#we bonded heavily over music. and i used it to cope after she left. so unfortunately shes mixed into so much of it

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

I was just listening to a song I used to love while we were friends. I listened to it so often, we talked so often, it became the background music to our relationship.

I'm listening to it while I knit. I often forget that I started knitting because of you. I remembered tonight. It's strange, I never knitted anything for you. I've knitted for other loved ones, rarely for myself, but never for you. I remembered you showing me the amazing things you made, and I wished I could get to that level of skill. But at that time, you had to explain to me how to purl because I couldn't get it.

Everything reminds me of you in a terrible way. Everything I do is an echo of you. I started painting so that I could paint for you. I started knitting to bond with you. I hear your voice in the music I listen to. You're haunting the things that I love. Will I ever make a brush stroke or stitch without you on my mind?

[molly2140]

Introducing Octavia Freeman 😎

Includes brief shit about my Half-Life universe.

Gordon has a twin sister, Octavia, she's approx. 4 hours younger than him if that matters haha. Their mother died during their birth (depressing as hell I know but I like the tragedy and dramatic shit), so their awesome father took it upon himself to raise his twin children the best he possibly can and give them a good life. Since Gordon can't speak, he, Octavia, and their father learned ASL in order for them all to communicate. Octavia acts as Gordon's voice and helps translate his signs for those who don't understand ASL. While growing up, Octavia becomes very defensive for Gordon, she hates when people make fun of him for not being able to speak. High school consisted of lots of fights and detentions for Octavia simply because she's defending her beloved twin. The two have a very unique bond, not only are they twins but they are best friends. Gordon has a really hard time opening up to other people, especially other girls, but he's always found it easy to confide in his sister, and Octavia is extremely supportive of him.

About a year after Gordon and Octavia graduate high school, their father falls ill and soon passes away, by then they are sharing an apartment on the university campus. Gordon is undoubtedly a genius, Octavia is quite intelligent as well, but she is studying for casual things such as photography and journalism, compared to Gordon who's clearly working for his PhD in science stuff. Soon after their father passes, Octavia finds herself taking the loss much worse than Gordon, and somewhere down the line she finds herself addicted to heroin. If Gordon wasn't home the night she finally overdosed, she would have died. During her rehabilitation and healing process, this brings the two of them closer and Gordon simply tells her that he cannot lose her, because she's the only family he has left. From that day forward, the two became even more inseparable.

Gordon and Octavia both end up at Black Mesa! Gordon obviously working in anomalous materials, whilst Octavia became the first female security guard, and she and Barney form a great friendship. Barney even tells her about his interest in Lauren, and she instantly hooks them up and everybody watches them fall in love. Octavia, like Barney, is a huge party animal, and enjoys grabbing some beers with Barney and Gordon after a long shift. Did I mention that Octavia and Barney are huge Queen fans? 😎 They will blast their music every day when they hit up the shooting range or while on lunch break. Also, Barney proposes to Lauren and Octavia was so happy when he announced it to her that she literally would not shut up about wedding plans for a whole week.

Black Mesa Incident time, yayyyy.

Octavia loses her shit when she can't find Gordon, she knew he was going in the test chamber that day, she wasn't supposed to know but he had told her anyways. She and Barney team up to fight the foreign alien creatures in order to escape Black Mesa alive. They are extremely pissed about the military simply executing any scientist or Black Mesa employee, however their highest priority is finding Gordon. Octavia and Barney get separated inside the Lambda facility, Octavia is trapped within and simply focuses on finding Gordon. She finds a portal to Zen, where she fights more of the alien creatures and soon realizes there's no way back to Earth. Suddenly the G-Man introduces himself to her, and offers her a job, she hesitates, but accepts when he tells her that he has Gordon. Together, the twins are put into stasis until their "hour has come again".

I'm not gonna get too much into the Half-Life 2 era stuff cause I'm planning on making a fan fic of it but here's some highlights and other facts about Octavia.

