#these two eps aired just over ten months apart

[dribs-and-drabbles]

The Thai Communal Wardrobe item #129

Only Friends ep 1:

My Stand In ep 7:

[luckystarchild]

Do you know why Jojo part 6 released in three batches of 12-14 eps many months apart instead of weekly like the previous parts?

Disclaimer: I'm not working on that series and I don't work for or with Netflix in any capacity, so please know everything I say here is just educated guesswork based on my experience in the anime industry at large, plus some logical observation thrown in.

But tbh? I'm guessing it's due to Netflix's dogged adherence to binge-model streaming.

In recent history, Netflix began licensing anime from Japanese licensors in a bid to enter the very lucrative anime space (valued in the tens of billions as of 2021). They kept their licensed titles in "Netflix Jail" until they could release the entire series in a binge-ready batch, foregoing weekly releases entirely. The "binge model" of streaming has worked well for them in the past, and they saw no reason to break from this tradition when they first started licensing simulcast anime in-season.

Carole & Tuesday, Beastars, and others received this treatment. The shows aired in their entirely in Japan, and months later, Netflix finally released them (with multiple foreign language dub options) in a big batch. Alas, anime fans accustomed to same-day simulcasts weren't happy they couldn't watch these series weekly during their seasonal debut (hence the term "Netflix Jail" entering anime community parlance). Because Netflix wanted to do batch-releases, fans missed out on the initial hype concurrent to the series' Japanese TV debut as a result.

I imagine most fans who wanted to watch a series would just pirate it rather than wait for Netflix to release it from Netflix Jail and drop the whole thing at once months after it aired (I know I did with Carole & Tuesday). Because there was no legal way to watch the series, these series weren't as widely reviewed for American audiences during the peak of the hype surrounding them. The lack of media hype + rampant piracy likely ate into Netflix's bottom line once the series were released on the platform. People had already watched the shows by the time Netflix released them from Netflix Jail, making them old news.

Since Netflix is a business, they were likely interested in figuring out how to better monetize their content and prevent preemptive piracy. That leads us to current-day-Netflix's behavior surrounding anime simulcasts.

The series I talked about above were largely licensed by Netflix. Licensing a show means buying the rights to these shows after the shows are funded (AKA produced) by Japanese producers, licensors and studios. Netflix owns the rights to stream these series, but they don't own the shows themselves. They couldn't prevent them from being aired in Japan since they didn't actually own the shows.

More recently, Netflix has been installing themselves as a producer on shows, rather than just a licensor of them. That is, rather than buying the streaming rights to a series, they've been putting down money up-front and funding the production of the anime they've been buying. They are co-producing, which gives them more control and power over the series as a whole. In short, they own all or most of the series.

Two recent series come to mind: Ooku the Inner Chambers and JoJo Part 6. Both of these series debuted on Netflix (Ooku is an exclusive Netflix production and ONA). In the case of Jojo Part 6, it was shown on Japanese TV after it debuted exclusively on Netflix.

Because Netflix has a controlling stake in these shows, they can control how and when they are released. They're going to release the series in the way they think will make them the most money. Because batch-releases and the binge model have worked well for them, they organized the release of JoJo Part 6 around this strategy. They premiered it on Netflix in a binge-ready batch of episodes, rather than rolling it out weekly. Then, afterward, they gave it a weekly release on Japanese TV. By preventing the show from airing on TV before it arrived on Netflix, they basically prevented pirates from "leaking" the episodes before Netflix could get a bite at them. This move made Netflix the first and simplest place to consume these series.

Basically Netflix wants to stick to their binge-model when possible. With anime simulcast licensing, you just can't do that without missing out on simulcast seasonal hype and inviting piracy of shows before you can air them. Anime simulcasts are basically incompatible with the binge model...

... unless you're rich enough to change the game, and turn "Netflix Jail" into just... Netflix.

If you own the show, you can control how it's released. Netflix removed JoJo Part 6 from the simulcast game completely and structured its release on what they thought would make them the most money. They think (and probably have numbers that suggest) people subscribe in order to binge new shows. By breaking Part 6 up into batches, they have three "binge cycles" that'll earn them customers each time.

Long story short: Netflix controls their content based on what they think will make them the most money, and for them, that's the binge model.

Obviously they're doing SOME weekly rollouts (mostly with their reality series), but Netflix still appears to be prioritizing bingeable content, and they haven't shifted over to weekly simulcasts for anime.

In the future, I expect they'll back away from simulcast licensing and do far more co-producing when it comes to anime. We'll likely see most "Netflix anime" being released as platform-exclusive (or ONA) content with a delayed TV release in Japan. Licensing simulcasts that get stuck in "Netflix Jail" earns them ill-will from fans who prefer same-day simulcasts. Owning the series by co-producing, rather than just stream-licensing, makes more sense for them and their binge-model business practice since they can escape the simulcast and piracy trap baked into the simulcast model. They can do whatever they like with the series they own... even if it flies in the face of anime fans who prefer simulcasts to the binge model.

Capitalism ruins the party again, I suppose. Hope this helped!

(Disclaimer: I understand there were long delays between the parts of Part 6, and that could be Netflix trying to drag things out, but it's also likely there were production issues. I can't say for sure, but the anime world is still suffering a lost of delays because of COVID, so... throw that in there and you have a recipe for long-delayed batch releases. But I can't speak to the specifics of this project.)

[jmdbjk]

Interior decor is self-expression

I do think it’s kind of peculiar that Jungkook admitted that he did not decorate his apartment. (By the way, for anyone thinking he was using a computer while entertaining us, he was using an Apple TV remote to look for songs.)

Remember everyone making a big deal out of the Marvel action figure showcase/shrine in that picture of Bam? The same room we saw a few times in other photos of Bam and his brother’s dogs...

The interior walls of the action figure room don’t look the same as his v live kitchen.

As artsy as JK is and the fact he has a big dog...seems like his apartment would consist of more than what we just learned...

So if he doesn’t decorate his apartment, those pictures of Bam are most likely not his apartment. JK shared that photo of Bam on IG in early December 2021 while in COVID isolation after returning from Los Angeles. 

BACK TO THE CAR SHARING/LIVING ARRANGEMENTS DEBATE:

At that time, Jungkook waited about 15 minutes for Jimin to get through customs at the airport. We saw that Jimin was headed to the same car as Jungkook upon arrival back from Los Angeles, only to be led by the arm to another waiting vehicle. They thought they would be traveling together in the same vehicle, otherwise why wait for Jimin? In this case, they had an extra vehicle waiting. Because their team knew they were headed to different destinations. 

So Jimin went to his own apartment and Jungkook must have gone to his brother’s to isolate – his immediate family. Not to HIS own apartment which is barren of furniture and only has mattresses, air purifiers and scent diffusers. Because he wouldn’t have had any creature comforts like real dishes there for a ten day isolation because he doesn’t actually live there. 

Granted, that was six months ago and the kitchen in which he did his V Live the other day could be a new apartment. Maybe he didn’t own Mattress World/Dining Room Laundry Shrine back in December. We don’t know. Regardless, he washed two stainless steel mixing bowls and was drinking wine out of a coffee cup. He doesn’t actually live there full time. If he bought a new apartment, where are the information sleuths who always find out this stuff? Where’s the real estate purchase records that everyone shares to the world when one of them buys property? They don’t have a problem outing any other personal info so where is this if it was a recent acquisition? If its because they’ve taken steps to protect their private information better then YAY!

And when they returned from Las Vegas this past April, Jimin and Jungkook left the airport together after being on an airplane for at least 15 hours. That was 8 or 9 weeks ago, about two months. The car Jimin was in waited about 20 minutes for Jungkook...in this case, I would assume they were headed to the same place or to places that were very close to each other. But I am leaning to the same place. 

In that one Run BTS (ep. 149) where they were divided into two teams and they were all decorating their space and Jimin and Jungkook started arguing over where to place the furniture? As if perhaps they had that conversation before? 

It’s things like that I need to remember happened so I can get my perspective back so just give me some time and I think we will all get through this.

[ficklefics]

Burden To Keep - Zemo x Reader ~ Chapter One: Saviour

Five years ago you were kidnapped by a mysterious group lead by a man only known as Critical. Five years of experiments. Five years of torture. And then in a blink of an eye, you're free. Three men, your saviours, asking you one question: where is the serum? But it could never be that easy. You join them as politics and terrorism throw you across the world, the hunters and the hunted. And through it all, there's him.

(starts towards the end of ep. 3, between Madripoor and Riga. will deviate from canon to an extent, but will likely follow the plot of the show loosely. planning for this to be a short series!)

SERIES MASTERLIST

MASTERLIST

The unlikely trio of allies made their way through the compound, dead-set on their purpose. Zemo had informed Bucky and Sam about a supply of super-soldier serum, purchased from the Power Broker six months ago, being kept in this facility. They were on their way to Riga when the information came through, and a quick pit-stop wasn’t an issue if it meant possibly getting evidence that could help them.

For being owned by a client of the Power Broker, the place was poorly defended. Sam came in by the air and drew their fire long enough for Bucky and Zemo to get past the outer wall. Reuniting in the courtyard, they took out the remaining guards and shut down the emergency siren.

Now they followed the path their intel had provided through the strangely unprotected building. They came across a few men with tactical gear and weaponry but dispatched them with ease. Posts seemed abandoned as they got closer to what was marked as a storeroom on their map.

“A lot of security for a storeroom,” Sam had commented when Red Wing brought back the scans. “That’s where it will be,” Zemo assured.

A long corridor marked the final stretch. The security cameras lining it were all thankfully deactivated as Zemo lead the way.

Rounding the final corner there was a lone guard in front of a solid door. Seemingly distracted by his radio, he didn’t notice anything wrong until Bucky’s metal arm was throwing him against the wall, knocking him out cold immediately.

On closer inspection, there was a slat at waist height in the door, and a glass window layered with metal and covered from the inside. With a wrench, Bucky broke the handle, forcing his way into the room.

What they found was not a store. There were no shelves or crates. No serum.

What they did find was a makeshift bedroom. In the corner stood a woman, a bloody shard of glass held in their direction.

*

The tray of food sliding into the delivery box set into the wall woke you from sleep that morning. The breakfast was the same as it had been every day for the past five years: two slices of buttered toast, a glass of orange juice, and a dish of assorted pills. You downed those first, barely feeling them pass through your throat as the orange juice followed. The toast disappeared quickly – they would get pissed if the tray wasn’t back within ten minutes.

“Another day in paradise.” You sighed to yourself, resting back onto the bed.

A few hours later, the sound of movement outside drew your attention. Drawing the window cover up slightly, you peered out at the guards talking in hushed German. Avengers … fucked … serum … Over your time here you had managed to pick up a surprising amount of the language. One guard left, leaving the other to stand guard at the door to your room.

The Avengers. You may not have followed them closely, but it was impossible to live in the West and not know who the superheroes were. But five years after they had failed, five years after half the world turned to dust, you had no idea what to expect. It’s better than this. That much was true. If they really were Avengers, maybe they were here to rescue you.

You paced your room, unable to hear anything else other than the occasional crackle of the guard's radio. Not knowing what was happening was like having a worm under your skin. Periodically you would check the window, hoping to see something, anything other than the guard.

That didn’t take long. You were peering out just as the group rounded the corner. Suddenly, panic filled you. These men weren’t Avengers. At least not the ones you knew. And if they weren’t Avengers…

You hurried back, almost stumbling on your feet, and grabbed the water glass from the desk just to smash it against the wall. The biggest shard sliced into your skin but you barely felt the pain. Backed into a corner, terrified, you listened as they knocked out the guard and broke the handle.

This was it.

The first man into the room was tall, with dark hair. What was most notable about him though, was the arm made of black and gold metal. He stopped at the sight of you, clearly confused. Behind him stood a slightly shorter man wearing goggles and some kind of armour. They both seemed familiar somehow, but you couldn’t put a name to the faces.

“What the hell is this?” The first man muttered as the other lifted his goggles, revealing warm eyes that narrowed at you. A quiet cough sounded behind them and they moved further into the room to let a third man step in behind them. He was shorter again, but only a little. He narrowed his eyes at you.

“Ah.”

“Who are you?” You brandished the makeshift weapon. You didn’t know these men. You didn’t know if you’d be able to take all three of them. But you weren’t going down without a fight. “Why are you here?”

“Sam Wilson.” The second man stretched out a hand, seemingly trying to calm you. “I’m an Avenger.” That’s how you knew him. The Falcon. You vaguely remembered seeing him in the back of photos, never quite taking centre stage. “That answers the first question.” “We’re looking for a serum that’s supposed to be stored here.” You turned towards the man with the metal arm. “The serum…” You’re mind immediately flickered back six months.

There were only six of you left in the dorm. The prison cell you called home. Weak from exhaustion, the countless tests, the years of suffering, it was easy for them to drag you out one by one. To strap you down to a table and inject burning liquid into your veins. You screamed through the gag as your body was set alight.

“Do you know where it is?” “It’s… it’s gone. I…” Could you really tell them where it was? You didn’t know their intentions. They might kill you. It seemed to register that you were afraid, that you weren’t a threat. The men exchanged a look, a silent conversation passing between them.

“Okay. Look, my name’s Bucky. What’s yours?” He took a step forward, not so much to threaten but to test how you would respond. Your shaking hand lowered, but you didn’t drop the glass. “(Y/N). (Y/N) (Y/LN).” “What do you mean gone? Where did they move it?” “Why should I trust you?” “Look, you’re a prisoner here, right?” Sam spoke up. You nodded. “We can help. We’ve got a jet, can take you anywhere you need to go.” “But only if I help you.” “She could be bluffing. We should leave.” The man in the back said this, shifting on his feet and glancing back over his shoulder. “Shut up Zemo.” The other two snapped in unison.

You couldn’t risk being left here. No matter who these men were, they were far better than those who held you prisoner. “I’m not bluffing. The serum is gone. I’ll tell you more, but your friend is right. We need to go.” The man in question, Zemo, was examining you even more closely now. His stare sent chills through your body. It was as if he was inside your mind, pulling it apart, exposing your secrets. “He’s not our friend,” Sam interjected. “Come on.” He stretched his arm out once more, gesturing for you to join them, and you dropped the glass, skirting around the bed. “We’re getting you out of here.”

You followed without question as they lead you through the building. Despite spending so long here, you had never seen more than brief glimpses of the endless corridors. Out through a hangar, the sunlight blinded you. Five years without the sun. No time to take it in. The four of you exited through the main gate – there was no one left to stop you.

A mile or so out a truck sat waiting. It had been hastily covered in branches, which Sam and Bucky pulled away quickly while Zemo stood at your side. You could feel his eyes watching you.

Once it was clear, Sam sat in the driver’s seat and Bucky stepped gracefully into the truck bed which had benches on either side. A hand on your upper back ushered you forward and you obeyed, taking Bucky’s outstretched hand and letting him help you up. You sat beside him as Zemo joined you. He sat opposite, hands on his knees and gazing past you. The engine started with a rumble and Sam took the vehicle back onto the road. You travelled in silence, the only sound the turn of the tires on the gravel and Bucky’s occasional sighs. You kept your eyes fixed on your hands which fidgeted with the hem of your shirt. This didn’t feel real. What if it was all a dream, or, even worse, a trick? A simulation to see what you’d do, and any moment now your rescuers would reveal themselves and send you back to an even worse hell.

Bucky seemed to catch onto your anxiety, resting his warm hand on your shoulder and giving it a reassuring squeeze. It helped a little.

Soon enough you were arriving at an airport where a plane sat waiting. You followed the men up the stairs, Zemo and Bucky in front and Sam behind you. What you found was nothing like what you were expecting.

