#the whole thing feels like it’s just trying to be referential because fans like when they see thing they like already

[mabaris]

i am just being picky here but i feel like i keep seeing a reticence to create new things, not just in the fact that most npcs are cameos and the fact that a lot of the worldbuilding we know is just getting reframed, but also in the little things.

i think about it every time i look at the lighthouse monuments. “the warrior: a paragon who was the first woman in the warrior caste” and no one came up with a name?? same with the book bellara’s writing where the main character is just called “the hero.” idk man, i like getting details for shit that doesn’t matter

[raisinchallah]

you know something i find really fascinating is the continual insistence by doctor who fans that like each era should roll out the red carpet and give their flowers and cheers applause and all that to the previous eras and just be all very nice and whatever and pay your dues and its like surely you realize the length and breadth of this show is so large thats just like impossible and antithetical to the entire conceit that its a show that has survived because of radical change and being so different nobody can actually like every part or style it tries idk i was musing on this while watching silence in the library/forest of the dead and my various davison era adventures which i think both those eras are in some ways like anomalies that the transition between the rtd era and moffat era was extremely smooth series 4 and 5 are both high points of the show moffat wrote beloved rtd era episodes and they even let him introduce river before his run properly started creating this bridge between times and that in a lot of ways 80s who is probably the most accessible to new fans trying to get into the classic era who also want to feel like theyre idk really in the weeds its quite self referential and became when more and more fans were writing for the show idk that both these periods people seem to latch onto are in many ways anomalies in the grander arc of the whole show but people really want it to keep working like that and to not shake things up and to like meticulously back reference your favorite obscure monster or whatever idk i think especially funny this argument is often taken up by chibnall fans who think u just gotta be sooooo respectful and uncritical when like he literally undid the entire huge multi season push 50th anniversary thing to bring back gallifrey and did the entire timeless child thing lol like please have some consistency my god..

[karlmarxmaybe]

Good post but I have to disagree with the take that The Killing Joke says nothing about the real world.

To analyze the story, though, we must understand two underlying bits of liberal ideology that are present in all Batman stories:

The police is an organization dedicated to upholding justice.

There are two kinds of people: "normal" and "insane", the "insane" ones being inherently and unchangeably dangerous.

Both of these ideas are utter bullshit, ofc, but the story accepts them as true, so we must keep them in mind. Now,

The whole point The Joker is arguing in The Killing Joke is that it only takes one bad day to turn a "normal" person into a dangerous "insane" one like him. We, the audience, knowing Batman's origin story, understand that this lines up with Batman's life: he suffered a tragic event, his one bad day, and turned into someone who fits more into the "insane" category than into the "normal" one.

But crucially, this is not what the story is arguing. Alan Moore has this habit of having his stories overtly make a statement and then have the subtler details of the story prove that statement wrong and make the exact opposite statement (to the point where people think Watchmen is an edgy fascist violencefest and not an unflinching tragedy about what happens when actual human individuals, flawed as they are, are given superhuman power over others' lives, which feels extra impactful considering the background of the Cold War and its threat of nuclear war. When I read Watchmen, I was brought to tears about the state of imminent world war portrayed in it- an element of the story I rarely see commented on).

How does this manifest in The Killing Joke? Well, you have The Joker's sad sad backstory and him proclaiming loudly his One Bad Day Theory of Mental Illness, and you have the knowledge that Batman kinda matches that... but then you also have Jim Gordon.

Gordon is "normal" and an agent of the law. Within the ideology of the story, that makes him a beacon of justice. And knowing this, The Joker plays his Killing Joke on him (dear Mao comics are ridiculous): he subjects him to one bad day (through the fridging of Barbara Gordon, something I'll always shit on Alan Moore for, but which forced every subsequent writer to write a disabled character, so... mistakes into miracles I suppose, although I don't think the writing of Barbara Gordon post-becoming disabled has been great or even good). The idea is that this one bad day will turn Jim Gordon "insane" and thus dangerous like The Joker.

And it fails utterly. When Batman rescues Jim, he is understandably traumatized, but he tells Batman to go after The Joker, with the words "I want him brought in... And I want him brought in by the book!"

He is still a man of the law. He is still "normal". The Joker's argument is wrong! Not everyone who goes through one bad day turns into a violent murderer! And through this, we can reconsider the point that Batman and The Joker are so similar. Batman did go through one bad day and became "insane", but he doesn't murder people for fun, now does he?

The Joker is trying and failing to excuse his own actions. He's saying he had no choice but to became a violent murderer, and the story proves him wrong. And this is how the self-referential Batman story makes a point about the real world: that one's own trauma is no excuse for causing others harm.

So I don't think long-running franchises are inherently doomed to only talk about themselves. It's just that nostalgia sells, and management wants to just tell the same story over and over to keep the money flow consistent, and they don't want to alienate the fans, and creativity is a risk, and cheeky self-reference makes money, and ultimately making a statement is disencouraged because all art must be status quo propaganda.

Last thing: I hate Alan Moore and all his works, they're sexist, racist, fetishizing of lesbians and just the most White Anarchist garbage you've ever seen. They can all go rot in a hole, especially the shit of shittrordinary shitemen. Ok bye

i have a theory that any franchise that lasts long enough eventually becomes incestuous and ends up eating its own tail, thematically. stories in these franchises can only ever comment on themselves

i think a lot about what alan moore said about his work on the killing joke, about how hollow it is in hindsight since the theme really just boils down to "batman and the joker are kinda similar when you think about it", which i suppose is a pretty novel observation, certainly changes the way i read batman comics, but what is there in that insight for me as a human being living in the real world that i can apply to my actual life? not a whole lot. all it can do is reward emotional investment in the brand of batman. if you don't really give a shit about batman there's nothing there for you.

the disney era of star wars is especially bad about this. by and large they're really just about our relationship to star wars. even the last jedi, which tries to be a little more critical about it, still can't break out of the thematic black hole the franchise has become. andor is possibly the only exception to this, and i steadfastly believe that was a total fluke. don't get it twisted, andor is good despite its connection to star wars, not because of it, and if it were just an original tv show about resisting space fascism, it would probably be better for it (if less popular). we're all lowkey dreading the second season bc we know that no star wars property can resist devolving into a nostalgia wank fest forever

there's nothing inherently wrong with hollow entertainment, but i do think there's something grotesque about pumping the gdp of a small nation into an entertainment product that doesn't aspire to be anything more than an advertisement for itself

[artbyblastweave]

BLASTWEAVE what does steven universe have in common with watchmen?

Both Steven Universe and Watchmen are groundbreaking entries in their respective genres that demonstrate a deep understanding of the appeal of the genre they’re working in, and engage with their ideas on a previously unheard-of level for the medium. That breaks ground and clears the way for what other works in the genre can get away with. 

Steven Universe showed that, well, first of all that you can make a cartoon that’s fundamentally ideologically queer beyond a few side characters, but also that you can have an emotionally intelligent and mature children's cartoon where the character nuance and depth and development are all taken very seriously. Watchmen showed that you could write serious and interesting narratives about superheroes if you were willing to roll with the crazy. (Neither of them was the first to do the things I’m ascribing to them, but I do think that they’re what made it stick for their respective fields.)

In doing so, though, both works create/created a catch 22 for all future works in their genre. Part of what made both of them so good is that they were willing to critically unpack and air out the ugly implications of their format that usually get chalked up to suspension of disbelief, and now that that’s out in the open it becomes very difficult not to think about how any other given work is or isn’t addressing those issues- even if they aren’t equipped to address those issues in the scope of the story they’re trying to tell. Watchmen asked questions about who sanctions superheroes, what qualifies you to do that work, where the line is between heroism and fascism or if there even is one, whether the agency to act means you have a right or a duty to act, whether anyone who seriously bought into the superhero thing could possibly be doing it for good reasons, and, if they somehow were, how long you can care with the intensity necessary to be an effective hero without suffering burnout (not long.) I literally can’t think of a single superhero thing worth reading that isn’t in some way in conversation with Watchmen - you now kind of have to answer those questions, explicitly or implicitly, even if your books thesis is “Alan Moore sucks eggs and being a superhero is very sustainable and fantastic.” If you just leave the question of whether your superheroes are justified completely unaddressed, there’s an uncomfortable discordance there, because we’ve seen the extreme end of that sliding scale in the form of the Comedian and if the narrative doesn’t engage with what makes the protagonist not Edward Blake, it can feel worrisome. If they try and then botch it it can feel alarming.

Steven Universe has a similar thing going on, at least for me. It’s the only unironic, non-parodic children’s series that’s really, seriously unpacked how fucked up and traumatic it would be to grow up as the archetypical All-loving Spirited Saturday Morning Cartoon Protagonist, how warped and dysfunctional a household that enabled that lifestyle could be at its worst, and what the future looks like when your whole childhood was centered on a now-ended conflict. ( a lot of cartoons flirt with that last one but don’t commit.) I’ve seen jokes and intended-as-cracky fan theories about this for years, surrounding lots of other cartoons (Ben 10, Pokemon, Powerpuff Girls) but almost never with the assumption that the creators are on the same page as them. I’ve seen stories that are post-modern reimaginings using the same general archetypes or whatever (Venture Brothers) but that’s not this! SU told an entertaining story earnestly, and then engaged with the emotional fallout of the story it told, with an unheard-of breadth and depth. A whole season of unpacking! No other show has ever been allowed to sink that much effort into closure. That’s usually what Fanfic is for.

I think it’s great, and that shows like Infinity Train and The Owl House are able to go as hard as they do largely because of Steven Universe’s precedent- but no matter how good a cartoon is, I can’t watch them without having this voice in the back of my head going “Oh, these children are going to grow up to be broken wrecks, bar an extensive and harsh healing process that kinda hurts to watch, huh.”

The issue is that not every cartoon can be Steven Universe, where the project was to thoughtfully and sensitively unpack this stuff. It’s a fair bet that we’ll probably never see a show with that exact project again (not least because of the loss of novelty value.) You’ve got your own stories you wanna tell that’ll run their own course, mostly aimed at children, there objectively isn’t narrative or financial room for most stories to unpack these assumptions if that wasn’t the goal going in. For example, Gravity Falls had pretty tight storytelling and a narrative that absolutely had room for a post-script "where-do-we-go-from-here” plot- it sped-run the “oh no, childhood’s ending” thing- and it’s pretty telling that the aftermath, healing process, interpersonal relationships and so forth are one of the things that that fandom heavily fixates on. The narrative had such a clean ending that it made people go looking for the mess. That’s not bad! It’s how most storytelling works! But now I look at any cartoon with kid heroes that’s meant to be taken even marginally seriously and go, Oh. Win the battle, lose the war. Then I feel sad. The contrast, of course, is that most superhero works actually can be, and in fact benefit from trying to be like Watchmen, because all the questions Watchmen raises about the ethics of power are also just.... like.... the most interesting storytelling hooks if you want to write a cape thing with real themes. They’re the kind of stories we’d have gotten years prior naturally if not for the CCA boondoggle. Admittedly it kinda creates a different problem where most “good” cape media is inescapably self-referential and draws on picking apart the conventions of a 60-70-year old canon that hasn’t been in wide circulation in years. But! I also think there’s a stronger obligation there to keep superhero fans in check- if your superhero thing isn’t making the reader question the ethics of violence and individual heroism in the face of systemic injustice, you wind up with people who unironically think Frank Castle is a role model to be emulated. We all know that guy. Children’s media doesn’t really produce that guy the same way, although it can draw them in from other corners. Superhero media often needs to be self-critical in a way children’s cartoons don’t always have to be.

[astrovian]

I think my issue with The Rings of Power is that I just wanted it to have really good writing (even if that meant deviating from Tolkien) so badly

What I mean by that is that I wanted us as the audience to be intentionally mis-led and deceived and double-bluffed... especially the Tolkien fans. While yes, they're trying to attract casual viewers, they also knew they'd have a big Tolkien audience and didn't cater to us at all in terms of giving us anything interesting/exciting re: plot

Like yes, it's awesome to see Númenor & Khazad-Dûm & all these 'unseen' things visually but for Tolkien fans there's not a lot plot-wise that's as exciting as the visual interpretations

I almost didn't care how much they changed up lore, if the trade-off was good TV writing... then I could accept that because we all went into this knowing it would be a bit of a bastardization of Tolkien's works

But this season finale was just so bland it's actually a little sad

The Mt. Doom reveal a couple of episodes ago was much more interesting and shocking than either the Sauron or The Stranger reveal which is pretty sad given they based the entire season upon the premise of "who is Sauron/The Stranger???"

Like if the reveals shocked you then great, but honestly both identity reveals were seen coming a mile away by pretty much anyone with a passing knowledge of Tolkien's works

They were basically hitting us hard on the head with a hammer in regards to the clues they left each episode which I was basically fine with because I expected the finale to be a be a big "gotcha! we were tricking you the entire time! It's actually not them at all!" rather than what it actually turned out to be which was just "why yes... it was exactly what you thought/predicted 6 or 7 episodes ago"

As a pretty die-hard Tolkien fan, I'm not as down on and harsh about the show as some others are and have enjoyed it for the most part but like... this episode broke me simply because the major plot twists they've been hinting at all season weren't twists at all by the end

I wanted it to be a big shock and that moment you get with good writing where all the puzzle pieces suddenly click into place and you're like "how did I not see this coming??" rather than reading the clues and knowing where you're going before you've even really left for the destination

In fact, I much preferred other theories we ourselves came up with while watching the first two episodes. If they had ended the series with the Mt. Doom eruption reveal (or something as suprising like it) it would have been a great cliffhanger shock ending. This ending just felt really weak

Really this big disappointment made me reflect on what bugs me the most about the series as a whole:

1) the fight in the Southlands that was like a bad tribute/homage to the battle of Helms Deep. It made it really obvious that the writers were struggling to find Tolkien's voice in the script and that they don't know how to come up with an original battle that still feels like a Tolkien battle

I feel like this is a good summary for the series - a wink and a nod to Tolkien's work with some referential dialogue or a visual scene or a specific important item scattered through-out episodes here or there to mask the fact that coming up with a Tolkien show when you can't write like Tolkien and haven't really captured his voice is hard

It's a very superficial and almost like... surface-level/lazy way of writing a Tolkien-based show imo

2) the whole 'mithril has special Silmaril powers now'/dying Elves plot is just SO BAD AND DUMB. Why would you change mithril like this???

