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vixthefantheorist · 3 months ago

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Looking through the recent IRIS posts

Guess what time it is, my fellow theorists! That's right! It's theory crafting time! (Or brain rotting because I have no social life)

But as we all know IRIS on Twitter have been pretty active for the last few days. Posting on 10/24/2024 - 10/25/2024 and 10/26/2024

Yes it's all in order... I hope. (Nothing on the 27th, my birthday, I see how it is IRIS -squint-). And I know I haven't covered the 25th and 26th posts, I was getting ready for my birthday and then struck with a terrible migraine all day the 26th.

I'm better now, don't worry. But I had been looking at the posts when I could and figured to post some things together while I can remember them. I already covered the post on the 24th, I just have it here for convivence and in case I remember anything else for it.

The post for 10/25 is a little odd, more obviously the fact the word 'Strangely' is spelled as 'Strangeley'. Honestly not sure if its an intentional misspelling or an actual one that no one caught until too late, either way kinda gives the notice a bit of charm. Or the employee was typing too fast and misspelled it and couldn't be arsed to type onto another paper to correct it. I wouldn't blame him for that.

But it does speak about a deadzone in an area between a certain bathroom and cafeteria. Only battery powered devices seem to be affected within that zone as the lights and ventilation systems were still operational as normal. Hmm, interesting.

Where have seen a cafeteria in IRIS before? That's right the "commercial" for IRIS in 'this is my 5,000th video' shows a cafeteria like area where employees were enjoying their break.

Not the most glamorous cafeteria (IRIS seems pretty cheap on it. Though we know its because budget for AF:CB), but it is still a cafeteria. If that's the case, then the only deadzone I can think of is the red hallway that Chase was terrified of and dragged through against his will.

The bathroom could be that door next to one of the guards.

Or this one which is right outside Chase's cell.

Not sure, but it is just a guess. Literally its just a guess, as there is no evidence to back up the claim like anyone making mention of anything battery powered being sapped dry while in the area in the stream. But the employee in the post did make mention that it may be nothing dangerous and just annoyance from a certain department up to no good and just advising others to use a different bathroom on the east aside to avoid their devices being drained of power.

Why does that matter?

Well, it's an electrical interference that isn't causing damage to the facilities systems, just personal devices carried by employees, phones, watches, that sort of thing. So it never warranted further investigation I believe. And there's at least two instances in which that could cause that deadzone.

One of which is Anti's attack on Chase (where we see the shadows move towards Chase, indicating Anti reaching for him)

As Arin points out that Chase was exposed to dangerous levels of energy. (Though I wouldn't put it past IRIS to also have replicated the energy Anti uses to use on Chase to see his reaction to it. Fucking cruel if that's the case. Which then only prompted Anti to find out where he is and zero in on his location)

The second time this deadzone could happen was when Echo appears to speak to Chase.

Shit goes a little funky for the camera but the lights are fine.

It could be that the hallways between Chase's cell and the cafeteria is the deadzone. We don't know when that post the employee wrote was written, either during Chase's week long stay... or even before that. If it is indeed the same building and universe the employee speaks of. (Goddamn timey whimey shit)

But if it is at least prior to Chase's capture, could mean Echo's energy is causing it, as Echo reveals to Chase that they too have been stuck here. Just don't know if its before or after... will not be surprised if it was before to wait for Chase to appear to talk to him. Again, timey whimey shit.

Again, it's all theory, not the best kind but still fun to think on. I think there's more to this post but I... don't know what else to look for in it, aside hey, no IRIS stamp on it, so likely a private message from one employee to another to avoid that place altogether. And then what Department could the Employee be talking about?

Onwards to the post from 10/26, where obviously things for an experiment have not gone as planned. Nope, someone died in the vacuum room. There is another word, 'vacuum' is misspelled to be 'vaccum' (...I will refrain from making a joke here, it's too easy), and again, I don't know if its an intentional misspelling or someone didn't catch it when it was approved and posted online. (And if it was an accident, don't be ashamed or embarrassed, I misspell a lot of words too quite often. The fun of having your brain go faster than your fingers and autocorrect in your mind to not catch the misspelling too.)

Either case, an experiment was taking place in a vacuum room and someone died in the hands of an ALTR. Why an ALTR? Well, the clues were something in there was dangerous and the term 'designations' was used. Designations being something to identify different things quickly for a variety of reasons. Mostly to determine if one thing is dangerous or passive. Much like SCP uses designations to determine each SCP's threat level easily to prepare to encounter them more effectively.

Plus Designations are alternatives to names. Why? Because if you name something, you or the other forms an attachment to the name.

No attachment, no emotional scuff.

No emotional scuff, means easier times to conduct rather... unethical and cruel experiments without the hassle of morality.

It's SCIENCE after all, science has no time or room for morality. At least in IRIS's thought process I guess.

That thought is hammered in with the person (I'm guessing head researcher for that experiment) making a comment of having to remind everyone the reasons why they do what they do and to think of the great rewards at the end of the day!

As if the dead would have to worry about it. But it's interesting to think about what the experiment could be in a Sound Vacuum room. Is it really a vacuum of no sound entering or leaving the room? Or merely a name because they couldn't think of anything else that relates to sound and blast high decibel noises in the room but does not escape those walls.

Which obviously means they used sound to see if the ATLR is rendered helpless to it or unaffected by it. We don't know the results of that but it did cost them a researcher. And if it was to see if sounds could render an ALTR's powers useless, that failed if it was immune to such a thing, or made it useless because it doesn't need sound to burrow into your head and commit unalive.

If not that, probably understood the researcher was probably using safety gear and the ALTR removed it from the scientist to let them suffer... whatever is going on in chamber.

As for the line 'Please update [blank] to [blank] status' I can think of two things at least.

Either its "Please update [ALTR] to [Keter] status" (I think its Keter for most dangerous class of SCPs. I'm not familiar with SCP, I apologize if I got it wrong)

"Please update [Mr. Daly] to [deceased] status"... I'm just using Mr.Daly since that is the only name we ever got from these posts and someone died so, might as well update their file to dead since well, they're dead.

I'm not quite sure which one, both fit in pretty well in context but I am kinda leaning towards the ALTR's status being updated to a higher tier of danger class.

Either way, the leader of this team is rather much an ass with how dismissive he was for the death of one of his own. But again, science waits for no one and mortality has no bearings in the fields of unknown discoveries.

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I think that's about it for my current thoughts on these posts. There's probably a lot more to them that we're missing. But that's the fun of theory crafting, finding out all the little things you missed before when armed with new information.