You had imagined a military operation, crates and weaponry, nets against the wall, functionality over everything else.

Instead, you had been shown into a luxurious jet. Spacious, with leather seats and dark wooden tables, a plush carpeted floor against your bare feet.

“Wow.” You couldn’t stop yourself from gasping. “Danke,” Zemo smirked at your reaction. “I am rather proud of it.” “This is yours?” He nodded. You chuckled, almost in disbelief. This was it. You were actually free. Once you were in the air they would never be able to touch you again. “Take a seat, (Y/N).” Sam gestured towards the chairs. “It’ll be a few hours before we get to Riga.” You’d never heard of the place, but it didn’t matter. It was far away from here.

Settling into a seat towards the back of the plane, away from the three men who sat together, you closed your eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.

Free.

CHAPTER TWO

[astonishinglegends]

Ep 203: The Beast of Gévaudan

“This animal is a monster whose father is a lion; it remains open what the mother is.”

– Dragoon Captain John-Baptiste Boulanger Duhamel, speculating on the origins of La Bête du Gévaudan in January of 1765.

Description:

In the years between 1764 and 1767, a real-life monster had brutally savaged the residents of the former province of Gévaudan in the highland region of south-central France. While the creature's first attack was reportedly unsuccessful in killing its intended victim, it did provide a horrific description of it. Some sort of massive, canine-like creature was stalking the villagers out in their fields of the Margeride mountains. And it would remain as elusive as its killing spree grew nightmarishly effective. In a three-year span, contemporary and modern estimates put the death toll anywhere from around 100 to 500 people, mostly women, and children. To add to the fear and suffering, these were no ordinary large animal predator attacks. Considering that only a small percentage of the victims were found partially consumed, with livestock untouched, the bodies of all were so shockingly mutilated that it could be surmised this abomination of nature was not killing out of hunger but for sport. As news of the relentless slaughter spread throughout France, tens of thousands from every walk of life, peasants, soldiers, and noblemen alike, joined in the hunt to stop this menace. Reports had even reached Versaille, where King Louis XV had placed a large bounty on its head. When survivors and eyewitnesses had given their statements, a puzzling picture of the beast emerged. Although many accounts described this creature as having some features like an abnormally large wolf, or wolf-dog hybrid, other details combined didn't fit any known animal. It was also described as the size of a calf or donkey, with reddish hair and a black stripe down its back, giant, razor-sharp teeth set in the gaping mouth of a pig-like head, a tail with a tuft on its end, and talons on its feet. This being was shot and wounded on several occasions at close range only to escape and kill again, adding a supernatural element to the legend. Many believed then as they do now that this animal must have been a canine mutation of some sort. However, without the descriptor of "werewolf" or "skinwalker" added to the story, saying it was just a vicious, big dog leaves an unsatisfactory conclusion. With no remains or taxonomy to define this murderous freak, the only name that could be given to it then is the one that remains today: The Beast of Gévaudan.

Reference Links:

Scrying on Wikipedia

The 1992 motion picture, The Crying Game

Samhain

Lori Williams’ Controlled Remote Viewing website IntuitiveSpecialists.com

Russell Targ

Crystal Gazing – Its History and Practice, with a Discussion of the Evidence for Telepathic Scrying, by Northcote W. Thomas, M.A.

Benjamin, from the Old Testament or “Hebrew Bible”

“The Forgotten Art of Scrying” by Fernando S. Gallegos on ExploringTraditions.com

Bernardino de Sahagún

Moctezuma II

Nostradamus

John Dee

Edward Kelley

“Notes on John Dee’s Aztec Mirror” by Ed Simon on NorthernRenaissance.org

Horace Walpole

“Making a Sigilum Dei Aemeth out of Wax [Esoteric Saturdays]” on YouTube

Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Thelema

“Joseph Smith's "Magic" Glasses and Other Bizarre Objects from Mormonism” on ranker.com

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Credits:

Episode 203: The Beast of Gévaudan. Produced by Scott Philbrook & Forrest Burgess; Audio Editing by Sarah Vorhees Wendel. Sound Design by Ryan McCullough; Tess Pfeifle, Producer, and Lead Researcher; Research Support from the astonishing League of Astonishing Researchers, a.k.a. The Astonishing Research Corps, or "A.R.C." for short. Copyright 2021 Astonishing Legends Productions, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

[reachexceedinggrasp]

Fated to Love You here reaffirming my long held conviction that no pure romance drama should be 20+ episodes.

This show is... really something. It is, in the fullest possible sense, A Lot. It starts out as an all-out screwball comedy wrapped around a troperiffic romance fluff plot. Wall to wall clichés, but not in a bad way; in a meta, self-aware, peak performance, finest Velveeta way. And if you’re not familiar with screwball comedy, think ‘light-hearted crack fic with slapstick and farce’. There is nothing believable or grounded about any aspect of it, it starts at Bonkers Level: Platinum and it only climbs higher as it goes on.

(On a side note, this results in the leading man being possibly the most memorable love interest in romcom history. His introduction scene is nothing short of batshit insane and you can't reliably predict how he will respond to anything. I have never seen a main character like this, he is all over the shop and utterly singular. Your first reaction to him is ‘wtf?’, your second and third reactions are ‘really?! this guy??’, your fourth reaction is ‘okay he do be mad hot tho’, your fifth and final reaction is ‘I cannot believe this performance exists, I have no idea what he is doing, but it is amazing.’

Appropriately(?) the actor who plays him is an uncanny Korean doppelgänger of Johnny Depp and- between the resemblance, the mannerisms, and the fearless total commitment to a bold as fuck acting choice with the very serious chops to back it up- I’m not convinced they aren’t half brothers separated at birth.

They do sabotage my happiness several times by starting to randomly style his (long, beautiful) hair very weird, fixing it right when the plot is rapidly circling the drain so he looks his hottest just as the show becomes briefly unwatchable, and then ruining him for the entire second half of the series by shearing it all off. WHY, my anguished cry goes up. Why do you do this?! Why does he have like seven hairstyles over the course of the show? Much later they even briefly give him that ubiquitous Kdrama Second Lead haircut with weirdly forward combed fringe in a solid straight line across the brow all the way back from the crown. It looks terrible on everyone and I hate it so much. This version was less bad than most but it is still bad. Anyway.)

So it’s an incredibly fun time to start but there are some problems with the tone and plot even in the first 9 episodes, including when the lovers start getting along really well right away and they’re both thoroughly decent people so there’s nothing keeping them from having a lovely time together making the best of the circumstances (forced/fake marriage). And, instead of introducing new conflict or advancing one of the dozen conflicts previously established and actually moving forward, there is a painfully contrived rehash of something they already dealt with which is then just never resolved. They make the hero leap to a conclusion his wife is nefarious after he’d already decided once that she isn’t (though it was completely reasonable for him to think she was- the fact that he decided to trust her so quickly just speaks to what kind of person he is), never try to find out more or talk to anyone about it, start pushing her away because of it, and have all this come to absolutely nothing. It only exists so he’ll stop being so incredibly nice to her and they won’t fall in love too fast.

You’d think they would have to eventually clear the air before the romance advances right? No. It wasn’t a real plot point, it was just a reset button to get them estranged and hostile again after they connect over their kindred spirits and we’ve spent a bunch of time showing how profoundly supportive and honourable our hero is. He’s being beautifully mature and selfless because he’s a really good dude (unusual for a romcom drama, right? for the main guy to be nice and considerate? to accept responsibility even if he doesn’t have to? Gun’s weird but he’s wonderful), but the writers need him to be cold and standoffish, so they just make him act like an unreasonable idiot for a while. He’s been thus far hugely proactive and direct and honest about everything, it’s one of his most prominent character traits, but suddenly he’s going to avoid confrontation in favour of being super passive aggressive?? Then the writers never solve it. Never! It just goes away. He got over it, I guess? He decided he doesn’t care if she’s a gold digger who deliberately trapped him? God forbid we have motivations that make sense and organic character drama, right? It's not like he didn't have totally valid reasons to be suspicious that could have led to legitimate conflict our heroine would struggle to vindicate herself from.

But anyway, apart from that kind of lazy bullshit, it’s a fine romance plot with extremely endearing characters who have great chemistry. They are fun and well-rounded and incredibly human despite all the silliness and OTT antics. Their relationship is hugely, hugely engaging and the dynamic is perfect, they really complement each other as characters and organically drive each other's arcs. There's the genuine depth and warmth and quiet pathos so often lacking from this kind of show. Things progress at a semi-reasonable pace. They work up to confessing their mutual feelings and get into some cute shenanigans before making out. It happens soon enough that you are not frustrated, but there's still plenty of build-up. Then- uh oh! We’re only 9 eps in and we have another 11 hours to fill with this fluffy plot!

Time for a bunch of absolute fucking nonsense. Time for our show, which has been so goofy and removed from reality it occasionally resembles a Monty Python skit, which has been so light it asks you to ignore the frankly incredibly fucked up implications of its premise for the sake of comedy (they were both drugged and proxy raped resulting in a pregnancy- the FL was a virgin prior to this and Gun had a girlfriend he wanted to propose to- and it was the FL’s family who did this to them: SUPER FUCKED UP), so farcical that it makes Some Like it Hot look like a gritty crime drama, that show to cover a bunch of serious heavy shit.

First, the rankest of melodrama. The families and the world all turn on our couple, but their love is true and will conquer all- UNTIL, he randomly collapses and gets convenient Soap Opera Amnesia. He’s forgotten their entire relationship and a series of coincidental pieces of misconstrued evidence, the machinations of his scheming ex girlfriend, the Soap Opera Doctor’s advice, and his closest confidants all going along with this conspire to make him believe (AGAIN) that his wife just wants his money.

This whole terrible episode is mercifully brief, but it just gets worse after his memory returns. This is where we get into the Noble Idiocy. The ‘pretend you don’t love them to “save them” from getting hurt by hurting them and making their important life decisions for them as if they don’t have a basic fucking right to decide that themselves’ kind. Which goes on for three FUCK years in the show. He wastes three years of their lives they could have spent together because he’s worried he might die young (in a terrible way) and doesn’t want to put her through that. And, of course, they inevitably get together later, so all he did was make it infinitely worse for her either way. To say nothing of how he thus couldn’t be there for her through the loss of their child. Possibly my most hated fucking trope of all time when done this way.

And, yep, you read that right. This show that has the single most batshit bonkers over the top slapstick I have ever seen in a kdrama, this show has a storyline where the fluffy romcom trope accidental pregnancy ends in massive trauma. Because she was standing around in the street after realising he does remember her (he continued to pretend he had amnesia after his memories came back, it’s all part of the stupid noble idiocy so I glossed over it) and gets hit by a car in the middle of their angst staring.

It is nearly Meet Joe Black levels of hilariously abrupt and incongruous.

so, blah blah, they lose their baby (there’s a very stupid whole thing about her telling everyone to save the baby instead of her- the baby is not far enough along for this to have been remotely viable. She is like 3 months pregnant. They all act like there’s a choice to be made between them and she’s mad at her husband for choosing to save her, but there was NO CHOICE. Either she lives or they both die! ffs I’m so irritated about this) and then he dumps her ~for her own good~~ because he loves her too much to make her go through losing him? So she loses him sooner?? right after their baby died???

Why do people in these stories always think being betrayed and abandoned for no reason and being incredibly angry at someone you love while also not getting to be with them is somehow less painful than making the best of your life together and then losing them against their will? ‘I will make her hate me and then she won’t be sad we broke up/I died!!!!’ is such a fucking galaxy brain take and I despise it with the heat of ten thousand suns. Fuck you, Spider-Man. You aren’t protecting anyone, the villains still know you love MJ and will still use her against you, you clod. Emotionally torturing the person you love is not going to make them not a target because the villains are not as fucking stupid as you two. Anyway.

Amnesia was right where I started fast-forwarding and skipping around (because I couldn’t bear it), but it only goes downhill from there. Maybe I would have toughed out more of the wretched middle part plot twist if they hadn’t cut all the hot guy’s hair off. If I’m going to watch total nonsense tedious melodrama, I need it to at least be pretty. I understand it was a Symbolic Haircut but damnit! Let me have this!

And it ultimately does the thing that kdramas seem obsessed with and which makes me want to claw out my own eyeballs with frustration. There’s a giant time skip, the female lead gets a personality transplant, all narrative momentum is lost, and the characters who eventually (at ENORMOUS length) get together permanently are essentially completely different characters with a completely different dynamic than the couple you were shipping for 90% of the story. It is so FUCKING unsatisfying and it is EVERYWHERE.

Not so much with this one because this one still had a lot of very romantic scenes late in the game, but most that do this, it’s also like all the romance is sucked out of the post-time skip episodes and the ending is a consolation prize instead of a triumphant culmination. Inevitably, the heroine abruptly cools off and is suddenly wary of the hero and wants this Important New Career she never mentioned until the penultimate episode but is now her one true life’s dream. What the apparently irresistible appeal is of these contrived separations and demure conclusions is I CANNOT FATHOM. I’m here for the fucking romance guys, you have not made Citizen Kane, please just indulge me with a big schmoopy finale.

And if not that, it’s frequently that there’s been so many random mood swings and so much shitty behaviour by the end that the relationship doesn’t make sense and you don’t know why they even bother to get back together.

I’m not inherently against all misunderstandings (they are the bread and butter of low stakes romance let’s be real) or attempts at noble idiocy from misguided characters, but the duration and seriousness of the drama these generate needs to be in proportion to how ridiculous they are. If your entire plot can be solved by a thirty second conversation there is NO REASON not to have and the continuation of the misunderstanding is a result of someone just NOT SPEAKING UP when any functional human being would have spoken up seven times by now IT’S BAD.

Do little cliff-hangers, whatever, but don’t draaaaagg out silly misconceptions into Shakespearean tragedy, it’s just wearying. It makes me hate the characters for acting like emotionally constipated toddlers with terminal stupidity. If there is so little trust, so little understanding, and so little basic patience between these people, they probably shouldn’t be dating, so try fucking harder, writers. And noble idiocy that is more than an impulse they fairly quickly see the error of is just insulting. You are not helping the other person, you are being domineering and selfish. I have a whole complex about wasting time and seeing endless parades of characters flushing years down the toilet for literally no reason gives me hives. Especially when the whole issue is about time!

(And, btw, so much of the plot is about how desperately the family needs an heir and everyone still wanting them to have kids the second time they get together- while the ~dilemma used to keep them apart is a GENETIC DISEASE which could STRIKE AT ANY TIME. Do you SEE THE PROBLEM WITH THIS WRITERS????? NO, I KNOW YOU DON’T. ommmmmmmmggggg that’s awful! So they’re just dooming more kids to Soap Opera Brain Disease? And maybe growing up without a father just as Gun did? And no one even considers suggesting adoption??? He never considers that he shouldn’t have biological children despite thinking he shouldn’t have a wife?)

ANYWAY. Please do watch the first nine episodes and the last three, it’s bananas. They are cute as fuck, Gun is The Best, and the tropey romance scenes are top quality. You don't get those things executed so well, it doesn't happen, so you need this in your life. The acting is of a calibre you never usually see in modern romcoms; these are people at the top of their game committing utterly and taking these characters completely seriously. In that way it is pure wish fulfilment for me as someone who loves romance and is almost always disappointed by popular romance media, and thus the show is incalculably special. But skip the middle. Just skip it. It's not worth the suffering. I find the tone whiplash honestly just this side of crass.

I’ve been thinking about it for over a week and I truly love the main characters so it did plenty right, but I just cannot with wedding the two things this show is trying to be together, especially when it goes so hard in two mutually exclusive directions. but also the Meet Joe Black sudden car accident device is not redeemable under any circumstances. Can we never do that again, please.

