#most of them i don’t even remember what they sound like but it evokes such deep memories of whatever my mental state was | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

intoloopin · 4 months

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LOOP GOES DISCO #1 - "THE LAST PIT OF HELL IS AN ASSHOLE'S HOTEL BATHROOM."

A SERIES REWRITE OF DISCARDED SCENES USING DISCO ELYSIUM GAME MECHANICS/LINGO.

TWS: Drug use. Cursing. Self deprecating language. Fighting. Forced vomiting. Blood. Feelings being expressed weirdly at inappropriate times (???).

CONTEXT: This is rewrite of a missing scene from END AT ME: it's a glimpse at the Hell party that caused Minwoo to call Taesong on July 14th going 15th + what proceeded the final motel scene by 4 to 6 hours.

starring: Bang Minwoo. Xu 'J.J' Jiahang.

word account: 3.8K / 3,848 words.

writer's note: OKAY, SO! To anyone who's unfamiliar on how DE functions, fear not: this works as it's own thing. But to hopefully get you into the right mood, I'll link a video to the game's intro as well as the skill sheet out of detail so you can grasp what's being evoked here. Most skills have been adapted to fit this new setting and Minwoo's own psychology anyway, so understanding how they function in game or not (hopefully!) won't take away from any fun of this psyche dive. With that being said! Good read! This is the most fun I had all week!

THE ASSHOLE’S HOTEL BATHROOM - Filled with too many soap cabinets and a candelabra for a lamp – things of value but no *practical use* – the Asshole’s Hotel Bathroom looks exactly like you expect it to. To put it simply it's a fancy, cold and soulless shit deposit.

REACTION SPEED (Easy: Success) - Like your goddamn man.

EMPATHY (Challenging: Success) - Like *them*, your man’s ‘friends’, who share no traits with him. Not an hinch of loyalty to anything or anyone.

YOU - You inspect Jiahang, the said man – just a man, his own man – that you have an arm's hold of, dragging along behind you. He doesn’t want to come into the Asshole’s Hotel Bathroom, of course not. He doesn’t want to leave The Party and its Party People either, but he must be surgically extracted from them. He must be attended to, immediately.

ESPRIT DE CORPS (Medium: Fail) - You still have no idea why he jumped on to take what the asshole man offered you, why he tried to bargain your way out of the room at the expense of his already too dazed system, with a dry gulp of a too big pill ill meant for you, putting on a show so you could leave.

INTERFACING (Easy: Success) - As if you would ever choose to escape out of any Hell without him – as if you could make out of any labyrinth without your North Star.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY (Easy: Success) - God, he’s beautiful even while bone deep in physical discomfort. That’s art in real fucking staggering movements, all live, full color. He has mastered the sweet, sweet pain it takes to *be* music. He has beat you at your own game, Minwoo love. Beat you right up. *Beat you good*.

LOGIC (Easy: Success) - Whatever is that he swallowed, he needs it out of his system. Now.

YOU - You lock the door behind you, let his pulse go. You both stand in discrepant different examples of equilibrium at the center of the room.

VISUAL CALCULUS (Easy: Success) - The toilet has its lid already set open, like a paid extra.

“What were you thinking?!”

“You need to throw up. *Now*.”

No talking. No time to waste. Reach forward. Be of help.

YOU - You take an unfocused step forward, leaving two feet between Jiahang and you. The proximity accomplishes nothing: your fingers trail millimeters over his chest, failing to check anything, just shaking.

JIAHANG - "Minwoo hyung, c’mon… Calm down, okay, calm down… I can… take it, I’m alright…," Jiahang’s marijuana voice is something deeper in tone and lighter in sound, close to a whisper. He takes pauses to hold in anxious, misplaced laughs. “It’s not my… First rodeo, so… Calm down…”

LOGIC (Easy: Success) - He’s not new to drugs, that’s what he meant. Both in general, and with today’s doctor’s prescription: weed, cocaine, maybe, and the other thing, the white pill.

ENCYCLOPEDIA (Easy: Success) - You knew this already. You pretended not to, for someone’s sake – you don’t remember who, now – but it’s become obvious to you early on. How could it not when it’s *you*, a Guryo son who knows what to seek for when telling… *high risk riders* apart from any crowd.

LOGIC (Easy: Success) - And yet you did nothing to put a stop to it. You let it come to this. This is as much as your fault as it is the asshole man’s. You’re a fucking asshole man, Asshole Man.

YOU - Your head bends downwards, away from him, away from direct view.

INLAND EMPIRE (Medium: Success) - Because it pains you; the sight of him pains you. It always has. Every inch of his body is a light that cuts right through your retinas, close to being fatal.

DRAMA (Easy: Success) - By God, he’s made you just as blind as the piano and guitar have. *He really is music*.

“Why are you, out of everyone, making stupid fucking decisions?!”

Give me something else. I won’t say that.

YOU - Give me something else. I won’t say that.

HALF LIGHT (Challenging: Fail) - Oh? And why the fuck not?

It’s not what he needs to fucking hear now, shit Head!

The night’s been already harsh enough. Try to be kind or something, fuck Hell.

Please, *please* don’t make me say it. I don’t wanna say it.

YOU - It’s not what he needs to fucking hear now, shit Head!

HALF LIGHT (Challenging: Fail) - Well, fuck-o, this is all you got. Have you forgotten who you are? You’re a brute and ruthless son of a gun. Shoot-words-to-kill, that’s the Bang Minwoo pattern of speech. You know nothing else.

“Why are you, out of everyone, making stupid fucking decisions?!”

[COMPOSURE CHECK: IMPOSSIBLE (3% CHANCE).] Breath.

[LOGIC CHECK: GODLY (27% CHANCE).] Come up with something else. Something soothing. *Anything*.

LOGIC CHECK: FAILURE. - As you search your oceanic brain for a cohesive, less deadly set of words, you find nothing but a dark void and the defeating sound of static. You’re tongue tied. You’re jaw set. You’re furious. You’re terrified. You’re only half inside your own body.

PAIN THRESHOLD (Impossible: Fail) - The smell of urine and powder mixed together, coming straight off the toilet to your nose. The sensation of being too small, too impotent inside a big room that you’ve never seen so big. The body of a loved one shivering close, mad with fever.

INLAND EMPIRE (Challenging: Fail) - It’s all too familiar, isn’t it now, crack baby?

[-1 MORALE.]

THE AWARENESS OF THE LOOP - TIME IS A FLAT FUCKING CIRCLE, AND YOU DREW ITS LINE THEN, AND YOU DREW ITS LINE NOW!

“Why are you, out of everyone, making stupid fucking decisions?!”

[COMPOSURE CHECK: IMPOSSIBLE (1% CHANCE).] Breath.

COMPOSURE CHECK: EPIC FAIL. - Thinking of breathing only makes your breathing worse. Stop. Thinking. Of. It. STOP. IMMEDIATELY.

[-1 PHYSICAL.]

“Why are you, out of everyone, making stupid fucking decisions?!”

YOU - “Why are you, out of everyone, making stupid fucking decisions?!”

JIAHANG - Slowly, as if he’s hearing you with a 15 second delay, Jiahang looks up at you with his big stars for eyes, embedded in a sea of red. “What..?”

“You–! Jesus Christ, you fucking heard me, Jiahang!”

YOU - “You–! Jesus Christ, you fucking heard me, Jiahang!”

“I can’t deal with you having a crash, I can’t witness that sort of *shit*! You know why I fucking can’t!”

YOU - “I can’t deal with you having a goddamn crash, I can’t witness that sort of *shit*! You know why I fucking can’t!”

JIAHANG - The delay’s gone, it seems: in front of you, Jiahang flinches, withers, pressing his tiny lips close together.

AUTHORITY (Challenging: Success) - BE CALM. He’s scared, but not of you – only of himself, what he’s done, and what you might think of him now.

EMPATHY (Medium: Success) - And he’s ashamed of what he took you back to, now that he realizes – the razor sharp flashes of your once uncle seem to flow between you telepathically.

THE BLURRY PHOTO INSIDE YOUR WALLET - *GOODSPEED, BANG WOOHYUN – BELOVED BROTHER, ADORED SON, TRUE FATHER. AND MAY GOD LAY YOU TO REST KINDLY.*

CONCEPTUALIZATION (Medium: Success) - He’s always scared of what people might think of him. It’s his Achilles tendon. When it comes to you, the fear of letting down goes hand in hand with an old, too familiar grief.

UNTRACEABLE RUSH OF DOPAMINE - Tell him. Tell him what we think of him, now and always. It’s time.

“I just don’t get– You or, or! You’re supposed to be music, for shit’s sake! Whatever the fuck that means!”

Don’t make me do this to me now.

I don’t fucking know what I think, alright?! Not about him, not about anything anymore! *I don’t know!* And I don’t want to know! I don’t give a shit! I never fucking have!

YOU - I don’t fucking know what I think, alright?! Not about him, not about anything anymore! *I don’t know!* And I don’t want to know! I don’t give a shit! I never fucking have!

DRAMA (Easy: Success) - Alright, sire, alright. Don’t open the Pandora’s Box that is your stone heart, if you’re too much of a pussy to see what’s been growing inside. Suit your weak self, take the coward’s road. Just be careful not to fall too hard while embarking on this deep, deep sink of yours into that old, old Egyptian river.

ENCYCLOPEDIA (Legendary: Success) - That old Egyptian river is called the Nile river. Say it's determiner and name three times quickly out loud. The joke writes itself.

INLAND EMPIRE (Easy: Success) - Not a easier joke to decipher than *you*, of course, Bang Man.

JIAHANG - It takes him a while, but Jiahang eventually recovers; straightens his spine up, grows back to big. “If you can’t see it, then… leave, then. You can… do that. You brought me my bag, I– I took the *thing* for you, you’re free– free to go. So go on. Turn around, just turn– turn around, if that’s what… what you want so bad!”

[VOLITION RED CHECK: IMPOSSIBLE (0% CHANCE). YOU CAN’T RETRY IT.] Leave.

I can’t leave him.

“I can’t leave you!”

YOU - I can’t leave him.

PERCEPTION (Heroic: Fail) - Ah, yes. That you have no strength to do. It's as simple as that.

“I can’t leave you – not like this!”

“I can’t leave you – not with them!”

“I just *can’t leave you*!”

YOU - “I can’t leave you, Jiahang – not like this!”

JIAHANG - You see a frown show up on his forehead as he mouths ‘like this’, like it’s an insult, but doesn’t say it. What he does say is a frustrated, confused plea of, “Then what, Minwoo? Then *what*?!”

HAND/EYE COORDINATION (Easy: Success) - Oh, sire. You know exactly what you must do.

[SUGGESTION CHECK: FORMIDABLE (38% CHANCE).] Convince Jiahang to throw up. Keep talking. He’s giving in.

[REACTION SPEED CHECK: CHALLENGING (65% CHANCE).] Make him throw up. You’ve lost too much damn time already with all this fucking talking.

[PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT RED CHECK: IMPOSSIBLE (1% CHANCE). YOU CAN’T RETRY IT.] Shove him into the bathtub and turn on the ice cold shower. Let the thermal shock overwhelm him, then make him throw up there. It’s risky, but it feels like the way.

REACTION SPEED CHECK: FAIL. You raise your arms and grab him suddenly by the elbows, catching him visibly by surprise – and it all goes quickly downhill from there.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT (Challenging: Epic Fail) - Your limbs struggle to make him bend any way, let alone to the direction of the toilet or the floor. Under your feet, the humid ground keeps you from grounding yourself enough to make any of this work. Nothing’s in your favor. You realize your mistake too late.

RHETORIC (Easy: Success) - You should have thought this through. Jiahang is, after all, much taller than you – and much too cherished for your hands to dare squeeze or scratch.

YOU - Your fingers let go without you telling them to. Bad equilibrium disrupted, Jiahang slips on the wet tiles and falls sideways, head bumping with the toilet’s unforgiving ceramic, nose first, sound second: a horrible cry out of pain you heard just once.

[CRITICAL MORALE DAMAGE.]

[CRITICAL PHYSICAL DAMAGE.]

YOU - DEAR GOD. MY DEAR GOD.

EMPATHY (Medium: Success): DON’T SHUT DOWN – YOU CAN’T. IT MAKES YOU MORE VICIOUS. YOU DIDN’T MEAN TO: HE MUST KNOW YOU DIDN’T MEAN TO. RUSH TO PROVE IT– HELP!

JUMP TO HELP!

YOU - YOU JUMP TO HELP! You’re on your knees quicker than you’ve ever been, palming his back, his shoulder.

JIAHANG - He glimpses at you sideways, then hides his face away, turning it to the opposite side. A lonely stream of blood drips from his left nostril, and he rushes to cover it with his trembling hand. You notice; you hear a sob.

RETHORIC (Heroic: Fail) - You’re a wordsmitch, fuck face, or are you not?! SAY SOMETHING. FIX THIS.

“Fuck, you– You didn’t give me *any other choice*, like!!!”

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry so so sorry I’m sorry sorry!!!!!!”

Fuck it. Focus on the mission. Put your fingers down his throat. Count damages later.

YOU - Make the worst worth it, you think, as you scoopes his face in.

LOGIC (Medium: Fail) - Will it even accomplish anything? The white pill’s been in his system for over 20 minutes, not to mention all the rest, a pool party of shit in his bloodstream. Anyhow: better safe than sorry, you assume – you pray.

YOU - You fight to get your fingers into his mouth, meet a wall of teeth, a resistence of tongue; it opens after you let out a small curse, like a castle’s gate.

SUGGESTION (Easy: Success) - So *this* is how it feels.

PERCEPTION (Medium: Success) - Under you, he’s stopped moving. Jiahang has no real strength or deep desire to push you out or hurt you. He might even understand the invasion, under the haze; be grateful for it, even.

YOU - You feel it when it comes, a stream of bile. You remove your hand and wipes it on your trousers, sees Jiahang bending over to sit and spill sick yellow vomit for seconds, a minute.

ENCYCLOPEDIA (Easy: Success) - Even though you’ve hurt him not a second ago – it wasn’t even the first time, either – he hasn’t bitten a single finger of yours off when he had the chance. Not a follower of the Eye For an Eye school of thinking, this pupil of yours, despite your suffocating influence. That’s good. You’re nothing but a bad preacher of a bad religion.

JIAHANG - When he’s done spitting and coughing, Jiahang begins to curl into himself, turning into a quiet small ball on the floor, too close to the release pool.

“I’m sorry. It was the only way– I’m sorry.”

“Jiahang-ah, please, let me take a look at you – Let me look at you, *please*.”

[AUTHORITY CHECK: EASY. 92% CHANCE.] “Show me your nose, now.”

AUTHORITY CHECK: SUCCESS.

YOU - “Show me your nose, now.”

PERCEPTION (Easy: Success) - He does, without a fight, lying on the floor with his head facing the ceiling. It’s bad, the bruise – the damage. You help guide him to sit up straight as he can.

YOU - You extend your hand to the side, up– The toilet paper dances off the holder as you push it, and it rolls away. You get enough of it to wrap it over your open palm three times, to make an amateur glove. You wipe the trace of blood off his mouth as gently as you can.

JIAHANG - “I’m such a… mess, just so–!” He cries, suddenly; a dam of tears, hot and uncontainable. “Awful, *awful* thing, disgusting fucking– fucking *thing*!”

“I know. I know exactly what you are.”

“That’s not all there is to you, baby, it’s not all there is to you at all, listen to me, honey, *listen*, **please listen**.”

“You could be worse.”

YOU - “You could be worse.”

JIAHANG - This gets his attention. “How even– Worse how?” Jiahang asks, mid hiccup, mid wail. “Give me one– One fucking example, if you… can. Can you? You *can’t*, can you?!”

SHIVERS (Medium: Success) - Around you and around him, The Party keeps on going, like a nonstop train. Your ears attune themselves to the purr of it – it's a habit. You’re too often outside rooms buzzing with life, only listening in through paper thin walls, missing the experience of it.

EMPATHY (Heroic: Success) - No one has come to check on him, you both have realized – Jiahang a minute faster than you. None of his Party People friends give a flying fuck. The reality is falling down on him like a skyscraper, crushing, breathtaking, killer.

AUTHORITY (Legendary: Success) - LET THE OUTSIDE WORLD GO QUIET. THERE IS SOMETHING HE WANTS TO HEAR YOU SAY.

[REACTION SPEED RED CHECK: IMPOSSIBLE (11% CHANCE.) YOU CAN’T RETRY IT.] Start listing the real world things that are worse than him. (There’s a ton, and you know them intimately – and you know him intimately. Give Jiahang something else to weep for.)

[DRAMA RED CHECK, IMPOSSIBLE (9% CHANCE.) YOU CAN’T RETRY IT.] Start listing the unreal, out of this world things worse than him – the ones you’ve seen in your open eyed dreams. (Not as many options, but a tad lighter. Make the sadness disappear, bring anything close to a laugh back. Be the mad man for a great cause.)

[INLAND EMPIRE RED CHECK: LEGENDARY (26% CHANCE). YOU CAN’T RETRY IT.] “You could be like me. I’m worse than you’ll ever be.” (The truth. It can only hurt you.)

Say nothing.

INLAND EMPIRE CHECK: SUCCESS.

YOU - “You could be like me. I’m worse than you’ll ever be.”

LOGIC (Challenging: Success) - There is nothing worse than you, False Prophet, Fake Noah. Obsessed with connecting melodies, speaking truthfully only through rhyme schemes on pieces of paper that meet no one, only the bottom of trash cans or the back of your hard pillow. You’re not functional. You’re no leading man. You’re no good.

INLAND EMPIRE (Medium: Success) - But it feels good, doesn’t it? To finally admit how rotten you are after a whole life of pretending you’re a giving three, a good soil.

EMPATHY (Challenging: Success) - To say to someone who knows it, understands it, and stays.

[+1 MORALE]

Wait, I gained a fucking morale point from THAT?!

YOU - What the actual fuck?!

RHETORIC (Medium: Success) - You’re neck deep into shit, pal. Just count your win. It’s only a consolidation medal, nothing more, nothingbless – kiddo needs his fake prizes to fill his kiddo fuel.

JIAHANG - “But… I feel like you already,” he tells you. “All the time, hyung… All the time, I feel like you– Angry, and upset, and– and so lonely.”

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT (Easy: Success) - Wait, what’s that taunting your face, blocking your neck…? Oh, fucking Hell…! You’re crying! You’re nodding at him and crying!

AUTHORITY (Impossible: Fail) - HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU CRYING?! You don’t do that anymore, you’ve forgotten how. Revoke it. Revoke it along with all this sweat taking over your body.

“Don’t you dare say that.”

“I’m sorry, Jiahang. This is not– Not what I wanted to happen.”

“Just– Give me a minute, God, give me a minute!”

YOU - “I’m sorry, Jiahang. This is not– Not what I wanted to happen.”

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT (Easy: Success) - The tears prickle your eyes, actually turn you momentarily blind. You blink, hard, adjusting to their salt. It reminds you of how hard to stomach you are, inside out.

PAIN THRESHOLD (Medium: Success) - And it reminds you of how much saltier you’ve used to be. The tears are already falling off your sad sockets, sire – let them.

[+1 PHYSICAL.]

JIAHANG - “It’s not so bad, right, I think, to have… Turned into *this*, because– You’re no longer… lonely, and… Neither am I, right…? We can both be happy with that, be happy…” He doesn’t finish speaking; just closes his eyes, closes his mouth.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY (Medium: Fail) - We like the visual he’s evoking, Minwoo love. Picture the two of you, holding hands, walking right into the dooming sun– Oh, oh! Romeo and Romeo, tongue deep into each other’s poison bitter throats!!!

EMPATHY (Medium: Success) - Your man’s not right. He’s fading. This isn’t the Jiahang you want; most importantly, this isn’t the Jiahang that *Jiahang wants*. This is no good, Minwoo.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY (Medium: Fail) - It’s as close as we'll ever get to having any Jiahang *at all*. Enjoy it! We should kiss him now. Seal this deal right up. Two shots of Marriage In Misery and a whole bottle of Honeymoon On The Floor (Animal Style) coming *right the fuck up*, sign it to the wingless lovebirds right there, near the piss jar!!!

EMPATHY (Medium: Success) - Let go of his hand. Check his eyes. Help him up.

INLAND EMPIRE (Legendary: Fail) - Or perhaps this is the time for you to leave. You shouldn’t have ever touched him, to begin with. You shouldn’t have spoken a single word beyond ‘Goodbye’ to this man when he was still a graduating boy. You shouldn’t have made him think that he needed to cling to ruination to shine. You shouldn't have come to know any of them.

Kiss Jiahang. (ANIMAL FUCKING STYLE!!!)

Check Jiahang up (medically.), then help him up. You both need to leave the Asshole's Hotel Bathroom and The Asshole’s Hotel all together.

Walk away – Just walk away. His shortness of breath seems contagious. It’s sticking to your lungs.

YOU - It takes no effort to untangle your hands from his, to place them both on his cheeks, tend to the temperature.

ENCYCLOPEDIA (Challenging: Success) - His skin is at 110 degrees, to be precise. The lucky-unlucky number, if you’ll believe it.

LOGIC (Medium: Success) - It’s a mind and body turmoil. I’m afraid you can do nothing about it.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN, *DO NOTHING*?! FUCK OFF.

I can do something, I– I feel it.

I refuse to let him fall. I reject it.

YOU - I refuse to let him fall. I reject it.

INLAND EMPIRE (Medium: Success) - Cute, my lord, but still not enough. You might as well swear to become a whole different man, in your desperation, if you want to make this medicine of yours come true – transform into a superhuman, super empathic man suit. Like the Taesong Taesong thinks he is.

