever newer immolations, disembowelments

reunited 

holding hands beside the carousel again

then grab your bag 

how much alike & not it is the others there gone round & round

how much it’s like a plastic pastel steed 

the way its piping up & down

distinguished from the other inauthentic breathing

ponies by the magic’s fact that circulates between us 

like an organ sound. 

It doesn’t fit beneath our wounded breast

inside the mega-church bewitched

bewildered, bothered

Ella’s way.

It’s just a penny in the busker’s cup

& since you’ve heard it all before

she’ll sing her flawless analects unmoored in static changes. 

She writes the songs

she writes the songs she is the heart like all of us are driving nowhere

spending someone else’s hard earned pay.

But there’s this thing I meant to say

way back at the beginning

that Kentucky is the place I found my heart’s real princess soul.

I don’t know. 

Does that sound strange? 

Perhaps it’s 

                pretty easy to

                               explain…

My heart’s eyes are closed when I am walking in the sun, & they dream the way I look in my delight. I’m a princess then & I have every thought inside my head, as well as none. I am neither regal nor belong to special blood, & I am simple in my costume of a levitating pink, cheap in clothes a royal wouldn’t dress a beggar’s wound in, smiling ear to ear as if I’d nursed on Purple Rain & smack, then set out for my walk of painless warmth. There’s liquidity of sex moving in between my legs. In desire I’m for anyone & I belong to nothing. I commune with bluebirds in the customary way because my singing is so kind & perspicacious. I am free, never once having seen my own image, existing in my mind’s eye as a portrait of forgivenesses received & that’s my calculous of body. Effervescence wanders in my system as the animating spa of matter lacking prime directive, bathing all sensation for an amplifying mildness my being is reliant on as empty, tender joke. The world is all this is in its exquisiteness & filter, the details I receive are simply dialect, & murmuring, a tease made of fulfillment & release. I am beaming absolution in my tulle & my satin, as light means only light has been for pointlessly rejoicing. Shade is little more than night that sun sings for completeness through the liberated objects near my motion. I waltz to meet the billowed bell my shadow is, for sleeping, as sun sings Honolulu nights of me, & endless births. & what was harm? & what was loss? As if ‘to love’ meant never knowing either one. 

But my heart’s eyes are open when I’m walking in the sun, & I see me as I am here in estrangement from the facts of all who have in our conditions lost & sang, less known than not & social, for my truth of constitution as it’s made. 

But still. What is that princess soul so real in heart’s release?

It’s the absolute mirage that private happiness is seeking in its adequate contrivance of a figment.

It is happiness more actual than blood & making good on its reality by offering myself to me in this authentic picture. 

Perhaps it’s all my mothers in their elegance & heavens.

Perhaps it is my mother when she smiles in my mind & her contentment comes to life beyond its borders.

Perhaps it is my daughter’s joy when I have mothered well.

Perhaps it’s institution in a pretty dissipation.

Perhaps she is an emissary born past all of this, & come to tell through feeling how the locks will die in swells of interpenetrating being not yet thought. 

Perhaps the heart’s the princess in its picture so impoverished it is fine to pump in rhythms that the blood holds out for that

redistribution & no center in our nourishment of motions.

Then the world goes all pre-code so free & post to seethe with titillation. 

Of course auto-correct sees ‘total ruin’ 

as if to even speak of freed arousal were an error in the language

mythic imperfection that my princess is in speech.

Our love is god.

It’s really touching. 

Sometimes I think that I’m just in the way. 

So 

Derek, anyone

what do you say?

Is it good to call these others as my moms the way I have? Is it care, & if it is, have I gave honor in my song?

My heart tells me surely they’re the mothers of its fact. 

So many others & in our world with its infinite oppressions

who can know what honor is 

or love?

Perhaps it’s like Kentucky in the way the state contains so many cities of the world, having stolen, for its country places, several famous names. 

Look at a map of the state: 

There’ s Florence. 

There’s London. 

There’s Warsaw, 

& Paris. 

There’s Alexandria,

& Athens.

There’s Versailles.

In Kentucky here’s what people say: “Versails.” The twang distorts the reference to the opulence & splendor. It makes it into someplace else that’s also just is real. Mother

when the heart announces cities of its birth

in twangs which mean it’s from such 

storied places.   

The way a child of Versails may seem a gremlin of Versailles

or a princess-man who’d die

to sing his heart out.

A princess of Versails may be a child of Versailles of care

a princess-man alive 

to sing his heart out.

& he may live to see the world’s Versailles be crushed & freed & him 

   with them 

       & him with them 

                 & him with them

[zeldahime]

I think reducing all country post-9/11 (23 years of music!!!) to jingoism + Carrie Underwood is, well, reductive, and seriously misses a lot of beautiful music that's come out in the last two decades. Even from the last couple years, here are some of my faves in no particular order:

Honeysuckle & Lightning Bugs (2022) by Blanco Brown, an artist who started off in hip-hop and rap who has been recording more generally "Southern" music, not confined by a single genre, for a few years now. You might have seen the album's single, The Git Up, go viral on TikTok during the pandemic (while the album is from 2022, The Git Up was released in 2019). The album is fun romp, chalk full of influences from Johnny Cash to Outkast to disco to everything in between, and The Git Up is a bouncy line dance.

Deeper Well (2024) by Kacey Musgraves. Pretty much everything Kacey Musgraves has put out has been golden, from her first hit Follow Your Arrow in 2013 to her latest album, Deeper Well, which came out just a few weeks ago. It's a sad, reflective album with slow songs and heartbreaking lyrics reflecting on family, relationships, and the sacrifices made in life. In the words of my little sister when I was texting her about the new album, quote, "yeah zelda all of kaceys stuff is pretty sadgirl summer". Nerds on this website might especially like Anime Eyes, where she compares the way she feels about looking at her partner to shoujo filters in anime.

American Heartbreak (2023) by Zach Bryan. This album is the closest to bro country I'm willing to come, and let me tell you: there is a fucking reason. Zach Bryan's voice is electrifying. He makes me long like I've never longed before, completely encases me in the emotions of the song. I feel his vocals in my fucking soul. I first heard Something in the Orange while I was driving into the sunset in South Carolina and something inside of me irreversible changed. It's a whole album of done-her-wrong songs, every one of them designed to teleport you to the bar where you're sobbing into your fourth glass of whiskey.

Through the Madness vols. 1 (2022) and 2 (2022) by Maddie & Tae. Maddie & Tae have been one of my most adored country acts since they came out with Shut Up and Fish 8 years ago. They have the irreverence that made 90s country so much fun! While they're primarily a touring act and usually release their songs one at a time on YouTube/Spotify/etc, their release of Through the Madness put a lot of their songs out for purchase on CD. Drinking to Remember has been absolutely feeding my fanfic brainworms in the last few months. I'll leave you with my absolute favorite song from them though, Tourist in this Town, which is basically the most perfect representation of losing a close relationship I've ever heard—a breakup song for any kind of breakup.

