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xmenshenanigans · 3 years

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Hey, it's me again, lol!

Well I've been thinking about this pretty a lot and, I don't know if this is your kind of post, but I was wondering who would be like date someone of x-family, but you are an outsider. Like... not of other country or other necessarily human, but... I mean they live in a school and almost don't get out but to stop villains, so they are probably in their own world inside the school. I really hope you got it because I made a mess to explain.

Anyway, how would be to date a member of x-family begin an outsider?

I think I understand!

I did my best to answer, but I may have gone more in depth than you were thinking. I’m not sure exactly who you mean by X-Family, because they’re all one big family. So, I added a lot of people!

NOTE: I did not put Erik and Charles in because they are kind of the parents of X-Family, and you specifically asked for X-Family. I don’t know if the parents would date anyone besides the other.

I don’t really do character x reader stuff, but this was a fun prompt. I hope I cover everything! Tell me what you think—feedback is appreciated! As always, thank you so much for the ask. Keep them coming! They are a lot of fun!

WANDA MAXIMOFF– Wanda likes domesticity. We saw that in WandaVision! I think you would likely meet her at the movie theatre, or a coffee shop. She can be a bit of a sap for things like that. She would be closed off at first, but if you could make her laugh, she would fall pretty fast. After that, it would be drive-in movies with popcorn fights in the front seats, references to sitcoms that the two of you watched together, and other fun dates (playing Twister, making cupcakes together, pretending to be witches and/or a witch and wizard attending Hogwarts together, etc.). Wanda might even show off her magic a bit to make you smile! It would be very two-way. Both of you would get a lot out of the relationship. Charles would likely dote over you if you could make Wanda smile. He would be the parent that constantly asks Wanda how her girlfriend/boyfriend is doing. Erik would probably be skeptical until he saw you making Wanda happy. Pietro would play lots of jokes on you to see how you react—do you take it well, or get mad? That would determine how he views you.

PIETRO MAXIMOFF— Pietro does have a life outside of the mansion. He gets away every moment he can, and because he’s so fast, there’s nothing his parents can do to stop him. You would probably be a friend of his that he met on one of his excursions from the mansion. It would start as just a friendship. But then friendship would probably turn into fun practical jokes that you could both laugh at. Karaoke nights would start to get later and later as the two of you refused to watch the clock and just spent time with one another. Halloween would be a lot of fun—I think Pietro would probably want to do a couple costume. He would refuse to call it that, though. Everyone else would meet you first as a friend, and then the psychics (Jean and Charles) would catch on that there was something more to it. They would make lighthearted fun of the two of you, but because they are both so caring, they would also take you under their wings, so to speak. Erik, on the other hand, may threaten you if you hurt his son. And Wanda would probably judge you.

JEAN GREY— Jean is studying to be a doctor, and I assume she still goes to classes outside of the Xavier Mansion. In order to get her attention, you would need to prove that you don’t like her for looks. She has had a rough love life, and they always seem to want her because she’s pretty. If you could prove to Jean that you like her because she’s funny, CRAZY smart, and fun to be around, then she would start inviting you to things. If you let her make the first move, she would probably like you even more. Dates would include long drives where the two of you could talk about anything and everything, book store dates where you would buy each other books, and the occasional food fight. Jean has a fun side that she rarely shows: she likes to be a kid, too, not just a superhero that studies medicine. She likes to make a mess, dance around, and stay up all night telling scary stories. If you were into that kind of thing, Jean would be a lifelong lover. She’s very heart-to-heart. Erik would probably look at you and nod slowly, because he could see the love in Jean’s eyes. Charles would be the skeptical one here. He would not want to see Jean get hurt, and it would take a few weeks for him to warm up. The other kids would probably adore you—after all, you would be someone totally new that can bring out the good in just about anyone.

RAVEN DARKHOLME— Would You Date Me? That was the song (yes, from the soundtrack of X-Men: First Class) that Raven would think when she met you. You would probably meet her on the battlefield. Raven is attracted to bad boys/girls. You would probably be a villain, and she would be a reformed hero. She would meet you and want to know more. You would not hurt her in battle because you have a softer side, and she would want to understand why. That would lead to her sneaking out of the mansion in the middle of the night to meet with you in various places. The dates would include was-that-fighting-or-flirting and a lot of heart-to-heart talking. Raven needs body positivity, and if you gave it to her, she would be eternally thankful. When you eventually would meet the rest of X-Family, it would be a little awkward... you would have tried to kill everyone in the room multiple times. Charles forgives easily, so he would accept you quickly. Erik has been in your position before, so he would like you, too. The other kids might take some time though!

ORORO MUNROE— Ororo used to be a pickpocket, and I think you would likely meet her by trying to pickpocket her. She would see you and decide that she wants to help you. You would start by meeting up for coffee and lunch where she can help you overcome your desire to steal. After that, you would open up and start to trust her more, but you would also want to spend more time with her. She would meet up with you at any time, whenever you needed her. Dates would include dancing in the rain and Ororo taking you up into the clouds to watch the sun set. She would teach you to garden and give you self-worth until you no longer felt the desire to steal to get by. The others would accept you very easily—if Ororo likes you, you have to be good.

SCOTT SUMMERS— Scott is very traditional. He would probably rescue you during battle—maybe a stone tower was going to fall on you or something, and he blasted it away. He likes to be the hero. After that, the two of you would start meeting up in all the cliche ways. He would take you to the movies or out to food. He would throw pebbles at your window, and send you long texts about how beautiful you are. Scott has gone through many lovers before, but the others would see the way he looks at you through his visor and quickly decide that you’re one of the better ones.

KURT WAGNER— Kurt is super religious, and I suspect you would meet him through church. He would be very shy, but if you were able to look past the blue, two-fingered, tailed exterior, you would find the softest of hearts. He would bring you flowers with small poems attached, and take you on short vacations—teleporting, not traveling—to the beach or to the big city. He would like to see your smile. There would be a lot of surprise gifts, too. If you ever needed him, he would teleport to get there as fast as he could. The others would think it is adorable that you make Kurt smile so much. They would invite you over all the time, for dinner and for game nights.

ROGUE— The poor woman is so touch-starved. You would probably meet her on an occasion that she snuck out, the little rebel. She would like to give you hugs (without skin to skin contact) and run her hand through your hair. The two of you would spray paint walls and have water gun fights as often as you could. She would probably leave you gifts outside your door on a weekly basis. Because she is, well, Rogue, I doubt she would tell the others about you for a couple of months. She would not want to make a scene. She’s also just rebellious like that. When she finally did, though, she would get a talking-to from Charles. Erik would want to meet you immediately, because he would think that you sound awesome. Charles would come around to that view, too. The other kids would probably be a little wary... until they met you.

KITTY PRYDE— NERDS! She is such a geek, and you would probably meet her through robotics or something. It would start as a school girl’s crush, complete with sending one another notes and giving each other looks when no one else is around. Once you got together (she would probably make the first move, but if you beat her to it, she would definitely say yes), she would make bad pick up lines and puns all the time. She would meet up with you to do things like fly drones over restricted areas. When she would take you to meet her family, she would make a big deal out of it. She’d make sure that it was a formal dinner with everyone on their best behavior, and... yeah. The others would find it endearing, and with a good first impression, they would easily accept you into the family.

LOGAN— This one is fun. Logan is a lone wolf. You would likely meet him on a separate mission, possibly in Japan. You would need to chase after him. He would not make the first move. If you chowed him that you really cared for him, then he would start to get protective and try to keep you safe. There would be a lot of late nights drinking and whatnot... I’ll leave the ‘whatnot’ up to your imagination. I mean, this is Logan. But he would love you very deeply. Seldom does Logan fall in love, so when he does, it’s a big deal. That being said, it would probably be a long distance relationship. You would probably not meet the rest of X-Family for a couple of years, until the relationship was solid and he wanted to take you back to the States to meet everyone. It might even be the wedding. If it was the wedding where you finally met the X-Men... expect some laughs. They would tell every embarrassing story about Logan, just to make him flustered.

Holy cow, that was long. I hope you liked it, and I hope it answered your question!!

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parvismaxima · 4 years

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Ragnarok references in Attack on Titan

Ragnarok is a series of apocalyptic events that will define the end of the world, where gods will band together to fight against the giants in a final battle that will ultimately destroy the planet, submerging it under water. According to the legend, the world will resurface, the surviving gods will meet, and the world will be repopulated by two human survivors.

The following major battles will be fought:

· Odin vs Fenrir

· Vidar vs Fenrir

· Thor vs Jormungandr

· Heimdall vs Loki

Major warriors during Ragnarok:

Odin

Odin is the chief of the Æsir and king of Asgard. He will lead the battle against giants during the Ragnarok

(Hange and Odin both sacrificed their left eye in exchange for knowledge)

Heimdall

is the guardian of the gods and the personification of order. He will blow a horn, called the Gjallarhorn if Asgard is in danger. His senses are so good that he can hear the grass grow and he can see to the end of the world. Heimdall could hear a leaf fall. He does not need any sleep at all.

Loki

The god of trickery and mistrust, Loki has a complicated relationship with the Æsir, oftentimes assisting them or hindering them in bringing their goals to fruition. He is the personification of chaos

Tyr

He is the God of war, and the bravest of all the Gods in Norse mythology. Tyr is interested in justice and with fair treaties, which makes him a God of law as well.

The reason why Tyr is the bravest of all the Gods is because of his most written story:

He once put his hand into the jaws of the gigantic evil wolf Fenrir. He did this while the other Gods bound Fenrir to a rock. When Fenrir saw this, he became suspicious, and declared that he would only allow the gods to put it around him if one of them would stick an arm in his mouth as a pledge of good faith. At last, when the wolf noticed that he could not get free from the chains, he became furious and ripped Tyr’s right hand

And there in that chain, the giant wolf remained in that sordid state until Ragnarok.

Freyr

the central god of peace, prosperity, sunshine and with good harvest. Freyr is in particular associated with the horse cult, and in the Hrafnkels saga, a noble Gothi once killed a man for riding a horse that he had dedicated to the god.

Thor

The champion of Asgard, Thor’s job is to protect both it and Midgard from the likes of the Jotnar, the giants of Jötunheimr.