Good, I’ll swear on it, I’ll be it – I've been waiting for an excuse to tend to the internal damage and start a renovation. This is will be my new wallpaper.

No, don’t swear on it, fool – There’s no need to be extreme. *There’s no guarantee it will work*.

YOU - No, don’t swear on it, fool – There’s no need to be extreme. *There’s no guarantee it will work.*

ENCYCLOPEDIA (Challenging: Success) - Exactly. Hold your horses, Bang Man. Take this promise in. You never tried to be anything besides what you are now. You’re a 26-year-old hound – in dog years that’s 116 to 128 years of living. There’s no space inside your head for new tricks, new instincts.

DRAMA (Easy: Success) - You’re chained to a wall, my liege. You have to tear it the fuck down, and clean the concrete aftermath, and rise from the ashes of it – full Fenix style. Fail at that and you’ll be here again, if not in this asshole’s hotel bathroom, then another asshole’s hotel bathroom; if not with him, then with someone else, just as meaningful. You got the need for change, now? The need to compromise the fuck out of you?!

AUTHORITY (Heroic: Success): Say you got it now.

Fine. I guess I got it now.

I got it! I fucking got it, goddammit!

I understand.

YOU - I understand.

INLAND EMPIRE (Challenging: Success) - My, oh my… It seems you really do.

THE AWARENESS OF THE LOOP - *OH?* OH! THIS IS A REAL STEP, THIS IS SOMETHING – OH, THIS IS *REALLY SOMETHING NOW*, LITTLE MOON, WHAT A MAGNIFICENT EFFORT! THIS IS PROGRESS YOU’RE HOLDING THE HAND OF, AND IT’S PLEASED TO MEET YOU AT LAST, SO PLEASED TO MEET YOU! THE THING ABOUT IT– THE THING WITH PROGRESS, SHARP-TOOTHED ONE, IS THAT THERE IS NEVER ANY INGLORIOUS END – THERE’S NO END TO IT AT ALL!

[HIDDEN TASK, ‘TAKE THE 1ST STEP OF A 100 INTO METAMORPHOSIS’, COMPLETE.]

[+30 EXPERIENCE.]

[YOU CAN LEVEL UP A SKILL NOW.]

[END?]

[END.]

#&& ⠀ [ . . . ] hound on a hunt ⠀⸻ extras .#&& ⠀ [ . . . ] hound on a hunt ⠀⸻ writing .#fictional idol community #fake kpop group #kpop au #kpop fanfic #kpop oc #I'm just a girl having fun!!!!!

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kamildawww · 9 months

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Happy Heavenly Birthday, Freddie Mercury!! <33

today this talented person would have turned 77 years old. eh, life takes away from us the most talented and unique people. i want to thank him for everything he did in this life, that he changed my life. i have again so many thoughts spinning in my head, so i will try to formulate them normally.

as i said, today is the birthday of the most talented, beautiful, wonderful, charismatic, caring, bright, intelligent and loving person — Freddie Mercury or Farrokh Bulsara! i want to thank you, Freddie, for everything that you have done in this life, that you gave music your incredible and unique hits, and simply left an imprint on music and this life. i want to thank you for everything that you have done and continue to do in my life; you are a huge inspiration to me and a ray of light in my life. if not for you, then i don’t know what i would have done in those bad moments for me in life. thank you for the unique emotions - whether it be sadness or happiness - impressions and memories, i keep them all in my head and soul. i am so happy that fate introduced me to such an incredibly talented person as you, Freddie.

i am so happy that Freddie has close friends who remember and love him to this day and share their memories with us; fans who love, support and do incredible work with this great man. i'm sure Freddie is proud of all of you!

Freddie is a talented person, he just has an incredible voice, as if heaven itself endowed him with an incomparable voice and simply amazing piano playing. i have always loved and continue to love everything about this man. i can't help but thank fate again for introducing Freddie to Tim, Brian and Roger. and that Freddie insisted that - the future "Queen" - the group continue to live! i am so happy that Freddie found Deaky and found talent in him, because without these four talented and amazing people, "Queen" would not be "Queen" that exists.

i can't get past the songs written by Freddie, regarding his work in "Queen" and his solo career, and not to say that i LOVE them! i'm sure they have some meaning and that these songs had some meaning in his life, as a memory of something or an event or something like that. his songs have always evoked a storm of emotions in me, for which i am again very grateful to him. Freddie always makes me smile, even on my worst day. thank you for not letting me give up. Freddie can make us smile and laugh, but at the same time he can make us think and shed a tear..

Freddie has been through a lot and i'm happy he stayed strong even during his toughest days. i am happy that he had friends and people close to him who stayed with him to the last.

okay, i think that's all that i wanted to say, i'm sorry that it came out so much, i'm just really grateful to this person. happy birthday again, Freddie. thank you for being a huge inspiration to so many people. i love you very much and appreciate you, thank you for everything. you are a very important person in my life, thank you for always being with me, although i know that it sounds very weird. happy birthday again, Legend! you will always live with us, in our hearts, in music, we love and appreciate you! <33 first of all, about the drawing, i know that it turned out not very well, this is not my best work, but i tried. there's a lot going on in life right now (again) but i tried to find the time to draw a present for Freddie. the art block is killing me, which is probably why it didn't work out so well. but i hope you enjoy it! <33

#queen #queen band #queen fanart #freddie mercury art #freddie mercury #happy birthday freddie mercury #freddie mercury fanart

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duckprintspress · 21 days

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Round Table: Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month. Duck Prints Press has to date only published prose fiction, and while some of us do write poetry on the side, it’s generally not our focus. Thus, we thought it’d be fun and interesting to have a discussion about poetry, how poetry has impacted us, and our favorite poems. The people who joined in on the round table chat are: Nina Waters, Tris Lawrence, Shadaras, Zel Howland, boneturtle, E C, Shea Sullivan, theirprofoundbond, and an anonymous contributor.

1. What are your favorite types of poems?

Nina Waters: I tend to like either extremely free form or extremely structured poetry, with nothing in between. I always loved silly poetry (Shel Silverstein…) especially.

Anonymous: Same. I generally like either narrative poems or poems that are about a specific moment. I’m especially fond of reading haiku, though I don’t know how good I am at writing them.

Tris Lawrence: I tend to have favorite writers more than favorite styles. I love the cadence of Shakespeare. I love the imagery of Emily Dickinson (I cannot even count how many times I read the book of poetry of hers that I received for Christmas as a young child). I adored Robert Frost as a child. For modern poetry, Amanda Gorman‘s book was an incredibly wonderful kick in the gut.

Zel Howland: I’ve always had a mixed relationship with poetry – I struggle with understanding figurative language, so often the meaning of poetry escapes me, but I love the technical forms of poetry. This means that I end up being better at writing poetry than reading it. That said, I love silly poems and nonsense poems because they are more about the form than the content! Shel Silverstein and Lewis Carroll come to mind first.

E. C: I love seeing/hearing poetry read aloud. Slam poetry or Shakespearean monologue, the way the act of speaking them gives additional meaning to the words is just *chef’s kiss*. I also love poets (like Silverstein, as Zel mentioned) who use the form to play with the words. Prose can do this, too, but reading or hearing good poetry… it’s like I can feel the words rewiring my brain in real-time.

Shadaras: +1, poetry when performed is absolutely incredible. And it doesn’t need to be slam or a monologue; most poetry when read aloud is fantastic! (Shape poems might lose something, but… that’s aiming for a different style)

Shea Sullivan: I love poetry that viscerally evokes feeling with word choice and has rhythm. I love Rainer Maria Rilke first and last, but also Seamus Heaney and Mary Oliver. I struggle with so many popular poets because the work doesn’t scan for me and I can’t make sense of the rhythm. But the poems that hit take me out at the knees.

Tris Lawrence: Coming back to this discussion this morning, I remembered I should add song lyrics to this… for me, really excellent songs are the best poetry, and some writers (like [Bob] Dylan) I remember more for the poetry of the song than the performance of it. Much like how poetry when performed comes alive, music is that taken to even further down the line. As for poetry being performed, that’s why Shakespeare is so awesome when staged. Sometimes it’s easier to hear the lyricism than to read it. I also often recommend when reading a book of poetry, take it slow, and read one poem aloud per day. This is how I savored Amanda Gorman’s book and how I really got the most out of every poem in that book.

theirprofoundbond: I want to echo what Shade and captainhaterade were talking about with regards to poetry and sound. I took a poetry class in college and when the professor had us read “Player Piano” by John Updike aloud it awakened something in my brain. I have never forgotten that experience and the absolute delight I felt, reading that poem.

When I went to university and took another poetry class, my instructor stressed that we should try reading poetry aloud – to slow you down a bit, to experience the sounds, to get just a little more out of it. He recommended reading it a little more like prose, not pausing at the end of a line if there’s no end-line punctuation. I always do these things now and it’s made poetry feel more accessible to me, and helped me enjoy it more.

Alfred Tennyson also does some great things with sound—no standout favorites just yet because I’m still exploring, but I like “Break, Break, Break”

Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman is really wonderful book of children’s poems about insects, meant to be read aloud by two or more people.

I also love poems that have some specific structure. My favorite is the haiku, but I also really enjoy villanelles, sestinas, and pantoums. Not only do they have specific rhyme schemes but some lines must be repeated in specific places; I admire the skill they take to craft. “Villanelle for the Middle of the Night” by Jacqueline Osherow is a lovely example.

And narrative poems, because it’s so cool to get a story in a small, unique format. “Letter to the Person Who Carved His Initials into the Oldest Living Longleaf Pine in North America” by Matthew Olzmann is one that I found recently that really stands out to me

Nina Waters: Maybe the “best listened to” is why I struggle with it. Understanding and processing spoken stories like that is one of my weaker tricks.

theirprofoundbond: That may be it! It’s not for everyone, but I know it helped me. And I started reading academic stuff aloud to help me focus, and then I started reading my own writing aloud which has helped me improve it in many ways (dialogue, flow, style), and I read my editing assignments aloud because it helps me pick up on little things I might not, if I read silently. But yeah, everyone’s brains work differently so it might not be the trick for everyone – just something to try, perhaps, if it hasn’t been tried before or recently

2. What inspired/convinced you to start reading poetry and did you have any preconceived notions and biases about it before?

Shadaras: as far as how I started reading poetry… well, the thing is that a lot of children’s books are poetry, right? They’re written in rhyme because it’s a good way to help kids learn! So in that way, simply by being someone who loved reading (from a family who loved reading), I was always surrounded by poetry as a kid by the nature of early reader books. I know that I was also introduced to poets who are thought of as poets as I grew up, and generally liked poetry even if I didn’t seek it out much. I wrote poetry as a kid just as much as I wrote prose!