The only good or interesting part about this plot is the tension it creates between Durin/King Durin and the Elves & Dwarves as a result. The actual idea of the plot itself made me laugh because I thought it was a genuine joke in the first few eps but now that it's not it just makes me angry

3) the fact that it was so obvious like 4 episodes ago (if that) who Sauron/The Stranger are lmao

4) there was literally nothing impactful in this entire season finale that made me go "I need more now!!" which is literally the exact opposite thing you want to do when you make a season finale of a TV show

5) the pacing and weird time-skips depending on which group of characters we're following is really weird through-out the entire season which I can mostly ignore but like... you're also just gonna have Celebrimbor make the elven rings overnight like that? alright lol

Theories we came up with early on in the season which would have been so much more interesting:

a) make Halbrand the King of the Dead

b) tbh I don't really care who The Stranger is just don't make him Gandalf because that was obvious the second we met him

they won't do it but even if it was Saruman I'd be like well... at least this makes for an interesting juxtaposition to his treatment of Hobbits in LotR/makes his corruption much more heartbreaking

my personal faves that were so unlikely but were thrown around in this category have been Tom Bombadil, a Blue Wizard or like a pre-Balrog Maiar(??)

c) have Gil-Galad think that the Elves are dying and mithril will save them (and in turn make Elrond etc. and us the audience think so) but have it all turn out to be a massive mis-direct where Gil-Galad has been unknowingly tricked by Sauron into getting mithril from the dwarves

d) I can't remember the episode number but a personal favourite theory early on that emerged during the ep where Elrond finds out Durin is mining mithril is that Sauron is actually in disguise as Elrond all along in order to gain access to mithril/Celebrimbor (though what that means for real Elrond in terms of his whereabouts I dunno). it only made sense during that episode really and look, it practically doesn't really work at all... but you can't say that wouldn't have been an exciting plot twist

TL;DR Yes, Amazon needs to cater to casual viewers who don't know much Tolkien, but the way that they have done so has made the plot immensely boring/predictable for anyone with a decent knowledge of (or background in) Tolkien's work

They demonstrate a basic understanding of some of the core central themes of Tolkien but their inability to cater to Tolkien fans beyond referential moments shows that they have a very shallow understanding of how to build alongside Tolkien's work/story-crafting style (or perhaps an innate inability to do so)

e.g. if you're gonna bastardize something at least make sure it's not extremely predictable and boring for a good 1/2 to 2/3 of your audience - you may as well just go all in

[lokiondisneyplus]

Yes, Loki series director Kate Herron knows about your fan theory about the show, the analysis you posted to social media. No, she won’t tell you what she thinks about it, or whether you were right.

“I follow all the conversations on Twitter,” Herron told Polygon in an interview shortly after Loki’s season 1 finale. “I don’t always weigh in on them, because I made the show, so they don’t want me weighing in like, ‘Actually, guys…’ I think that’s the whole point of art — it should be up for debate and discussion.”

[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for season 1 of Loki.]

Loki has been a hit for streaming service Disney Plus — episode 6 of the show, the final installment for this season, was reportedly watched by more households than any of the platform’s MCU finales to date. The series has been a popular source of fan conjecture and argument, with one particularly big rolling conversation focusing on whether the budding romantic relationship between trickster Asgardian Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and his alternate-universe counterpart Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) is a form of incest.

Herron is willing to speak up about that one. “My interpretation of it is that they’re both Lokis, but they aren’t the same person,” she says. “I don’t see them as being like brother and sister. They have completely different backgrounds […] and I think that’s really important to her character. They sort of have the same role in terms of the universe and destiny, but they won’t make the same decisions.”

Herron says thematically, Loki falling for Sylvie is an exploration of “self-love,” but only in the sense that it’s Loki learning to understand his own motives and integrity. “[The show is] looking at the self and asking ‘What makes us us?’” Herron says. “I mean, look at all the Lokis across the show, they’re all completely different. I think there’s something beautiful about his romantic relationship with Sylvie, but they’re not interchangeable.”

Directing the final kiss between the two characters was a complicated process because it had to communicate something about each of them over the course of just a few seconds. Herron says the primary goal was creating a safe, comfortable environment for Hiddleston and Di Martino, and after that, she had to think about how to bring across Loki and Sylvie’s conflicting goals in that moment.

“It’s an interesting one, right?” she says. “Emotionally, from Sylvie’s perspective, I think it’s a goodbye. But it’s still a buildup of all these feelings. They’ve both grown through each other over the last few episodes. It was important to me that it didn’t feel like a trick, like she was deceiving him. She is obviously doing that, on one hand, but I don’t feel the kiss is any less genuine. I think she’s in a bad place, but her feelings are true.”

Herron says directing Hiddleston in the scene mostly came down to discussing the speech Loki gives Sylvie before the kiss. “That was really important, showing this new place for Loki,” Herron says. “In the first episode, he’s like, ‘I want the throne, I want to rule,’ and by episode 6, he isn’t focused on that selfish want. He just wants her to be okay.”

Loki writer and producer Eric Martin recently tweeted that he wished the show had been able to focus more time on two of its secondary characters, Owen Wilson’s Time Variance Authority agent Mobius M. Mobius, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s Ravonna Renslayer. “I wanted to explore her more deeply and really see their relationship,” he says, “But covid got in the way and we just didn’t have time.”

Asked if Loki and Sylvie’s relationship suffered from similar necessary edits, Herron says it’s true that the show’s creators and audience still don’t know everything Sylvie went through to make her so different from the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s original version of Loki. “We’ve seen her as a child, but she’s lived for thousands and thousands of years, in apocalypses on the run,” she says. “I think there’s so much more to delve into with Sylvie […] You’re filling in the blanks. You see [her on the planet] Lamentis, and it’s horrific. And you’re like, “Well, what kind of person would she be, growing up in apocalypses? What kind of personality would that give her?”

Herron says Sylvie’s backstory actually reminds her of the 1995 movie Jumanji, where a young boy is sucked into a magical board game in 1969, and emerges 26 years later as a full-grown man, played by with typical manic energy by Robin Williams. “It’s such a weird reference, but…” she says. “He’s a little boy when he ends up captive in that game, and when he comes out, it’s obviously been a life experience. With Sylvie, it’s similar. She was a child when she had to go on the run, so she’s had a very difficult life. I would love to see more of it. As Eric said, she’s a rich character, there’s so much to be explored.”

Herron says, though, that during her time on the show, material about Sylvie was added rather than cut — specifically, those scenes of her as a child, being kidnapped by the TVA. “This was before my time, but I know in the writers’ room, there were lots of avenues exploring Sylvie on the run and what her life was like,” Herron says. “I wouldn’t want to speak more to those, because I wasn’t there when they were being discussed. But something wasn’t in there that was important to me — I felt we should see her [history] in the TVA. Me and the team were talking about how it made complete sense, because episode 4 is all about twisting the idea that the TVA might be good on its head. And so that’s something that came in later, once I joined, was seeing her as a child. I think we needed to see that, not to understand her completely, but to get an idea of her motivations, why she’s so angry at this place.”

Talking more broadly about the series finale, Herron says the last few episodes weren’t as heavily referential as the first episodes, which she intended as “a love letter to sci-fi.” While early images like the TVA’s interrogation rooms had specific visual references from past science fiction, episode 6’s locations were drawn more from collaborations with the crew.

“The idea of the physical timeline being circular, our storyboard artists came up with that,” Herron says. “I had in the scripts, ‘We move through space to the end of time,” and then me and [storyboard artist Darrin Denlinger] discussed how we could play with the idea of time, while also adding MCU nods. He was like, ‘What if the timeline is circular?’ I think that’s such a striking image, like the Citadel at the End of Time is the needle on a record player. I just thought that was such a cool image, but it wasn’t necessarily taken from anything.”

Episode 6 focuses heavily on the mysterious figure He Who Remains and his citadel, a space she says was largely conceived by production designer Kasra Farahani. “I remember he brought in the art of the Citadel, and I thought it was beautiful,” Herron says. “He said, ‘The Citadel has been carved from an actual meteorite,’ which I thought was such an inspired idea. And He Who Remains’ office is the only finished portion of it.”

She says there are only a few direct homages in episode 6, including the zoom shot through space, which directly referenced a similar sequence in Robert Zemeckis’ 1997 film Contact.

“And then I have my Teletubbies reference for episode 5,” Herron says. “I wanted the Void to feel like an overgrown garden, like a kind of forgotten place. And I realized I’d pitched it as the British countryside. I remember trying to explain it to ILM, who did the visual effects, and saying, ‘Oh, you know, it’s like the Teletubbies. It’s just rolling hills, but they go on forever.’ That actually was quite a helpful reference in the end, which is funny.”

Asked for her favorite set memory from shooting the season, Herron says it comes down to Tom Hiddleston starting a mania for physical exertion before takes. “Sometimes he runs around set to get himself in the right mindset before he performs,” she says. “He does pushups. You know, you’re going into an action scene, you want to look like you’ve just been running. And it became infectious across all the cast. We’ve got so much footage of — I think Jack [Veal] ended up doing it, who plays Kid Loki. I’ve got [shots of] him and Sophia doing pushups and squats, just to get ready. It was so funny watching that echo across all the cast. I think all of them ended up doing those exercises with him at some point. It was so funny.”

“That might be my favorite set story, but it’s honestly, not a sweet one,” she adds. “I would say my favorite thing is his enthusiasm. He’s a very kind empathetic person. We were filming this in quite tough circumstances, a lot of people were far from home and isolating, and he brought this warmth and energy and joy to the set every day. And I think that made everyone feel very safe and very bonded. I’m forever grateful to him for doing that.”

[gb-patch]

Ask Answers: July 10th

I really let asks get away from me lately. I was super focused on working on that Patreon Moment. With that done I can finally think about doing other things, so here’s a new collection of answers!

Thank you for sending in questions everyone ^^.

For the new Patreon moment, will you be able to reference it in step 4? Or just like a tiny nod to it if you pick certain choices?

There won’t be. I’m sorry if you were hoping for that! The Patreon moment is meant to be entirely optional, it’s not something that gets you extra content in the main game.

Is the new CG artist the main one now? :0 I’ve noticed theres been a difference in the art style recently. Is the old CG artist still going to make art for the game? :0

The original artist still makes CGs for the game sometimes, but he mainly focuses on character sprites.

Are you going to put the NSFW our life moment on a website other than patreon? I would love to get it but I can't use patreon atm.

I don’t know. I'm afraid we can't release the Patreon Moment on a normal game storefront because we can't mix 18+ content with our family friendly game. If there's some other place similar to Patreon where it's not the normal type of full-scale public content releases we'd consider using that, but I’m not sure if there is another site that’s better than Patreon in that regard. I'm sorry.

Out of curiosity, in all of your games so far, which characters in each were the most fun to write? They obviously don't have to be your favorite characters!

Buffalo Seer in AFA, really everyone in XOD/XOBD is pretty equally entertaining to write, The Guide in LoV, and Cove in OL!

idk if you accept "personal" questions, but is there anything you've been watching/ listening to lately

Mostly, I’ve been watching/listening to Authortube videos as of late! It’s people who talk generally about the process of how books become traditionally published and/or share their own experience as they attempt to be published. I don’t have an interest in writing normal text based books, but it’s really interesting to hear about that world. I’m listening to a video about royalties right now as I answer these asks.

Will one of the desserts we get to pick be fudge? That'd be such a cute reference! 

Haha, yeah, it should. Unless I completely blank on it and forget when trying to include the various referential food options.

I don't know if this has been asked previously but what would be the approximate heights for the presets MC can choose from Step 2 ~ 4? Are there any measurement you had in mind? Sorry if I didn't make myself clear kk I've been struggling with my English lately 💀 

I don’t know, ahah. I didn’t have any numbers in mind for that. So it’s whatever you imagine it is!

I noticed a bug with the Patreon moment when it comes to what your character wears. When Jamie and Cove are kissing while my character only had dresses selected, I had both the option to remove the dress or to remove the shirt... Picking one of the options to interact with Cove, after he removed his shirt, it had Jamie remove their shirt followed by ther pants despite only having dresses picked. 