He has two children: Modi and Magni

Vidar

is the god of vengeance. A member of the Æsir, he is the son of Odin and the giantess Gríðr. To be honest, Vidar isn’t really an important God. Virtually all of the references to him Norse mythology are concerned with his role in Ragnarok; we know little to nothing about his origin or function outside of his one particular role at the end.

Personally, I only saw two things for Connie’s role in this story — Sasha’s comedic counterpart and someone who will justice for Ragako (however that justice might look like). Given that Sasha is gone and the series has taken a serious route, there is only one role left for him to finish

Eren’s soul: Fenrir

Is the half-giant wolf of Norse mythology. The Æsir gods raised Fenrir themselves in order to keep him under their control and prevent him from wreaking havoc throughout the Nine Worlds. Fenrir however, grew at an astonishingly fast pace, and eventually the troubled gods decided to chain him up.

Eren’s titan: Jormungandr

The biggest beast in Norse mythology, he's a sea serpent who was imprisoned into the sea by Odin and is fated to rise during Ragnarok. In literature and prayers, he symbolizes the destructive forces of nature, with everything from hurricanes, tornadoes, vulcanism, earthquakes, etc... His greatest foe is Thor

Before Ragnarok:

In Norse mythology, gods belong to either one of two tribes: the Æsir and the Vanir. And these tribes fought a lot. They fought so much that Prose Edda had poems entirely dedicated to the War of the Gods.

On the other hand, the Giants (Jotun) came before these two tribes and lived in in Jötunheimr, one of the nine worlds of Norse cosmology. They were banished there by the Gods, who refused them entry to their world, Asgard. In the ancient Norse stories, the Giants frequently interact with the Æsir and the Vanir, but they are usually in opposition with them.

The Æsir fought by the rules of plain combat, with weapons and brute force, while the Vanir used the subtler means of magic.

Loki is the mixed-blood son of a goddess and a male Jotun. His role in Norse mythology is unique and controversial since he appears to both help the gods and hinder them. According to the story, Loki tricked the blind god of winter Hod, an action that resulted in the death of the god Baldr, the shining god beloved by everyone.

Because of this, he was punished and cast into a cliff where he was to remain bound to a rock until Ragnarok, the end of the world.

Baldr’s death is one of the many signs that will fortell Ragnarok. First, there will come a great Winter “Fimbulvetr” which will last for years. Brothers will slay brother, father will slay son, and son will slay father. It will be an age of war

Next, the wolves Skoll and Hati (Fenrir’s sons) who have hunted the sun and the moon for a very long time, will at last catch their prey.

Loki will escape his prison to join the other Giants.

the chains that has been holding back the monstrous wolf Fenrir will snap, and the beast will run free.

Jormungandr, the mighty serpent who dwells at the bottom of the ocean and encircles the land, will rise from the depths, spilling the seas over all the earth as he makes landfall.

These convulsions will shake the ship Naglfar (“Nail Ship”) free from its moorings. This ship, which is made from the fingernails and toenails of dead men and women, will sail easily over the flooded earth. Its crew will be an army of giants, the forces of chaos and destruction.

Fenrir, with fire blazing from his eyes and nostrils, will run across the earth, with his lower jaw on the ground and his upper jaw against the top of the sky, devouring everything in his path. Jormungand will spit his venom over all the world, poisoning land, water, and air alike.

The gods who have been warring all these time, will decide to join arms and go to battle, even though they know what the prophecies have foretold concerning the outcome of this clash.

They will meet their enemies on a battlefield called Vigrid (Old Norse Vígríðr, “Plain Where Battle Surges”

An ominous horn blast will ring out; this will be Heimdall, the divine sentry, blowing the Gjallarhorn to announce the arrival of the moment the gods have feared. He will be the first one to stop the giants

Odin will anxiously consult the head of Mimir, the wisest of all beings, for counsel. Odin will face Fenrir, and by his side will be the Einherjar, the host of his chosen dead human warriors whom has preserved in Valhalla for just this moment.

During Ragnarok:

Odin and the champions of men will fight more valiantly than anyone has ever fought before. But it will not be enough. Fenrir will swallow Odin and his men.

Then one of Odin’s sons, Vidar, burning with rage, will charge the beast to avenge his father. He will stab his sword through the wolf’s throat, killing him.

Heimdall and his archenemy Loki will do the same, putting a final end to the trickster’s treachery. Both will inflict fatal wounds on each other, but Loki refuses to die until he sees the destruction of the worlds which happened soon after. They both died next to each other

Tyr will perish fighting Fenrir. The wolf will bite his remaining hand and he will bleed out, but not before he gives the beast a mortal wound

The god Freyr and a fire giant will also be the end of each other.

Thor and Jormungand, those age-old foes, will both finally have their chance to kill the other. Thor will succeed in felling the great snake with the blows of his hammer. But the serpent will have covered him in so much venom that he will not be able to stand for much longer; he will take nine paces before falling dead himself and adding his blood to the already-saturated soil of Vigrid

After all these, these gods will die, the giants will alight the world in flame, until a flood finally covers the world.

After Ragnarok:

Several of the Gods will survive, among them is Odin’s sons Vidar. Thor’s sons Modi and Magni will also survive, inheriting their father’s hammer Mjölnir.

While most of the Gods will die in the mutual destruction with the Giants, it is predetermined that a new world will rise up from the water, beautiful and green. Before the battle of Ragnarok, a woman and a man, Lif “life” and Liftraser “lover of life”, will find shelter from the cataclysm in a place called the “Wood of Hoddmimir” (Hoddmímis holt).

They will now come out and populate the lush land in which they will find themselves. A new sun, the daughter of the previous one, will rise in the sky. And all of this will be presided over by a new, almighty ruler.

After Ragnarok” by Emil Doepler (1905)

The significance of Ravens in Norse mythology

Ravens are found everywhere in Prose Edda, a collection of poems detailing the legends of Old Norse. It is the holy bird circling around Odin

In Norse mythology, Huginn ( "thought") and Muninn ("memory") are a pair of ravens that fly all over the world and relay information to him, causing Odin to become very wise.

Now I know I just said that Hange is supposed to play Odin during Ragnarok, but given the bird’s role in the Norse story, and all the perspectives being dropped, I think it’s safe to say that Eren’s been hearing his enemies pretty well, as well as seeing the literal bird’s eye perspective of the entire war

Anyway, these are all the Norse references I saw during the Marley arc onwards. What do you think? How do you foresee the final battle ending?

#snk 31 #aot 31 #Attack on Titan #shingeki no kyojin #snk meta #snk analysis

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tangled-the-series-forever · 3 years

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Rapunzel and the Lost Lagoon

As soon as I heard about this book, I put it on my birthday wishlist. But alas, my birthday had come and gone. No Lost Lagoon. Apparently my mom didn’t see it on the wishlist, so that’s why. Flash forward to Christmas Day and I held the book in my hands, which were trembling with excitement. Not really, but you get the idea. I had been waiting to devour this book for months on end and I did. So without further ado, I will present to you this handy-dandy post that encapsulates my thoughts on Lost Lagoon before, during, and after reading. I thought it would be fun to record my expectations and compare them to what I discovered. If you’ve read Lost Lagoon, what did you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts! ❤️

Before Reading

honestly, I’m not quite sure what to expect. All I know is that there’s a lot of moments between Raps and Cass and I am ready for them!

maybe it explains how Cass came to be Raps’ lady-in-waiting? (I hope so because I’ve always wondered this...)

I think I’ll like the book as a whole (I’m hoping I’ll love it)

I’m guessing that it is cute, funny, serious, and adventurous all in one

maybe we’ll learn more about Cass?

will Raps tell Cass about her life in the tower?

what will be the ratio of lighthearted to serious moments? Am I more likely to laugh or cry? Probably both 😅😂😂

this book’s design is absolutely gorgeous! 😍😍😍 I literally just stared at it for a while beginning to read it

During Reading

Rapunzel’s hair hasn’t grown back yet? Oh, it’s her first week in Corona. Okay...

“Something was missing. I was hoping painting would help me find whatever that was, or at least help me end the afternoon on a happy note.” (is this relatable or what? I know not to chase after the elusive beast referred to as happiness, but I do often strive to end the day on a good note because I feel like Satan wins if I don’t)

Friedborg is Arianna’s lady-in-waiting? That makes more sense now. I always feel bad not knowing much about her or her background. I hope she makes some appearances in the book (no sooner did I type this than I look down and skim the scene where she teaches Raps how to sit. Crazy, right?)

Eugene referring to Rapunzel as “my girl” (so sweet 🥰)

“Eugene’s warm brown eyes and mischievous smile are irresistible from any angle” (she’s head over heels, ya’ll 😂💕😂)

first look at Cass 🥰 That’s my girl! Not only does she want to be part of the guard, but she wants to succeed her father as Captain! Go after your dreams, girl! I support you ❤️

“I’d rather shovel sheep dung than mend clothes and gossip.” Mood 😂😂

she recently discovered a hidden spot by using maps of an ancient underground tunnel system? How cool!

okay, but Cass’ animosity towards Raps is fair. And the fact that she refers to her as “that girl”? Priceless

names of nearby nations? Like, yes please!

the irony of Cass piquing Raps’ interest in her by leaving as soon as she can after throwing the shot put 😅😂😂

Cass worrying she got herself in trouble by practicing shot put. Poor thing!

the angst Cass feels towards her dad because he wants her to be a lady-in-waiting when she clearly doesn’t... so relatable (it’s tough when a parent’s expectations and our own dreams/desires don’t match)

I didn’t realize Cass created the maps herself! She’s so determined to prove herself to her dad, it hurts 😭😭

I wonder if the pools in Yultadore are what make up the lost lagoon...

“Her enthusiasm was so shiny and bright I had to squint” (I totally understand this)

pretty boy Eugene and his quips 😂😂

Cass trying to keep her distance from Raps by calling her “Princess” and firmly saying “Goodbye” before shutting and locking the door behind her

So that’s how Cass and Eugene met... okay, cool. Nothing too crazy or weird. I don’t know what I expected but it’s nice to know how their battle of wits began

I’m noticing a pattern in the words used to describe Cass: knowledgeable, brave, etc. I think that’s cool because I feel like her pessimism gets a lot more attention in the series. It’s nice to acknowledge her other qualities as well.