What do you guys think? What could be hidden in these posts? And who is leaking them to the public. And if its being leaked, why on the official twitter and why hasn't IRIS removed them?

(...Be quick to screenshot and save the posts in case they do remove them in the future! We need files to look back to in the future!)

#jse iris #jacksepticeye #jse community #anomaly found chase brody

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purplemagics-blog · 2 months ago

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DATING VINCENT HEADCANONS! GN READER🔳🎻🩸🚬🍋

“That little lady sittin’ on the passenger side. It’s much less picturesque without her catchin’ the light. The horizon tries, but it’s just not as kind on the eyes.”

A/N: Vincent is literally my husband. I made this on my tablet instead of my phone so sorry if anything is misspelled.

Description: works at the restaurant and is a waiter.

TW: Vincent being a bitch and very toxic, cannibalism, murder, cigarette kisses, no use of Y/N

1.) Very Cold to you. He will basically refuse to even let u touch him when he is in a bad mood. Ones you wanted to cuddle but he didn’t want to so he just kicked you out of the room and made you sleep on the couch.

2.) Very VERY defensive about food. Don’t even let him catch you eating Ramen or Kraft mac & cheese. He will grab the bowl, chuck the food into the garbage, start up the stove and make you something. And if you eat from a different restaurant? Safe to say he’s not letting that slide. Once you’re eating from a somewhat rival restaurant because they had good food. Vincent saw this and was so offended he basically threw the food out the window and gave you the silent treatment for two months.

3.) birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc any holidays he will bake a lemon pie. During Christmas when it’s late at night you’ll come home after a long shift and see Vincent sitting at the table half asleep waiting for you as he is quickly trying to make a lemon pie for you when you come home.

4.) it doesn’t matter what your special talent he will fully invest in it. If you like to play guitar he’ll buy you a cool guitar and a guitar pic. If you like to make art he will buy you a bunch of art supplies like canvases, books, paint, pencils, etc. If you’d like to play sports he’ll buy you whatever equipment you need. If you like to sing he will stay up at night to listen to your new songs.

5.) You cannot leave him. He may be cold but he seriously cannot live without you. Ones you were tired of him so you wanted to leave him. his response? He seriously broke down. Still the cold expression, though he begged you to stay with him. Offering to do better, offering to be less controlling, etc. Honestly it was creepy to see him looks so desperate, but yet so cold with tears daring to fall. His eyes were wide and well creepy. You wasn’t sure if it would be more scary to leave him or stay with him.

6.) He bites… Neck, shoulders, face, ear… ears, body, he didn’t care. What’s his is his and what’s yours is his.

You find out he’s a murderer and cannibal. Two reactions down below! TW

7.) you find out he’s a murderer, and cooking peoples bodies into the food he makes for you. Talk about Romantic. You help him you bring peoples bodies, make people mad just so they try to corner you but then Vincent comes in. Perfect partners in crime.

8.) you find out he’s a murderer and cooking peoples bodies into the food he makes for you. What the actual fuck. You try to run out the restaurant. Pretend you didn’t see anything. Pretend you didn’t see your ex’s ring on a cut off hand with also your ex’s Tattoo. But as you are backing up you feel your back hit somebody’s chest. He slowly turned around and it’s Vincent.. You tried to scream but he chloroform you. You wake up, tied to a chair with Vincent standing over you. He leans down and starts whispering sweet nothings in your ear before biting that shit clean off. You scream in pain as he does that.

“Your mine”

9.) he will blow cigarette smoke in your face. Ones he took a hit of a cigarette and forced his mouth on yours forcing the smoke into yours.

#Dead plate #Vinson #Vincent dead plate #mini game #Head cannons #Vincent X reader #Vincent X Y/N #Vincent X you #Dead plate head cannons #Headcannons #Y/N x murderer #Murderer #Cannibalism #spotify #Lemon

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princecharmingtobe · 3 months ago

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Some insights I've gained working as a poll worker for early voting

I strongly wonder how much "voter suppression" is actually just sheer incompetence on the part of various systems/organizations. Because as a poll worker, I now want to fight both the BMV (my state's version of the DMV) and the postal service. And to a lesser extent the local election office.

Common issues we deal with that are not the result of malice, but of incompetence:

Person is still registered at an address they haven't lived at in years, despite being told when they update their license that it will also update their registration (can still vote)

Staff struggles to find person's registration in the system, find out it's because whoever entered them into the system in the first place put them in wrong (incorrect birthday, misspelled name, etc.). (can still vote)

Person was told they could register when they got their license at the BMV. The BMV evidently did not follow through (cannot vote, this one has caused us some drama)

Moved here from elsewhere, was told when they updated their license their registration would also be updated. See above. (can vote, but only if they can get back to the place they're registered in, which has varying degrees of difficulty)

Person requested an absentee ballot, did not receive it before the date they would need to be leaving the city by, so they came to vote in person instead. (can vote, we just gotta call the election office to have them cancel the absentee ballot). We had an especially odd case of a couple filling out their request forms and mailing them together. Wife received her ballot, husband doesn't even show up as having requested one.

Person received absentee ballot, filled it out, mailed it back with plenty of time... and for some reason it doesn't make it to the election office until months later. I personally have not experienced this as I'm only a volunteer poll worker, but my mom who worked more in the system saw it a few times.

None of these are malicious acts intended to rig the election one way or another, I've seen them happen to people of all different genders, races, backgrounds, ages, and political leanings. It's just sheer incompetence by certain groups. And I don't really know, from an outside position anyway, how to fix it. Mom says there's been talk for a while of wanting to remove registering at the BMV just cause they fuck it up so often, but there's push back against that. No idea what to do about the mail, there's already several things in place meant to make it organized and efficient and they still manage to fuck it up bad.

The best advice I can give to the common voter is: Register well ahead of time, do not leave it to the last minute. Even if you think you're good, check in when it gets closer to the election to be sure your shit went through as it should have. Look into early voting in your area (mine has it basically a full month leading up to election day). Make sure ahead of time that you have whatever you need to vote, my state requires ID. Double check you know what's required (sorry lady, your son's high school ID card is not a valid form of voter ID).

I can only speak for my own location, but we really do try our hardest to make sure everyone who is eligible to vote gets to. And it's really hard that people don't trust us and don't want to listen to us when we're trying to help them because they think we're The Enemy.

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yourfriendlybi · 12 days ago

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Command ===> Alpha, introduce yourself

Heya, the names Alpha, but I can be called Al or Wyvern. I go by she/her, they/them, cy/cyber & star/stars pronouns but overall, I can go by any/all pronouns.

