Am I the only one who GENUINELY loves Paul’s old man singing voice? Like, I don’t know. Maybe it’s not as strong and doesn’t hold exactly as well as it used to, but it is SO GOOD to convey a more vulnerable state of mind, to hear what the core of a human emotion sounds like. Like, I obviously love Paul’s voice ALWAYS, but back in the day it sounded like an “aesthetically” pleasing voice and wasn’t often moved by it (I was more moved by his lyrics, piano, guitar and bass playing). And now I just connect to his voice instinctively.
Frankly, I don’t care that on some days he doesn’t get to certain high notes, or that his voice breaks. Actually, THAT’S THE POINT. I don’t want a vocalist to be flawless. I want a vocalist to express something.
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“You did not live in a house of horrors. I was raised to believe in hellfire; now that was bad!” Okay and impending global genocide of any culture that disagrees with your beliefs isn’t? Being raised mentally preparing to withstand torture at the hands of police in a “do it to Julia” situation isn’t? Being socially isolated from your peers on the grounds that they’re evil uneducated dumb worldly heathens controlled by Satan isn’t a bad thing? No. Those are all good things which every child should be taught in order to experience “the real life.”
The legitimate truth is that we are all in “the real life” right now and in “the real life,” the Governing Body is doing the very best they can to cover up the fact that they’re a cult by relaxing the cult’s rules in a futile attempt to prevent the prosecution in the numerous ONGOING child sexual abuse cases from handing their non-tight-pants-wearing asses to them. And the other legitimate truth is discovering this fact to be the legitimate truth while having to navigate a sea of lies and high school is extremely traumatizing, especially when you feel the need to take a hard stance against the cult to prevent others’ children — children like you — from befalling the same fate by dressing up as some miserable wretch who cooked and ate children, hoping the way you look and carry yourself and stare into the parents’ eyes will scare them away. And even more traumatizing is that your tactics worked; proving that you are just as bad and scary as your preexisting OCD made you out to be. Yes I did it to myself; but consider the reason why I felt so compelled to sacrifice the entirety of my mental health to sabotage you with what little tools I had. I wouldn’t have done it had I not had a very good reason, and my very good reason was that I was a child who loved children. You were trying to protect me and it was a sacrifice; but I was also trying to protect children. My endeavor is not — and was never — a selfish one. It is not that I don’t care about you; I only prioritize the class which is most oppressed, and you are not a part of it because you are adults. Your feelings, unfortunately, are expendable in my mission to end religious child labor. I will not support your corrupt religion to make you happy when I know what it’s done to others and to myself; it is wrong, and you are wrong for supporting it. I, as a paraprofessional, refuse to support a religion which hides the sexual abuse of children for its own gain. By law I am now a mandatory reporter; I must report child abuse when I see it under penalty of law. Therefore it stands to reason that I must report your cult from the top of every mountain for the entire inhabited earth to hear so they may not even take so much as one step in your direction. I am sorry if I seem like I hate you; if the fact that I reject your ideals of theological expectational fascism disturbs you so much, then maybe you need to re-evaluate your choices.
“Your actions affect others.” I know my actions affect others; I know how they affect others as well. You’re crushed and demoralized and suffering physically from all the emotional stress; I’ve likely dug you both early graves. I know what I’ve done and I can live with it — Not easily — but I am not defeated because I know I’m in the right, and have always been in the right. No. The real question is: Do you know how your actions are affecting others? In exquisite detail? Have you listened to the victims? Have you allowed yourself to hear both sides of the story with your human ears, not ones made of tin and thought-blocking strategies and “I had it worse than you” excuses? No? Then you’d better start because the key to healing yourself is to aid in the healing of others. We are all connected as one body; and I refuse to be a cancer cell. Sorry I’m aiding in your downfall but it’s got to happen at some point.