Palomino (2022) by Miranda Lambert. When people say they "only like women's country," they mean Carrie and Miranda. Kerosene and Gunpowder & Lead are pretty much the only things that got radio play in the years that weren't bro country in 2005 and 2007 respectively, which is also approximately when these people stopped looking for new country. Can't blame them, really; 2007 was a very bad year for country in general. Here's the secret though: Miranda hasn't gone anywhere. She's been recording the whole time. Palomino is her latest album, and if I recall correctly the first one she's released since she split with Blake Shelton (her ex-husband and fellow country star). While a lot of my all-time favorite Miranda songs are from her 2007 album Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, since that was released when I was about 12 and nothing will ever compete with the music you heard when you were 12, I've loved the shift in her sound on Palomino and the themes of independence that run through it. If I Was a Cowboy is my particular favorite because it gives me so much gender.

And I'm not even going to bother trying to sell Cowboy Carter (2024) by Beyonce. It's fucking Beyonce. You've already heard of it.

TL;DR not only is the last 25 years of country not made up entirely of jingoistic bro country, not even the last *two* years of country are. The good stuff is getting airplay on the radio, even, and country radio is by no means the primary way tumblr users are going to be hearing new music. All you have to do to hear the good stuff is be a little curious and click on new things, or even old things that you already know you like and see if they have any new things.

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[theworldofmycreations]

Here is the twenty-first and second-to-last of my Power Rangers OCs (for now, anyway).

-

Maeve Elodie Jones

Age: 8

DOB: June 27th, 2013

Occupation: Third Grader, Purple Dino Fury Ranger

Pronouns: She/Her

Friends: Claire (Best Friend), Zayto, Ollie, Amelia, Izzy, Javi, Aiyon

Family: Joseph (Dad, Pharmacist), Jodi (Mom, Office Worker), Wesley and Grayson (Older Twin Brothers, 25, Business Entrepreneurs), Popo (Pet Yorkshire Piglet)

Likes: Writing Stories, Making Up Stories, Archery, Playing the Piccolo, Riding her Bike, Tulips, Red-Eyed Tree Frogs, Old Cowboy Movies

Favorite Color: Purple

Favorite Food: Blackberries

Skin Color: Medium Almond

Hair Color: Light Golden Brown

Eye Color: Light Gray

Appearance: She wears a purple t-shirt with a rose on it, brown shorts, pale blue leg warmers, and pink shoes. Her hair is also in space buns supported by orange hair ties.

Facts

-Popo was a gift given to her by her grandfather after his mother rejected him

-Maeve is her parent’s rainbow child born seventeen years after her older twin brothers

-She wants to be an author when she grows up

-Her sword is a purple Ptero Talon Zord

-She’s a champion archer and has been in archery lessons since she was six

-Her fascination with red-eyed tree frogs began when she was four and she took a field trip to the zoo with her playgroup and she got to hold one during a reptile demonstration

-

Created via Adobe Illustrator.

[lastchancevillagegreen]

Thursday, 23 March 2023:

Secret Stratosphere William Tyler and The Impossible Truth (Merge) (released 31 March 2023)

William Tyler, once of Lambchop, has been releasing solo albums under his own name since 2010.  I’ve been buying his work since that time but he releases music on many different small labels, smaller than Merge and I don’t always manage to track them down.  Heck, I’ve not even bought his last three albums with Merge (New Vanitas which was a download only and then became a Record Store Day release, the soundtrack to First Cow or the album he did with Marisa Anderson titled Lost Futures--I’ve heard cuts from all these albums and enjoyed them, so I’ve no excuse for never picking them up).

This new album with his band Impossible Truth (which was the name of my favorite William Tyler album, it came out in 2013) takes songs from previous solo Tyler albums and turns them into full electric band exposés.  I’ve not heard a note of this so perhaps I’m merely telling you what the hype sticker already will tell you a few photos down.  Above you see the album cover, the gatefold and then the back of the cover.  Below, you will see the hype sticker.

This came out on Orange Creamsicle vinyl and you will get a glimpse of that below.  I had to lay the album down because this gatefold will not stay shut and it kept wanting to push the record off the top of the album cubbie I use to shoot my photos!

The next shot shows you what this looks like in the bright sunlight.  Unfortunately it is a rather drab day here in my hometown.  Check it out below. 

The next four shots reveal the labels for both sides of both records.  I must admit, I really like the looks of this label a lot. 

Lastly, Merge included a promo poster with this album.  I do like this cover and the poster considerably. 

[j1mmyr]

Oop I seem to have gained some new people! Sorry I’ve not been too active lately XD

UH…a small “get to know me” though I guess!

- My IRL name is Jonny so you may see close people using it but my online name/art name/alter ego is Jimmy sometimes stylized as J!MMY and it comes from a long story inside joke! Sometimes I tack on my last initial (R) depending on the situation

- I’m a guy, my pronouns are he/him/his!

- I’m trans and have been out since 2013! I’m 5-6 years on T (I honestly forget the exact year off the top of my head) and am almost two years post-op! I don’t label myself as a “trans guy” exactly though and usually just say “guy” because frankly trans or cis doesn’t matter because I AM A GUY lol

- I’m an artist first and foremost and draw…well, kink and nsfw mostly XD I have an original comic about two fat BDSM gimps in a cyberpunk world that fall in love…sort of :U It’s complicated. They’re names are Scream and Candy and they’re my main OCs. You can see more of them and my art at my art blog @electropuz or send them asks at @spandexspaceman though that blog isn’t exactly ready yet!

- Other hobbies include writing, RPing, and cosplaying! And sometimes making said cosplay though my skills aren’t great so I usually end up buying cheap cosplay and fixing it up lmao. I also like gaming sometimes and wanna stream myself playing them or do “let’s plays” as a side thing for fun!

- Possible trigger warnings! I am mostly “spiritual” but openly identify as an atheistic Satanist! I also am a heavy drinker and a stoner so it’s hard for me to always tag things like drugs and alcohol! I’m also pro-kink BUT within limits!! I DO NOT support pedophila, incest, and other such things! Just keep all this in mind before following and minors DO NOT INTERACT at all! Btw if you’re a minor and I interact with you first out of accident first just tell me and I will quit right away!

- Otherwise I have three (technically five…long story) awesome cats that I love very much and put before all else! They’re names are Cirice (black, female, we pronounce it Cirrus due to a Ghost video we watched early in the fandom years ago), Dewdrop (cream/light orange, male, named after the unofficial name for Ghost’s lead guitarist), and Mochi (sphynx/hairless, male, named because he looks like he has rice ball skin lmao). The other two cats mentioned are cats I had when I lived with my grandpa and had to leave behind when I moved out! I still visit them frequently and make sure they’re well cared for though! They’re names are Wade (fluffy gray and white, male, named after Deadpool because he’s my hero) and Bruce (white, male, named after Batman to match Wade being Deadpool). All are spayed/neutered and three are shelter rescues!