[dustedmagazine]

Slept Ons: The Best Records of 2020 That We Never Got Around To

Tattoos and shorts! How did we miss the Oily Boys?

It happens pretty much every year.  After much fussing and second-guessing, the year-end list gets finalized, set in stone really, encapsulating 12 months of enthusiastic listening, and surely these are the best ten records anyone could find, right? Right?  And then, a day or a week later, someone else puts up their list or records their year-end radio show, and there it is, the record you could have loved and pushed and written about…if only you’d known about it.  My self-kick in the shins came during Joe Belock’s 2020 round-up on WFMU when he played the Chats.  Others on our staff knew, earlier on, that they weren’t writing about records they loved for whatever reason — work, family, mp3 overload, etc. Except now they are.  Here.  Now. Enjoy.  

Contributors include me (Jennifer Kelly), Eric McDowell, Jonathan Shaw, Justin Cober-Lake, Bill Meyer, Bryon Hayes, Ian Mathers, Andrew Forell, Michael Rosenstein and Patrick Masterson. 

The Chats — High Risk Behavior (Bargain Bin)

High Risk Behaviour by The Chats

Cartoonishly primitive and gleefully out of luck, The Chats hurl Molotov cocktails of punk, bright and exploding even as they come. They’re from Australia, which totally makes sense; there’s a sunny, health-care-subsidized, devil-may-care vibe to their down-on-their luck stories. Musically, the songs are stripped down like Billy Childish, sped up like the Ramones, brute simple like Eddy Current Suppression Ring. Most of them are about alcohol: drinking, being drunk, getting arrested for being drunk, eating while drunk…etc. etc. But there’s an art to singing about getting hammered, and few manage the butt-headed conviction of “Drunk & Disorderly.” Its jungle rhythms, vicious, saw-toothed bass, quick knife jabs of guitar frame an all-hands drum-shocked chant: “Relaxation, mood alteration, boredom leads to intoxication.” Later singer Eamon Sandwith cuts right to the point about romance with the couplet, “I was cautious, double wrapped, but still I got the clap.” The album’s highlights include the most belligerently glorious song ever about cyber-fraud in “Identity Theft,” whose shout along chorus buoys you up, even as the dark web drains your savings account dry. The album strings together a laundry list of dead-end, unfortunate situations, one after another truly hopeless developments, but nonetheless it explodes with joy. Bandcamp says the guitar player has already left—so you’re too late to see the Chats live—but it must have been fun while it lasted.

Jennifer Kelly

Oliver Coates — skins n slime  (RVNG Intl)

skins n slime by Oliver Coates

2020 was a year of loss, of losing, of feeling lost. Whether weathering the despair of illness and death, the discomfort of displacement or the drift of temporal reverie, English cellist Oliver Coates creates music to reflect all this and more on skins n slime. Using modulators, loops and effects, Coates employs elements from drone, shoegaze and industrial to extend the range of the cello and conjure otherworldly sounds of crushing intensity and great beauty. Beneath the layering, distortion and dissonance, the human element remains strong. The tactility of fingers and bow on strings and the expressive essence of tone form the core of Coates composition and performance. If his experiments seem a willful swipe at the restrictions of the classical world from whence he came, the visceral power of a track like “Reunification 2018”, which hunkers in the same netherworld as anything by Deathprod or Lawrence English, the liminal, static bedecked ache of “Honey” and the unadorned minimalism of “Caretaker Part 1 (Breathing)” are works of a serious talent. skins n slime is an album to sit with and soak in; allow it to percolate and permeate and you’ll find yourself forgetting the outside world, if only for a while.  

Andrew Forell  

Bertrand Denzler / Antonin Gerbal — Sbatax (Umlaut Records)

Sbatax by Denzler - Gerbal

Tenor sax player Bertrand Denzler and drummer Antonin Gerbal released this duo recording last summer which slipped under the radar of many listeners. Denzler is as likely to be heard these days composing and performing pieces by others in the French ensemble ONCEIM, playing solo, or in settings for quiet improvisation. But he’s been burning it up as a free jazz player for years now as well. Gerbal also casts a broad net, as a member of ONCEIM, deconstructing free bop in the group Peeping Tom, or recontextualizing the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik along with Pat Thomas, Joel Grip and Seymour Wright in the group Ahmed amongst many other projects. The two have worked together in a variety of contexts for a decade now, recording a fantastic duo back in 2014. Sbatax, recorded five years later at a live performance in Berlin is a worthy follow-up.  

Gerbal attacks his kit with ferocity out of the gate, with slashing cymbals and thundering kit, cascading along with drubbing momentum. Denzler charges in with a husky, jagged, repeated motif which he loops and teases apart, matching the caterwauling vigor of his partner straightaway. Over the course of this 40-minute outing, one can hear the two lock in, coursing forward with mounting intensity. Denzler increasingly peppers his playing with trenchant blasts and rasping salvos, riding along on Gerbal’s torrential fusillades. Throughout, one can hear the two dive deep in to free jazz traditions while shaping the arc of the improvisation with an acute ear toward the overall form of the piece. Midway through, Denzler steps back for a torrid drum solo, then jumps back in with renewed dynamism as the two ride waves of commanding potency and focus to a rousing conclusion, goaded on by the cheering audience. Anyone wondering whether there is still life in the tenor/drum duo format should dig this one up.  

Michael Rosenstein

Kaelin Ellis — After Thoughts (self-released)

After Thoughts by KAELIN ELLIS

To be sure, “slept on” hardly characterizes Kaelin Ellis in 2020. After a trickle of lone tracks in the first months of the year, a Twitter video posted by the 23-year-old producer and multi-instrumentalist caught the attention of Lupe Fiasco, quickly precipitating the joint EP House. It’s a catchy story from any number of angles — the star-powered “discovery” of a young talent, the interconnectedness of the digital age, the silver linings of the COVID-19 pandemic — but it risks overshadowing Ellis’s two 2020 solo records: Moments, released in the lead-up to House, and After Thoughts, released in October. It doesn’t help that each album’s dozen tracks scarcely add up to as many minutes, or that the producer’s titles deliberately downplay the results. And some, of course, will judge these jazzy, deeply soulful beats only against their potential as platforms for some other, more extroverted artist. “I’d like to think I’m a jack of all trades,” Ellis told one interviewer, “but in all honesty my specialty is creating a space for others to stand out.”

Yet as with all small, good things, there’s reward in savoring these miniatures on their own terms, and After Thoughts in particular proved an unexpected retreat from last fall’s anxieties. Ellis has a poet’s gift for distillation and juxtaposition, a director’s knack for pathos and dramatic sequencing — powers that combine to somehow render a fully realized world. As fleeting as it is, Ellis’s work communicates a generosity of care and concentration, opening a space for others not just to stand out but also to settle in.

Eric McDowell   

Lloyd Miller with Ian Camp and Adam Michael Terry — At the Ends of the World

At the Ends of the World by Lloyd Miller with Ian Camp and Adam Michael Terry

Miller and company fuse the feel of a contemporary classical concert with eastern modalities and instrumentation. The recordings sound live off the floor, and give a welcome sense of space and detail to the sensitive playing. Miller has explored the intersection between Persian and other cultural traditions and jazz through the lens of academic scholarship and recorded output since the 1960s. With this release, the performances linger in a space where vibe is as important as compositional structure. The results revel in the beauty when seemingly unrelated musical ideas emerge together in the same moment, with startling results.

Arthur Krumins

 Oily Boys — Cro Memory Grin (Cool Death)

Cro Memory Grin by Oily Boys

The title of this 2020 LP by Australian punks Oily Boys sounds like a pun on “Cro-Magnon,” an outmoded scientific name for early humans. It’s apt: the music is smarter than knuckle-dragger beatdown or run-of-the-mill powerviolence, but still driven by a rancorous, id-bound savagery. The smarts are just perceptible enough to keep things pretty interesting. Some of the noisier, droning and semi-melodic stretches of Cro Memory Grin recall the records made by the Men (especially Leave Home) before they decided to try to make like Uncle Tupelo, or some lesser version of the Hold Steady. Oily Boys inhabit a darker sensibility, and their music is more profoundly bonkers than anything those other bands got up to. Aggro, discordant punk; flagellating hardcore burners; psych-rock-adjacent sonic exorcisms — you get it all, sometimes in a single five-minute passage of Cro Memory Grin (check out the sequence from “Lizard Scheme” to “Heat Harmony” to “Stick Him.” Yikes). A bunch of the tunes spill over into one another, feedback and sustain jumping the gap from one track to the next, which gives the record a live vibe. It feels volatile and sweaty. The ill intent and unmitigated nastiness accumulate into a palpable force, tainting the air and leaving stains on your tee shirt. Oily Boys have been kicking around Sydney’s punk scene since at least 2014, but this is their first full-length record. One hopes they can continue to play with this degree of possessed abandon without completing burning themselves to down to smoldering cinders. At least long enough to record some more music.

Jonathan Shaw

 Dougie Poole — The Freelancer's Blues (Wharf Cat)

The Freelancer's Blues by Dougie Poole

A cursory listen might misconstrue the heart of Dougie Poole's second album, The Freelancer's Blues. When he mixes his wobbly country sound with lyrics like those in “Vaping on the Job,” it sounds like genre play, a smirking look at millennial life through an urban cowboy's vintage sound. Poole does target a particular set of issues, but mapping them with his own slightly psychedelic country comes with very little of the postmodern itch. His characters feel just as troubled as anyone coming out of 1970s Nashville, and as Poole explores these lives with wit and empathy, the songs quickly find their resonance.

The album, though it wouldn't reach for pretentious terms, carries an existential problem at its center. Poole circles around the fundamental void: work deadens, relocation doesn't help, spiritual pursuits falter, intelligence burdens, and even the drugs don't help. When Poole finally gets the title track, the preceding album gives his confession extra weight, a mix of life's strictures and personal limitation combining for a crisis best avoided but wonderfully shared. The Freelancer's Blues comes rich in Nashville tradition but finds an ideal fit in its contemporary place, likely providing a soundtrack for a variety of times and spaces yet to come.

Justin Cober-Lake

 Schlippenbach Quartett — Three Nails Left (Corbett Vs. Dempsey)

You might say that this record has been slept on twice. The second recording to be released by the Alexander von Schlippenbach, Evan Parker and Paul Lovens (augmented this time by Peter Kowald) was released in 1975, and didn’t get a second pressing — on vinyl — until 2019. So, Corbett Vs. Dempsey stepped up last summer, it had never been on CD. But this writer was so stumped on how to relate how intense, startling, and unlike any other free improvisation it was and is, that he just… slept on it. Until now. Even if you know this band, if you don’t know this album, well, it’s time you got acquainted.

Bill Meyer 

Stonegrass — Stonegrass (Cosmic Range)

STONEGRASS by Stonegrass

Released on the cusp of a tentative re-opening for the city of Toronto after two months of lock-down, this slab of psychedelic funk-rock was the perfect antidote to the COVID blues when it arrived at the tail end of a Spring spent in near-isolation. The jam sessions that became Stonegrass were also a new beginning for multi-instrumentalist Matthew “Doc” Dunn and drummer Jay Anderson, who reignited a spirit of collaboration after a decade of sonic estrangement following the demise of their Spiritual Sky Blues Band project. Listening to these songs, you’d never know they spent any time apart. The tight, bottom-wagging jams on offer are evidence that these two are joined together at the third eye. Anderson’s grooves run deep, and Dunn — whether he’s traipsing along on guitar, keys or flutes — is right there with him. There’s enough fuzz here to satiate the heads, but the real treat here is the rhythmic interplay. Strap in and prepare to get down. 

Bryon Hayes 

 Bob Vylan — We Live Here EP (Venn Records)

Bob Vylan flew under the radar in 2020 successfully enough that when someone nominated them for the best of 2020 poll in Tom Ewing’s Peoples’ Pop Polls project on Twitter (each month a different year or category gets voted on in World Cup-style brackets, it’s great fun and only occasionally maddening), most of the reaction was “is that one a typo?” Nobody had that response after listening to “We Live Here” — my wife also participates in the poll, so we just play all the candidates in our apartment, and Bob Vylan was the first time both of our jaws dropped in amazement; the song got played about ten times in a row at that point. Bobby (vocals/guitar/production) and Bobbie (drums/“spiritual inspiration”) Vylan’s 18-minute EP lives up to that title track, fireball after fireball aimed directly at the corrupt, crumbling, racist state that seems utterly indifferent to human suffering unless there’s profit in it. Whether it’s the raging catharsis of the title track or the cool, precise hostility of “Lynch Your Leaders,” Bob Vylan have made something vital and essential here, that very much speaks to 2020 but sadly will stay relevant long past it.  

Ian Mathers

 Working Men’s Club — Working Men’s Club (Heavenly Recordings)

It’s been evident these past few years that I’ve retreated from music and committed myself to the slower world of books as a way of giving my mind a break from the accelerating madness outside, but I could never really leave my radio family the same way I could never really leave Dusted. Another great example why: A fellow CHIRP volunteer played “John Cooper Clarke” in a December Zoom social I actually managed to catch, and I’ve been addicted to Working Men’s Club’s debut LP from October ever since. The quartet hails from Todmodren, a market town you won’t be surprised upon listening to discover is roughly equidistant between Leeds and Manchester; the album screams Hacienda vibes in its seamless integration of post-punk signifiers and dancefloor style. It’s easy to bandy about names from Rip It Up and Start Again or even The Velvet Underground in 12-minute closer “Angel,” certainly one of the most arresting tracks of the year, but the thing that struck me immediately is that this was the record I’d always anticipated but never got from Factory Floor — smart, aloof and occasionally calculated, yet still fun enough to play for any crowd itching to move. Until the community of a dance party or Working Men’s Club live set is once again possible, patience and a fully formed first album will have to suffice. You’ll have to imagine the part where I corner you at the party to rave about it, I’m afraid.

Patrick Masterson

[brokenbuttonsmusic]

Laura Cantrell: Nashville-born, New York-based, Acclaimed Country Singer-Songwriter & DJ (& Kitty Wells Fanatic)

This post is a near- transcript of the Broken Buttons: Buried Treasure Music podcast (episode 2, side B). Here you’ll find the narration from the segment featuring the pioneering rock band Fanny, along with links, videos, photos and references for the episode.

Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Anchor or Mixcloud.

Music blog Stereogum used to have a running feature called “Quit Your Day Job” where they interviewed indie musicians about their current or former jobs. There was one with Marty and Drew from the band Blitzen Trapper. The two discussed being torn about walking away from teaching as their third album, Wild Mountain Nation, was starting to blow up. There was another where the lead singer of War on Drugs detailed some of the disgusting things he had to clean up while working as an apartment property manager. Mostly dead rats and clogged toilet stuff, but he did walk into an apartment that had been converted into a porno set. I remembered this discontinued “musician day job” feature while reading up on my next featured artist and it got me thinking. 

How many professional musicians do you think have a full time day job? How many juggle multiple side gigs and still manage to tour and put out records regularly? How many have really successful careers all while trying to make it as a musician? 

I don’t actually know. I did some research and there aren’t any reliable stats that I could find. There is a lot of anecdotal discussion on the topic. The consensus seems to be that most musicians are not getting by with music as their only, or even their primary source of income. I don’t think anyone is surprised by that. 

One Reddit user said less than 5% of musicians derive all or most of their income from music. He didn’t offer a source or anything, but he seemed very authoritative in his post. And then after a few more Google searches I lost interest and listened to more Laura Cantrell. 