The land outside City 17 is fairly different, White Forest still exists, however everything is more inland and not next to the coast. The only large bodies of water are rivers and lakes. Technically City 17 is somewhere in Russia or in Soviet territory because I noticed a lot of the buildings and signs there are in Russian, but let's pretend City 17 is in the US because I want Octavia and Gordon to find their home as well as the ruins of Black Mesa. :3

City 17 has a wall around it that the Combine patrol heavily, the canals still exist but there is also underground tunnels that lie below City 17. The Combine are completely clueless of the underground tunnels, therefore Alyx uses them to help transport supplies and escort citizens to other outposts.

The Combine become aware of Gordon and Octavia's return a couple months after they arrive, unlike literally within the first day in the actual game.

Gordon and Alyx do fall in love of course. :)

Barney and Octavia fall in love too. :) Not gonna spoil shit about what happens to Lauren though I'm sure you can figure it out easily.

Eli's lab is far outside City 17, further west, so instead of it being called Black Mesa East, it's now Black Mesa West. It's actually a fairly large building that is partially submerged underground and is hidden in the trees so the Combine aren't aware of it. There's a nice open area to the south of the lab where Alyx and Dog have plenty of room to play fetch.

Since the lab is partially submerged underground, kinda like some houses where the back end is underground but the front isn't, that's literally this concept. So you can basically walk onto the roof, and that's Barney and Octavia's hang-out spot. This is also the spot where they confide in each other and talk about their tragedies, for Octavia, her heroin addiction and overdose, and for Barney, what happened to Lauren.

Oh yeah they also stole a Combine helicopter and fixed up Black Mesa style. 😎

Octavia helps Barney cope with his reoccurring nightmares over Lauren and the things he's seen working undercover, oh, and about that cat.

Barney managed to save some of the old mixtapes he and Octavia made back in the day, as well as the portable cassette player, which he rigged so it doesn't need batteries. So they constantly jam out to their favorite old tunes when hanging out or going on supply runs or hunting trips.

Octavia is definitely a night owl, Gordon is as well and they both have troubles sleeping sometimes. Gordon sometimes joins Octavia on the roof at 3am to talk some energy out in hopes of going back to sleep.

The classic desert eagle is Octavia's preferred weapon, the one she used while on security at Black Mesa. She is forever grateful that Barney managed to find and keep her prized gun after the Incident, as well as Gordon's infamous crowbar. The crowbar he still swears his life on by the way, ha.

Like Alyx, Octavia is quite fit and flexible, it's obvious they're experts at parkour. ;) If you haven't noticed, Alyx has a hoodie underneath her leather jacket with the Black Mesa logo, so I decided Octavia's shirt should have the Lambda logo with a similar color concept as seen on Gordon's HEV suit.

Octavia sometimes will go undercover with Barney to try and understand what he does every day, as well as gain more Combine information. She starts doing this soon before they confide in each other and confess their newfound love for each other. They definitely feel like they're working together again like in the old days but now forming secret crushes on each other.

Okay I'm not gonna spill too many more details without spoiling everything haha. But this is Octavia, as well as a brief explanation on my Half-Life universe. I showed my finished drawing of Octavia to my boyfriend and he swears she looks like me in real life but I don't see it other than the fact we both wear glasses and we both have our hair in ponytails all the time lol. The pose was based off of Kibbitzer's reference sheets, as mentioned before, you can find Kibbitzer's sheets on DeviantArt, their Patreon, or by simply searching it in Google. So yeah, this is my OC, Octavia Freeman, I hope you guys like her because I've put a lot of thought into her character and I've never done that with my other OCs haha. But I'm really proud of it. :)

[webmdog]

Un Ojo Para Una Vida (Part 1)

I’ll post this in parts, but it’s a little story attached to lore from my askblog, @ask-the-iron-queen, more specifically, a bit of backstory on the new character introduced, Lady Melissa Foster.

The characters here are human, unlike how they are pokemon in the blog. 

Read on if you’re interested.

I knew from the day we separated that he would come crawling back to me.

What I didn't know was that being of flesh, blood and bone once more would come with an unspoken price.

Shadows of a past that I never knew, a past that wasn't even mine. These heavy shadows being lugged behind me and constantly eating at my very existence - following me around, making me feel anxious and uneasy.