- My personal triggers are cat deaths, harm, etc. so please tag them if we become mutuals! It’s not that other forms of animal death/abuse aren’t important (they bother me too), they’re just not a full blown trigger. Cats specifically send me into episodes of severe anxiety and depression

- My “just talking” tag is “the rest is all bullshit” so feel free to blacklist that if you’re just here for cats or memes or something!

ANYTHING ELSE?? I guess just ask me! I love to talk and my favorite things are currently the band Ghost, Walt Disney World, Ghostface (both Scream and DBD), and talking about my OCs! Also aside from Ghost my big fandoms are OFF, TF2, Rick and Morty, and MHA! There’s also a handful of nostalgic fandoms (like Homestuck) and various characters I adore, it’s just hard to list them all right now XD

OKAY I THINK THAT’S FINALLY IT!! Welcome to my blog!

[spacepunksupreme]

Was tagged by @psygull to post some albums I’ve been listening to lately :D it was fun to sit and think about what I’ve actually listened to start to finish recently instead of just random songs on repeat lol

“Does This Look Infected” Sum 41- Just good early 2000s punk music to get riled up to lol. Love this album art, I’ve used that same obnoxious green and orange as colors on my blog before. Everything about this album is just exactly what it should be, ya know?

“Is This Thing Cursed?” Alkaline Trio- Actually the band I’ve been most devoted to since like middle school. I can listen to all of their albums start to finish because there’s only a handful of their songs total that I think are skippable. This is their most recent album, and imo actually a good first album to listen to if you want to get into them, just a really solid blend of the punk sound that got them started in the 90s and the more refined sound their frontman, Matt Skiba, has picked up with age. Skiba is also the current front man for Blink-182 since Tom DeLonge left btw, not that it has anything to do with this album lol.

“The Snow Goose” Camel- Absolutely beautiful instrumental concept album about Paul Gallico’s novel of the same name. At some point in the 70s, the band was forced to change the name of this album to “Music Inspired by The Snow Goose”, because the author was apparently furious that these dirty hippies would dare make music about his book, but in 2013 was changed back to just “The Snow Goose”. My favorite thing about this is the fact that I haven’t met a single person who’s actually read Snow Goose that didn’t learn about it first from the Camel album lol. Anyway, completely enchanting album, very subtle and emotional music, great music to listen to in bed. I am actually listening to it at this very moment. 

“The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and The Knights of The Round Table” Rick Wakeman- Rick Wakeman (keyboardist from Yes) has a ton of solo stuff, but this one is easily the best imo. Anyone who knows me irl can contest that I never shut up about this album. I cannot recommend this shit enough, it's so good. Yes-quality synth and electric guitar aside, this album also features narration and an entire choir doing backup. It’s basically like Camelot in Space, and what more can you ask for? I think everyone should listen to this album at least once lol. 

“Dark Night of The Soul” Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse- An album that my dear friend Leny recommended to me that I love now. I was not actually previously familiar with almost any of the like 15+ artists who collaborated on this, aside from Iggy Pop and David Lynch, which I was told “oh, of course those are the only two you know”, so I guess that says something about me lol. Anyway, really solid album with a totally unique sound to each song from all the different artists while still having a really strong unifying mood. 

“The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” Genesis- I only really got into Genesis recently and this was the first album of thier’s I’d heard, but it’s still easily my favorite. I feel a little evil recommending this one to people who aren’t that into progressive rock because it’s like well over an hour of 20+ songs but, god every single one of them is so so good. 

“Good For The Soul” Oingo Boingo- Only recently actually listened to this one and their self title all the way through. Vibes as hell, I mean, like it’s Oingo Boingo, what can I say lol. Just good kooky, new wave to have fun to. 

“Synchronicity” The Police- I know I haven’t shut up about Sting on this website in like a year, for some reason lol, but ... he’s good, you guys, I swear lol. I mean this is one of The Police’s more popular albums next to Zenyatta Mondatta, so I don’t know what I can really say about it that isn’t obvious. So much more refined than some of their earlier stuff where they were just doing a lot of shouting like the The Clash wannabes that they were lol. “Synchronicity II” and “Wrapped Around Your Finger” are up there among some of the better examples (across his entire discography) of Sting’s genius as a narrative lyricist imo. 

Camel self-titled- Another Camel album because I’ve been listening to them a lot lately. A lot jazzier and more psychedelic than Snow Goose (more fitting of the descriptor “dirty hippy music” lmao), but equally as good. Where Snow Goose is great chance to hear the talent of Camel’s flautist, this one is great to hear their singer’s smooth, deep (dare I say, sexy) voice. Not on either of these albums, but I also feel like I should mention that Camel has a song about Gandalf ( “Nimrodel/White Rider”) which is just great to listen to on its own, because, naturally, it slaps. 

I’m going to tag: @ribbon-girl @maxophone @graballa @bubble-tsunami @brimstone-cowboy @cispr-cas9 @magicalmrmephistopheles @mister-outer-space @nitewrighter and the girl reading this :)

[rachelminetti]

september 2021 music!

it’s september 2022, i dug through the archives to post this before i type up this year’s september playlist. a lot has stayed the same, 2021 set the tone for the next few septembers, it seems.

everything is less intense, more settled in. great month of music for me, a lot of stereolab, autocollants, and homelife. very gentle, not necessarily subtle. i'm fully engulfed in this subgenre of twee - anything that's soft, a little dreamy, blue-tinted and slightly sedative. maybe this is rooted in nostalgia, for a time i only vaguely remember, yet crave without means to an end.

i know it's 7 days into october, but my music hasn't shifted quite yet and i put too much effort into these playlists to leave them without an audience. but first i'll list some of my favorite songs from last month, songs that still haven't been worn out, some that might make it into a favorites playlist. and then i will get into the smaller playlists i made to keep things organized, group genres/moods together, force a little cohesion into the mix. (i obviously did not get around to this. the playlists are made though! and can be found here: i learned a lot of good things this afternoon, still here?, too fast?, watch your step!, brain replaced by something, supreme nothing)

songs!

op hop detonation - stereolab

cobra and phases group play voltage in the milky night... // 1999

there is not a bad stereolab song. they are a group of utter consistency, everything just works, hits where it needs to. this song works well on a loop, like going down a factory line. maybe playing in an orange monochrome suburban bathroom that hasn't been updated since the 70s, maybe taking a moped down a twisting side street.

afterglow - pine*am

pull the rabbit ears // 2005

this song/album brought me to a days long deep dive into discogs and rateyourmusic, mostly while sitting up at the reference desk at the library, copy and pasting links into an email i'd send to myself at the end of the hour. it introduced me to picopop, shibuya-kei, brought me further onto this side of twee pop. this song feels like something, unnamed. the theremin (probably, maybe) is haunting, clear. i'll probably try to find a used CD sometime soon.

nothing at all - the autocollants

why couldn't things just stay the same // 1999

this album has given me so much, i could listen to it everyday, every drive to and from work. this isn't a stationary song, it's very much in motion, i must be going somewhere, moving along somehow. i'm sad about nothing at all.

on a rampant multi-tab google search at the circ desk at the library, i found a website that i will most definitely spend countless hours on in the future, TweeNet. a goddamn dream come true. this makes me want to plan another radio show, bless the columbia airwaves with this eternal tenderness.

est - greenscreen

greenscreen // 2019

can't find anything about this band/musician/group/whatever. kind of reminds me of boothe's gentle absurdity (though they're album is no longer available in my country? i miss eggs are 0's) (2022 update: bought the mp3 on bandcamp, all is well). this song is mesmerizing, a little hypnotizing, a little bit cryptic. definitely mysterious, but i'll keep it that way. i learned a lot of good things this afternoon.

one we kiss - jenny mae

there's a bar around the corner...assholes // 1995

god i love this song. maybe i was a college radio dj in the 90s in some alternate timeline or something. this just sounds like wusc on any given tuesday, tucked into the mundane.

east side glory - marnie stern

the chronicles of marnia // 2013

looking forward to continuing to gradually make my way through marnie stern's discography, though i'm saddened that this was her final album (for now maybe?).