Nina Waters: I’ll own I had some preconceived notions about poetry and reading poetry hasn’t really dispelled them? I’ve always found most “high literary” poetry quite inaccessible. Things like epic poetry (such as Homer) I love and can read no problem, and things like silly poetry (Silverstein, Dr. Seuss) I also love and can read no problem, but the kind of poetry that’s ~deep~ and tends to win accolades, I often feel like my eyes glaze over when I try to read it. I just really struggle with it.

Shadaras: I feel like that’s almost more a problem with the idea of “high literary” mode in general? Because I feel like that about a lot of different kinds of media. It’s like people think that if they struggle to understand what a piece of media is about, that means it’s ~higher art~ or something. (There’s a certain style of movie I call “award bait” and I think it is adjacent to what you’re thinking of with poetry here.) And yes, deep and thematically complex art is fantastic and deserves praise, but there’s also something to be said for praiseworthy works being enjoyable/accessible to the majority of people who encounter it? and that doesn’t seem to factor in to those “high literary” assessments.

Nina Waters: That’s definitely true, and something I used to talk about when I was still doing academic reading and writing. This idea that these ~great minds~ would write these papers, and they weren’t good, they were jargon-laden bullshit. Their sheer inaccessibility would always convince a subset of people that it must be genius, because the alternative would be to admit they didn’t personally understand it and no one wanted to confess that.

With poetry it’s harder but there’s definitely that line between “this is so eloquent and deep” vs. “this literally means NOTHING.” (And with poetry, there’s the added “sometimes the line that is eloquent and deep to one person is exactly the same line that means nothing to someone else and because of the nature of poetry that’s kinda the point and both interpretations are ‘correct'”)

theirprofoundbond: I have been, and still am, a bit intimidated by poetry. A lot of it can be really inaccessible, whether it’s classical or modern. I’m not sure I’ll ever truly grasp the meter stuff, lol. But as with any other written work, poetry can be for anyone. Even if I can’t understand a poem on all levels, it’s okay because it’s still worth exploring and I might find something that resonates with me, or teaches me something, or inspires my own (prose) writing.

3. What can a prose writer learn from reading poetry?

Tris Lawrence: It’s really all about the way the words taste, and how that evokes imagery and sensation and emotion for me. Which is also what I take from it as a prose writer – I’ve always been about the way words feel in my mouth when I write.

Shadaras: I might mostly write prose now, but the poetic instinct is still in my head; it’s very visible (audible?) in descriptive passages I write, because I think about rhythm and shape and sound all the time even in my prose writing.

theirprofoundbond: Reading poetry has inspired me to think more carefully about choice of word, pay attention to how certain emotions are evoked or impacts achieved, and to play with sounds.

Shadaras: I think that reading poetry is a fantastic way to think about metaphor/simile and descriptive language more generally. It also emphasises the rhythm/shape/sound of words and asks for a focus on specificity and thoughtful word-choice to maximize the impact of any given piece. Those elements are just as useful to prose writers as poets! Poets might be able to sustain that in-depth focus across a whole piece (since they usually work in shorter forms), but even if a prose writer only uses that specific attention at points of intense emotion where they really want to ensure there’s an impact, it’s still fantastic.

Anonymous: So I guess what I’m saying is that is that reading poetry will make you a better short story writer.

Shadaras: Yeah, the dividers between poems, prose poems, and prose is… sometimes about framing/intent?

Anonymous: Often I find short stories are structured like poetry, in that the narrative is kind of intentionally picked apart and rearranged to evoke emotion rather than straightforward understanding of the narrative.

Shadaras: And then there’s epic poetry, which is a long-form narrative as well as being poetry!

Anonymous: It’s harder to do that kind of thing with long-form fiction but it does happen occasionally.

Nina Waters: I think reading poetry can really help a prose writer with lyricism and flow.

Zel Howland: Seconded what everyone has said about reading poetry helping with lyricism and rhythm. I think having a good understanding of poetry technique can really develop how your prose manipulates (for lack of a better word) the reader beyond what is in the content – building tension in horror, for example. Great for genre work in general!

Shea Sullivan: From a writing standpoint, poetry helps me improve metaphor and simile by encouraging me to look beyond common comparisons and really dig into the question of what I want to evoke. I agree with everyone else that it helps with rhythm as well.

Anonymous: One thing I will note is that a short story can be very close to poetry and vice versa. Some of my favourite poems are in fact short stories that blur the line between stylized prose and outright poetry. Neil Gaiman has a few short stories that are especially good in this way, for example.

4. Our favorite poets

Many of our favorite poets were already discussed and linked in the above discussion, but here’s a few more…

Nina Waters: I’ve especially enjoyed Silverstein, Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, and T. S. Eliot. I went on a big Eliot kick when I was young cause I saw the musical Cats, and while I didn’t care much for the musical it made me curious about the poems that the musical was based on. I loved Silverstein so much that I memorized a couple of his poems for school. I also memorized a [J. R. R.] Tolkien poem and performed it at a school talent show when I was in middle school, so those plus reading Eliot because of Cats (which I was probably in early HS for?) is how I got started reading poetry for fun instead of just cause I had to.

Shadaras: Some other poets I’ve appreciated whose names haven’t come up yet: Mary Oliver, Ursula Le Guin, Pablo Neruda, Langston Hughes, Allen Ginsberg, Edgar Allen Poe, Sylvia Plath, Robert Graves, W. B. Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, William Carlos Williams (I once wrote a short essay about “The Red Wheelbarrow” for a poetry class wherein I attempted to argue it could be about aliens/ritual sacrifice, because it was funny and I thought the professor would enjoy it, and I was correct about that).

Nina Waters: Langston Huges is i.n.c.r.e.d.i.b.l.e. W.E.B. Du Bois too. (Not his focus but there are a few)

boneturtle: Seconding Rilke. I will also add Annie Dillard.

How about you, dear blog post reader? How would you answer these four questions?

#duck prints press #national poetry month #poetry #poetry month

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acotars · 8 months

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Need to know your thoughts about "Payback's a Witch" after seeing your tags on that edit you made. Because I just finished the book and it's like. so genuinely bad. The Harry Potter ripoffs, the corny banter between 26 year olds who sound like they're 16, the entire premise of hyperbolic trauma from what was at worst a high school breakup....... It was so CRINGE. Also I didn't like that there was so much emphasis on biological family, blood relations and lineage- it was weird to me, idk how to explain.

HI MIMI! i really disliked payback’s a witch. here’s my original review from a few years ago:

I really wanted to like this book, but it lost me a few chapters in and never got me back. It took me over a month of daily reading to finish this book, because it just failed to grip me. My main problems with this one stem from the faults of the main character, Emmy Harlow. Emmy is a witch who left her hometown (and her magic) behind ten years ago after a traumatic breakup, but heads home to the witchy, autumnal Thistle Grove for a once-per-generation magical tournament at the request of her father.

Payback’s a Witch is one of those Emma-like stories, where the main character starts off self-absorbed, pretentious, and largely tuned out to the consequences their actions have on others. Over the course of the book, they’re supposed to learn, face consequences, and make amends. The thing with this one is, Emmy realizes she’s been unfair to her family and her friends, but readers don’t ever really see her change. At the end of the novel, Emmy is still self-absorbed, unthinking of how her actions will affect her family and her friends, and she gets everything she wants, without having to sacrifice anything. Usually in a romance novel, that’s exactly what I would want. But with Emmy, it felt too easy and undeserved.

The romance was lackluster to me, relying on sultry looks and banter that failed to evoke any reaction. I wanted more witchy autumnal town, and less of… whatever this ended up being. Side characters were criminally underdeveloped and one dimensional, which was extra frustrating because there was so much potential for nuance in these characters and this narrative.

This was one of my most anticipated romance reads from 2021, and I’m sad to say I will not be rereading or recommending it to anyone. One star for fun bisexual rep, and another half-star for Emmy’s dad, whose bookish stoic personality really charmed me.

Everything you mentioned, I fully agree with! Contemporary fantasy with emphasis on bloodlines is inherently sketchy (it’s almost like… the egregious (and made up!) concept of blood purity exists outside of fantasy and was the driving ethos for countless genocides and crimes against humanity, and is still informing power structures in our everyday lives that oppress and kill people of color), and it felt like Lana Harper just fully leaned into that concept in this p much all-white town with reckless abandon.

the banter was cringe! and I’ve had to take a break from second chance romances because much like this story (a revenge fantasy, not a second chance), the hinging of a character’s entire adult life on how hard their breakup was at 16/17/18…. it’s exhausting to read about. like go outside! meet new people idk. breakups are challenging and there’s a lot of grief there, but are you honestly telling me your life hasn’t grown enough in a decade to eclipse that teenaged heartbreak? yikes!

emmy’s callousness towards her family really bugged me. especially her mother? in the story emmy’s mother is treated like a nuisance the entire time, even though as far as i remember, she doesn’t do anything on page besides tell emmy how much she’s missed her??

also, listen. i know it’s a revenge story. i get that. still, the whole entire time, i was waiting for a twist. it just seemed reductively simple for the story to be, my boyfriend’s family made him break up with me because i wasn’t good enough for them, so now as a grown woman, i’m going to humiliate that boyfriend and ruin his reputation. like, who’s really at fault here? in the story of two kids who are being manipulated by powerful parents who care more about blood and power than anything else? how is he still the villain? i understand he would seem that way at 16. but at 26? where’s the perspective? the whole entire time i was waiting for what would have been an easily-written redemption of the ex-boyfriend. in reality, the fault lies with the entire system at play, and those in power who instructed their child to break up with his girlfriend. the side plot of the ex dating her friend and breaking her friend’s heart too was messy and poorly-executed, but all it did for me was leave that door open even further! like he must be a decent guy if her friend fell for him too! there must be a misunderstanding here somewhere? i guess in truth i just kept waiting for all the youths of the town to realize they were being played, so they could band together, get revenge on those actually at fault (the magically elite!) and reshape the town without so much emphasis on lineage and blood purity. instead, they humiliate her high school sweetheart (who was also a victim in that scenario!!) and it turns out Emmy Was Actually The Most Powerful All Along Anyway! wow!

the romance in this wasn’t bad it was just lackluster in my opinion. which, in a romance novel…. if you can’t write good characters and your plot is lame and there’s a racist undercurrent to your entire premise AND the romance is boring??? what is supposed to be the selling factor? the witchy autumn town vibe? sucks that this failed at that too

#this got soooooooo long i apologize #but i just kept waiting for this book to be better than it was #i was holding my breath the whole time waiting for the story to prove its own worth #and it just never did!!!#anti rec #lunaathorne #asked and answered

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yutaholic · 2 years

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Jungwoo/Mark’s tweet earlier got me sooo mad I was heated again like so quick after the nj concert the very next day you’re like “back to koreaaaaa💚” like I’m upset bc i am into 2 other groups, all of which I’ve supported since their respective debuts (except for the fact that I’d been around and waited for neos since 2014 smrookies…since their fucking name sounded like a citation in a legal contract, SR14B! That’s right, all the way from Florida, I’ve been down for them since before THEY WERE EVEN “THEM”, THEIR DAMN SELVES!! I remember when Haechan spelled his birth name without a ‘c’ in it, you little muskrats, i— anyway ) but 80% of my attention time and money for the last few years has been to nct, including superm. First it was it was like 50-55%, then it progressed a couple years ago to 65-75, now here we are. To the point that I still care about my favs but all I talk about & most of I listen to & only I voted for, has been nct. On top of that, I’m Black. And was most active on Twitter. Do y’all know how hard it is to be a black ifan to these mfs for over half a decade, sometimes I wonder if im in my right mind cus part of me lookin in the mirror like “bitch u sure u good over there?🤨” 😭

The confidence…the gall, the audacity, the mf TEMERITY of these people to either not gaf enough about the majority of their fans that they’ll pussyfoot around and kiss the feet of Korean nctzens so much that they are actively disrespecting us. A few of them lurk, I know they do, esp Ty. ik cus he’s my bias & what he texts in bubble proves he knows things he wouldn’t be aware of without looking at our tweets. I am so upset with him & I have never been mad enough about anything he’s done as I am rn. If you’ve seen anything Tyongf have said, you know we are a little shocked and a lot disappointed. I’d planned to say sumn but that video showing he was insecure in his position came out so I used my allotted texts on that but the minute he sends smth (3 replies allowed per message of the artist) it’s ON, on.