DISCLAIMERS:

There will be talk and/or reblogs of suicide & suicidal topics, self-harm, mental illness, violence/abuse, and suggestive themes but not on full NSFW, due to this, my blog is intended for a 16+ audience. I will tag what needs to be & don't be shy with telling what needs to be tagged that I might've missed!!

I have memory issues, so there is a chance I might forget about something, just please be patience with me & remind me of the thing. I'm dyslexic so there is a pretty big chance I might misspell stuff.

I'm horrible at social interactions in real life and online, so apologize in advance if I come off as awkward. I use tone indicators as default due to that, if that bothers you, please tell me!!

Mirrorshipping/selfcest will be on this blog!

\/ MORE UNDEREATH \/

[☆] MORE INFO ABOUT ME:

Currently 20 years old & my birthday is December 30th. I'm a bisexual demigirl!

Diagnosed with ADHD, plus a whole lot of other shit but that's my shit to know and not yours (/lh)

My classpect, for homestuck, is Page of Light & Derse Dreamer, for my astrology sign is a Capricorn. I enjoy both astrology and astronomy. Note: I don't believe in astrology or in the classpect/luner sway, just find it interesting to learn about!! ^^'

I'm a PNGTuber & I normally stream on Twitch!

I'm interested in any type of history & enjoy learning about it!

Fave colors: Cyan's, Purples, Yellows, Black

[☆] Things of my interest that you'll see:

-UnderTale + the Multiverse around it (hyperfixation)

-Tower Defense Simulator by Paradoxum Games on Roblox

-Minecraft/MCYT

-Homestuck

-And many more!!

[☆] Main Tags:

#Alpha.txt <- old tag was "Alpha saying nonsense again"

#Alpha OCS

#Alpha Writes

#Alpha Edits

#Wyverns' Trinkets

#Wyverns Mail

#Wyvern.png

#Chasmverse <- UT/MV

#Painted Appleverse <- UT/MV

#Star Reblog <- Mutual reblog

[☆] Links:

-Alpha's refence sheet (W.I.P)

-Wyvern's refence sheet (W.I.P)

-Pronouns <- It got my flags too

-Carrd <- Extra stuff in it lmao

[☆] Credits:

Dividers: Sister Lucifer Graphics

#Another new intro lmao #tags for navigation:#Alpha.txt #Alphas OCS #Alpha writes #Alpha Edits #wyverns' trinkets #Wyverns mail #Wyvern.png #star reblog

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agent-yolk · 2 months ago

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Today at work they misspelled my name again and it bothered me so much that I had to grab a sharpie and blot out the unnecessary letter. Four years in this shit hole and you would think whoever makes the nice fliers for birthdays and anniversaries would know how to spell my name right when typing the winners of the turkey bowl from a sheet of paper

#agent yolk and the quest for bread #whoever misspelled it most likely was hispanic since that’s how you would spell it in their culture I think #I would complain but clearly no one pays attention to what I have to say in the first place

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jesusbutbetterrr · 1 year ago

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Ghost Ask Game 🦇

Send this to the last 10 Ghesties in your notifications, then reply here with 10 facts about yourself! Let's get to know each other 🖤

thank you so much for sending the ask, I've already done this before, but like I had fun doing so why not do it again :) Imma be real these are kinda all over the place this time

I was once yelled at by a teacher for not sitting in my chair, and then a week later she took my chair and made me stand for half the class

Ever since I was a toddler, I have talked nonstop, and many of my family members would complain to my mom that I talk too much when they babysat me

Also when I was a toddler I used to talk with this odd kind of Bostonian sounding accent

One time in the first grade, I took the whole " sound out the word" a little too far during a spelling test and misspelled the word 'said' as 'shit' because I over pronounced it in my head

My grandpa used to take me on tractor rides when I was little

I own half of a wet floor sign, I got it for my birthday

I get mistaken for a mother quite a lot whenever I'm with my little sister in public

I'm also the oldest child out of 4 kids

I send foot pics to mainly irl friends, but there's also the occasional online friend who gets to see the grippers, it's all for the funnies tho

I know I've already said I'm good at trivia, but I'm specifically really good at bible trivia (I might be traumatized, but at least I know their book better than most of them lol)

#also im mad sorry it took me forever to do this #blackbird tag #jesus responds #jesus lore

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ijustwantedtobeoneofthestrokesuk · 2 months ago

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Eel Pie Island

South London

Eel Pie Island is an island on the River Thames, near Twickenham, South London. Named after, ‘eel pies’, served in the inn in the nineteenth century however, it was in the ‘60’s when the Island gained a hedonistic reputation which then led to one of the 2000’s most unique bands, the Mystery Jets, who helped create the ‘Thamesbeat scene’.

In the ‘50’s and ‘60’s the Eel Pie Island Hotel ballroom had the likes of The Who, David Bowie, Hawkwind, The Kinks, Pink Floyd, Jeff Beck, Black Sabbath, Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stones (The Rolling Stones played there every Wednesday for 5 months in 1963) played there before becoming the biggest hippie commune in the UK in 1970. The hotel went into disrepair after neglect and fires but the Island, accessible on a footbridge has continued to breed creativity as there was over 20 art studios there.

Henry Harrison, father of Mystery Jets frontman Blaine (as well as an occasional band member) bought part of the Island which became rehearsal space for the band and the place where the iconic Eel Pie Island parties took place.

Mystery Jets

Originally called The Misery Jets, after a headline in a local paper about the Heathrow airport fly path above them. The South London kids changed to Mystery Jets when drummer at the time, Blaine misspelled the name when painting it on a drum skin and never looked back (or up).

Blaine Harrison “For obvious reasons (Blaine has spina bifida which affects his leg muscles) I wasn’t a sporty child but I think my dad recognised the effect music had on me as a kid very early on and educated me with a steady diet of records to listen to, books and magazines to read and films to watch. I’d say it was Alan Parkers’ film ‘The Wall’ that had the biggest effect on me at that age. I remember hiding behind the sofa with Will when my dad put it on and just thinking ‘what is this fucked up shit!!?!?’

There was just something about the way Pink Floyd brought the sound and visuals together into something so terrifying that even a child could be impacted by it so strongly. I think it must have been seeing the way we reacted that made Henry think ‘maybe I should help these kids form a band of their own…

I met our founding guitarist Will at nursery school. When I moved to France to go to primary school, we started the band as a way of keeping our friendship. We played our first gig as Mystery Jets on my 10th birthday (1995). Our first album ‘Making Dens’ came out exactly 10 years later (to the month) and I’d say was a stylistic culmination of all the music we had been influenced by in the interim. Mainly my dad Henry’s record collection: King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Yes, The Beatles, Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel… but also bands we got into at art school; Dexys, The Smiths, The Cure, The Stone Roses, The Cure, The Coral….