This is especially true given the flesh and bone that make me up now doesn’t even belong to me.  Or, it didn’t anyway. I’m still adjusting.

One shadow that I do welcome with open arms, even until this day, is the fateful evening that I was reunited with my beloved. While this was my own shadow of the past, what I feared was a shadow that wasn’t my own. If it wasn’t for the shadow of my flesh, blood and bone, then I wouldn’t have met my love one again. While thankful, this night had somewhat traumatized me for years to come. The velvet puddle under the limp, suited body is engraved into the insides of my eyelids, even now after about 10 years. I can’t help but feel like it was my fault, but I have no recollection of the person that was dead in front of me, even though he recognized me.

It was rather cool that evening and for the first time in years, the Renaissance King Fernando, the first monarch of the Royal Isles, had finally hosted yet another Royal Ball. The timing was a bit weird, because unlike the first time he hosted such an event at Castillo Hayañil, he seemed to randomly call for it in the midst of the infamous Cryptic War. Not that there were any imminent threats at the time since most soldiers were sent overseas to fight battles and the city was generally untouched, but stuff like this Royal Ball were usually held during peacetime, when feelings of anxiety and fear were but a distant memory.

I remember bringing this very point up to Lady Katherine Foxwell, Fernando’s advisor and head of El Departamento de la Guerra (Department of War) for the Royal Isles. She was a generally bubbly personality and as expected, she just smiled and said:

“Why not? Another Royal Ball would help ease the tension a bit for the Royal Islanders! Sure, it would be better to use it as a celebration for the end of the war, but God knows when it’ll end! Might as well have some fun now and get our minds off it.”

Immediately, I knew that Fernando’s decision to host this event in the castle was heavily influenced by Katherine. Most of his decisions were, after all. The man was generally stubborn and strong-willed but when it came to Katherine, he became putty in her hands. It was clear that the pair shared some sort of romantic bond, but none of that was any of my business at all. Either way, a few weeks later the Royal Ball commenced nonetheless. Fernando’s troops, the Soldados Sombras (Shadow Soldiers) were being shipped over to the nations of the Contrasoviet Confederation and Himilaya to fight off Dictatorial Forces under King Thapa and Tsar Danylo, who were in an alliance with Fernando’s nemesis, Tobias Messieri. Some stuck around here in Hayañil to train and to keep guard of the castillo. Thank God for them though, bless their brave souls. If it wasn’t for them, I don’t think I’d be here writing this following the disaster that occurred during the ball.

Anyway, the Royal Ball, yes. It was a lovely little event. Katherine of course casually invited me weeks in advance and I immediately bought a lovely lavender flamenco dress and did my hair the way those Flamenco girls do. I mean, I surely wasn’t the only one who wore this outfit, but I felt like it would be fitting. The last Royal Ball had a ton of tango pieces performed by the talented Royal Musicians after all, and I’d very much rather do that than waltz.

(More under the cut!)

My date was an older man, roughly in his 40’s I believe. A very notable man too. A college professor by the name of Guillermo Escudero. For a man of his age, he was outstandingly handsome and looked like he was in at least his 30’s, with ginger hair that looked like fire and tranquil blue eyes that seemed to take your breath away. He had a number of freckles right under his eyes, and he almost looked like a kid. But god, he was such a heartthrob. Though maybe that’s just me talking. I met him while working on one of Fernando’s war machines one day, I decided to work outside rather than in the hangar to get some fresh air and he kept saying “Hi” to me and starting chit chat every time he walked back from his daily lectures. He was a history professor or something, he always loved the topic of Piracy’s Golden Age. You know, those stereotypical pirates that say “Arrrrrgh” and “X marks the spot” and shit like that.

He really loved what he did, and I really admired that in a man. The small talk he and I engaged in soon evolved to full-on dating and though we never really did anything physical, we were the best of friends. Hell, this Royal Ball was the first time we’d even touch one another in some way and we were both completely okay with that. But there was something about him that reminded me of Finn, oh my sweet Finn. He was a darling too, but I don’t think there was a way I could see him again after we got separated those many years ago. I guess dating similar-looking guys was a bit of a coping mechanism or something.