Thank you for reporting ^^

I keep refreshing steam to see when the new doc for xobd will be released. I noticed you haven't posted anything about it in quite some time. Would it be possible to ask about a timeline/potential date? (If it's even this year—) I know you and your team are probably working super hard, I'm just super curious! ~Thank you!~ 

There are more stories done, I just haven’t gotten around to publicly releasing them. Hopefully I will have a chance to spend the time on that sooner rather than later!

hello!! i’m not sure if it’s an update but i’ve just replayed our life and at the end i can’t propose to cove anymore? :(( i’ve actually tried playing twice but the options are not there anymore, did you guys remove the options? i’m sorry if you’ve answered this before!! thank you and have a good one :) 

I’m afraid things haven’t been changed or removed, so I think you might’ve accidentally picked the wrong things somewhere along the way and locked yourself out of being able to propose by mistake. Sometimes you meant to say you want to get married but instead you mis-click and have it so the MC isn’t thinking about marriage or something. All I can suggest is starting from the beginning of Step 3 and making sure to follow the steps listed in the FAQ. I’m sorry for that.

Did yall remove some of the options for when youre making out with Cove in the charity moment? I could've sworn you could grab his bonkadonk and its not there anymore 

This is the same situation as the above. We didn’t remove things and you’re not wrong that there are sometimes those options. But there are various choices you have to make to get those options and it sounds like you accidentally missed something. If your relationship isn’t long-term, you can’t do it for example.

HI IM SO EXCITED I CAN FINALLY GET THE STEP 3 DLC 

Thank you for getting it!

Is Shiloh super totally straight bc I’m very gay and a huge Shiloh fan, would my man make an exception?😩

Sadly, he is one of our super straight characters. I’m sorry.

Hi, I have a very dumb question. In Step 2 does Cove not wanna share his drink with us at the mall (or rather why he stops drinking it) because it's an indirect kiss? Or is it like ...weird to him to share? Because if I remember right he eats off our spoon in the birthday scene right? 

Yeah, he’s awkward about it because he likes the MC and it feels very personal to share a straw with his crush.

Hi! If you don't mind me asking, who is the artist for OL2? Their style is so pretty! 

Thank you for saying so! This is her Twitter- https://twitter.com/redridingheart

Do Beginnings & Always and Now & Forever exist in the same universe? 

Yep! XOXO Droplets also exists in the same universe. It’s one big GB Patch world, haha.

Do Pran's parents regret the way they raised him? Do they feel ashamed of it?

No. They’re the type of people best cut out because they’re not gonna change. Which is why Pran does go very limited contact when he’s an adult.

Hi! I just wrapped up my second playthrough of Our Life, and I absolutely adore it, but I had a question. I went to the gallery and found I was missing 2 CGS (specifically Step 1-3 and 2-3) and I had no clue where they would've shown up. Which moments are those found in? 

You get it by telling Cove about his dad offering you money to be his friend in Step 1 and Step 2. You can’t get both in one playthrough, since you can only tell Cove the truth once. I’m really glad you liked it!

Hi hi! Please, how tall is Baxter and Derek? Love the game so much and I can't wait to see more! 

I don’t know, aha. I think Baxter was around 5′10 and Derek was like 5′8/5′9, maybe. I really am not one who has specific heights for things in mind.

is adult cove a bottom, top, or switch? 

A switch, though would choose the top if he had to pick.

I was wondering if there is a way to transfer save data? Even if through the game files. I wanted to be able to transfer my save data from my desktop over to my laptop so that I could continue playing right where I left off from but I'm not entirely sure how to go about that. 

If you save the save folder/persistent data of the game from your desktop and put it into the game folder on your other device, that could work.

Hi! Is it possible for us to know the date when our life: now and forever comes out on steam? Sorry if you've mentioned it before but I haven't seen it and I'm looking foward to that happening and just wanted to know :) 

It’s gonna be a long time, I’m afraid. There’s no estimate right now.

I started playing Our Life with my sister a while ago, and I think you guys should know that we discovered your secret. >:)

L from death note and Cove are clearly the same person, and this whole game is just an origin story!!

I’ve never seen that show so I’m sorry to say I don’t understand the connection/reference you’re trying to make. I’m pretty out of the loop when it comes to media. I don’t watch movies or TV.

Will OL2 have options for disabled MCs?

I understand if it's too complicated, just curious

Unfortunately, it’s not really something we have a plan for. We couldn’t finish the game if we tried to include every disability and have it be meaningful. It’d just be too much content to create. But if we decide to only include a few, how would we choose which disabilities get to be represented and which are left out? I don’t know. It’ll probably have to be something we don’t include as an option again, sadly. I’m sorry.

playing our life > anything else 

Haha, I’m glad you’re enjoying it.

Honestly, I would like to thank Our Life for helping me come to terms with my sexuality. Before, I never would've actually thought that it was possible to like boys romantically and still be asexual. Almost all of the BL visual novels I've read had unskippable sexual content in them and it honestly just didn't click with what I feel. I'm glad I found Our Life. I love the game, the developers, and this fandom so much. Now, I can safely come out as homoromantic AND asexual (at least anonymously here anyway; my parents are still huge homophobes 😂). 

Aw, it’s great to hear you felt comfortable being yourself in the game! That’s wonderful. I’m really sorry about your parents, though.

Will the demo for OL2 be on android? Really not sure if I could wait any longer than I have to aha 

Yeah, it’ll be available for Android once we eventually release a demo!

Do all these reveals perhaps mean development is progressing ahead of schedule? Please let that be the case I'm already obsessed with Qiu 

No, sorry, aha. Art comes along much faster than script/programming-work for us. It’s gonna be a long time before the game is a finished thing you can actually play. But at least we can look at the beautiful images.

Hey! First of all I wanna say I reallllllyyyyy loooovvveeee Our Life and XOXO Droplets! I have over 300 hours of playtime on Our Life… Anyways, I was just wondering, are the Derek and Baxter DLCs going to come out at the same time? If not, which one do you plan to release first? :3 

They will come out separately and Derek will be first! Glad you like the game.

I keep replaying Our Life to get every possible iteration and I am loving it <3 I was wondering if Cove gets locked out of his confession because MC was talking to Lee, would it be possible to confess to him in step 4? 

Yeah, you can avoid the confession in Step 3 and then get it in Step 4.

Hi, my Cove wears bracelets through step 2 and 3 but I still don't get an option to give him a bracelet? I didn't even know that was possible until I seen someone else ask about it lol 

Hm, did you use the Cove creator? Maybe there’s a bug where using the creator to add bracelets doesn’t fulfill the requirement to give Cove a bracelet in Step 3.

Wait, I'm dense, when does Baxter appear in step 2? Is it from big park firework? I feel so bad since i really love Baxter and waiting to buy his dlc. 

It’s in the Soiree Moment. You have to be just friends with Cove, indifferent, or crushing but not ask Cove to the dance at all. Then while there you can find someone new to dance with. But if you bring Cove to the dance while crushing, the MC won’t wanna dance with anyone else so you can’t get the scene.

In step 2 when we go to the soiree I made my mc go alone and baxter chooses the mc to dance, i'm curious, why did he pick the mc? sorry if this has been asked before! 

Because the MC looked to be around his age, seemed to also be searching for a partner, and had nice legs. A perfect option for him.

I read some of the FAQs, and I saw that we could tell Baxter about the condo that he rented there was previously the mean old grandparents. how do we get the mc to tell him that? 

It happens in the DLC Moment “Late Shift”. If you don’t have a job you instead get a longer scene with Baxter.

I don’t know if you’ve addressed this or not, but are you planning on paying voice actors for our life: now and forever? 

Yeah, we pay our VAs in all our projects.

hey can i ask how you did the moments thing in ol? im trying to get into making visual novels and while im VERY sure its out of my comfort zone and all that atm i kinda wanna know just for the future, bc im p sure it would work well for something i wanna do :O but its also fine if you cant say for other reasons :> 

I’m afraid I’m not sure what you mean. Are you asking how we programmed the screen or something script related? Adding Moments like that is pretty straightforward, though. You just have buttons that open to different labels and then the scripts are essentially individual short stories/vignettes. Good luck with your VN!

Since Autumn becomes gender fluid later in the game, will there be a character who remains as he/him to romance in game? 

OL1 has the he/him LIs, OL2 is all about other genders.

I don't want to impose on your creative plans, but a parrot could possibly make a good pet in an OL-type game? They're pretty long-lived and likely to still be thriving by the end even if the MC got them back in step 1. 

I do appreciate the suggestion, but I’m afraid it’s not likely going to happen. I understand there are technically some animals that could theoretically live long enough to last the whole game that or we could have the MC only get a pet after some years have already passed. But the many things that would have to be considered/accommodated for makes it just something we probably can’t manage adding. I’m sorry.

As time passes will we be able to see Qiu and Tamarack's other stage arts as well?

They are both so cute i can't wait to be friends with them!

Yeah, we’ll show content from other Steps in the future. It’ll be a little while from now, though.

Can you date Cove and still have your family comfort you in the car?

You can’t get Cove’s Step 3 confession scene if you have the family comfort you in the car. But that’s not the only way to date him. You can get together with him earlier in the game or later on in Step 4.

Is Mc always going to be the one walking down the aisle or could Cove do it? Also could you choose to have one of your moms walk you? 

No. Cove wouldn’t want to walk down the aisle like that and the MC automatically respects that. And the MC also gets to have their preferences respected, so it’s up to you whether they want to do an aisle walk or not. You also can pick who, if anyone, walks with you.

Once step 4 is out, will you be able to go the whole game on crush/love without either of you confessing? 

Yes, as long as you tell the game you don’t want to progress the relationship. Even in Step 4 it won’t force you to officially get together.

Howdy, so in Step 4, there will be any Romance with Derek that is not part of any dlc? 

He’s only a friend unless you get his romance story.

Will the step 4 in OL2 be one big step or are you considering moments? 

Step 4 is just an epilogue in both games.

hi kind of a weird question but!! we know tht cliff doesn't start dating again but. wht abt flings? like does he ever do 1 night stands or anything? thank u!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Nope. Cliff has a very small interest in sex. If he’s not in a real relationship with a partner he’s crazy about it simply isn’t something he feels a need for, so one night stands wouldn’t even cross his mind.

sorry if you've already answered this, but i was wondering if there were plans for there to be bonus love interests in OL2 like how we have derek and baxter in OL1.

Maybe! There are side characters who could be given romance stories, but whether or not it will happen depends on funding and how long everything else takes to finish.

I don't know if i'm allowed to ask about ol2 here yet, if not u can ignore this or answer it later. My question is can you date one of them and be good friends with the other? I don't want to be strangers with the other bcs i love them both a lot :<

Yes you can!

what patreon level do i have to be to unlock the nsfw moment? im on the $5 one right now, will that give me access to the moment, or just access to the moment progress? 

That’ll give you access! Tier 2 and anything higher allows the player to download it.

[flclarchives]

Amusing Himself to Death, an Akadot.com interview with Kazuya Tsurumaki (director of FLCL and assistant director of Evangelion) from around December 2001. In the article, Tsurumaki explains a few things about Evangelion, his mentality behind FLCL as a whole, and the meaning of the name ‘FLCL’.

Full article text is under the cut, or read the article in its original form [here].

Kazuya Tsurumaki was a relatively little-known animator when Hideki Anno selected him to work as the assistant director on Neon Genesis Evangelion. For the TV series, which became a smash hit in Japan and one of the touchstones of the current surge of interest in anime in the US, Tsuramaki served as the main storyboard artist as well as assistant director, and when Studio Gainax began production on a trio of Evangelion films Tsurumaki got his first directorial assignment.

As he tells the story, Anno came to him after Eva and announced that he was out of ideas and that it was up to Tsurumaki to dream up the next project because, "you are next." Tsurumaki let his imagination run wild, but by the time he had written a script, Anno - despite his declaration that he had no stories left to tell - was already several steps ahead of Tsurumaki and in pre-production for his next series, Kareshi Kanojo no Jijo, leaving Tsurumaki a chance to have complete and unsupervised creative control of his own series FLCL.

FLCL, referred to as "Fooly Cooly" (or "Furikuri" by its American fans), is unlike any anime series to come before it. Wild, maniacally fast-paced physical comedy; exaggerated, exuberant animation alternately pushing towards surrealist- as when mecha exuviate from a bump on young Naota's head - and deconstructionist - as when the animation literally stops and the story is told by a camera bouncing across a page of black and white manga art panels; and obsessively, often irrelevantly, referential to obscure Tokyo-pop bands and anime insider trivia; FLCL was hyperkinetic and disorienting, yet mesmerizing, almost transgressive, and undeniably original. It inspired enthusiastic admiration for Tsurumaki as a creator, even amongst the perhaps 90% of the series' fans who were absolutely baffled by much of it. One is tempted to refer to it as announcing the arrival of full blown post-modernism in animation, or perhaps as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable of the anime industry.

When Tsurumaki visited Baltimore to speak to American fans at the recent Otokon Convention, predictably, many of the questions were along the lines of, "Hi, I really loved FLCL [or Evangelion], but could you please explain this part of it to me?"

Tsurumaki answered all questions genially with a self-deprecating and often mischievous sense of humor. For example:

Why does Haruko hit Naota over the head with her guitar?

Kazuya Tsurumaki: Naota is trying to be a normal adult and she belts him to make him rethink his decision.

Why does Evangelion end violently, and somewhat unhappily?

KT: People are accustomed to sweet, contrived, happy endings. We wanted to broaden the genre, and show people an ugly, unhappy ending.

Why is the character of Shinji portrayed as he is?

KT: Shinji was modeled on director Hideki Anno. Shinji was summoned by his father to ride a robot, Anno was summoned by Gainax to direct an animation. Working on Nadia [Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water, one of Anno and Tsurumaki's earlier projects] he wondered if he still wanted to work like this. He thought that working on Eva could help him to change.

Is there any particular reason why so many Gainax series feature very anxious, unhappy young male protagonists with no parents?