I think we might only have had a week leading up to our first gig on my 10th birthday so I’m pretty sure the gig mainly consisted of covers; Light My Fire by The Doors, Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd and Wild Thing by the Troggs. But we also played in the village bar later that summer and had a couple of originals by then, Rastamadeus and Moonlight Satellite. Both showed up on our first EP a few years later.

Our first song was ‘Moonlight Satellite’. I’d say it was a group endeavour, with Will singing the verses and all of us singing on the chorus. It had one giant drum fill in the middle which usually lasted somewhere between 8 bars and 16 bars depending on how much Sunny Delight we’d drank that afternoon.

We were pretty quick to adapt to the internet as a tool of mass self-promotion. We’d post the Eel Pie Party flyers on our Myspace and also spam the message boards of all our rival bands too. .org was always a good one because there was such a die-hard indie community there, and we knew Pete and Carl would sometimes post on there too so maybe they’d see it.

Once every couple of months we’d post a new track on our Myspace and then anxiously wait and watch for the play count to start clocking up. Sometimes we’d make the tracks downloadable, but even if we didn’t, it usually wouldn’t take long for someone to rip them and start sharing the files around on Limewire. I’d say that was the beauty of it, it was incredibly democratic, but also like the wild west. If what you were making was good or exciting or had something different about it, it would find a fan base very quickly.

My dad runs a boatyard on Eel Pie Island, on the Thames in Twickenham and there used to a famous blues club there which everyone from The Stones to Hendrix played at back in the day. It burned down in the ‘70’s, so we thought we’d bring some of that spirit back to the birthplace of British Blues and that’s when things really began for us.

We were at an Art School nearby so would print out our own handmade flyers, and copy and paste a text message to everyone in our phonebooks a day or two before, “BYOB and invite everyone you know.” We’d book anywhere between 5 to 10 other bands a night, playing 20-minute sets and didn’t charge anything at the door. No sound checks, no payment, no backstage and no security. It was complete chaos.

We’d put on a party every couple of months, over a period of about a year and a half. They went from 20 people sat cross-legged on the floor to people eventually showing up in their hundreds. Word spread so quickly. We’d have people falling in the river, swinging from the light fittings, smoking cigarettes indoors, and the room was covered floor to ceiling in Moroccan carpets so it was a huge fire hazard. On 2 occasions people left in ambulances.

The last party was kind of legendary. We had all our friends' bands at that time playing one after another; Larrikin Love, Jamie T, The Noisettes, Good Shoes, Dustins Bar Mitzvah and a few others I can’t recall. 700 people squeezed into our rehearsal room and we estimated a good third of them were music industry scouts, managers and booking agents, who ended up signing most of the bands on the bill. And then the authorities showed up and served us a £20,000 noise abatement order if we tried to do it again. So it ended there, but that was the right time to kill it. I still meet strangers on the street who tell me they had some of the wildest nights of their lives at those parties.”

After hosting parties at Eel Pie Island they started getting attention from labels. The Eel Pie Island EP was released via Liquid Sky Music in 2003 however, it was 2 years until their next release, a limited edition 7” single, Zoo Time on Transgressive Records which led to the band signing with 679 Records. The rest of the year saw the band release more singles.

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Blaine “The Monday morning after our final Eel Pie party, we received a phone call from our manager to tell us that 3 labels had put in offers, 1 major and 2 indies. I wouldn’t say it was a bidding war but it felt good to know that we had caught the attention of the industry on our own terms and on our own turf. We went with 679; the label with the most interesting roster, and put out our first 2 albums with them. Ironically, in the intervening years we’ve ended up being on both the others at one time or another too.

Rather than decamp to a pro studio and make a record in an unfamiliar environment, we took our first advance and invested in recording gear to track ‘Making Dens’ in our rehearsal room on Eel Pie, the same room we held the parties in. It felt like the most likely way we’d be able to capturing some of that frenetic energy from the gigs onto tape.

For the following couple of albums we worked in commercial recording studios, because we needed a change of environment, but ultimately we ended up having our own studios again from ‘Curve of The Earth’ onwards because it enables us to work at our own pace, and have a space to collaborate with other artists too.

A lot of the press we got around ‘Making Dens’ focused on the father/son relationship, my disability and Eel Pie Island. At the time we felt that was partly responsible for the album not connecting as well as it should have, no one was talking about the music. For ‘Twenty One’ we went back to the drawing board and asked our favourite DJ, Erol Alkan (from Trash) to step onboard. It was quite a freeing feeling to get our debut album out the way and having paid homage to so many of the influences of our youth, now we could make a record inspired by what was new and going on around us. Remix culture, French house music, synths and electronics were starting to influence guitar music and we decided that’s the direction we were most excited about moving in. And we tried to learn how to write choruses.

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I think any band would agree that the early days are the most exciting, because everything is happening for the first time. The first time you sell out a gig, the first time you hear your song on the radio, the first time you get stopped in the street by a fan, your first Reading or your first Glastonbury. In a way, past that point it’s all about sustaining the excitement and maintaining forward motion. Touring isn’t for everyone, but for me, the more crazy our touring schedules became the more I loved it. Around Serotonin/Radlands we were touring so much that we all had to have two passports. I dread to think what our carbon emissions were like but regrettably, that awareness just wasn’t really part of the public consciousness back then. We’d finish a tour in the States and shoot straight over to tour around Australia and Japan. After a few days back at home to do our washing and demo some new songs it would be straight back over to Mexico and Argentina for more festivals. We’d literally follow the sun. During pandemic times it was hard to believe that’s what life used to be like but there you go.

The bands we had the most memorable tours with are mostly the bands we’re still friends with today. We toured all around Europe and the UK with The Kooks in 2008 which was wild. We toured Europe supporting the Arctic Monkeys on their first album and again when they released ‘Humbug’. We supported Mumford Sons on a huge Arena tour across America and Europe which lasted the best part of a year. One of the most crazy ones was opening for Klaxons during the height of the nu rave craze. The band were on fire and the audiences were nuts. I remember us all going to Disneyland together on a day off and Simon from Klaxons getting recognised on Space Mountain and thinking how perfect it was. It doesn’t get better than that. Job done.”

2 months before the release of 7th album, A Billion Heartbeats in April 2020 William left the band. The release timing was unfortunate as it came at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, pausing all of the promotional campaigns, leading to the album reaching no.85.

