#there's just a particular quality to fanbases who make something out of fucking nothing at all it's insane and magical i love y'all

[artfulacrostic]

the 3636262728 newsies have only whatever personalities that fanon can wring out of their .5 lines each, les mis fans keep going out of sheer spite even though most of les amis de l'abc don't even have canonical first names, and the vast majority of named clone troopers have never even taken their buckets off on-screen. so.

[sarahdraws-sometimes]

Hello, so I cannot stress this enough.

It's.. no surprise that I'm a Pale King liker. My blog has (kind of?) been centered around him since the beginning, when I decided to sell my soul and make a Tumblr page.

Apparently, there is a very... Unique and small side of the Hollow Knight fanbase who believes that the Pale King is simply 'misunderstood', and tries to justify his actions/put down other characters to make him look nicer than he truly was, just as a 'reason' to like him.

I'm going to say it right now, this is not me. And if you are like this, then you are on thin fucking ice.

.

I like the Pale King simply for what we know about him that fits with the canon of the story. The Pale King is a figure who was praised by many bugs, however he is not what he seemed, and was doing many questionable things behind the scenes to get rid of the infection, and the Radiance. It is very fun to play with his character, and come up with many interpretations for his character. That is what I enjoy him for.

However, interpretations are just that. They aren't canonical by any means. And... Yeah, I am guilty of having a couple headcanons about tpk that is positive, in a way. But never, would I ever try to convince others that tpk is something that he is not. My headcanons are not intended to clash with canon, nor are they intended to appear canonical, if they even do. I just try and think of certain situations in a different light. Y'know, for fun, and nothing more than that.

What the point of this entire post is, is that... Apparently, people are trying to justify his actions, or just downright denying canon, for the sole reason to make tpk look "not as bad" in comparison to other morally grey characters within the Hollow Knight universe. This is NOT what I intend to do with any of my posts that even remotely sheds any positive light onto a very very dark and complex character such as him. I do NOT understand those who are putting down characters like the Radiance, and just making up random bullshit about her, and fuck it, even making up shit about the Pale King, just so there's a 'good' reason to like him.

Guys, there is literally nothing wrong with accepting the faults of a character you enjoy. Why the fuck are we making shit up about this game's canon, just so we can enjoy a character as twisted as the Pale King? The Pale King is already interesting on his own, as a very mysterious character with a LOT of responsibility and power in his hands. There is no other character in the world of Hollow Knight as influential to the story as the Pale King. That alone is enough reason for me to enjoy his character. Why are these particular few trying to convince the rest of the fanbase that the Pale King basically did nothing wrong, that he's misunderstood, and that other characters are awful and just as bad as him, JUST so you can like him? Because at that point, you don't even like the Pale King, you like a very altered version of him in a universe that simply is not canonical in any sense. It's just nonsense. And no, there truly is no wrong in having your headcanons, no matter how much they clash with canon. But when you alter and change a charcater, and OTHER characters THIS much, just to make your fav seem like a better person they really are, and try to convince your following that he is a good person, then what the fuck are you doing?

And, AUs are perfectly fine! If you have an AU that flips the canon for fun, then good on you. I have a ton of AU ideas always rattling in my head, most of them fuck around with hk's canon because why not? But if you are gonna sit there and tell me that, canonically, the Pale King was not a bad person, then what the fuck. That's just you misleading your audience.

YOU CAN LIKE A VILLAIN WITHOUT FEELING THE NEED TO JUSTIFY THEIR ACTIONS. JFC GUYS. THEY ARE VILLAINS FOR A REASON. The Pale King is an AWFUL, piece of shit person, that simply has ZERO redeeming qualities. And to me, that's quite alright. The fact that he is so villainous, yet praised by some blind bugs in Hallownest, is all I need to love his character.

The fact that I feel the need to even make this post after disappearing for MONTHS says quite a bit about how upset this shit makes me. It's incredibly embarrassing for me to know that other Pale King likers try and justify his actions rather than just accepting him as a villain. Just. Like the Pale King for what he is, and not what you WANT him to be.

That's all. I'm pinning this post because I don't want this to get buried as I plan to start posting more HK artwork again.

Edit; I know I've "defended" tpk in the past, but that was just more of me trying to get my original interpretations of him out there rather than actually justifying his actions. I wrote that awhile ago and even partially disagree with stuff I said (for example, the 'he cared for his people', especially considering it was a rather weak point anyway). And as I just said, it was mostly just interpretations, filling in the gaps with things we simply don't know much about. The plot of hk is incredibly vague to the point where the backstory could be viewed from multiple angles, thus the post. It was a pretty weak post overall and I hate that its still being spread around. If you were introduced to this blog because of that post then I am deeply sorry. If I knew a lot of PK enjoyers acted this way then I wouldn't have had the balls to post that lolol ok. edit over

[effyodrama]

YandereDev stole and made fun of some little kid’s art...

Or at least, that’s what the anti-YandereDev crowd is claiming THIS week. According to them, he recolored a drawing made by a 10-year-old girl, claimed that it was fanart that someone sent him, and proceeded to make fun of it in one of his videos. So they decided to do a bunch of fanart of this character, try to convince DrApeis to include it in Love Letter as a character named Arya Codinson (no, seriously), and try to get in touch with the original artist so that they can send their love. And yet again, the truth behind this situation amounts to a huge pile of nothing being blown completely out of proportion...

First off, there’s the context behind the whole thing. About four years ago, YandereDev made a video talking about how the number of people who have been sending him less-than-helpful emails has been slowing down development. Here is the clip featuring the art in question:

As you can tell, he is not making fun of a piece of alleged fanart. He never even implies that the picture IS fanart. He’s using an image that looks like it was drawn by a little kid as an example to illustrate how the volunteer requests he’d get often came from people whose artistic talents fell far below his quality standards.

Aside from that, there are a few other things that need to be addressed about this. First of which is the fact that you won’t find this particular video on YandereDev’s channel. He deleted it a long time ago. As far as I know he hasn’t addressed this, so I don’t know the reason why it was deleted. But if I were to hazard a guess: I’d assume that it was either because his policy regarding emails has largely changed in the four years since the video was made, or because he felt that its overall tone was far too negative toward his fanbase. Either way, the fact that people are demonizing him over something they claimed he did in a video that’s been deleted is a little ridiculous.

Beyond that, the way the story is being framed is equally ridiculous. These people are making this claim as though he was publicly humiliating a little kid because their art was trash. Now to be fair, the person in question was a 9-year-old girl when she originally posted that picture... in 2012. On a blog that was abandoned in 2013. So now we have people who are crying out for YanDev’s blood over an old picture drawn by someone who is likely 18 now and has probably completely forgotten that said picture even exists. And then they obsessed over it. They named it. They drew fanart of it. They appropriated it as a symbol for their obsessive hatred for YanDev. They made posts trying to find out how to contact her. They demanded justice for this girl because “that mean ol’ pedophile con-artist who can’t take criticism made fun of a drawing she made when she was a little kid”.

And this all leads to what I feel is the most fucked part of this story: They found her.

Let me repeat that. These people saw a random picture in a deleted 4-year-old video, learned that it was a recolor of a little girl’s drawing from 8 years ago, scoured the entire internet looking for said girl... AND. THEY. FOUND. HER.

Am I the only one who sees how insanely fucking creepy this is? These people spent an entire week tracking down a person based on personal information from a long-abandoned blog, checking email addresses, and going down a chain of old acquaintances that eventually led to them cyberstalking her friends and family; just to tell her that she was the victim of a person that she never heard of who “made fun of” a decade-old drawing that she completely forgot existed. Why? Because they are so desperately obsessed with destroying YanDev’s reputation that they went on a straight-up manhunt to find someone that they could paint as a victim.

So apparently, if you do literally anything that can be associated with YandereDev in any way, you’re not safe. These people have demonstrated that they will go to any length to find someone if they think they can weaponize them against their target. Boundaries mean nothing to them. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from, what you did, or how long ago you did it.

They will find you...

[lost-in-zembla]

Disco Elysium or: How I learned to Stop Wallowing and Love the Game

I will now review a videogame. No real spoilers. Just very vague descriptions below.

My writing this is uncharacteristic of me. I find most writing surrounding the video game industry to be repugnant. The industry (including the media surrounding that industry) relies upon the subsumption of subcultures on the fringe into the very center of the infernal machine where the dedicated and nostalgic nature of its fanbase can be exploited for capital. It’s the same process that produces Iron Man Funko Pops. Call me a jaded and pretentious pseudointellectual poseur, but in the case of Marvel the idea that this fucking billion dollar franchise with the biggest actors in the world somehow retains this guise of this ‘geek’ subculture is disturbing to me.