KT: Yes, the directors at Gainax are all basically weak, insecure, bitter, young men. So are many anime fans. Many Japanese families, including my own, have workaholic fathers whose kids never get to see them. That may influence the shows I create.

Could you explain the mecha bursting from Naota's head in FLCL?

KT: I use a giant robot being created from the brain to represent FLCL coming from my brain. The robot ravages the town around him, and the more intensely I worked on FLCL the more I destroyed the peaceful atmosphere of Gainax.

Why doesn't FLCL follow one story?

KT: In the third episode Ninamori was almost a main character, a kid who, like Naota, has to act like an adult.  After episode three her problem was solved so we wrote her out.  She has many fans in Japan and we got plenty of letters about that decision.  For FLCL I wanted to portray the entire history of Gainax, and each episode has symbols of what happened behind the scenes on each of Gainax's shows.   Episode one has many elements of Karekano; episode two, a lot of Evangelion references, etc.

Where does the title FLCL come from?

KT: I got the idea from a CD in a music magazine with the title Fooly-Cooly.  I like the idea of titles that are shortened long English words. Pokémon for "Pocket-Monsters" for instance, and an old J-pop band called Brilliant Green that was known as "Brilly-Grilly."

Is there any reason why the extra scenes added to Eva for the video release were cut in the first place?  Did you think the story would mean something different with them intact?

KT: The scenes that were added to Eva for its video release aren't that important.  We added them as an apology for taking so long to get the video out.  Maybe they'll help people understand things, because the episodes were done under tough deadlines the first time around.

Can you explain the symbolism of the cross in Evangelion?

KT: There are a lot of giant robot shows in Japan, and we did want our story to have a religious theme to help distinguish us.   Because Christianity is an uncommon religion in Japan we thought it would be mysterious.  None of the staff who worked on Eva are Christians.  There is no actual Christian meaning to the show, we just thought the visual symbols of Christianity look cool.  If we had known the show would get distributed in the US and Europe we might have rethought that choice.

After the panel, Mr. Tsurumaki sat down to speak with Akadot.

Do you enjoy confusing people?

KT: I have a twisted sense of humor.  I'm an Omanu Jacku, a contrarian.  [Writer's note- Omanu Jacku is a folk character a bit like Puck, a mischief maker]

What do you see differently now that you're working as a director rather than only as a visual artist?

KT: As an animator I have only the art; as a director story is really big.  I still feel as an animator and I often have trouble putting the needs of the story first.

Did you intend from the start for FLCL to be as bizarre as it wound up?

KT: From the very start I wanted a different flavor.  To achieve this I had to re-train the animators to be as stylized as I wanted them to be because I wasn't drawing it.  I knew that not everyone would get it.  I deliberately selected very obscure J-pop culture and anime sub-culture jokes and references.  Because Eva was so somber I always intended to make FLCL outrageous and wacky.

Why the choice to break out of conventional animation and use manga pages? Was it at all a response to how many anime are using computers to achieve smoother and more realistic visuals?  Were you trying to go the opposite direction?

KT: I like manga, not only to read, but the visuals.  The pen drawings, the frame breakdowns and layouts . . . This is the first time I have used digital animation, and those bouncing manga shots wouldn't have been possible with cel animation.   Personally I'm not interested at all in using computers for realistic animation.  I'm impressed by it sometimes, but I'm interested in using computers to do what was once impossible, not to do smoother versions of what has already been done.  I want to be less realistic.

Has using digital animation techniques changed the way you work, or the way you feel about your work when you see it?  Does it still feel like it's yours if a computer did much of it?

KT: Before I got into digital animation I saw other shows that were using it and I felt that there was no feeling, it was empty.   As an animator, there's a sense of release when you draw a cel.  There's something there.  Working on FLCL, though, I learned that computers can do more, and, most of all, that they allow room for trial and error and revising, more freedom to experiment.  That is why I now feel that cel art cannot win against computers.  For actual animation everything is still drawn on paper.  That work hasn't changed.  It's the other stuff, the touchups, and coloring.  If we didn't use paper, maybe the feeling would change.

Earlier today you said that you were trying to broaden the genre by giving Eva a sad ending.  Does the sameness of much of today's anime bore you?

KT: First of all we didn't use a sad ending to annoy fans.  When they're upset, that really bothers us.  Personally, I think a happy ending is fine, but not if it is achieved too easily.  That's no good.

For all the fans that are confused at all, if you had to define in one sentence what FLCL is about, what would you say?

KT: FLCL is the story of boy meets girl.  For me it is also about how it's ok to feel stupid.  With Evangelion there was this feeling that you had better be smart to understand it, or even just to work on it. With FLCL I want to say that it's okay to feel stupid.

Even though it may be strange to us, do you have in your head a logic behind it?  Are you trying to portray a story that follows the logic of dreams, or is it supposed to make sense symbolically?

KT: I'd like you to think of FLCL as imagination being made physical and tangible, just as it is for me when I take whatever is in my head and draw it.

So what are you working on next?

KT: Right now Gainax has told me that they'll support anything I choose to create, but I'm having trouble coming up with any ideas.

Why is that?

KT: Releasing titles for market, I know I have to make something to please fans, but I'm not a mature enough person to accept that fact.  If I'm not amusing myself I can't do it.  I feel bad that fans have to put up with such behavior from me.  I apologize. 

[meta-squash]

I may as well also transcribe the Heart Of The Matter video analysis/interpretation that I did on twitter as well. Again, since it was a twitter thread some of the paragraph/sentence structure is probably a bit choppy and weird.

A lot of Libertines songs are a pretty equal ratio of instruments to vocals, but Heart Of The Matter is absolutely a commanding "Listen to the words" song. The mixing for this song is so interesting. Vocals up, guitars in the back, drums even further back. Like, vocals take front and center, guitars are way more ambient than actually carrying anything really complex. There’s no solo. All the instrumental is so far back, tucked away under the vocals, because at least for this song, the truly important part is the words, not so much the combined work of words and instrumentals. I'm so glad they wrote this song and did this video. It's a really good "we know what you're doing, fuck off" to the media but also a "here's all the shit we've dealt with over the years and we're still going" for themselves.

I love that they picked Dean Fragile to play the "true fan." I wonder if the other people in the video are just hired actors or if they're also friends of the band. I kind of hope they're just actors because that would make it even better. Also idk if they did this on purpose or it's just Dean Fragile's makeup in general, but it looks like there's already tear tracks on his face when he sits down at the beginning, like he's already been forced to watch this peep show he doesn't want to see before and he has to do it again.

This is the video where I understand why Peter “got” the acting part and Carl didn't when they first met. Peter's a lot more physically emotive. You immediately are drawn to the intensity and openness of his expressions. Peter’s face almost from the get-go looks upset. There’s a lot of different emotions there, whereas Carl’s expressions and emotions are mostly anger or coldness. Which I think makes sense. I mean Peter's always been more dramatic, more emotive, more intense. There's that interview where he calls his drug abuse "self defense from reality" and in general it seems like his emotive state is always so intense and overwhelming/overwhelmed. Whereas Carl seems much calmer. Or at least more in-control, more subdued in his emoting. So it would make sense that this acting-out of their individual self destruction would mirror that perspective and the two reactive styles.

I just noticed that when he first enters, Peter taps the side of his double's face like "Sit the fuck up, we're gonna show them what they want to see" way. Like, showy but also casually cruel. Also every member of the band is wearing poorly-applied stage makeup; as real as this all is, within the peep show it’s seen by everyone else as a performance. I love the way the "audience" goes from intrigued, to horrifically fascinated, to gleeful, to getting off on the hurt. And they're not passively watching either, they’re pointing and laughing, participating and egging on. The only one who doesn’t seem to participate in some way is the “true fan,” whose only reaction is tears. During the words “heart of the matter” at the beginning of each chorus, the shot is always the audience, and “why so glum, it’s all on a platter” is also usually the audience.

There are so many more things on Peter's table than on Carl's. Carl gets coke, a hammer, and booze. Peter gets heroin & crack & related paraphernalia, cigarettes, a straight razor, and a whole lot of other random crap that I can’t identify because it’s hard to get a clear shot. Like, they were really shooting for brutally honest here. (Also that seems to reflect every photo Peter has ever posted of a table full of crap.)

I find the way Carl interacts with his double really interesting. Just this weird sort of back and forth between this sort of semi-comforting headlock-hug and extreme violence. Aside from the neck pat, Peter doesn’t interact with his double in the same way, but he looks a lot more upset than Carl does. There’s a cruel sort of cold smile on Carl’s face during most of the abuse, either that or hateful anger. It looks like a detached, almost superior-feeling “fuck you” expression, like an “I’m doing this because I hate you.” Whereas Peter’s face is either the same sort of cruel amusement or a sorrowful, sympathetic sadness, an “I’m doing this even though I don’t want to.”

And then you have John and Gary, and I love that they're included in this narrative because it's so important. And they're portraying two totally different types of worried, frustrated helplessness. You have John, who's just sitting or standing there, stock still, jaw clenched, staring sadly into middle distance or straight into the camera with this judgemental look. Like this "you are complicit" face. This sort of frozen, stoic pain of knowing that you can’t do anything because you have no control. And then you have Gary, who's shocked, yelling at them and yelling at the audience, trying to get someone to listen or do something and no one's listening or doing anything. His helplessness is more external, trying to connect and then getting frustrated at inaction or complicity. But Gary comforts the "true fan."

And John and Gary get to be inside the room with Carl, but they're outside of it, sitting with the audience whenever Peter's in the room.

Also, even at the beginning and the end, Carl never looks at or interacts with the audience. John and Gary get to be both audience members and inside the room. Peter looks at and acknowledges the audience at the beginning and at the end, but Carl doesn't acknowledge them at all. But Peter doesn’t acknowledge John or Gary, and Carl does.

It's interesting that Peter's verse in Heart Of The Matter sounds like it's speaking to the audience while the other two, which are Carl's verses, are self-narratives. It makes sense, because this song is a sentiment that most of Down In Albion expressed, but Carl's albums didn't really. So Carl gets to narrate for both of them, while Peter gets to do the finger-pointing at the fans and media. Also makes sense, because his problems had more media frenzy, so he has more grievances with people rubbernecking his problems. Carl gets to "hold" the personal narrative for both of them. But that makes sense as well. Peter gets to be angry at the media and at "fans" while Carl gets to express their personal hurts. Because if it was Peter singing those lines it would only be about Peter. But with Carl singing them it's clearly both entwined in each other.

In the last chorus, Carl beats his double with a wooden block, which I think is referential to the sink incident. I can't tell what Peter's doing to his double. I thought he was strangling him but it looks like he's just pushing him down into a fetal position? Carl's face at the end, before he reveals his double, is one of like...relief, almost, or exhausted release. He grabs his double’s hair/face with not a little roughness. Peter looks so sad looking at his own slumped over double, and he’s so gentle when he lifts the double’s head. But I love Peter's face when he reveals his dead double. "This is what you wanted, right?"

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

The Pretty Reckless’ Taylor Momsen Lives for ‘Death by Rock and Roll’

“The 27 Club” is a depressing cultural phenomenon — it’s the age musical luminaries Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Mia Zapata of the Gits, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix died.

The Pretty Reckless singer Taylor Momsen is now is 27 but was 25 when she wrote a reckoning in the semi-autobiographical “25.” The song appears on Death By Rock and Roll, the band’s fourth record. The LP is a stunner; a dozen stellar songs that are at once reverential, referential and intensely personal.

In the past four years, Momsen lost two hugely important people in her life. In 2017, Chris Cornell died by suicide, and not long after, her musical mentor and best friend Kato Khandwala died in a motorcycle crash. Understandably, Momsen was devastated. Thanks in no small part to the catharsis of music, the age of 27 seems to be a renewal, as she exorcises her pain in Death By Rock and Roll. The Pretty Reckless’ best album to date, the passion and pain are palpable in both music and lyrics. The plaintive “Got So High” could be an alt-rock chart-topper, in wonderful contrast to the raw rallying cry and aggressive gutter-rock feel of the title track. She moves easily from the quirky cinematic moment of “Broomsticks” into the fiery, feminist coven-call that is “Witches Burn.”

Speaking from her pandemic hideout in Maine, Momsen isn’t on the other side of the grieving process.

“I’d be a liar to say that I’m, you know, over things,” she tells SPIN. “I’m still in the process of healing, but the making of this record really was just a huge step forward. I was in a very, very dark space there for a while, and if it wasn’t for the making of this record, I don’t know if I would be here right now.”

She wallowed, but ultimately her instinct for self-preservation kicked in. As did a worldwide pandemic. Masking up is nothing new for Momsen, who calls herself “a super hypochondriac” who hasn’t left her house since March.

“Even before COVID, I was strict. It probably stems from being a singer and not wanting to get sick on tour, because you never fully recover. So [I always flew wearing] masks,” Momsen says.

Though she’s healthy, and it’s probably not an exaggeration to say that, emotionally, Momsen was saved by rock and roll. “I keep just sticking to the word rebirth,” she says. “I know it sounds cliché, but it really does feel like that for the band.”

While the songs are truthful, sometimes sad, always powerful, they’re never a pity party. “I keep trying to want to put a positive spin on it because I don’t want it to be this representation of this very morbid thing,” Momsen says. The concept behind Death By Rock & Roll is a positive rallying crying, something a band might shout together before going on stage. “It’s an ethic that we live our life by; go out your own way, rock and roll till I die,” she continues. “Don’t let anyone tell me differently.”

