#this is a song to inject estrogen to

[juliacorvia]

It's still cooking but, as inevitable as it was for all my characters and ships my brain latches onto, I have been making a playlist for Adrien, worlds #2 catgirl, not gender neutral, Agreste. and of course the first song on it is 'Dumbest Girl Alive' from 100 gecs

[jamiepaige]

Constant Companions Closeup #9: OBJECT OF AFFECTION

(also on spotify!)

O, wayward soul, I beg of thee an ear; Companionship, a Constant of desire, is all too fleeting. Would thee quell this fire? My love, do you know what you want to hear?

Welcome back to the Constant Companions Closeups - a series of in-depth dives into the songs off of my latest album, Constant Companions! Yesterday was some gay shit (Liaison) and today is some more gay shit (Object of Affection)

---

I'm usually pretty good about letting go of the things I make and letting them live imperfectly, but there is exactly one released song of mine that I've ever been actively unhappy with the final product of, that I haven't been able to let go of my displeasure with.

Honor Majesty, off of Autumn Every Day.

It's not that it's a bad song, or that it didn't have good ideas! In fact, I genuinely think it shares more with the music I make now than a lot of my older work does. Rather, it was incredibly rushed and full of uninspired choices I made for the sake of completing the song rather than making it the best version of itself, and it ultimately ended up falling incredibly flat relative to what I wanted it to be!

I really like the intersection of synthpop/electropop and fantasy. One of my favorite musicians ever is Baths, whose album Romaplasm is chock full of this exact thematic and sonic intersection, and it's so deeply inspiring to me that it still gets put on whenever I want to dream things up. I've always wanted to make things like that! Bubbly and fantastical, brimming with a sense of magic so pervasive it makes even the mundane seem mystic.

...Also I'm just a fantasy dork okay. I like wizards and shit. Sue me

I've been wanting to make a grandiose and fantastical story song for years, and my single attempt to do so felt like it missed the mark entirely. I did touch on fantasy a couple times on Bittersweet, but ultimately, when I started working on this album, I knew exactly what I wanted to take a second crack at.

---

The intended story in question here is fairly vague, but to sum it up as literally as possible:

A rebellious, disobedient, gender-questioning prince has mildly inconvenienced "his" royal lineage one too many times. Their solution is to invoke magicks widely regarded as heretical - what's a fantasy monarchy without some hypocrisy - to seal their "son's" soul within an automaton body, rendering "him" a perfect, subservient doll.

This doll is promptly spirited away under cover of darkness by a mage, and is granted free will once again. She experiences the crushing weight of newfound self-awareness and nearly spirals out of control, before realizing the mage who saved her is the same - a doll. It turns out being a magical-mechanical construct has its perks if you are TRANSGENDER. then they overthrow the monarchy and fuck nasty or whatever idk this is where the story gives way to things like "metaphor"

this is a song about artifice and being transgender

Seriously, though, I know that being an electronic-music-producing transgender lesbian with a thing about dolls or robots or whatever is a major endless-store-shelves-of-identical-buzz-lightyear-action-figures moment on my part, but dammit, I own a copy of Logic Pro and a genuine leather wizard hat, I inject estrogen into my stomach fat every Wednesday, and I think ball joints are cute. I'm posting this on Tumblr, for gods sake, I am unconcerned as an active choice

---

With the exception of Liaison, the entirety of Constant Companions utilizes only three unique vocal synth characters - ANRI, Gumi, and Teto. This trifecta was born organically from simply being the vocal synths I enjoy using the most, and in this song, I wanted to use all three of them almost like one single singer, freely shifting intonation based on the context. I messed with this idea before on Ballroom, my voice meshing and melting into Gumi V3's voice, but it felt especially appropriate for this context; Plus, I feel like there aren't a lot of examples of vocal synths being used/recontextualized in this way, and that's a shame in my opinion!!

I really want to do more story-driven songwriting like this in the future as well. Now that I'm a bonafide VocaloP I've been floating the idea of doing a song series with this trio... I'm mostly just worried I'll want to get too ambitious with it.

Off the top of my head, Object of Affection references at least eight other songs of mine - Honor Majesty is an obvious one, but it also directly samples parts of Autumn Every Day, and lyrically references genuinely just a bunch of things. I'm probably forgetting some, even!