(If you have played the game Disco Elysium, then you can probably already see part of why I enjoy it so goddamn much.)

I don’t mean we should gatekeep. My point is the media attached to these quote-geek-unquote industries wants to milk the same cash cow (e.g. 10 AWESOME THINGS IN THE LAST OF US 2!) Coming from an academic environment of criticism, I crave at least the appearance of an honest and thorough critique of art. In my experience, you really need to go past the surface to find any reliable ‘takes’ on contemporary videogames. That being said, there’s a lot of good work being done in the form of video essays.

In any case, I play videogames relatively often. Competitive shooters, mostly. But I suffer no story in videogames. Why would I? I read the most *genius* pieces of literature in the English language. I’m too *good* for that. So when I heard all the buzz about Disco Elysium last fall, it fell on deaf ears. Detectives? Disco? Isometry? Story-heavy. Ugh. I’m interested in none of that. But about a week ago, a friend of mine bought the game. Unlike me, he is a real adult with a real job so it was just a whim on his part, I believe. I looked at the game and, with Steam’s lax refund policy in mind, I bought it. In the past week I have put approximately thirty hours into this game. This review is a way for me to explore my own thoughts surrounding the game, thoughts that I didn’t include in my steam review (See below.)

So it was devastating, sure. And this devastation was somehow positive. One thing that I would like to make clear about me talking about this game is that it is fucking useless. Disco Elysium possesses that quality that exists in all great art; it is irreducible. When I try to explain this game to my friends, I find that my words fail to describe what’s so great about the game. Let me give you the elevator review I’ve come up with. *This game has allowed me to explore the breadth of human experience*. It’s an absolutely insane thing to say about a game. The writing, the art style, the story, the world, the RPG gameplay, they all work together to create a kind of experience that I have never encountered in a piece of art before aside from those few, fleeting moments when you feel as though you truly *get* an encyclopedic novel you’re reading (and in my case I usually don’t get it.)

I will not delve too deeply into the mechanics of the game. There are probably plenty of articles and videos that describe the game already. Put simply, the game is about choices. You can choose to solve the murder however you want. You can say absolutely batshit things to people. You can say mildly bemusing things. You can speak apocalyptic prophesies, espouse communism, conservatism, Moralism. race science.. There are moments when you genuinely *feel* like you can say anything, which is quite a feat when you really only have a few dialogue options at any given moment.

As you’ve noticed, this is not a review of the videogame. Playing this game after a tough breakup was sort of earth-shattering. I mean, not only am I navigating through a strange virtual world with its own history and culture and cosmological makeup, I’m diegetically grieving over being left by my *divinely* beautiful ex while I, the player, undergo a similar process and find similar coping mechanisms. Playing this game was like knowing the funniest clown in the world, a clown so funny that you thank him when he occasionally punches you in the chest to make you *feel things*.

The plan wasn’t to make a character whose qualities reflected my own. I just wanted to play the game. I wanted to win. It just so happened that because *I* was the one playing the game, the character essentially turned into me. It doesn’t help that I, too, have had my issues with alcohol, drugs, commitment, and mental health (in no particular order). The character ended up becoming *me* in a way that I’d never experienced before. I faced ethical dilemmas. My ideology was shaken. This game achieves unbelievable mimesis.

Here’s the wild thing: this game has changed me. I feel like a thirteen-year-old white boy who just watched The Boondock Saints and got a pretty okay over-the-pants handjob at the same time. I’m thinking about my life in terms of choices. The game enforces a kind of perspective of the world that highlights its contingency and the permanence of choices. You can, of course, save your progress in the game and reload whenever, but I found myself just sort of riding out the bad choices I made unless they were game-ruiningly catastrophic. (E.g. I had a “thought” equipped that made me fail every unrepeatable *red* check during a pivotal firefight; it was a hilarious disaster. We were essentially mowed down.) I stood by most of my bad choices. After all, I made the choice using the information I had at the time.

I am not good at this game. I absolutely bungled the investigation. I was just a pawn for forces far greater than myself. Seven people died, and I know that I could’ve saved a few of those people, if not all of them. I think about it sometimes. I think about what I could have done, how I could have gone deeper to find out what’s *really* going on, how I could take control of the investigation rather than be taken control of. Maybe I’ll play the game through again, but the first playthrough is kind of magical if you know absolutely nothing about the game like I did. If not for an absolute deus ex machina at the end, I would have been taken to the madhouse. It would have been an unbelievable failure.

During that deus ex machina moment, by the way, a goddamn tear rolled down my cheek. Yeah, I’m in a rough place, personally. But I don’t *cry* over characters in art. They’re not real. But damn if that changed.  I tell you it’s changed *me*. I care more for characters. I know they’re not real but they represent something that I can relate to, no matter who they are. This game has made me think about empathy more. Maybe it’s because I dumped all my points in the emotional skills. Maybe I’d be more violent if I rolled with the physical skills. Maybe I’d feel like a superstar if that’s what I chose to pursue in the game. Disco Elysium feels open-ended enough that if you sign up for the story, the aesthetic, and the investigation itself, then you can get whatever you want out of the experience. The game, again, achieves incredible mimesis.

The mimesis is so convincing in Disco Elysium that it feels as open-ended as reality, with one caveat: you *know* it's a game. You, as a player, know that the experience of Disco Elysium is a designed one, that it was created as a sort of origami structure, that there is narrative and, god help us, *meaning*. What this game-knowledge afforded me during my playthrough was the constant sensation of synchronicity. I found myself saying “I don’t know how this element will fold into the grand structure of the game, and it almost seems impossible that it should become part of the investigation narrative.” But because I know it’s a game, I am graced with the confidence of the highly religious. Everything will come together in the end.

This is not a review for a videogame. This is a confession. I am deeply flawed and I want to change that. My worldview has been shaken because of a videogame. I don’t want to be that kind of animal anymore.

I’m trying to empower myself, to become more aware that my choices do indeed matter, have always mattered. I’m trying to be more pragmatic, to consider the things I want to do in terms of their result rather than the momentary pleasure I will derive from doing them. Now *that’s* a change for me. 

I’m trying to be more empathetic, more willing to imagine the perspectives of others. 

I am trying to give the world around me the benefit of the doubt. It is easy for me to think of the world as a random coincidence of matter, but if you look at the world with totality in mind everything seems to take on this Spinozan glow of divinity. The human mind is a meaning-making machine, I think. If I look at the world as fundamentally devoid of meaning, then that is still meaning. It is nihil-ism. It’s still an -ism. But if I ascribe to the world a kind of glowing potential, as though meaning were to be found in every speck of matter, then I feel invited to participate in this massive dance that we’re all a part of. 

I’m trying to be more adventurous, because beneath the surface of things there seems to be a vast network of relationships, causation, possibility and, god help me, *story*. Or maybe it’s not beneath the surface of things, maybe there is no Deleuzian schizophrenic depth beneath the surface, perhaps the world is a homogenous and ever-developing surface upon which I constellate meaning and, thereby, create it. I’m trying to create a story for myself that will hold a candle to my experience playing Disco Elysium. I didn’t ask for this; it was just what I needed. It was, in a word, unforgettable.

[aijee]

hello! i’m the anon who left the 6-part ask regarding mg a few months ago (i refer to those asks bc i’m back to drop more thoughts about mg and might touch on what i previously said). i wrote this whole thing disregading word count, believing i could drop it all in one go because i managed to log in to my tumblr, but it seems i still have to break it up… lmao i don’t know how many parts this will be or if i could post it all tonight, but i will signify the very end with “6-part anon” :)

Cont’d with response under the cut (I made some executive decisions about where the paragraphs break lol so it’s not all one block of text):

they want to be famous; that part just came along with the package. then i read in your bts post, you see mg as more wrapped up in entertainment, having star power with a bright personality, liking the limelight. reading that, i do agree, but i guess ive never thought of that before. i think wanting to be a star and wanting to be in the spotlight can seem self-centered. i hope im not coming across like im judging everyone who wants to be famous as “bad” because that’s not what i’m trying to do, but i think it’s safe enough to say that wanting to be famous means wanting people’s attention on you. i’m trying to tread carefully but i suppose i am saying that on the surface, wanting to be a big star can seem a little selfish in the sense that you want to boost your image, present your best self at all times, want people’s eyes on you and want them to think good things about you. combining those general thoughts about wanting to be a star, with my thoughts about mg in particular, is interesting to me.

i’ve always seen him as someone so selfless, so lovely, so considerate towards others. throughout idotsc, you’ve written him throughout as someone so amiable, liked by everyone, and also selfless and considerate. and in chp 7, his reaction twds the pictures is... well, I think they’re pretty true to character, and again i think it shows selflessness. then the ‘Love Languages’ text that OP had written— while, of course, OP doesn’t know him and everything is an assumption to a certain degree, I think their writing summarizes in one place what I observed about mg through the content available to the public: he constantly gives to people around him, exhibiting sincerity, words of gratitude and acts of service. at the same time, i definitely agree with what you said about his star quality, so i think that was the first time i really stopped to examine my thoughts about stardom and how some things may not be mutually exclusive.