The phrase “death by rock and roll” was coined as the band’s de facto motto by Khandwala, which made it an appropriate choice for the album title. The band’s friend, producer and touchstone, Khandwala died in 2018 at the age of 47. He was with The Pretty Reckless from 2010’s Light Me Up to 2014’s Going To Hell and 2016’s Who You Selling For.

Khandwala’s memory bookends the album: A recording of his actual footsteps on a wooden floor begins the record, and the final song is the poignant tribute “Harley Darling,” a stellar ballad that could be a hit on Americana/country radio. If the only way around something is through it, Momsen dove in headfirst, putting all her angst, love, sadness and power into the songs.

“The record delves into a lot of darkness and a lot of sadness. There was no way around that as a writer. And as a person. It just became so a part of who I was that I couldn’t avoid it. But I think by writing it and getting it out, that was a huge part of the healing process.”

Wanting to use music to process and express her emotions, she called Khandwala, who had produced every The Pretty Reckless album, to talk about recording.

But then came the call that Khandwala had died.

“That was the nail in the coffin for me. I threw my hands up in the air and kind of went ‘Yeah, I give up.’ I went down a very dark rabbit hole of depression and substance abuse and everything that comes with that.” she confesses. Momsen was so down that she couldn’t even listen to music. Eventually, listening to her favorite artists helped her. “I started with the Beatles, listening to every detail, the whole Anthology, and just going through what made me fall in love with music when I was young.”

The band – drummer Jamie Perkins, guitarist Ben Phillips and bassist Mark Damon – met Momsen through Khandwala and were all equally devastated, processing losses in their own ways. They were on tour with Soundgarden in 2017, which was a thrill but ended in tragedy when Cornell died.

“As an artist [being asked to open the tour] was the highest compliment that you could possibly get,” she says. “If you know anything about me, I mean Soundgarden is just the epitome [when it comes to rock bands]. I was there that last night in Detroit,” she remembers. “I talked to him at night I gave him a hug and said goodbye. When I wake up to that news the next morning … It just went from the most elating experience to the one of the most devastating. And Kato was at all those shows.”

Cornell’s death shook Momsen and the band profoundly. She says it “took me down to a place where I wasn’t useful in the middle of a record cycle.” The Pretty Reckless were supposed to be on the road for another year, but Momsen wasn’t up to performing as she dealt with her grief. “I couldn’t grieve and continue to get on stage every night and pretend, put on this big rock show like everything was okay. I left the tour,” she says.

With time, she was able to listen to Soundgarden’s music, and eventually, she picked up a guitar. Death by Rock & Roll was a record that was easy in the worst way possible.

“I didn’t have to try to write it. It was more just a necessity that I didn’t even know I needed. It just kind of poured out of me,” Momsen says of the writing process. “There were a lot of tears during the recording. We put everything we had into this album, physically, emotionally. There are good days, bad days, obviously. I think the full spectrum of emotions was spanned on making this, from anger to tears of happiness to tears of sadness.” Some days were too difficult for Momsen even to attempt vocals, too heartbroken from the past few years.

That said, Momsen, in conversation, along with the record itself, aren’t outwardly mournful. Her voice has laughter and life. “I’m ecstatic for people to hear the album and to share it because I’m really proud of it. I know it sounds cliche, but it really does feel like the first album, like we had to start from scratch again, and we didn’t know how that was going to go.”

Still, there are songs where Momsen chooses not to divulge the true inspiration to inquisitive journalists. “I think it’s unfair to the listener to detail song lyrics in a personal manner. It takes away what it means to [the listener].” She offers up an example to clarify: “I’m a huge Pink Floyd fan. (She references “The Great Gig in the Sky” in the song “Rock and Roll Heaven.”) I’ve watched every documentary ever made about Pink Floyd. In one, Roger Waters is talking about ‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond,’ going into depth about what the song was about to him, about Syd Barrett.”

Momsen was shocked to learn the song’s true story. “It was so not how I had taken that song my entire life! I’m glad that I know the story now. But if I had known before I listened to it, I think that it would have changed my perspective of the song. It wouldn’t have had the same impact that it had on me and my personal life. That’s why I don’t like to do that.”

Death by Rock and Roll reaffirms The Pretty Reckless’ love of rock and roll, along with the people who made them who they are, musically and as individuals. “I think because we went through so much trauma, and so much loss, that this record, in one way, feels so much like a gift. We’re given the gift of rebirth; I mean, how many artists can say that? As artists, you struggle to find inspiration always. In this case, inspiration was just thrust upon me.”

With a record that marks such a powerful turning point for The Pretty Reckless, talking about Khandwala and Cornell will be inevitable and ongoing. “This record starts and ends with my love letter to Kato. So there’s no getting around talking about that,” Momsen concedes. “But it’s so much more than that. I think it’s reflecting on the cycle of life. You come into this world with nothing but your soul, and you leave it with nothing but your soul.”

[onestowatch]

Your Grandparents Manifest a Cinematic, Soulful Debut Album With ‘Thru My Window’  [Q&A]

Photo: Jordan Perez

Inspired by everything from ‘90s boom bap artists like Digable Planets and the Pharcyde to modern funk legends like Outkast and D'Angelo, Your Grandparents have quickly proven themselves to be their generations' torchbearers for the psychedelic soul movement. 

Using a variety of recording techniques to get the desired effect for their genre-blending debut album Thru My Window, the group credits their uniquely cohesive sound to their years-long friendship, which began in their early teens. With their lush grooves, breezy, clear vocals, a sonic aesthetic built on unwavering authenticity, and of course, a deep love for their roots and deep musical traditions passed down from their grandparents, Your Grandparents embodies what it means to be an artist to watch.

Ones To Watch had a chance to talk with the trio, comprised of DaCosta (vocals), Jean Carter (vocals), and Cole, aka ghettoblasterman (producer), to discuss their inspirations and the long days and nights that went into creating their debut album.

When you last spoke to Ones To Watch, it was for the release of your single "So Damn Fly," and now, a year later, here we are talking about the release of your debut album, Thru My Window. How are you all feeling, and what have you learned about yourselves in this last year through the album-making process?

DaCosta: From a personal outlook, I've learned that making music is heavily dependent on my mood, or just how I'm feeling and what's going on in my personal life. When things are a little too stagnant, it's a little harder to write. On the other hand, when things are flowing, and life is being lived, it's easy fuel. It's good fuel. It doesn't burn too quickly.

GBM: I've learned that no idea is too wild. It's usually less wild than I think it is.

Jean: Yeah, it's better to start at the extreme and take away. I realized I feel like a lot of artists feel like they have to put themselves through turmoil or allow certain situations to write meaningful things. Like it's not necessarily good music, but it's something that means a lot to them. I think I realized that that's not the case and inspiration comes in many different forms. It could be a person or something completely random and inanimate that makes you feel something.

What were some of those inspirations?

Jean: Definitely films.

GBM: A lot of films!

Jean: Yeah, we're all pretty big film people. We do all our own videos pretty much, and it just comes from this love of film that we've had that got nurtured in high school. We were blessed enough to have a really dope film program that Sony funded and stuff, and so we got like an impromptu film education before we graduated. So by the time we graduated, we knew how to get our own projects done without reaching out to someone else and then taxing us because they want to hire their friends and all that stuff. So because of that, we had complete creative control. I've also been watching a lot of Korean movies lately. Not during the album—wait, actually, during the album, there were a lot of old kung fu movies and blaxploitation movies from, like, the ‘70s. Also, my friend got me this Curtis Mayfield record, and "So Damn Fly" is definitely heavily influenced by that whole record.

GBM: I feel like the ‘70s in general, the ‘60s and ‘70s, definitely had a big inspiration on the aesthetic and the kind of sound we were going after. Especially with "So Damn Fly" and "Tomorrow" and those kinds of songs.

Do you feel like this album has a linear story the same way a film does, or do you feel like it's more of an anthology of the band's personal experiences?

GBM: It's kind of a mix of both.

Jean: Yeah, it started off as an anthology, and then we pieced together the story, which was largely done by Cole by sitting there and being like, “Hmmm.”

DaCosta: Yeah, it was a lot of Cole dissecting the words and putting them on the tracks.

Jean: When we're writing the words and trying to be free-flowing and expressive and stuff, we're not fully conscious of a bigger picture situation. Instead, Cole is sitting there producing everything and putting in the music and being just more of a listener than anyone else could. So he has the context, and he could find a story that we didn't know we were doing together with our three minds and in our three different lives.

GBM: It's like a puzzle almost, because I'll be sitting there at like 2 a.m. in my bed, listening to the songs, and I'm like, "Ok, Kyle said, that in the hook, so this song has to go before that," and so on and so forth. It's like a storyboard kinda.

Right, to keep the record's "plot" cohesive and self-referential.

GBM: Another big consideration was playlists. I love making playlists, and I know Kyle loves making playlists, too, so it needed to flow. It just has to flow. We didn't want songs that juxtapose each other or have opposite vibes be back to back.

DaCosta: Yeah, I think we even switched around the playlist a couple of times before we had it set in stone.

GBM: There were like fourteen songs originally, and then we got talked down to ten.

Jean: Fourteen tracks woulda went crazy!

I'm sure fans would love a deluxe version of the album at some point! So what were some of the rough draft ideas before you set these ten tracks in stone?

Jean: There were more modern-sounding tracks. The more time we spent on a project, and this being our debut, we wanted to be true to the name. We wanted to be true to the artistry that had gotten us to this point.

DaCosta: There were a couple of heavier hip-hop tracks there too.

Jean: We had been doing that, and a lot of people haven't even heard those because they're like heavy hip-hop stuff from when we were in high school and like early college.

Were there any tracks on the record that challenged you?

Jean: "Intoxicated" challenged me. I had a whole different verse. The conception of that song—I was just venting about whatever I was going through at the time, and one of my homies was like, "It's not sexy enough!" So I was just like, "What? No! I've done sexy stuff on all the other songs. Just let me vent!" So I tried another verse, and we ended up going with that one instead.

DaCosta: I mean, it worked out great though...

Jean: I mean, yeah, it sits nicely on the song, and now I have a verse for something else one day when it's time for it.

GBM: Yeah, that song went from being all of ours and everyone on our team's favorite song to our least favorite song. I will say that recording the instruments for the album was fun, but there were definitely some long hours. We had a drummer and bassist come through, and they played for like twelve hours straight doing all the songs. So the songs that have live drums on them were all done in that one day, and they even did songs we recorded that didn't make it on the final record. I think we started at 1 p.m. and we ended at 1 a.m. It was crazy.

What song are you most excited for people to hear when the album drops?

Jean: I think people are gonna like "Comfortable" a lot. Honestly, I haven't listened to the record in a while because it's existed in our world for a minute. We had just posted the visuals for that song today, and I was feelin it.

DaCosta: I think people are gonna really like "Digest." For me, it gives me that "it" factor.

GBM: I think "Red Room." It's my personal favorite and one of the more fun ones to me. It's just a good time!

You mentioned earlier that you try to maintain creative control when making your music videos and coming up with concepts for visualizers. What is your creative process like?

DaCosta: We definitely sit down, and we go through everything from storyboard to shotlist and just take and grab inspiration from all over the place. For "So Damn Fly," there was that That 70's Show shot where they're all sitting around the table, and it's spinning. So there are all types of really cool influences, and we just try to use those and make everything unique to us.

GBM: I think we kind of go through a three-step verification. The idea has to go through all three of us before it becomes something else or moves on to actually being tested out or put into picture. So that kind of attributes to the very solid identity we aim for.

It sounds like that impromptu film education you mentioned earlier has really set you up for success in creating your videos.

Jean: Yeah. My high school film teacher, Miss Butler, I took that class for two years, and then when I couldn't take it anymore, I became a TA. So then I took the after-school class, and I just spent hella hours pretty much ruining the way I enjoyed cinema and teaching myself like—she would have us look and watch these classic movies and be like, this is what they did wrong.

Can you give me an example of a classic film you would watch and critique?

Jean: The first one that comes to mind is Rear Window. I watched it a few times, just because I had taken the class a couple of times. She talked about how the set that they made and the world that they created, they had full control over. Just seeing older films and how simple things were a lot more complicated then. Like you can't just delete a take and wipe your card. Everything had to be so planned out and so intentional. You gotta do shit on purpose. It's just a lot of thinking and planning, and sometimes, I feel like it's more challenging to have more people involved in a film production sometimes because of the growing degrees of communication. With the small groups that we usually keep, everyone's on the same page as us. All of us took this same class, so we all have a similar workflow.

DaCosta: Yeah, our organization when it comes to films, we're all pretty much on the same page. You know, with what was going to happen, who's doing what, who's in charge of what, etc.

Jean: And pre-production is the biggest thing and finding the right team because we can't shoot it and be in it. Although Cole can somehow!

GBM: I'm in one scene, and I'm like, "I'm just gonna kill this scene right now, and then I'm gonna jump back." That's why I'm only in the last scene.

Because he's doing everything else!

Jean: Yeah! Then as soon as the scene cuts, it's like, I go back to directing people, and Kyle goes back to making sure we got the next shot set up.

GBM: There were only seven people on set.

DaCosta: And four out of seven were crew members

GBM: Yeah, the DP was the only person that wasn't actually a casted character. Everybody else is like multitasking.

You'll be making your first-ever festival appearance at Day N Vegas in November. How are y'all feeling about it? 

GBM: It feels incredible!

DaCosta: I'm so so excited!

Jean: If I get excited, I get nervous. So I just aim to be focused, or I don't think about it at all.

After the release of Thru My Window, what are some long-term or short-term goals y'all are manifesting?

