#this does not include pieces NAMED untitled

[art-that-fucks-you-up-tournament]

hey everyone!!!!

your diligent mods here at the art that fucks you up tournament have been trying to track down all the artworks you’ve submitted, and some have been..... tough. so if you could please keep in mind that if you don’t know the artist or title, then that makes OUR job significantly harder, and makes it more likely your submission won’t end up in the final!

[hamsterclaw]

Fic Library: Namjoon

A list of incredible fics I've read and re-blogged on my (almost) 2 years on here. These stories all celebrate our fave big, brainy, clumsy, sometimes annoying, always sexy Joon, check them out and give these authors some love!

The Body Through Time by @yeoldontknow. KNJ x f! reader, sexy academia AU. Angsty fic with Namjoon as a smouldering brainiac.

Goodnight Nabi by @sahmfanficbts. Get used to seeing Sam's handle in my lists because she's one of my fave writers and a lovely person to boot. KNJ x f! reader, sexy DILF mechanic Namjoon. A sexy, beautiful fic with Sam's signature hope and heart.

Pronoia by @junghelioseok. KNJ x reader, college + zombie apocalypse AU. A cracky, funny, zingy story with guest appearances from other members - including JK and Yoongi.

Booty Jorts by @miscelunaaa, who also has a good showing in my fic recs for her top notch writing and just being a great human. KNJ x f! reader - this is a smuttily delicious gem.

Shell-ter by @miscelunaaa. Hermit crab! Namjoon x marine biologist reader. I genuinely think about this grumpy (crabby?!) Namjoon all the time.

Scent of a woman by @sahmfanficbts. Leopard hybrid parfumerie boss! Namjoon x employee f! reader. There's always so much humanity in Sam's stories, and this does not disappoint.

How I love you by @ahundredtimesover. KNJ x f! reader. A 28k beautiful musing on love and marriage that's thought-provoking and sensitively written.

Seoul Redemption by @sahmfanficbts. Forger! KNJ x single mom! reader. A gorgeously realised imagining with a noir vibe and very human characters.

Park and Ride (Explicit) by @here2bbtstrash. KNJ x reader, idolverse. The first story I read by M, and it made me want to read so much more of her work. Sexy, fast-paced, and this Namjoon is swoonworthy.

Holding on letting go by @augustbutwinter. KNJ x gn! reader. August is queen of the short impactful drabble but her longer pieces are just as incredible. A sad, angsty, truthful, beautifully realised gem.

Cuffing Szn by @miscelunaaa. FBI agent KNJ x soft-bodied/plus-sized reader. Joon's an FBI agent, he's big and sexy, do you really need to know any more?

Reckless by @vyduan. Part of the Her multiverse. KNJ x reader, also featuring JJK x reader, idolverse. I started reading vyduan's writing when I first got into BTS fanfic, and apart from being a fucking fantastic writer, she's also an all-round good egg with a razor sharp wit. Reckless is hot and sexy and reader is gritty, strong and kickass. Namjoon is the arrogant pompous asshole of my dreams in this.

Fall apart & redefine by @ugh-yoongi. Idol KNJ x f! reader. Namjoon's music and musings give off sadboi vibes to me, and this gorgeous, angsty story captures all of that. Stunning.

On the line 1 by @augustbutwinter. KNJ x reader. I was only speaking the truth when I said August writes drabbles like no other. Short, cute and impactful.

Hey, it's me by @yoongiphoria. Exes Namjoon x reader. I remember reading this for the first time around the time Indigo came out and thinking how perfectly it captured the vibe of the album. I still love it now.

Untitled by @ahundredtimesover. An idolverse AU ft KNJ and f! reader. Musings on loss and impermanence and legacies also inspired by Indigo.

If this is all we can do by @yoongiphoria. A follow up to Hey, it's me, linked above, that made me stop skim reading and pay attention. Angsty, full of longing and just a great read.

The package thief by @blog-name-idk. KNJ x f! reader, enemies to lovers. I'm a fan of Mango's cracky humour, and it comes through in this judgy, petty and somehow also endearing Namjoon.

Shut up! by @daechwitatamic. KNJ x gn reader. I love it when a story alludes to Namjoon being annoying and I especially like how reader shuts him up. Smutty, sexy and so so good.

Envy by @whatifyoulivelikethat. KNJ x f! reader. Love this author's general DGAF vibes, and they've also written some of my favourite stories. Namjoon's gorgeously written and darkly sexy in this. So so hot.

The one with Namjoon and the u-haul by @eoieopda. KNJ x Jeon! reader. Jade's writing is sharply hilarious and this is a perfect example. A dreamy, sexy Namjoon and a lil shit JK.

Pheromones by @rmnamjoons. Spaceship captain Joon x spaceship botanist reader, sci-fi AU. The fic that introduced me to the concept of sex pollen and a sexy, sex-crazed yet somehow still chivalrous Namjoon.

Promise Me KNJ x f! reader, JJK x f! reader, military AU, by @sahmfanficbts. A beautifully written, tender love story that made me cry and reflect on my life. Sam writes emotions like no one else.

Additional notes: A few of my favourite Namjoon stories, are only on AO3, for which I've created a separate post.

[alwaysbethewest]

2024 fave things I've made

My sweet friend @walkingaline tagged me in this end-of-year activity from @jolapeno asking people to name their three favorite things they'd made in the year.

The writing well has been d r y this year for me so I wasn't sure what I'd even have to choose from. But looking back on my blog what I discovered is... almost every piece I wrote this year was a gift for someone. And it's easy for me to pick those as my favorites.

Starter Home (Javi/Connie/Steve) for @by-ilmater. I don't think this is like, an example of my best writing or anything. But it certainly is very me, taking my favorite dolls and smushing them together into domestic intimacy over the course of several run-on sentences. And as I said in the note at the top of that fic, I came to the realization that maybe it's better to share an imperfect fic if there's something in it that might make someone smile, rather than keep it private indefinitely while you continue to tinker with it. I have perfectionist tendencies so that is a tough lesson for me.

Untitled (him/you, or "choose your own hunk" as I wrote in the tags) for @mourningbirds1. Clare bought a house this year and I'm incredibly proud of her for achieving that dream and for surviving some really hard challenges the last few years. It was such a pleasure to put together that moodboard and fic, thinking of her and the things she would like in it.

Crossing the Streams (Frankie ghost AU x Javi X-Files AU) for @fleetwoodmactshirt, obviously, because this is a fic that could never be for anyone else. I mean. I'm more than happy for other people to read it and enjoy it. I would love for you to read it!! But I don't think anyone else will Get It the way fleetwood does, since the way I wrote this fic was to basically mind-meld with her for the last four years and then spit out a portion of the results onto the page. To us it just makes sense that her X-Files AU Javier Peña is my ghost AU Frankie's uncle and that he and his partner would come by to investigate. Like? It's obvious? But also I've gotten really in my head about that ghost fic and didn't feel comfortable committing to that wackiness as canon~ for it so I'm technically considering this fic an AU offshoot in itself, lol.

I've had a hard time feeling connected to fandom this year. I still have some old WIPs I'd like to finish—I haven't written anything off even if it's years old at this point. I also made this post while I was supposed to be working on my current project (for the pedrostories secret santa exchange), which is a fun one but has been tricky just because I feel so rusty. One of my goals for the new year is to do more writing practice. To keep my fingers and brain a little more nimble even if the words are nonsense and will never see the light of day. Whether that translates to more fic… who can say 🤷‍♀️

This year I also made: eight birthday cakes, including the last one ever for a woman who later died*; several batches of cookies; dozens of curries; three or four loaves of focaccia; a handful of soups; probably seven or eight different preparations of tofu; and one batch of perfect cottage cheese pancakes. Next year I’ll try to develop my food photography skills and maybe I can share some of it with you.

*no connection to the cake, to be clear lol. Just noting it because I felt glad that I was able to make a special treat for her in her final year.

[ani-antiquities]

The Melancholic Woman: Eva Hesse, Ennead (1965), and Trauma, De-strung

(source: ICA Boston)

I will open this essay with a line from art historian, Anne M. Wagner’s essay, Another Hesse, on her journal October, vol. 69 – wherein she writes of our subject, American sculptor Eva Hesse:

Hesse’s self-scrutiny, we learn once again, is a means of coping with “environment” – with the inheritance of the past. But it is also the measure – even the proud badge – of her “difference”, the difference, we remember, of being an artist. (p. 131)

Anne M. Wagner’s essay on Eva Hesse will be one of the main sources of this paper.

Here, we will be able to trace Eva Hesse’s art and its asymbolia to the artist’s melancholia and her journey of sublimation and working through. We will also thereby arrive at more questions to ponder Hesse’s life, and inquire about the connections among art, melancholia, and the semiotic – and possibly ponder a perspective that ties the end-goal of these Kristevan concepts together.

(Before I go on, I just wanna say that this essay may draw on similarities EVA HESSE: POST-MINIMALISM INTO SUBLIME, by Robert Pincus-Witten. I wrote this specific essay more than a year ago for my Cultural, Literary, and Critical Theory class, and I only found this essay just today, as I am writing and doing more research for this piece. LOL. However, I would like to justify that the content of my essay is to draw connections between Hesse’s art and Kristeva’s psychoanalytic theory. I did enjoy Witten’s essay, though!)

(Source: pbs.org)

Eva Hesse

At the height of Nazi Germany, Hesse’s family fled to America for protection from religious persecution, but it was not long until sanctuary proved to be fickle as well, in the land of the free. Due to trauma implicated by the Second World War that vehemently caused the deaths of Hesse’s extended family, the serious circumstances of (Eva Hesse’s mother) Ruth Marcus House’s bipolar disorder worsened. These events dominoed to Wilhelm Hesse’s divorce from Ruth Marcus, and Ruth’s suicide. Adding salt to the wound, Wilhelm would marry a woman named Eva. Upon the new marriage, the young girl and her step-mother would share the same name.