“stardom” also makes me think about his recent incident, because of course, such incidents are definitely a potential consequence of fame. during that time i’ve also come across several opinions saying that they’re not surprised if a current idol was a past bully… i don’t remember exactly what people said but i think it was somewhere along the lines of, if they were so confident and cocky since predebut, then they might have had the qualities of a bully. something like that. i think from the outside looking in, it may be easier to equate star quality with a diva attitude/disregard twds others.

one thing i’d like to add is sth that a famous person said abt fame, and why they value it more than money, bc if they meet a fan, the look on the fan’s face upon meeting them gives them a feeling money can’t buy. and i suppose from this angle, being a star seems selfless. with svt too, they expressed how meaningful it is to them that theyre able to bring us so much joy. i think from the outside looking in, it may be easier to equate star quality with a diva attitude/disregard twds others. one thing i’d like to add is sth that a famous person said abt fame, and why they value it more than money, bc if they meet a fan, the look on the fan’s face upon meeting them gives them a feeling money can’t buy. and i suppose from this angle, being a star seems selfless. with svt too, they expressed how meaningful it is to them that theyre able to bring us so much joy.

i hope this all makes sense; i had lots of thoughts and wanted to try to write them. i struggled to understand why one would want to be a star, and went in circles questioning if i thought it was more selfish or selfless, and what one’s true motives might be behind wanting fame. ik u implied u embrace long writing bc you also write in length, but i’m less eloquent than you are so i hope this was fine! thank you again for having a space where people could offload their thoughts :) ~6-part anon~

There’s a lot to unpack here, isn’t there! A buffet of food for thought, for sure. I can’t possibly respond to everything written here because there’s just so many points, so I’ll write a few points. As always, take what I write with a grain of salt.

I don’t think there’s anything bad or inherently wrong with pointing out that, hey, people who are interested in a profession necessarily tied to a public image probably to show off or want attention. These things are perfectly natural to want, even for people who aren’t celebrities, because we’re (1) inherently social creatures and a lot of our survival is contingent on external success, and (2) we are brought up to feel validation from others, especially in an age where our lives are much more on display. But I can see why “selfishness” may be thrown in the mix because we often look down on attention-seekers and “popular” people, many of whom exhibit arrogant/tone-deaf behaviors. On the other hand, it’s understandable that an idol with a big public image necessitates putting their best foot forward all the time to maintain good opinion of them and to earn more money, frankly.

I’ve probably repeated myself too many times, but something I’ve been grappling with recently is this black-and-white mindset/judgment system we often have of others (very much exacerbated by social media, e.g. witch hunts). Bad is bad, good is good. I’ve thought this way for a long time of myself in an upbringing that always punished/looked down on bad behavior (or what was considered behavioral flaws, like speaking out against elders, swearing as a femme person, etc.) rather than acknowledging that “bad” behavior can be exhibited by people who also do and act “good.” In short, while I can only speak from my perspective, I think we’re programmed to subconsciously seek behavioral perfection for a number of reasons: we were raised that way by family; and/or society; we feel judged by the presence of social media and greater access into our lives; accessibility to celebrities and “perfect” public figures makes us judge ourselves by comparison; education systems that poorly address internal learning as well as external learning, etc.

In Mingyu’s case, there’s nothing wrong with seeing and continuing to see him as all those good qualities in my opinion. There’s nothing wrong with grappling with potential past problematic behaviors of your faves, as long as you’re critical and open-minded about the parties involved (which is rarely ever a fanbase at large, but the skewed authority of a fanbase is a different can of worms). Idols are human, which means dealing with the good and bad that comes with interacting humans. Contrary to popular belief (and I write this sarcastically), people CAN change. People should be ALLOWED to change. Characters are static. People are not. And it’s sad to say that this is still an issue in the K-Pop world. 

As hard as it sounds, a person who bullied others in the past could still have good or pure intentions for becoming an idol. They could still feel fulfillment from making others happy; is that a bad thing? I personally don’t think so. Or maybe a person’s intentions for becoming an idol could be mixed good or bad, who the fuck knows? Not us. Honestly, I firmly believe that we fans don’t have the right to make definitive moral judgments of idols in the first place because we don’t know them personally. That, and people are extremely complex and hard to categorize, as much as we want to because it’s easier to do so. People are messy. Real life teaches us that more than the Internet does imo.

In any case, I don’t think selfishness and selflessness are mutually exclusive in the same way a person can be both good and bad. I learned that language, too, is a powerful vehicle that influences how we think. In that vein, with how compartmentalized definitions are in specific words, perhaps we think that their existence/practice is separate, i.e. being “selfish” is never being “selfless” because each word’s definition exists solely in their respective word and not the other (hopefully that makes some sense).

TL;DR: I think wanting attention and validation from others is okay and not inherently a bad thing, and people are fucking messy and rarely good without the bad (and vice versa).

Pretty sure I rambled a ton as well and probably didn’t hit that many points that you offered, anon. You ended up putting me on a thought train as well!

[the-desolated-quill]

Let Star Wars Die - Quill’s Scribbles

You may recall I was less than impressed with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It wasn’t a bad movie, but, let’s be honest, it wasn’t very good neither. It was far too derivative of the original trilogy, in particular A New Hope. and the new characters just weren’t very interesting or well developed. The only character I was even vaguely invested in was Finn and even his story didn’t really make sense under any close scrutiny. The only thing this movie really had going for it was that Luke, Leia and Han were in it. In fact whenever I find myself talking about The Force Awakens, I often refer to this quote from a review of the movie written by Andrew O’Hehir for Salon:

“This is the work of a talented mimic or ventriloquist who can just about cover for the fact that he has nothing much to say."

That pretty much sums this movie up perfectly. I’m fully aware I’m in the minority, but I honestly just don’t see what makes this movie so special. Yes it’s competently made and somewhat entertaining, but only on a purely superficial level. In my opinion the only reason The Force Awakens became so successful wasn’t because of any inherent good qualities it possessed. It was because it cynically pandered to a nostalgic fanbase.

Now look, if you like the movie, fair enough. I’m not criticising you for your taste in cinema. Everyone likes what they likes and that’s okay. It just wasn’t my cup of tea. And I’ll be the first to admit my opinion may be slightly biased because I never actually wanted to see a sequel trilogy in the first place. Return Of The Jedi was a good ending to the Star Wars story and there was no reason to carry it on. I didn’t even see the point of a prequel trilogy, although I was mildly curious as to how exactly Darth Vader became Darth Vader (pity they didn’t do it very well). As far as I was concerned, a sequel trilogy was little more than a cynical cash grab, and The Force Awakens did very little to change my mind of that. And judging by the trailers to The Last Jedi, where everything looks like a rehash of The Empire Strikes Back, my opinion doesn’t appear to be changing any time soon.

Now we could debate for ages whether or not the sequel trilogy is a cynical cash grab (it is), but one thing cannot be denied. This new trilogy Disney have announced is most definitely a cynical cash grab.

Oh yeah, Disney have announced that a new trilogy is being made. Perhaps I should have led with that.

Yes it appears Star Wars is going to become a franchise without end, with movies and sequels and spinoffs being churned out year after year like a fucking assembly line production. Why? Because Disney is Disney and Disney is the fucking worst. These are the people who originally started making live action remakes of classic Disney movies from the villain’s perspective, but then after Maleficent somebody in Disney said ‘Hey. Here’s an idea. Why don’t we just remake the original Disney movies?’ These are the same people who own the increasingly convoluted Marvel Cinematic Universe whose movies have become more and more bland and homogenised every year. These are the same people who are currently making a sequel to Mary Poppins. Yeah! I’m sure that’s something we’ve all wanted to see, right? I don’t know about you, but whenever I watch Mary Poppins, I often wonder what happened to her after she flew away on her little brolly and the story was over.