I know I'm the Leitmotif Lover, but it's a lot even by my standards. However, this song's entire existence already served to satisfy a fairly self-indulgent desire, and these days, I don't deal in half measures. I think the final product serves as a lovely little look back at where I've come from, though, and perhaps even a little glimpse into the future!

That all being said, Object of Affection in some sense is also a love letter to a beloved part of my creative process - the voice memo. A lot of the audio I've provided with these posts have been recordings off my phone for good reason! Not only are the chops at the beginning of the song entirely comprised of edited recordings I got on my phone, but the sample at the very end happens to be from a particularly legendary recording, never before heard by the public...

Until now. I present to you an excerpt from "the worst beat on planet earth", featuring none other than unit.0.

That's about it for today!! If you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them below, but otherwise, I'll be back here tomorrow to talk about this album's title track laid askew - My Darling, My Companion!

[sammygender]

1st ever spn post i made: “dean winchester save me. save me dean winchester.”

2nd ever spn post i made: “you guys just don’t get dean winchester the way i do. no one could understand him like me.” <- still true though not in a way i realised then

3rd ever spn post i made: “i already feel like my brain chemistry has been changed by dean winchester and i’ve just started the second season. i haven’t even met castiel yet.” <- person who Does Not Know dstiel is bad yet

4th ever spn post i made: spn fans where are you. come to me. this is a safe space you can come out of hiding. <- person who had 0 spn mutuals

9th spn post i made: it’s just dean winchester parental issues that have me captivated btw. like he’s not even bisexual yet. i was a samgirl before i realised the specific nature of deans emotional problems <- has not realised The Divide between samgirls and deangirls yet

18th spn post i made: i know i’m like deangirl of all time he makes me go insane but truthfully i’m returning to my samgirl roots this season……he has everything. who’s dean? some older brother bisexual with a dog motif and daddy issues? 🙄 he could never <- had just started s4. historical posts made moments before disaster (samgirlism descent and dean disillusionment).

23rd spn post i made: i’m a samgirl

26th spn post i made: sam winchester did nothing wrong

29th spn post i made: spn s4 au where instead of sam drinking ruby’s blood he’s injecting her estrogen. ideologically awful but it’d slay. deans transphobic

35th spn post i made: ‘sam has made unforgivable mistakes’ shut up ‘sams redemption arc in s5’ shut up ‘sam’s way of making up for his one evil mistake in s4’ SHUT UP ‘sam’s ending in swan song perfectly redeems his character’ SHUT THE FUCK UP i hope you people die

[charlott2n]

i got 0 on that quiz i know about gorillaz and listened to some of their songs but never a full album am i going to get executed

its ok just come down to my basement and let me inject you with this super music juice that totally isnt just estrogen 😁

[bunnywithgender]

you should listen to ska in the middle of the night

its good for the health

here is a song that talks shit on famous abusers

here is a song mostly about addiction that includes the line "please inject me with iced coffee and estrogen"

or you could listen to BAD OPERATION by BAD OPERATION on the album BAD OPERATION

no matter the reason you should play some ska

[discodeerdiary]

I used to listen to this song every time I injected my estrogen

[alangraysonus-blog]

Rock the Boat

I knew Aaron Swartz. Aaron was an internet leader and free-speech advocate who helped organize the worldwide movement to keep the internet free from censorship and corporate control. Now more than ever, we should listen to his story and what he fought for. Aaron committed suicide at the young age of 26 after downloading JSTOR articles without JSTOR’s permission. He was unfairly facing many years in prison. January 11, 218 is the five-year anniversary of his death, I hope you read my remarks at his memorial service and learn a bit more about the man who “rocked the boat.” Here is what I said:

CONGRESSMAN GRAYSON: Aaron worked in my office as an intern. He had a quality that I found unnerving. He could come up with better things for him to do than I could come up with for him to do. Time and time again, I would give him something to do, and he’d say, “Is it okay if I also work on this other thing?” And “this other thing” turned out to be much more important than anything that I could come up with.

I learned to live with that. I learned to live with that shortcoming, which I took to be a shortcoming of my own, not one of his.