Laura Cantrell’s story is what got me pondering how indie musicians go about juggling making art with the necessity of, you know, making a living to survive. In 2003, after two critically acclaimed albums, including a tour opening for Elvis Costello all across the United States and Europe, Cantrell was at a similar crossroads. Laura had risen to the position of Vice President of Equity Research at Bank of America in New York. Yes, you heard me right. Laura Cantrell was working as a corporate executive and touring with Elvis Costello at the same time. She actively worked on the road during the day and then performed for thousands of people each night.

Before we get further into what led up to this point and what came after, let’s hear a song from Laura Cantrell’s debut album, Not the Tremblin’ Kind. Here’s the title track.

That was Not the Tremblin’ Kind from Laura Cantrell’s first album back in the year 2000.

Laura grew up in Nashville. She played a little bit of piano and sang in the church choir, but did not get into performing music and playing out until her college years. As a teenager she worked at the Country Music Hall of Fame as a tour guide. This job, in addition to the influence of the diverse musical tastes of her parents, sparked an interest in traditional music, particularly classic country. She also became somewhat of an aficionado in this area. 

This love and knowledge of the early days of country music would help differentiate Laura as she honed her sound and selected her songs while developing as a performer down the road. Before that, however, it would make her an excellent college radio DJ and later an even more excellent DJ at WFMU, one of the best and longest running free-form radio stations in the country. Out of the New Jersey/New York area, WFMU is awesome to this day, with a wide array of programming where DJs still get to play whatever they want. 

Laura is my favorite kind of DJ, and the kind that has been dwindling in numbers since the rise of music downloads, which then gave way to streaming and endless algorithms. First off, she’s knows her stuff. She carefully curates each shows, and thoughtfully sequences each set within every episode. She packs in history, context and story to create something that transcends your typical weekend-afternoon-background-radio-soundtrack. I know this show is about under appreciated bands and artists, but Laura Cantrell’s contributions to radio deserve to be heard by more people. You can find her past WFMU shows, called The Radio Thrift Shop, archived on the WFMU website. You can hear her present day on her “States of Country” radio show on the Gimmie Country radio app, or on her SiriusXM George Harrison themed show “Dark House Radio,” on The Beatles station.

This concludes the part of the show where I babble my enthusiastic endorsement of Laura Cantrell’s past and present radio career.

Laura began playing music with others in college at Columbia University. Her jam pals included Andrew Webster, future member of Tsunami Bomb and Mac McCaughan, who would go on to form Superchunk and Portastatic + found Merge Records. The friends would call their band Bricks. A lo-fi, mostly apartment recording projects that played sporadic gigs over the years. 

Here’s the Brick’s song, The Girl with the Carrot Skin.

Living in New York, Laura began playing guitar and writing her own songs. She also plucked some choice classic country finds and incorporated them into her own performance catalog. One day she met a guy named John who asked her to sing on a song that would appear on his band’s next major label release for Elektra. 

That’s The Guitar from They Might Be Giant’s 1992 album, Apollo 18. John Flansburgh asked Laura to sing on that recording. It was the first time Laura recorded in a professional studio. John Flansburgh became a fan of Laura’s music and released her first recorded material as part of his Hello CD of the Month Club, an EP called The Hello Recordings in 1996. 

Let’s hear another Laura Cantrell song. This time one that she wrote with Amy Allison. From Laura Cantrell’s 2014 album, No Way There From Here, this is All the Girls are Complicated. 

That was Laura Cantrell with All the Girls Are Complicated from her last full length release, No Way There From Here. Actually, that was her last full album of new material, but Laura did release an album a few years back of her BBC recordings on John Peel’s radio show. That album is called At the BBC: On Air Performances and Recordings 2000-2005. 

I mentioned earlier that Peel was a big fan. Again, here’s John Peel’s full quote about Laura’s first album, Not the Tremblin’ Kind: "[It is] my favourite record of the last ten years and possibly my life.” Having the endorsement of the legendary English disc jockey was enough to give Cantrell wider exposer throughout the UK. She developed a loyal fanbase through regular appearances on Peel’s show, as well as US and European tours, including the opening slot for Elvis Costello. Which brings us back to Laura’s fork in the road. Before her third album, Laura decided to walk away from the corporate gig. She was excited to focus on music full time, but a little worried about walking away from the security of a successful career she liked and position she was good at.

From a spotlight CNN Business did on Cantrell in 2004:

“For several months until she finally quit, Cantrell balanced her day job with a growing schedule of rehearsals, gigs, recordings and publicity. On the day she appeared on the Conan O'Brien show she was at her desk until lunchtime.”

“And while life as a professional musician is a dream come true, Cantrell still looks back with fondness on more than a decade on Wall Street.”

“‘I came into Wall Street with a very typical kind of stereotype that it was all going to be people just obsessed with money. What I found was that there were just loads of interesting people who were a lot like myself, just doing it as a job and who had lives that were full of other things.’

‘So I miss some of the contact with people I met. Ironically it was a very supportive environment for me as an artist.’”

Laura’s first two albums were released on the the indie label Diesel Only, which was founded by her husband, Jeremey Tepper. Her third album was released by Matador Records, also an indie label, but with an impressive roster that included Liz Phair, Modest Mouse, Pavement and Sleater-Kinney. Released in 2005, Humming By the Flowered Vine continues Cantrell’s classic country sound, but with some evolved production and arrangements. Laura’s mastery as a song selector gets more and more impressive. This album includes a cover of a rare, unreleased Lucinda Williams song form 1975 called, “Letters.” 

In fact, Lucinda Williams herself was thoroughly impressed with Laura’s cover of “Letters.” She attributes the cover to bolstering her confidence to go back through her earlier material and look for her own buried treasures. 

From Blurt Magazine: 

“The inspiration for her journey through the past struck when she heard Laura Cantrell’s version of her song ‘Letters,’ which Williams wrote around 1975 and recorded on a demo but never officially released. Explains Williams, ‘She got a copy from a mutual friend and did a beautiful, really sweet version of it that made me think wow, she brought this early song back to life, maybe I should go back and review some of my old stuff. I’ve got all these tapes of old little songs, but I never thought they were good enough to do anything with.’”

You know you’re an ace at finding under appreciated gems when you surprise Lucinda Williams by helping her discover one of her own songs. Let’s hear Laura Cantrell’s version of Letters.

That was Laura Cantrell with Letters from her 2005 release Humming by the Flowered Vine.

In 2008, Laura returned with an EP called, Trains and Boats and Planes with 9 songs about… trains, and boats and planes. It’s very good and it includes a fun cover of New Order’s Love Vigilantes. 

Throughout this time, Laura continued her radio show. She also started a family and became co-owner and co-operator of Diesel Only Records. 

In this clip from an interview with Face Culture, you can really hear Laura’s passion for country music and its roots. She talks about the importance of country’s influence on rock n’ roll, and how each artist is inspired by something great that came before. 

And Laura continuously pays tribute to the greats that came before through her radio show and on her own records. In 2011, Laura released a tribute to Kitty Wells called “Kitty Wells Dresses: Songs of the Queen of Country Music.” The collection includes nine Kitty Wells covers and one original, the title track, Kitty Wells Dresses.

From the Washington Post:

Here’s Laura talking about the inspiration for the album. 

“Kitty wore very typical stage clothes for women who performed at barn dances and in early country music shows,” says Cantrell, a Nashville-born, New York-based country singer and host of an old-time music show on the legendary radio station WFMU.

“They were these frilly gingham dresses, non-threatening and cutesy. It became this uniform that all the women of the era wore, and I always thought it was a great metaphor for how you can underestimate the strength of the person or the value of the artist underneath.”

That was the song Kitty Wells Dresses from Laura Cantrell’s tribute album of the same name, released in 2011. Wells was the oldest living member of the Country Music Hall of Fame upon its release. She was also the first woman inducted into the hall. Cantrell met and talked to Kitty about her album. She said that Kitty asked which songs were selected and as Laura began calling them out, Kitty would sing each one. 

I’ve mentioned all of Laura’s past and present DJ efforts, all of which I’ll link to on my website, brokenbuttons.com. Laura also continues to release music. She had planned a host of special activities for the 20th anniversary of Not the Tremblin’ Kind, which had to be put on hold due to all things 2020. 

You can contribute to Laura’s IndigGoGo campaign to help fund her new digital singles collection that she’s already started releasing. The plan is to release six singles with an A and a B side, all working with different musicians and producers. I’d recommend the $50 Kitty Wells Dresses Pack, which gets you access to the digital singles as their released, a signed CD copy of both the singles collection and the Kitty Wells Dresses album, as well as a copy of Laura's essay on Kitty and Patsy Cline from the book "Rock and Roll Cage Match: Music's Greatest Rivalries"

Laura Cantrell is the rare performer whose work is deeply rooted in its original source material while still feeling fresh and exciting. Laura’s radio shows can be described the same way. A buried treasure unearthing buried treasure and taking the old and classic and making it new and lasting and so much sweeter. Laura Cantrell.

References and other stuff to check out:

Laura’s Indiegogo campaign for her digital singles series

The Radio Thrift Shop - Laura’s prior radio show. You can stream past episodes and check out her playlists

Gimmie Country, where Laura hosts her current show States of Country. New episodes air 3:00 Monday EST. Laura chats during the show with listeners in the app.

Darkhorse Radio on Sirius XM. Laura’s other show dedicated to George Harrison. New episodes air Thursday at 3:00.

John Peel wiki entry about Laura

TMBG wiki entry about Laura

A Wall Street journal feature on Laura

An NPR feature on Laura

A CNN Business Week feature on Laura

Stereogum archive of the Quit Your Day Job feature

[fanfic-inator795]

Random Hamato-Jitsu-Draxum family shared custody headcanons cause I can't sleep :P

After that whole situation with Big Mama/Shredder/the Council of Heads has been settled and Draxum decides that yeah, these are his kids too and he does want to spend a little more time with them, he and Splinter agree to a schedule 

The official schedule is the boys sleeping over at Draxum’s apartment every 2nd and 4th weekend of the month, though the boys are pretty much allowed to visit whenever and vice-versa for Draxum, now that he and Splints don’t completely hate each other. 

Draxum’s still trying to learn about human holidays so those + birthdays are spent at the Lair and he’s alowed to join in on them, though Draxum is also allowed to take the boys on Yokai holidays and festivals

Speaking of which, since he isn’t wanted by the Council anymore, he’ll sometimes take the boys to certain spots in the Hidden City to teach them about the Yokai side of their heritage. …or just to show off a little. (“Heh, I bet they don’t have something THAT impressive on the surface, huh boys?”) 

Four teenagers (five, if April comes along) can be VERY overwhelming at times, leading to lots of screaming, arguing and upset feelings that he has go later apologize for if Draxum is in an impatient mood that day. So, for the first few months - just to give him a chance to get used to this whole ‘parenting thing’

he only takes two of the turtles each visiting weekend before eventually making his way up to all four. Technically they’re supposed to take turns so Draxum can spend an equal amount of time bonding with all of them, though Mikey’s still usually able to work his way into most of the Draxum Weekends

if a mission or an emergency ever overrides a Draxum weekend, the boys try to make it up to him by either sleeping over two weekends in a row or stopping over for supper for a few nights that following week 

Draxum’s place is a one-bedroom, so the turtles have to sleep on the floor. The night before the first weekend, Draxum had no idea what all they would need. And so, not wanting to push them away (or listen to their complaining all night) he ended up buying four air mattresses and as many blankets as his lunch lady paycheck could get him. …he then facepalms when he sees they brought their own sleeping bags and pillows (though the boys certainly don’t mind the extra comfort)

Draxum only has ten channels on his tv and basic wi-fi, so they have to get creative when figuring out how to spend the weekend. Lots of VHS tapes, board games (Both Draxum and Leo are MALICIOUS when it comes to Monopoly), and walks around the city. He also has that orb from the Goyles ep to show the boys scenes from the past, for when he wants to teach them stuff

it’s always a toss up when they visit whether it’s gonna be a weekend full of trying to mix human and Yokai styles of cooking or a weekend of take-out, depending on how tired Draxum is from his lunch lady duties (Mikey still takes it upon himself to make yummy snacks and awesome breakfasts though)

Huginn and Muninn live at Draxum’s place when they find him again. They do odd jobs and help pay rent and keep him company when the boys aren’t there. In return, Draxum brings them home cafeteria leftovers and buys them a cat tower. “Upgraaaaade~!“ 

April doesn’t mind Draxum and will sometimes hang out over at his place when the boys are over. Splinter… They’re sort of friends (more like casual allies) and can tolerate being in the same room, with Splinter even being willing to give him parenting advice.

Granted, Splinter hasn’t forgiven Draxum - and there’s a good chance he’ll never forgive him - but he can accept that both Draxum and his sons want to try and have a relationship with each other. So, as long as he feels there’s no danger to them, he’ll allow the visits to keep happening. Draxum may not be a friend to him, but like Mikey said, he is technically family 

Hidden in his bedroom in a locked drawer, Draxum keeps a notebook of information he gathers during their weekend visits, from important things like allergies and things that make them uncomfortable to basics like favorite foods and hobbies. He may still be his usual grumpy and aggressive self half the time, but he really does want to be a decent father and caregiver, figuring that his creations - his SONS - who cared enough to give him a second chance and a new life deserve that at the very least

[silver--storms]

Portland

Okay Sammy Anon here it is, sorry it took me so long I just wasn’t happy with my original draft so I started over. I hope you like where I went with it.

Shoutout to my babe @sparrowof-thedawn​ for being my Bae-ta. ;)

Warnings: None, it’s so fluffy it’ll rot your teeth.

WC: 3.8k

It was a Saturday afternoon, you were in your apartment lounging on the couch, waiting for a new video to upload to your YouTube channel, when you receive a message on your instagram.

Hello y/n, I am writing you on behalf of Greta Van Fleet. Jake Kiszka recently listened to your debut EP, which he shared with the band, and they really liked what they heard. The band is playing a ten show run across the West Coast in a month and their opening act had to cancel. We wanted to extend the opportunity to you to join them. Please get back to us as soon as possible to make arrangements, if you are interested in accepting this invitation. Thank you.

You sat there, heart pounding out of your chest, in shock at the thought of Greta Van Fleet even knowing you existed, let alone liking your music.

Without hesitation, or even taking a moment to process what you just read, you accepted the offer. 

Grinning ear to ear, you called your mom telling her the news.

 “I’m so for you happy y/n, but are you ready for what comes with this? At most the largest crowd you’ve played for has been 200 tops.” 

You felt the air leave your body “Oh my god, you’re right. What did I just say yes to?”

You spent the next few weeks practicing five hours every day to nail down a small setlist and different elements you could incorporate into some sort of stage presence. Going as far as recording yourself for hours on end, mercilessly criticizing yourself, trying for perfection. 

You went shopping with your best friend Alix to find some outfits that were easily interchangeable to add variety to your stage clothes without having to travel with multiple bags. You picked things like a colorful sparkly blazer, some see through button up blouses and, of course, the staple ripped black skinny jean that Jake Kiszka himself would approve of. 

The day came to fly out to Portland to meet the band before your first show the next day. You were relieved when you found out you had a day before jumping right into the shows to be able to get to know them. 

When you arrived at Portland International Airport everything was going to plan, you even made it there a few minutes early. However things took a turn when you arrived at the baggage claim to find out the airline had lost your luggage. You were mortified, as this only left you with your guitar and carry on bag containing just the essentials. 

Panicked and filled with anxiety,  you left your contact information with the airline in case your bags turned up in the next day or so that you’d be in the area. But you knew it was unlikely they’d find the luggage in time for your first show tomorrow night. 

You exited the airport and searched for the description the band’s management gave you of your driver and the license plate number. There was no driver fitting the description, no one holding a sign and no matching plate. 