It couldn’t be any more obvious at this stage that Disney clearly doesn’t have a single original thought hovering around their little media empire, but this is also a problem inherent with the entire film industry right now. Sequels and remakes have always been a thing in Hollywood, but it’s never been at this scale, and that’s largely down to the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Since then everyone has wanted a slice of that pie, hence why it feels like every movie franchise is being turned into one great big giant sequel factory. It’s this thinking that made Warner Bros. extend The Hobbit into a trilogy when it really didn’t fucking need to be. It’s this thinking that made Universal Studios try to lump all their horror movie monsters like Frankenstein and the Mummy into a shared universe only for it to backfire when they realised that (gasp) not everything works as a shared fucking universe. It’s this thinking that has essentially stripped the once promising Marvel Cinematic Universe of any creativity and artistic integrity, reducing it to the shallow and soulless franchise it is today where every movie has become virtually identical to each other.

Now I’m not saying that sequels or franchise or even shared universes are inherently bad. Provided the quality remains consistently good and there’s proper narrative and artistic justification for it, I don’t have a problem with it. What i do have a problem with is movie studios churning out sequel after sequel for no reason other than to make money. Let’s not deny that is the motive behind these new Star Wars movies. That is most definitely the motive behind this new trilogy we’re going to get. It feels as though everyone in the movie industry has forgotten how to tell standalone stories with a beginning, middle and end (you know? Like proper stories?). I can’t think of a single reason to justify a sequel sequel trilogy, just like there isn’t a single reason to justify the sequel trilogy. And don’t you dare give me that bullshit about how George Lucas always intended Star Wars to be 9 movies long. For one thing, I don’t think anything George Lucas has to say holds much weight anymore because, you know, the prequels exist. And second, there is literally no reason to continue the story after Return Of The Jedi. The baddies are dead, the Empire has been destroyed and Luke has finally completed his journey and became a Jedi Knight. There is literally nowhere else for the story to go, as evidenced by The Force Awakens effectively repeating A New Hope again. What’s the point of carrying the story on? I couldn’t give two fucks what happens to Luke after Return Of The Jedi for the same reason i couldn’t give two fucks what happened to Cinderella and Prince Charming after they got married and lived happily ever after (although Disney showed us anyway with their direct to video bollocks). The story is over.

Actually, going back to the whole 9 movie thing, let me throw that argument back at you. If George Lucas really intended Star Wars to be 9 movies long and Disney are merely respecting his artistic vision, why the fuck are we now getting 12 movies? Could it be perhaps that Disney are a bunch of money grabbing arseholes who don’t actually give a shit about Star Wars and just to want to squeeze the brand for every penny they can get? Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s one thing to have a movie studio earning some of your money for a well made movie, but it’s another thing entirely when a movie studio feels they’re entitled to all of your money for a continuous stream of mediocre crap.

Now it’s very easy to lay the blame at the feet of the greedy corporate bastards that are draining the franchise dry, but I think we the audience deserve a portion of the blame too. Don’t forget, we’re the ones that paid to watch these movies. We’re the ones effectively enabling them to produce more cynically made and hollow products. The movie industry wouldn’t be able to pull off half of this bullshit if it weren't for the more gullible members of the audience that simply don’t know when enough is enough. Case in point, Frozen. I loved Frozen. Everybody loved Frozen. It was a good movie with a proper beginning, middle and end. There’s no need to make a sequel. In fact making a sequel to Frozen would be quite possibly the dumbest thing you could do because there’s no way you could top the first one. But what did fans say in their droves? ‘Sequel! Could we have a sequel please?!’ And now we’re getting Frozen 2. Bugger.

The reason these sequel factories exist is because we enabled them to exist. The fans wanted this, and this is something I’m going to keep reminding people of when this new Star Wars trilogy comes a calling. You wanted this. All you people that kept saying it would be a shame when Star Wars ends with Episode 9 and that you hope there would be more. When Disney keep finding more and more excuses to keep releasing annual Star Wars movies, once they’ve strapped the suction tubes onto the udders of the Star Wars cash cow and drained every last drop from it until it becomes a shrivelled, lifeless husk before they grind it into the dirt, just remember... you wanted this.

Finally, just to add insult to injury, Disney have announced that Rian Johnson is going to be directing the new trilogy. Yeah. That fucker. The guy who’s directing The Last Jedi. The guy who has been constantly sidelining all the characters of colour, including Finn, the main character. The guy that believes that Kylo Ren, the villain, is in fact a dual protagonist with Rey. The guy who insists that Kylo Ren, a 30 year old man who killed off one of the most beloved characters of the original trilogy, is in fact a confused adolescent who deserves redemption. Now I’m not saying that Rian Johnson is a racist moron who seems to have taken up permanent residence in Cloud Cuckoo Land. I’m not saying that at all. We’ve all seen the interviews. We’ve all heard the bullshit. I’ll let you come to your own conclusions. But if you don’t mind, I think I might give this new trilogy a miss.

Now you could easily just dismiss everything I’ve just been saying as the pessimistic ramblings of a cynical snob, and you have every right to do so. However I ask you to at least consider the bigger picture here. The announcement of this new trilogy I think is indicative of the much larger problem both within Disney and within the entire movie industry. Yes filmmaking is a business, but there did used to be art in filmmaking too. From my perspective, it feels like the art and passion has gone right out of it. The emphasis is more on making as much money from existing brands as possible rather than putting effort into creating good quality content. It’s gotten to the point where studios have become reluctant to take a risk on original stories, and that’s both tragic and stupid. Let’s not forget there was a time when Star Wars was an original idea that a studio decided to take a risk with, and it paid off big time. The fact that Hollywood execs don’t seem to recognise that is deeply frustrating and just a little bit sad.

Producers and studio execs keep saying how much they love Star Wars, hence why they keep making the movies. I’d like to propose a counter-argument to them. If you really love Star Wars as much as you say you do, then here’s the best thing you can do. Stop making Star Wars movies. Come up with your own ideas. Make something else. Stop dragging this franchise out and let it die with dignity. To quote a recent and popular Disney princess: “Let it go. Let it go.”

[rockrevoltmagazine]

INTERVIEW: HOLLYWOOD UNDEAD

Photo by Darren Craig

An amazing week thus far, and it’s just getting better. There is NOTHING better than putting our ears on New Empire Vol. I of Hollywood Undead, and then speaking to them about it.

Feast and quench your reading thirst with this conversation had with Johnny 3 Tears about all things Hollywood Undead and New Empire Vol I.!

Thanks, so much for talking to me today! I have a few questions about the New Empire Vol. I. Is there one phrase you would use to describe the new album? If you could keep it short and sweet how would you sum up your new album?

It’s a piece of shit, honestly. No, I’m just kidding. I don’t know! That’s such a… I hate when people ask me that stuff. It’s like when my wife asks me why do I love her. It’s like dude, I don’t know! I don’t have any reasons. I just think it’s a great album and it’s a step forward and something we’re proud of. It’s work we’ve never put out before so the whole message I would give is prepare yourself for the unknown.

Okay, Awesome! So why did you change directions with the album and go with one specific producer?

Well, honestly… oof. You know uhm…A.) with the sound and stuff like that it’s never a particular type of record it’s kind of comes to be. We’re kind of instinctual and we go with our guts and our emotions and that’s what was there. As far as the production went, I think we just, things happened a lot quicker than we thought. We worked with a lot of the same guys, who are great guys by the way, you know I love all the guys we’ve worked with for a long time. I think there’s a certain comfort level you know. A lot of them are my friends. Matt, who we worked with, we knew him, and we toured with him when was with From First to Last and Drugs and some other bands and we’d known him for a long time. When we got into the studio the work ethic was certainly different and it sort of brought the best out of us. As we started our plan was still to go in with multiple producers but as we kept rolling with him it came to a point where it was like look, this is really clicking this is really working, let’s just stick with what we’re doing. And that was kind of why. It wasn’t like some kind of decision. It was just like, why stop doing what we’re doing this is really working for us. We ended up just doing the whole thing with him. It was never intentional and honestly, it’s kind of refreshing because starting up with someone new in the studio you always have to go through a lot of different rigamaroo to get going. And it’s kind of nice to stay on all cylinders straight through until you’re done with the album. It was refreshing, it was different. We might do it again or we might do it differently next time but certainly this time it worked for us.