I remember superhuman era quite well but what strikes me is how large the treatment gap has widened since then. There came to a time where we were lowered another peg (cus we knew we weren’t equal) to please and appease kfans. Then it’s gotten worse and worse when their fandom size jump quite a bit with Kick It but EXPONENTIALLY abroad with Sticker & favorite last year. But the acknowledgement has been less! How long does sm think we will sit & take this from them before we find another group that doesn’t mistreat their fans abroad lmao. One of those I’m into is BTS. Do you think I would’ve been calling radio stations regularly to get & then keep their songs on there, buying the albums in store to help with physicals and doing all the other projects if they treated intl army like NCT treats nctzens outside of Korea🧐?!?? Does NCT and sm think GRAMMY NOMINATIONS came to BTS twice by intl armys getting treated like second class citizens?! LMAOOO chile they have bumped their damn heads.

Atp I want Chris Lee and some other people’s heads on pikes!! Whoever make them type of decisions to shun us!! They really bending over backwards for people who tanked their entire era in anger bc American fans got fan service like taking pics with them on the street & shit?? That just shows how shallow they can be! Clown asses! Usually I’m like “Bubu don’t go on Twitter there aren’t good things there” but rn I’m sooo close to going off that it got me boutta text him to go on Twitter & exactly what to search if he wanna see whats really good in the fandom rn. I’m tired of being understanding & acting like I’m fine and is being the bigger person. I want to evoke emotions, I want them feel upset and worry and FEAR👹 It sounds unhinged and petty but I want them for even just a MINUTE, to have a bodily experience of fright and sadness and the realization that we very can leave in droves! But not boycotting an era and cursing them out, oh no, by legitimately just dropping them. That we CAN leave their asses silently and put another group on the map. We can drop not just the unit but the whole brand, ending that nct Hollywood bullshit RIGHT NOW if they don’t appreciate us being around. We don’t expect to be superior just at least toe the mf line??

It’s funny, they call us grass sometimes bc of our light sticks. I’m all about not feeling insecure or conflicted in the past but…These days? I’d thoroughly enjoy them having an “oh shit…” feeling of despair, and epiphany that if they don’t water ALL the “grass” in their yard, there WILL be noticeably large patches of nothing but dirt and dead plants.

I need you to know that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this ask. You have a way with words. I could feel the rage through my screen. I also felt like I was being scolded even though I did nothing wrong. You know how like when you're in the room and your friend is getting chewed tf out by their mom? That's how I felt for a hot minute lol

I said in an earlier ask that all this ncity discourse has me feeling like I'm on the couch with a bag of popcorn watching my bestie fight with her boyfriend. You are now that bestie and I will cheer you on while you read our men to filth. 👏 also hell yes kill nct hollywood early so we never gotta deal with that shit! hahahaha

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ngl1221 · 11 months

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Does journaling actually work?

If you are like me, journaling sounds like a terrible idea. I am supposed to put down my deepest, darkest thoughts on a piece of paper and somehow it’ll magically improve the problem. Like journaling actually magically makes things better because we write them down.Actually yes.

A study showed that students who journal (about their emotions or day-to-day activities in general) are seen to have an increase in grades. Studies in physiology have observed that journaling improves antibody response, blood glucose level, etc. (http://gratepic.s3.amazonaws.com/Heart_Rate_Variability_and_Inflammatory_Biomarkers.pdf link in case you want to read about it)

1.Benefits of journaling

Avoiding problems

If you have a problem in life, you spend most of the time avoiding problems. Your mind is like- if I can fix something, then I am happy to think about it, when it results in something productive, but I don’t want to think about it unless it moves the needle forward. When you journal about something that is emotionally challenging, it tends to evoke those emotions, this is exactly where we spend our time avoiding. The emotional burden you feel when you journal is less than the actual experience. The experience of journaling is kind of uncomfortable but what it teaches you is how to tolerate discomfort.

Eg. you call your teacher ‘mom’ instead of ‘ma’am’. You continue cringing for days. Now what journaling does is it helps you reduce the cringe. Over a period of time, as you experience more and more of these emotions while you are journaling, the amount of stress decreases. As the stress level goes down, you start to resist negative emotions. Increase in journaling, decreases our avoidance of negative things or things that make us feel bad.

Building a narrative-

Not all humans experiencing trauma will develop PTSD, some experience post traumatic growth. You may have heard cancer patients say that “Cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me, made me realize how amazing life truly is.” Journaling helps you change your perspective and build a more cohesive narrative. You may think “I don’t like looking in the mirror”, “I am a waste of space.” Studies have shown that there is a change in pronoun over a period of time of journaling. You might say “I need to treat myself better” or “This person is not treating me well”. The narrative changes form ‘I’ and ‘they’ to more of a mixture of both. (I remember reading about this, but I don’t know where. If you do know, please tell me). Identifying and understanding the problem is more important than just moving forward and winging everything. It's better than shooting in the dark.

Identify problems-

Therapy or coaching don’t solve problems, they help you understand them and give you a 'why' and 'how' to tackle those problems. Think of it as replay analysis, sit down and think in an adjective, cohesive way what we could be doing better. If you ask someone who just got out of a situation what was wrong they will jump to one reason but on sitting down and thinking about it, they will get to know 10, 000 different possibilities their mind didn’t come up with in that moment. “What are your choices when someone puts a gun to your head? What are you talking about? You do what they say or they shoot you. WRONG. You take the gun, or you pull out a bigger one. Or, you call their bluff. Or, you do any one of a hundred and forty six other things.” (if you know, you know)

2.How to journal?

Studies show that even a single episode of journaling shows a delayed result (improvement or revelation) up to six months away.

It’s difficult to journal in the beginning because we don’t see the benefit right away. It has very delayed benefits that are kind of unexpected.

There is no magic formula, but there needs to be consistency (15 mins-1 hour everyday).

3.What kind of stuff should you journal about?

It doesn’t matter what you journal about, it has some kind of benefit.

But the most efficient(scientifically backed) one is writing about a recent emotional experience.

Read your journal from time to time (so that you can notice the changes unconsciously happening)

If you are afraid that someone might read your journal then don’t be- this age of media has shortened our attention spans, so much that no one would actually find it enticing to read a whole book about someone’s daily thoughts.

You can journal anywhere you want- in your notes, in an app, desktop. But it is preferred to do it by hand. Reasons-it slows down your thought process. If you slow your thoughts down, you are kind of able to sit with them more, you’ll be able to sit with them a little bit. The other reason is that writing commits things to memory.

Now that you know, HAPPY JOURNALING!

#self improvement #self love #journal #self care #self development #my diary

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flowercrowngods · 1 year

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19, 21, 28, 40

oh boy this got so out of hand i have a lot to say apparently 🤡 you did this to yourself 🙏

19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

i think it started with a story about a little girl who was visited by some faeries, about four or six a4 computer-written pages that i then printed and gifted mama for her birthday or something. no, it was before that, handwritten, but i only remember mention of a cat. a chubby cat i think. i definitely started writing these little stories in primary school, but never short stories, it was always works that were way bigger than little me, abandoned after three pages because i moved on to the next. and then in 6th grade or so my friend wanted to write a crime novel with me. god, we had no idea what we were doing. it just occurs to me how deeply rooted these let’s go all out on these characters tendencies are.

why did i start? because it was fun. it was fascinating. it was something people told me i’m good at, writing alternative endings to short stories in school, writing my own fables and short stories, even essays and all that. in primary school my teacher told me i’m gonna be a writer or a teacher. and here i am, on my way to becoming a teacher, and writing some funky little stories sometimes.

writing has always been the thing i just do. in 12th grade half my year was rooting for me going nanowrimo for the first time, and they’d check in every day, and when i told them i made the 50k, they asked how much that is, and when i told them, that awe in their face, that exasperation, that shake of head and a muttered, “you’re crazy”. that’s when i knew i had found my happy place, and if i ever end up writing something of my own, i already know there will be people who have my back, who will not be surprised, who will smile and say, “knew it”. it’s a bit of a thrilling feeling, knowing this.

but still there’s no way that i’m going, i’m just walking. there’s not even a road here, just grass, some hills, it’s freedom and it’s safe and it’s dangerous and devastating and i wonder why i ever set foot on this journey only to round a corner and find out once more, with a smile. there is a version of me, lost to the past, but possibly still out there somewhere, who thinks that evoking emotions is what humans are here on this earth to do. that making people feel joy or anger or sadness or wistfulness or any of that, with the power of stories, is the most base act of humanity — and the fact that i get to do that sometimes on the internet with you people? there’s something deeply humbling about that.

but also i’m just here to fuck around and find out i guess, whatever works

21. Could you ever quit writing? Do you ever wish you could? Why or why not?

i don’t think i could, because there’s just. this itch. this need. the absolute certainty that my brain would eat itself, go into full self-destruct mode if by some external force i were made to quit writing. that’s not to say i think i’m necessarily good at it, in either language, but something about it seems to catch people, and i’m addicted to that. it’s like a drug, i think, learning to master this craft and getting the reactions for it. having people say, with certainly much exaggeration, “this is the best thing i’ve ever read”, it just. makes me understand being alive a bit more.

i frequently wish i could stop this need to write. because needing to write isn’t what will make the words sound good, and breaks are necessary, they are vital. but the brain doesn’t care for that, and i’ll be miserable on the floor without my words, knowing they’ll come back because they always do, but i wish i wouldn’t rely on them so much.

but even so, i think my wish to be able to quit writing isn’t that at all. it’s probably more a painful awareness that my self worth is tied directly to if and what i’m writing, this addiction to creation. i want to stop needing to write, i think.