Jean: I think for the next album, I want it to get Best Rap Album. We went R&B on this one, but nobody knows the way that we—like yes, we rap on it, but nobody knows our actual rap potential. So I feel like that's something that needs to be lived out on the next project. It's been a minute since we were rapping, bro. There are cool people out here doing the rap thing right now, but not many people have impressed me.

GBM: I kind of want this album to open up the door to doing a lot of travel. When we got back from Paris in 2019, what we experienced during that summer gave us fuel to start this project. So I feel like if we just keep that kind of like tradition going, we just travel somewhere and just make stuff, I think it'll never get steered wrong.

DaCosta: I think I want the album to just open up doors in general. I know it's kind of a broad thing, but like, we're so diverse, and between the three of us, we can do literally anything I think in the world if we put our minds to it, and we kind of plan on doing everything that we want to do. So, I kind of want this album to open the door just so that we can you can start striding towards whatever, whether it's directing movies and videos and fucking scoring—

Jean: Or directing other people's videos!

DaCosta: Yeah, all types of shit.

Thru My Window is available everywhere you can stream it. 

[spockandawe]

Okay, I want to pull together more detailed thoughts at some point, I think, because the sheer amount of material means I have about ten billion thoughts to sort out. But I’ve read all three of the mxtx novels now, and loved all of them, in different ways. Though I already tried to figure out if I can pick a Favorite, and tbh, I can’t. I love them all in ways that are too distinct to let me rank them easily. And... man, it’s lucky for my friends that social distancing is in place, or I’d be hassling them shamelessly to give these novels a try.

RIGHT. So.

The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System: Shen Yuan goes to bed full of rage directed at a trashy webnovel with a grimdark blackened hero who conquered the world and collected hundreds of women into his harem.... and wakes up in novel, while that hero is still an innocent youth. As the hero’s abusive teacher. Who is doomed for a horrifying death unless he can somehow turn things around.

I think I had the most fun with this one. I really enjoy self-referential stories, and stories poking fun at certain genres, and I’ve run into the concept of transmigration before (the idea being a person enters a fictional world, a la lost in austen), though I’m blanking on any media like that I’ve actually consumed. This was chronologically the first book mxtx wrote, and it has less of a sprawling cast with complicated relationships than the other two books, but it definitely has the thing where she lays early groundwork for later revelations that shatter my poor heart. 

And there may be fewer relationships to play with, but my GOD, do I love the relationships we got. I’ve been rolling around in svsss fanfic since I finished the book, even more so than mdzs or tgcf. There’s a lot of good crunchy relationship content with the 79 ship (they destroy me, all day every day), Liu Qingge owns my whole-ass heart, and Luo Binghe makes for a fascinating love interest. I love that even at his best, he remains a needy, needy, manipulative boy, who’s so smart and strong and nEEDY. I don’t love how the book handled moshang, but mmmm the fan content is Good. And Shen Qingqiu does the unreliable narrator thing that is usually not my jam, but works so WELL in these books, in that his unreliable narration is hugely skewed towards not giving himself nearly as much credit as he deserves. Xie Lian takes this to UNBELIEVABLE heights in tgcf, but in Shen Qingqiu’s case, it’s done on such a casual, immediate, personal level that I’m fascinated by everything he does. 

And, since Shen Yuan/Shen Qingqiu is a millennial fan of trashy romance webnovels who gets yanked into the universe of a novel he hates, into an old-timey xianxia setting, the prose is SO COOL. You swing between modern slang and old school high society courtesies at the drop of a hat, and I’m honestly awed that the translators were able to catch so much of that. Like, in-setting, I love all the nuance you can get in ‘qi-ge should give his a-jiu the scroll’ vs ‘yue-shixiong should give this teacher the scroll’ vs ‘you should give me the scroll’. But then it adds a whole new layer when the person ALSO has modern-day casual speech bouncing around in their head. It makes for a fascinating, fascinating reading experience.

The Grandmaster Of Demonic Cultivation: Thirteen years ago, Wei Wuxian died. And then he wakes up! In someone else’s body. I’m not going to try to summarize the premise of this one, go look up The Untamed if you want someone to do a better job of this than me XD

Ahhh, this was the book I read first. I still haven’t watched the show (only clips) and I’m not sure I ever will, because adhd is a hell of a drug. But it’s hard to purely evaluate the prose when there’s also this gorgeous, beautifully-acted visual adaptation all over my tumblr to bias me in its favor. I think this book benefits a lot from the MYSTERY of it all. From the very start, there’s the question of ‘what the fuck is up with this goddamn arm’ that the characters pursue, even as that takes them through flashbacks and other arcs within the story. It gives a thrust to the novel that I think isn’t exactly there in tgcf, though I’m torn on which one is “better.” This gave the story momentum, yes, but it also meant I was much more impatient in yi city and the 3zun flashbacks, because this isn’t what I was focused onnnnnn this is cool but how much longer will we BE HERE--

That being said, I think I’ll be more patient with those flashbacks on my next time through the book, now that I have a better picture of where everything is headed. I think the balance and structure of the book worked really well, I was setting myself up for self-sabotage because of the pace I was plowing through the thing. My reading habits didn’t lend themselves well to the nonlinear storytelling, and it speaks to the story’s strength that it held up that well despite me. And the CAST. My GOD. I went in not caring about anyone but Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji and maybe the jackass nephew, but... that Did Not Last. I didn’t intend to care about 3zun? Nope, too bad, you care so much now. Who cares about Xue Yang? Me. I care. Way too much. HECK!!!

And something that happens in this book and tgcf that was much less of a thing in svsss is that there are some meaningful holes in the story that I’d like to be filled, and I really care about filling-- and the story doesn’t go there. But it doesn’t leave me unhappy, it leaves me cheerfully scrabbling around in the throwaway details trying to piece together a picture of what happened when I wasn’t looking. What happened to Wei Wuxian in the burial mounds? How did Hua Cheng take control of the ghost city? Idk, but let us Rummage and theorize and roll around in ideas and have a fantastic, speculative time. Svsss might hook me more than the other stories from an au+shipping perspective, but mdzs and tgcf do a great job of making me want to roll around and create within the bounds of canon.

Heaven Official’s Blessing: 800 years ago, Xie Lian ascended to heaven. And fell. And rose again! And fell again. Now he’s ascended for the third time, and things are Awkward.

God, I just finished this, and I’m still reeling. This is the LONGEST mxtx book, that’s for sure. I also think it’s the most tightly edited translation. All the translators did an unbelievable job, I could never even approach what they accomplished, but I am genuinely stunned that a book this long was edited so well. I blew through this in about 3.5 days (if not for work, i could have made it in three dghsafdsgf) and my brain was cooking in my skull by the time I was halfway through, but I couldn’t STOP. I was ENCHANTED the entire time! I was reading so much my head was destroying me and I still sulked so HARD every time I had to put my phone down and sleep.

This book sprawls the hardest, I think, because it involves a cast made of mostly immortal/immortal-adjacent people, so time and space get... flexible. And I feel really bad saying this, because Lan Wangji is DEVOTED, but this is seriously the book with the most attentive and adoring and respectful love interest. Hua Cheng is..... god. I truly don’t think I’ve EVER read a character quite like him before, and I am so, so sad, because I don’t know how I’ll find one who lives up to these heights ever again XD I recommend reading this book just for the Hua Cheng experience, if nothing else. I was making audible noises at literally flailing at multiple points in the story, but most often, it was because of him. 

Shipping is what usually drags me into a fandom hardest, and all of these books do pretty well for themselves, all of them have a nice selection of fluffy and crunchy ships to choose from. And this one... goddammit. I just realized, that the best, most crunchy ships are too spoilery for me to be willing to talk about them here. Hell. Goddammit. But I think tgcf has the crunchiest ship of all, even better than xuexiao. I was so invested, and then there were Reveals, and then I was like OH NO THIS IS TERRIBLE BUT MY INVESTMENT HAS EXPONENTIALLY INCREASED. 

And something that I really, really appreciate, is that across the mxtx books, even though a lot of characters fit into strong archetypes, there’s nobody that is blurring together for me, either within or across the books. Liu Qingge isn’t Jiang Cheng isn’t Feng Xin. They’re all blunt, fighty boys, but all super distinct in my head, and what I want for each of them is distinct and character-driven. I want Liu Qingge to be properly cherished and I want Jiang Cheng to relax with his brother and nephew and I want Feng Xin to [goddammit i don’t want to spoil this book AGH]. It’s something I appreciated in the other books too, but I can really FEEL it in this book, with how long and luxurious it is. 

And last thing I have to say, I think, is that tgcf is so long. It’s so, so long. But I would FITE if anyone tried to pare it down at all. I can’t think of anything I’d be willing to sacrifice. I enjoyed every last piece of it so much, and it was all ultimately SO well-constructed and interlocking, that any piece I can think of snipping out would take away significant emotional impact from what was left. It’s a nonlinear story, like mdzs is nonlinear, and I loved mdzs a lot! But the construction here is so, so, so elegant. I’m just in AWE of how well it was assembled. I was in Agony as reveals happened, because oh no no no no, now that they’ve told me this, that casts this whole other scene in a brand new light! The one I read hundreds of thousands of words ago! Literally, I need to go start the book over so I can savor the shitty teens in new ways, given [redacted] as revealed in like, the last twenty percent of the book. The book was a fun experience, but there’s so Much here that I know I haven’t even absorbed yet. I loved the other mxtx books a lot, and in many ways, they were easier to get a grasp on than tgcf was, but even before I finished tgcf I was already despairingly trying to figure out how easily I could fit a full reread into my life, and I think that says a lot

[bereft-of-frogs]

aaaah you just finished Hannibal! can I ask what are some of the things you liked the most?

my god WHERE TO BEGIN??? (spoilers, obviously. should I tag spoilers? I know it’s been 5 years, but with the whole Netflix revival...)

- the aesthetics. it’s just. it’s so pretty. it’s so violent, but so so pretty. Bryan Fuller said in an interview that they were trying to create horror* that was so beautiful it was hard to look away from and they definitely nailed it. 

- specifically the season 1 aesthetics because y’all know I am folk horror trash 

- but I also love how each season evolved in the aesthetics. all three seasons had a specific and unique vibe and they stuck to it really well, to the point where the season 3 flashbacks felt separate from season 3, everything about them called back to season 1 as it resolved the Abigail Hobbs story line

- I also love how referential it is. the first episode of season 3 is just Deep Red and it’s fantastic how well they capture the mood of the gialli (with the wide shots and the academia sets, down to the soundtrack and the costuming...without me having to suffer through the whole dubbing thing). 

- I guess all of the above is I just love how intentional everything was about this series. You really got the sense that the people making it really had a vision and worked hard to keep true to that vision. 

- also, let’s be real, I’ve spend the last 5 years under the assumption that reports of ‘Hannigram’ have been greatly exaggerated because, well it’s tumblr and they tend to do that. I honestly didn’t even really believe Bryan Fuller. I watched Shudder’s Horror is Queer panel before I started season 3 and I was like, ‘naw it can’t have gotten that explicit’ but oh my god it did. I love love love it when creators embrace fan interpretation and I also love the tension of their relationship through that whole last season. 

- that whole last scene. and people say they never had sex... (insert a more cleverly phrased ‘you think sex is good, but have you ever murdered a serial killer in perfect sync and bathed in his blood in the moonlight and then cast yourselves into the tumultuous sea?)

- additionally, Alana Bloom’s whole season 3 arc is real fantastic, I love how dark her lipstick gets. (and she just gets to be powerful and haughty and have her child with her murder-wife and wear dark clothes and dark lipstick and she is so beautiful) 

- Lawrence Fishburne is a national treasure

(* In yet another episode of ‘men argue with me about horror’, a guy tried to claim that Hannibal wasn’t horror the other day and I really went through a 5 minute self-doubt spiral where I was like ‘oh god...is it not? is it not horror?’ and then I was like @ me: ‘fuck no, of course it is, you just watched Bryan Fuller talk about it on the ‘Horror is Queer’ panel and read a bunch of interviews that talk about how it is literally horror, and it’s super referential’ and that conversation was just another example of ‘white dudes just saying whatever and I feel the need to show up with a 5-paragraph essay with appropriate citations’.)

Anyways, I’m probably going to start rewatching soon because now that I have the whole narrative I want to soak up the aesthetics, this may have spawned an ill-advised creative venture on my part (that’s a wip right now, will let y’all know if it gets off the ground, don’t want to jinx it but I’m real excited about it right now), I can’t believe I’ve slept on this show for five years. What an excellent finale to my ‘cannibalism quarantine theme’. XD 

I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts but. Anyway. It’s just real pretty. <3 

[surrealsunday]

hi brilliant writer, i adore your stories. They are complex and nuanced. I'm kind of reader/viewer who loves to search deeper meaning, hidden trops/hints you know connecting the dots, where smt result from smt else. And my question is where is the line between paralelism and repeating/copying the storyline? And do you think skamfr crossed that line? Because i think they did. They repeat concept of parallela in kind of snobbish way like 'wow this is so clever' when it's not. i'm fed up.

Thank you so much! I appreciate that a lot! 

This is a very interesting question. I think it depends on exactly what you’re referring to specifically. In general I don’t think skamfr has done anything particularly well since the end of s3. I do think they rely on particular storytelling devices over and over again, and the unfortunate part of that being, they’re not things we want to see - i.e. cheating storylines, love triangles, drama piled on top of drama, abusive parents, lack of communication, isolation, etc. etc. If they took those narrative devices and applied them in ways we thought were brilliant, I don’t think we’d notice as much or be as bothered. 