Looking back and working with Matt Good, I know you said everything kind of clicked when you went into it and that there wasn’t any rhyme or reason to it. Looking back on it was there anything that you think he brought to the table production wise that really stood out for you while creating the album?

I mean, the guys cutting edge, but I think honestly the main role of a producer in a studio is to make sure you’re doing your job. So, it’s very easy to get complacent and you just want to finish so let’s just write some songs. And most people can write incessantly and constantly but that doesn’t reflect on the quality and he was really good at pushing us. You know, we haven’t been a band forever but we’ve been a band for a pretty long time and we have five records and we’ve released like 50 songs that were never on albums so we, it’s been a lot of material there and I think it’s easy to kind of get in a box and kind of get used to running through the same system to create an album. He didn’t allow us to do that. He really pushed us, and he’d tell you “You know, hey, this isn’t good enough.” Sometimes that hurts to hear and sometimes he’s wrong, but a lot of the times he’s right and you end up going back and rewriting and reworking things and looking back on it going, “Oh, I’m really glad we did that.”. So, I think that is his principle role is pushing the writers and the band to push themselves and he did a phenomenal job of that. And that goes back to knowing the producer too well because eventually you just don’t listen because eh, what are you gonna fucking do? You know, you start and you’re kind of like, “Okay, I gotta listen to this guy because he’s my new boss in a sense.”. You know, there’s a lack of discomfort that I think drives artistic expression. If you’re really comfortable it’s really easy to get lazy about it so that’s what I liked about it was the extra push to do my best.

Right, so you didn’t get too complacent and he kind of helped you push those boundaries.

Yeah, and you know just someone there to say, “That’s not good, that sucks.”. We’ve written plenty of songs that suck. I’ll be the first to tell you that. You want to at least enable your yourself to be honest with yourself and be truthful. I think that is the main role of any producer with any band is to make sure that the band does what the band does. What they’re capable of doing. So, yeah, anyhow.

Was it his idea to bring in Kellin Quin from Sleeping with Sirens or was that more your idea because you saw the connection there and wanted to broaden it? Whose idea was that?

Kellin? No, that was totally random! So, we uh, our manager where we recorded it, the office has a huge… a bunch of studios in it. So you have people bouncing around in there hanging out recording their own stuff and in a different studio or just sitting there and one day like, he was hanging out because they manage Sleeping with Sirens and he was just drinking some tequila, and we were drinking some tequila, and we were writing a song and we’re like, “Hey man, would you want to jump in with us?”. And he was like, “Yeah!” and that was it. That was really it. And I’ve always been a Sleeping with Sirens fan so there’s that. I mean, obviously if I thought it wasn’t, they weren’t good, it wasn’t my thing, I would have never asked. But, uhm, it was really actually just completely random. He was there. We were there and we all like to play music so we played music together. I love that stuff too. Especially like when you read about bands back in the 60’s. Jonny Cash would write stuff with Bob Dylan because they were just sitting around together and they both liked to play music and there was a lot of comradery in the music scene and now I don’t sense that so much. So, it was really cool in that sense. All the guests on our album we were all just hanging out so it’s very natural, I guess. It wasn’t like, “You know who would sound good right here at this moment is blah blah blah.”. It was kind of just a natural progression from just hanging out to we’re all in the studio together let’s make something and if it sucks it sucks, if it doesn’t it doesn’t. It was just a natural thing.

So, there was really a sense of “community” on this album then?

Yeah, no you’re totally right, there really was.

After being around for 15 plus years what sort of propels or compels you to keep going and to keep wanting to break boundaries and keep creating? What is it would you say is your driving force?

I guess the same thing that really made me want to start doing music to begin with. It’s really hard to explain to someone who doesn’t like look at it that way. The best way I can explain it is you don’t really have a choice. I know for a fact if I wasn’t writing music, I don’t know what would happen.

So basically, it’s just a part of you?

Yeah, I’d say it’s just a part of everybody. Even people who just listen to music. They have the same drive towards it just on the other end of it. Like I know there are a lot of people without the ability to listen to music would lose their shit too. I mean, I think it’s kind of a universal thing at least with the musical community that we all rely on it fairly heavily to get through things. That’s really kind of all I’ve got is that it’s a part of me whether I want it to be or not. I’ve often thought “Man, it would be really nice to not have that drive.”, because I really wouldn’t mind just being a happy whistling mailman like you see in like Mayberry or something. That seems pretty nice too, but I guess that’s really just not my fate. You know, music is just an amazing thing and I’m glad to be a part of it and I’m glad there’s people who feel that strongly about our music too and that support the band because the connection certainly transcends most. So, we’re just happy to be able to do it in general.

I can totally relate to that. Now with the album this is a Volume I, so this isn’t all of the tracks? The rest of the tracks are finished though, right?

Yeah, Yeah. We finished everything over the summer this year, but everything is done, and Volume II is ready to go. Everything is fired up Bro.

Can you walk me through the decision process on breaking up the tracks? What made you pick this first set of tracks for this volume? What was the thought process on how you split them up? Was there a specific reason you picked these?

There is to a degree. There’s heavier songs I think, or more up-tempo songs on the first one because you kind of want to come out of the gate with that. The second one has some ballads on it and some different kind of material that’s probably a bit more experimental. So, I think it’s more like, hey let’s make the fanbase happy and that immediate sort of need for it and kind of take care of that on the first one. There’s still heavy material on the second one. I actually like the second volume better, personally. So, it’s more about taste but yeah, I mean it was kind of like that. I guess that was the ballpark was let’s keep the first one like kind of punch-you-in-the-face-style even though there is a ballad on there called “Nightmare” and stuff like that. But that was kind of where we were at is just kick them in the teeth on the first one and then go into the artistic driven stuff so the people who hate that stuff kind of already got what they wanted, I guess.

I had a chance to read over some of the comments you had made about the new album and everything and I read your comments about “Time bomb” and the pressures that kids deal with, in regard to social media. Can you describe what you were speaking about in this comment?

Social media is one of those things I can look at from sort of a distance. I mean, because it’s all kind of silly. But when I started to understand the effect that it had on very young people especially it really isn’t just them. It’s like this worldwide version of keeping up with the Jonses, you know? So, it’s this mythological lifestyle that everybody has. It doesn’t really exist and what it does from my observation is it puts pressure on the person next to you to go, “How come I’m not like these people?”, They seem happy and they seem to have their act together, which is obviously not true because nobody is going to discuss or divulge, you know, the worst parts of life or the lesser parts of life. I found that at first, I thought of it as kind of like this just pocket little fad that was going to come and go but I think social media has a greater effect on the general thinking of the population than anything else. I think its superseded music, its superseded movies, it superseded any type of entertainment and I think it has had a disastrous effect on people’s lives in general. Now some people can use it and just use it for business, or you know, talking to their friends in high school, I don’t know. But in general, I think it’s kind of by nature itself, because human nature starts getting involved, it’s an evil kind of like algorithm because what you have is this constant state of comparison. Which in my mind, is the absolute worst thing a person can do is to compare themselves to the person next to them or the person down the street or in this case, a person across the world. What starts to happen is these feelings come through that they’re not good enough or they’re not doing what someone else is doing. Because there’s so many people on earth, there’s always going to be something that they’re not doing and they’re always not going to be good enough. And I think that projection on to people’s lives is extremely negative. I’ve read a lot of stuff about kids and especially with suicide is driven by bullying on social media. I mean, I think almost everybody has heard about that at this point. And you start to see the really ill effects it has on society as a whole and it really just made me think about this thing because I don’t think it’s going away. In fact, I think it’s going to grow and grow and grow and at some point, we have to deal with the ramifications of what this does to people and how it makes them feel about themselves. “Time bomb” was kind of just a reflection on that and from a different person’s perspective and how it can affect them. Obviously, it’s going to take a lot of resources and time to time to get to the bottom of this stuff and I think this was just Hollywood Undead’s take on this modern disease that people have of the constant comparison on the internet that people have with on another. It’s pretty wild.

Also, in the comments Jimmy said how you guys don’t want your fans to get comfortable. Why would you say you don’t want them to be comfortable? What do you mean by that?