You tried to calm yourself down “Maybe he is running late, I am a couple minutes early, wait it out.” 

You waited for another thirty minutes before you broke down and called the manager, with no success. You spiraled into full blown panic as you hailed a cab and gave them the address of the hotel you and the band were staying at. 

When you arrived at the hotel you were over an hour late. Heart racing, you hustled into the lobby heading for the front desk. 

As you checked in with the clerk, you caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror off to the side of the desk. You looked rough, hair disheveled and makeup smeared from tears of frustration you had tried to suppress in the back of the cab on the way here. 

All checked in you grabbed the key to your room and stepped over to the mirror to quickly try to freshen up your appearance. Fussing with your hair and reapplying some lipstick in an attempt to salvage any chance of a good first impression. 

“This is as good as it’s going to get” you mutter to yourself. 

Just then you heard familiar voices as you glanced over your shoulder. You saw the twins, Josh and Jake sitting at the hotel bar laughing about something between themselves. 

Your hands began to shake as you grabbed your guitar and carry on, quickly walking towards the bar, when you collided with a boy. 

You watched as your guitar slid out of your hands, flying into the air, when the boy lurched forward, almost diving, to catch the guitar inches from the ground. 

“Holy shit!” you let out a sigh of relief as you practically snatched your guitar back, holding it close to your chest. 

You looked up at the boy “Thank yo-” you stopped mid-sentence when you realized who he was, Sam Kiszka, the youngest of the band. 

You were starstruck and at a loss of words. You never really gave Sam much thought. But being inches from him, you finally took him in. 

You found yourself in a daze, staring into his bedroom eyes. You were completely mesmerized.

 You felt your face growing warm and palms become sweaty “Oh my god, hi, I’m so sorry I ran into you like that, I really need to pay more attenti-” 

Sam interrupted you “It’s okay, no worries.” he laughed. “I’m Sam, I’m assuming you’re y/n?” 

You smiled at the fact he knew your name “Yes, it’s nice to meet you. I was just heading over to introduce myself to your brothers at the bar.” 

Sam waved his arm motioning towards the bar “After you”.

Sam introduced you to his brothers, Jake and Josh, who were everything you thought they’d be. Jake, who was more timid, but very sweet. Where Josh was very vocal and had this passion behind each word. The four of you made polite small talk, Jake complimenting your EP and you expressing how excited you were to be here. 

“Wait, where are the rest of your bags?” said Josh. 

You let out a defeated sigh “Well you see…” you explained the trials and tribulations of the baggage claim disaster and the no-show driver to which the boys all apologized for the mix up with the transportation. “Yeah it just sucks because I’m not sure what I’m going to wear now for tomorrow’s show.” 

Jake said he’d talk to management and see if there was anything they could do for you. 

Josh stood up from the bar “Well let’s go up to the rooms, we have to wake up Danny anyways, he’s only been napping for over two hours.” He rolled his eyes.

As you entered the elevator, Sam offered to take your carry on, swinging it over his shoulder “You know, we have a couple interviews lined up for this afternoon, but after that I think we’re free?” 

You looked at Sam with a confused expression. 

“Portland has some of the best thrift shops, we could always hit a couple to find you some new stage clothes.”

You noticed Josh crossed his arms and exchanged looks with Jake smiling at each other. Before you dissect what they were thinking the elevator arrived at your floor, turning your attention back to Sam “Yeah, that sounds great!” Sam smiled at you as the elevator came to a stop. 

 As soon as the door opened Josh bolted and ran down the hall to their room to bust through the door, screaming at Danny to wake up. 

Within seconds Josh retreated back into the hall, with his arms up in defense as Danny appeared running at him into the hallway with a pillow raised in his hand, screaming  “WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?!”

Before Danny could land his blow to Josh’s head, Sam loudly cleared his throat, “Guys!” in a strained deep tone.

Danny turned to look behind him and laughed, dropping the pillow, walking over to introduce himself to you “Sorry, sometimes I just want to kill him. Trust me at the end of this tour, you will too.”

You laughed looking at Josh rolling his eyes behind Danny’s back. 

The band had to get ready for their interviews and said their goodbyes. You entered your room, surprised by how big it was, but mostly taken aback by the view of the city. Stepping onto the balcony you breathed in deep, feeling like you should pinch yourself that this is actually happening. 

Later that evening you were drying your hair after taking a quick shower when you heard a knock on your door. Peering out the peephole it was Sam, you felt your stomach flutter, opening the door slowly. 

“Hey” Sam said smiling at you.

“Oh, hey, come in” giving him a half smile as you felt a little self conscious being makeup free with damp messy hair.

Sam stepped into the room “Are you ready to go?” 

You looked down at yourself in your sweats, “Uhh…” 

Sam chuckled “Need a few minutes?” 

You felt your face get hot again “Yeah, sorry. I didn’t expect you guys to get back so quickly. Meet you downstairs in ten minutes?”

Stepping off of the elevator you spotted Sam sitting in a chair across the lobby, he waved at you, which made your heart skip. 

“Hey, sorry, hopefully I didn’t take too long.” 

He smiled, “You’re fine. Ready?”

 You nodded but suddenly noticed he was alone  “Wait, where’s everyone else?” 

Sam started walking towards the door casually said “Oh, Josh and Jake already had plans to check out a local brewery and Danny’s girlfriend flew in a couple hours ago.” 

Suddenly you felt very nervous, not in a bad way, just having the whole band with you was far less intimidating than just you and Sam alone together exploring different shops across the city. Nethertheless you felt an unfamiliar excitement grow within you. 

Sam said he was taking you to downtown Portland to a couple of his favorite shops.

“You’re bound to find something that will work for tomorrow and we can figure out the rest later.” he said, but you were too lost to really pay attention to what he was saying. 

You tried to play it cool, not wanting him to notice you studying him in the taxi. The way he held himself, the way his skin seemed to glow, his high cheekbones and perfectly arched eyebrows. 

You always thought you were more into Jake, considering your mutual love for guitar, but there was something about Sam that lingered in your mind. Maybe it was how calm and collected he seemed, but not in a cold or intimidating way. He was warm and welcoming, like you’d have known each other for years versus the couple hours you’d spent together looking through racks of clothes. 

“Ohh, this is it y/n!” Sam yelled across the store as he held up a bright purple polka dot fur vest with tassels hanging off the sides “This will really make a statement” he said sarcastically 

“Oh yeah, that will definitely make a lasting impression, a real show stopper” you quipped back at him. You both laughed and smiled at each other. 

You were starting to get frustrated not being able to find anything when Sam walked over to you holding a deep maroon dress. 

“How about this” he held it up in front of you. 

The dress had a subtle sparkle to it with bell sleeves and lace on top, something straight out of Stevie Nicks wardrobe. 

Your face lit up “Oh Sam, it’s perfect. I love it!” 

Sam smiled brightly “Why don’t you try it on, make sure it works”  

 You headed to the dressing room and slipped the dress on, it fit perfectly, like a glove. You admired your cleavage and the way it hugged your hips just right. Your worries about losing your luggage started to fade away, but you weren’t sure if it’s because Sam had found you the perfect dress or if this meant you got to have these little thrift store adventures with Sam throughout the tour. 

As you were lost in thought Sam tapped on the door “Did it work?” 

“Yes, it’s absolutely perfect”, you laughed in reply. 

There was a moment of silence “Well…can I see?” 

You felt your face get flushed as you slowly opened the door. Sam was standing directly outside, his eyes got wide and his mouth slightly dropped open as he stuttered.

 “uh…Wow, yeah it looks great. I think it’s a keeper.” 

You smiled coyly “Thanks, I’ll get changed and we can head out.” 

Sam and you couldn’t stop talking the entire way back to the hotel. Everything from food, to different countries he’s visited, his favorite bands and of course you had to ask about the no shoe policy.

 As you pull up to the hotel Sam quickly got out of the cab and ran over to your side opening your door for you. 

You laughed loudly at him “Oh, Samuel, you’re such a gentleman. Thank you.”

He beamed at you, looking rather pleased with himself “So I’ve been told.”

As you were walking together to your room things suddenly shifted, an unspoken tension between the two of you, you started to feel nervous. The conversation between the two of you sort of died out and were mostly quiet the whole way up until you got in front of your rooms 

“So this is it, I’ll see you bright and early?” 

You nodded “Yeah, sounds good. I’ll try to not let the nerves get me and actually get some rest.” 

Sam chuckled “You’ll be okay, promise” as he started to walk away you lightly grabbed his arm 

“Thank you, by the way, you really didn’t have to do that tonight.”

Sam’s face scrunched up with confusion “Do what?” 

Your hand remained on his arm “Helping me find new stage clothes, I really appreciate you taking the time out.” 

Sam smirked and took a step towards you, your heart feeling like it was about to explode inside of your chest. Sam started to say something when Jake opened the door of the boys room and peaked out at the two of you standing inches from each other.  

“I thought I heard voices.” You smiled at Jake and back up at Sam as he started to back up and walk towards Jake.

“Sweet dreams” he said joining Jake in their room. 

You entered your room and collapsed on your bed replaying the night in your head trying to dissect every moment. You sighed as you rationalized that Sam was probably just being nice and you were getting ahead of yourself. You decided to head to bed to be well rested for the long day ahead of your tomorrow. 

The next morning you all headed to the venue and started to run through your sets. Soundcheck went well and you were feeling okay about the show, however when it was an hour before you took the stage your nerves really started to get the best of you. 

The band was finishing up with a pre-show meet and greet with some fans who had VIP passes so they weren’t available to talk you down. You felt hot and like you might vomit as the time inched closer. 

With only twenty minutes left, you decided to peak out at the crowd from the side of the stage, instantly you knew that was a terrible idea. Looking out you couldn’t tell where the crowd started and came to an end. 

Feeling like you might pass out, hot and sweaty, you needed to do something to cool yourself down. You headed to the refreshment table and grabbed some ice, dabbing it over your face and chest. The whole while taking deep breaths to center yourself.

 After a few minutes, you felt yourself starting to calm down when you heard footsteps behind you.

“You okay?” turning around it was Sam with a warm smile, embarrassed you chucked the ice in the garbage next to you.

“Yeah, I guess” you said sheepishly “I’m just feeling a bit overwhelmed, how do you do this every night?”  

Sam laughed “Well, to be fair it’s not every night, but it does get easier” 

You smirked “I hope so.”

Sam motioned for you to follow him over to a set of chairs “Look, I used to feel the same way when we first started doing live shows. Honestly, sometimes I’d get sick right before going on stage.”

You were shocked he admitted that “Wow, really?” 

Sam nodded looking a little embarrassed “Yeah, really, it was awful.” Sam moved his knees in closer to you, lightly brushing them agaisnt yours “The thing you have to remember is that if you fuck up, the crowd will have no idea, only you will. You choose how you react to it, so just play it off. That’s one of the best things about being an up and coming artist, they have no idea what to expect from you more than you from them, so use it.” 

You instantly felt the tension release from your body but before you could respond to his sweet words the stage manager yelled your name and waved you over, you got up.

Sam followed you to the side of the stage, handed you your guitar and said “Good luck and try to have fun.” as he gave you a light shove onto the stage. 

You walked out on stage stopping halfway to turn back and smile at him as he gave you a thumbs up. You laughed at him mouthing the words “Thank you” and he nodded.

 You strummed the first few notes of your opening song and after that it was all a blur. You felt electrified to play in front of that many people and you lost yourself in the energy of the night. 

Catching glances here and there from Sam, who watched from the sidelines your whole set. You knew this tour was going to be the best few weeks of your life, especially with someone like Sam cheering you on.

[olicitytropes]

Olicity Tropetastic Awards: Season Six

We got a wedding. And domestic!Olicity. And a crossover that could’ve easily been called “Oliver and Felicity are Soulmates.” And 6x18. There may have been moments that were frustrating in season 6, but at least we can all agree that Oliver and Felicity were the silver lining. They remained a united, solid force to be reckoned with throughout the season. 

We also have these fics (and this badass gif!) to appreciate forever:

@it-was-a-red-heeler’s recs:

Coming Home Again - @allimariexf

Felicity shimmied quickly out of her pajama bottoms, her eyes glued to the mesmerizing sight of Oliver’s hands unbuckling his belt, unbuttoning his fly, pulling down his zipper. As with everything, his movements were precise and graceful, and wow had she missed seeing him like this. She swallowed and wet her lips, finally looking up to see him watching her with dark eyes. “We’re really going to do this.”

He nodded slowly, watching her. “You okay with that?”