Now if you’re referring to the way they’ve drawn parallels between Elu and other couples? I’m not a fan. I absolutely LOATHED the way they did this in s5. It makes me angry just to think about it. I didn’t hate it as much in s6 - probably because Maya and Lola themselves just seemed so incredibly different from Eliott and Lucas and their whole storyline just hit very differently. But when there seemed to be more obvious parallels, my general feeling was that they were heavily relying on triggering that familiarity in their audience in order to cultivate those same s3 feelings - i.e. they wanted to lure us back in because well... if it worked with Elu 🙄. But, while at the beginning of the season I thought it was really going to piss me off, as I say, Maya and Lola’s story was so totally different, it didn’t end up giving me Elu vibes at all so it was fine. 

I think in general repetition and parallels are pretty normal in writing (I definitely do it in my own writing, both intentionally and not) but it’s when you’re not vibing with the content that those sorts of things become far more glaring and the reaction is not positive. Oh and that sort of self-referential ‘aren’t we clever’ thing is definitely a feeling I’ve gotten from almost all the remakes tbh. I think that might just be a consequence of the format - i.e. recreating and trying to improve on something already done. 

[aion-rsa]

Doom Patrol Season 2 Episode 7 Review: Dumb Patrol

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This Doom Patrol review contains spoilers.

Doom Patrol Season 2 Episode 7

As its title suggests, Doom Patrol gets pretty dumb this week when the manor experiences an infestation of microscopic beings that feed off of bad ideas, but which reveals Miranda to be an effective primary. Meanwhile, Cliff rockets back to Earth, and vows endlessly to kill the Chief, who is seeking answers in the Yukon, and Rita decides to shadow the Cloverton beekeeper for her community theater role. And once again, Doom Patrol hits us with a silly episode that still manages to push character development forward – even for Willoughby Kipling — and unveils more of Chief’s plan for Dorothy.

“Dumb Patrol” introduces the pink-skinned microscopic beings the Scants which, as a 1950s health class PSA from the Knights Templar explains, implant very bad ideas into infected humans, who then produce “uma-jelly” upon which the creatures feed. Bad ideas as a weapon is incredibly effective, it turns out (and is quite tasty, if the Scant Queen played by Jhemma Ziegler is to be believed).

After some Scant mist inspire Larry, Vic, and Roni to open a crate from the Eismann Gallery marked “Do Not Open” on the front, the back, and the sides – all caps, underlined – we’re treated to great comedic moments where our typically dour characters can get goofy.

(As an aside, the Eismann Gallery “somewhere in Switzerland” is likely a reference to Horst Eismann from the Doom Patrol comics who collects bizarre objects, and who Kipling claimed in the first episode of the season to possess enough magic to return the team to normal size.)

Despite Miranda’s fairly sound advice that Captain Trainor should give his family space, he asks for her to ring up Flit from the Underground – where they both teleport into the hospital where Larry’s grandson was held. The normally morose Larry goes from Negative Man to Positive Man as he chipperly announces himself as “Doctor Trainor” with a lab coat, and almost gets captured by the Bureau of Normalcy.

Meanwhile, Vic and Roni’s relationship, already moving way too fast to be believed, shifts into a whole new gear with them agreeing Vic should just perform surgery on her to remove her tech (an idea Larry is more certain of than anything in his whole life; and he should know since he is already dressed as doctor). Oh, and Cyborg confesses his love to her, which leads to a sweet “booyah” between couples.

Since Vic and Larry are two of the more downer characters on Doom Patrol, this foolish optimism fueled by the Scants is a refreshing breather. This is especially true for Vic. Larry’s arc is often heart wrenching, but meaty, whereas Vic doesn’t typically have as much to do. I have to say, I am like Vic overall more this season.

Kipling also benefits from being a dum-dum. Already a likable smartass, it’s nice to see the drunk wizard taken down a peg. Even he isn’t too smart to avoid getting infected by the Scants, and the Scant Queen prods him about his secret love for Baphomet, the horse-head demon without a body. It makes one almost feel bad for Willoughby, who uses a first edition The Catcher in the Rye for some papercut blood magic to send a message to her.

Rather than the Scantoverse from the comics (created by artists Mike Allred and writer Gerard Way, musician and creator of The Umbrella Academy), the Scants are hanging out in the painting that had trapped Beardhunter and Mr. Nobody. Sporting some Beast Boy Teen Titans Go! undies, Beardhunter mentions Nobody skipped out of the painting for another gig, cheekily referenced in a meta onscreen promo for the animated Harley Quinn series where he plays Joker and Clayface. Along with the Scant Queen’s self-referential magazine, these kinds of jokes work on Doom Patrol because the show has set up the expectation of weirdness, and they allow the viewer to revisit characters like Beardhunter and Nobody (though, for now, in absentia).

But the show also plays with expectations by making Miranda a calming, rational persona as primary. Sure, she seems to be trying hard to be well liked and learn how things are done around Doom Manor because she’s the new kid. Indeed, making breakfast, fawning over Rita as her biggest fan, and offering help from the other alters – not to mention saving the day by killing the Scant Queen – go far in winning the team over. And she appears less chaotic than Jane.

However, Miranda appears to have her own agenda underway in the Underground, and it looks like Jane will be stuck down there investigating. Who will be the one topside to ask for Jane back? Probably Cliff.

That is, unless Cliff isn’t too absorbed with his newly arrived daughter.

In classic Chief fashion, he rocketed Robotman back to Earth (and right through a billboard for the autobiography from the dino-side of Animal-Vegetable-Man, which received accolades from Gerard Way, Doom Patrol writer Jeremy Lambert, and, of course, supervillain Kite Man).

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TV

Doom Patrol Season 2: Dorothy Spinner is Forever Young

By Rosie Knight

But it turns out he wasn’t trying to kill him, as it initially appeared at the end of last episode. Cliff has a literal journey walking back to the manor, vowing to kill Niles along the way, getting shat upon by a bird (who he also vows to kill), and subjecting himself to pathetic shout-outs as a talking statue in exchange for cellphone use. But Cliff literally wills himself forward and is eventually rewarded with Clara waiting for him – and holding the missing tape of Niles’ confession of what he did to Cliff. I had a suspicion the Chief was out to betray Cliff again, and it seemed confirmed last week, so this reveal was a welcome surprise. The Chief is no saint, but I want him to ultimately be a good guy, perhaps because I can’t help but love Timothy Dalton’s performance so much.

And it does appear that Dalton will have more to do as Chief coming up. His venture into the Yukon, searching for Slava, instead leads to a vision of Candlemaker who suggests he is a creation of Slava’s ancestors. I don’t know if I buy it; Candlemaker has already proven himself to be a manipulator. But the vision is enough for Niles to call upon Kipling, wherein the episode closes with the two appearing to discuss a plan to dispatch Dorothy because she is too powerful to be contained. It’s a dark episode finale for the remorseful Chief to be pondering killing his beloved daughter.

Finally, Rita had her own parental issues to work through this week. While shadowing the Cloverton beekeeper who she is portraying in the community theater show “Our Town” (but not the Thornton Wilder one), she seeks to find inspiration for her one line: “My Bees!” Rather, she ends up drunk with the beekeeper, talking about how parents are sometimes full of their own ideas in an attempt to protect their (potentially also dumb) kids. Rita may think she has found catharsis by talking to the bees, but something inside her might be fixed after all. She demonstrates control over her powers to thwart a mugging, and potentially becoming a real superhero: The Beekeeper? Does Cloverton have a new avenging angel buzzing about?

OK, a final petty thought that is driving me a little bonkers about a show I think is legitimately great, but Rita seems to have a disappearing parasol at the beginning of the ep when she walks up to the beekeeper’s porch. The sudden vanishing act had me wondering if Mr. Nobody was operating behind the scenes after all.

That said, an episode about our heroes having a lot of dumb ideas ended up being a smart story that allowed the actors to stretch a little and have some out-of-character fun in their roles.

The post Doom Patrol Season 2 Episode 7 Review: Dumb Patrol appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[doomedandstoned]

Top 10 Albums Of The 2010′s

~By Calvin Lampert~

I think it is safe to say that underground metal has enjoyed a period of unprecedented growth and popularity in the last 10 years. But when I am saying this I am not only thinking about the heavy underground; those adherents of the Sabbath sound and this whole new wave of doom metal bands. I am thinking of the fact that (underground) metal has undergone a change in image, too.

Though frequently maligned as hipster bands (or metal for people who don't like metal), acts like Deafheaven have brought metal to a whole new audience and raised awareness of the genre as a genuine form of art that does not just exist for its own sake; that metal fans only go for gore, beer and self-referential horn-throwing. Not that Neurosis and Godflesh haven’t been ambassadors of this mindset for more than three decades already, but it feels that the understanding of metal as art seems to have finally broken through to an audience outside of the traditional metal subculture in the past decade.

I think it is in no small part thanks to some of the bands on this list I have assembled (though I may have forgone obvious picks like Alcest and Deafheaven for more personal choices). And in retrospect, it should’ve been a list of bands rather than records, as most of the artists on this list would’ve have had a claim to a spot on here, with any record they put out. Take that as a hurray for consistency. So, without further ado, my picks for the best and most remarkable records of the decade.

10. Akhlys – 'The Dreaming I' (Debemur Morti - 2015)

The Dreaming I by Akhlys

I can’t help but wonder if Naas Alcameth of AKHLYS (also of Nightbringer, Aoratos and Bestia Arcana) set out with the express intent to create what is essentially a nigh perfect atmospheric black metal record when he started working on The Dreaming I. It damn sure feels like, each strum, syllable, and beat sits at the right place; the pieces of this nightmarish puzzle fit with an unsettling ease.

Photograph by by Kuba Leszko

The sound really does justice to the underlying concept of dreams and nightmares, as you’ll rarely find a record with such an impenetrable atmosphere. Once you hit play you’re soon enveloped by countless layers of swirling guitars, all at the command of Naas Alcameth, and he seems hellbent on suffocating you with them. The Dreaming I is about as close as you can get sleep paralysis-made-music. If you put off black metal as spooky noise made by a bunch hooded esoteric nerds you might’ve found your match in Akhlys. They are just that, they’re dead serious, and the results are impressive.

9. Elephant Tree – 'Elephant Tree' (Magnetic Eye Records - 2016)

Elephant Tree by Elephant Tree

I’ve observed myself growing increasingly apart from most stoner rock as of late, sometimes even antagonizing the genre. I’m afraid I’m just burned out on it and grown embittered, so a record from those genres ending up on my Albums of the Decade list should give you a hint of just how special it really is.

That is not to say that there haven’t been some real stoner rock heavy hitters this decade, such as Gozus Revival, Valley of the Suns Sayings of the Seers or Lo-Pans Salvador, but there’s something to ELEPHANT TREE's self-titled record that just so narrowly sets it apart from the others.

Photograph by Phil Smithies

What that is I am still not quite sure, and I had my fair share of relistens. Maybe it is the tasteful balance act of the production that makes this record so wonderfully ethereal but also ridiculously crushing. Or the sleek as all hell songwriting where every hook fires but the flow remains impeccable. Or the gorgeous harmonic interplay of Jack Townley and Pete Hollands vocals. Or maybe really just the sum of it all.

Whatever it is, Elephant Tree get it so very right and it is a true joy to behold such a well-written and fine-tuned record in a genre that has become all too prone to shoddiness and idle Kyuss worship. If there is any justice in the world, Elephant Tree will be looked back as a classic of the genre.

8. Oranssi Pazuzu – 'Värähtelijä' (Svart Records/20 Buck Spin - 2016)

Värähtelijä by Oranssi Pazuzu

So many have tried to do it. Countless chonged out Hendrix worshippers. Australian neo-psych darlings. But they all failed. Turns out the holy grail of psychedelia was dug up by a bunch of dudes in the frozen wastes of Finland when they decided to throw together black metal and almost every imaginable psych rock permutation under the firmament. Absolute insanity inducing balls-to-the-wall trippiness ensues.

ORANSSI PAZUZU is their name, ego-death squared in hyperspace is their game and Värähtelijä is the latest in a slew of attempts to smear your brain across the event horizon, and their most accomplished one so far. Think Hawkwind trying to interpret the soundtrack of Interstellar with a guy being spaghettified by a black hole screaming on top of it. Huge, plodding riffs and spacey synth fuckery abound.

Film by Shelby Kray

This madness extends to their live shows, yours truly (being completely sober) suffered a sensory overload when they launched into the crescendo of the album opener "Saturaatio" at Roadburn 2016. This band is taking things to the next level, and something tells me that Värähtelijä is just another chapter in an increasingly maddening venture.

7. Conan – 'Blood Eagle' (Napalm Records - 2014)

You can’t really draw a picture of the doom scene in the '10s without CONAN. And I do mean that in quite the literal sense, as seemingly every self-respecting doom fan seems to own at least one Conan shirt and you can’t really go to a gig without seeing one.

By all accounts the band probably could’ve retired years ago and just live off those rad merch designs. But Conan knows no rest -- always writing, always touring, always scheming. Thus the band has fed a steady stream of releases to a cult-like following over the years and narrowing down the output of such an important band to just one record is no small task. My choice eventually fell on the fan favorite, 2014's Blood Eagle.

Photograph by Sally Townsend

Conan had already pretty much established themselves as the emergent sludge-doom act of the decade at that time, but as we know they’re not one to rest on their laurels and Blood Eagle was just them driving the point home and the stake deeper, solidifying a grasp on the scene that hasn’t waned ever since, and they did it oh so righteously, by the primordial might of tonal displacement and drop F glory.