Well, then that would mean I’m comfortable and I don’t think you can write good music from a position of comfort. You have to push yourself; you have to make yourself uncomfortable emotionally. Emotion is the bedrock of music if you look at it. No matter what your progression looks like or how catchy your melody is there has to be something underneath it. If they’re comfortable that means I’m comfortable which means I’m not pushing myself and I’m not doing what I’m supposed to do. Also, it goes to the effect that if someone that’s been listening to our records thinks they know what they’re gonna hear before they hear it that’s a very negative thing to me. Now, there’s a lot of fans that wish, I’m not arguing against this, that would love to hear duplications of records from the past. We hear it all the time. “Why don’t you write a record like this. Why don’t you write a record like that?”.  That would be extremely uninteresting to us. I don’t think we’d have much of a purpose if we had to duplicate past work. And then whether they realize it or not, if you did do a record like that, then they’d just be asking you why your record sounds like another one. So, it’s like one of these things is duplicitous. I mean, I think a band in order to do what it’s supposed to do has to constantly kind of push boundaries and if we’re doing that then that should push listeners boundaries to some degree. So, discomfort to me is very vital to writing good music and even from the listeners perspective I would hate the idea of someone releasing an album that I’m looking forward to and almost knowing what’s going to be there before I listen to it. That’s all I meant by it.

Real quick, just a fun question here. If it were your last day what song off of your discography would you want to be remembered for? What’s your number one, holy grail, this is what I want people to remember me for?

Ooh… “I’ll be there” off of the deluxe version of Day of the Dead. That’s a no brainer for me. Yes ma’am!

Interview by Heather Householder

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INTERVIEW: HOLLYWOOD UNDEAD was originally published on RockRevolt Mag

[lerry-hazel]

Mystrade

… so, I accidentally fucked up the very beginning of a project I had secretly hoped to finish today, so I need to complete something in order to not feel completely useless. Now, I have an actual Mystrade fic on a backburner, but I’m not really sure I want to finish it anymore, - but I *am* sure I’ll never dare to attempt this one, so I might just as well put it up here for someone, hopefully, to find and work on.First of all, while I came up with the idea because someone worded the disclaimer on their Mystrade fic as “I owe nothing, because if a was writing the show I would write myself a sex scene with Rupert Graves” (although I would not; if anything, I find Guttis the more attractive of the two ;-P), and while some rumors about ST: DS9 I had come across on the Net ages ago conveniently fit the plot, I d like to point out that it is not supposed to be an RPF: I deliberately didn’t pry in the biographies of the creators of “Sherlock” (or DS9, for the matter), so any similarity, as they say, if purely coincidental. OK, here we go.

Screenwriter!Mycroft/Actor!Lestrade AU

With a little Star Trek mixed in

(or, more likely, accidentally dropped in)

Young Mycroft writes a very good novel – or maybe a play. Lestrade get a supporting role in its screen – or stage – adaptation, and they become good friends.  Despite the promising start, Mycroft’s writing career fails to blossom for some reason,  so Lestrade helps him get a job as a screenwriter on the TV-show where he himself has been working for a while. I’m going to use Star Trek as an example, but the show just needs to be relatively popular with relatively small fanbase, it doesn’t have to be a si-fy.Now, prior to Mycroft’s arrival Lestrade’s character was somewhat like Sulu: technically on the main cast, but actually just sitting there. Mycroft, being a good writer, brings the general quality of the scripts up and works on character development, so Lestrade’s character in particular becomes more like Data: still mostly there for comic relief, but also gets to lead some episodes and build up a more or less consistent story.  Also, Mycroft develops feelings for Lestrade, but doesn’t act on them, because Lestrade is too handsome/too popular/seems to exclusively date women/all of the above.Eventually the show either ends of becomes one of those sad remnants that drag on although the entire cast has been replaced, but, thanks to his character becoming more interesting, Lestrade gets noticed and his career takes off. As for Mycroft, he eventually gives up his artistic dreams and gets a boring job he went to college for (probably not “the British Government”, but something that requires sitting in an office and wearing a suite). However, while the show was still running, Mycroft once dared to sneak in a character based on himself and got him to flirt with Lestrade’s character. Then there was some problem with the actor cast on this role, and, since it was supposed to be a one-time thing, the producers told Mycroft to go ahead and just play the role himself. Surprisingly, Mycroft was not half-bad as an actor, the fans loved their interaction, so the character got brought back from time to time(*). Now, a few years after the show ended/degraded beyond redemption, the anniversary of something or other is coming and the company is doing a spin-off about those two characters (think Garak and Bashir on post-canon Cardassia). Mycroft, as the successful duo was his invention in the first place, is given a carte-blanche on writing the script, and he decides that he would throw caution to the wind and make the characters actually fall in love. Unfortunately, he only gets to write one or two episodes, and they come out so brilliant that the company decides to sell them to a bigger studio. The production now has to cater to larger mainstream audience, so the character are given female love interests, the roles are given to more famous actors, and, in order to appease those 150 fans who were actually looking forward to seeing Mycroft and Lestrade, they are cast as background characters who barely have any joint screen time and aren’t supposed to be acquainted. At first, Mycroft is devastates, but then he gets a crazy idea and writes a fanfiction novel, where their characters – no longer Garak and Bashir, but, say, random Cardasian and Federation officers – shared a story during the Federation-Cardassian war and are forced to pretend they don’t know each other, but that will soon change. The fic becomes tremendously popular, even though it’s clear the “canon” isn’t going to go that way. Eventually Lestrade finds out about the fic and somehow – probably because he feels the “chemistry”  between the characters even though the plot doesn’t allow him to act on it – he figures out that Mycroft wrote it and confronts him, which probably should lead to a happy ending. Although for some reason I rather envision a bittersweet scenario where Lestrade says that he is flattered and dearly loves Mycrof as a friend, but otherwise is just not interested, and Mycroft answers something like “I know, I just wanted to see how it would feel”.

____________________________________

(*) Because some people tend to get worked up over the weirdest things, let me clarify that, according to something I read somewhere, Garak was supposed to only appear on DS9 once, but became a recurring character because the public liked him; I don’t even know if it’s true, but the rest of the story is definitely pure fiction and doesn’t mean to imply anything.

[martywurst]

YEAR 2: The Worst Comedian (Part 2)

I had an encounter with former Comedy Store talent coordinator, Tommy, who was fired just months prior and was working on developing another home base where he could still play comedy godfather. The Vaucluse Lounge was a mere two blocks away from the Comedy Store and now Tommy was recruiting comics that were still loyal to him and putting on shows. They were calling this place Chaplin's House, but I don't think there was anything historic about it.

It really was an impressive bar/lounge, but management was falling apart. It was a ghost town. I ordered their onion rings and got a pile of American cheese on a couple of turd circles (psst, I'm not really a writer). I ordered something disgusting and got so much more.

"Ooh, that looks good, I'm gonna get that!" one comic said, pinching and stretching some cheese off my plate.

A couple of nights the place was locked up unannounced, black curtains drawn, even though a show was supposed to be going on. Headliners were bailing before their sets.

There were a couple of open mics going on there, too. Tommy would play some acoustic guitar for 30 minutes to get the room warmed up. He played the same three songs over and over. Or maybe it was just the same three chords, I can't remember. He was like one of those dudes that destroy a party by forcing us to listen to a cover of Hotel California. Strictly Hollywood Blvd quality. Then he would hang out for the mic and occasionally give advice to some lucky comic.

After one of my sets, he was suddenly next to me, talking into my ear like David Blaine.

"There's something that's still missing, but I don't know what it is."

"I'm not connecting with the audience?" I asked.

"There was just something missing. Try sitting on a stool and just saying your material, so it's not so (in-your-face gesture) forced. Your material is good, it had an intelligence and you have a good look. It's not about how you look on stage, it's about how you look on camera....really. But I think you just need to say what you have to say- I took it in. You'll get there, I enjoyed it."

Then he patted me on the shoulder and walked away.

Maybe if I worked hard enough I could become a Vaucluse regular! I honestly thought it was cool to get advice from Tommy, despite him being a reputed racist douchebag. I mean, he was once the apprentice of The Comedy Store owner Mitzi Shore, so his opinion has to count for something, right? A racist's opinion is still an opinion. Plus, he really wailed on the guitar!