She stepped closer to him and slipped her hands under the waistband of his boxers, feeling the hard, smooth muscles underneath. “Very, very okay.”

~~~~~~~~ This is an immediate follow-up to the end of 6x03. AKA season 6 Olicity reunion smut (and fluff)!! ~~~~~~~~~~

**Award: Most Realistic Reunion Sex with Resolution and Sweet Moments (Loved it!)**

Dangling soons - @smkkbert

Three years ago, Oliver dangled maybes on Felicity. Now, they seem to be dangling soons on each other.

**Award: All the Clearing the Air and Making Plans for the Future Goodness**

Take Two - @yet-i-remain-quiet

A slight rewrite to the Olicity scene at the end of 6x19. When Felicity comes home after seeing the explosion and is looking for Oliver. What if the couple had had a real conversation.

**Award: Best Oliver Letting Felicity Vent and Really Listening Award**

@msbeccieboo’s recs:

Back to you (in your arms, I’m home) - drmrs

Oliver is done waiting. He asks Felicity out on their first date post-Lian Yu. 

**Award: Cutest S6/3x01 Parallel**

Dessert - minachandler

Set at the end of 6x04. What if Slade called later that night, and Oliver and Felicity's sexytimes weren't interrupted?

**Award: Best Dessert, Followed by Dessert**

The Price We Pay - @wrldtravler

Months have passed. The hope for Oliver's imminent release dwindles into nothing. Felicity makes a deal with the Devil to have the moment with her husband that she never got.

**Award: Most Bittersweet, Better-Late-Than-Never Honeymoon**

Zip. - Vixx2PointOh

Her dress has a zip.

A zip that goes all....the....way....down.

Set just before 6x01.

That purple dress is stunning, gorgeous and Oliver has seen it before....

**Award: Hottest Bunker Reunion Sex**

@tangled23works’ recs:

Above All Else - shesimperfect_butshetries

A different take on episode 6x14: When Rene is pointing his gun at Felicity he shoots, but Oliver jumps in front of her.

This story is an alternate ending for season 6, beginning part way through 6x14 in which Diaz is a more intimidating villain and Oliver doesn't make that stupid deal.

**Award: Best Season Six Rewrite/ I Wish This Was Canon**

@smoaking-greenarrow’s recs:

Before They Turn the Lights Out - MachaSWicket

Some late night conversations.

SPOILERS for 6x01.

**Award: The Emotional Punches We Needed From Season Six**

Finally - who_seeks_shall_find

Finally, William and Felicity let it all out. They had bottled up their feelings for a long time so there are some accusations and yelling. In addition, every secret is brought up and Oliver finds out that he isn't the only one who has hidden things.

**Award: Sweetest Queen Family Mending**

(if you must leave) leave as though fire burns under your feet - @emilyszuko

When Oliver gets home from saying goodbye to Thea and Roy, his entire body feels drained, bones dreary and tired in a way that differs from any of the other times he’s slugged through the apartment to get to his and Felicity’s bedroom. The exhaustion isn't like it normally feels after nights out fighting assassins. It’s also different from a day spent bent over his desk as he struggles to come up with ways to save his city.

**Award: The ‘Oliver Gets His Well Deserved Snuggles’ Award**

Fade to Black - @felicityollies

Late night visits, confessions, and a bean bag chair? (Post-Ep fic 6x03 spoilers)

**Award: Best Use of Bonus-Scene-Smut (and Felicity’s Bean Bag Chair)**

Miles to Go Before I Sleep - @jesileighs

6.11 Missing Scene

Oliver returns from wiring the ten million dollars to Cayden James defeated, out of control and broken. Luckily, Felicity knows how to put him back together again.

**Award: Best Felicity Doing Everything She Can to Make Oliver Feel Better**

@memcjo’s recs:

words can hurt - @alexiablackbriar13

Post-6x12, Felicity has to help Oliver deal with the emotional fallout caused by Rene's insensitive line about PTSD.

**Award: Best Use of Felicity Being There for Oliver**

All the Little Things - @it-was-a-red-heeler

Just some drabbles, one-offs, and missing scenes from Season 6.

**Award: Most Amazing Snippets of Olicity and Team Arrow**

The Importance of Trust - @hope-for-olicity

This is my spec fic on the upcoming Olicity fight in Arrow 6x18.

**Award: Best Use of Beautiful Angst**

Felicity’s Chip - @smoaking-greenarrow

anonymous asked: HI!!!! Can you maybe write I fic where instead of Curtis hacking and attacking dig’s chip. He hacks Felicity’s. And Oliver just LOOSES HIS SHIT on the new team

A/N: I had too many angry feelings to write this right after 6x14. Oliver would have ended up murdering all three of them. I still wouldn’t read if NTA being awful in a story would offend you, because they’re little shits in this fic :)

**Award: Best Use of Oliver Facing Off Against NotTA**

@blondeeoneexox’s recs:

Post its and Promises - @yet-i-remain-quiet

Felicity is feeling as if there is never time for her and Oliver to get married. Oliver comes up with a compromise.

Inspired by the Grey's Anatomy season where Derek and Meredith get married via post it note.

**Award: Most Precious Wedding That Wasn’t Technically Legal But Still Counts For Everything**

A Spark from the Fire in Your Heart - @smoaking-greenarrow

6x18 speculation fic. Oliver hallucinates, lashing out at Felicity and William in his frustration. Diaz and Black Siren make moves against Oliver, and John and Lyla come in to help.

**Award: Most Heartbreakingly Beautiful Supportive Felicity**

And I can’t bear losing you, not again - inlovewithimpossibility

Set directly after the flashbacks of Oliver finding Thea and Samantha during 6x01, Oliver sets out to find out if the others members of his team are okay and he's particularly worried about one of them

**Award: Funniest/Sappiest Felicity in the Most Dangerous of Situations**

Accepting Promises - @allimariexf

Oliver's promise to Felicity that he would always come back (episode 6x19, "The Dragon") didn't sit quite right with Felicity. When she wakes up after a vivid dream/memory, she decides to continue the conversation.

**Award: Most Beautiful Additional Scene That Absolutely Should Have Been Scripted**

Heartbreak - @felicityollies

Felicity is sent to prison instead of Oliver. While she’s there she discovers she’s pregnant.

**Award: Most Cry Worthy Pregnancy Reveal**

@allimariexf’s recs:

Everything Will Be Ok - @stephswims

After 6x13 something was missing. Obviously, William leaving to follow Oliver needs to be addressed between the Queens.

**Award: Best Queen Family Domesticity (that remembers William is a person and not a prop!)**

(Something) Just Like This - @by-mintsea

A collection of season 6 canon ficlics and silences we won't or didn’t get to see on screen. Prompts welcome.

**Award: Best Soft and Domestic Olicity Moments that Should Have Been**

[demaury]

Some kind of mistake (chapter 1)

Ever since Eliott first came across the new resident of the apartment 320, he made peace with the fact that Lucas 'Big Blue Eyes' Lallemant would, one way or another, turn his life upside down. Thing is, he hadn't expected that Lucas' wife and Lucas' daughter would play a part in it. Because, you know, he didn't know they existed until it was too late. (ao3 link)

SAMEDI, 08:49

It was a Saturday. For some reason, that particular fact in itself stuck in Eliott’s mind.

What was odd was that it didn’t particularly strike him as any different from the other Saturdays. It started off with Sofiane kicking him awake on his couch with a cup of coffee that wasn’t nearly enough to calm the pounding of a hundred hammers against his skull — courtesy of one (or ten) too many drinks from the night before. While he was twisting around in a sitting position and discarding the blanket usually covering the couch, Sofiane sat on the armrest, looking down at him.

“Eliott, c’mon. You know I like having you here but man- you stink.” He pulled a disgusted face as he said so. If Eliott’s eyes weren’t already giving him hell for the sunlight flooding the tiny living-room, he would have rolled them. It couldn’t be that late, considering Sofiane was still here. “Why can’t you just come over when you’re sober for once? That’d make for a nice change.”

A snort escaped past his lips as he was trying to swallow down his first sip of the morning. Sofiane was an actual mother hen, always down to give advises, especially when no one had asked for it — but Eliott wouldn’t have it any other way, and that’s why he always ended up crashing on his couch whenever he was too tired and/or drunk to go home by himself. It was just convenient that Sofiane’s place happened to be located in a particularly lively neighborhood, which meant that more often than not, his place was the closest from where Eliott was finding himself. A waste, considering that Sofiane was rarely (if ever) pulling an all-nighter these days.

“Not my fault you’re always ditching me,” Eliott protested, nose in his coffee. “Idriss too. You guys are the worst friends.”

What kind of friend let you ring at the intercom and didn’t even open the door? Idriss fucking Bakhellal. He was exactly that kind of friend. ‘Dude, I can’t keep up with your shit. I gotta wake up in the morning, just go make some other friends to party with,’ he had told him bluntly.

Was it his fault if all of a sudden his friends had boring jobs and boring lives?

Sofiane gave him a pointed look, before shaking his head as if he had been able to follow his train of thoughts. “I’ve got a job, Eli. Not everyone can afford to get shitfaced every Friday nights and a couple other nights in-between and still keep up with their lives.”

“I’ve got a job too, I’ll let you know,” Eliott retorted, mildly wounded in his pride.

Being overly judgmental was going against everything Sofiane was, although technically Eliott knew there was some truth in it, but after nearly five years of justifying the fact that yes, staying home on his computer was part of his job (and a huge part of it at that, not to say all of it), it was getting a little bit more on his nerves each time someone mentioned it. If anything, he was making more money that Sofiane, and probably more than Idriss as well — EP teacher wasn’t really the starter plan for a millionaire career.

He shifted on the couch, becoming increasingly aware of his wrinkled and slightly damp tee-shirt with every move he made. Maybe Sofiane was right about the smell, after all.

“Yes, but you don’t have work hours like Idriss and I do.”

Eliott shot him an unimpressed look. “You’re a driving instructor, Sof, you don’t treat cancer.” Joke was on him, because after ten years of friendship, he surely knew Sofiane well-enough to be aware that he was as proud to help kids get their driving license as any doctor was to save a life. Twenty years down the road and he’d start lining up on a wall the driving licenses he had contributed to.

Sofiane rolled his eyes. “And you’re still an asshole whenever you’re wasted, nice to see some things never change.” He leaned forward to grab his phone from the coffee table and immediately bolted up. “Shit I’m late. Look, do whatever you want but lock the door behind you and leave the spare key in the mailbox.”

“What’s the point of a spare key if you have both of them in here?” Eliott observed as Sofiane shrugged on a hoodie and fumbled around to grab the things he needed to go — shoes, keys, phone, and wallet— before literally jumping to the front door.

“That’s just a proof you’re spending too much time in here!”, he yelled as he slammed the door behind him, making Eliott wince at the sound.

SAMEDI, 09:51

He stayed put for a couple of minutes, before setting the cup of coffee on the table before him and gathering his things to head out. Usually he didn’t feel so much like things weren’t okay whenever he found himself here, with Sofiane fretting around him — if anything, it made him laugh. But for some reason this morning just wasn’t it.

An awful part of his teenage years had been spent hating himself for not being more like the other kids of his age, with an easy life, healthy hobbies, healthy relationships, healthy self-perception. Yeah, an awful lot of the time, between fifteen and nineteen, he had wished he was more like Sofiane, more like Idriss. More like anybody else. It had started working out for him only after he hit twenty. His meds were on point. He was slowly making peace with the fact that things would never be a 100% easy, and stopped purposefully ignoring the signs when shit was about to hit the fan.

As a free-lance graphic designer, he mostly worked from home, which spared him the prospect of dealing with an asshole boss on a daily basis — and getting fired because of one of his low lows. His sex-life was always a bit of a mess, but not dating anybody was making it a lot easier to juggle between the moment he craved loneliness and those he craved physical contact beyond logic. He was seeing his parents, who lived across town, twice a month, talking with his sister at least once a week, going to his therapist whenever it was needed, and every once in a while, Idriss got invested into a new sport and bugged him enough to join him, or simply to go for a morning run.

It wasn’t a perfect life, but it was healthier than it had been since what felt like forever. For the last five years or so, he had felt reasonably like the rest of his friends and acquaintances. So why was everyone starting to act like 26 was the age limit for all of this? It was as though they had no idea about all the efforts he had put into this in the first place, and sometimes he just wanted to scream his frustrations out.

The bus-ride back to his place wasn’t long, but it felt a lot like it. His phone had died the night before, so he was only hoping that whatever his drunken self had posted on his stories wasn’t shameful enough to make prospective clients run off to the next graphic designer on their list. He had started making a name for himself when he had scored a campaign promoting a new club in the Marais, two years ago, and although his building couldn’t be considered ‘fancy’ by any means, he was making enough money to afford living on his own in a bigger space than Sofiane’s literal shoebox.

Talking about boxes, Eliott thought.

A bunch of cardboard boxes were piled up in the entrance of his building. The main door was hanging wide open, a couple of leaves swirling around under the cool breeze and loud voices echoing inside — far too loud for Eliott’s still inebriated, sleep-deprived brain. He had known that the family of four living in the apartment on the fourth floor, the level below his own flat, would lose no time in being replaced — the moment the two parents had stopped fighting for good was when the dad had left and the countdown had started for a single mom in an overpriced city.

As Eliott walked in, careful not to trip, his eyes fell on three guys apparently waiting for the elevator to reach the ground floor, while holding upward the slatted base of a bed. Young, probably in their twenties. And fucking loud.

“I didn’t sign up for this!” one of them was protesting vehemently, his voice bouncing up against every wall and right through Eliott’s brain as he padded further in. When the guy straightened, the two others almost toppled over under the weight of the bed base. “I signed up for a bunch of books and clothes, I’m not a moving company!”

“Bro, can you just stop whining already?” another one said, adjusting his position with an elbow resting on the wooden frame.

“My point is, why are we doing all of this, and Lucas gets to just… I don’t know, slide them out of the elevator and inside his flat?” the first one complained.

Eliott almost snorted, and if he had been in the mood for conversation, he would have probably told them that they were fucking spoiled. Back when he moved in, the elevator was out of order, which had been a real pain in the ass to move everything up to the fifth floor — Sofiane and Idriss kept insisting that as long as the amount of years he had spent in his flat didn’t equal the number of floors they had to go through, they would never be even.

Oh fuck no, he thought.

That meant he had five goddamn flights of stairs to go through before crashing onto his bed.

Just what he needed.

“So following your logic,” the third one, a blond guy with glasses, chimed in, “Lucas should be here, dealing with the heavy shit, while you’re randomly shoving everything in his living-room until we can’t even open the door.”

“Exactly!” the first one exclaimed, then he met the look of his two friends. “Wait no- Not exactly but-”

“I can’t believe he’s allowed to vote,” the guy with the glasses muttered with a loud sigh, “congrats Baz, you made me lose faith in the democratic system.”

The fact that he threw his hands up in the air as he talked, and that the bed base once again threatened to fall to the ground under his other friend’s protests, offered enough of a distraction for Eliott to reach the stairs without having to go through a conversation he had no emotional interest in.

The pressure of being one among a million other people was nothing compared to the pressure of being known from everyone in a small town. Eliott was fine with being lost in the crowd, especially in a town where people considered it a flaw to be over-sympathetic; that was definitely something he could get behind. It was easy to just coexist with other people without seeking any further contact with them than a polite nod whenever they let you use the elevator with them, or when they held you the door out of habit rather than politeness — that made for less people asking annoying stuff from you when you couldn’t deal with it. He scrambled his way up through the floors, occasionally reminding himself that he could go through the last two flights of stairs without puking. It wasn’t exactly easy, considering that going through the mess that was the fourth floor gave him the impression of being the character of an online platform game. When he made it there, the technological wonder that was an elevator had managed to get the bed base up the fourth floor before him.

Eliott heard a grunt before he actually saw anything, then he saw the bed base move before he saw the person behind it. A boy was pestering to himself, sliding between the bed base and the wall of the elevator to try pulling it out from the outside, rather than pushing it out from the inside. The frame made an agonizing screeching sound that reverberated through the whole building and had Eliott wincing, but the guy had apparently made peace with every single living soul hating him because he didn’t stop — only slowing down as the meters added to the actual weight of the object. Eliott liked to think of himself as someone at least more observant than most, but it didn’t take a genius to know that the number of smaller boxes waiting by the front door was multiplying the number of chances for something bad to happen.

And as Murphy’s law stated so well, everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

The guy walking backward didn’t get to see the box near his foot until he tripped over it, letting out a ‘fuck’ as he lost his balance and the bed base toppled over him with a loud, metallic sound. It took Eliott an extra-second to get in motion — really, it wasn’t like shit like this happened every day. The guy was struggling to get out of what looked ridiculously like a wooden cage all of a sudden.

“You okay?”, Eliott enquired, startling him.

“Never been better,” he gritted out.