Conan might have the closest thing to a universal doom appeal because they speak to your baser instincts. Songs like "Foehammer" or "Total Conquest" seem like trebuchets aimed at the synapses of your reptilian brain, and I can’t help but admire these noble DIY barbarians, who so deservedly have carved out their place in the canon of the genre.

6. SubRosa – 'More Constant than the Gods' (Profound Lore - 2013)

More Constant Than The Gods by SubRosa

SUBROSA was one of a kind. If one band calling it quits this decade broke my heart, it was them. But before doing so they gifted us three outstanding post-metal records, whose folk and chamber music flourishes felt completely unique, intimate, and anachronistic in a genre dominated by more vast and spacious narratives. They reached inward rather than outward and did so with a no-parts-wasted mentality.

In a world rife with one-trick bands, SubRosa's employ of multiple vocalists and two electric violins felt natural and unabashedly non-gimmicky, and they would reveal the true potential of their sound on 2013's harrowingly beautiful More Constant than the Gods.

Photograph by Alyssa Herrman

More Constant is remarkable for its elegant and restrained way of instilling dread. Hardly any harsh vocals, the tempo never goes beyond a steady stride, just those horrific and yet also beautiful violins, plodding guitars, and downright poetic lyrics. And SubRosa seem to feel right at home on either terrain, be it the skin-crawling lead guitar line of "Affliction" or the grandiose outro section of "Fat of the Ram." One can only hope that SubRosa will return one day. A band that was truly novel, and not just a novelty.

5. Tchornobog – 'Tchornobog' (Fallen Empire / I, Voidhanger - 2017)

TCHORNOBOG is many things. Among others, a dark, ancient Slavic deity. In the world of music, a monolithic amalgamation of extreme metal, some Eldritch chimera of cavernous black, death, and doom metal. And the beast of one Markov Soroka, though him stating that the Tchornobog inhabits his head begs the question who might really be in charge?

Photograph by Nona Limmen

Soroka does indeed seem to be guided by spirits since he started the project at the age 14, and eight years of gestation and arduous work culminated in one of the most engrossing, all-consuming records I have come across this decade. Far be it from me to reduce Tchornobog’s remarkability down to the young age of its creator, but Sorokas ambition and execution of those ambitions could run circles around a lot of veteran extreme metal bands. The man is just flat out talented. And that is not even taking his various other projects (Drown, Aureole, Krukh) into account, or his curation work through his own label, Vigor Deconstruct.

As such, Tchornobog ultimately is, among many other things, a bright spotlight shining on a young man who has all the makings of being the next big underground metal mastermind. I’m sure you’ll be inclined to agree as soon as Soroka brings out the grand piano and saxophone on "III: Non-Existence’s Warmth (Infinite Natality Psychosis)" to perform what I’d like to call Lovecraftian Lounge Music. He must have a thing for Demilich too, judging from those song titles.

4. Hell – 'III' (Lower Your Head / Pesanta Urfolk - 2012)

Hell III by Hell

There is a subtle power in melodies, particularly melancholic and sad ones. Doom, and more specifically funeral doom, have long since sought to harness the power of the melody, but I think nobody has been quite as effective or moved me so profoundly with a simple plucked melody as MSW, the singular mind of HELL.

Just one minute into Mourn, the opening (and penultimate) track of Hell III), I am already instilled with a deep sense of melancholy, but also foreboding doom. However, few songs can just thrive from having a good riff or lead -- and there’s 17 minutes yet to go. I’ll spoil you and say that in this time Hell shifts between doom, black metal, neoclassical music, and dark ambient. That’s a lot of territory to cover and it becomes apparent that for how meticulously well crafted its individual parts are, MSW never loses sight of the bigger picture and the transitions between these different sounds are seamless.

Film by Billy Goate

At the danger of sounding like a huge fucking nerd, I really am more inclined to refer to "Mourn" and its follow up "Decedere" as movements rather than songs and if the songwriting doesn’t clue you in you’ll be persuaded by the time Decedere breaks out the operatic vocals and a flute accompanied by a string ensemble. And no matter if he’s performing a contemplative acoustic piece or pounding you in the ground with some absolutely hellish (the band name is apt as can be) blackened doom, MSW always manages to maintain an aura of grandeur. MSW is not just a great songwriter, he’s a veritable composer, and III is his magnum opus.

3. Mizmor – 'Yodh' (Gilead Media - 2016)

Yodh by מזמור

If whatever has come before was bleak, then Yodh is pitch fucking black. This decade hasn’t lacked in dark records (not even taking metal into account -- Mount Eerie's A Crow Looked at Me, Nick Cave’s Skeleton Tree, or The Caretakers Everywhere at the End of Time), but taking on existential dread specifically (and thereby becoming a vessel for it) MIZMOR's Yodh remains unsurpassed in its sheer effectiveness to instill said dread in the listener and is possibly the most harrowing record of the last 10 years.

Photo by Kento Woolery

As befits the theme, Yodh genuinely sounds like the work of a broken man. A miserable slab of glacial funeral doom and grimy black metal, but delivered with a brute strength and conviction that really suggests more defiance than self-pity. I’d be remiss to not point out ALN's incredibly varied vocal performance, ranging from wretched snarls and air-starved bellows to what I can only describe as pterodactyl shrieks, all carrying the same biting vitriol as the instrumentals.

Film by Shelby Kray

Yet for all its doom and gloom, Yodh surprises with occasional moments of tenderness and outright (if melancholic) beauty, too, such as the acoustic intro of "II: A Semblance Waning" or the massive main riff of "III: The Serpent Eats Its Tail" that feels like the sort of thing Pallbearer would’ve come up with if they had been more into Mournful Congregation than Warning.

All these things combined with thoughtful, introspective lyrics make Yodh into an incredibly powerful and downright visceral record, and if for you the main draw of doom metal lies its emotional potency (as it does for me) then Yodh is an essential listen. Let ALN shout down the very pillars that uphold your personal beliefs of life’s meaning.

2. Pallbearer – 'Sorrow and Extinction' (Profound Lore - 2012)

Sorrow And Extinction by Pallbearer

Warning was the first band to try to bridge the gap between traditional and modern doom metal, and while Watching from a Distance might have a fair claim to be one of the saddest metal records out there, in my eyes it was PALLBEARER who took that formula even further and perfected it with their 2011 debut Sorrow and Extinction. To me, it’s a classic record in both senses. A landmark of post-millennium doom and a throwback to the days of yore, when Saint Vitus and Candlemass were in charge of bumming everyone out; while still maintaining the larger-than-life-feel and sonic heft of modern doom championed by bands like Yob or Neurosis.

Photo by Sally Townsend

But Sorrow and Extinction isn’t just some roided up epic doom sans the operatic vocals, Pallbearer are far too clever to suffer such a pitfall. Granted, Sorrow sounds huge, and while there’s plenty of the heavy stuff to go around what makes Sorrow so great is how catchy it is. There is no weak song on this record (admittedly there’s only five), and while most bands could only hope to one day write a riff as good as "Devoid of Redemption's" main theme, it seems like Pallbearer just comes up with them on a whim, and their ability to do so doesn’t seem to have faded three records into their career -- not even to speak of Brett Campbell's soulful lyrics and passionate delivery.

Film by Billy Goate

Then, of course, there’s the amazing guitar interplay between Campbell and Devin Holt, chiefly on the casket closer "Given to the Grave," whose second half essentially boils down to them constantly trading dramatic leads with each other like the world's most woeful ping pong game.

Sorrow and Extinction is not only a deeply moving yet utterly anthemic record, but also one that successfully marries the past and the present of doom. In that regard, it is a preciously rare and so far unsurpassed record.

1. YOB – 'Clearing the Path to Ascend' (Neurot Records - 2014)

Clearing The Path To Ascend by YOB

Writing about metal without resorting to superlatives is hard. Try to practice restraint in the presence of something whose very nature lacks restraint. I am definitely guilty of that lack of restraint; one has only got to scroll up again to confirm it. But luckily some records are so very superlative that I do not have to take that editorial high road and can fire all the “mosts” and “-ests” at will. In fact, they almost require you to use them. Clearing the Path to Ascend by YOB is one such record. Even among all these preceding superlative records it stands above and beyond.

Photo by Angelique Le Marchand

Clearing the Path to Ascend is so vast, it feels singular. It is one and it is all. When I think larger-than-life sound, Clearing comes to mind first. It has become the very benchmark with which I measure other records. Yob's big and beautiful only consists of four tracks, but they made each feel like a distinct part of a greater journey. "In Our Blood" opens with a recording of Alan Watts telling you it is "time to wake up," before the song slowly rises into a stretched-out draw and crash, eventually unfurling into a manic guitar line.

"Nothing to Win" feels like Yob's own take on Neurosis’ Through Silver in Blood. It is an unrelenting, steady 11-minute march down a highway of broken glass, utterly windswept and viciously hopeless. "Unmask the Spectre" seems to tread similarly bitter paths but manages to wrestle itself free into two grandiose spiraling crescendos.

Film by Billy Goate

The death knell of an album closer that is "Marrow" shouldn’t really need much of an introduction at this point. It still feels like I’ll see a link, post or share of it every other day. It has become an omnipresence in the doom scene, and deservingly so. Yob dials back on the gloom and shines all the brighter. "Marrow" is not just hopeful; it is downright ecstatic and by the time Mike Scheidt launches into the grand solo of the track (so very gracefully accompanied by a Hammond organ played by producer Billy Barnett) has ascended to a genuine sermon.

Though Clearing had its fair share of dark moments "Marrow" closes the record on a remarkably conciliatory note and I really think that speaks of Yob as a (metal) band. Call it a big move to offer closure -- a fitting end to such a big record. One that suits the title of ‘Album of the Decade,’ and embodies the spirit of metal that wants to be just more.

Calvin's Choice: 100 Best of the Decade

YOB - Clearing the Path to Ascend

Pallbearer - Sorrow and Extinction

Mizmor - Yodh

Hell - Hell III

Tchornobog - Tchornobog

SubRosa - More Constant Than The Gods

Conan - Blood Eagle

Oranssi Pazuzu - Värähtelijä

Elephant Tree - Elephant Tree

Akhlys - The Dreaming I

Clutch - Earth Rocker

Merkstave - Merkstave

Gozu - Revival

Chelsea Wolfe - Pain Is Beauty

Valley of the Sun - The Sayings of the Seers

Inter Arma - Paradise Gallows

Thou - Heathen

Om - Advaitic Songs

Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper

All Them Witches - Dying Surfer Meets His Maker

Horn of the Rhino - Weight of Coronation

Boss Keloid - Melted on the Inch

KALEIKR - Heart Of Lead

Jeremy Irons & The Ratgang Malibus - Spirit Knife

Woman is the Earth - Torch of Our Final Night

Weyes Blood - Titanic Rising

LINGUA IGNOTA - Caligula

Queens of the Stone Age - ...Like Clockwork

Messa - Feast for Water

Anna von Hausswolff - Dead Magic

Mamiffer - The World Unseen

Samothrace - Reverence to Stone

Primitive Man - Scorn

Fórn - The Departure of Consciousness

Khemmis - Absolution

Bongripper - Miserable

High on Fire - De Vermis Mysteriis

UN - Sentiment

Cult of Luna - Mariner

Slomatics - Future Echo Returns

MISTHYRMING - Söngvar elds og óreiðu

Dvne - Asheran

Earth - Primitive and Deadly

Mars Red Sky - Apex III (Praise For The Burning Soul)

The Midnight Ghost Train - Cypress Ave.

Panopticon - Panopticon - Roads to the North

Mare Cognitum - Phobos Monolith

Sólstafir - Ótta

Have a Nice Life - The Unnatural World

Furia - Księżyc Milczy Luty

Tardigrada - Emotionale Ödnis

Yellow Eyes - Immersion Trench Reverie

Stoned Jesus - Seven Thunders Roar

Höstblod - Mörkrets Intåg

Ulver - The Assassination of Julius Caesar

Zola Jesus - Okovi

Funereal Presence - Achatius

Wormlust - The Feral Wisdom

Daughters - You Won't Get What You Want

L'Acephale - L'Acéphale

40 Watt Sun - The Inside Room

Vilkacis - Beyond the Mortal Gate

Bossk - Audio Noir

Carpenter Brut - Trilogy

Sumac - What One Becomes

Death Grips - Exmilitary

Red Fang - Murder the Mountains

Lo-Pan - Salvador

Whores. - Gold

Truckfighters - Universe

Greenleaf - Trails & Passes

Bölzer - Aura

Monolord - Vaenir

Dead to a Dying World - Elegy

The Body - I Shall Die Here

Mutoid Man - War Moans

Neurosis - Fires Within Fires

Opeth - Pale Communion

Planning for Burial - Below the House

Triptykon - Melana Chasmata

Graveyard - Hisingen Blues

Saor - Aura

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

Egypt - Endless Flight

Emma Ruth Rundle - Marked For Death

Deafheaven - Sunbather

Kadavar - Kadavar

Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - Blood Lust

Vanum - Ageless Fire

Dai-Ichi - Dai-Ichi

Lord Mantis - Pervertor

Ne Obliviscaris - Portal Of I

Loss - Horizonless

Tome of the Unreplenished - Innerstanding

Elder - Lore

Witch Mountain - Cauldron of the Wild

Ahab - The Giant

Alcest - Kodama

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Dissociation

Sleep - The Sciences