One night at Vaucluse I waited around for 2 hours to do a 10 minute set. That's actually a good set for that kind of wait, but this night was excruciating. There was a line-up of all male comics that had plenty to say about the opposite sex: Stories varied from "This bitch was sucking my dick," to "I wanted to give her brown eye a black eye!" and so forth. I remember hearing the bartender making pained noises behind the counter, like some victim of a stabbing. left for dead. She had to just stand there and take it...every worthless comedian. Worst of all, EVERYONE got 10 minutes. When the first 30 seconds are torture, the next 9 1/2 feel like a lifetime. When they finally got to me the host said,

"Uhh, you get 2 minutes."

I've never been that pissed at an open mic before. Mother...FUCKER. They were letting the worst people host, nothing ever started on time, the food was godawful, the bartender wanted to kill herself, and no one seemed to give a shit that the place was falling apart. I was mentally trying to stay positive and tune out all the negative shit I'd been listening to, but now I wanted to douse myself in gasoline and tackle the host into the fireplace--that would be such a great closer. My stomach was turning from the onion rings, so I opted for my shitty set instead.

But hey, it's 2 minutes so I did it. I got through a joke-and-a-half. Once I left, I cursed and muttered angrily all the way to the bus, letting the "cocksuckers" and "motherfuckers" fly.

I went home and looked at their Facebook page and saw this ridiculous post,

"Chaplin's House is being called the New Comedy Store...no joke."

Nobody's laughing.

Anyway, that place folded and Tommy moved on to another space where he still occasionally gives out his comedy pointers.

Also in my second year I was doing fewer bringer shows, but I still got roped into a couple more at Flappers. I would quickly get stressed out again and moan to my girlfriend about why I put myself through this. Just reading the emails made me want to puke:

Respond to this email with a head count of how many audience you expect so that we can properly staff the room. 

It takes everyone involved to have epic shows--we do ask everyone to always aim to have at least 5 people per show.  If you are unable to get anyone out please let us know and we will re-schedule you for a date that is more convenient for you to support.

Like I said before, they only want me back when I make some fucking friends!

I decided to not show up at all and go to the Rebel Bite open mic in Long Beach instead. An open mic at a pizza joint was better than doing a bringer show, at least in my head. I wrote back:

Sorry for the delay,   I wanted to get a more accurate count of zero confirmed.    I think my friends tapped out months ago.  Let me know if you want to reschedule or give me the boot.  Or I'll audition again once I have a little fanbase I can depend on instead of wasting everybody's time. Nothing personal.  Thanks.

I shouldn't have felt bad about it anyway, since I bought 4 of my videotaped sets from them.

Then there was the Formosa Cafe. I did it because I was told it wasn't REALLY a bringer show...just sort of. Uggh. I won't mention the names. I can still hear the producer pretending to laugh at other people's sets--so forced and obvious, trying to get the crowd on our side. He'd be looking down at his phone and let out a

"BWAHAHAHAHA!"

Then I'd have to listen to some jerk-off host do his Family Guy impressions for 15 minutes. Then the producer would go up and do the most dated material--many of these bringer show people stick to their one routine. Anyway, what do I know, they're the ones cashing in, right?

I had friends show up for my first and second show, then the third time none of my friends came out and the producer stopped booking me. During past shows, he was blowing smoke up my ass and said all these nice things about my particular brand of humor, but he was only thinking about the head-count. He was a phony just like his forced laughter.

 There were some nice moments. My blues buddy, Street Slim invited me to do a set at The Rainbow Bar and Grill, a really cool rock bar on The Sunset Strip. Just to do something outside the ring of comedians that I was usually bumping heads with felt really special.

My friend Donald and I rented out a black box theater and produced a variety show. It ran 2 1/2 hours and half the audience left, but we had a great time.

I co-produced a comedy show with Jeanne Whitney and Timika Hall at Echoes Under Sunset. We only did 3 shows, but it was a fantastic experience.

I remember bombing at the new UCB on Sunset and when I was walking back to the car, a couple I've never seen before starts yelling at me from their car.

"Marty, you were funny!"

"What?"

"We were inside."

"Really? Thanks, it felt like death in there."

"We thought you were funny."

"Working on it, working on it."

That blew my mind. Who does that? And they remembered my name!

One time they moved a Comedy Store open mic into the Main Room and after we finished our sets, Bill Burr dropped in and did 15 minutes to an all-comic crowd. It was awesome.

Another time I was waiting around for Tony Bartolone's Hat Show to start and the great Rick Shapiro was outside with Rick Wood and Jeremy Bassett. Shapiro was making fun of the Oldtown Pasadena scene and he suddenly gets a glimmer in his eye and this evil grin,

"Let's go to the Mac Store and jerk off!"

It was said with such demented glee. Later we went to get him some Starbucks and he told the barista that his name was Johnny Two Chicks. He was so excited to hear the name called out, but it didn't get the reaction he wanted.

 Then there was the time that I was waiting in the green room for another possible Kill Tony episode at the Comedy Store. Dom Irrera comes in and sits down across from me. It's silent, it's uncomfortable, the guy is amazing, so I'm a little in awe. He asks me if I'm a comic and how long I've been doing it. Very friendly, but I just gave him short answers. Meanwhile, Pat Regan was on stage singing about how much he misses getting jacked off in San Francisco, and Dom and I are just sitting there while this song is in the background. Dom turns to me completely serious and says,

"This song brings back a lot of memories." I barked out a laugh.

I started making goofy set-lists and posting them online. Just a good way to vent about the shit I'd seen at open mics during the week. Here are a few of my favorites:

The usual variety of homophobic/misogynistic shit I'd hear on any given week.

 My second Kill Tony appearance went a little better, but only because I managed to get a few laughs. It was a unique situation because I brought my buddy Dakota Freeman with me, but he was under 21 and wouldn't be allowed inside the club unless he was called up to perform. So I stood outside with him, listening through the door every few minutes to see if we'd get called.

About 30 minutes into the show I got called, but I couldn't open the door from the outside. For a second, the hosts thought I had flaked, but a couple of my friends were in the audience, telling them I was behind the door because I was with a minor. They opened the door for me and at this point there was some confusion because the hosts were under the impression that I was the one underage. Then when it was cleared up Tony says,

"Oh, you're hanging out with underage boys. Ok!"

Before I've even started my set, another pedophile joke had been spiked over my head. You can probably see where this is going.

I didn't gain any Twitter followers this time--in fact, I think I lost a couple.  They probably thought I was really a pedophile.

 Gradually, I found some open mics down in Long Beach, where I had moved in with my girlfriend. There was the SOM open mic at the Rebel Bite pizzeria, The Library Coffeehouse, Blacklight District Lounge and Makai Coffee.

Now if I wasn't feeling the LA scene that week, I had the option to hit some mics in my neighborhood. Rebel Bite, Makai, and The Library were just a mile away. Long Beach was also calmer. I could do longer sets- I did my first 15 minute set at Rebel Bite. I met some nice people. It's funny how these two coffee shops were the polar opposite in terms of an audience--take a look below.

I was also hearing some positive feedback for a change. Sometimes my conceptual ideas would play well and even if they didn't, I'd still be writing the kind of stuff I wanted to try. The support I was getting from my new friends gave me the confidence to try bigger ideas. Showing up to mics and finally having a group of friends to talk to was a nice break. I was so used to being the creeper that was eavesdropping outside a circle of comedy nerds or asking Dean Delray stupid questions in the Comedy Store hallway. Complimenting comics on their podcasts, or a joke that I liked, thinking I always had to go in with a compliment or they'd hate my guts. Then I would fuck up their name anyway, which made the compliment null and void.

I'm still learning to relax, but I'm usually amped up whenever I'm in Los Angeles. I feel the cutthroat competition and that air of judgement. Mostly because I'm carrying it around with me--turn that shit off Wurst, these are your friends! I don't have to prove anything to these comics, we're all showing up to the same mic. Charles Disney was just saying how we ask questions that we want to be asked in return,

"You got any cool gigs coming up? No? NOW ASK ME IF I HAVE ANY COOL GIGS! THANK YOU, I DO! SLEEPAWAY CAMP BABY-MARGARET CHO HEADLINING! ENJOY YOUR SHOW AT P.F. CHANG'S, YA ASIAN FUSION COMIC! "

There's usually 4-5 standard questions (How you doing, got anything coming up, you hitting another mic after this, you ever go to Marty's?) and if there's no conversation beyond that, we're not really friends. It's just surface level pleasantries for insecure comics.