Arianna chose Cass to be Raps’ lady-in-waiting. I always wondered how she got the position. I’m loving how many little things this book is explaining 🥰

Also, just noticed the bird illustrations on the page of every new chapter. I wonder if there’s a pattern...

OWL!!! 😍😍 he literally “senses her distress”. I wish we got to hear about how they met

I wanted to cry for Cass. Poor thing just wants to follow her dreams. I like the way the finality of the decision was described. It’s so tragic 💔

“When Cassandra saw him [Eugene], her face clouded over like a stormy afternoon” 😂😂 I love how Cass doesn’t try to hide her feelings about people. It’s true that she keeps personal things close to her chest, but not when it comes to what she thinks of others. Honesty is the best policy, right?

I love how Cass continuously prompts Raps to keep reading the poem. She’s like, “Yeah, yeah, just get to the good stuff” 😂

about that poem... maybe it’s from Herz Der Sonne’s perspective. Could the “truth sealed in precious stones” be a reference to Zhan Tiri’s disciples and how they were trapped within stones? And what about the three gems? What’s the emerald tapestry supposed to be? Does it reference Saporia? I HAVE TOO MANY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

“A few times I thought I heard some rustling behind me, but I kept going” (me: yeah, Raps is definitely following her) 😂

me when I realize the “emerald tapestry” is grass: 🙃

why is Cass so fearful around water? Did someone try to drown her? someone please tell me who is responsible so I can PUNCH THEM IN THE FACE 😅🤣

painfully ironic how Rapunzel can swim despite being locked in a tower all her life and Cass can’t

Raps nonchalantly offering to teach Cass how to swim just warms my heart 🥰❤️

okay, so Cass is responsible for her fear of water. That’s almost worse because it invites shame and self-hatred, which makes it more difficult to push against that fear or overcome it 😔

the importance of Raps agreeing to help Cass even after realizing she doesn’t want to be her lady-in-waiting is HUGE. This is something I feel like should have happened throughout Season 1 but never did (Raps supporting Cass and trusting that she has a good reason for things even if she doesn’t understand)

“But now I have to teach you which fork to eat your waffles with and stuff” 😂

the first time they call each other Cass and Raps 🥰😍🥰😍

woah, I didn’t expect there to be a time jump. I should have known because I kept wondering why they would depict Rapunzel with her blonde hair on the cover if this takes place before it comes back. Anyways...

I forgot to take notes as I read the majority of part 2. I’m currently a chapter or two away from part 3 and all I have to say is that something bad is about to happen. I can feel it. Dahlia’s definitely shady and so is Marco. I suspected Marie earlier but now I’m not sure. She wasn’t obvious until she was but now she’s not again so maybe she is guilty after all? Either way, Raps is making dumb decisions and I’m over here yelling at her to get her life together before she gets killed or kidnapped (whichever comes first, I guess) 😅🙃

Cass is absolutely roasting Rapunzel and I am here for it! Don’t mind me just munching away on my popcorn over here 🍿

Cass said she’s finally gonna leave Corona so I bet Raps will fess up and tell her that Dahlia’s been helping her with the painting for Cass so Cass will let her guard down and think Dahlia’s okay after all. But... she won’t be and they’re gonna realize she was the bad guy after all 😎

didn’t think Cass would get attacked 😅 also, the fact that she is highly skilled and powerful yet trips and twists her ankle is such a mood. Like, that’s literally me in a nutshell. She is beauty, she is grace, and she falls flat on her face 🤣🤣 while I’m here, I’m guessing Marco is her attacker because he probably has a rough voice

Okay, so I guess Dahlia really is innocent then... idk, I still think she could be up to something

I WAS RIGHT!

Marco’s the bad guy and things just escalated quickly cause now he’s got a knife against Cass’ throat 😳😬😵

so Dahlia’s innocent after all... I thought she or Marie might be working with Marco but I guess not (kinda disappointed to be honest)

okay so this Dahlia chick is exasperatingly hilarious 😂😂 she legit took part of Raps’ bookcase to use for an art piece. Like, who does that?

“Pascal shook his head, totally fed up” me too bud, me too 🤣

After Reading

so I did get to see how Cass and Raps first met (also how she first met Eugene as well)

I like how they combined their talents and passions at the end to create the map painting

There were a bunch of lines that made me laugh, although there were just as many that hit me like a knife to the chest (pretty much anything angsty from Cass’ POV) so I like how it made me feel all the feels (I felt like an investigator trying to figure out who the bad guy was and that was a blast 😆)

overall it was pretty good. I did feel like the characters were off (Arianna seemed like she swapped personalities with Frederick at times and Eugene apologized for joking Cass- as if!), but other than that I enjoyed it. There were a bunch of new characters being introduced so it was somewhat hard to tell who was bad and who wasn’t but I guessed correctly in the end. I was hoping there would be more than one bad guy but oh well.

I’m glad I read it because now I know a few extra things about Corona and its surrounding countries (plus I can finally read through all the Lost Lagoon related tumblr posts I saved for later... I was waiting until I read the book and here I am!)

If anyone needs me, I’ll be going through LL tumblr posts. I should definitely be sleeping but that’s not important 😅😂😂

#tangled the series #rapunzel and the lost lagoon #tts lost lagoon #lost lagoon spoilers #tts lost lagoon quotes #lost lagoon quotes

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daggerzine · 4 years

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Ray Farrell on music and his time at SST, Blast First, Geffen and many more.

Ray Farrell has had a lifetime surrounded by music. First as a fan as a young kid and then eventually working for a series of record labels. He’s obviously a fan first and foremost as you can tell by reading below. It also seemed like he was there at the beginning of some major music scenes happening.

I had met Ray very briefly at one of the A.C. Elks hardcore shows that Ralph Jones put on in Atlantic City in the Summer of 1985 though Ray doesn’t remember it (honestly, a bunch of us were standing in a circle and chatting so I’m not even sure if any proper introductions were done).

Anyway, knowing some of the record labels that Ray had worked for I wanted to hear the whole story. I contacted him and shot him some questions and he was more than happy to elaborate and let us know where he’s been and where he’s going. Take it away, Ray!

Where did you grow up?

RF-Jersey City and Parsippany, New Jersey in the 60/70’s. I have two younger brothers.

What did you listen to first…classic rock or stuff earlier than that?

RF-Rock wasn’t classic yet. My earliest memories of music are my parents’ modest collection of 45’s and grandparents’ 78’s. My mom had a handful of singles on Chess and Satellite (pre-Stax) that she said fell off a truck. We rented our house from a family connected to the mob. The records probably came from them. My mom and her sisters often sang Tin Pan Alley era songs at family gatherings. Harmony was encouraged!

Some records I heard as a toddler stayed with me forever. Lonnie Donegan’s “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor?” is a skiffle classic. Chuck Berry’s “Guitar Boogie” and “Last Night” by the Mar- Keys are still favorites. I remember being spooked by the overblown production of the “Johnny Cash Sings Hank Williams” e.p. on Sun Records. In the mid 60’s, my mom had top 40 radio on in the house unless my dad was home. When I was in kindergarten, a high school neighbor in our building babysat me for a couple hours after school a few days a week. Her girlfriends came over regularly. They listened to a lot of doo-wop, which I still love today. The babysitter and her friends taught me how to slow dance, even though I wasn’t nearly a full grown boy. J

My best friend in 7th grade was a Beatles fanatic and we immersed ourselves in decoding clues to the “Paul McCartney Is Dead” gimmick. That was a brilliant scam and a fun short term hobby. It was a deep dive into The Beatles music as a junior music detective. By the time I started buying records, The Beatles were on their way out.

I happily lived for many months on only three albums-

CCR’s “Bayou Country”, Iron Butterfly’s “In A Gadda Da Vida” and the Beatles “Sgt. Pepper.” I joined the Columbia Record Club. I got the first twelve albums for one buck. That was a popular scam. Those first twelve records shaped my taste because they were the only records I had. I didn’t know what to order but I chose very well in retrospect. After that, I bought a lot of records. I didn’t smoke, but many of my friends did. A carton of cigs cost the same as an lp- 5 bucks.

I learned in 7th grade that if I knew the songs that girls liked, we would have something to talk about. Girls loved Tommy James and The Shondells and The Rascals. I still do! I had a wider range in music taste than most of my high school friends. Everyone in my extended circle loved the Stones, Neil Young and the Allman Brothers. In a tighter circle we were into David Bowie, Lou Reed, Sparks, Todd Rundgren etc. I loved Mountain, Led Zep, Hendrix, Budgie, The Kinks, Alice Cooper, Sabbath. At first, The Stooges seemed too deep and serious for me. A little scary because I thought if teenagers felt like this all over the world, I’m doomed. I bought the album with “Loose” and played that song for weeks before listening to the rest of it. The girl next door had Iggy’ s “Raw Power” album the week it was released. When glam rock was happening in England, there was a weekly NYC radio show that played the Melody Maker Top 30 singles. I was fascinated by T.Rex, Slade, Hawkwind. I don’t recall if prog rock was a tag yet, I knew that I didn’t like songs that rambled on for more than 7 minutes. There were exceptions of course- some King Crimson, Yes, Mahavishnu. I was impressionable. Radio station WBAI hosted “Free Music Store” concerts with local acts. One show was a keyboard group called Mother Mallard that had banks of synthesizers on stage. They were similar to the music of Phillip Glass and Steve Reich, who you would only hear on that same radio station. I talked myself into buying their records, but it took years to comprehend them. I was too young to be listening to such serious stuff. I played soccer and ran track for a couple years. During meets at other schools, I made friends. At parties I heard Issac Hayes, Bohannon and James Brown records. Brown was all over top 40 radio. Rhythm guitar was my jam! Soul and funk records were best for that. I spent many nights listening to AM radio. The signal travels farther at night, so I’d listen to stations far away. It didn’t matter what kind of music it was. Some of my relatives had short wave radios. I was more interested in radio production than short wave content. The production quality has not changed much since then. It often sounds like broadcasts trapped in the ether for the last 30 years.