The Dance was held in the ballroom of the newly erected Castillo Hayañil, King Fernando’s castle in the center of the city. The chandelier dangling from the stone ceiling glowed dimly, with the faux diamonds that hung from it’s arms and around the light bulbs refracting the faint orange light throughout the ballroom. The polished stone floors were gently draped over by a velvet red carpet with gilded lining and against the walls were marble tables with punch and small refreshments, from empanadas to chicharrones con vinagre. The stone pillars and wooden interior balconies towered above the dancers below at the edges of the room, small candlelit lanterns burning gently on each side, helping the chandelier above bring more light to the show beneath them all. A large wooden door was left ajar at the front of the room - clearly the entrance to the ballroom, and two winding staircases made of polished wood, led up to the top balconies on the front and back of the castle as well as other rooms. On the walls behind the pillars were paintings of all kinds, made by all kinds of uncredited artists, works that I’ve never even seen before placed in golden frames that had leaves carved into them as well as other intricate patterns. Each painting had the Royal Islander Coat of Arms carved into the top of the frame - El Diamante de Casa Boromeo (the Diamond of Casa Borromeo).

Those participating in the Royal Ball were mostly the prominent of Hayañil that were invited by either Katherine or Fernando but others that attended were usual citizens that were able to afford tickets to get in. Not that I minded that, it’s nice to get to mingle with people you’ve never met before and get to know them. One couple I met was particularly interesting. They both moved from the wasteland that was the United States to Hayañil at the start of the war since the husband, Francisco, wanted to serve as part of Fernando’s Soldados Sombras. Francisco was a doctor and his wife, Marie, was a nurse. He was registered to practice here in Hayañil and so was his wife, but the war had given him other things to do. He fought in the bloody “Batalla de Roma” a few years prior while his wife stayed in Hayañil to practice nursing. When he returned he was put on reserve and since then, has been getting to know the capital city and the people that lived in it a little more. Hence, why he and his wife were here. He wanted to get to meet the other professionals of the city, and he was definitely in the right place for that. He claimed that he lived in the city of Rey de Los Islas before it was even called that, but he didn’t really go into detail.

We all came flooding in with big ol’ smiles on our faces when the clocktower outside struck 7pm that night, couples dressed in elaborate dresses of different colors and suits or tuxes of different cuts and styles. The decor of the ballroom was rather simple, with banners of the Royal Isles’ flag pinned to the stone walls of the room between each glimmering candle lantern. But the elaborate chandelier, the paintings on the wall and the sculptures on the tables of food were what garnered the most attention. The musicians were setting up their music stands and tuning their instruments in an area toward the back of the room, right between the two large staircases. They all stood in front of a large glass door that overlooked a small grassy field, the jungle beyond it seen in the distance. Obviously the uncharted area of Hayañil.

After about 15 minutes of preparing the music to be performed for the evening, I saw the castle maid, La Eterna herself, Cecilia Lacroix readying her violin with a grin and a nod toward the Royal Conductor. He nodded back in understanding and curled his fingers on the ivory of his piano to prepare his piece. As soon as the music played, the dancers began to hold each other and start performing all kinds of complicated, circus-worthy twirls and twists while holding one another. This was when Guillermo jokingly knelt on one knee in front of me, kissed the back of my hand and with a smile asked “Puedo tener esta danza?” (May I have this dance?) I quickly fixed my hair and replied with an excited “Sí, mi amor.” before we began to embrace and move along to the music, our movements melodiously coordinating with the violins.