Then there are just genuinely great dudes like Spencer Kalendar, who's never putting on airs and makes me feel like I can just be myself. I think the very first thing he said to me was,

"I remember you from Kill Tony, you're the pedophile guy!"

[thisaintascenereviews]

Album Review by Bradley Christensen & Jake Higgins Linkin Park – One More Light Record Label: Warner Bros Release Date: May 19 2017

Three years ago, give or take, I reviewed Linkin Park’s last LP, 2014’s “The Hunting Party,” and I hate to say I told you so, Linkin Park fanbase, but I told you so, because they’ve officially sold out with their new album, One More Light. I mentioned in that review that it was blatant how the band was selling out to their diehard fans, as the album was touted to be heavier and more guitar-driven, because that’s what the fanbase wanted at the time. The problem with that album, at least for me, anyway, was what the album represented. Linkin Park were out of ideas by the time The Hunting Party was written, and instead of trying anything new or interesting, they just resorted to giving the diehard fans what they wanted, all the while alienating the casual listeners that might like a song or two from the rock radio stations. One More Light, their new album, alienates everyone, and I don’t know how that’s possible, but it is. This LP is even more of a sellout, because they totally went back on the ideas of The Hunting Party (wanting to give fans a heavier and more aggressive album), and ultimately made an album that sounds like pop music in 2017 – boring, uninteresting, and EDM-influenced pop music that has no flavor or heart to it. I’m not one to use the term “sellout,” because it means that a band / artist made music or did something that they would never do, only because they want to make a quick buck. That’s what One More Light is. Linkin Park couldn’t win back their fanbase with The Hunting Party, so they resorted to trying to appeal to mainstream pop fans, but the end result is one of the worst albums I’ve ever heard, whether it’s because of the circumstances behind the album, or how the album actually sounds. It’s easily one of the worst albums of the year, but I won’t be talking about this album alone. I made that mistake with The Hunting Party, but I’ll be bringing my best friend Jake aboard for this piece of trash. As more of a Linkin Park between the both of us, what were your thoughts on The Hunting Party, as well as your thoughts going into this LP?

Hey, I thought we agreed to only review good albums together after the Chevelle review! Of course you have to drag me back in for this nonsense! If I have to do this, though, I have to go all in, so I'll take it back even before The Hunting Party. Around 2006-2007, I really started finding my passion for music, and Linkin Park was my first favorite band. I thought it was super cool how they were able to be really aggressive and energetic, yet catchy and relatable all at once. That nu-metal sound, regardless of how well it's aged now, had a charm to it, and Linkin Park eventually led me to discover one of my favorite genres, that being hard-rock/alternative metal. So, in a way, Linkin Park will always have a place in my heart, but I guess that's what makes their more recent material so bizarre and puzzling. Basically, nu-metal wasn't cool anymore by the time the band was ready to release the follow-up to 2003's Meteora, so ever since then, they've been throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, to varying degrees of quality. The albums from Minutes To Midnight to Living Things, while definitely having their fair share of issues, were mostly excusable. The Hunting Party, on the other hand, was when things were actually starting to get really questionable. As Bradley said, they were clearly out of ideas by this point, so they figured they could go to their one safe bet, their core fanbase, yet they somehow botched it completely. By this point, my fandom for Linkin Park was dead, so naturally, I wasn't exactly excited for what they would do next, but damn, was I fascinated by the possibilities. Once buzz started circulating about work on a new Linkin Park album being done, Bradley and I had multiple debates and conversations about where the band could go next. We both thought they essentially had nowhere to go but up. And then, "Heavy" happened.

You know I couldn’t do this alone, bbygurl, because this album is too bad, even for someone like me that covers bad albums from time to time. Seriously, though, it’s good to get your perspective on this band, considering that I got into them much, much later. My first experience with this band was 2012’s Living Things, which I got at Goodwill around three or four years ago, and I didn’t like that album, but I’ll admit that their first couple of albums (now that I’ve listened to them) are rather charming, fun, and silly, even if they haven’t aged the best. Even as someone that got into them quite late, I’ve always been perplexed by them, because I could never get a firm grasp on these guys. Despite how I don’t have any personal or emotional connection to them, I’ve been insanely puzzled by them. With the release of The Hunting Party moving back into their “older stuff,” it’s been interesting to think about where they would go from there. Where could they even go? They’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t, because no matter what, it wouldn’t end well. Either way, Jake and I have had tons of conversations about where they would go, but like he said, “Heavy” happened. It’s been about time for a new Linkin Park album to drop, but this was the first single? No one could seen a song like this coming, not even us, because we didn’t think they’d sink that low. Simply put, “Heavy” is a generic pop song that The Chainsmokers would laugh at. The Nostalgic Critic started off his review of The Master Of Disguise by calling it a “study,” not quite a review, because the film was a cinematic suicide – a film that wanted to die and was doing its best to die. I feel like this review is more of a study on why this LP is so awful, more so than merely saying it is, because nothing about this is good. One More Light is an album that desperately wants to be liked, wants to be listened to, and wants to be remembered, but it doesn’t achieve even one of those things. One More Light is an album that’s so awful, it’s rather sad, and it really should be put out of its misery. I mentioned this in the introduction, but this is easily one of the worst albums of the year, possibly one of the worst albums I’ve ever heard.

So, exactly why is this album so bad? Well, there are two "phases," if you will, of awful to this album. I'll explore the first here, which is the album itself, rid of all the outside baggage and personal attachments. To be blunt, this is a pop album, and it's a pop album that might possibly be one of the most utterly lifeless, boring, and derivative things I've ever heard. I feel like the band knew they had nothing left, so they set out to do the absolute bare minimum to remain even remotely relevant. Going back to "Heavy," absolutely nothing about that song says Linkin Park to me. Not even a modern version of Linkin Park who just wanted to experiment and update their sound, but a really weak imititation of every bland pop/EDM artist clogging up the charts, with an added bonus of Chester Bennington sounding painfully out of his depth. "Heavy" is just the start, too, as you have pretty much every type of popular song on this album. A "banger" with a thin trap beat? Check. Semi-energetic pop song with like three guest rappers? Check. Totally feelsy ballad that tries way too hard to tug at the heartstrings? You guessed it, check. That's one of the many, many problems One More Light has; it comes off like a really thin checklist, so there's no flow to the album whatsoever. Sure, maybe it would be somewhat forgivable if the band could pull off any of these styles competently, but they can't even do that. No matter what style they desperately try to emulate, they do it in such a lifeless way that has absolutely no energy, emotion, or spark to it whatsoever. I'm just left not feeling a damn thing after hearing these songs, even on the most shallow levels most pop music at least comes close to. Well, okay, that's not entirely true, because once all that baggage comes back into play, I just end up feeling really angry. For more on that, let's throw it back over to Bradley.

The real reason why the album pisses us off so much isn’t the album itself, although it’s some top notch garbage that’s drenched in the highest grade of dumpster juice, but it’s how the band has reacted to the backlash that they surely knew they were going to get after its release. Hell, they got some backlash for “Heavy,” but they surely had to know that fans were going to slaughter this album the moment they heard it. I can’t blame them at all, though, because I’m right there with you guys. I’m not even a diehard fan of them, or anything close to that, but I completely understand the anger that most fans are feeling with this LP. Chester Bennington, in particular, has reacted in the most childish, annoying, and rude ways possible. Not only has he told fans to “move the fuck on” from Hybrid Theory, despite having to know how much fans love that album, he also told fans that don’t like One More Light to go stab themselves in the face. All in all, Bennington is the real reason why this album pisses us off so much, because of his reaction to this backlash. If Bennington didn’t react so angrily, rudely, or insultingly, the album would be a forgettable piece of pop garbage that no one would care about in a week (that’s still true, for the record), but I could forgive that. I mean, it’s pretty bland, so I wouldn’t have the energy to remember it. This actively bothers me, though, because Bennington is behaving like a child. It’s weird, because I can understand being bummed if people don’t like your newer albums that you put so much time and effort into, but that’s part of the risk of you take when doing something totally different. People won’t like what you put out, and since most Linkin Park fans are the “pop music sucks” kinds of fans, well, are you really surprised, Chester? People are finally catching on that Linkin Park is out of ideas, and Chester can’t handle that, so he’s essentially insulting and lashing out at fans that actually give a crap about their music. That’s not many people, unfortunately, especially if Bennington is going to react that way when he gets some backlash. If Linkin Park end up breaking up after this LP, One More Light would be a fitting name for a final album, wouldn’t it?