Identity crisis aggravated young Eva’s trauma – from the persecution of family whose faces she had never known, to losing her to suicidal mother at ten. It seemed like grief was her very being.

Graduating from Yale, she exhibited works whose style displayed that of Abstract Expressionism and paved the way for Minimalism.

Art historians speculate how these traumas were sublimated into her art. Her self-portraits showcase distorted images of faces and figures. They are almost like a child’s attempt at creating a figure painting, except that their tone is so somber that only an adult can express such a feeling.

(Untitled, 1965, oil on canvas: From: mutualart.com)

However, the most intriguing work of Hesse does not come from two-dimensions – but three. This includes Hesse’s sculpture, Ennead (1965).

(Ennead, 1965, oil on canvas. From: icaboston.org)

Eva Hesse’s Ennead (1965)

All that there is to the piece: acrylic, paper mache, some resin-coated strings, plywood, some plastic, and a title possibly referencing the Egyptian pantheon.

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, describes the artwork as such:

The orderly, formulaic application of the threads devolves into an increasingly chaotic composition as they accumulate and tangle toward the floor. A few strands are affixed to the adjacent wall, cordoning off a wedge of space that becomes part of the sculpture itself. This gesture also draws the viewer’s attention to the corner of the gallery, activating this normally overlooked area. Additional material hangs to touch the floor, thus uniting three planes. “Ennead” means a group of nine, in this case referring to the nine points from which the strings extend.

How can we interpret art whose surface presence is devoid of any points from its meaning? Baroque art can be so interpreted by its gargantuan number of details that fit on a four-cornered canvas. Poetry can be dissected among its metaphors, language, and enjambments. How can we possibly describe a sculpture so bare of material and overly abstract in its form? Was it meant to be this way – stripped down and bare?

Asymbolia and Melancholia

Many of Hesse’s works portray a distinct use of asymbolia, and the stimulation of asymbolia to its audience.

It is impossible to speak of Ennead without speaking about Hesse – primarily because Hesse and her art are one. Hesse even says: “My life and art have not been separated. They have been together.”

Ennead is no exception – however, with absolutely little to no “initial and final'' interpretation of meaning when you see the sculpture. What can we then say about Eva Hesse through the piece? Even art historians themselves, up to this day, consider Ennead to be an enigma on its own – its minimalism minimizes itself, to the point of devoiding any meaning, making us doubt if there is any at all.

First, we must discuss the asymbolia in Ennead – the art itself. Though by instinct and intuition, the substance of Ennead is uninhabited on its own, I would like to shed a few pointers on the piece and its asymbolia through its deliberate absurdity.

The strings were meant to be orderly at first, until its tail-end, wherein Hesse describes them as a jungle. Hesse even took in the effort to dye the strings to possibly add more aesthetic depth to them. Hesse describes the process of this piece in one of her journals.

The further it went toward the ground, the more chaotic it got; the further you got from the structure, the more it varied. I've always opposed content to form or just form to form. (Quoted in L. R. Lippard, op. cit., p. 62)

However, even when Hesse describes her decision to irrationalize the hinds of the strings, the art still talks gravel to the path towards the most inane question: What does it mean?

So, we shall secondly address the audience’s confusion, that stems from the asymbolia of the audience themselves – the very inability to attach any familiarity or meaning to the symbols the art presents, because of the very fact that it lacks anything.

The only thing that makes sense of Hesse’s art is nonsense – the asymbolia found in Hesse’s art, that stems from dissecting, stripping down, and representing her trauma. Hesse states in one of her interviews: “There is no abstract art. You must always start with something… A painter paints to unload himself of feelings and vision.”

Must her own “something” be from her depression – from the trauma of losing her mother, identity, and other factors throughout?

We take the theory behind this inquiry from Julia Kristeva’s illustration of asymbolia and melancholia in her book, Black Sun – “The negation of that fundamental loss opens up the realm of signs for us, but the mourning is often incomplete. Melancholia then ends up in asymbolia, in loss of meaning…” (p.42).

Hence, to study the bare Ennead is to study Hesse’s bare melancholia.

We may never have the opportunity to bear witness to Hesse’s trauma, as only she and herself can live it, so we turn to her journals,

Throughout her life, Hesse seems to be on good terms with working through with her depression, as she sublimates it with her art – if it means going against the conventions imposed on her by four-cornered dimensions of papers and canvases, and the one-platform norm of past sculptures (Ennead takes up two adjacent walls, and thereby two dimensions).

Asymbolia and the neglect of the pre-conceived semiotic can be seen in her journals – which instead of letters and intelligible words, consist of drawings that penetrate any dividers and lines.

Kristeva furthermore explains this psychoanalytic mechanism as she illustrates the control of the preverbal in aesthetic creation: “When the struggle between imaginary creation (art, literature) and depression is carried out precisely on that frontier of the symbolic and the biological we see indeed that the narrative or the argument is ruled by primary processes” (p.65) – explaining the subnormality of Hesse’s art and entries, and how the manifestations of obscurity stem from the mere struggle of Hesse’s melancholia.

(Figure 3: Hesse’s journal. From: sugarcandymtn.com)

Other than these, her excerpts write of her own feelings of depression and anxiety: “I must write, my sanity is involved. I cry and cry, the pages are wet. I have no one, to go to and the edge of hysteria and insanity is not far apart” (October 19, 1964).

Anne M. Wagner writes: “Anyone who wants to make a serious contribution to remembering Hesse will likewise have to speak about a wound. For what is striking about Hesse’s art is its utter inwardness, with artistic languages of the day: her imagery and effects are not learned by rote, only to be parroted back more or less unchanged” (p. 159)

With this: Must her melancholia still be the root of her asymbolic art? Or was this art a testament to her ability to self-scrutinize all along? Furthermore, will there be anything to self-scrutinize when there is no trauma?

Conclusion: The Futile Point of Interpretation

Hesse intended her work to be autobiographical, but never understood – and thus reflecting the paradox of identity: to know, but never understand. Even her journals were not meant for the purpose of understanding: “Hesse’s journals and their users have meant that it is no longer possible for viewers “not to know the artist” – or at least, not to feel they know her, and to prepare themselves accordingly when looking at her art.”

Yet, even when we have read Hesse’s journals, watched documentaries, and studied countless journals from art historians – the impossibility to fully understand still looms over her audience. So then we ask the question: What should we feel to know of Hesse? The illness caused by both personal and socio-economic circumstances of her time? Must her works be cursed with the fallacy of perpetually being tied to her trauma.

On Dostoevsky, Kristeva writes: “Works of art thus lead us to establish relations with ourselves and others that are less destructive, more soothing.” Hesse’s artifacts are therefore not records of her mania, but documentations of her survival from it. Her illness, therefore, is not what should be reflected of her life – but her sisyphean triumph over it.

Maybe it is for the better – as the point of art itself is to sublimate the traumatic aggression of the artist, and (like a monster) to never let it out of the cage of the canvas. Kristeva can even attest to this, saying: “Art seems to point to a few devices that bypass complacency and, without simply turning mourning into mania, secure for the artist the connoisseur a sublimatory hold over the lost Thing” (p. 97)

Hesse did this concealment well, so much so that it is said the artist herself might not have realized this. As Wagner would write: “If Hesse’s life did enter her art, it did so by a process that Hesse herself was in a position to describe. We would be looking for ways (Hesse’s unconscious) repeatedly configured. I think such imagery exists in Hesse’s art, and I take it to concern the artist’s feelings toward her mother above all” (p. 165) So much so, that even daring to question the trauma behind Hesse’s art, we do not only turn a blind eye to the artist herself, but arrive at a futile destination when we do: “Yet, in asking them [questions on Hesse’s art] we risk losing sight of the workings of Hesse’s unconscious – a notion that, after all, was the motivating impulse of this discussion. But the artist and her unconscious are not far away.” (p. 173)

Conclusion

I will close with another one of Wagner’s concluding lines:

“To claim that Hesse’s art aims to remember and express a common human quality or experience is not the same as attributing to it some universal force or purpose. It gives its own account of that experience.” (p. 186)

This aim of art is reminiscent to how beauty sublimates melancholia in the form of art, much like giving its own account of an experience. Kristeva writes:

“Beauty emerges as the admirable face of loss, transforming it in order to make it live. Melancholia to the point of becoming interested in the life of signs, beauty may also grab hold of us to bear witness for someone who grandly discovered the royal way through which humanity transcends the grief of being apart.”

(p. 100)

Hesse’s journey as an artist is proof that asymbolia – another result of melancholia – paves the way into sublimation. Art is therefore not rooted in the melancholic, its her way of forging a path deeper underneath it. Art is agency from the trial of inner-disagency. Art is therefore the artist’s most individual and subjective struggle, not of her depression, but one of working through. Precisely through this art, we unlock the beauty sculpted from the marble of melancholia. Hesse and Ennead are just among the myriad of melancholic beauty in the realm of art.

SOURCES

Kristeva Julia. Black Sun : Depression and Melancholia. Columbia University Press 1989. https://archive.org/details/blacksun00juli. Accessed 27 Feb. 2023.

Artincontext. “Eva Hesse - The Brief Life and Incredible Works of Eva Hesse the Artist.” Artincontext.org, 4 Apr. 2022, https://artincontext.org/eva-hesse/.

Branaman, Bianca. “Love - Eva Hesse.” Sugar Candy Mountain, Sugar Candy Mountain, 4 Sept. 2018, https://sugarcandymtn.com/blogs/the-brand/love-eva-hesse.

“Ennead.” EVA HESSE, https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-315751.

“Ennead.” Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, https://www.icaboston.org/art/eva-hesse/ennead.