[broke-bruce-wayne]

Share 6 albums you’ve been listening to lately!

Tagged by @milfharleyquinns (I’m not sure if I was supposed to give reasons but they did so I couldn’t just...not lol)

Food & Liquor - Lupe Fiasco (2006)

This one just had it’s 16 year anniversary a couple days ago, and it was one of my favorites growing up, so I’ve been revisiting it.

Morbid Stuff - PUP (2019)

Honestly, I could’ve picked three albums just from this band, but I went with this one because it’s the one that turned me onto them. Probably my favorite band from the last 10 years. They are incapable of making a bad song

good kid, m.A.A.d city - Kendrick Lamar (2012)

These next two are both from 2012, and for whatever reason I randomly decided recently that I wanted to go back to both. This is still my favorite Kendrick album

Channel Orange - Frank Ocean (2012)

Love love love this album so much. Like the last one, I feel like it’s since been overshadowed by the albums that came after them, but its still my absolute favorite from him.

American Idiot - Green Day (2004)

As overplayed as it was, as well as the unfortunate meme jokes that came from it, Wake Me Up When September Ends has always been a really personal song for me, for the same reasons it is a personal song for Billie Joe. And when it popped onto my shuffle the other day, I decided to give the whole album another listen as it was one of the most important to me growing up. (The first concert I went to on my own was the supporting tour for this album)

The Greatest Generation - The Wonder Years (2013)

The only album on this list that isn’t one of my long time favorites, but its a band a lot of people I know love, so I’ve been taking the time lately to check them out. Its definitely a solid album too. Not sure how much I’ll personally go back to the whole thing, but I get why people love it

Not really sure who to tag in this tbh. I feel like people are more individual song than full album listeners, but if you see this and want to do it, consider yourself tagged, tag me, and I’ll check out the albums you posted

[silentfcknhill]

FAVORITE SHOWS IN POSTERS

Well, we’re back for another installment of this tagged meme, this time for TV shows! I also stole this from/was indirectly tagged by @jcmorrigan. My taste in shows also differs a bit from my taste in movies, as I tend to like a lot of comedy shows with not as many horror ones. I’m not into shows as much as movies overall, but there are some that I am very passionate about so I picked twenty again. So, here we go for part 2, in order:

1. Avatar: The Last Airbender/The Legend Of Korra (2005-2014)

I'm including these as one show since they take place in the same universe and tell a continuation of the same overall plot. Altogether this is probably the best piece of media to ever exist, including movies. It has so many great characters and villains especially and some of the most epic sequences, charming humor and heartwarming moments ever. I've never met a person who didn't like these shows, even people who normally don't like cartoons. My dad, who is biased against animation? He loved it. My mother? She loved it, watched it with her multiple times. My grandmother? Loved it. My ex-boyfriend? Loved it. My best friend? Loved it. I dare anyone not to, and I'm so glad it's making a resurgence since it's on Netflix for a new generation to enjoy.

2. Black Butler (2008-2014)

I never was big into anime growing up and only really started watching anime when I was like 16 and above, but this is one of the exceptions because holy shit is it ever dark and epic. I'm not sure I'd really recommend it for kids, it's more of a teens and young adults kind of anime and that's probably why it's so good, because it isn't afraid to explore dark and mature topics and do it with all of the intensity and gravitas required to do said topics justice. It has lots of great characters, and the story of demons who make deals with children who have a dark side is fun to watch play out.

3. Seinfeld (1989-1998)

My dad was a huge fan of this show so I watched it growing up since I was a toddler and it became a classic for me. I've watched thw hole show through at least 8 times, and I'll never stop because it never gets old or boring. It's also my only comfort show when I'm having a panic attack because of one time a few years ago when I was having a drug-induced psychosis episode and watching it calmed me down, so now it's like the opposite of a trigger and whenever I'm having an episode or something I watch it to bring me back to reality. For that reason it's more than a show to me, it's a medical treatment and I'm forever grateful to it.

4. The Good Place (2016-2020)

The big four shows made my Michael Schur all made it on this post (The Good Place, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Office and Parks And Recreation), either in the main list of the honorable mentions, but this is my personal favorite of the four. It's so funny, quirky, relatable and basically tailor-made to suit my interests. Not only is it an entertaining and wholesome show, but I think watching it helped me come to terms with a lot of things like mortality, ethics, philosophy, religion and my relationships with other people. It gets  alot of different viewpoints across and if you're a very analytical and philosophical person like me you'll probably enjoy seeing it all play out. Not to mention, every single character is 'favorite character' material. It's rare you find a show with no filler characters in the main cast, but I genuinely can't choose who is best.

5. Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013-?)

Another of Michael Schur's shows, this one is just barely under The Good Place and to be honest it was tough to pick my favorite between the two because they're both equally funny. I know it's kind of controversial right now because of the whole law enforcement thing, but I actually think they do a good job of handling social issues in the show and remaining respectful of real-life systemic problems. As for the characters, this is another one of those shows where every single character is gold and I think that tends to be a trend among Schur's shows in general. He produces damn good comedy, and damn good characters. I can't wait to see what they bring next.

6. Rick And Morty (2013-?)

This is unfortunately one of those cases of 'great show, horrible fandom' and for that reason I don't get involved in the fandom even though I love the show. It's a shame because it really is a great show, so funny and, again, such good characters. I think it's a lot more accessible than the fandom likes to claim, so I'm hoping more people will give it a chance and not get put off by the intellectual elitism of the fandom because it does have some of the most entertaining and batshit crazy episodes ever, poking fun of some of the staples of science fiction in media while also poking fun of itself the whole time. Unlike the fandom, the show doesn't take itself seriously and that's enjoyable nowadays.

7. Orange Is The New Black (2013-2019)

While this show is a comedy, it is also a lot of other things and it's probably made me ugly-cry just as many times as it's made me laugh. Well, maybe not as often, but those few scenes (if you've watched the show then you know the ones I'm talking about) made me hysterically sob hard enough to be worth like fifty minor sads. But I didn't even mind because the show is just that good, and it makes you /feel/ something in a real way. Probably because of just how real it gets in terms of telling stories that happen all the time in the real world, sometimes with inevitably tragic endings. But these things do happen every day, and it's important to shine a light on that. It's not just representation for LGBTQ+ but also for POC, the neurodiverse, the poor, and many more. Give it a watch to broaden your perspective!