I know this is probably getting rather dull by now, but no worries. I won’t go into detail about how the night went on before shit went down. Besides, it was basically just Guillermo and I getting to know each other and dancing the night away with the others while some were off to the side socializing and munching on goodies and admiring the paintings between the pillars and whatnot. At one point, a very strange song began to play in the midst of people just mingling and talking that caught us all of guard and next thing we know a couple comes down from the upper balcony and starts waltzing in the center of the ballroom like it was nobody’s business. Of course, this couple was Lady Katherine and King Fernando but they were dancing together, for the very first time. It pretty much confirmed the talk of the town that Fernando and Katherine had a thing for one another, but man did they did they turn heads, that night. Katherine had this elaborate silk gown was absolutely dazzling. Very European in style with all kinds of shades of yellow and even some white and red thrown in the mix. It was like she was straight out of a ballroom in Vienna or something. Fernando, on the other hand didn’t even seem to dress formally, only wearing his usual buttoned silk shirt with the  battlement-shaped patterns on the cuffs and the bottoms of the shirt with black dress pants and dress shoes, still donning the onyx crown upon his head. It was a cute little waltz, they both looked absolutely adorable! According to Cecilia, the waltz they played was a piece written by Katherine herself, which was surprising given I had no idea that she had musical skills in her. Honestly, I think that was the first time in years I’ve seen Fernando’s face light up like that. Who knew that all it really took was a short little brunette wearing an elaborate, yellow silk gown to make the miserable son of a bitch smile? She was clearly having a ball, and the two seemed to have a lot of chemistry together. Its a shame they never really went anywhere with that relationship.

[sinceileftyoublog]

Spectres Interview: Horrible Hell Bubble

Photo by Paul Samuel White

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Fake Spotify ads, alternate James Bond themes, you name it. Bristol noisemakers Spectres have tackled the more corporate realms of the music industry with satire and snot. What they’ve finally also done is brought that same level of vitriol to their music. Their second album Condition, which has been out since March and is one of the more overlooked releases of the year, is leaps and bounds better than their debut Dying, a very good, lauded record in its own right. On Condition, the band--guitarist/vocalist Joe Hatt, guitarist Adrian Dutt, and drummer Andy Came--ditched their original idea of experimenting with electronics and instead pushed the guitar to its limits. But it’s not a record that will blow out your ears. It’s more the type to give you a sense of unease that increasingly permeates throughout your head as you listen, bringing you into the nausea of the songwriters themselves.

I corresponded with Hatt and Dutt over email to talk about Condition and the band in general. They touched on their influences, the recent departure of a band member, live performance, and what’s up next.

Since I Left You: What were you trying to do with your second LP different than your first?

Adrian Dutt: There was never any conscious decision to explore different routes with our second album. It was more a natural progression of how we wanted to explore sound and how we can deconstruct it. On a guitar level, for both of us, we have no interest in playing conventional chords, so perhaps we tried harder when it came to really pushing ourselves outside of any comfort zone. We never expected Dying to get the critical acclaim it did. We had been writing and playing those songs for maybe a couple of years, and they were already the result of our growth and experimentation. To have people embrace those songs and sounds was a double-edged sword; on one hand, it was great people were getting it, but on the other, we knew we needed to go deeper inside ourselves if we wanted to really shock someone out of their comfort.  

For me, personally, there are a lot of moments on the new record where I am playing entirely 'sounds,' so the signal from my guitar and pedals is screaming out of the amp, and I manipulate that via a bunch of happy accidents and holes in my guitar. It's also an excuse for me not to get too caught up in analyzing what we are doing or communicating with everyone else. I exist best when I am inside myself and my own little horrible hell bubble. Due to a busy tour schedule and the fact we all worked full-time, we had hardly anytime to write all the songs for the record before we went into the studio, so perhaps that informed the final output. We were stressed and under pressure and it was all our own fault, but I think we'd rather be in that headset than go into a recording session with 25 songs that you just smash out and whittle down. Our songs are the result of our own problems, every practice is a counseling session, we exorcise our own demons and shape them into horrible soundscapes that other people may or may not connect with, and that isn't an easy process. If we tried to write a huge collection of songs, I genuinely think we'd implode under our own pressure and Spectres would not exist. 

Maybe I should have just gone with a more direct answer. We knew we had people in an uncomfortable place when they listened to Dying, and we knew we could pull them fully under with a more inward-looking album, where we took ourselves into places we'd never been before.

SILY: For a band whose social musical presence is a combination of button-pushing and tongue-in-cheek, your LP is comparatively understated in terms of a message. How did you try to balance the record with your outside reputation?

AD: The record speaks for itself. It is a personal hell. It doesn't need to be delivered with a message.