While I was in high school, it was common for local colleges to host rock and jazz concerts for low prices, sometimes free. The schools had to spend the money sitting in the student union coffers. There was a live music club in my town called Joint In The Woods. The venue began as a banquet hall that doubled as a meeting hall for Boy Scout Jamborees and the like. When it became the Joint, it was a disco. The first night of live music was a show with Iggy & The Stooges. The regular disco patrons were pissed! The guys were mostly goombah’s in Quiana print shirts and bell bottoms. Three or four guys smacked Iggy around after his set. Sure enough, he played Max’s Kansas City the next night as if nothing happened. Because of this club, touring bands were suddenly playing in my town. Badfinger, Roy Wood’s Wizzard, Muddy Waters. The NY Dolls were scheduled but didn’t show up. Springsteen was often an opening act. The N.J. legal drinking age had just lowered to 18. It was a great time. I was still in school, so I wasn’t staying out on weeknights.

I was determined to learn NYC music history by hitting all the Greenwich Village clubs and talking to the owners and bartenders. It didn’t matter what kind of music they specialized in- I was into the vibe. There were occasional scary nights parking near CB’s or jazz spots in that neighborhood. Folk music was on FM radio at the time. A high school friend booked a local coffee house called Tea & Cheese. Mostly locals and ambitious tri-state artists. Martin Mull, Aztec Two Step, Garland Jeffries. Some of Lou Reed’s touring band, The Tots, played there. I went to all kinds of record stores, mainly those that sold rock imports and cutouts. I was fascinated by the street level buzz of a record. In ’74, I heard dub reggae for the first time. The only stores to get that music were in Queens because there was a strong West Indian community there. It may have been the “Harder They Come” soundtrack that got me started. There was a “pay to play” radio station in Newark - WHBI. DJ’s had to buy their airtime. Arnold “Trinidad” Henry had a weekly show playing new calypso and reggae. He was more into calypso than reggae. A lot of calypso was political and comical. Arnold was fascinating! There was often a personal crisis he’d talk about on the air. My favorite incident was when he said that his life had been threatened during the program, so he locked himself in the studio.. Someone called the cops. They convinced him to unlock the door. He just wanted more airtime. Arnold played the first reggae dub track I’d heard- full dub albums were a new concept at the time. Most dub was found on the flipsides of reggae 45’s. One of the shows sponsors was Chin Randy’s Records in Queens. I trekked out there by train to buy my first dub records. That was a trip! Randy Chin’s family went on to start VP Records.

What was the first alternative/independent music you got into? How did it happen (friends? older siblings?)

RF-The term “punk” as a music style hadn’t been coined yet. I vaguely recall equating “punk” with the great “Nuggets” compilation or something Greg Shaw might have writ in Bomp Magzine. I didn’t identify labels as independent. I knew that if the label design was simple and the address was listed, it was probably a small company. There were plenty of record stores carrying obscure stuff. I bought import records from a few NYC stores. I took the bus in until I was old enough to drive. One store Pantasia, was up in The Bronx. I went there one Christmas eve day to get the import of the second Sadistic Mika Band album. The clerk talked me into buying the harder to find first album as well. He said it sounded like Shel Talmy produced it. I knew who that was and it was a revelation to talk to somebody in a record store at that level. That is what a record store should be! I read Phonograph Record magazine, Bomp and Trouser Press regularly. Patti Smith and Television self released their debut singles- those are the first “indie” records I bought, followed by the first two Pere Ubu singles. I remember hearing the Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner” from the Bezerkley Chartbusters comp on WFMU and thinking that there must be more music like that. It was refreshing.

Seeing Patti Smith and Television perform at CBGB’s changed my life. I connected the dots. I had BÖC albums on which Patti had co-writes. She had a poem insert in Todd Rundgren’s “A Wizard, A True Star” album. She read a Morrison poem on a Ray Manzarek lp. She wrote for rock music mags with distinctive style. I read a brief story about her in the Voice and went to see her do her annual Rock N’ Rimbaud show. Shortly after that she and Television played CBGB’s for six weekends in early ’75. Both bands were really great. Patti didn’t have a drummer yet. Richard Hell was a big inspiration to me. He looked cool. He played bass like he just picked it up the month before. That was a new concept. Television changed bass players in the middle of the residency. Television was the first band I saw with short hair and they dressed like teenage delinquents circa 1962. The CBGB’s jukebox had a good number of 60’s garage records. In my head I conceived Television to be inspired by that music. Made sense to me- Lenny Kaye, who assembled the “Nuggets” comp, is in the PSG. When I went back to see Television headline, The Ramones opened. Seeing The Ramones again, Talking Heads opened. It seemed like the streak of seeing great new bands would not end. They were distinctly NYC sounds. They could not have merged anywhere else. I remember avoiding the band Suicide because I didn’t think the music could be good J. Bands like Tuff Darts, Mumps and The Marbles opened shows but I wasn’t thrilled by them. A CBGB’s band that doesn’t get mentioned much is Mink DeVille. They wore matching outfits like they were playing a low budget Miami dive in 1962J. The club still had the small corner stage. The p.a. was ok and the bands had small amps. The music wasn’t loud in a “rock” way. You could sit at a table right in front of the band. Although we consider the club a birthplace of punk, the club showcased local bands that had been around for a while. I think the club upgraded the p.a. once before building the big stage. I realized at that point that when a band was great or at least interesting live, the records were basic documents of the band’s sound.

What was your first job in the music scene/industry?

RF- Before realizing I wanted to be in the business, I hounded import mail order guys on the phone about non-lp b-sides and albums that weren’t released stateside. I was fascinated by the process. Why were some records not in stores even though they had local airplay? My dad did not listen to much music, but he had an army buddy that made a living in Al Hirt’s band. He came to our house once. He gave my dad a copy of John Fahey’s “After The Ball” album, which he played on. I liked his stories about the session man side of the business. Fahey treated him well. I was generally shy, but when it came to music I would approach anyone I thought I could learn from. I heard horror stories about the music biz in NYC but learned later that those were a mob related labels. At the time, I thought the entire NYC music biz might be that way. I planned to move to California anyway. In high school, I go-fer’d at local Jersey radio stations and talked my way into meeting a few top FM radio dj’s. I thought I wanted to be a professional dj, but my dad wisely talked me out of that. The itinerant radio jock life would not be for me. It was a racket.

In ’76, I took a long low budget cross country trip with my high school sweetheart. Along the way, I stayed in Memphis for three weeks with a cousin who was stationed at the Millington naval base. Got a job at a hip movie theatre that served liquor. I found Alex Chilton in the phone book and spent an afternoon talking with him. I wasn’t yet legal drinking age in Tennessee. It amused him that a fan showed up in his town who was not old enough to drink. En route to Cali, Tulsa, OK was on my route to find Shelter Records and studio , but it shut down and the label moved to L.A. At the time, Dwight Twilley’s “I’m On Fire” was a radio hit. I didn’t think there were still bands like that. Twilley was from Tulsa, but had moved to L.A. by that time.

When I arrived in L.A. I visited small label record company offices. A few offered me jobs or references. I spent two weeks crashing at the Malibu house of a distant family friend. I didn’t want to live in L.A. but I was encouraged by the opportunities. I got a job at the famous record store- Rather Ripped in Berkeley, CA.

Patti Smith told me about Rather Ripped before I left Jersey. In ’75, she and her band went to California for shows in L.A. and Berkeley. The northern Cali shows were set up by the store. She did a poetry reading there. This is well before “Horses” was released. I bought a couple records from the store’s Dedicated Fool mail order service. They had a monthly catalog on newsprint. Thousands of records in tiny font. Every record was described with a few words. This is 1976 and punk rock was just getting started. I worked as a prep cook in a charcuterie associated with Alice Waters’ famous restaurant Chez Panisse. The proprietor knew the record store owners. I wasn’t actively looking to work there, but I talked about music all day every day. They fast tracked me for an interview. Because of a scheduling mistake, Tom Petty interviewed me for the job. His first album just came out and “American Girl” was close to being a hit single. The band came to the store before a local show. Tom overheard the owner apologizing for not being able to do the interview, so he offered to conduct it. It was great. I knew all about his label, Shelter Records. I deliberately avoided talking about The Ramones and Patti Smith because punk was new and against the grain. At the end of the interview Tom told the owners that if he lived in Berkeley, he’d buy all his records from me. The store owner still had to interview me formally the next day, but I knew that I nailed it.

It was owned by two dynamic gents that were connected to Berkeley society and Bay Area journalists. They weren’t typical record store guys. They celebrated the 70’s in the moment. They held court with well known music scribes, musicians, dj’s. They were good friends of The Residents. Perhaps my strangest story is meeting The Residents with the Rather Ripped owners at a S.F. Irish bar that specialized in Irish Coffee’s. I had only recently heard of the group, so I was not cognizant of their marketing myth. At the bar, we were with our girlfriends and wives. One of the Residents tried to convince me and my gf to go back their place for a hot tub session. I laughed out loud and said “geez, what a bunch of hippies”! We didn’t go. In retrospect, I should have gone on the condition that they wore eyeball heads in the tub. At that time, The Residents rarely performed live, but they did in 1975 for the store’s birthday party. The early Bezerkley Records (Jonathan Richman, Greg Kihn) was distributed to stores through Rather Ripped. Their office was a few blocks away. At the store, each employee had unique music taste and expertise. Pop music was changing rapidly with a new energy. Some of us were tapped into it. We all had to know the key new releases in every genre because we were tastemakers. Major labels would beg us to do window displays for new releases. But if they could not find a store employee that liked that artist, it was no go. So, no Pablo Cruise window display. We weren’t against major labels, but we put a lot of energy into selling the ton of music that we loved. Our focus was on imports, indies, promos and cut outs where we could get a good price mark up. We had a rare record search service with customers all over the world. We’d find rare records through trade-ins and by combing record stores all over the state.