8. Big Mouth (2017-?)

This is probably the grossest show I've ever seen but by god is it ever funny. Maybe it's because I have an immature sense of humor or something, but I love this show. It definitely won't be everyone's cup of tea and I don't recommend you watch this show with anyone else around because it will get awkward. I think part of its appeal to me is that everyone I talk to who likes it considers it so relatable to their lives growing up but for someone like me who grew up on the autism and asexual spectrum and who was physically an early-bloomer by years, nothing about this show is relatable to me in any way so it makes it all the more crazy and bizarre watching how the people around me must have experienced things. Did y'all really have these experiences with puberty in middle school???

9. Dexter (2006-2013)

I recently heard that this show is coming back for a reboot soon and I'm so excited because this is my absolute favorite drama/thriller show, as evidenced by the fact that it's the highest one on the list so far that isn't a comedy. I love the idea of having a protagonist who is sort of a villain (or at least morally dubious), and the idea of a serial killer who only kills bad people is particularly satisfying for some reason. Maybe because he's the vigilante we all deserve and want in this unjust and evil world of modern times? Idk but the very premise of this show set it up for big things and aside from the ending I think it delivered consistently.

10. Once Upon A Time (2011-2018)

This show took us on some journeys, and you can't deny that. Sure, maybe it didn't always finish what it started and didn't always end in the most satisfying way, but part of its charm is that you didn't care because the experience was just so much fun. They took characters and stories that have been told to death and somehow managed to put a unique and unexpected twist on them, and that alone is admirable. Good twists, good villains, and pretty much every cliffhanger known to man will keep you hooked on binge-watching every episode.

11. RuPaul's Drag Race (2009-?)

A bit different than the other entries on my list in that it's not fiction but a reality competition show, but I couldn't leave Drag Race out because it's just so fucking iconic and perfect. Even when you disagree with the judges or can't stand a certain contestant you'll still be having a good time. It's got the personalities you love to love, the ones you love to hate, and the comedy that's completely meme-able. I mean just how much has this show contributed to pop culture and the internet? More than most of us, henny. I've watched every single season, even the international ones and all of the spinoffs. This show will probably be on for another thirty years when Ru is throwing shade from a hospital bed and I'll still be watching.

12. House (2004-2012)

Some people hate on this show, and I don't get it. I love House. Yes, he's an ass. That's the point. He's supposed to be unlikeable, and that's why I like him. Maybe because I always love the rude, sarcastic, misanthropic jerkass-genius characters for some reason. And I also love procedural shows, so it's a win-win. I also work in the healthcare field so it appeals to me for that reason too, because obviously the whole premise is outlandish which is what makes it funny. Of course it's not realistic for a hospital, so just enjoy the absurdity and don't get too hung up on the details of medical accuracy and professional ethics and you'll be fine.

13. The Office (2005-2013)

The third of Michael Schur's show and the last one that made the main list (sorry Parks And Rec, I love you too but there was just so many good shows to choose from and I saw you last so the nostalgia isn't as strong!) I don't think I need to hype this show up any, it's already a classic and you can't even turn around online without getting hit in the face by a dozen Office memes. You'll have to pry this show and it's relatable characters (especially Michael Scott) from my cold, dead hands.

14. All Hail King Julien/The Penguins Of Madagascar (2008-2017)

Like Avatar/Korra, I also consider this as one show for the sake of this list because it also takes place in the same universe (Madagascar, specifically) and I just couldn't choose one over the other because they're both so perfect. They're funny and I love all the characters (it cut out the weaker links of the Madagascar film series and just focuses on expanding the standout side-characters like King Julien and the penguins). It also delved into some lore, particularly the first show, and even though I didn't also agree with the directions it took (you may have seen me get salty about the ending because I cared too much), I can't deny how much I love it.

15. Bones (2005-2017)

One of the other scarce non-comedy shows on this list, it still has it's funny moments. It's also, like House, another procedural show that involves some medical stuff, but this time on a more scientific and forensic level which is even more interesting. It's nice to see a lead female with Asperger's, too. There's a lot of cop/law enforcement shows where they try to solve crimes, but this one is the best, and I'm saying that as a fan of CSI as well. Don't fight me on this, I'm right. Oh yes, it's corny, it's campy, it's cheesy, but I love every minute of it. Don't watch if you have a weak stomach though.

16. The Simpsons (1989-?)

We all grew up with this show, don't lie. It's been around longer than most people on tumblr have even been alive. Should it have ended seasons ago? Hell yes. But that doesn't take away what the first like 20 or so seasons gave us (there's a lot of argument about when the show jumped the shark, for me it wasn't until much later than the popular consensus). The characters are amazing, but the secret to the show's longevity is that they always return to status quo and there's comfort and nostalgia in that. Bart will still be in 4th grade when you're out there pushing 90. This show is persistent. This show is eternal. This show will outlive us all.

17. Ash Vs. Evil Dead (2015-2018)

Sorely underrated. This show is hilarious, gruesome and campy as hell and I love it. I don't think you necessarily have to watch the Evil Dead movies beforehand in order to get the plot of the show, although it would probably help. In my opinion this show ended way too soon and I'm hoping someday we'll get a comeback because Ash is the reluctant, self-absorbed hero we all need and it's 2020 so at this point there really might actually be a demon-zombie apocalypse and who's gonna save us then if not for the impulsive womanizer with a chainsaw for a hand?

18. Malcolm In The Middle (2000-2006)

Another show I grew up with, I don't think it gets as much credit as it deserves. It has some damn funny episodes and great characters, and it did a lot of the popular sitcom tropes before they were 'cool'. Some other great sitcoms, The Middle in particular, took a lot of influence from this show and it helped pave the way for the future of sitcoms at a time when they were about to make a comeback. If you want a good show about the real experiences of growing up, this is a much more accurate representation of the highs and lows of being an awkward tween from a dysfunctional home.

19. A Series Of Unfortunate Events (2017-2019)

Unlike most people I actually liked the movie version from the early 2000's, and I read the books growing up so I was excited when I saw there was a live action television adaptation of it on Netflix because I felt like they cancelled the movie franchise too soon. I was interested to see how new actors would handle the roles, and I was not disappointed. I wouldn't say I liked either portrayal of the characters better or worse, they both added their own twist to it and this show is a great and loyal adaptation to the books, probably because the author was so heavily involved. He knew just when to stick to the books and when to improve upon what he had done with the benefit of hindsight. This show is basically the books, but remastered.

20. Winx Club (2004-?)

Sort of an odd one out on this list, but I really love this show even as an adult and it may surprise you to learn it is still going on and the most recent season came out last year. They take big breaks sometimes in between seasons, but it's still going strong and in multiple countries. The only thing I don't like about watching this show is all the different and inconsistent dubs since the original show is Italian and each dub only goes for a couple seasons so by the time you get used to one set of voices/names for the characters oyu have to abruptly switch to another, but it's still worth it for the beautiful animation and cool characters (especially the villains!)