Evemy, Benjamin Blake, et al. “Auctions, Exhibitions & Analysis for +500K Artists.” MutualArt, MutualArt, 17 Feb. 2023, https://www.mutualart.com/.

“The Sickness of Being Disallowed: Premonition and Insight in the 'Artist's Sketchbook'.” O A R, https://www.oarplatform.com/sickness-disallowed-premonition-insight-artists-sketchbook/.

[piratefalls]

WIP title game! I was tagged by @ereborne!

RULES: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

the list of things I've left unfinished is short, so I'll include a snippet with each one. it's also 85% mcdanno lmao.

Give Me a Memory I Can Use (McDanno, finale fix-it)

“Hey, Steve?” He looks down to see her smiling. “Be happy.” He returns her smile. “Hey Cath?” “Yeah?” “I think it’s my turn to walk away.” This time she grins. “I think so too.” So he pulls his bag from the bin, and does.

Share the Scars From Our Abandon (Person of Interest/Rinch, post-series)

Night after night he reaches out for something, anything, to soothe the ever-present ache under his ribs, the one that calls to him when the sun goes down, reminds him that he has family, love, a home somewhere out there, wishing he were in it right now, if only he’d seek it out. The one that reminds him that human connection does not have to be a foreign concept any longer, that it is instead a patchwork quilt of messy, complicated, beautiful people to call his, the place where he drops anchor and floats steady. His body, so broken in so many ways, can now recall a touch that does not hurt, the smell of fresh brewed coffee and old books, the sound of a heart that beats in time with his own.

Untitled Finale Fix-it #2 (McDanno)

His buddy introduces him to the group, since he's apparently a legend. He talks about his life post-SEALs. Later his friend would learn Steve hadn't retired but had been medically discharged. "Got shot. A lot," he says. "Needed a liver transplant." "How did you get one that fast? Anyone with half a brain cell could figure out those odds, factoring in the fact that you were on an island." And then he tells him about Danny, and the plane, that he'd saved Steve's life more than once that day. "Fuck." Steve laughs. "Pretty much."

super rough jotted down ideas for Ace!Henry FirstPrince (RWRB)

They do talk about how to navigate physical intimacy. Henry loves touch, craves it, wants to be wrapped up in and around Alex as often as possible, his breathing slowing to match the steady rhythm of Alex's heart under his cheek as they cuddle in bed. Holding hands, carding his fingers through Alex's hair, always touching touching touching. That's never been his problem. It's everything that's supposed to come after that gives him pause.

5+1 play on the practice of kintsugi (McDanno)

Three days later he listens to his father die over the phone. his whole team is dead, Anton Hesse is dead, everyone is dead. Freddie died and it was all for nothing. Freddie, the keeper of Steve's darkest secrets, the person who kept him tethered to the real world when all he'd wanted to do was fly apart, had sacrificed it all just to be given oblivion. A piece of Steve's heart is anchored somewhere in the middle of a North Korean jungle. He could give you the exact coordinates, but he won't. He doesn't want it back.

Can You Do It? (You Bet Jurassican) (buddie velocipastor au) (if you haven't watched the movie this will make less than zero sense)

No, Eddie Diaz - father, firefighter, combat veteran, boyfriend to an actual fucking dinosaur - is wearing a stretchy orange dress that, after he gets it all the way down, barely hits mid-thigh. Before he has a chance to pull it off and look for literally anything else, Buck comes around the corner and stops in his tracks. “Jinkies.” “Fuck you.” Buck gives him a quick look up and down and shrugs. “Fine with me. If I’m being honest Velma always lowkey gave me top vibes.” And that’s a discussion he’s not touching. “You’re an idiot and I hate everything you choose to be.” “Now that’s a lie and we both know it,” he replies.

no one has to participate, but if you do please tag me!

[randomvarious]

London Hip Hop Playlist

Something that Brits really seem to go absolutely fucking nuts over are breakbeats. They singlehandedly invented jungle and drum n bass with them, as well as the genres of breakbeat and breakbeat hardcore as well, and out of breakbeat also came big beat, which was that fun party stuff that was huge in the late 90s and early 2000s that was made popular by people like Fatboy Slim, the Chemical Brothers, and The Prodigy.

But another thing that Brits naturally applied breakbeats to was hip hop, which, after it had managed to make its way from New York, led to the formation of a UK-specific genre in the late 80s called Britcore. And Britcore featured people (almost strictly blokes) spitting furiously over slammin' breakbeats. Basically, if you love old school rap records like I do, you are *really* missing out if you never messed with any of this stuff at all, because while the US continuously led the way, the UK was cooking up some seriously overlooked unique fire on the back-burner that never really managed to make it into the American hip hop diet.

So, here's a bunch of dope rap tunes from London that span from the late 80s to mid-90s, a lot of which are Britcore tracks. And my #1 favorite among all of these is, hands-down, "Doomsday of Rap," by Hijack, which isn't just the greatest Britcore song that I've ever heard, but is also, to me, just one of the best pieces of old school hip hop that's ever been made, period. In fact, this tune, which lays ferociously raw lyrics over a sample of the Incredible Bongo Band's iconic "Apache," actually helped Hijack to catch the ear of none other than Ice-T, who then signed them to his own Rhyme Syndicate label. And "Doomsday of Rap" is probably one of the least obscure songs among this set here, but considering just how irresistibly good it is, a Spotify play count of around 75,200 still feels a bit low.

Another banger on here, though, which does have an obscenely low play count is Kobalt 60's "Kaos From Order," which seems to sample its breakbeat from Tom Jones' "Looking Out My Window," and also adds these forceful "ba-ba-ba-ba" male vocals in the second verse too. And I have no idea where those specific vocals come from, but they really enhance this whole track, overall, which is only sitting at a little under 1,900 total plays.

I also included a couple cuts from a slick-tongued ragga hip hop star originally from Jamaica named Daddy Freddy, too, who moved to London and then made some choice tracks, like "Go Freddy Go" and "Haul & Pull." The version of "Go Freddy Go" that I've added has about 16,700 plays, and a remix of "Haul & Pull" that was done by Bobby Konders has about 32,900.

This playlist is ordered as chronologically as possible.

Lady Sugar Sweet - "Sugar Sweet" Thrashpack - "Trigger Happy" Hijack - "Doomsday of Rap" MC Duke - "I'm Riffin" MC Duke - "Gotta Get Your Own" Hardnoise - "Untitled" SL Troopers - "Movement" Standing Ovation - "Onslaught" Daddy Freddy - "Go Freddy Go" The 3 Knights - "Burial Proceedings" Militant Posture - "Dawn of Terror" Brothers on Organised Missions - "B.O.O.M." Brothers on Organised Missions - "Delivering the Answer" Kobalt 60 - "Kaos From Order" Daddy Freddy - "Haul & Pull" Killa Instinct - "Un-United Kingdom"

And, of course, there's a YouTube version of this playlist too, which includes a couple more gems that aren't on Spotify, like a tune that's actually not Britcore, but takes a page out of Pete Rock's relaxational jazz-rap stylebook instead: 499's "Don't Categorise Me," which has around 11,600 plays across a bunch of different uploads on YouTube.

Demon Boyz - "Rougher Than an Animal" 499 - "Don't Categorise Me"

And this playlist is on YouTube Music as well.

So, with the unveiling of this playlist, we start with 68 minutes worth of tunes on Spotify, and 78 minutes over on YouTube. And because the YouTube version has that 499 track, I definitely recommend you check out that version rather than the Spotify one 😊.

Enjoy!

More to come, eventually. Stay tuned!

Like what you hear? Follow me on Spotify and YouTube for more cool playlists and uploads!

[flownwrong]

october music thingie

i'm doing dreamwidth blind so i decided to talk about music. let's do it. here's my october rotation.

i know nobody's clicking that link so you can read it here too:

Faves:

Halber Mensch by Einstürzende Neubauten: a beloved album that went out of my rotation for most of this year but made a perfect return once the late autumn stuff got going outside. Great for long commutes and short walks. The first time I really appreciated Yü-Gung on its own merit, too. When the bass hits on the last refrain of "fütter mein ego" it's physically enjoyable.

Gris Klein by Birds in Row: it came out roughly a year ago and immediately landed a spot on my all time faves list, but especially my late autumn fave list. Not only is it a solid hardcore/screamo record on its own, but this time they really outdid themselves. It's such a perfectly paced listening experience—by the time the closer hits you are vulnerable to it, and when it's done, you get that perfect hit of "wow, I don't even know what to put on after this". The instrumental game is on point, too—I have so many loops and riffs from it wedged between my braincells, so, sonically, it's a win. And of course the songwriting here is impressive af. "Noah" in particular is a straight up masterpiece. I've listened to it outside of this record so many times. Ten out of ten, would recommend.

[untitled] by mewithoutYou: I just kind of forgot about it, but thanks to shuffle, I went back to it. I'm a fan of their earlier releases so I didn't particularly remember this one. And it's really beautiful! I'd say it's more smooth and melodic than their usual fare, but the usual songwriting quirks are all there, signature melodic decisions and lyrics and all that. Loved it anew!

Terror's Horns by Natural Snow Buildings: For some reason, I only now, after a couple years with this record, noticed there's a track called "King in Yellow" on it, haha. I've re-read it very recently and entered another small loop of my horror reading spree—and I must say this record would actually be a good soundtrack. It's only subtly creepy, but it does feel rich and heavy and mysterious and has bursts of pure ecstatic beauty near the end there and one of the most devastating closers I know.

Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada by GY!BE: a classic; and, by extension, Górecki's third symphony, since the iconic "Moya" is a nod to that. I love many different recordings, but my all time fave is the one with Beth Gibbons of Portishead doing the vocals. Her unique voice and manner fill the already gorgeous parts with something fragile and sublime that is simply unparalleled. It's one of the best pieces of music I've ever heard.