Eliott smirked to himself and leaned forward to grab the slats and lift the bed base off, before sliding it up against the wall while the guy was laboriously rising up on his feet.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, rubbing his forearm. “I guess some people don’t get the point of teaming up to get shit done faster.”

Eliott cocked an eyebrow. “Let me guess, the other three downstairs are yours?”

“There might be no more than me at the end of the day if they keep up like that.”

Sassy, Eliott noted. He liked it. For the first time he was actually indulging in a little bit of staring. Not much. The barest minimum, really. First of all, despite having been told him countless times that he looked younger than his 26 years old, he had troubles believing that this guy was an actual grown-up, but maybe it had to do with the fact that he was rather short, or the way his hair seemed disheveled beyond repair — and, again, Eliott knew a stuff or two about messy hair. What caught his attention was the two, big blue eyes suddenly staring back at him.

Wide.

And blue.

Very, very blue.

A very dark shade, one of those that even Photoshop had no trouble making pop — which didn’t happen often. Call it a professional quirk, but it was a nice thing to see. There was a bit of an awkward silence, only broken when the elevator dinged behind them, offering Eliott enough of a distraction for his brain to fall back into place, and preferably out of the gutter before he started overanalyzing the wonders that his skinny jeans made to his lower body.

“See? I told you he would be just fine,” the voice of one of the three guys from the hall echoed behind them. “Our Lulu is the best.”

Suddenly the big blue eyes were not focused on him anymore, and Eliott didn’t know how to feel about it. He was just awkwardly standing now, caught between people he didn’t even know fifteen minutes before. That wasn’t the definition of how he wanted to spend his Saturday morning riding out his hangover.

“Are you fucking kidding me? I almost died!”, Blue Eyes protested.

“I told you this would happen,” another one muttered.

Eliott shook his head to himself, and started to retreat towards the staircase while they were busy throwing insults at each other.

Maybe Sofiane was right.

Maybe he was too old for this shit — whatever that was.

[jamlocked]

Let’s talk about John

Seeing as @raeofalbion and @summeringminor asked for it, let’s talk about John. I feel it may be unwise, but on this blog WE DIE LIKE MEN.

I want to talk about the violence and why, contrary to some things I’ve seen, it’s just…I don’t want to say, ‘not as awful as it’s made out’ but I can’t, because it is. But the reasons behind it don’t seem as alien to me as they seem to be to others.

Okay. So, first off, let’s talk about the British cultural thing I mentioned on this post, that I feel is sometimes overlooked (understandably) by those overseas. And I’m not condoning his behaviour in any way as a result of this, just pointing it out.

See, in my generation, it was always perfectly normal to utter casual threats of violence. Keep in mind that John is about ten years older than me, or something – I forget what year S4 is supposed to take place in - so this is even more true of his generation. Even when I was a kid, it was perfectly normal to say, ‘shut up, or I’ll kick your head in’. My mother would tell me, ‘I’ll skin you,’ if I was cheeky. When I was a teenager, my mates and I were all, ‘shut your mouth or you’ll get a slap’…and the thing is, none of us ever did these things, it was/is just a way of speaking in the UK. Hyperbole. There’s a very definite line, and people would rarely make the jump into actually doing any of it. But this is why John making statements like, ‘I could break every bone in your body while naming them’ does not read as abusive to me, it just reads as a standard, ‘shut your face because you’re annoying me’ statement.

Another mitigating factor – John was in the army. Now, my dad was in the army. So was my uncle. My best friend in my twenties was a senior cadet instructor, and I very nearly joined up myself a couple of times. I also played rugby – as John does/did – and spent my teenage years surrounded by lads with pints in their hands, threatening each other with a kicking while still being the best of mates. I went on holiday with an ex-paratrooper who told me that the regiment celebrated the arrival of new recruits by stuffing them in a locker and chucking them down a hill. This mate spent his first two months as a para recovering from a broken leg, collarbone and arm as a result of this initiation. (The guy was also utterly mental in other ways, but that’s another – very army – thing).

My point is…if you’re British and of a certain age, if you’ve been in the services, if you like macho sports and hanging out in that sort of company…there’s a certain way of speaking and behaving. And John is an intelligent man and a doctor, so not fully subscribed to this – I think it’s made pretty clear that he’s an outsider in some respects - but he also goes on holiday with his rugby mates, he’s addicted to danger and adrenaline, and he’s only happy when chasing down criminals with a (pretend) sociopath. He’s not portrayed as a sensitive type. He’s just more sensitive than Sherlock to social niceties, and spends his time pointing them out to him. But in the context of his age, the country he lives in, his background job, his hobbies, his current chosen way of living…his casual threats of violence don’t seem out of place to me.

(I will add at this point that speaking this way seems less of a thing, nowadays. Most of my friends now are about ten years younger than me, Oxford graduates, generally Woke, and would never dream of talking like that to anyone. Hurrah for the younger generation!)

HAVING SAID ALL THAT. John’s actions in S4 – specifically when he beat Sherlock up in TLD – were reprehensible. I could write a whole other essay on why, ‘a relationship would complete you as a human being’ was just awful, and…maybe I’ll get into that in a bit, because NO NO NO. But we’re talking about violence here, and why he seemed to start S1 as a generally affable guy with problems, and ended up shoeing Sherlock in the ribs on the tiles of a morgue. Of course that was gross. He crossed a line that few people go over, and the worst thing about it all was that Sherlock just accepted that he deserved it.

But again, the seeds of this were in him all along, and you can argue that yes, it made his character go to a really horrible place, but also that it was an action born out of circumstances and was there specifically to highlight just how much trouble John was in at the time. It also served as a plot device, because the relationship between John and Sherlock – the nucleus of the whole show – had to break down to its lowest point before they could rebuild it for a glorious coming-back-together in the final episode. It’s a standard redemption arc, where both heroes start high, fall to the pits, and then come through it together, stronger. It’s one thing to have John freezing Sherlock out and Sherlock nearly killing himself with drugs to get him back…that’s a slow-burn falling apart, and it’s hurtful but it’s not exciting. When you’re making ratings TV for the majority of people who are not in fandom, and just want their excitement fix once every few years, then you need a crunch point. A visual representation of how bad things have become. So, you get John literally kicking a man when he’s down, blaming him for the death of his wife. It brings it home to a mass audience.

…damnit, I had so many other things in my head about this the other night, and they’ve all deserted me. Never mind, let’s move on to the big Lack of Apology.

I am one of those who would love, beyond all else, for John to have stood in front of Sherlock at the end and the end of that episode, and said, ‘I’m sorry for assaulting you. I’m sorry for blaming you for Mary, when she was her own person and made her own choices. I know you did your best for her’. That would have been lovely.

At the same time…I think it says a lot about their relationship that he didn’t say it. I don’t think Sherlock needed him to, no matter how much we know Sherlock deserved to hear it. I think this was an instance of Moftiss trusting the audience a little bit. Quite simply, the fact that John stood in front of Sherlock and admitted, ‘what it is…is shit’, and then cried – Sherlock and John don’t do vulnerability with each other. They take the piss and call each other names, and are downright insulting a lot of the time (‘I always hear ‘punch me in the face when you talk’…’you’re an idiot – oh, don’t look like that, most people are…’). Sherlock drugs John without consent (twice), and sets an imaginary dog on him in Baskerville. John quips about Asperger’s. They’re friends, but they’re not soft with each other. They’re British men of a certain generation (written by British men of a certain generation). So, John came to Sherlock after all the shit that happened, and he admitted that he wasn’t doing well, and Sherlock stood up and hugged him and told him he was a human being. Sherlock knew he was sorry, or he wouldn’t have come. John knew Sherlock has been beating himself up over Mary, or he wouldn’t be in the state he was in. They accepted each other back into their lives, and tacitly agreed to move on. They’re intelligent men, they knew what they’d been through, they knew they were both sorry. And from there, they go onto TFP, having each other’s backs once more and finishing the season running together side by side.

I’m probably missing loads of important stuff, because I haven’t watched S4 since it aired. But the feeling that has stayed with me since I watched it, is that nothing that happened in the first two eps was good between them, but nothing was particularly out of character either. John beat Sherlock up because he was wracked with guilt over thinking about having an affair, and then Mary died. Him beating Sherlock up was an eruption of that guilt, transferring it onto the easiest person to blame. And of course that’s an awful thing, but he’s supposed to be a human being. People do that shit all the time. The fact that Sherlock forgives him is a whole other kettle of fish (let’s not get into his whole lack of self-esteem), but what is true friendship if not seeing someone at their very worst, and loving them anyway? I don’t think – I hope – that no one believes John makes a habit of that, and beats Sherlock up once a week for the rest of their lives. It was a one-off thing that came from a very particular set of circumstances.

…okay, I’m going to shut up. This isn’t me defending John as a character, because honestly he’s always been one of the least interesting to me as a whole. But I do think he’s integral to everything that happens, and I see a lot of readings of his behaviour as completely OOC, or that somehow he’s a poor representation of friendship (I mean, he is in lots of ways but Sherlock’s often worse). I just…prefer to look at him as character, rather than some idealisation of How Friends Should Act towards one another. He’s not there to represent an ideal friend, or be an ideal person. He’s a foil to Sherlock who, let’s face it, is Problematic with a capital P. Yes, John functions better in society, but it’s a certain section of society. He’s a bloke who plays rugby and dates a string of women, and doesn’t remember details of their lives. He’s a bloke that chafes at domestic living (very clear in S3) and seeks excitement, so he texts another woman in S4. He’s not any kind of ideal. He’s just a bloke, and he falls apart when his wife dies, and it brings out the very worst of him. Sherlock accepts that, and they move on. It may be an unpleasant character arc, but I just don’t see it as being one that’s inherently OOC.

(But fuck Moftiss for ‘a relationship would complete you as a human being’, fuck them fuck them fuck all the way off.)

[millepara]

aikatsu friends episode 41 + 42 + 43 spoilers (so close to finsishignh.. .gh)

I can’t believe I still have the internet tonight. I can watch HQ anime again. this is so exciting, I love living in 2019 and having modern technology

Aine... is cute.

HOLY CRAP it’s Mirai on a bike?! she’s too cool for aikatsu, oh my god....... all of her casual coords are really neat though. I wish we’d gotten that pink harness one in the game...

oh that’s right I guess I’m gonna find out what the LOVE ME ZONE is in this ep... what is it... why did they name it that

the Aikatsu Zone... it really is just Kurobas. did they think no one would notice but also, that is a hilarious thing to pull from for aikatsu of all things,,

Karen wants to climb higher than any other idol before, to warm hearts and send love all over the world... might I suggest an Aurora Rising?

the idols LMT were competing with in the past said they had no right to perform, and left the world of aikatsu.... yeah, sure they did. but that makes it seem like Hibiki and Alicia’s beef is with LMT, so wouldn’t that mean LMT is going to have to have a big-ish role in the next series...? but I guess I gotta see how PP beats LMT first before I speculate lmao

Karen, that’s a bathrobe, not pajamas. you brought 10 cars full of pjs and you still managed to pick the wrong one

little Karen had Yumekawa Yui hair...

hhhghaghghfhhh I’d forgotten how cute the animation for aifriends is... everything’s so adorable.... even Aine dragging her nails down the window.

hhhhhhhhhhhkhkhhhh Mirai touching Karen’s face tenderly as she pretends to sleep....!!!!!! I’m going to die

wow!! this aura!!! it keeps getting more and more... MORE.... oh my gosh there’s the actual Miracle Aura like we have on the game!! I had no idea it showed up in the anime, wow!! everything’s so colorful and the lighting’s so cool and Pride is such a good song...!! ! I love Love Me Tear!!!!!!

(clapping alone in my apartment)

everyone in the audience has an expression like they just got hit by a Shin・Infinite Hug

oh my god it ended... thank god I can watch the next episode immediately after!!

even after seeing that performance this ed still kicks my ass though

lmao Coco is so excited about the Miracle Aura

ep 42!! alright kids, how the heck do you manage to win this thing

I like Coco’s unbridled delight whenever she’s about to deliver a really unhelpful line.

oh that’s right, Mio had already written their new song lyrics. I’d forgotten in the last two months... I was wondering how they were going to pull a new song out of thin air.

｡：ﾟ(｡ﾉω＼｡)ﾟ･｡ t-take my tomodachikara, Pure Palette!! oh--damn, they got me. so that’s how they win: tomodachikara theft.

aww, they got their Miracle Aura too... so sparkly... I still think LMT had a better performance and should win, but I knew what was going to happen (like. even before it happened, you know) and it was just a nice feel-good ep about being good friends, so... it’s fine. it’s fine. It’s Fine

still I hope they only win by like the tiniest barely-visible sliver, I want and need the possibility of LMT beating them in the future haha

“The winner is... PURE PALETTEEEE!!” (a bomb is dropped on PP, instantly killing the new Diamond Friends in a bubblegum-pink explosion)

LMAO @ Mio getting scared when Mirai swooped in hawk-like to get a high ten

Love Me Tear.... even though you didn’t win the Diamond Friends Cup, you’re still the winners in my heart... and in Aine and Mio’s, it seems. I’m looking forward to them coming back stronger with their Moon Dresses or whatever next season.

haha, even Ken and Tamaki and Koharu Chiharu are all talking like ‘yep, LMT are the best idols after all.’ all I’m saying is watch out, Pure Palette

the Pure Palette Monogatari is gonna be so... gay

and with that, their dream has come true. aikatsu friends is over. huh what theres more

HMMM ok I guess I can stay awake for one more ep to see Diamond Dresses. ep 43!!

did Aine and Mio steal LMT’s pink limo...? or do they just get another one made for every new Diamond Friends unit??

Mio’s mom was able to combine her designs for jewelry and clothing into one project... could it be... A S2 JEWELING DRESS.... oh wait it’s the Diamond Dresses hahaha I instantly forgot about them

Maika and Ema dropped out of the Diamond Friends Cup first and then immediately announce a world tour. why weren’t they the winners again...?

I don’t mind Pure Palette singing Aikatsu Together bc it seems more like a generic aikatsu song rather than a song written specifically for Coco, but it is weird that we don’t even get one performance of Soko ni shika nai mono in Diamond Dresses first?

it is kind of cute that they’re doing this low-pressure dance where they just hop all around the stage right after becoming Diamond Friends though.

ahhh I can’t wait to see the Diamond Dresses Chiharu will design for the next main characters after Aine and Mio... (I wish)

this would’ve been a great final ep of the season. and yet... there’s several more after it... . I’m scared haha, what’s gonna happen ;;

the lyrics for Pride are so... cool

boys? a confession?? I knew I was right to be scared

[ncfan-1]

ncfan listens to The Magnus Archives: S1 EP039 (’Infestation’) & EP040 (’Human Remains’)

And I’m finally finished with the vacation binge-listen backlog!

No spoilers, please!

EP 039: Infestation

- I probably won’t have as much to say about these two episodes, because a lot of it is going to be less meta and more just my observations.

- Jon, don’t go for the tape recorder! You’re going to be worm food!

- Sasha, you didn’t have your worm removed with a corkscrew.

- Poor Martin, he really has had entirely too much time to think about this, hasn’t he? He’s been living in the Archives for four months, now, and others might think it’s time for him to move out, but I can’t blame him, not at all. I mean, Prentiss followed him home. The Flesh Hive knows where he lives, and there’s nothing to stop it from heading over to his place again if it decides it wants to fuck with him some more. I wouldn’t want to go home, either.

- “These old files are far more protected than we ever were.” Yeah, that does reflect the Institute’s attitude towards its personnel, doesn’t it?

- Martin going from “Hah!” to “…Sorry” in the space of like, two seconds is peak Martin and my heart hurts.

- “Why record it?” Why, indeed. I think your boss has a problem, Sasha.

- And Jon’s picked up on what the audience has—that the statements all seem to be connected with one another somehow, but that we’re only just beginning to grasp at the general shape of it.

- I’m not surprised that the statements that have some basis in reality don’t place nice with digital recording software. Whenever you quote dialogue from the entities in statements, the audio distorts; digital recording software would probably cope even worse. I still want to know if the statements go through a scanner alright. There’s been no mention of trying to digitize the physical statements themselves. I mean, I’d bet the “real” statements probably don’t scan very well—they probably produce a distorted image on the screen. But you could still transcribe them and drop them into an engine like Laserfiche.

- How the heck did Tim miss all the worms?

- “Do… you… hear… the… song?”

- Martin, sweetheart, it might have been better to tell your coworkers about the spare fire extinguishers.

- Martin blowing up at Jon about his unwonted skepticism is golden.