There were a few import distributors, but they weren’t hip to many small run U.S. independent releases. That was understandable because bands didn’t often press enough records for a distributor to get excited about. In other words, why spend half your day hunting down records that were only pressed in small quantities. Just as they start selling, you’re out of stock. There gonna sell a hell of a lot more Scorpions’ picture discs! As always, some distributors financed exclusive re-pressings of records that had momentum. The only way to get records like Roky Erikson’s “Two Headed Dog” single or The Flamin’ Groovies’ “You Tore Me Down” 45 was directly through mail order. I wrote to label addresses listed in Trouser Press and fanzines to buy direct in order to sell them in the store with no competition. Major label sales reps didn’t prioritize us because we didn’t shift bulk units of the hits. However, we were so plugged in to the lesser known artists that we were a good place for record companies to try and start a buzz. We could swell 50-100 of a record that all the other stores sold a handful of. Bands showed up at the store while touring. Springsteen bought Dylan bootlegs from us by mail order. Patti Smith’s manager Jane Friedman used the store as a home base when Patti and John Cale came through the area.

Berkeley is in the East Bay of the S.F. bay area. A few months after starting at Rather Ripped, I realized that the city had a rich music scene well before punk /new wave started. There was Fantasy Records, a well known jazz r&b label but best known for CCR; Arhoolie, Solid Smoke, Metalanguage; the contemp classical labels- Lovely Music and 1750 Arch; folk and blues labels like Takoma and Olivia. Of course, bands like Chrome and others started labels to release their own music. Ralph Records was started by The Residents, and they began signing bands. Rather Ripped was also a center for improv, electronic and meditation records.

In ’77 or ’78 I joined the nascent Maximum Rock N Roll radio team. This was well before the magazine. In the early days there were weeks when we didn’t have enough new punk records to fill the two hour weekly show. Tim Yohannon was all about energetic, real rock n roll, so he filled in the program with records by Gene Vincent, The Sonics etc. BTW, Tim applied green masking tape to the three closed sides of every record he had. He gave me a Mekons double single he decided he didn’t like. It was in a gatefold sleeve that he sealed shut with his green tape! Sometimes he re-designed the cover art…never for the better. He made his own pic sleeves for 45’s that didn’t have them. Bands would stare at their own records in bewilderment. Tim was archiving the records of the entire punk and hardcore movement worldwide.

Eventually, Tim brought in Ruth Schwartz, and Jeff Bale as co-hosts- both great people. Jello Biafra was a frequent guest. Tim assembled the “Not So Quiet On The Western Front” lp and later organized syndication for the radio show. I remember hearing the first Disorder ep and thinking -this is the future! J It was exciting. But soon, most hardcore records sounded alike to me. It was like- “Do you want more fries with your fries?” I went to plenty of live shows without knowing a lot about the bands playing them. I was happy when the fashion trended away from jackboots to sneakers…getting a boot kick to the head in a stage dive could be brutal. I didn’t see a lot of skinhead violence at shows, but I know it was changing the scene.

San Francisco and Berkeley were important music centers, activist meccas as well as creative artistic and intellectual hubs. Yohannon had history as an activist. He identified with public protests for causes & social issues. For many teenagers, punk rock was a rite of passage. I think it changed a lot of kids’ lives for the better. The overriding message was to be civically aware of what is going on around you and what affects your life.

Tell me about your time at Arhoolie Records. Where was it located?

Rather Ripped’s owners had a falling out and the remaining owner just wanted to sell records and antiques with his wife. He moved it to a nearby city. Just before the store closed, he told me of an open position at Back Room Distribution, a division of Arhoolie. It was in El Cerrito, a small town north of Berkeley. Chris Strachwitz, the owner of Arhoolie is a legendary record man. He recorded many of his early blues albums with a tape recorder in his car. He owned the legendary Down Home Music store in the same building. Separated by partition behind the store was Back Room. It was an indie label distributor for blues, folk roots music. Rounder Records was still a new label at the time. I gotta admit, when Rounder issued The Shaggs “Philosophy Of The World’ I was in seventh heaven. I worked primarily for the distributor, grooming to be a sales rep but I spent a lot of time in the store. At first, I didn’t yet relate to blues and country music. But there were a lot of touring artists in those styles making a living. It was a strong network of clubs, fans, radio shows and press that fueled it. The store had an incredible selection of obscure 50’s/60’s rockabilly and garage band comps. The Cramps were my favorite band at the time. The rockabilly comps mostly on a the Dutch White Label, were treasure troves of insane songs. My heart was in new music- whatever you wanna call it, punk, new wave, art music. That’s the business I wanted to be in. I used my time to learn more about distribution operations. The people that worked at Arhoolie and in its community were fun music heads. There were a lot of good musicians among them. It was a great time to live in Berkeley.

What was next, Rough Trade and CD Presents? Was that in San Francisco? I went to that Rough Trade store a few times and it was an amazing store.

I knew folks from Rough Trade UK because I bought imports from them to sell @ Rather Ripped. When they wanted to open in the U.S. they contacted me, but at the time the wage was low and there wasn’t enough space to work. I was interested in working in the distribution division, not the store. They speiled something about it being a socialist business. I stayed at Arhoolie for a little while longer. In the meantime, I was offered my own weekly late night radio show on Pacifica’s KPFA in Berkeley- same station as Maximum Rock N’Roll. I took over a show called “Night Sky”, an ambient music program. My interim program title was “No More Mr. Night Sky” until I settled on “Assassinatin’ Rhythm”. The station’s music director was a contemporary classical composer closely associated with avant -garde and 20th century music. A major segment of my show was for industrial, post-punk and undefinable music. I hosted a few live on- air performances with Z’ev, Slovenly and Angst among others. Negativland’s “Over The Edge” program started on KPFA around this time. KPFA was 100,000 watts of power with affiliate stations covering the Central Valley down to Fresno and Bakersfield.

When the time was right, I moved to Rough Trade’s U.S. distribution company in Berkeley. The record store was in San Francisco. We distributed a lot of British records sent by Rough Trade UK, often in small quantities. Rough Trade US was set up to press and distribute select RT and Factory records by Joy Division, ACR, The Fall, Stiff Little Fingers, Crass. It was cheaper and more effective to press in the U.S and Canada. I also distributed some U.S. labels but there was one Brit on the staff that hated most American music. On top of that, it could be a dangerous place to work. One of the staff was importing reggae records and weed from Jamaica to our warehouse. The local connection was shot on his porch shortly after he picked up a shipment! I was lucky to spend a few days travelling with Mark E.Smith of The Fall. He loved obscure rockabilly and garage band records. I was able to return to Memphis for a while to prep the first Panther Burns album for release. Tony Wilson of Factory put up most of the money to keep RTUS going. He was a brilliant character, but I learned from talking with him how not to conduct business. I often got sample records from bands that wanted distribution. Pell Mell’s “Rhyming Guitars” e.p. was the start of my long association with the band. I enjoyed selling records to stores all over the country. I learned about local scenes, records, fanzines, clubs and college radio stations everywhere. Making these sources connect for touring bands and record sales was exciting. Because Rough Trade is British, we had the benefit of connections with club dj’s. We pressed and promoted New Order’s “Blue Monday” single on a shoestring budget. For a long time, it was the best kept secret from the mainstream. I left Rough Trade for Subterranean Records ( Flipper etc) for a spell while working in a record store. The guy that put up the money for the record store ran guns to Cuba through Mexico. Thankfully, not through the actual store. I booked Cali shows for Panther Burns, The Wipers, Sonic Youth, Whitehouse.

Who owned the CD Presents label? I remember that Avengers compilation.

It was owned by a lawyer, David Ferguson. He had a recording studio as well. I didn’t understand why he wanted to run a label. He did not have an ear for music. But we did release a Tales Of Terror lp! He almost released a DOA album that I thought the band would kill him over. Many years later I got into a fist fight with one of David’s employees in a limo ride shared with Ferguson and Lydia Lunch. We fought through the window separating the driver from the passengers. I would love to recreate that for a film. Good times!

My main role there was to set up the first Billy Bragg record in the U.S. Billy’s manager was the legendary Peter Jenner and both were great to work with. They were using CD Presents as a stepping stone to a major label. In the meantime, I knew a few people at SST. Joe Carducci is an old friend. He was pitching me to move to L.A. and work there, but I resisted for a while. I had just met the woman that I knew would be the love of my life. I didn’t want to move to SoCal. Joe gave me an ultimatum. He sent three advance cassettes that convinced me to go- Meat Puppets’ “Up On The Sun”, Minutemen’s “Double Nickels” and Huskers’ “New Day Rising” That’s an excellent recruiting strategy. I later married the love of my life.

On the side I booked shows for bands I loved. Gerard Cosloy asked me to book Sonic Youth first northern Cali shows. I also booked shows for The Wipers and noise band Whitehouse

Was SST Records next? How long did you last there and what was that like?

I was there for three years. “How long did you last there?” sounds like I was biding my time :) I’m often asked about my time with SST.

Carducci hired me to do PR. That meant publicity, college radio, regional press. Video was a valuable promo tool. MTV’s “120 Minutes” program was a great way to promote our records.

In 1987 we put out more records than Warner Brothers. By that time, I hired people to help.

I’ve done a number of interviews about SST. If you have specific questions, shoot. I recall that my social life was almost entirely with my co-workers and bands on the label. I was nearly oblivious to music from other labels. I was a big fan of Dischord and Homestead. Metallica, COC, Voivod and the Birthday Party/Nick Cave were my non-SST staples.

I think around this time I had met you briefly in NJ at one of the Elks Lodge shows that my old friend Ralph Jones put on. Were you living in NJ at that point or just visiting?

You’ve mentioned that before and I don’t recall the specific show. I moved out of NJ permanently in ’76. I came back for annual summer visits to NYC, north Jersey and Philly. Some high school friends went to Upsala College, then the home of WFMU. On my first visit back in ’76 I met Irwin Chusid and R. Stevie Moore. Some high school friends were connected to Feelies before they took that name.

Was Blast First! next? I met Pat Naylor once and hung out with her at a show and she was really sweet.

Yeah around the time I left SST, the folks in Sonic Youth called saying that they had left as well. They wanted me to be involved with Blast First! in the U.S. I knew Paul Smith because he released their albums in the UK. Blast First UK released a number of Touch N Go and SST records. The label was a division of Mute which had a U.S. deal with Enigma. My job was almost entirely “Daydream Nation” promotion. It was so much fun to be able to go deep with one album. We issued Ciccone Youth shortly afterward, which augmented the overall Sonic Youth story. The only other active touring band was Band Of Susans and on a limited level, Lunachicks and Big Stick. It was only one year of work before Enigma cut Mute/Blast First loose. I went on Sonic Youth’s Soviet Union tour and I had a few memorable meetings with Sun Ra. David Bowie called a few times asking about recording studios that Dino Jr and Sonic Youth used. Bowie had a brilliant idea to record Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream” with Glenn Branca’s large guitar group. We tried following up on it but Bowie was immersed in Tin Machine and other projects.