The other unnerving quality that I found in him was the fact that when he would conjure these assignments, they actually came to fruition — an unusual phenomenon here on Capitol Hill. He’d give himself something to do, I would recognize that it was very worthwhile, I let him do it, and it got done! He was a remarkable human being.

Another thing that I found unnerving — but also very endearing — about Aaron was that Aaron wanted to rock the boat. Now, we all hear from a very, very young age, “Don’t rock the boat.” I would venture to say that of the 2000 languages spoken on this planet, probably every single one of them has an idiom in that language for that term: “Don’t rock the boat.” And yet Aaron wanted to rock the boat. Not just for the sake of boat-rocking, but for the sake of improving the lives of ordinary people. And that’s a beautiful, a wonderful quality.

We’re talking about somebody here who helped to create Reddit, an important world-wide service, at the age of nineteen. Honestly, somebody who probably could have spent the rest of his life in bed, ordering pizzas, and left it at that. And yet he didn’t. He continued to strive to do good — good as he saw it. And that’s a rare quality in people. Many of us, we just have to do our best to get through the day. That’s the way it is. Many of us struggle to do just that. Very few of us actually can think big thoughts, and make them happen. But Aaron was one of those rare people.

And he was willing to take the heat for rocking the boat. Now, you know, sometimes when you rock the boat, the boat tries to rock you. That is exactly what he encountered, right up until the end.

And it’s a sad thing, that that’s the price you have to pay. For some of us who rock the boat, we end up losing our property. For some of us who rock the boat, we end up losing our freedom. For some of us who rock the boat, we end up losing our families. And in Aaron’s case, his life.

And yet, he was willing to face the facts, and to let that happen. To keep striving, to keep struggling, to keep trying to shake things up.

Aaron’s life reminded me about a different life that came to the same end. It’s the life of Alan Turing, a brilliant mathematician. He lived in England, and was born one hundred years ago. Alan Turing was the greatest mathematician of the 20th Century. He not only invented the Turing Machine, which is the basis for all modern computing, but Alan Turing also broke the Nazi codes during World War II, and allowed the English and the Americans to defeat the Nazis.

You would think that someone like that would be cherished. Someone like that who, if he had managed to have a full life, might have won one, or two, or even three, Nobel Prizes. But in fact, he was vilified, because he was a homosexual, which, at that point in England, in those days, was illegal. And I’m sure that at that point in England, in those days, there were people who said, “Well, the law is the law. And if you disobey the law, then you should go to prison.” Because of that, because his boyfriend turned him in, Alan Turing was convicted of perversity, and sentenced to prison.

Given the choice between spending hard time — years and years of his life — instead of doing the mathematics that he loved, or alternatively, to accept estrogen injections, well, Turing took the estrogen injection choice. And that broke not only his body, but his mind. He found that he could not do the thing he loved the most, mathematics, any longer. So after two years of this, Alan Turing committed suicide.

And who lost, out of that? Well, Alan Turing lost. But so did all of we. We lost as well. All of us who would have benefitted from that first, and second, and the third Nobel Prizes that Alan Turing had in him. And that Aaron Swartz had in him.

We’re the ones who lose.

If we let our prejudices, our desires to restrain those with creativity — if we let that lead us to the point where that creativity is restrained, then going back all the way to the time of Socrates, what we engage in is human sacrifice. We sacrifice their lives, out of the misguided sense that we need to protect ourselves from them, when in fact it’s the opposite.

Our lives have meaning, our lives have greater meaning, from the things that they create. So we’re here today to remember Aaron — and also to try to learn from the experience. To understand that prosecution should not be persecution.

This morning I reached into the closet, randomly took out this tie [showing necktie], and wore it. And I have a sense that sometimes, things are connected in ways that are not exactly obvious. It happens that this tie is a painting of “Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh, someone else whose life ended all too soon.

In a Don McLean song about Vincent Van Gogh, it ends this way: “They would not listen. They’re not listening still. Perhaps they never will.”

It’s time to listen.

SEE THE VIDEO

Courage,

Alan Grayson

“And when no hope was left in sight, 

On that starry, starry night, 

You took your life, as lovers often do.

But I could have told you, Vincent, This world was never meant for one 

As beautiful as you.“

-Don McLean, "Starry, Starry Night” (1971).