28. Who is the most delightful character you’ve ever written? Why?

this might come as a surprise, but i love when my characters get to be happy. happy soft ridiculous giddy eddie as he gets in some scenes or in the tattoo shop au? that’s really fucking delightful. delighted characters will make a delighted writer, i think, so i’m gonna stick with that umbrella type answer

40. Please share a poem with me, I need it.

uh. you know i’m not a poet, but i guess i’ll try for you, dingus, even though you’re way better at this than me 🌷 it is, of course, about arson

they liken flames to tongues and i wonder how my name would taste for them. i wonder what they would say. i wonder if they would scream like me.

i wonder if they want to burn or if they’re made to like me.

i wonder what they would feel like on my skin, if warmth had any meaning then or if it were misplaced like me.

silent and still, it’s in my room, a spark waiting to become a blaze. waiting to serve a purpose. waiting to be so much more than it ought to be, yet recognised in its ability.

like me.

#weird asks #ask game answered #beloved dingus #can’t believe you made me write a poem this is a criminal offense to all poems

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elizabethanism · 2 years

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Excerpts from an exquisite letter Roger Ebert wrote to Werner Herzog — "You are the most curious of men . . . "

Dear Werner,

You have done me the astonishing honor of dedicating your new film, "Encounters at the End of the World," to me. Since I have admired your work beyond measure for the almost 40 years since we first met, I do not need to explain how much this kindness means to me. When I saw the film at the Toronto Film Festival and wrote to thank you, I said I wondered if it would be a conflict of interest for me to review the film, even though of course you have made a film I could not possibly dislike. I said I thought perhaps the solution was to simply write you a letter.

But I will review the film, my friend, when it arrives in theaters on its way to airing on the Discovery Channel. I will review it, and I will challenge anyone to describe my praise as inaccurate.

I will review it because I love great films and must share my enthusiasm.

This is not that review. It is the letter. It is a letter to a man whose life and career have embodied a vision of the cinema that challenges moviegoers to ask themselves questions not only about films but about lives. About their lives, and the lives of the people in your films, and your own life.

Without ever making a movie for solely commercial reasons, without ever having a dependable source of financing, without the attention of the studios and the oligarchies that decide what may be filmed and shown, you have directed at least 55 films or television productions, and we will not count the operas. You have worked all the time, because you have depended on your imagination instead of budgets, stars or publicity campaigns. You have had the visions and made the films and trusted people to find them, and they have. It is safe to say you are as admired and venerated as any filmmaker alive--among those who have heard of you, of course. Those who do not know your work, and the work of your comrades in the independent film world, are missing experiences that might shake and inspire them.

I have not seen all your films, and do not have a perfect memory, but I believe you have never made a film depending on sex, violence or chase scenes. Oh, there is violence in "Lessons of Darkness," about the Kuwait oil fields aflame, or "Grizzly Man," or "Rescue Dawn." But not "entertaining violence." There is sort of a chase scene in "Even Dwarfs Started Small." But there aren't any romances.

You have avoided this content, I suspect, because it lends itself so seductively to formulas, and you want every film to be absolutely original.

You have also avoided all "obligatory scenes," including artificial happy endings. And special effects (everyone knows about the real boat in "Fitzcarraldo," but even the swarms of rats in "Nosferatu" are real rats, and your strong man in "Invincible" actually lifted the weights). And you don't use musical scores that tell us how to feel about the content. Instead, you prefer free-standing music that evokes a mood: You use classical music, opera, oratorios, requiems, aboriginal music, the sounds of the sea, bird cries, and of course Popol Vuh.

All of these decisions proceed from your belief that the audience must be able to believe what it sees. Not its "truth," but its actuality, its ecstatic truth.

You often say this modern world is starving for images. That the media pound the same paltry ideas into our heads time and again, and that we need to see around the edges or over the top. When you open "Encounters at the End of the World" by following a marine biologist under the ice floes of the South Pole, and listening to the alien sounds of the creatures who thrive there, you show me a place on my planet I did not know about, and I am richer. You are the most curious of men. You are like the storytellers of old, returning from far lands with spellbinding tales.

I remember at the Telluride Film Festival, ten or 12 years ago, when you told me you had a video of your latest documentary. We found a TV set in a hotel room and I saw "Bells from the Deep," a film in which you wandered through Russia observing strange beliefs.

There were the people who lived near a deep lake, and believed that on its bottom there was a city populated by angels. To see it, they had to wait until winter when the water was crystal clear, and then creep spread-eagled onto the ice. If the ice was too thick, they could not see well enough. Too thin, and they might drown. We heard the ice creaking beneath them as they peered for their vision.

Then we met a monk who looked like Rasputin. You found that there were hundreds of "Rasputins," some claiming to be Jesus Christ, walking through Russia with their prophecies and warnings. These people, and their intense focus, and the music evoking another world (as your sound tracks always do) held me in their spell, and we talked for some time about the film, and then you said, "But you know, Roger, it is all made up." I did not understand. "It is not real. I invented it."

I didn't know whether to believe you about your own film. But I know you speak of "ecstatic truth," of a truth beyond the merely factual, a truth that records not the real world but the world as we dream it.

Your documentary "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" begins with a real man, Dieter Dengler, who really was a prisoner of the Viet Cong, and who really did escape through the jungle and was the only American who freed himself from a Viet Cong prison camp. As the film opens, we see him entering his house, and compulsively opening and closing windows and doors, to be sure he is not locked in. "That was my idea," you told me. "Dieter does not really do that. But it is how he feels."

The line between truth and fiction is a mirage in your work.

Some of the documentaries contain fiction, and some of the fiction films contain fact. Yes, you really did haul a boat up a mountainside in "Fitzcarraldo," even though any other director would have used a model, or special effects. You organized the ropes and pulleys and workers in the middle of the Amazonian rain forest, and hauled the boat up into the jungle. And later, when the boat seemed to be caught in a rapids that threatened its destruction, it really was. This in a fiction film. The audience will know if the shots are real, you said, and that will affect how they see the film.

I understand this. What must be true, must be true. What must not be true, can be made more true by invention. Your films, frame by frame, contain a kind of rapturous truth that transcends the factually mundane. And yet when you find something real, you show it.

You based "Grizzly Man" on the videos that Timothy Treadwell took in Alaska during his summers with wild bears. In Antarctica, in "Encounters at the End of the World," you talk with real people who have chosen to make their lives there in a research station. Some are "linguists on a continent with no language," you note, others are "PhDs working as cooks." When a marine biologist cuts a hole in the ice and dives beneath it, he does not use a rope to find his way back to the small escape circle in the limitless shelf above him, because it would restrict his research. When he comes up, he simply hopes he can find the hole. This is all true, but it is also ecstatic truth.

In the process of compiling your life's work, you have never lost your sense of humor. Your narrations are central to the appeal of your documentaries, and your wonder at human nature is central to your fiction. In one scene you can foresee the end of life on earth, and in another show us country musicians picking their guitars and banjos on the roof of a hut at the South Pole. You did not go to Antarctica, you assure us at the outset, to film cute penguins. But you did film one cute penguin, a penguin that was disoriented, and was steadfastly walking in precisely the wrong direction--into an ice vastness the size of Texas. "And if you turn him around in the right direction," you say, "he will turn himself around, and keep going in the wrong direction, until he starves and dies." The sight of that penguin waddling optimistically toward his doom would be heartbreaking, except that he is so sure he is correct.

But I have started to wander off like the penguin, my friend.

I have started out to praise your work, and have ended by describing it. Maybe it is the same thing. You and your work are unique and invaluable, and you ennoble the cinema when so many debase it. You have the audacity to believe that if you make a film about anything that interests you, it will interest us as well. And you have proven it.

With admiration, Roger

#Roger Ebert #Werner Herzog #letter #letters #film directors #film critic #film #kino #cinema

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graceshouldwrite · 2 years

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Top 3 Poetry Mistakes to Avoid

instagram: @ grace_should_write

DISCLAIMER: These are my personal takes applicable to MAINSTREAM poetry!

If you want to just write for yourself with no need of validation from things like competitions or literary magazines, FEEL FREE TO IGNORE THESE, PLEASE! /gen

Hey writers! Poetry is one of the most undercovered topics in fiction writing communities, so I hope this post helps add some value to your writing journey :)

Now, here we go—top 3 poetry mistakes to avoid!

∘₊✧────── ☾☼☽ ──────✧₊∘

1. Too much abstract language

This is the “show, don’t tell” version of poetry!

Especially in mainstream poetry currently, the poet is expected to convey ideas through very specific imagery.

This is why poets who rely too much on abstract language like “democracy,” “justice,” “love,” or “freedom” are rarely featured in competitive publications.

Instead of saying “I’m in love,” think about WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE!

Think about the sensations, such as how your heartbeat pulses faster, blood and warmth rush to your face, or how you breathe a bit quicker when you approach the person you love.

Rather than talking about “freedom,” DEPICT IT IN IMAGES! Is it the shattering of chains? The way you are free to sing any song you wish? Does it remind you of the wind, the mountains, or maybe a bird?

What about “justice?” Common images include scales, a blindfolded woman, a sword, the motif of judge, jury, executioner, and many other ones.

Basically, ask yourself: WHAT DOES _____ LOOK LIKE? FEEL LIKE?

Greatly consider imagery and sensation! Here is a non-exhaustive list of things you can focus on:

smell

particular sweet scent? familiar aroma? evoke something specific, like your mother’s slightly burnt brownies, or the lingering of rain on dry soil

sight

colour, shape, texture, a specific thing? person? what does it / do they look like?

touch

not just from your hands, but anywhere else on your body. does your neck strain against an iron clamp? do their fingers brush against your arms, sending tingles up your spine?

sounds

what type of sound is it? a clanging? the harmonious tinkling of wind chimes; the dissonant wails of a desolate crowd? what sort of emotions does it evoke in you?

taste

a very distinct and underused sense! for example, if you want to paint the picture of blood and just describe something like a copper / metallic taste on someone’s tongue, readers may immediately associate it with blood

emotions

but even when describing them, USE A MIX OF ALL SENSES! as examples, grief might be a very heavy, paralyzing feeling that’s akin to Atlas straining under the sky, while giddiness feels like gliding on water or flying through the sky as the wind tousles your hair

Remember, THE KEY IS TO BE SPECIFIC! SHOW, DON’T TELL!

Try to IMPLY what you mean by using heavily connotative language and painting very specific images!

Most of the beauty in poetry is in subtlety and creativity :)

2. Mixed Metaphors

Although this entire list is based on common mistakes, this one is definitely most common among people trying to sound skilled.

Mixed metaphors are comparisons between things so unrelated that it sounds more uneducated than trailblazing.

This is often produced when a writer tries to combine two metaphors, but ends up with something totally ridiculous. Hence, it’s mixed.