Was it on to Geffen then?

Yes, Sonic Youth had good meetings with the label. I had recently met Mark Kates who was championing the signing. He suggested that I come in to meet the entire company. He brought my name up with David who said, “we need someone like that here”.

I had fleeting thoughts that working for a major was “selling out”...punching corporate clock. I wanted to apply what I knew on a larger scale.

What was that like, working for a proper major label? Was David Geffen still involved?

On my second day there, David called me into his office. He is down to earth, street smart. Like many of the best in the biz, he didn’t have an attitude. He had met with the Meat Puppets. He sensed that Dinosaur Jr. was important. I reminded him that I was not hired for a&r.

He said- “I don’t assign job titles. If you find something else you’d like to do here, you can pursue it ‘after 5pm’ ”. I found reissue projects like the Pere Ubu box and Raincoats catalog. I recorded a new Raincoats album. I signed Southern Culture On The Skids, Garrison Starr, Skiploader. I assembled and recorded Rob Zombie’s Halloween Hootenanny comp. With Sonic Youth, I pondered making records with John Fahey and Townes Van Zandt. After ten years, it was time to move on.

Tell us what you do now, didn’t you get involved with digital music at some point?

Geffen Records was folded into Interscope in 1999 and I was bored with the limitations of the business as it was. Digital music was gaining ground solely through illegal file trading on Napster. I knew there would be a major shift in the business moving to digital. I worked for the download site. eMusic.com, signing distribution agreements with labels. This was years before iTunes and YouTube. Major labels would not work with us because mp3 files are open source files that could be traded freely without control. They saw eMusic as a facilitator of illegal file trading. Like marijuana use leading to hard drugs! In the big picture, I knew that digital downloads weren’t “sexy”. But at some point, digital music would develop into something easier to track and use. We skipped the major labels. The bigger independent labels understood that digital music would be the future. It was a great place to be. I knew a lot of music, but I had no idea there were so many labels in every country. One label owner told me that I had the best job in the world. I knew that to explain this new unproven music format it could be an uphill climb. So I took the time to research label websites for song samples. That way I could find common ground with label owners. There’s surf music in Brazil? There’s a young female cellist duo in Prague that make energetic music? There’s archaic royalty rules connected to opera arrangements? Bring it on! It certainly changed how I listen to music.

It was a time when business rules and legal rights had to change in order to deal with digital income disbursement. For example, digital downloads could be sold by the song while royalty payments were based on album sales. eMusic was at the forefront of those changes. When iTunes launched, digital music was “legitimized”. Borne out of eMusic was RoyaltyShare which provides a royalty accounting platform for labels. It is now a division of The Orchard and I divide my time between The Orchard and RoyaltyShare.

Who are some current bands you are into?

A loaded question! I listen to a lot of new music. I spend a lot of time listening to records and cd’s in my collection. Of current artists, I really like Steve Gunn’s music. I listen to the projects involving members of Sonic Youth. Bill Nace, Kim’s partner in Body/Head is a guitar genius. Body/Head’s music is a cathartic experience for me. London is lucky to have Thurston Moore living and working there. I think the music they make separately is far more exciting that what Sonic Youth would’ve made if still together.

Lately I’m digging Melenas from Spain, Hayvenlar Alemi from Turkey. Quin Kirchner is a Chicago based drummer that put out a great jazz record in 2018 called “The Other Side Of Time”. I think he plays on Ryley Walker ‘s records.

Because I’ve spent so much time with the music of Sonic Youth, Branca and Rhys Chatham, I crave the occasional dive into instrumental symphonic guitar army and tonal stuff. Current favorites in that vein are Bosse De Nage, Pelican, Sunn O)))

Given the chance I’ll see any performance by Mary Halvorson, Ches Smith, Marc Ribot or Mary Lattimore.

It took me years to get it, but I’m now a big fan of Keiji Haino’ music. Dean McPhee is a British guitarist I really like. I just bought a couple of Willie Lane lp’s on Feeding Tube.

I research music history and the development of the industry. There are historical and social components of every type of music by culture, country, time period. I love stories about riots at premieres of new avant garde works. I read a book about famous classical composers in the 18th Century playing home concerts (salons) where people are talking the entire time…but they are paid handsomely for the performance. Streaming music sites and YouTube are vast repositories of music and cultural documentation.

Do you still make it out to many shows?

I go to two/three shows a month when I’m home and more when traveling especially NY/London. I start work early in the morning so I’m not out late often. I understand why people see less live music as they get older. I’m done with music festivals. The Big Ears Festival is the only Stateside event that might inspire me to stand for eight hours.

I always hear music by new artists that I really like. I don’t always go to see the live show. Sometimes I hear a new band that sounds like a band I liked 20 years ago. I wouldn’t deliberately see a band that uses another band’s sound as a template.

What are your top 10 desert island discs?

I cannot do 10. It’s 20 or nothing. If you say sorry Ray, it will be nothing. FineJ If I’m on an island, I’ll listen to the ocean waves and sounds of nature. If I’m relegated to a desert, I’ll listen to the blood coarsing through my veins.

Miles Davis- Kind Of Blue

Television- Marquee Moon

Peter Brotzmann- Machine Gun

Sex Pistols -Never Mind The Bollocks

Rolling Stones- Let It Bleed

Soundtrack – The Harder They Come

Billy Harper – Black Saint

Kleenex/Liliput- First Songs

Patti Smith Group -Easter

Hound Dog Taylor & The Houserockers- Houserockin’

Led Zeppelin- Houses Of The Holy

Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation

Elvis Presley- Sun Sessions

The Cramps- Songs The Lord Taught Us

Pell Mell -Flow

Procol Harum- A Salty Dog

Sibelius- Complete Symphonies

Lou Reed -Coney Island Baby

Meat Puppets- Up On The Sun

The Kinks- Kinks Kronikles

“Hmm....Flow or Star City?”

Any final words? Closing comments? Anything you wanted to mention that I didn’t ask.

I’ve been involved off and on with the artist Raymond Pettibon for a music project called Supersession. He has made records under this moniker before. This project began in 1990 and stalled for many years. We revived it a couple years ago. I play bass. Raymond wrote many pages of words and lyrics that he passed to the band, encouraging us to write music behind them. It’s different from Raymond’s other records because it is not improvised. Rick Sepulveda, our guitarist is a great songwriter and he wrote music for Raymond’s words. Rick sings a bunch of the songs because Raymond loves his voice. We did a NYC performance in November that was really fun. So now of course, I’m thinking we should play monthly in L.A. We are nearly finished with the album that we recorded at Casa Hanzo, the San Pedro studio Mike Watt owns with Pete Mazich. Raymond is a brilliant man; fun and inspiring to work with. When I practice with Rick, he’ll often break into a cover song deep in the recess of memory. Like John Cale’s “Hanky Panky Nohow” ,Kevin Ayers’ “Oh Wot A Dream” or the Doors “Wishful Sinful”. We may cover a Harry Toledo song. It’s a blast. I hope to have the album finished in July.

Tav, Bobby, Pell Mell and Ray

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optimiist · 4 years

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𝚒’𝚍 𝚔𝚎𝚎𝚙 𝚊𝚗 𝚎𝚢𝚎 𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚖 ; that there is LIONEL MILLER , notorious for being ( resentful ) and ( tense ) , but there are times when he can be ( considerate ) and ( self-effacing ) . i've heard that he could pass as a YUSUF GATEWOOD doppelganger , but i don't see it . the ( thirty-eight ) year - old cis man has been in town for ( his entire life ) and they are an ( english professor ) by day and murder suspect by night . they tend to spark images of an endless collection of the romantics - from the john donnes of the world to the carson mccullers’ , the perfect leather-on-tweed stereotype , being a willing human doormat to those with bright eyes and a kind smile , rehearsing the humphrey bogart but ending up the victor laszlo , a secret even worse than murder: …your favorite movie is the abomination of 2019 . you’ll know when they walk by because they always seem to be blasting as time goes by by DOOLEY WILSON . it truly explains why they're known as THE SECRET ADMIRER .

TO KNOW:

born to a single mother, lionel was lucky in never joining the daddy issues™ club. nonetheless, his mother’s status still deeply affected him. with all of the men he watched go in and out of her life, none staying around long enough for him to call his true role model, he found a very thin line - but it was still a line and he knew exactly which side he wanted to be on. the line? separated the good men from the toxic men. and, of course, he wanted to be a good man!

it should be noted that his mother worked in the local library ( he was unaware of why it was named what it was named for quite a while - he thought it was just named after abraham lincoln and some other guy ). naturally, he spent most of his youth reading authors all the way from shel silverstein to lewis carroll to… most importantly… t.s. eliot. why is this the most important? you may ask yourself.

he unironically likes cats. the book it was based on… the musical… even the 2019 movie… there are very few people he’d ever admit it to, but… his favorite movie is cats (2019).