Blaine “I could easily moan about how the entire campaign of ‘A Billion Heartbeats’ was plagued with obstacles, but so many of them were just completely outside of our control. 2 weeks before the album was meant to be released I went into hospital with a critically inflamed leg injury, pushing the campaign back 6 months to allow for my recovery. Then a month before the re-release the world went into lockdown and all the vinyl plants closed down.

Suddenly the streets were empty and no one was riding the tubes so we had no choice but to pull all our adverts and billboards. We also couldn’t tour around the record stores which just flatlined the sales, so yeah, the album never got the send off it deserved. But I still feel incredibly proud of it. It was the first time we addressed big social questions and themes in such a head-on way”

Whilst Mystery Jets were on the rise out of Eel Pie Island there were a bunch of young South and West London groups joining them, building a vibrant community. These included scene favourites Good Shoes and Larrikin Love as well as indie heavyweights The Maccabees and Jamie T.

Good Shoes

Good Shoes were on the horizon in Kingston and they would become Eel Pie Island party regulars.

School mates, Rhys Jones and Steve Leach had been playing music as a hobby in 2003 with Rhys on vocals and Steve on guitar. The pair had their first gig in January 2004 at a charity event at The Peel in Kingston where they called themselves Good Shoes. After a few months, the hobby transformed into a band when Rhys’ brother Tom and fellow Raynes Park High School mate Joel Cox got on board.

As a 4-piece they played their first gig at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University on the 1st February 2005. This was followed up with a gig at an Eel Pie Island Island party before playing as many London shows as possible.

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Think Before You Speak, the bands' debut album was released in March 2007 and they built up a following as they went on tour with several bands including The Rakes, Franz Ferdinand, The Pigeon Detectives and Maximo Park.

Although the band showed promise, they split up after releasing their second album, ironically called No Hope, No Future.

The Rumble Strips

The Rumble Strips, headed by Charlie Waller were a band that briefly exploded into the world however their history dates back to when they were at school in Devon.

Charlie “I loved Shakin’ Stevens as a young kid. My first gig was Vanilla Ice at Cornwall Coliseum when I was 19 or 11. Both pretty cool! My uncle bought me a guitar when I was 8 and would teach me chords and simple blues songs.

I guess I properly got into music in a big way like a lot of people my age with Nirvana and all the early ‘90’s grunge stuff. I stopped playing sport and started smoking with the skinny scruffy boys. I remember my dad had a guy he worked with who knew I liked music. He decided I should be educated and would make me tapes of blues and doo-wop. I really loved The Coasters from that. I loved the humour and all the range of voices.

I started going to a sort of music youth club when I was 12 with my friend Sam who became the bass player in The Rumble Strips. It was run by Henry's dad who taught us Captain Beef Heart and Frank Zappa songs. That became a band called The Mother Eating Blackberries. That then split into different bands when were around 14. I was in one called Harry and The Hormones and Tom and Henry from The Rumble Strips had a great Talking Heads kind of ska band called Scarper.

I don’t know if it was because we were in the countryside, or that it was just that time in general, but we would listen to all sorts of old music. It felt very untethered by what was fashionable. Though I did love Gorky's Zygotic Mynci from that time. That was a band that always seemed to link us when we were older.

I would buy a lot of old records. I loved The Kinks and Bonzo Dog Doo Bah Band. When I discovered Adam and The Ants I got pretty obsessed with them and collected most of that. I still think Kings of the Wild Frontier is a masterpiece.

I moved to London to go to art college. The band I was playing in moved to London as well. We broke up around about the time I finished college. I started meeting up with Tom who was also without a band. We would get stoned and write boy band pop songs to make ourselves laugh. Some of them were quite good so we started writing songs that we would actually like to play.

The first Rumble Strips was me, Tom and Harry on keyboards, who went on to make our early videos. He’s now a YouTube star going around the UK in a tiny speedboat.

Eventually, we got Matt to play drums who was in The Hormones/Action Heroes with me, and Henry moved to London and played keyboards and trumpet. Then Sam joined us on bass.

I met Mark (Vincent Vincent) at Chelsea College of Art. I remember talking to him quite early on about music. He really liked Bob Dylan who I like now, but at the time thought was a bit moany groany. We both liked the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band though, and early rock n roll.

We shared a studio in college at some point and got a lot closer, then we lived together with some other guys in our last year. We also lived together after college. We were very close and did a lot together.

I remember driving in his car listening to Dion and the Belmont’s. We thought that it would be cool if there was a band like that now. With all the harmonies and stuff. Then we thought well we could just do one. It felt like an exciting thought.

We had a duo for a while called the Heartbreak Snakes. We played every week in The Ten Bells pub in Spitalfields. We would write a new song for each gig I think. It was a lot of fun.”

The Rumble Strips weren’t getting anywhere. Mark invited him to join Vincent Vincent & The Villains and it was great until EMI was offering them a record deal and Chrysalis came along with a publishing deal but both of them wanted Charlie to focus on Vincent Vincent & The Villains, not The Rumble Strips which put Charlie in a difficult situation, he loved being a frontman and his Rumble Strips mates who he’d grown up with. Without Charlie, there wasn’t no Rumble Strips whereas in Vincent Vincent & The Villains he was sharing frontman duties with his best friend.

He chose The Rumble Strips and moved out of the flat, the pair didn’t speak for a while, they made up and both blame themselves for being egotistical lads.

“I was probably a bit egotistical or something and didn’t quite have Mark’s confidence, so I think I could be a bit quiet and grumpy. I do regret that now. It’s a shame we didn’t record one album. There were some great songs that just got lost. It probably spurred us both on to get signed when we went our separate ways, but I think it maybe took some of the fun out of it.

I was quite driven, but maybe not always happy. I remember my girlfriend telling me I was a cliche, which I probably was a bit.

The Rumble Strips did a couple of singles with Transgressive Records, then signed a deal with Island in 2006. Getting a record deal had just seemed like such a big drive for so long. It did make a lot of things easier, but ultimately it has to be the band that still drives it.

I didn’t feel like we were part of a scene, but maybe everyone feels that way a bit. I never really thought of us as an indie band. I think I wanted to be more funny than cool. We did hang out and play with a lot of bands though. I liked them as well. We probably weren’t that different.”

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The Rumble Strips were featured on the Sound Of 2007 list, headlined an NME tour and their biggest single, Girls and Boys got played on ads. The debut album was recorded in America while Mark Ronson produced the second album.

Charlie “I remember jamming in a studio one time. I was on one keyboard, Mark was on one keyboard, Dave from the Zutons was on bass and Sean Lennon was on drums.

I had no idea how to work the thing I was playing and I was quite high. I remember thinking to myself at one point that this is really bizarre and something that I would always remember. Also that it sounded pretty terrible.