Honorable Mentions: 

13 Reasons Why, America's Next Top Model, American Horror Story, Arrested Development, Bates Motel, Battlestar Galactica, Black Mirror, Care Bears, Chernobyl, Courage The Cowardly Dog, Criminal, CSI, Duck Dodgers, Goosebumps, Kenny Vs. Spenny, Kim Possible, Kingdom Hospital, Lazytown, Lost, Making A Murderer, Mayday, Mindhunter, Modern Family, Monster High, Obsession: Dark Desires, Parks And Recreation, Prison Break, Project Runway, Queer As Folk, Queer Eye, Salem, Schitt's Creek, SCTV, Spongebob Squarepants, The Emperor's New School, The Good Doctor, The Haunting Of Hill House/Bly Manor, The Middle, The Pretender, The Walking Dead, The X-Files, Through The Wormhole, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Unsolved Mysteries, Yugioh

Tagging: @bullet-farmer​ and anyone else who wants to!

[carnegiemuseumnaturalhistory]

Watercolors

by Samhita Vasudevan

Smooth reds, muted oranges, and sandy browns painted the landscape that graced my sight. An overcast sky drizzled almost cautiously onto our heads, while the crunch of the rocky terrain echoed after every footstep, as my parents and I trekked up the precarious path on the West Rim of the Grand Canyon. It was early December of 2019, on the Hualapai Reservation, a site our family reached after a two-hour cellular-signal-less drive from Las Vegas.

As we hiked up the path to the second and last stop of our tour, Guano Point (aptly named considering its history—In the 1930s the U.S. government spent about $3.5 million to extract the nitrogen-rich bat droppings), the terror I felt about being so close to plummeting down hundreds of feet evaporated when an opaque, red-colored Colorado River came into my view. Like a ribbon, it weaved through the towering cliffs, drawing everyone’s attention. Today, however, it was especially eye-catching: its striking color was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.

Prior to the completion of the Glen Canyon Dam in 1963, the reddish color of the Colorado was much more prominent. In fact, the Colorado River’s original name, El Rio Colorado, meaning “the reddish river,” came about when the first Spanish explorers to see the river encountered an even more vibrant red than I did. The river’s color is tied to the amount of sediment its water contains while flowing through the canyon. Since the dam’s construction, however, this color has been dulled severely, as the dam blocks much of the sediment from travelling further downstream. Most days, the river is a clear greenish-blue. The reddish-brown color I saw on my visit can most likely be credited to the rain stirring up the sediments earlier that day.

The subject of sediment reminded me of my other favorite National Park, Crater Lake. Unlike the Colorado River, this waterbody’s bright color is caused by a lack of sediment. In 2013, I found myself boating on possibly the most beautiful body of water I have ever seen: Crater Lake in southwestern Oregon. This roughly 5-mile-wide lake, which formed through the collapse of a volcano more than 7,000 years ago, has no tributaries, or smaller rivers flowing into it. In much of the world today, rivers and their tributaries are impacted by human activities, and the effects travel downstream. The reason Crater Lake has some of the cleanest water in the world is because most of its water comes from melted snow or rain. Being free from the inward flow of potentially contaminated water and sediments, Crater Lake maintains its clarity resulting in one of the deepest, brightest, blues.

As beautiful as both bodies of water are, they can only be protected through active efforts to preserve their sanctity. The Colorado River, a source of water for 40 million people, has been negatively impacted due to climate change, population growth, nearby natural resource exploitation, and the over-allocation of its flow for crop irrigation. Crater Lake has become increasingly at risk due to careless visitors who head onto the lake with items prohibited by the National Park due to their potential to pollute the pristine water. The pandemic has only heightened this chronic problem. Increased visitation has brought an increase in people, knowingly or unknowingly, bringing in prohibited items like wetsuits, kayaks, and innertubes. These materials could introduce non-native species that are known to hitchhike on watercraft, jeopardizing the lake’s ecosystem. Visitors to such natural beauties must accept some responsibility to keep these areas alive and well. These positive outcomes can only be achieved by following park guidelines and being conscious of one’s impact on the environment around them.

Samhita Vasudevan is a Teen Volunteer in the Education Department. Museum employees, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

Sources:

https://grandcanyonwest.com/explore/west-rim/guano-point/

https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/releasing-flood-controversy-colorado-river

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/americannile/

https://www.doi.gov/blog/12-things-you-didnt-know-about-crater-lake-national-park

https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/bsp/docs/finalreport/ColoradoRiver/CRBS_Executive_S ummary_FINAL.pdf

https://www.heraldandnews.com/news/local_news/crater-lakes-clear-waters-under-threa t/article_94e3756c-9d73-5b5e-bc9d-94e9afe1cf8f.htm

[puppy-phum]

get to know me

am going to mix these two different tag games into one post so thank you a lot for tagging me @jazthespazz and @i-am-just-a-kiddo ♥

it’s somehow funny to do these same games again after a while so let’s see what I come up with:

Part I

name: real name petra but i prefer vish/vishie over here ^^ 

pronouns: she/her

star sign: aries ♈

height: 178cm (which am coming more and more proud of while i realize how damn tall every cdrama actor is lol)

time: 10:37pm as am answering this one

birthday: 10th april!

nationality: finnish 

fave bands/groups: ah well this is always a hard question but let’s go with these: BTS, DAY6, OneRepublic, Hurts, Oneus, Hoppipolla, TXT, Red, Mamamoo

fave solo artists: (forgive me if i’ve assumed any of these wrong) Novo Amor, Talos, Crywolf, Liu Yuning, SYML, EDEN, PVRIS, Joker Xue, NF, Halsey, Sleeping At Last, Nuz, HyunA, Sam Smith, Taemin

song stuck in your head: it’s OneRepublic’s Rescue Me bc of the song tag game i did earlier today :’D that one always gets stuck in my head whenever i as much as see the title lol 

last movie you watched: i think it’s The Yin-Yang Master (2021)? I haven’t watched any movies after that bc am so busy with all of my dramas haha

last show you binged: i think binged would be The Journey Across the Night! I watched that as a whole in 4 days

when you created your blog: in 2013 

the last thing you googled: ummm i think it was “what is a ball of wool called” bc of fic purposes haha as a non native speaker i always get a bit lost with words like this 

other blogs: none, i just dump everything here like the idiot i am 

why i chose my url: dates back to my intense summer of binge reading J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series. Vishous was my favorite of the brothers haha. i first used this username in some random game on my nintendo ds lol 

how many people are you following: 358 which somehow feels like a lot but also like way too few?? i should probably search for some new blogs with other topics than cql, bts and/or dmbj bc i do love a lot of things at once 

how many followers do you have: over 800 

average hours of sleep: i’d say around 7h

lucky numbers: i remember answering 5 previously? i don’t really have a lucky number but 5 pops into my head