- I mean, yeah, come on, Jane’s tongue and lips are probably gone by this point. Can’t form consonant sounds without your tongue and your lips (seriously, you need them for that), so how could she speak intelligibly without something supernatural going on?

- Jon finally admits that he’s always believed in the supernatural, and also admits that he feels like he’s being watched while he records the statements. He feels like he loses himself in the statements (Which would definitely explain why he seems to get so wrapped up in the narrative of the statements, only to rip them apart once he’s done reading).

- And now the Flesh Hive is destroying boxes of statements. I don’t know what it is coming out of Jane’s mouth, and frankly I’m not sure I want to know. Might it be a pale, sickly yellow?

- Jon tries to have a heart-to-heart with Martin. It goes about as awkwardly as you might expect. Jon, consider that Martin’s problems with Jane Prentiss do not just go away if he quits. The Flesh Hive probably won’t get the memo that Martin isn’t with the Archives anymore. He’s better off just staying where he is.

- “You… didn’t die here, did you?” “Did you think I was a ghost?” Jonathan Sims, you gigantic dork.

- “A ghost? Really?” “Shut up, Martin.”

- Elias isn’t taking this nearly as seriously as he ought to.

- “He’s not smoking again, is he?” Ooh, backstory. I can definitely see Jon as a stress smoker.

- When Elias brings up the fact that dumping a bunch of carbon dioxide on Jon and Martin might kill them, his first concern is that he doesn’t want to find another archivist. Seriously. Elias, if you want to convince me you aren’t sketchy as hell, you’re not doing a good job.

- The thing with the wall into Jon’s office leading into tunnels and Tim breaking through a wall in I think the room where they store the statements leads me to wonder something: is the Archival part of the Institute underground? Partially underground? I’d say that that isn’t the best place to store paper, since if the air conditioning ever breaks and you don’t get it fixed in short order things are going to get bad, fast.

- I just imagine Jon and Martin clinging to one another as Tim breaks through the wall, trying not to scream like Courage the Cowardly Dog.

- Did Tim just strip?

- That moment of silence, punctuated only by the fire alarm, as Tim and Jon digest Martin’s “I write poetry” is golden.

- Farewell, Sasha, we barely knew ye. I do wonder what exactly was up with Not-Sasha’s “I see you,” though. I can’t decide whether the scream is in response to Not-Sasha coming up out of the table, or if it’s in response to Not-Sasha “replacing” her, so what’s up with the “I see you?” Is it a response to Sasha trying to run away, or is Not-Sasha breaking the fourth wall and addressing us?

- Well, I actually wound up saying as much as I do on normal posts.

EP 040: ‘Human Remains’

- First up, we’ve got Elias, who is way too calm, and seems to be hiding attempts to be obstructive behind concern.

- Jon sounds fucking rough. Given what happened to him, that’s not a surprise.

- Okay, so the place where Jon records the statements is in the basement. That answers one of my questions.

- Good thing they burned Jane’s body. That’s really the only way to be sure, in cases like this.

- “Tens of thousands of things without mouths screaming as one.” Very evocative, Jon. Elias sounds a bit weirded out by this.

- Interesting how “Sasha” doesn’t seem to have been affected by the gas before it dissipated. Interesting how no one comments on this.

- “Tell me what happened to Gertrude Robinson.” Are you sweating a little, Elias? You are sketchy as fuck—you ought to be.

Seriously, you found a massive blood stain at Gertrude’s desk and all you told her successor was that she had “passed away?” What the hell?

- Next up is Tim, who drops an… interesting detail from the tunnels on us.

- Tim, I don’t think quarantine is the proper place for making jokes.

- Tim pointing out that the worms being slower and louder in the Archive than without is an important one. Because, indeed, what is it about the Archive that hinders their progress?

- That “interesting detail?” When Tim was in the tunnels, he looked into a room, and saw the worms swarming there, trying to form what he’s pretty sure was a doorway. At this point, it’s clear that things like the Flesh Hive are the earthly representation of something else. If they were trying to form a doorway, what were they trying to open up a door for? Could the thing on the other side have even gotten through? And what would it have been like if it did?

- Now we have Not-Sasha’s statement. My first reaction, the first time I listened to it?

“YOU’RE NOT EVEN GOOD AT IT, YOU HACK.”

I’m angry.

- Fucking hell, Not-Sasha… She sounds uncanny, and she probably dresses like a… I don’t know, I have a very specific aesthetic head canon for people as obviously artificial as she is, and it tends to involve the 1950s, because that is a very artificial decade in many ways. I just imagine “proper” dresses and immaculate makeup and a thousand knives hidden in every fold.

- Can the worms even burrow in to whatever Not-Sasha is?

- Elias was looking funny at Not-Sasha?

- Yeah, I’m sure you just dropped the tape recorder. Definitely didn’t destroy and/or hide the tapes.

- Jon, be nice to Martin.

- “No, I mean… I’m sorry I left you.” My heart.

- “Everyone’s fine.” Nobody’s fine.

- “The walls seemed to kill the sound dead, and there wasn’t any echo.” This makes me think about unnatural darkness, and the things that move in them.

- So the Archive was built on a prison?

- Yeah, I wouldn’t want to go down those staircases, either.

- It sounds like the tunnels have been occupied recently, though, with Martin’s talk of finding empty wine bottles and a pack of Mint Imperials. So I’ll keep that in mind for Season 2.

- The tunnels are a maze, and Martin was hopelessly lost. Then Martin looked into a room… and found Gertrude. In a room full of cassette tapes. And somehow, he could look at a woman who’s been dead for months at least, slumped forward in her chair, and tell that she had been shot three times in the chest. Somehow.

- Jon… does not sound good. I do not see him handling these revelations well. (Hell, I know he doesn’t handle these revelations well.)

- I haven’t checked, but I’d bet the tapes that are gone are the ones that have Sasha’s voice on them.

- “I’m going to figure this out, and I’m not going to stop. They’ll have to kill me first.”

[doomedandstoned]

Tripping Through the Void with SUNNATA

It's been four years since Doomed & Stoned visited SUNNATA and my how they've grown in the interim! Three successful independent releases, legendary live performances, an exponentially growing fanbase, and broad critical acclaim have shifted the spotlight on the Warsaw doomers. Long before they became the juggernaut of the heavy underground, we knew them as an exciting upstart called Satellite Beaver. This week, we give Sunnata’s latest collections of songs a thorough going over and speak with Szymon Ewertowski (guitar, vox), Adrian Gadomski (guitar), Michał Dobrzański (bass), and Robert Ruszczyk (drums) about what fuels their fire.

Heart of Storm

By Simon Howard

Polish loners Sunnata offer the melodic pilgrim a ritualistic, dark, heavy journey into the atmospheric Outlands, hypnotizing us with an eternal 48 minutes of tripping. Pineal glands will decalcify, doors of perception will be cleansed, and the listener will be enlightened.

Sunnata have been creating a musical Zenith in a blend of genres since 'Climbing the Colossus' (2014) and 'Zorya' (2016). This well-crafted album is hard to believe, in the fact that this band have only been around since 2014. Incorrect. Jump in the TARDIS of Tunes, and rewind ourselves back to 2008. Under the moniker of Satellite Beaver, they released two demos and one final EP in 2012, aptly named, The Last Bow. If the reader is not familiar with Satellite Beaver, then you have an amazing musical journey ahead of you.

Outlands by SUNNATA

'Outlands' (2018) was recorded at Monochrom Studio, mixed and mastered by Haldor Grunberg of Satanic Audio, and brilliantly saturated in the artwork by Maciej Kamuda.

I really cannot attest to what was in the Kool-Aid at Monochrom Studio, but the results are spiritually absorbed into the listener's soul. Mind expanding mantras like "Lucid Dream," "The Ascender," and the epically entrancing closing track "Hollow Kingdom" appeal to me on planes we can only experience ourselves. Outlands transitions from mellow meditational hymns to heavenly heavy riffs, blending this album into something transcendental for avid or new fans of Sunnata. This journey will be taken upon by many, and many times. Musical Mecca has been found. The void has been filled.

Soon It Will All Be Gone

A Conversation with Sunnata

Interview by Billy Goate | Photos by Justyna Kamińska

How would you characterize the evolution of sunnata from ‘Climbing the Colossus’ to ‘Zorya’ to your latest record, ‘Outlands’?

It’s been a long way. I would describe it as emotional trip from anger on our debut Climbing the Colossus, through spatial epicness and a need for air on Zorya to introverted melancholia you can dive into on Outlands. In general, we have always been the "sad guys" who were into kind of a gloomy, dark state of mind and soul and our approach towards the music evolved along with our skills of using instruments to express what we feel inside. That’s why I’d characterize our evolution as a path to greater complexity of emotions, where our debut was the simplest and our latest album the most complicated, emotion-wise.

Are there thematic motifs that the band finds attractive when writing songs? Which themes were most influential on 'Outlands’?

We definitely have become more lyrically confident since our previous album and even though we still consider the role of our lyrics as backing for the rest, I think we can finally admit that Sunnata actually has something to say! (laughs) It might not be your most positive answer ever, but our motifs on Outlands consist of loneliness, despair, the negative influence of religious fanaticism, helplessness, and development of the self and whatever conflict you have inside of you. We dig deep, reopen wounds, and push to get to the core. We prefer fighting yourself to fighting others, until you turn into none.

Are the songs on the new album connected in any way? Is this all a “Lucid Dream” that culminates in a journey into the “Outlands,” with “The Ascender” climbing some forbidden mountain of the gods? And what is the “Gordian Knot” -- an internal fight-or-flight struggle? At the end of the journey, is the prize the conquest of a “Hollow Kingdom”? So many questions!

Sure! Song order always comes last, so we have no intention in putting a story together in any way. However, this sort of lyrical consistency allows us to arrange one after another in a way that triggers certain emotions and impressions. Let’s get through the album piece by piece:

"Lucid Dream" encourages you to give, not to receive; to understand that if you separate your self-esteem from the external world and build value of self and the will to explore, you will grow as a human.

"Scars" is a story of being misled, lied to, cheated on, and abandoned on the one hand, but also a story of growing strength and power to end whatever harms you.

"Outlands" was actually inspired by some politically related events. It's all about sacrifice as a way to bring attention to an idea or social problem ignored before. Too deep to dig into it in a single interview.

"The Ascender" track is focused around any sort of radicalism giving an illusion of being permitted to force your point of view on others. We disagree with anyone’s feeling to be justified for actions that do harm. It’s an illusion that keeps you away from self.

"Gordian Knot" is exactly what you have interpreted: inner struggle -- one that can make you fall apart or disintegrate, in any way.

"Hollow Kingdom" has been chosen as climax, the ending song in praise of emptiness. Its structure, repetitive feeling, and overwhelming melancholia are the best ending of an album we could choose from this track list.

Tell us about the artwork, the artist you chose, and the layers of meaning behind this many-faced wraith?

The only constant is change to us. That’s why this time, instead of going with the magnificent Jeffrey Smith of Ascending Storm once again, we decided to go with another talented artist, Maciej Kamuda, who is also author of Weedpecker and Major Kong artwork. We felt a strong urge to do something different. Deity presented on the front cover is a variation on deep symbolism of Goddess Kali. We didn’t want her to look in a way she’s known from Hinduism. We were inspired more by deep, complex symbolism behind her various forms. If you read about her, you will instantly get it.

One consistent word that comes up in all the descriptions of your music -- live performances especially -- is “ritualistic.” Whether it is the careful setting of the stage, the lighting of the incense, or the hypnotic, trance-like rhythms of the music. What is the importance of ritual for the band and what does this bring to your compositions and performances.

Ritualism in our music comes from trance-inducing forms we create. Immersed in void and drugged with noise, we jam a lot in search of the desired emotion trigger -- we can’t name it, we just get the feeling. If we do, we proceed further. Our work routine and who we are as people actually doesn’t have much to do with dark shamanism, but everything changes once we take instruments and start playing together. It’s similar to being possessed with something. All other details you mentioned -- stage setting, light, clothes, and merch -- are secondary to this and their role is to create certain atmosphere to take people on the journey with us.

I've heard rumors of a music video in the works?

Videos are our curse. We’ve been working on them for every album, but for various reasons all these projects were abandoned. Right now, we are at the beginning of production process for video of "The Ascender" song and we really do hope that it will work out this time. I can’t tell much yet, but we would like the outcome to be something similar to our music -- '90s aesthetics in a psychedelic, doomy setting. We’ll see what time will tell.

Let’s close by giving our readers a peek at your touring plans for 2018 and beyond. What “Outlands” are you off to in the days and months ahead?

We can’t reveal many dates since they are not officially announced yet, but after the our spring tour of Scandinavia with the crazy lads of Boss Keloid, we have various festivals in the summertime confirmed and good perspectives on touring Europe with Dopethrone in October, plus an appearance at Gizzardfest in Rotherham, UK. I believe that best is yet about to come. We just need to follow our own path.

Ruling Land of Emptiness

By Shawn Gibson & Billy Goate

To understand the significance of Sunnata's musical achievements, we need at least a cursory understanding of the soil in which the band is planted. Poland's heavy music scene has been experiencing a surge of activity over the past decade or two, but its music roots are deep-seated and stretch back generations to the darkly complex oeuvre of composers like Frederic Chopin, Leopold Godowsky, Karol Szymanowski, Henryk Górecki, and so many others.

Sunnata's home base of Warsaw encompasses an impressive if turbulent history, evolving from a smattering of villages more than 1400 years ago to become one of the ten largest capital cities in Europe. Warsaw has had more than its share of doom to contend with, too, from disease and famine to regional and global wars -- including the devastating Nazi occupation, which spurred the great underground resistance movement known as the Warsaw Uprising.

Given this context, it's significant that Sunnata has adopted a name representing one of the fundamental principles of Buddhism. Śūnyatā is a transliteration of the Sanskrit word शून्यता (pronounced as "shoonyataa"), which signifies voidness. Think of it as a meditative state of "emptiness" in which the mind is devoid of desire, specifically the stubborn presence of that word we all learn by age two: mine. Śūnyatā involves the diminishing of one's ego, and the band that wears this name has dedicated the better part of a decade to exploring this philosophy through the medium of ritual heavy music.

Photo by Aleksandra Burska

"Hollow Kingdom," the closing track on Outlands, is one example of Sunnata's approach to voidness, with its droning ups and downs and subtle twists. Sunnata let this song be the pedals of a cherry blossom drifting in the breeze. Another highlight is "The Ascender" (my favorite of the record). It's the kind of vessel one imagines boarding to cross over to निर्वाण (nirvana). The backing vocals near the beginning of the song calls to mind prayers and mantras of Tibetan monks. Guitars buzz like propellers, shuttling you along to another plane of existence. The heavy psychedelic vibe and stirring chorus makes for an uplifting experience that is, one imagines, not unlike astral projection. Sunnata are your gurus fixed atop the mountain, lulling you ever closer on an ascendant journey skyward. Along the way, there's an avalanche of emotions.

One imagines the many plagues, fires, wars, and uprisings that might have influenced "Scars." The song strikes a thrash-like tempo, with jazzy cymbals and a psyched-out tambourine. Then, at the five-minute mark, all hell breaks loose with a thundering bassline, fuzzed-out guitars, and a pummeling drumbeat. Doom has come to claim its reign! Similarly, "Gordian Knot" attacks like a nest of pissed-off hornets. Still rocking hard by the two-minute mark, things lighten up for a spell as fuzzy desert riffs and reassuring chants (with those wonderful backing vocals) lull you to sanctuary. The aggressive pace returns, leading to a crescendo of screaming vox to chase every worry from your mind. Only the journey consumes you now.

Taken in sum, Outlands is an exhilarating magic carpet ride, albeit with some turbulence. Sunnata hone the powerful elements of rock and metal like master alchemists, dispensing measured doses of doom, sludge, psychedelic, and stoner, melding them seamlessly, and transcending boundaries only few conceived possible. The heavy doom passages are somehow made even heavier by this psychedelic blend, which brings one closer to a state of voidness.

High spiritual concept meets the earthy might of doom in Outlands. It is the enlightenment of the yogis, the ascension of gurus, a musical Kathmandu. I've visited the temple now multiple times over the course of weeks and months and it continues to be a cathartic experience for me. Outlands will make your heart flutter and embolden your spirit with its mesmerizing riffs and hypnotic rhythms. It will usher you down a river of feeling and bury you in a cascade of sonic desolation. The chants and mantras sent my spirit soaring heavenward. Returning to earth, I felt as if I have been everyplace in existence and at the same time perfectly still, third eye open -- mind, body, and spirit aligned. Awareness is the gift I received from this Outlands. Who knows? In listening, perhaps you will find your own Śūnyatā, as well.

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