ANYWAY, as he grew, he matured into the catalogs of writers such as john donne, william shakespeare, tennessee williams, carson mccullers…

he was fucked!!

the authors and the poets and the playwrights all gave him a sense of what love is, what love must be. he began writing poetry, attempting to mimic donne’s subtle style. this both helped and harmed him when he met the girl he was totally sure would be the love of his life: chastity. she was gorgeous and kind and had bright eyes…

he prepared a speech asking her out and rehearsed it every morning. just in case he forgot, he even wrote it down on notecards. but, when the time came, he was always just too… frozen.

he didn’t shoot his shot on time - before he knew it, ethan kim was dating the girl he’d psyched himself out of asking out one too many times.

although it was difficult for him to try to see chastity as just a friend ( perhaps friendly acquaintance at most on her part ), he did his best… especially when ethan enlisted him to help him get the girl™.lionel had plenty of moral qualms about it, but… ultimately, money was money. libraries didn’t make much. even the smallest amount would help.

not to mention, it was an excellent way to see if he… would’ve been successful in asking her out. in words, at least.

he’d give ethan poems he’d already written, soliloquies he’d been inspired to write, and just… ultimately give him the advice that all of the romantics had given him throughout the years.

when chastity was murdered, his heart :( shattered :( died along with her but more poetically :( while his alibi checked out - he had been in the library writing a poem in donne’s style, the subject inspired by mccullers’s ‘the lover v. the beloved’ tangent in the ballad of the sad café, and he won! there were some areas in which they could poke holes: his mother, who clearly wouldn’t want her son to go to jail, was the only eye witness, they had no way of proving the date he submitted the poem, etc., etc. but, for the most part, his alibi was pretty solid.

this idiot didn’t profess his love until she was dead. WAYYYYY too late to shoot ur shot buddy!!

anyway, he’d already gotten accepted into college - thank god because he, otherwise, would not have been in the state to write a worthy application. he chose local for his undergrad.

along the way, he found some new people to love. or try to love. it wasn’t exactly the actual relationship that made it hard for him to ‘get over’ chastity, what considering they’d never had one, rather the literal death and lack of closure.

but, come grad school, he met the woman he would be able to call his wife!! she was lovely and kind and beautiful and had such bright eyes. after only two years of dating, he proposed (granted, he’d been prepping… for an entire year... ) and!! she said yes!!

with an english professor slot (yes, slot) opening up at the university, they returned to taunwick. it was absolutely perfect, if you were to ask him. he could help his mom as libraries went the way of the dodo, he could potentially start a family (they were considering adoptive), he had a job he loved!!

but... then there’s that whole problem of the reunion… and, while he’s been doing well in taunwick, what in spite of the reminders of chastity… this could be yikes central for his marriage!! which is why it’s gonna be submitted to the main in .5 seconds!!

and that’s what you missed on glee!

TL;DR:

hopeless romantic who will never admit that he unironically likes all forms of cats.

CONNECTION IDEAS:

** (open to any gender unless otherwise specified)

his wife (f): WILL BE BEING SENT INTO THE MAIN.

people he tried to love: as was previously mentioned, when he entered undergrad, he desperately tried to find people he could love just as much as he figured he’d loved chastity. only real requirement would be that they would’ve both gone to the local university at the same time!!

opposites attract: he’s meek, easy to unnerve… give me this. give me 13 going on 30’s main friendship.

neighbor: pretty self-explanatory!! they live in the suburbs next door to he and his wife… both of whom are disgustingly domestic!!

couple friends: pls this idea just makes me laugh. we love the failed version of this connection where… it’s their last resort… they’re desperate… everyone else is trying to induct them into having a foursome… they just want a wholesome friendship… this is the closest they’re getting!!

students: let’s hear it for all the younger characters out there!!

more to come!!

FURTHER:

for a bit of a better idea:

pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/idkimnewwastaken/lionel-not-richie/

playlist (the final song is a lil treat): https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7vYatuuQmEWxcKvs2CBjCa?si=_XQCKYGsRz2jujfMT7V1BQ

musing tag: https://optimiist.tumblr.com/tagged/lionel-%7C-musings.

mini stats (to be later extended): optimiist.tumblr.com/ls (the font is strangely huge rn but… don’t feel like fixing it at this moment in time :\ )

#lionel !#lionel | intro.#taun.intro #UPDATE: i forgot!! that tumblr makes the read more happen on the dash now so the font is!! now small!!#hopefully did not strikethru anything bc that wld be a tragedy to lose.#THERE. ARE TABBED BULLETS. AND THEY ARENT SHOWING UP AS TABBED.#IF SOMETHING SEEMS LIKE IT'S RELATED BUT ONLY SORT OF. IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE TABBED. BC I THINK IM FUNNY.

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hidefoxandallafter · 4 years

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Badger Voldemort

Dear Adam,

If you’re here and you’re reading this--I remembered my Tumblr password for you. I’ve been thinking about reaching out for a long time but I haven’t been sure how to do it or if to do it. But there’s something about writing here that feels less governed by the rules and expectations of social reconnection that have been hanging over my head. I worry that if I add you on Facebook that you’ll say no. I worry that I’ll add you and you’ll say yes and then nothing will happen and we’ll just be two people who used to know each other who are now awkwardly friends on Facebook. But then I feel worried that something will happen--that we’ll reconnect, message each other, maybe meet up in person. Maybe I’d fall in love with you again--that’s the “real” worry, I suppose. I’m married *spoiler alert* to a man now and I worried what he would say if we reconnected. But I told him that and he said I should do it. He wasn’t worried about it. So this is me reconnecting. Doing it here feels less like I have to follow the rules of the universe and more like I get to follow our rules. And maybe I’m romanticizing, but I think that, according to “our rules,” you’ll just still like me and want to reconnect too? We had something really rare, and intense, and special and I think that might mean that we get to reconnect whenever, wherever for the rest of our lives? Is it that kind of love?

I’m in an MFA program now at the University of Idaho. I have three years to be a real poet! It’s kind of like living a dream (minus the pandemic, systemic racism, black people getting murdered, rampant police brutality etc). A friend of mine said recently, “ When I remember 2020, I’ll remember a bad year for the world, but a pretty good year for me.” I know--this is what white privilege sounds like. I’m hoping you will see the best in me when I say that I like my life right now. I feel like we might be able to just pick up where we left off--like I’m writing to you in this voice that so few people in my life even know I have now...It’s a definitive, confident voice, don’t you think? Anyways (I’m typing anyways and not going to look it up to see if I should actually be typing anyway, which is def the sort of thing I do now whenever I write anything ever) I’ve been writing a lot of poems and thinking a lot about my past and our relationship and I guess that alone is reason enough to reach out. But I wrote a poem for National Poetry Writing Month, which is where you’re supposed to write a poem every day, and it wasn’t a good poem or a refined poem and it wasn’t a poem I’d show the world, and it was a poem about you (I have 1,000 poems about you) but my friend and I were reading each other’s work for some accountability and she actually ended up holding me accountable in another way. I had called you she in the poem and it didn’t sit right with my friend (who knows you are a man because I have told her our story [parentheses within parentheses to say I realized as I typed this that your gender definitely falls outside of the scope of an “ours” and is a “yours” so I’m sorry for claiming it or supposing I could tell your story). This got me wondering about how I could write about our past in a way that respects your identity...and whether or not it was my story to tell, after all.

It also got me thinking that I’ve always thought of our relationship from a very me-centered perspective. Like, it was hard for me because of my mom. Our being together and then not being together (and then being together and then not, etc. etc.) really fucked me up. Like, it fucked me up in a way that is now, over ten years later, a kind of fundamental part of my identity. I guess I always figured it was worse for me? And honestly, there was a long time when I felt hurt and angry because I didn’t think you understood how hard it was. BUT--I’m realizing that it must have been a really hard experience for you...hard in ways that I can’t really imagine.

So if I’m being honest, I want to reconnect with you for two big reasons. One, you were a magical, fantastic, amazing person in my life. We had such a love. I guess I didn’t realize it until much later, but I think our kind of connection is rare... Not the forbidden-lesbian-secret-girlfriend part, but the we were crazy about each other, we were so close, you were my best friend part. I keep imagining us meeting up and having a drink and just having a blast laughing and talking. I wonder if we could be friends. I would honestly love to get a drink with you...I think you might live close enough.

My second reason is that I’m hoping for your perspective. I want to ask you questions about us. I want your memories. I also want to understand what it was like for you.

So it’s a long shot, but I’m putting it into the universe here. It’s funny, when I chose my Tumblr name, I think I just thought it sounded cool and kind of literary (which I still kind of agree with, very cool, past me) but also, the hide and seek thing is so us. Hiding and sneaking around and finding each other. If you find me, give me a sign.

Love,

Cady

P.S. I went back to our rocks.

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bizarre-dollhouse · 6 years

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My Top 10 Favourite Anime (And Why You Should Watch Them)

This is normally something I would put on my main blog, but I wanted to celebrate a follower milestone and also I know this will reach a significantly wider audience on this blog.

Consider this both a list of recommendations and a *get to know me* thing, I guess.

Honourable Mentions:

Bakemonogatari: A really stylized show about a semi vampire helping people with their supernatural afflictions born from emotional issues. The subsequent seasons get a little questionable, but this is definitely a standalone story with great dialogue and visuals. (15 eps)

Shiki: Creepy story about a small town infested with vampires. Really brutal and sick, but it has fascinating themes. The pacing is a bit slow and it has a kind of bad scene towards the end, but the show is 100% worth it. (24 eps)

Cardcaptor Sakura: Because this is mostly aimed at younger viewers, I would only really recommend this show for either magical girl fans, or people who watched the extremely altered dub as a kid. That being said, its a cute, fun show about magic with a likeable cast and surprisingly creative and original ideas, especially towards the latter half. (70 eps)

Jojos Bizarre Adventure 4: Diamond is Unbreakable: Full disclosure, I have not seen the first 3 jojo series, but its not necessary to enjoy this show. This is a super creative and really fun series about superpowered badasses in a strange city fighting each other and trying to solve a murder mystery in the background. Weird, but in the best way. (39 eps)

Kuroshitsuji: Book of Circus: This should be higher on the list, but in truth I would recommend the manga way over the show. But, if you want to watch a supernatural horror/comedy without reading a 138+ chapter manga, OR you were a fan of the original Black Butler seasons and want to see something way better, give this a watch. (10 eps)

*drumroll*

10. Trigun

So Trigun takes place is this old west, yet mysterious science fiction-y world where, through a bunch of complicated scenarios, a pacifist is the most wanted criminal known to man. Due to his status as a “natural disaster,” two insurance workers are tasked with reining him in to save their business. It’s an incredibly charming series, and the protagonist is really likeable. It’s extremely creative, funny, and emotional near the end. I do have some problems with the ending because it almost seems like the final conflict just...solves itself, but that’s a nitpick. The first episode is basically a short film, so give that a watch and see how you feel. (26 eps)

9. Paranoia Agent

This was directed by the late and great Satoshi Kon and has his usual themes about the blurring between fiction, dreams, and reality. It’s about a string of mysterious assaults committed by a kid with a baseball bat, and how these assaults seem to solve the problems of the victims. It’s very arthouse and has a twist that makes me ball my eyes out even though it’s not sad it’s just...odd and overwhelming. It drags a bit near the middle, but if you like kind of surreal stuff that’s also just really good, you have to watch this show. (13 eps)

8. Baby Steps

The amazing thing about this show is that its premise is specifically designed to make me hate it. It’s about a nerdy teenager who starts to play a sport for the sole sake of getting fit and having a more well rounded life style, and also he has a crush on this really popular girl. That sounds fucking awful, but the main character is actually really likeable (he reminds me a lot of Deku from BNHA) and I swear to fucking god every time I thought this show was going to do something awful and cliched with its romantic comedy plot, it doesn’t. The beauty and the geek trope is still there, but all of the bullshit that comes with it is omitted in a way I feel was kind of self-aware. The sports aspect is really good too: it’s well paced and there’s lots of tension even though the show as a whole is really upbeat and pleasant. I had a blast watching it, and if you can make it past the fact that is has god awful animation, give it a watch.