Discoveries:

Jeff Buckley: I have no idea why I have been putting off checking him out for so long (I have an oddly patchy impression of popular music, in that I know a lot of obscure stuff but most of well-known names missed me completely), but man, the beauty here is really on another level. I was tickled to remember that a semi-obscure progressive metal band I like did a cover of "Dream Brother" a decade ago and that's how I first heard of him. Which is hilarious, because before I remembered, I commented on "Grace" to my friend saying it sounds like that very band if they weren't progressive metal. Also, no one who can pull off Dido's Lament will escape my admiration. Grace is going on that fave list for sure.

The great Destroyer by Low: I've been a fan for some years, but I tend to be slow in catching up with big discographies, so I missed some records, this one included. It's everything Low is beloved for, their quintessential reserved harmonies and precise lyricism all on display. Plus, the opener has been covered by Robert Plant, which is pretty cool.

Wind's Poem/Ocean Roar by Mount Eerie: I adore the quiet and devastating spoken word pieces Phil Elverum is known for (among other things), but these two black metal inspired albums, with those same quiet vocals and tentative lyrics contrasted by gloriously noisy instrumentals, are new for me and I'm in awe.

New stuff:

Silence by Rorcal: I'm only sometimes in the mood for Rorcal, but when I am, this record is a good example of why. Fun blackened hardcore, and the record is pretty tight and runs for less than 40 minutes.

Everything is Alive by Slowdive: I love this one! More than I loved their first post-reunion record. I think it was released back in September but it was a perfect melancholy autumn sound for my October.

Sit Down for Dinner by Blonde Redhead: a new Blonde Redhead record! Can you believe it? I think it got quieter than 23 and I love it less, but it's still a good record.

Oscillating Forest by Tangled Thoughts of Leaving: another September release by my ultimate underrated faves that get tagged as post-rock but actually do something more free jazz-ey and noisy and chaotic but also yes, with crescendos and keys and all that fun. Another absolute banger. Check it out.

At Zeenath Parallel Heavens by Black to Comm: my scariest ambient fave. It's not his absolutely full of dread Seven Horses for Seven Kings, but it's still delightfully uneasy and beautiful.

in spoar by piiptsjilling: there's this obscure Dutch sound designer/electroacoustic/ambient/neoclassical guy Machinefabriek with a massive back catalogue, and piiptsjilling is one of his even more obscure side-projects. It's more melodic and has actual words and not just vocal textures! I love it.

Not yet released, but Neubauten finished a new record and I'm HELLA excited. Nothing they've ever done is boring. Let spring come soon.

[joannaliangart]

Unwanted (2020) photography, series of 13

individual photos: we have rain // reach out // fill the gaps with life open doors // remnants // soak neighbours // corner // take notice look up, pleasant day // bypasser // safety in numbers breakthrough // tangled lives // untitled

Unwanted explores the often arbitrary nature of classifying a plant as a ‘weed’. Weeds are subjective; by definition, they are just plants one does not want somewhere. Using static and blurring effects to distort the images, I’ve drawn more attention to the rebelliousness, resilience, and persistence of these plants.

---

Inspired by my irritation with my mother for picking out all the weeds and 'unsightly' plants on our property lol.

had fun going out taking photos for these... I used to like these more than I do now, now I only like a few that were my favourites from back then haha (namely open doors (#4), remnants (#5), and we have rain (#1))

for that last row, breakthrough and untitled aren't technically part of this series! I edited them together (+another photo of brambles I think) to create tangled lives, which is officially in the series. But I'm sentimental and have trouble not including photos lmao

tangled lives was an attempt to address the nuance in weeds; with the decorative pansy having escaped its flower bed bounds, invasive blackberry bushes, and non-native cherry blossom trees prized for their beauty. What belongs, what does not belong? why? and Who decides?

I curated this piece in my exhibition by projecting it. I think my plan was to project it onto the ground, making them easier for viewers to step upon them like weeds? But I think it ended up being way too hard to see lol so instead I projected onto a piece of black fabric a little above the ground. It's still like, a little ephemeral/incorporeal/dismissible vibes?? eh I was trying to make do with the space we had lol

+fun fact: the psd files for editing these photos is named "lets chop n screw this shit babey" and "lets chop n screw part 2"

how I wrote about it in 2020:

This series revolves around how weeds, by definition, are just unwanted plants. I made a connection to the weeds and to people who feel invisible and disliked by others. The weeds have been covered with blurring, pixelating, and static effects. This represents how some want to get rid of them, but by so blatantly obscuring them you look harder at what is being hidden. I wanted to encourage viewers to look closer at these often unconsidered and uprooted living things— weeds or otherwise.

[xunandran]

WIP Wednesday - Eddie Diaz and "Buck"

Hello all! Just wanted to bring a bit of my new project, a sci-fi style AU (currently untitled) akin to Detroit Become Human (which I've never played but should). It's still in the works, but I like the idea so far and I'm excited to flesh it out and wanted to share.

Premise

In the near future, androids have integrated society and serve to assist with numerous tasks including Military applications, Search and Rescue applications, and basic household functions, such as meal prep, childcare, etc.

When exhausted former Army Machinist and current Los Angeles Firefighter and single father Eddie Diaz finds himself the recipient of a new prototype Executive Valet Android (E.V.An) codenamed "Buck", he's initially wary at having such a sophisticated piece of technology having access to his daily life.

But Buck does make his life easier, and soon he accepts the help. But having an android that is both so human and so alien can be jarring. Can Eddie keep the two separate, or will "Buck's" exceptionally realistic programming blur the lines between Owner/Friend/and perhaps even more…

Sample

“It looks so lifelike.” When Eddie entered the firehouse, bag slung over his shoulder, he noticed that the team was gathered near the foot of the stairs. Worried that he might have missed an important meeting, he jogged over to the collective mass.  “Like, you’re messing with me. This is an actor or a prank, right?’ Chimney poked along the ribs of a tall stranger who looked entirely unaffected by the action.  “Who’s this? New probie?” Eddie asked. He sized up the man in front of him. He was tall, taller than Eddie by at least a couple of inches, with dirty blond hair and the most affecting blue eyes Eddie had ever seen. The man’s features were casual and neutral, with a strong nose, pouty lips, and a small burn or other affect over his left eye. He couldn’t have been older than his mid-twenties. He looked almost too young to be a firefighter, if you ignored the fact that the man was built. Eddie traced the lines of the man’s chest and forearms with his eyes. The veins in his arms alone sent a tickle down Eddie’s spine, as did the tattoos. Eddie appreciated a well-formed build, male or female. It spoke to taking care of oneself. It spoke to strength, stamina, and dedication. It had been what had finally pulled the string in the net cast around him by his estranged wife. Her pregnancy had been what put a ring on his finger, but her ability to outpace him in nearly every activity was what had pulled him into her bed.  

And this? This was a form he could appreciate.  “Not a probie,” Hen said, looking up at the man. “An E.V.An.”  “A what?” Eddie pulled the slipping strap of his bag back over his shoulder and crossed his arms.  “It stands for Executive Valet Android. It’s a prototype from the applied robotics division at Karen’s lab.” She looked up at the tall blond in something akin to awe. “This one’s designated as ‘Buck’.”  At the sound of its name, the blond focused those piercing eyes on Hen. “Hello, Hen.” its voice was warm, not the artificial chirrup that Eddie associated with androids. Chimney was still poking about its ribs, and when it looked at him, he abruptly stopped. 

Eddie was curious. And skeptical. He padded around Buck, his keen eyes focused on every feature he could take in. Buck turned its gaze to follow him as he circled around the android. “No. I’m with Chimney. This is a stunt.” When the rest of the team turned to him, he shrugged. “I worked with automata in the field. Combat Mechanist, remember? The army had some of the most sophisticated units to ever be developed.” He looked at Buck. Its unwavering gaze focused on him as he spoke, its head cocked ever so slightly to the side. “This?” He gestured with his hand toward Buck. “This would be lightyears beyond anything that I’ve ever seen.”  “Welcome to the future then,” Hen said with a broad smile. When Eddie continued to appear unconvinced, she sighed and stepped in front of the tall blond. She rested her hand on Buck’s shoulder, fingers along the ridge and thumb pressed lightly against the pulse point of its neck. Buck’s demeanor never shifted at the intrusion into its personal space.  Eddie watched the display, the casual intimacy of the touch. The way the man appeared wholly unmoved. As far as performances went, he deserved an Oscar. After a beat, a quiet chime sounded. It appeared to emanate directly from Buck himself, but that was impossible. “Buck, diagnostic mode.” Chimney audibly gasped as tattoo on Buck’s arm, a concentric ring of lines and dots, animated and began rotating, pooling under the skin like some sort of LCD display. The man’s eyes faded from sky blue to a milky white, and if Eddie hadn’t physically seen the small panel underneath Buck’s arm unfasten, he would have likely believed the other man was having a stroke. Hen removed her fingers, and casually lifted the man’s arm, exposing a small touch screen embedded inside his skin. Servos and actuators and extremely complex wiring systems with diodes in every possible color blinked, hammered, and pulsed in the cavity behind the screen. In all his years, Eddie had never seen anything so surreal, so entirely foreign.

[pridepages]

Everyday Power: A Restless Truth

I just finished A Restless Truth by Freya Marske. I have thoughts...

Here there be spoilers!

Power comes in many forms. You don't need to be able to cast a spell. Just be lucky enough to be born in the right body.

Picking up right where A Marvellous Light left off, A Restless Truth is the second installment in Freya Marske's The Last Binding trilogy. This time, we're following Sir Robin Blyth's sister, Maud, on a mission to protect the keeper of the second piece of Britain's magical contract.