We got dropped by Island and my marriage broke up so I went on a long holiday to Cuba. I was 30 and it was the first time since I was about 14 that I wasn't obsessed with being in a band. I got back and met up with everyone and said that it’s quite nice not being in a band. They kind of agreed so we just stopped. It was pretty chilled I think.

We got together and did some more recordings around 2016. I like the thought that we could maybe do that every 10 years. I really love them all.”

So, what about Vincent Vincent & the Villians…?

Mark Ogus, or Vincent Vincent as he became known as was introduced to ‘50’s rock ‘n’ roll after discovering his dad's record collection in his late teens. Mark was creative and went to art school where a lot of his work had a connection to music. While studying he met Charlie who he was in awe of, he used to watch his band Action Heroes and his on-stage persona made him want to do the same.

In 2003 Mark formed The Vincents, he wanted to be something more than “Mark” so he created a persona where he became Vincent Vincent and the band was Vincent Vincent & The Villains. Mark got creative on all aspects, everything was thought out, their live show was a performance, they had a ‘look’ and Mark was hands-on with artwork too while the sound was influenced by his love of ‘50’s rock ‘n’ roll. The band gained interest from labels and management early on.

Smoking Gun released the first single in March 2004, XFM’s John Kennedy picked up a copy from Rough Trade, he played it regularly on XFM. Both Radio 1 and the NME started to support them before signing to EMI in 2006.

With tension between Charlie and his two bands building Mark was inspired to write Johnny Two Bands about the situation, the song became Vincent Vincent & The Villains biggest song and Mark had to have an awkward chat about the song as they had become friends again by the time the song was released.

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EMI made them rerecord Johnny Two Bands with Stephen Street which wasn’t an enjoyable experience as the producer ripped out the fun of the process while Mark was already hating the song anyway. That resentment towards the song continued when they had to perform it (mime) on Top Of The Pops and it was the start of the end for the band.

Instead of releasing new material, EMI made the band rerelease the early singles. In 2008 the band released the long-awaited debut album, but they were already seeing a decline as the crowds at gigs were getting smaller, they were skint and lost in their 20’s watching their mates moving on with their life and they were going backward. There was no future for the band who faded away.

Les Incompetents

When it comes to the 2000’s indie, it’s impossible to overlook Fred MacPherson who was a fan as much as a musician. Once the Londoner discovered bands, he wanted to be in one, before even hearing The Strokes he was obsessed, they oozed cool and, like Alex Turner (and many boys in this era), he just wanted to be one of them.

While at school he formed Les Incompetents (2004), a band with 8 members, 2 of which (including Fred) were lead singers. They liked the idea of being in a band more than doing the work required to be in a band. Fred and Chris would turn up to house parties and whip out the acoustic guitar and play some covers. Hotel Yorba was the first song they learned, its simplicity inspired them to write their own.

After telling everyone they were in a band to sound cool, despite not having any songs they got a gig at The Rhythm Factory in Whitechapel but they needed a demo. They put a song together, recorded it on a 4-track and badgered the venue. They ended up supporting Martha Wainwright for their first-ever gig.

They started playing around London, they’d be on stage more than rehearsing, it was mostly chaotic but each gig was an opportunity to meet people. After being introduced to the Mystery Jets, Les Incompetents played the Eel Pie Island parties where they discovered a scene that was bubbling underneath with the likes of Larrikin Love and Jamie T. Fred appears on Zoo Time from the Mystery Jets debut album while Jamie T’s songwriting changed the way Fred structured songs.

Way Out West gigs were the first time they felt like they had a crowd who was into them. The band was still at school when they released their first double A-side single Much Too Much/Reunion (2005) on White Heat Records having played White Heat club night a handful of times. Matty who ran the club and label was into the band early on. The boys had been regulars at the central London indie disco since 15 (it was pretty easy to get fake ID back then).

Fred had a proactive personality, building relationships online as well as IRL. Fanboying Test Icicles on MySpace and connecting on the forums. He did work experience at Drowned In Sound and despite being involved in the party scene from an early age he was sober until he was 23.

They’d study all the bands, how they dressed, where they went out and how they wrote songs, taking influences from across the scene, How It All Went Wrong, their most recognised song was written after listening to Razorlight.

The bandmates stopped getting along with each other by 2006 and they realised they didn’t have enough songs for an album or plans for progression. There were so many bands out there, Les Incompetents weren’t signable. In June, as the band was about to put an end to it, Billy Leeson, the bands' other singer was attacked after an argument on the night bus and went into a coma for 3 weeks, during this time How It All Went Wrong started to get attention.

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On the 1st September Les Incompetents announced on MySpace that they were to split up and they would be playing one final gig at the 100 Club in November, which sold out. They ended up playing Way Out West at Acton Town Hall a few days later with Late Of The Pier, Fear Of Flying, Jamie T and Kid Harpoon (who has gone to be Harry Styles songwriter).

Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man

One month after Les Incompetents split Fred, Sean and Tommy formed Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man, a very different band to Les Incompetents on many levels. Where the former played live and rarely rehearsed, Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man was the opposite, where Les Incompetents were a bit messy and fun, the latter was dark, intense and self-indulgent.

They were heavily influenced by prog rock, Nick Cave and Doom Metal, the sound was gloomy but it was a dark time for the lads too who were in their early 20’s. Having put the groundwork in with Les Incompetents it didn’t take long for them to get a record deal with Transgressive. After just over 3 years the band split up but they never had the legacy of Les Incompetents.

Before Fred’s next big move, he had a few projects for fun including a comedy rap group with Charlie from Noah & The Whale and King Charles during the short-living ‘grindie’ scene. There are no recordings but they did support JME. There was Captain Kick and the Cowboy Ramblers, another line-up including Charlie of Noah & The Whale as well as some of Mumford & Sons.

He’d seen friends like Jamie T, Mystery Jets, Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons breakthrough and get jealous of their success. On MTV2 he’d interview the likes of Kings Of Leon and Interpol at festivals which would inspire him to have another shot at it, form his next band who we’ll come on to later.

Test Icicles

Over the years Fred, like many (including Harry Styles and Beyonce) has collaborated with Dev Hynes who arrived with the explosive trio, Test Icicles who were only around for 2 years and released 1 album but Circle. Square. Triangle. is a generation-defining song.

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Lightspeed Champion

After the noise and neon with Test Icicles, nobody would have predicted Dev Hynes next move, Lightspeed Champion. After leaving his East London life behind him in 2007, moved to New York and wrote songs that shared country/folk influences which turned into the solo project. His touring band included Florence Welch while Alex Turner, Faris Badwan, Fred MacPherson, Jack Penate and Keith Murray made appearances on stage.