The line may be blurred for certain things, but there are various OBVIOUS examples such as some that I will add here:

“Don’t beat a dead horse in the mouth.”

beating a dead horse + look a gift horse in the mouth

“It’s easy; it’s not rocket surgery.”

it’s not rocket science + it’s not brain surgery

“I’m not the sharpest crayon in the shed.”

sharpest tool in the shed + brightest crayon in the box

Not only do mixed metaphors obscure meaning; they make the writer sound far less skilled than intended!

3. Unintended Connotations

Aside from mixed metaphors, however, considering the connotation and logical flow of imagery / words is extremely important.

For example, maybe you want to evoke feelings of deep sadness in the reader while using the image of the ocean.

Painting the image of a calm, sunny ocean with barely any turbulence and the bustle of a nearby harbour might be less effective than an image like…

a lone sailor walking along the beachside as he watches rags wash up the cloudy shore.

also invokes loneliness

the remnants of a shipwreck, like wooden planks, cracked boards, rusted metal parts, or a torn sail emerging from the waves on a sunny day

also invokes eeriness

the personification of the ocean as an entity who lunges for the sky, reaching its waves like watery arms up to the moon at night, desperate for an embrace

also invokes longing

These are just a few examples of what you could do with a single, specific image alone.

Think about all the ways you could invoke unique emotions by carefully considering the connotations of your words!

I’ll make a separate post soon more on this subject, because there’s just SO much to cover regarding connotations :)

∘₊✧────── ☾☼☽ ──────✧₊∘

I will be making a part two because of the sheer number of tips there are! Thank you guys so much for checking this post out <333

Let me know if you have any questions through responses or re-blogging, or DM me at the instagram at the top.

Happy writing, and have a great day!

- grace <3

#writers on tumblr #writing #writer #booktok #novel #writeblr #writerslife #poetry #writers and poets #poets on tumblr #writergram #ya fantasy #young adult #ya books

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th-edreamer · 1 year

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Eros, Ludus, Pragma - The Many Faces of Love.

Late December Evening - 07/12/22

"I'm more than confident in my ability to pleasure you until you're satiated. You deserve that much. But after we're done, I insist. Let me run you a bath, remind you of the love that you deserve. Listen to the sound of my voice, as you lay here submerged take the deepest breath that you've taken all day and as you exhale each time, release the tension from your forehead, then your jaw, your shoulders, your arms & your hands and then your legs and feet. Imagine your self melting into the water. Now that you're a bit more relaxed, pay attention to the sensation of me gently soaping your skin. Feel every bit of my love channeled into my touch." Even in my highest arrogance I'm humbled by this love and moved to deep emotions by the thought of being deemed deserving of your time, your presence, your love. I see God in you, hold my hand look deeply into my eyes, that love you feel peering into your soul is simply a reflection of what I see in you. You evoke wonders, you ignite the magic of fables.

"Sorry, I got lost in thought for a moment. Would you like to stay in the bath a bit longer, if not. Let me help you out, then dry your skin for you. I'll be right back, don't be afraid to stare as I walk away my love."

You don't know it, but I've been making playlists of your favorite songs, this one I've made just for moments like these. I know what else is would be ideal in this moment. I'd light some scented candles and quickly heat some coconut oil so that I can massage your body. Fuck, I love this woman. I can hear you singing along, I bet you're going to point in my face and sing to me when I get back to you.

"I'm back. Look at you with your fine ass self, laying there just looking like my wife to be."

Fuck, I'm getting turned on again. Focus! You lil freak. Laughs to myself

Nothing pleases me more than being able to please you.

I kiss you on your shoulders, gently, but also with seduction. You've already grown accustomed to how sexual I can be. I kiss your neck then your lips and then finally your forehead before proceeding to return to my initial plan. Slowly I pour the oil upon your skin. A student of your body, I attentively witness every reaction; the curling of your toes, the releasing of your pelvis paired with the ease of your posture. "You're a lot more relaxed than when you got home 2 hours ago. I love that I can be this to you. Loving you makes me feel as if I've lived a full life. As if I've known the contentment of 100 years."

Receiving love expressed through words aren't really one of your top love languages but you're aware that it's one of my most grand expressions of love, so you make the conscious efforts to remember to express gratitude for them.

As I massage your body, every touch is intentional. I love feeling the sensation of your skin rubbing against mine. I'm aware of the different levels of sensitivity associated with each part of your body. I know where it's tense because that's where you hold your stress. I know where requires me to go deeper and I also know the areas that are ticklish which means you'd prefer if I'd just gently rub there. Honestly, some moments I feel as if I know you better than I know myself to be honest. You're my muse after all.

When I finished, you sit at the edge of the bed, staring at me. There's communication that supersedes words, and in this moment I can hear you as loud as the thoughts in my head, beyond that I can feel you. It feels as if you said, "Is this what it's like to feel safe?"

Impulsively, I kneel at your feet, bending toward them, kissing them. Playfully I kiss them a few more times. Then I look up at you, and whisper "even a King bows at the feet of his Queen. I love you."

D. Stewart

Agape

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projecthipster · 8 months

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Radiohead - OK Computer

Transport, motorways and tramlines / Starting and then stopping / Taking off and landing / The emptiest of feelings / Disappointed people / Clinging on to bottles

This is a big day for the blog! Working through the lists, I’ve been excited to get to the albums. Music is such a major part of Hipsterdom, it almost felt wrong to not yet have any album review here.

So I’m going to start out by committing full on Music Internet suicide. This is the first on the list, so it’s the one I’m doing, and I have to be honest with myself and the 0 people reading this:

I don’t really get what the big deal is with Ok Computer.

Before you get the pitchforks– well, no, carry on, but before you set them on fire– I do think it’s a good album. It has its strengths, which I want to focus in on. But first or second of all time for decades running according to Rate Your Music? You’re telling me this droning is better than Abbey Road or Kind of Blue or Dark Side of the Moon or In the Aeroplane Over the Sea or Funeral or Illinois or Helplessness Blues or…? Am I being gaslit by a quarter-century of Music Internet? I get the feeling that I’d like Ok Computer and the entire Radiohead discography more if everyone else liked it less (how's that for hipster.) If this was just known as a Good Album, which it is, I wouldn’t feel this pressure to understand why Radiohead fans in general think that Thom Yorke’s mumbling makes for The Greatest Band Ever.

So, let’s just try to unplug and listen.

This is 90s Gen X disillusionment not-quite-grunge type of media, which always feels a little poorly aged, though at its best you get stuff like Fight Club, Alex Garland’s The Beach, Nirvana, and David Foster Wallace. I think what keeps Radiohead from reaching those heights is its unwillingness most of the time to have any fun with the sanding belts of corporate life. Ok Computer’s best moments come from breaking out of the drone and playing a bit with its form and melody, allowing for moments that can actually be remembered. Those moments also define the theme or concept inasmuch as there’s any commitment to one, evoking digital isolation and control. I know this has been pointed at as prophetic, and, yeah, I can see that, though of course more contemporary art actually made in our Age of Tech-Corporate Dopamine does it in a more relevant way. There’s the early experimenting with vocaloids in “Paranoid Android.” There's the jazzy influence and alien abduction plot of “Subterranean Homesick Alien,” even if it’s a bit of an unwarranted dig at Bob Dylan to have that allusory title on a song that has nothing to do with his masterpiece.

As I listen to the album for the second or third time, I’ll admit that the melodies stand out better after a few listens. “Exit Music For a Film” is the grandest composition, building from the acoustic intro to a crescendo that the rest of the album could learn something from, appropriate given it was originally written for a Shakespeare adaptation. “Let Down” almost has, perish the thought, a hook with a tune, and thanks to those opening lines quoted at the top of the post, is one of the best melancholy train songs (a crucial mood to have in your library– note one of the best, it's nothing on Vashti Bunyan's "Train Song.") Then there's the very symbolic duel between acoustic guitar and synthesizer at the end. “Karma Police” has its entrancing piano runs, which lead into the best moment of the album, “Fitter Happier.” The synthesizer absolutely victorious, sounding like a breaking-down sci-fpropagandic indoctrination reel into suburban mundanity, hinting hauntingly at a receiver of the message who plucks wings off of moths in apathetic sociopathy, this is a genuinely haunting and memorable piece of art, and I do think it’s one of the best “songs” of the ‘90s, precisely because it stretches that definition a little.

Pragmatism not idealism

saith the robot masters. If that isn't the antithesis to all hipster ideology!

"Fitter Happier" is such a climax that it’s a bit disappointing to return to Thom Yorke’s nasal whine. I recognize what that whine adds to the songs, but for some reason it just doesn’t work for me as well as his contemporary Mangums and Meloys. Maybe it’s because I can’t actually hear most of the lyrics? Speak up, sir.

Anyway, we return from the fascinating netherworld of “Fitter Happier” into the regular Radiohead world with “Electioneering,” a pretty bombastic song that starts with a cantering Beatlesy guitar riff and builds quickly into big-sounding rock. The only other remotely memorable moment on the back half is the pleasantly pretty, lyrically ironic “No Surprises,” a song good enough to almost make me like Yorke’s vocals. Sadly “Climbing Up the Walls” has nothing to do with top-roping. "The Tourist" is a satisfactory closer, with its buildup and thesis refrain of "hey, man, slow down," delivered better than it sounds here.

I think I need to listen to Ok Computer on a train through the city at night. This is definitely night train music, and sitting at home in the incessant prairie sunlight, this doesn’t feel like the right way to appreciate it.

Finally, apparently this album was recorded in a haunted mansion in the English countryside, which I love. That's worth some credit in itself.

I give this hipster album four pigs in cages on antibiotics out of five.

Because even though it's growing on me, Neon Bible is still better.

Project Hipster is a futile and disorganized attempt to dive into the world of things that the internet has at some point claimed "are hipster," mostly through ListChallenges search results.

This review comes from the fifth list, The Hipster's Guide to Music.

Stay deck.

#radiohead #music #hipster #indie rock #indie #indie music #alternative music #alternative rock

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selfdefensegearco · 7 years

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Check Out This Fantastic Post Just Published on https://selfdefensegearco.com/personal-protection/lessons-on-politics-and-tactics-from-the-osu-terrorist-attack/

Lessons on Politics and Tactics from the OSU Terrorist Attack.