What begins with a grey parrot named Dorian (hold for laughter) becomes a murder and a high-stakes chase aboard an ocean liner. During the crossing, Maud meets an old friend--Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn--and several new ones including semi-professional radical scoundrel Alan Ross and the scandalous heiress, Violet Debenham.

Like her brother, Maud isn't a magician. By circumstance, she's been introduced to this world or 'unbusheled.' She has voluntarily taken up this fight to save British magic from renegade magicians who have broken from the ranks to violate the laws of magic out of greed.

In the modern world, we're used to seeing people who volunteer to save a community that isn't their own as selfless...

But does anyone else sense some sharks in the water?

No? Let's try this on for size:

Of our merry band, Alan Ross is the lowest rank. He's untitled, poor, Italian, and makes his way by day as a journalist for gossip rags and by night as a jewel thief and purveyor of pornography. Finding him caught in their mess, Maud attempts to defend him from having his memory wiped--or worse--by the magicians present.

Ross is offended.

"I'm trying to help you, Mr. Ross," said Maud indignantly. "I didn't ask for your bloody help. In fact, you're inflicting it on me against my will. An insult to my human dignity, that."

And there is the crux of the novel: power comes from choices...

And who gets to make them.

Maud may never have starved, and may be able to 'afford morals,' as Ross puts it, but that doesn't mean she's free. Women in this era were even more constrained by patriarchy than they are today. Maud needs to recruit the help of Ross and Hawthorn because they can literally go places she can't. Even hosting their squad meetings in Hawthorn's suite is a risk--Violet and Maud quickly get a reputation for being loose women that he's entertaining!

But even beyond the niceties, Maud and Violet are desperate for the freedom to make choices for their lives. Violet fled her family home and took up a life onstage in quest of personal agency. Maud finds hers not by running away...but by running towards. She wants to be involved in something bigger than herself--in a cause of her choice.

But Maud is not a magician. So that does beg the question...

Does she have the right to choose this one?

As Hawthorn repeatedly points out, Maud isn't a magician in any sense. She didn't acquire the power to cradle and cast. She certainly wasn't born to it. So who is she, really, to take up this fight and tell people who do live under its bind what they should be doing?

The novel both does and doesn't provide an easy answer to this question. Over the course of the adventure, Maud discovers that she is a medium. This puts her at least tangential to the world of British magic. Should the reader be inclined, they can take this pass and neatly resolve the question.

But if you're like me...you won't be satisfied. You might be left struggling with this question of who has the right and the responsibility in this sort of scenario.

Did Maud act heroically? Or was she out of line?

At what point does selflessness turn back on itself and become selfishness?

Even if that question's impossible to answer, the crux of the conflict is easy to see:

Choice is power, and power is choice.

They are unequally, unfairly bestowed.

And if you're lucky enough to have them?

Use them wisely.

[reflective-muses]

(for Kaveh) 1, 3, 8, 15, 18

questions are from this ask meme

1) Their favourite time of year

Well, you see, Sumeru's rainforest doesn't really have seasons. The city and rainforest are warm and often humid with rain showers passing through here and there.

Kaveh enjoys the tropical climate and its consistent weather The desert is fine too, even if the temperatures are more extreme and the air is dry enough to give you cottonmouth.

He's never experienced snow, and there's definitely a lack of commissions in an area like Dragonspine. However, he has seen pictures of what autumn and winter are like in other countries. Going off of those, autumn looks breathtaking with the rainbow of warm hues covering the landscape.

He'd like to visit more places that have actual seasons to experience them for himself.

3) Their favourite type of landscape

Kaveh loves areas that are a blank canvas with a beautiful backdrop. The waterfalls behind the Palace of Alcazarzaray, or the sea at Port Ormos are two examples. He enjoys places that allow him to appreciate the natural beauty, especially if there is something unique about it such as Mawtiyima Forest and its enormous, fluorescent mushrooms.

8) Their most embarrassing moment

Kaveh says no comment.

Kaveh isn't getting away without an embarrassing moment.

It was during his Akademiya days within his (still) underfunded Darshan. Leaving a bunch of genius architecture and engineering students to their own devices would never end well.

Kaveh, in his late-teens, sleep-deprived and fueled solely by caffeine, had an idea. He could make a device that would brew and bring coffee to him so he didn't even need to get up from his work. There were tons of spare parts of various mechanics lying around the Kshahrewar labs, after all.

Engineering something was a break from the intense architecture classes, and if this worked it would make his life more convenient.

The project came to a halt when he went to test it for the first time and not only did part of it blow up with a dark cloud of smoke in his face, but it also leaked half-brewed, luke warm coffee onto his robes.

The coffee stain never did come out.

15) Any nervous tics they may have

Kaveh will at times fidget or pick at his fingers. Sometimes he doesn't even notice he does it.

18) Their most prized possession

The Old Sketchbook, originally given to him by his mother. It has chronicled his life from when he received it as a child into his adulthood. Within its pages are various memories, some painful, some positive and some mundane but important to him in some way.

Entries include:

glued-together pages with a drawing of someone in quicksand and a postscript pleading for forgiveness,

mentions of a new friend and their similarities differences, but that this could push them both in regards to their contradictory speculations and philosophies,

a torn up thesis cover that has been pieced back together,

an excerpt from an untitled Akademiya publication,

many architectural sketches with timetables and notes; the handwriting goes from smooth and legible to messy scrawls as it seems deadlines are closing in,

a real-estate transfer certificate,

interior design sketches, presumably of the second floor of Lambad's tavern,

rent records,

a toolbox design draft he has affectionally named Mehrak.

There are no further entries after this.

[reflective-blog-ablearmonthughes]

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition-London 2018

Every year The Royal Academy stages a Summer Exhibition displaying hundreds of pieces of contemporary art created by its Academy members -all professional artists. But what it also does is invite members of the public to send in their art works anonymously and these are then submitted before a hanging committee headed by a well-known artist. The hundreds selected then go on public display in the Exhibition alongside the serious artists. It is the biggest open exhibition in the world. And so the sheer random breadth of contemporary art works that goes up on the walls every summer is often exciting, unpredictable or simply quite weird. You book in online, turn up, collect your and away you go. And 2018 being the 250th year anniversary of the Show (it has run uninterrupted for 250 years)The Royal Academy apparently wanted to pull out all the stops

And nothing sounded like it could be more fun than an Exhibition organised by Grayson Perry, the famously flamboyant artist who often appears dressed as a kind of Bo-Peep styled shepherdess and is regularly on our TV screens. When I heard he was organising the 2018 show I decided I had to go.

Every year an artist is chosen to create a display for the courtyard in front of the RA Building. This year it was Anish Kapoor and it didn’t disappoint. As we turned in off Piccadilly, we were met by a display of massive metal ingots piled high against a backdrop of a concave red fabric sphere suspended from a frame above them. I have to confess I did not understand the title Symphony for a Beloved Daughter, but it made a great impact as we headed inside.The first impression was of lots of colour-the walls everywhere were painted vivid yellow or turquoise. According to Grayson Perry “the Exhibition was meant to be a joyful celebration of arts - there is a lot of politics, especially in this room, but the main thing for me was for it to be an aesthetic, sensory overload experience".

Well I think he succeeded.

There were 800 or so works by well-known members of the RA including world famous names like Grayson Perry himself, David Hockney, Tracey Emin and Banksy and many other RA artists that I confess I had never come across. Of these, I particularly liked Joana Vasconcelos’ huge sculpture Royal Valkyrie, (a vividly coloured inflatable installation hovering over our heads hung from steel cables and constructed from handmade woollen crochet, felt appliqués, ornaments and fabric) and also Debbie Lawson’s carpeted ‘Red Bear’. Kate MccGwire’s work ‘Squall’ featuring a sinuous snaking sculpture constructed in mixed media and pheasant feathers in an antique cabinet was so beautiful . There was humour and irreverence everywhere too. I don’t think Grayson Perry took things too seriously. The catalogue with Michael Landy’s Closing Down Sale on the front gave a strong hint of the playful tone because of course virtually everything in the Exhibition is for sale and has a price tag.

I enjoyed the light-hearted wit in works like David Shrigley’s, Untitled. And I also loved the sheer daft silliness of some of the exhibits. A giant papier-mâché garden gnome, an ironing board strangely engulfed by a giant pink blob of clay….But Chris, by the comedian Joe Lycett was the standout for me - a small misshapen pink head made of air-dry clay, acrylic paint and (allegedly!) a Pringles tube displayed as if by mistake rolled into a corner on the floor of one of the exhibition rooms and carrying a price tag of £12,500,000. For obvious reasons its photo was immediately texted to my Dad who is also called Chris….