SILY: There are songs that seem punk-influenced ("Welcoming The Flowers"), slow-core influenced ("Colour Me Out"), krautrock-influenced ("Coping Mechanism"), and industrial techno-influenced ("End Waltz"). How did you balance all of those seeming influences within and among songs?

AD: I guess we all have varying influences within our songwriting--what we grew up listening to, what we are currently listening to, sounds we hear in everyday life, how we are feeling that day. But we've never said, “Oh, hey, let's write a techno banger,” etc. Our writing process is a vortex of playing noise at each other until one sound or SICK RIFF rears it's head above the maelstrom and we use it as a starting point. We've always been so lost when it comes to pinpointing our sound. Are we psych? Are we noise? Are we pop? So it all just comes out and rolls into one thematic destruction.

SILY: What made you want to name a song after the film A Fish Called Wanda?

Joe Hatt: The song isn't actually about the film, although I don't really blame anyone for thinking that. I don't really want to go into to much detail about who it was inspired by, but it was from an online post they had made about a recently diagnosed brain condition where the doctors had told him his memory was going to be erased bit by bit. The Wanda part is linked to this person’s artist name, and the fish part due to the memory loss, and then I guess I was just trying to be clever by using a misleading title about something so harrowing.

SILY: What inspired the album title? The album art?

AD: I'll let Joe answer this one! I love the excitement of finding out what Joe is calling the record and reading his lyrics. Artwork wise, this was the first Spectres release where I was out of the creative loop, which was unsettling, but very rewarding. The package that Laurie [Lax], Steph [Third], and Joe created married the music so perfectly, and to see it come together was beautiful.

JH: For whatever reason, the title came to me when we were mixing the first record, and from then on, it just stuck. It was about another year before I started writing lyrics for Condition, but it was good having that starting point forming and sprawling in my head for that amount of time, as there was already a mood set. I've always been interested in the human condition in terms of how we are programmed emotionally and either try to adhere or break away from that. How we condition ourselves to try and blend in or get through the day, whether that be blocking things out or drinking it all in, or in many cases, both. 

Spectres’ Condition album art

This all fed into the artwork quite heavily too. The idea was to try and present both the introvert and extrovert within us. The front cover (vinyl) came about from me being a huge fan of the artist Laurie Lax’ 'Comic Boom Boom' series. The first time I saw them, I thought that it would be an exciting idea to try and work with her on something similar for the future, and when the time was right, we began working out ways of how to link her process to the themes and moods of the album somehow. The rest of the story will be very boring to anyone but ourselves probably, and it took over three months of experimentation, but she has absolutely nailed it. We have also worked with Stephanie Third again (who did the Dying front cover) who produced a set of Tranimal-inspired photographs in which we wanted to depict a human’s emotions bulging out of one’s body in a vulgar mess, just like they do, but represented physically.

SILY: How do you adapt these songs live?

AD: The benefit of writing under pressure is that the songs are always pretty much fully formed when it comes to recording and playing them. The only teething problems we ever encounter is if anything breaks and a sound changes, but then it's just a trial and error process to replicate certain frequencies and inflict the pain intended. We are a 'live' band--we create songs to play them in an environment where a sound system that can cope exists and where every nook and cranny of the song can be heard and explored. I want people to get lost within it all so we don't hold back when it comes to adaptations of any recorded work. Some things are improvised in the studio during recording, and then we relearn it all to play live.

SILY: What's next for you?

AD: We've had a strange year and a huge release and album tour, followed by losing a member of the band. Our infrastructure and dynamic was teetering on the edge of implosion when we came back from Europe, and something had to change. That decision would always affect our sound because [bassist] Darren [Frost] was an integral piece of the Spectres puzzle, but with Dom [Mitchison] we now have this new exciting period of creativity and harmony, which is really pushing us in another new direction. I'm so excited about the current incarnation of Spectres and everything we are doing. It feels like we've focused everything and we know what we want now. We've spent years chipping away at this concrete mass, getting to the bones underneath, and finally, it feels like we are climbing inside and becoming an entity which is capable of understanding structure and chaos and embodying that into an output we are all happy with. The new songs we have been writing are absolutely brutal in ways we've never tried before.