Just before 10 am on November 28, 2016 the emergency management division of Ohio State University tweeted a warning about an active shooter on the OSU campus. As is always the case with dynamic violent events, the details were muddied. This isn’t a surprise. Eye witness reports are sketchy and it is a difficult task for authorities to piece the details together to provide an accurate picture of a spontaneous event like this would be spree killer. It makes sense to try to understand the facts about a situation before drawing conclusions, but at the same time, many of the facts don’t really matter. Especially if you find yourself in the middle of an attack perpetrated by a spree killer. I understand the frustration that has arisen in the pro-Second Amendment community with media reports of this event as an “active shooter”. It seems to be an almost intentional attack on guns. Many are right to point out that guns aren’t the issue here. Instead it is the will to do harm to innocent people in order to evoke fear into a population and force change. Terrorism. A logical error is keeping people afraid, unnecessarily. The 18 year old Somali born immigrant and those like him want to hurt you. It really doesn’t matter why. It is just a fact. They want you to be afraid and to live a life of fear. They want you to worry about sending your child to school and off to college. They want you to worry about going shopping for the holidays, and about flying on 9/11 and every other day. In some ways, the battle they are waging has been working. We can see the fear in social media sound bytes: Odd, this terrorist didn’t have a gun. Again, interesting conclusion. No victims died, the terrorist didn’t have a gun, and the hero police officer did stop the event. These opinions and the thousands that are shared like them aren’t helping. In fact, they are perpetuating the belief that the only thing that can stop the attack of a madman is a good guy with a gun. In this case it happened to turn out that way, but if the Columbus PD hadn’t been able to respond with such speed, this problem would have been solved in some other creative fashion. Don’t get me wrong. I believe the Second Amendment applies to college campuses and those that live, work and spend time on those campuses just like it applies every where else. What people seem to be forgetting is that just because their 2A rights have been restricted in some places, the right to self-defense, a human right granted by the very same creator, hasn’t been stripped away. Remember that frustration with media reports of the “active shooter”? GUNS AREN’T THE PROBLEM! Guns aren’t the the problem and they don’t have to be the solution. That is the reason I don’t agree with the fear and confusion that spawns these messages and spreads the wrong idea about defending ourselves from attackers like this Somali terrorist and even spree killers that find more success in their evil. In fact, if we apply some logic to the situation the actions of the terrorist give us the power to know that there is no reason to have additional fear in a “Gun Free Killing Zone” compared to any other location. Guns aren’t the problem and I want everyone to understand that a gun doesn’t have to be the solution. A gun can be the solution and in this case it was, but the solution can be a fire extinguisher to the back of the skull, or a coordinated group rushing the attacker, controlling his weapon and stomping out the fight, or an astute driver crushing the attack and the attacker with their trendy hybrid. Maybe the solution that matters most to you and your family will be a medical response in the immediate aftermath of an attack. Nope. This wasn’t an active shooter. Even if it was, the gun wouldn’t be the problem. Instead, this coward sowed his evil with an automobile and a kitchen knife. The seeds weren’t related to the tools. Instead, they were born in the commitment and intent of his evil soul. In the same manner, the solution isn’t dependence on a specific tool. Instead, the solution is your commitment and intent to stop a violent attacker by whatever means you have available to you. If the right tool for the job is a gun and you have a gun, great, get to work. If however, you find yourself in the path of a spree killer with no gun because of laws, your own choice, or any reason in between, it is time to get to work regardless. Willingness to act, regardless of the tools available, is the real solution. I want the students, faculty and staff of The Ohio State University to have their Second Amendment Rights fully restored. In the mean time, if you find yourself on the OSU campus or anywhere else where concealed carry is restricted, take the advice of Rob Pincus and “Don’t confuse your politics with your tactics.” The fact that you don’t have a gun doesn’t make you HELPLESS any more than the terrorist on campus in Columbus was HARMLESS. When it comes to politics, work for change that you believe needs to occur. When it comes to tactics, train, develop the skills, willingness and commitment to act, and if the situation arises, get to work regardless of the tools at hand and encourage others to do the same. -Paul Carlson The post Lessons on Politics and Tactics from the OSU Terrorist Attack. appeared first on Personal Defense Network. CRIME & ASSAULT ARE EVERYWHERE TODAYWATCH THE VIDEO BELOW & DEFEND YOURSELF CLICK HERE for More information on theTaser Pulse Black w/Laser

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imathers · 1 year

Video

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Top 40: Szun Waves — Earth Patterns

I had literally never even heard of these guys until I ran into the Dusted review of this record, and honestly I don’t remember what made me check it out (I read pretty much everything we put up, and definitely can’t keep up with checking everything out, even just everything that sounds interesting). Whatever made me give it a chance, I’m glad it did, because this stuff is fucking transcendent. There are a lot of things you could do with a sax/synth/drum trio but I don’t think I’d get quite as much out of most of them as I do from Earth Patterns. Not surprised either to see James Holden contributing to one track; somehow this has, like his The Inheritors (a real touchstone for me), a rough-hewn, natural-world-evoking feel. Also, funny coincidence, two albums with 7 tracks apiece today! This one now has three “bonus tracks” on Bandcamp, but they weren’t in there when I bought it, so I haven’t heard them yet.

#2022 review #music #szun waves

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jezfletcher · 1 year

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1000 Albums 2022: Albums #5-1

Top 5 time! All of these are worth a listen, at least to the representative tracks here! Remember, these represent the top 0.5% of all the music I listened to this year. Give them a try, and let me know what you think.

5. Christopher Tin, Voces8 & The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - The Lost Birds (contemporary choral)

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First up today, we have a really surprising but also deeply beautiful album from composer Christopher Tin, who is largely known for his work on video games. Here, he works with contemporary choir Voces8 on a cycle of pieces surrounding and evoking birds and birdsong. He sets different text to music, including the poems of Emily Dickinson into familiar but exquisite shifting harmonies. There's something wonderful about the way things swell and resolve here, and it turns this music into something exquisite. My top track is indeed a Dickinson poem, The Saddest Noise, which is undoubtedly more poignant for the fact that it's so bittersweet in content. You'll like it if you like: choral music, epic video-game music, and the vast overlap between the two.

4. Vancouver Sleep Clinic - Fallen Paradise (vapor pop)

Vancouver Sleep Clinic · Love You Like I Do

There are always a few albums each year that I really love, but which I may have very easily. Despite listening to 1000 albums every year, there are ten times as many which I don't listen to, even if I screen them. Vancouver Sleep Clinic's Fallen Paradise is one of those albums which very nearly slipped through the cracks—as it was a substitute added in at the last minute by Sam one week when we crossed over and both picked another album. I'm so fortunate he did, because this ended up blitzing the week it was in, and it finds itself here as my #4 of the year. It's a atmospherically beautiful album—finding itself with shifting harmonies, ambient dreampop instrumentation, and ethereal falsetto vocals—you almost get a blues groove underneath some of these tracks. But for all that, it has a wonderfully familiar pop rock structure to the compositions, so while it's taking you on a journey, you're comfortable in the swells and troughs. I love this kind of thing, and I could highlight about half the album as "my particular favourites". Nightfall has some wondeful harmonic shifts in it, Fallen Paradise reminds me of "artist of the year 2019" ViVii, and The Flow manages almost to feel like rock while sacrificing none of its atmosphere. I'll call out here Love You Like I Do, which feels like the most emblematic of the whole. You'll like it if you like: ViVii, dreampop, vapor pop, being assessed for apnoea treatment in British Columbia.

3. Ellevator - The Words You Spoke Still Move Me (indie pop rock)

The Words You Spoke Still Move Me by Ellevator

This one for a long time felt as though it was going to be my Album of the Year. It's a banging album of banging tracks, and albums like that have commonly gone on to top the rankings. We have the pop excellence of the opening number Claws which still remains my top track, or the sultry Charlie IO, or the slightly heavier Slip with a riff based on vibraphone chords. They also has the feeling of one of those bands who are just an album away from really being launched into the stratosphere—one of their tracks features on the next hit TV series, and suddenly everyone knows Ellevator. It's familiar and has all the key elements of popular music, but it also manages to spin it in a way that sounds like they've found their own distinct style. So why is this only #3 of the year, and not higher? To be honest, while this is a great collection of tracks, it lacks something in the whole—the tracks themselves make the album good, but there's not something more than that in the collection. The two (only two) albums above it this year manage to transcend being "a great collection of songs" and become "a great album". There's a difference. Still, this is a fabulous selection of music, and I'll give you Slip as a sample of it. You'll like it if: you want to be ahead of the next big thing, or if you want to be able to lament the fact that Ellevator never really struck it big in 10 years' time.

2. Dim Gray - Firmament (art rock)

Firmament by Dim Gray

In the end, I think my top albums were pretty easy to identify. There were three albums that absolutely gripped me on the first listen: Ellevator's, this one, and the one still to come. Dim Gray hail from Oslo, where they put a cold Nordic spin on atmospheric prog, and evoke a sense of vastness in their use of 70s style synths to build a layered symphonic experience. We start with the lightly shuffled Mare which then turns into the segmented but symphonic darkness of Ashes. But more than that, this is an album where everything is crafted for a whole listening experience. While there are exultant moments in individual tracks, they feel like they're in service of the album—even tracks which take on folk elements (like Cannons) feel like a capricious side-plot that serves as a comparison. Overall, it's huge and monumental. My favourite track is probably Abalus | In Time which has an otherwordly lyrical dance mixed with the wash of a thunderstorm rolling in over the ocean. I'll leave that one for now though, and stick with Ashes which has a better sampling of everything the album has to offer. You'll like it if you like: atmospheric prog; but I honestly feel like even if you specifically don't like atmospheric prog, you'll find something in this.

1. The Blackheart Orchestra - Hotel Utopia (progressive folk)

Hotel Utopia by The Blackheart Orchestra

As a final example of what a great boon At The Barrier is to me as a source of new music, I came across The Blackheart Orchestra solely via At The Barrier, and their monthly Spotify listener count sits currently at about 344, so it was unlikely I would have bumped into it otherwise. But I'm so glad I found it because this is without a doubt my top album of the year. Nothing, as it happens, was ever going to top this album from the moment I first heard it. This was a behemoth for me—I thumbed every single track on my first pass through the album, and had at least three tracks which I identified as potential Tracks of the Year (all from the one album!). Moreover, on relistening I was just greeted time and time again with a track that made me shiver with delight. It flows so wonderfully between orchestral folk, to dreampop, to chamber pop all with the sense of progression and scope you might get in art rock. There's also a distinction provided by the ethereal vocals of Chrissy Mostyn. Compositionally, this shows off so much inspiration and brilliance, and I find myself just letting myself get enveloped by it time and time again. I really do think this is an album that's up there with some of the very best we've listened to in the music project, including some of the all time classics (even though it's foolish to do that—I'd only be setting myself up for disappointment). While the album is brilliant in its entirety, it's also filled with individual moments of brilliance: the tempo-shifting, atmospheric and slightly menacing Alive, the harpsichord-toting Safe with its unstable vocal harmonies, the driving rock of Astronaut, or the surprise fucking sleazy sax solo in A Dangerous Thing. That last one is the one I'll leave you with—it's not all that distinctive of the album as a whole, but it will give you a example of the type of delights you will encounter if you take the time to spend with this album—truly my favourite album of the year. You'll like it: and that's all I have to say about it. That's it for the year of albums. I'm still going to post my Top Tracks (probably in one shot) in the next couple of days, as well as a big list of all my favourite music in order (I have about 100 albums and 200 tracks ranked), with playlists available for all of them. Until then, enjoy!

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