Art takes itself very seriously most of the time and there was plenty to see that was serious-minded, but for me these flashes of fun made this exhibition a whole different experience to the norm. I think Perry summed it up really well: "To play with a whole load of toy box of art for a few days was absolutely the most joyful thing. I celebrate that really." It was definitely an afternoon of fun

[1ddotdhq]

🎤Wed 9 Dec ‘20❄️

LOUIS!!!!!! I am posting this from beyond the dead because Louis’ trailer KILLED MY MIND! But THEN, it brought my body back to life because I HAVE to be around on Saturday to see this show go down. NEW LOUIS SONGS!!!! I AM NOT READY!!! First Eleanor kicked off promo for the livestream day by modeling Louis' purple Balenciaga windbreaker for us with a caption about her “BF”. I mean, it’s a look! No dogs today tho :(. Oddly though after posting herself in the outfit and saying that she was going to go out in the get up, she didn’t! Changed right back into her own clothes after all. Just like how Louis liking her post a few weeks ago was the first sign of action, this too was an indication NEW THINGS COMING! And boy, did they come! After Louis this posted his fifteen (15) second long clip, which included at least one full second each of an as of yet untitled song, KMM, Too Young, Walls, and a badass unidentified riff by Michael Blackwell (POP OFF, dude)! Louis was NOT done there though; fans were wondering what the unfamiliar songs in the trailer were. In what seemed to be a hint, Louis tweeted “copy of a copy of a copy”, which, when googled, turned up with two musical results. The only one that matters is the song ‘Copy of A..’ by Nine Inch Nails (“I am little pieces. Pieces that were picked up on the way, invented with a purpose, a purpose that's become quite clear today”). According to the band, this song is about breaking out of an image that no longer fits you: “How dare you have the audacity to not perform in the role you have been placed in”. Nine Inch Nails has also been really vocal about the importance of artistic freedom and the struggle to maintain it in the face of label interference, which I’m sure Louis can relate to. But! It turned out the untitled song that fans were wondering about isn’t ANY of these, it is, instead a “New song. Not a cover!” according to Louis himself! Let’s be clear: this does not mean that he WASN'T tweeting that lyric about doing a Nine Inch Nails cover, just that the snip in the teaser ISN’T ��A Copy of A…’. Okay guys, I didn’t say this when the show came up, but now I will: I am IN LOVE with 12/12!! Last year, we got Fine Line on the 12th, and THIS year, we get BRAND! NEW! LOUIS! SONGS!!!!!!! This is one trend that is welcome to keep continuing!

And, for the TRUE piece de resistance: LOUIS’ HAIR! It is long long long, and slightly curly at the ends, and “HIS HAIR” (in all caps) was trending under “Beauty” immediately after the trailer was released. As it SHOULD! It’s BEAUTIFUL! And, in the middle of all of this, we got pictures of Louis from outside his rehearsal studio two weeks ago - OP said he said not to tell anyone about his hair, so they posted them the second after the trailer went up like “well if HE'S showing everyone..' They also scribbled out his hand. People asked does he have a new tattoo?? A ring?? Nope! It seems that he was probably holding a beer, which was edited out because yes certainly fans should jump in to take on the role of 1D management circa 2011 and preserve Louis' squeaky clean teen idol image! If Louis didn't want to be photographed with something he wouldn't come out to do fanservice holding it, give me a break, you really think he's sharing actual secrets with you? Grow up! Anyways, while on twitter Louis followed Isabella Signs, who he met through the charity work that she does for her younger brother. She has a YouTube channel by the same name and does A LOT of really cool SSE (Sign [language] Supported English) covers of all the boys plus 1D, check her out!

The Naughty List music video is OUT! It is a #quarantinevideo made with the green screen that Liam talked the other day about having had set up in his living room for days and how much he disliked that. It features Liam in a Snow Globe and Dixie and her friends dancing in a photobooth in colorful outfits (Liam in a red sequin vest with nothing underneath anyone?), pastel and glittery backgrounds, and lots of Christmas cheer! More than Liam had today, that’s for sure! Dixie loves Christmas, but Liam said that if it wasn’t for his son “pfft, Christmas can pass me by” in the joint live Liam/Dixie did to introduce the video. Steve the Manager (who made Liam’s naughty list for “making him work today”) spent most of the time feeding Liam questions for Dixie and trying to keep him on track. Liam and Dixie shared stories of Christmas presents (Dixie’s best Christmas was when she got a four wheeler), who made their Naughty List this year (Dixie: No one, Liam: “NIALLLL” - no he did not say why), and if they’d ever been kissed under the mistletoe (Dixie was when she was 12, Liam has not yet because he’s “a loonneeelyyyy boyyyy”, but then went on to say, “Mayaaaa you gotta kiss me under the mistletoe!!” so I guess that’s that).  Steve the Manager kept cutting Liam off before he could even TRY to do his Harry voice, so we didn’t get any of that, but we did get a nice solo Liam alarm to wake up to this morning, where he did a meditative bit and reminded people that it’s almost Friday!! And he's added some signed Naughty List single CDs to his store and merch! Really cute hoodies-- I'm not personally sure I want my chest to say Naughty List all over it but Liam can work it and it is a cute design. He also went on a radio show (not Roman’s) to promote Naughty List and revealed that he had NOT done any Christmas shopping yet, which IMMEDIATELY put him on their naughty list. Not to worry Liam, I think you’re still pretty nice!

And my favorite larrie is BACK: we got a sneak peek of Harry’s Jingle Ball set and, surprise, surprise, it’s the pre-recorded set with the Free Nationals! The description is, “Harry Styles and the Free National light up an LA backyard celebration with a hit-stacked set”. So, uh, I guess he’s not going to be playing in front of a blank wall - it’ll be a garden with a camper van, little blue flags, and fairy lights strung up. His shirt matches the small flags in being That Color Blue, and my one and only prediction for the set is that he’ll be covering Blue Christmas. I gotta say that I have NEVER seen anyone as dedicated to that - or ANY color - as Harry is. He still hasn’t popped up anywhere, but this is EXCITING! A new Fine Line set!!

Zayn made Martyre’s Instagram story again, and though you STILL can’t see his face, it’s his neck this time instead of his hands! I think that he’s meant to be modeling the necklace he’s got on, but the picture is too blurry for me to make it out. Alas. Anyways, I’d love to see some pictures of his FACE if Martyre has those? Please? Meanwhile, Niall promoted  a beloved Doncaster native musician... no it was Yungblud! On Instagram, of course: he did tell us he wasn't going to be on twitter for a while! 

[even-love-unreturned]

Meanings behind Chain of Iron chapter titles (part I, Ch1-15)

1. The Bright Web

From Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s sonnet “Body’s Beauty” (1866), alternatively titled “Lilith”, written to accompany his painting Lady Lilith.

Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,) That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive, And her enchanted hair was the first gold. And still she sits, young while the earth is old, And, subtly of herself contemplative, Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave, Till heart and body and life are in its hold.

2. All That Turns

3. Bitter and Sweet

4. A Good Name

From “This Marriage” by Rumi, date unknown.

May these vows and this marriage be blessed. May it be sweet milk, this marriage, like wine and halvah. May this marriage offer fruit and shade like the date palm. May this marriage be full of laughter, our every day a day in paradise. May this marriage be a sign of compassion, a seal of happiness here and hereafter. May this marriage have a fair face and a good name, an omen as welcome as the moon in a clear blue sky. I am out of words to describe how spirit mingles in this marriage.

5. The King is Dead

“The King is dead, long live the King“ is a well-known traditional saying, and is the first thing that comes to mind, though I’m not convinced that this is the particular source for this title.

6. Things To Come

There are way too many possibilities for this one to narrow it down. I’ll put two of them here:

One the poem “The Flesh and the Spirit“ by Anne Bradstreet, published in 1650. An excerpt:

In secret place where once I stood Close by the Banks of Lacrim flood, I heard two sisters reason on Things that are past and things to come. One Flesh was call’d, who had her eye On worldly wealth and vanity; The other Spirit, who did rear Her thoughts unto a higher sphere.

And the other is “Frost at Midnight” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1798. An excerpt:

So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear Most like articulate sounds of things to come! So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt, Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!

7. Tread Lightly

Perhaps “Requiescat” by Oscar Wilde, written in the 1880s. In the poem, the speaker speaks of and to an unnamed woman, who is buried and cannot hear.

Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow.

All her bright golden hair Tarnished with rust, She that was young and fair Fallen to dust.

8. To Bring a Fire

Most of the references I can find for this are Biblical passages, but none exact.

9. The Scars Remaining

Most likely from “Christabel”, an unfinished narrative ballad written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge from 1797-1800. The ballad focuses on a young lady named Christabel and her encounter with a strikingly beautiful stranger called Geraldine, who claims to have been kidnapped from her home. Christabel takes Geraldine in to share her bed, and they spend the night together. The story also involves Geraldine putting a spell on Christabel that leaves her unable to tell anyone about what they do or what Geraldine’s “true form“ is.

Brings to mind a certain other strikingly beautiful character in TLH who also does spells to a similar effect, doesn’t it?

This excerpt that includes the phrase “the scars remaining”, however, is about Christabel’s father and his long-lost friend with whom he had a falling-out, but who also turns out to be Geraldine’s father.

They parted—ne'er to meet again! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining— They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; A dreary sea now flows between;— But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been.

10. The Damned Earth

Likely from Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, “Lenore”, published in 1843.

Avaunt! to-night my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise, “But waft the angel on her flight with a Pæan of old days! “Let no bell toll! — lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth, “Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damned Earth. “To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven — “From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven — “From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven.

11. Crowns and Pounds and Guineas

From an untitled poem (but often identified by its first line) by A. E. Housman, included in his poetry book A Shropshire Lad, published in 1896. According to Wikipedia, this collection sold “slowly at first, it then rapidly grew in popularity, particularly among young readers. Composers began setting the poems to music less than ten years after their first appearance.”

When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, “Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free.” But I was one-and-twenty, No use to talk to me.

12. Requiem

A requiem is a mass for the repose of the souls of the dead, or a piece of musical composition in honor of the dead. It’d be impossible to narrow this down to a specific quote, though.

13. The Wintry Wind

Likely from “The Withering of the Boughs“ by W. B. Yeats, published as part of his poetry volume In The Seven Woods (1903). Each of the three stanzas of the poem ends with the following two lines:

“No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind, The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.”

14. The Flaming Forge

From “The Village Blacksmith“ (1840) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem makes use of the image of “the flaming forge“ twice.

And children coming home from school Look in at the open door; They love to see the flaming forge, And hear the bellows roar, And catch the burning sparks that fly Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

[…]

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought.

15. Walk by Daytime

From poem V in “A Dark Month” by Algernon Charles Swinburne, written in May 1881.