instruments: nope, no. not touching those tyvm. i admire everyone who can play any instrument tho

what i’m currently wearing: black jeans, socks with foxes on them (plus my woolly socks), a gray cardigan (my fave thing ever!) and an orange/brown top

dream job: writer would be ideal but that is very faaaaar into the dream zone 

dream trip: around different parts of asia to taste all the amazing food ;; maybe a road trip of sorts through europe? or inter railing? another trip to london bc i miss that ;; a trip to the very northern part of lapland to see all the auroras etc! i’ve never been that far north :’D 

fave food: if i need to quickly name something then sushi. otherwise am pretty fine with anything spicy 

top three fictional universes you’d like to live in: i remember thinking about this a lot the last time i answered this but hmm. currently i’d say dmbj still bc that world is fascinating AND i would love to talk to the characters. mass effect would be the second one currently bc i miss those games and the space stuff is super cool! and the third one would be assassin’s creed rogue bc that is my fave ac game and i like the northern sea and the places in it AND i could probably be one of abstergo’s employees instead and just test/play those simulation games haha 

Part II

Last Song: am currently listening to my playlist with just everything so i have Andrew Belle’s The Enemy playing right now (also I only just now realized that Andrew Belle also sings Pieces which is one of my fave songs? my bff linked that to me after it played in some tv series she was watching)

Last Movie Last Stream: i didn’t want to mention the same movie again or skip this question and i’ve wanted to talk about this anyway so! i watched Liu Chang’s bday live last night :’D it was so much fun even if i couldn’t understand anything. it was just nice to watch him being himself and have fun and chill with his fans. also the songs were amazing ;; i cried with Liu Sang’s character song as well as the ending. and all the while i couldn’t turn my gaze away from his eyes! he has such pretty eyes and they were absolutely Sparkling throughout the whole stream, it was so nice :’)

Currently Reading: Devotions by Mary Oliver (i adore her poems! they’re a very nice change after Siken haha) and then some uni stuff for a course about culture and mental health plus my thesis

Currently Watching: Douluo Continent, Word of Honor, The Long Ballad 

all of these are amazing and make me feel different things! i started Douluo Continent just a while ago and am now on ep 16 i think? it’s been very pretty and very chill and i watch it during the weekend while i wait for new episodes to the other two :’D it’s nice to see Xiao Zhan again and i’ve enjoyed the rpg game type of feeling in it? the group of seven is doing amazing and it’s interesting to watch them craft their team work! Word of Honor again has reached the ending and i just hold my breath with it. am not too far gone with it so i am not getting as heavy feelings about it as i probably could but i enjoy it  alot still and i do cry at times ^^ and then The Long Ballad has just blown me away! i didn’t expect to love it this much and be this invested in it but everything about it has been such a positive surprise and it keeps making me super emotional! i love the characters and the story and the romances even! it’s a great accomplishment for me. also yes i cry on the daily bc of hao du and bc of ashile sun’s hair haha

(i am also rewatching Ultimate Note kind of and been thinking about getting into rewatching Reboot bc it has been on my list ever since i finished it)

What is antipoetry to you: okay hmm i had to google this too and have to agree with Kiddo here. i don’t have strong feelings about poetry tbh, i wasn’t into poetry that much before maybe a bit over year ago? Siken has really blown me away haha. but i have always loved song lyrics which i never thought as poetry but then Kiddo said to me that they consider them poetry and yeah ok. i agree? so idk poetry can be whatever i suppose. i’ve never seen any rules in it anyway. i know there are many rules for different types of poetry but then again. i feel like poetry has always been just words put together to feel things and i guess that is the core purpose of every written type of art in the end right? 

Currently craving: a drama as good and as personal as The Journey Across the Night. that show really just stole my heart and i want that feeling back. i think about that show every day. i miss Li Jia and his two partners. i miss the vibes. i miss sitting on my floor watching it and just sobbing my heart out haha. also! craving a properly subbed, whole version of Anti-Fraud League. only the first 12 eps are badly subbed out there. wetv has... blocked? deleted? the whole show??? i need it to my life, i wanna see Xiao Yuliang being cute as Mi Ruo and i wanna know where the story goes smh 

thank you so much for these both! i had fun ^^ also am sorry this is so long but haha if you’re asking me to talk about myself and my interests then this is what you get :) 

tagging (to do which ever part you want or both!): @cross-d-a @jockvillagersonly @humanlighthouse @kholran @xcziel @minmoyu and @leonzhng ♥

[sunnydaysecrets]

favorite things in 2021, pt. 2

Before this year ends, I wanted to share some of my favorite things in 2021. This list includes books, movies, places, and anything else that I deeply loved this year.

This year has been difficult, fleeting, and lonely. But it has also been unforgettable, happy, and rewarding.

In the midst of all the turbulence, I found pockets of peace in the following:

3. The Wind Rises (2013, dir. Hayao Miyazaki)

Directed by the legendary Hayao Miyazaki, The Wind Rises is a fictional animated biopic about Jiro Horikoshi, a well-renowned aeronautical engineer who built fighter planes for Japan during WWII. The film chronicles Jiro's life throughout the Great Kanto Earthquake, studying aeronautics, falling in love, and the raging World War. The movie is poignant, nuanced, and - in typical Studio Ghibli fashion - absolutely gorgeous. What stood out the most is its approach to Jiro's undying passion for airplanes, which we see clash with his detest for war. Utilizing a dream sequence motif between Jiro and Giovanni Caproni, his biggest role model and the engineer who inspired him to pursue the same path when he was young, the film consistently returns to the following thematic quote:

"The wind is rising. We must try to live."

This quote stuck with me... for days. It invited me to reflect on my past year. There were many moments throughout 2021 where I was painstakingly frustrated at almost every aspect of my life, and giving up had never been more tempting. Maybe because I'm sometimes hard-headed or maybe I just didn't know the way out, but I didn't give up. The wind was always rising. So I had to try to live.

Some Studio Ghibli fanatics might be quick to point out - Miyazaki is widely known for being anti-war and being blatant about this in his films. Why would he make a film honoring the life of someone who had a direct and massive contribution to advancing Japan in war?

... Which is a very good question. I was skeptical myself before watching the film.

But I actually think The Wind Rises is Miyazaki's most successful attempt at approaching war and pacifism, which have been consistent themes in his films in the past, with nuance. Contrary to his other magnificent films like Princess Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle, which are both blatantly and subtly anti-war, The Wind Rises attempts to address the gray areas felt by Japanese ordinary people who were directly impacted by war. Jiro had always seen airplanes as more than tools for war, and at times throughout the film he's even a little naïve to the damage they are capable of bringing. In one scene, Jiro presents his new plane to a seminar and says, "Weight is a problem. But if we leave out the guns, we should be fine." His audience, consisting of other engineers and military generals, quickly bursts into roaring laughter. Jiro's goal had always been simple: "to create beautiful airplanes." At the end of the film (little spoiler alert), he confides in Caproni in one last dream sequence that he's incredibly disheartened that his beloved planes were used for war. Jiro had blindly followed aviation, and it took him to a cursed crossroads between his passion and national atrocity. So, I would very much argue that The Wind Rises stays consistent with Miyazaki's hatred for war, and seeing it from the angle of Jiro further establishes his stance on the subject.