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Blood Orange

Lightspeed Champion lasted 2 albums then Dev reinvented himself once again with another very different solo project, Blood Orange. He went into “producer” mode with Blood Orange which is beat-driven, soulful and smooth with r ‘n’ b vibes that has taken Dev into A-lister territory.

Jamie T

South London-born Jamie Alexander Treays launched himself onto the music scene with his half sing/half rap acoustic songs on London’s pub circuit under the stage name, Jamie T. His demos started to make their way through the online forums and on MySpace then in 2006 his songs started to get radio play.

In July 2006 Jamie’s breakthrough came with Shelia, a huge hit that sounded nothing like anything out there. It was followed by If You've Got The Money then Calm Down Dearest.

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His debut album, Panic Prevention documents his struggles with panic attacks as a kid and it became a cult classic, while follow-up, Kings & Queens reached a broader audience with breakout single, Sticks ‘n’ Stones.

“Where is Jamie T?” campaigns floated online after he’d gone quiet for some time but finally, after a 5-year wait he returned with Carry On The Grudge and Zombie, another defining song that showed punk influences and he can continue to disappear for years but he will be missed.

The Maccabees

As schools go, Alleyn's School in Dulwich is one to have bred some talent in such a short about of time as Florence and the Machine’s Florence Welch, Jessie Ware, Jack Penate and Felix White of The Maccabees all attended.

Jack was already a keen guitarist and Felix was obsessed with Oasis. After months of persuading, Felix got Jack to form a band together, they called themselves Jack’s Basement, as that’s where they practiced. The pair played a handful of gigs together, sharing the stage with The Maccabees who had already been going.

In 2004 when school was over Jack went solo and encouraged Felix to join his brother who was in The Maccabees. Frontman Orlando Weeks was heading to Brighton for uni so the rest of the band found jobs in bars and joined him on the south coast.

The band wrote a bunch of songs, played some gigs, wrote another bunch of songs, played more gigs. Each bunch of songs showed improvements and after the fourth time of trying everything clicked into place and they wrote X-Ray. Inspired by Interpol and The Strokes togetherness but with The Maccabees twist (play as fast as they can) it became their first single, receiving support from XFM and Radio 1 and released on 7”.

Fiction Records picked the band up and debut album Colour It In stood strong against what other bands were releasing at the time, however, the label weren’t completely comfortable with it until they heard a slight twist in creativity with the acoustic love song, Toothpaste Kisses, which took the band into the mainstream.

The band returned to Brighton to follow up the debut album, writing and recording for Wall Of Arms was a very different process. For 6 months the band would go into the rehearsal rooms for 8 hours a day to write the album. Some days they would come up with nothing, other times they’d spend hours working on a singular guitar part but when creativity came, all of them would jump on it. They’d end each day going home and getting stoned.

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A breakthrough moment for the band was when their manager played them The Teardrop Explodes albums, it inspired them to use instruments differently, specifically brass. The new outlook on sounds is what shapes the layers on the record which Colour It In lacked. They headed to Paris for 4 months to record the album with producer Markus Dravs who had recently worked on Arcade Fires album, another complex sounding record in terms of instrumental arrangements.

The label had allowed the band time to discover themselves, focus on who The Maccabees were and develop. Patience paid off as Wall Of Arms (May 2009) set a new bar, not only for themselves but for other bands, it was no longer acceptable to lazily piece together something basic.

Another very different approach came for their third record compared to how they worked on their previous releases. Following the success of Wall Of Arms The Maccabees were full of confidence and the label gave them creative freedom. Given To The Wild was self-produced, at their home in Brighton where, after years of being a live band, playing as fast as they physically could, they focussed on becoming a studio band where detail mattered.

The bands’ fourth album, Marks To Prove It was an intense period for The Maccabees who were reaching their late 20’s. They returned to London where they discovered The Jesus and Mary Chain’s former recording studio, The Drug Store in Elephant & Castle which had been left derelict. It took them 4 years to create the album as they struggled to find structure but it was finally released in July 2015.

After the 4 tough years making Marks To Prove It and 2 years of touring, the lads who had now grown into men decided to split up. They ended it on a high with some epic shows at Alexandra Palace where they were joined on stage by mates including Jamie T, Marcus Mumford and Mystery Jets. It was an end of an era.

The Maccabees story wasn’t over as, in October 2024 they announced they would be back in the next summer…

Fear Of Flying

Fear Of Flying was a school band that grew through MySpace but months before going to university they reinvented themselves as White Lies, a band that went on to have a chart-topping album.

The first roots of the band go back to 2001, after practicing at home they started playing at parties. Things started to get a bit more serious when they gave themselves a name, Fear Of Flying. Frontman Charles knew Fred Macpherson from school, they would go to gigs together. Fear Of Flying started supporting Les Incompetents, getting gigs through Fred’s connections and building up a fanbase on MySpace. The 3-piece played Frog, Nambucca and the Pleasure Unit early on as well as Way Out West and Young & Lost Club while being in sixth form.

They managed to get Stephen Street to produce their first single as they were good friends with his son. The band was contacted by managers via MySpace who got them on a support tour with Jamie T. They’d jump on the National Express with their instruments after school around the country, soundcheck, play the gig then get a coach home and get up for school the next morning. Issues with the manager started to come up, they sacked him the day before supporting The Maccabees on tour, he didn’t take the news well and ended up stealing their equipment. They explained the situation to The Maccabees and they let them borrow their equipment and stay on the tour bus after gigs.

Still in their late teens, on a gap year, they were reluctantly going to university in September as things with the band were starting to get a bit stale, the radio and press weren’t really supporting them and they had stopped playing live.

In July 2007 Charles started messing about on a piano, within minutes they had Unfinished Business, a song that sounded completely different to anything they’d released as Fear Of Flying.

They recorded a demo and had a complete rebrand with a new name, White Lies, and created a new MySpace page with no photos of the band members. With just one song on there they sent a link to Keith from Way Out West, he loved it, as did his industry colleagues. From then on they were inundated with messages from labels, managers and agents.

The band knew they needed to build on this new sound, taking influence from the ‘80’s they wrote Death which got an even better reaction, then the third song, Farewell to the Fairground. These three songs have lasted throughout the bands' career to date, featuring on the setlist for every gig.

NEXT CHAPTER

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t1meslayer · 6 months ago

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We're so back.

Please ignore the five Pokemon stories that I posted before "Neurocysticercosis" to celebrate leftover sales for PokéPocket. I probably won't be doing a Debrief for them since the collective is kind of its own thing.