Dreams that strive to seem awake, Ghosts that walk by daytime, Weary winds the way they take, Since, for one child's absent sake, May knows well, whate'er things make Sport, it is not Maytime.

Part 2 (chapters 16-29) here.

[ingek73]

Juneteenth

STORY by Team at Archewell

Jun. 16, 2021

YOUNG POETS OF GET LIT SHARE POWERFUL WORDS TO COMMEMORATE THE DAY

In honor of Juneteenth, we, at Archewell, connected with our friends at Get Lit and asked them to share poetry to honor this important day. We hope their poignant words allow you to reflect on the significance of this newly declared federal holiday in the United States and its impact across this country and around the world.

AND HOLD, AND HOLD

CORTUNAY MINOR AND TAMIA JACKSON

WHY THEY WROTE THIS POEM:

“When I wrote this poem, just a few weeks before June 15th, Juneteenth wasn’t yet a federal or national holiday. It wasn’t something I’d given much thought to, but when I had recognized that fact, it wasn’t information, it was confirmation. At first, I was upset about it. My immediate thoughts were along the lines of, ‘Where are our fireworks? Where’s our three-day weekend?’ But in reflection, I realized that this was demonstrating continued deference to a supposedly superior entity. Juneteenth isn’t the ‘Black Independence Day,’ it’s the only Independence Day. To have that nationally recognized feels amazing. But whether or not the date is printed in every calendar does not validate this holiday. We do.”

WHY SHE ANIMATED THIS PIECE:

“This poem, especially for Juneteenth, really inspired me. The color palette expresses the somber yet hopeful emotions that happen when black freedom is discussed, and what it means to be a Black individual in America. This poem as well as the visuals really emphasizes the impact that Black people have by simply existing, and the importance of our breath. We know that as long as we’re still breathing there can and will be change, and ultimately full freedom.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Cortunay Minor (she/they) is a performing artist who specializes in Stage Acting and Spoken Word Poetry. They are currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Theater from the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television. The theme and goal that Minor tries to hold in the heart of their artistry is liberation, be that emotional, intellectual, or otherwise. Expression and education are two of the most fruitful paths Minor has found that achieve that liberation, and she is immensely grateful to be able to participate in a craft that allows their simultaneous occurrence.

ABOUT THE ANIMATOR:

Tamia Jackson (animator) is a rising senior at the Rhode Island School of Design, receiving her BFA in Film/Animation/Video with a minor in Literary Arts and Studies. She has always been passionate in art, animation, and storytelling. She loves bringing stories of lesser voices, such as BIPOC, low income, female, etc., into a visual and cared-for light. Though not all of her stories or animations revolve around such identities, it is important that she shows diversity so that many people can relate and find comfort in the characters or art piece. Not only does Jackson enjoy spreading her own voice, but she also loves bringing others’ stories to life.

AND HOLD, AND HOLD

‘Holiday’ meaning ‘Holy Day’ meaning:

every second is sacred/every hour hibernates

within the spirit, huddled beneath the bosom.

To breathe is to commemorate:

inhale – exhale – cradle the thought – hold – and repeat.

When daybreak demotes breath to subconscious action,

the diaphragm still submits in reverence, still remembers that

This is Divine. This

is where jubilation begins:

in the suspension of

breathe in – breathe out – take maybe – and

forever hold the moment,

where the deferred dream stopped shriveling,

wavered in anticipation, remembered that expansion

can be soft,

recognized that it didn’t want soft

expansion.

Bodies were policied out of possession, but

the Black individual liberated their own being,

hollered themself out of state-sanctioned silence.

Words ignite, but presence sustains; this intake/expel maintains us

here

the dream explodes. The spirit absorbs the remnants and outpours,

‘holiday’ meaning ‘Holy Day’ meaning:

I hold this day as sovereign. Meaning:

I hope this day knows its home is in these lungs,

is in this breath, is in the repetition of:

inspire – expire – immortalize the memory – and hold – and hold – and release

POPLAR TREES

CYRUS ROBERTS

WHY HE WROTE AND DIRECTED THIS POEM:

“It’s easy to say “slavery was an atrocity and we need to do better” but it’s much more difficult to say “slave masters ripped babies from their mothers and used them as crocodile bait for sport.” In the average American lexicon, phrases like ‘Never Forget’ are commonplace but are rarely attributed to periods of fundamental, ongoing violence of a racial nature for the simple fact that our pain makes the people who benefitted from that pain uncomfortable. For me Juneteenth is a day of mourning; the Confederate holidays still celebrated today seem like a gruesome counterbalance. So this is my eulogy to both the country and my own being that could have been.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Cyrus Roberts (he/him) writes, acts, and directs across poetry, theater, and film. While his work has been commissioned by organizations like Toms Shoes, Adidas, and March For Our Lives, he also enjoys working on cool independent projects, whether he’s self-publishing poetry compilations, creating movies with friends, or acting in his own plays. Roberts is currently a senior in UC Santa Barbara’s BFA Acting program. Look for him in the upcoming film Summertime, directed by Carlos Lopez Estrada. His assistant director on the project was Mattie Kranz.

POPLAR TREES

Before you there was me. But before me there was (Nina Simone audio: “black bodies swinging”). And that was the gentler time period. Everything base within you, reflected in your actions. Please don’t censor me when I mention how you wrangled our teeth from our mouths and used them to seduce your own illnesses into submission. Or how you took an interest in the skin that had a monopoly on sunlight and then took what you wanted underneath the moon. Or how you used our babies as crocodile bait and our skin as shoe leather. Look right into the eyes of our demise and try to say those times are past, that I’m being rash, that I’m being bad and so full of woe and I should be glad I’m writing this on my MacBook Pro. Yeah? Who am I to complain about slavery? Because it ended, right? On June 19, 1865, Union Army general Gordon Granger made his way to Texas and proclaimed slavery’s supposed fall and us colored folk supposed to have a ball? I mean it was two and a half years after Lincoln already announced it, but we needed a white man to tell other white men what another white man already said. I mean that is until that white man found himself dead and Reconstruction found itself at a head and chain gangs, sharecropping, Jim Crow, private prison options, perc popping, bodies dropping, cops still stopping, guns cocking to ensure that (Nina Simone audio: “black bodies swinging”). Every 19th of June we celebrate the end of chattel slavery and every 20th we’re back to fighting its descendants. Private prisons / a cop’s knee is a modern lynching / it ain’t my decision to get busy dyin’ or busy living / I paid attention, to all the digitized depictions / all the people packing up pensions while we’re backed up by the system. Put your back into the system, this is wack how mother’s missing their babies kisses and I’m supposed to be celebrating? I’m sorry. Will you forgive me, I’m jaded. My grandmother looks at me and says confidently that I made it. That she can’t possibly imagine the life that I’m living, I owe a debt to her generation, and I hope that I pay it. I just get so angry, hazy laughter at the thought of thoughts and prayers ending enslavement. So after you hear me, I’ll forgive you if you’re jaded. But you still need to know the history to have an appreciation. It’s no mystery why it’s a mystery present in our education, presently the gatekeepers keep us from it and it’s heinous. On Juneteenth, Americans across the nation eat red foods in honor of the blood spilled before and during emancipation, we celebrate the secondary, pushed-to-the-side independence day, but you don’t have to know our proclamations of jubilation for us to be heard. We will be heard in our voices screaming thanks that we are not treated as herd. We dance and we sing hymns of freedom. Freedom: absence of subjection to foreign domination or despotic government. Are my brothers and sisters in jail cells free? When there’s a glaring loophole in the 13th amendment smiling from cheek to cheek I’d imagine there’d be some incentive to ensure our purity is never free. And how can I be free when I can’t sleep because my dreams keep whispering I can’t breathe. Regardless of that fact, progress is still being made. But I fear progress is just an exchange of chains for other chains. Same way they changed our names for other names, I rest a bouquet on the graves of enslaved, singing regardless this day. In the hopes that I never again have to see (Nina Simone audio: “black bodies swinging”).

UNTITLED

SIERRA LEONE ANDERSON

WHY SHE WROTE THIS POEM:

“When writing this poem, I really made an effort to think back to my ancestors. What was their impact? Who did they inspire? How did they carve the path for the road I now choose to take? This poem is about legacy. I am calling back to the ancestors before me to give me the strength and courage to be the ancestor I want to be to future generations.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Sierra Leone Anderson (poet) is a youth activist and professional spoken word artist from Los Angeles. Rooted in liberatory joy and armed with ancestral truth, Sierra Leone aims to bring light to the power of language, empowering Los Angeles youth of color to recognize the quantifiable influence of their voice. She has placed both second and first in Get Lit’s annual middle and high school Classic Slam respectively, co-wrote an article for the political column of USA Today, and has shared space with several influential changemakers including Dr. Melina Abdullah (co-founder of BLM-LA) and Cecily Myart-Cruz (president of UTLA). Her other organizing work includes collaborating with Students Deserve LA to make Black Lives Matter in and beyond schools. She is currently a ninth grade student at Girls Academic Leadership Academy and an avid lover of trashy teenage dramedies.

Her director and editor is Lukas Lane, an award-winning filmmaker and founding member of Literary Riot (started in his junior year of high school), and he is currently attending UC Berkeley.

UNTITLED

Every generation, the world gives birth to a new fleet of freedom fighters.

I am one of them.

I stand on the shoulders of tired women.

I dance in the footsteps of Pan-African poets, liberation fighters, and Black writers

who grew fires from a pit hungrier than a stomach. They call my name and I call theirs.

Malcolm X. Phyllis Wheatley. Maya Angelou. Sojourner Truth. Audre Lorde. Ida B. Wells.

Your resilience rivers through me. You are my founding fathers. The blueprint to a world we need to be brave enough to see, to seek.

Let us imagine a world in which we know each other’s palms

and never the fist. Not unless needed. Not unless united together.