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Poison's first dance: The chains dragging Angel at every step, his facade failing every now and then and having to smile for Valentino
Poison's second dance: His dance, his stage, a scenario in his head for coping with what's actually happening right now
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Hey! I hops life has been treating you well! And warning for a long and convoluted ask incoming (which is pretty par for the course for me). I’ve been going down a Yunho (U-Know Yunho to be precise lol) rabbit hole and I’m curious how you think he compares to other male SM solo artists especially Taemin (though I think it would be interesting to compare all SM solo artists like BOA or Taeyeon and Hyoyeon for the purpose of this ask im just thinking about the dudes). Cause I feel like him, Taemin, and Kai all fall on different ends of the same spectrum that’s distinct from some of the other SM solos like the other Exos (except I might add Baekhyun in there but I’m just not familiar enough with him) as they tend to tackle that darker sexier sound. I’ve been thinking about how when people say a male solo artists is making taemin lite music it’s usually actually closer to Yunho’s more recent stuff. Like taemin has kind of become short hand for dark male solo concept especially if it’s on the sexier or high concept side when that’s not always an accurate comparison. I’ve seen this especially with Wonho which is really interesting to me cause in my mind he falls way more on the Yunho end of the spectrum than Taemin (by like a long shot). And this could also be cause the kpop circles I run in are way less familiar with Yunho to make that comparison in the first place, I was just wondering if others like you that knew Yunho would agree with me. I also found it interesting that Taemin went solo before Yunho even though TVXQ are the older group so I wonder he affected Yunho’s music at all. Cause Yunho kind of seems like a more, I don’t want to say masculine, definitely more of a player, conventionally sexy foil to taemin’s more unhinged (satanic?? Fantasy? Horror-adjacent? I can’t really describe it accurately but I mean TVXQ has down their share of that too) sensual side and I can’t tell if it’s cause of the age difference between them, their group concepts (I mean TVXQ are the grown men of the kpop industry in my mind and I have no doubt they play a role in inspiring any “manly” or mature concept and Yunho’s concepts seems to follow pretty closely to TVXQ’s image in a way that Taemin doesn’t at all with Shinee), or their own artist personas and careers- taemin has always been viewed as the “feminine” one and you’ve talked a lot about how he’s both rejected and embraced that image overtime in his career. And to further complicate this I don’t really know where to put Kai between them cause he has the more overt sex appeal in Mmmh, and in his image over all, that Yunho has but also is more sensual and softer (subtle?) dance style that seems closer to taemin (or at least taemin’s image I’ll be the first to admit that my understanding of him as an artists doesnt always align with his actual output and the expectations I project on him) so I guess he goes in the middle. But peaches does really stand out as a sort of softer lighter storybook concept (which I love cause I feel like we don’t see traditional concepts that are more feel good) so that kind of throws a wrench into my theory and I guess thats what I get for treating artists’ output as a monolith and for comparing them😅. This ask is getting very very long and I’m late for class so I won’t continue but I did have some idea about where Xiumin’s recent comeback fits into this roster of artists but I’ll save that for another day lol. As always thanks for your input and I hope this makes at least some sense to you!
i stopped photo editing to answer this lmao bc i think this a very interesting question/thought experiment etc etc
firstly, most people will make the taemin comparison for male soloist because he is significantly more well known as a soloist, and part of that is that he's famous for being a soloist; an extension of which is the disparity between his solo work and his group work. now there are two points i want to fork off into from here:
-> the first is that it's a flawed comparison to place yunho, taemin, and kai on a spectrum because they're not derivatives of each other in the way that a spectrum would imply; what they all are is derivatives of rain. every dance-based male soloist is, via some lineage, a descendant of rain, whether it's through the skills line (taemin) or the 'masculinity' line (yunho) or a mix (kai). baekhyun doesn't factor in here because he's almost purely rnb based and therefore a kangta derivative.
-> the second is that it is valid for people to be making that comparison to taemin because most younger idols are going to be using him as reference, and because a lot of these younger idols are following his method of creating a separate solo persona from their group. yunho does not have that distinction. he is quite literally the face of tvxq, and therefore inextricably bound to the group's identity because there are literally only two of them. if they were, for example, still a five member group, he might have had more a chance to diversify himself a bit, but that's a bygone point because we don't live in that world. the reason tvxq made it through the split and maintained being an extremely successful group is very likely because of yunho's singlehanded determination. obviously changmin does care about the group, but as we've seen with his solo work, he's much more of a musical chameleon; he's more focused on dabbling in widely different genres that interest him. yunho's solo music however, is pretty consistent in sound and also not all that surprising of a leap from who he is in tvxq. so by that observation, i would say there isn't actually a difference between uknow yunho and uknow the soloist. his artistic identity is tvxq, in a way that he can't separate, unlike how taemin can separate from shinee. and following that point through, no younger soloist can really be compared to him because his history and group image are so integral to what he does. that's why there's like a negative number of young idols that every attempt to cover a yunho song, bc the vibes of something like follow or thank u would OBLITERATE anyone under the age of 30.
if you were to look at just aesthetics and music styles, sure on the surface there are some younger idols that unintentionally skew more towards some of the stuff that yunho has done, but in the end that's because they're all under the rain umbrella.
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