But actually, don't ignore them. Go check out PokéPocket! Leftover sales run until July 31, 2024!!!

... That's not what I've gathered you all for today, though. No. If you haven't read my latest JJK fanfic, "Neurocysticercosis," what are you waiting for? Jump on that, and then jump into my little-a Read More below!

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I made this joke in the opening Notes. However, I do once again have to point out:

What can I say?

It's very funny to me.

I'm also a big fan of Jujutsu Kaisen (don't mind the fact I misspelled it "Jujitsu" in the original AO3 summary), there's just too many things occupying my brain at a given time to write about it often.

My first SatoSugu fic "Infinitesimal Distance" came together soon after I learned my good friend and beta reader (you know who you are) also rotates those boys around in their brain. I had just gone to a Kura (revolving sushi bar) JJK crossover event. I won myself a Megumi figure and a felt hat.

Though I can't recall the exact impetus for that story idea, I do love the way it turned out. There's fun bits of horror storytelling, some of the dialogue is pretty sharp, and I leaned on the knowledge of a friend who lived in Japan to set the stage around Tokyo's Shinagawa city. The story wound up being pretty popular on AO3 too, garnering over 460 Hits and exactly 38 Kudos (as of this writing).

More importantly, it was a big hit for the birthday coalition of spiders.

Furthermore, it was a big hit for my friend who lived in Japan — surprise, she's the other birthday haver! To this day she considers "My fingers glide over you like a redacted passage" to be the greatest piece of prose I've ever written. I don't disagree, but you should've been there the night she beta read the piece, interrupting every other event going on in our friend group's VC just to hype me up.

So naturally... I didn't write any more JJK for seven months. This doesn't mean further ideas weren't festering in the back of my mind.

My original idea for "Neurocysticercosis" was pretty simple: Geto and Gojo are in some kind of art exhibit, Geto gets existential about humanity, and then it's revealed they've been fucking around while Shoko gets her ass beat by the Cursed Spirit of the week.

Shoko's brief beat-to-shit cameo was planned from the beginning. Sorry about that, Shoko fans.

That being said, a lot of my original idea didn't pan out as expected.

Late into the story, Geto makes this comment:

"Ask the average human what they think a 'living wall' is, and they'll talk up woven ferns and grass climbing up the side of their high-class mart. Pedestrian. Laughable. Imaginations stretched so thin within their walnut-sized brains that they couldn't begin to fathom what you and I see every day. Real living walls of scar tissue and rotting tendons and bloodshot, oozing eyes."

I originally wanted Geto to be observing a Living Wall, akin to San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art (I visited the museum with birthday friend and one other member of our group a few years ago).

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However, I couldn't necessarily plop Jujutsu High students in the middle of San Francisco without over-scoping my vision through explanatory storytelling. And I was having some trouble finding good examples of Living Wall installations in Japan.

Then my fate turned on a dime one legendary night this February, in which I attended a Lord of the Rings watch party for another birthday. At that party I met an excellent cosplayer who, naturally, also happens to love Jujutsu Kaisen. We shared "Infinitesimal Distance" live, and I told them about the idea I was gestating on for a future SatoSugu piece. The current gift fic recipient recommended using the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art as a setting that would make sense for Gojo and Geto to canonically visit.

The rest, as they say, was history.

Once we started approaching her birthday, I knew what I had to do. We haven't finished the 2014 series Black Sails (her current obsession) together, so Plan A was not viable. Plan B was a go.

Having decided to go with an entire art gallery, this meant I needed to pick actual art. Now... I enjoy an art. I appreciate a good drawing. Sometimes I create my own art, especially ceramics. However, I am not a well-versed scholar in art history. This is an especially big roadblock when I have to try and come up with an artist whom folks might see in Japan circa-2008 — around the time when Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto are in Jujutsu High, as I understand. Not to mention the fact I can't ask my friend since she's the one this fic will be a present for.

My solution?

I kind of just looked up lists of the most influential modern Japanese artists and scrolled a couple of listicles, digging deeper into a few people whose work stood out. Much of that Googling took place over the course of a big family dinner for Father's Day this year.

I sorted through a number of names, including — but not limited to:

Tsuguharu Foujita

Tetsuya Ishida

Tadanori Yokoo

Makoto Aida

Yasumasa Morimura

However, as you all have read this fic (you better have!), you'll know I focused on the work of Chiho Aoshima. The compositions and color in her pieces really struck me, and the surrealist, often beautifully monstrous subject matter felt like a perfect match for the JJK universe.

In particular, this story revolves around A Contented Skull (2003):

Originally I chose this piece as a striking work that would be fun to describe. However, as I began to describe it (during a car ride across the Washington countryside), patterns began to emerge. I realized very quickly that A Contented Skull slots perfectly into foreshadowing the ultimate fate of Suguru Geto.

That's right, it's no longer just an opportunity to have Geto wax poetic about his feelings on humanity, and to reflect all the fucked-up shit he and Gojo experience. We've also got themes in this bitch. Themes of fate and autonomy and death, not to mention parasitic brain worms.

The fic's title is even a reference to a parasitic brain worm. If you had no idea what "Neurocysticercosis" was before now, don't worry. I didn't either. It was 99% big, fancy word to sound interesting, and 1% thematic brain worms.

As far as elements of the writing craft are concerned...

It took a few stabs, but I like the way I formatted painting titles to look like actual minimalist gallery plaques.

Shoko's injured, dying words do a lot of fuckery with text formatting, which I pulled almost directly from the nightmare sequence in my Pokemon ScarVi fic "Paradiso." The Cursed Spirit they're fighting is also notable. I always planned on making a centipede-esque monster, but it wasn't until I actually started writing that I realized the main image in my head was the "Charge Beam Beast" from Metroid: Zero Mission.

Anybody remember this dude? I used to play the beginning of Zero Mission over and over, so he's seared into my brain.

I'm also a fan of the experimental formatting with regards to breaking up dialogue. I finished "Neurocysticercosis" during a long train ride, only one day after I finished reading John Scalzi's The Kaiju Preservation Society. It's a fun little read by an author whose work I tend to enjoy, though given it was his COVID "mindless fun" book, I do think it leans a bit too hard into sounding like a quippy Marvel film.

That being said, he does invoke a fun mid-sentence verb through em dashes that I think creates a great flow. Tried it out here, and will mostly likely use the idea again going forward!

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Now that I'm done with this piece, I don't know when my next JJK fic will come down the pipeline. There aren't a ton of concrete ideas in my head for the series. However, I do know it'll be time to return to some of my bigger projects...

I'm been dying to write more "Fallout" sooner rather than later.

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