Jiro constantly grapples with the conflicting goals and politics of the career he's decided to pursue, something I think I'm starting to become familiar with in my own life. Since graduating last May, I've gone back and forth endlessly about the path I want to pursue. Is a burning passion enough reason to pursue a goal? Will it be worth it? I guess I see a little bit of myself in Jiro: too often blinded by passion and too stubborn to give up.

Despite these questions, as 2022 looms closer I choose to remember the unchanging nature of wind. The wind is rising. It's a gale. Therefore, we must try to live.

4. "The Orange" (1993, Wendy Cope)

"The Orange" is probably my favorite poem of the year. This poem was published in 1993, but the message continues to resonate, maybe more than ever in the times we live in now. I'll leave the poem below for you to read.

"I love you. I'm glad I exist." might be the most tender line of poetry I have ever read.

My first thought: who does the speaker love? You can tell how much they love this person, and it makes you wonder what kind of person they might be. And then, I question what it would be like to love someone so much that it makes you glad to exist.

I think there is a difference between being grateful to be alive and being glad to exist. The latter is much more difficult. And definitely something I am still learning to do.

In the second half of 2021, much of my life changed. I graduated, lost my grandmother, and worked tirelessly on grad school apps for months. I also lost contact with a lot of old "friends," deleted almost all of my social media, and moved back home. I went from spending every day with friends to seldom seeing and talking to them at all.

I felt like there was little reason to be glad I exist. But like this poem, life is quite funny sometimes. As I spent more time by myself, I started picking up old hobbies and interests I forgot about. I became more comfortable with my thoughts and started allowing myself to dream new goals. I picked up writing again. I traveled. I even got closer with my mom.

Through mindless and seemingly trivial everyday moments like having tea with my mom on our balcony and re-reading a book I loved years ago, I am learning to be glad of my existence. I am allowing myself to indulge in the "ordinary things" that Cope speaks of.

However, I am still a little bit envious of the speaker of the poem. Their burning lust for life seems so natural, but in reality it's difficult and completely unromantic. In those moments it's easy to forget why it's important to love yourself, others, and the world around you. But, sometimes, there are words, stories, and poems like this one that remind me of what often goes unsaid and unexpressed.

To those who loved me unconditionally in 2021, I love you. You make me glad I exist.

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P.S. Check out my favorite songs in 2021 on Spotify here!

[theworldofmycreations]

To celebrate Autism Awareness Month, I want you all to meet my new OC. This is Zachery (Zach). - Zach was born to unnamed parents in North Carolina and at a year old, his biological parents noticed something wrong with him. After countless doctors visits, they have confirmed that Zach had Autism, more specifically Asperger’s Syndrome. Now, keep in mind, Zach doesn’t remember a lot about his real parents but one memory always stuck with him. He was two when his biological mother took him to the airport. She told him that they were going to Disney World. After a while, Zach turned around from looking at the planes through the window, he noticed that his real mom wasn’t there. The boy was frantic and spent days at the airport looking for her but to no avail until one day, a woman named Shannon, who was leaving North Carolina, saw the frightened boy and asked the security guard who he was and where he came from. Once Shannon learned his story, Shannon’s heart melted for the poor boy and after a few weeks, Shannon and her husband, Adam, adopted Zach into their lives, and the three of them became a family living in beautiful Sarasota, Florida. Despite his diagnosis, they treated Zach as a neuro-typical person, but, they also gave him the help he needed for his Autism. By the time he was 2 1/2, he learned how to speak, read, and write, and under Shannon and Adam’s care, he grew up to keep surprising everyone around him, his parents, his teachers, and almost everyone he met. - Name: Zachery Jacob-Dallas Clark Nickname(s): Zach, Zacky, Z Birthday: June 8th, 2004 Gender: Male Nationality: American Skin Color: Light Medium Gold Hair Color: Orange Eye Color: Light Blue Marking(s): Four Freckles on his Cheeks Clothing: He wears a Mickey Mouse inspired long sleeved shirt that was red with beige sleeves, yellow lining, and a picture of Mickey’s head on it, navy colored jeans, and turquoise colored boots with sea green lining. Likes: Trains, Drawing, Stop-Motion Animation, Disney, X-Men and Spider-Man, Writing, Singing, Ceramics, Funko Pops, Theme Parks, Comic Books, Crafting, Cooking, Mangas, Telling Jokes/Playing Gags, Dancing (especially tap dancing), Playing the Piano, Cosplay/Costume Design, Musicals, Puppets, Baseball, Bike Riding, Stuffed Animals, Puzzles Dislikes: Pickles, My Little Pony, Loud Noises, Olives, Running on the Treadmill/Stairs Machine, Rollercoasters (the tall ones), Boy Bands, Ignorant People, Boy Bands, Changes in his Routine, Horror Movies, Bullying, Needles, Being Alone, Spicy Food, Sour Food, Thunderstorms Personality: Introverted, Shy, Socially Awkward, Creative, Kind, Stubborn, Intelligent, Empathetic

Fact(s)

-He’s Autistic (specifically, he has Aspergers) -He was left at an airport by his real parents and adopted by another family when he was two years old -He started reading when he was two and a half -His favorite animals are bears -His favorite color is orange -He’s always doodling in class -Because of his love for reading and writing, he has a vast vocabulary -He always carries around his sketchbook, which he had since he was three (hence the miss spelling of the word “property”) -He has a stuffed monkey named Marvin which he’s had since he was two and it had been his source of comfort ever since, especially after his real parents left him at the airport -He was diagnosed with Autism at one and a half years old

Favorite Movies

-Wolverine Vs. Hulk -Space Jam 1&2 -A Bugs Life -Free Guy -Batman: The Mask of the Phantasm -Wakko’s Wish -The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh -The Spongebob Squarepants Movie -The Sony and MCU Spider-Man Trilogies -Zootopia -TMNT 2007 -The Lion King Trilogy -Dragon Ball Movies

Favorite TV Shows

-X-Men: The Animated Series -X-Men: Evolution -The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse -Batman: The Animated Series -Dragon Ball Z Kai -Ultimate Spider-Man -Tom and Jerry -Family Matters -Mickey Mouse Shorts (2013) -X-Men: Anime -Tailspin -Making Fiends -Animaniacs -The Backyardigans -Looney Tunes -The Muppet Show -Bill Nye the Science Guy

Favorite Foods

-Chicken Nuggets -S’Mores -Hot Chocolate -Coke Zero -Spaghetti -Pizza -Ants on a Log (Celery Sticks, Peanut Butter, and Raisins)-Tuna Melts-Brownies-Apple Pie-Celery Sticks-Ritz Crackers-Mozzarella Sticks-Burritos-Watermelon-Vanilla Ice Cream