Let us be the drum and not the war.

Let us know each other’s names and not the languages we cry in.

Let us be, let all us be more than a slave’s wildest dream

Let us beam past blueprints and what-ifs and start becoming the now we want to see, the now we want to be

Trees growing so far past the Earth, Allah would mistake our bodies for angels.

When I die, I want to ripple through lifetimes. I want my name to graffiti the mouths of the next 10 generations.

I don’t want to be forgotten. Or remembered for the way my feet wouldn’t stop running.

I wanna grow roots in this soil, in this American skin. Join the forest of my ancestors. Let my grandkids climb up my branches and tell stories of school.

And before the first pulse of morning, I want them to drip from their homes and gather at my roots.

I want to tell them my name before I forget it.

I want to tell them that morning is coming. And will always come. And will never wait for when you are ready.

I want to tell them that there is a point far beyond this tree, this forest, this temporary point in time, their bodies, their fears, their fathers, their memories. Where the sun is eternal and smiling. Where freedom rings and is never silent, never out of reach. It is called horizon. And it is right there.

[girlsbtrs]

How Being a Woman in Hardcore Helped Me Learn to Love Myself

Written by Jen Moglia. Graphic by Laura Cross. 

Since this is my first piece written for Girls Behind the Rock Show, I figured that I should introduce myself; hi, my name is Jennifer, but most people call me Jen. I live on Long Island in New York, and my favorite things include my cats, the color pink, giving gifts to my Animal Crossing villagers, and watching sports. Above all else, however, I love music.

I frequently refer to music as the love of my life. It somehow plays a role in everything that I do. I got my first iPod when I was five years old, stacked with everything from Miranda Cosgrove and Avril Lavigne to Tool and Deftones. Some of my favorite memories growing up are sitting in my pink and purple bedroom singing and dancing along to Paramore’s crushcrushcrush and Fall Out Boy’s Thnks Fr Th Mmrs on the local alternative radio station. I danced for 12 years, played cello for seven, and am currently a wannabe ukulele rockstar after buying one on impulse and starting to teach myself how to play four years ago. Even on the simplest, barely noticeable levels, music has been everywhere in my life for as long as I can remember; even now, I can’t complete a basic task without a song playing in my headphones.

Music became an even bigger part of my life when I started attending live shows. I went to my first concerts at age 10, seeing my two favorite artists - Nickelodeon boy band Big Time Rush and classic progressive rock band Rush - within one month of each other. By the time I was 15, I had been to my fair share of arena/seated shows with one or both of my parents, from Fifth Harmony to Fitz and the Tantrums to Alice in Chains. My first general admission show was seeing the Foo Fighters at Citi Field with both my mom and dad when I was 12, but my first pop-punk general admission show (yes, they’re different) came a few years later. I had the typical list of favorite bands that you would expect from a young teenager getting into alternative music: Neck Deep, Knuckle Puck, Real Friends, and State Champs. 

In late 2018, I was able to see all four of these bands for the first time, and I am a firm believer that it changed the course of my life. I met, cried-during, and eventually got the setlist for Neck Deep at Stereo Garden on Long Island in September. I sang all of “Untitled” at the barricade for Knuckle Puck at SI Hall at the Fairgrounds in Syracuse in October. I had my first minor concussion scare (yay!) before Real Friends’ set at Irving Plaza in New York City in November. Finally, I crowd surfed for the first time during State Champs’ anniversary show for The Finer Things at House of Independents in Asbury Park in December. After just a few shows, I had fallen in love with this new brand of live music that I had just been introduced too. There was something so magical to me about skin covered in sweat and Sharpie marks, feet hurting from dancing in the pit all night, and meeting strangers on line outside the venue who would become your best friends and know your deepest secrets by the end of the night.

After making some friends at all of the pop-punk shows I was going to, they started to tell me that I should get into hardcore music. I was hesitant at first - the heaviest thing I had listened to at that point was nowhere near the snippets of hardcore that my friends had played for me - but, eventually, I decided to give it a chance. I was bored and home alone with nothing to do one night over the summer of 2019 when I listened to my first hardcore album, Laugh Tracks by Knocked Loose. Immediately, I got that gut feeling that you have when you know you’ve heard one of your favorite bands for the first time. I knew that this was something special that I was meant to find at this point in my life. For the rest of the summer, I worked my way through the rest of my friends’ hardcore and hardcore-adjacent recommendations, with Cost of Living by Incendiary, Stage Four by Touche Amore, You’re Not You Anymore by Counterparts, Time & Space by Turnstile, Springtime and Blind by Fiddlehead, Smile! Aren’t You Happy by Absence of Mine, Bad to my World by Backtrack, and Reality Approaches by Harms Way being some of my favorites. By the time the next school year started, I was hooked, and I already had tickets to my first few hardcore shows in the fall.

My first hardcore show was in November 2019, seeing Knocked Loose at Webster Hall in New York City - fitting, right? They were on tour supporting their new record A Different Shade of Blue, which I had become obsessed with the minute I heard it for the first time. Although I was ridiculously scared of getting stepped on and breaking all my bones (yes, that was an actual fear of mine), I had the time of my life at that show. There was something about this newer kind of live music that prompted a cathartic release, one that I hadn’t found anywhere else before. As soon as the show was over, I was counting the days until my next one.

My love for live hardcore music (and live music and hardcore music in general) has only grown since then, and that story sort of ends there. However, I want to go back to that first hardcore band that I listened to, Knocked Loose, and the album they put out that first summer that stole my heart. I was taken by storm as soon as the first notes of A Different Shade of Blue rang through my headphones, but something was different about the third track, A Serpent’s Touch, particularly the ending; I heard a voice that sounded a little bit more like my own.

This song features Emma Boster, who does vocals for one of my favorite hardcore bands right now, Dying Wish. When I heard A Serpent’s Touch for the first time, though, I had no idea who she was. I was used to the aggressive vocal delivery of frontmen in hardcore, particularly that of Knocked Loose’s Bryan Garris, but hearing it come from her changed my perspective on a lot of things. It’s not like the song was super angry and changed its tune to be lighter once the token girl came along; in her verse, Boster sings, “I watched the venom / Overcome your spirit / Jealousy holds you now / Distorting your appearance / Bleed out.” These were lyrics that held the same intensity that the lines screamed by the men held, and they sounded just as cool coming out of her mouth. As cheesy as it sounds, it had never even occurred to me that women had a place in this new world that I had discovered. The audiences in the live videos I watched (and eventually at the shows I attended) were made up of mostly men who looked bigger and older than me. When I did start going to shows, most of the non-man population consisted of my friends and I. Emma Boster, along with so many others, began to open my eyes to the fact that a place for people like me existed in this community. It didn’t matter that I had bright red hair or liked butterflies or wore pink - I was just as much a part of this magic as the men multiple feet taller than me with tattoo-covered arms, and I belonged there just as much as they did.

As time went on and I got more involved in the genre’s music and community, I discovered more bands with women in them, and it only fueled this fire of empowerment inside of me. When I felt insecure, I’d watch live sets from Krimewatch, a hardcore band from New York City, just half an hour away from my hometown. They have multiple women as members, including their energetic badass of a vocalist, Rhylli Ogiura. Year of the Knife became one of my all-time favorites, and their bassist Madison Watkins became a serious inspiration to me; the way that she can balance killing it on stage and running the cutest, most pink apparel brand I’ve ever seen (aptly titled Candy Corpse) amazes me. Even some of the bands I’ve found more recently have had an impact on me. I started listening to Initiate last year when their EP Lavender came out, and their beautifully colorful cover art caught my eye before I had heard any of their songs. Their vocalist, Crystal Pak, is also a woman, and she’s insanely talented. Discovering this kind of representation in this new universe that I had come to feel so at home in introduced me to a world of confidence and determination that I had never known before.

When people ask me why I love hardcore so much, I often give the easy answer; “the music sounds good.” If the person allows me to ramble on for a little longer, the answer becomes much more emotional and cheesy. Hardcore taught me that speaking up for what I believe in is important, and if there’s something I’m passionate about, it’s worth shouting about. I became familiar with this when listening to one of my favorite bands ever, Incendiary (the second hardcore band I ever checked out), before quickly realizing that politics are a pretty common topic within the genre - it’s what this music was practically built on. The first time I heard their vocalist Brendan Garrone singing about police brutality and injustice on songs like Force of Neglect and Sell Your Cause, I realized that there is so much more to music than just sounding good.

However, at its core, the thing I love so much about hardcore is what it taught me about being a woman. Growing up, I was the loud girl with the personality bigger than the room who always had something to say and had a never ending supply of excitement about just about everything. As I got older, I was taught that this was not okay. People didn’t like how enthusiastic I was about everything, or that I constantly had new ideas and new discoveries I wanted to talk about. As cliche as it sounds, I felt like everyone around me was trying to dull my sparkle, especially some of the men that I was encountering on a day-to-day basis. Even when I started to come to terms with my big and bright personality, in turn also coming to terms with my own femininity, I was told that this wasn’t how girls acted. I had to pick one - I could watch Disney princess movies and wear Hello Kitty hair clips, or I could be outspoken about my beliefs; but never both. The women that I mentioned earlier, along with so, so many more, helped me unlearn these toxic mindsets. Seeing someone like Emma Boster take the stage and scream ferociously for a full set helped me see that I could be a girl and still be a powerhouse. Following Madi Watkins around on social media showed me that I could love bands like Year of the Knife and also love heart-shaped purses and wear pink from head to toe. My aggression and passion didn’t make me any less of a woman, and my femininity didn’t make me any less of a force to be reckoned with. 

So, at the end of this love letter to hardcore and the women who run it, I say this; thank you for teaching me that I don’t have to shrink myself anymore. It has made a world of a difference.