7. Higurashi: When They Cry

Yet another great show with absolute garbage animation. Anyways, this show is about a group of teenagers in a small town who are unknowingly trapped in a time loop. In each loop there’s a bunch of new mysteries, as well as some extremely brutal murders and tortures experienced my the main cast. I’ve seen a number of Western shows (Orphan Black, BBC Sherlock, Lost, Supernatural, etc.) fall apart because the writers want a really clever and intricate mystery to play out, but they don’t want to actually put the time into crafting one, so it’s just a bunch of cliffhangers with no answers or pay off. THIS SHOW SUCCEEDS AT WHAT ALL OF THOSE OTHER SHOWS FAIL AT. While not all of the answers are great (the second season isn’t as good) the original author somehow made the world’s most ludicrously complicated mystery story work, with a lot of it relying on the audience to put all of the pieces together even when the characters can’t. Its very clever in doing that: it makes its audience feel smart. It also has themes that don’t really show up in other horror stories, even though they’re incredibly relevant to fear and violence. Great show, go watch it. (50 eps)

6. Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood

Everyone knows about this show, everyone says it’s great, and everyone’s right. If you’ve been living under a rock for ten years: the show is about two brothers who break an alchemy taboo, which destroys their bodies, They’re on the hunt for something to restore them to normal and along the way they meet like 8990354578579 characters with interesting stories. It’s tightly written and really gripping. It’s fun, but also really dramatic and emotional when it needs to be. My only problems with it are that the ending is reaaaallllly convoluted, and there’s a minor plot point earlier on that gets weirdly dropped, but everyone kinda forgets about those things because the show’s so good. Also the brotherly bond makes me cry. (64 eps)

5. FLCL

I honestly don’t even know where to start with this show because it has the unique property of being the only show I have ever seen that I have literally no problems with. Not even nitpicks. There is nothing wrong with this show; it’s perfect. The only reason it’s not number 1 is because some other shows have more ideas or more fleshed out characters. So this arthouse spastic comedy is about a boy who is disappointed with all of the adults in his life, then some chick hits him in the face with a guitar and giant robots from a secret facility start coming out of his head. It’s fucking wild and has like 30 different aesthetics and I love all of them. It’s the best looking show I’ve ever seen and one of the best directed. It feels like someone read a really weird poem and turned it into a 6 episode show. It’s funny, it’s emotional, it’s cartoony, it’s beautiful, it’s raunchy, it’s poetic, it’s silly, it’s creative, and it’s got strong themes. The wtf visuals, the nonsensical plot, and the amazing soundtrack make an aesthetic experience more than anything. (6 eps)

4. Princess Tutu

I already made a post about this show and why it’s good, which you can check out here, but the gist is it’s a meta fairytale about a duck that turns into a girl to help a storybook prince find his emotions. I used to love stories that were “twists on fairytales” or whatever, but after watching this show I realized that the genre is pretty derivative. This show is so amazing it honestly made me reevaluate an entire genre and come to the conclusion that this is the only member of that genre worth watching. It’s truly creative and well crafted with fantastic characters. (26 eps)

3. Hunter x Hunter (2011)

This show is basically a bunch of creative ideas, unique set pieces, and interesting characters stacked on top of each other in a trench coat disguised as a narrative. It’s about a perky shonen protagonist and a child assassin becoming friends while also trying to become hunters (a position involving vast wealth and adventure). It’s in a modern fantasy setting so literally anything can happen. In one arc they have to play life-or-death dodgeball against robots, and another is an insanely epic tale about the intense evil that people are capable of (feat. a 25 episode climax). I can’t even talk about all of the themes or ideas because there are just too many. Because of it’s wild, sprawling story, it has a lot of ass pulls and retcons, but in the grand scheme of things they don’t really matter. It’s long, but super easy to watch in huge chunks. (148 eps)

2. Neon Genesis Evangelion and The End of Evangelion

The most efficient way to describe this show is to say that it’s the most interesting show ever made. It’s about an apocalyptic future in which emotionally disturbed teenagers must pilot giant bio-machines to fight monsters which are referred to as angels. It’s got deep characters, a creative story, and is probably the most well directed show I’ve ever seen. The ending infamously fell apart due to production problems, so there’s a movie called The End of Evangelion to conclude the story. It’s a very disturbing arthouse movie, so watch out for that, but the show as a whole is moooosssstly more straightforward and fascinating, This is an absolute must watch. (26 eps and 1 movie)

1. Baccano!

Baccano! takes place in 1930s New York, and is about thieves, gangsters, criminals, terrorists, alchemists, and immortals interacting in this nonlinear comedy/action thrill ride. I felt like I was on a rollercoaster while watching this show. It’s the perfect blend of action, comedy, romance, drama, horror, and creative storytelling. It’s fantastic to rewatch since the first episodes barely make any sense without context (but are still an absolute joy to watch). It’s got great characters and it’s a great story. Go watch it. And then watch it again. (13 eps and 3 OVAs)

That’s it for this list! Check out my MAL page for more recommendations if you’re interested and have a great night!

#neon genesis evangelion #hunter x hunter #fmab #higurashi no naku koro ni #trigun #flcl #princess tutu #baby steps #paranoia agent #baccano!#not kuro

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omophagias · 4 years

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What makes the 14th century alliterative revival interesting to you? If I can ask?

(i’m going to do the best i can to answer this while every piece of premodern lit i own is taped up in a box somewhere. this post is also going to be very long because it’s my blog and i do what i want.)

first of all i just like alliteration in any form of poetry—i think it makes it more fun to read out loud and helps to accentuate and drive along the meter. it’s also the primary ornamental device in old english poetry—i think the ruin provides a pretty good ongoing example although the translation they’re using on wikipedia is a bit lackluster imo. the ruin is also interesting in itself for a variety of reasons but i’m personally a fan of the way the alliteration seems to ebb and flow in intensity throughout the poem as the poet moves between the city as it once was and the ruins that it is now. it’s also got a bit of internal rhyme near the start with the repetition of -orene words—gehrorene, scorene, gedrorene, forweorone, geleorene (undereotone if you squint)—that i love. this is largely beside the point. anyway it looks like this—

glædmod ond goldbeorht || gleoma gefrætwed, wlonc ond wingal || wighyrstum scan; seah on sinc, on sylfor, || on searogimmas, on ead, on æht, || on eorcanstan, on þas beorhtan burg || bradan rices. (the ruin, lines 33-37)

broadly, the rule is: four stresses per line, at least three of which alliterate (wlonc ond wingal || wighyrstum scan; or, more widely known and a bit looser, hwæt! we gar-dena || in gear-dagum...)

anyway post-conquest a lot of things change; partially because english isn’t the prestige language for a couple-three centuries afterwards so prestige poetry is in latin or norman french (or anglo-norman), partially because english itself is obviously changing through absorbing a lot of norman & otherwise-french influence, partially it is the nature of poetic form to adapt. i’ve seen some arguments that end-rhyme was introduced into french-etc. poetry through diffusion of arabic poetry out of al-andalus; i’m not qualified to comment but it sounds plausible. either way, at and after the time of conquest, french verse was generally octosyllabic, and rhyming or at least assonant—

Bels fut li vespres e li soleilz fut clers. Les dis mulez fait Carles establer. El’ grant vergier fait li reis tendre un tref; Les dis messages ad fait enz hosteler; Duze serjant les unt bien cunreez. (la chanson de roland, att. turold, c. 1040–1115, lines 157-161; assonant)

Quant des lais faire m’entremet, ne vueil ubliër Bisclavret. Bisclavret a nun en Bretan, Garulf l’apelent li Norman. (bisclavret, marie de france, c. 1160–1215, lines 1-4; aabb rhyming)

alliterative verse didn’t entirely disappear, probably, but we don’t have evidence for it after the composition of layamon’s brut in 1190. the verse compositions in identifiable english that we have, like of arthour and of merlin or richard coer de lyon, tend to take after anglo-norman and french antecedents—

Merlin seyd to þe king “Al y knowe þi glosing, Y wot þou louest par amour Ygerne þat swete flour. What wiltow ȝeue me, ar tomorwe Y schal þe lese out of þi sorwe?” (of arthour and of merlin, c. 1250–1300, lines 2477-2482)

He answeryd wiþ herte ffree, “Þeron j moot avyse me. Ȝe weten weel, it is no lawe, A kynge to hange and to drawe…” (richard coer de lyon, c. 1300, lines 997-1000)

the above two are fairly representative of earlier (like, pre-chaucerian) middle english poetic literature. speaking broadly: short, metrical rhymed couplets. i should also mention, probably, that people at the time were fairly inconsistent about the scribal difference between u and v or y/i/j, that þ goes “th”, and that ȝ makes a variety of “g” or “g”-“y” cusp or “gh” or “ch” sounds and can also stand in scribally for a z or hard s.

anyway, the 14th century alliterative revival is what it sounds like: around 1350, primarily in the north and west of england, a lot of alliterative verse began to be written down. it’s…very different from the examples given above:

And þat þe myriest in his muckel þat myȝt ride; For of bak and of brest al were his bodi sturne, Both his wombe and his wast were worthily smale, And alle his fetures folȝande, in forme þat he hade, ful clene; �� For wonder of his hwe men hade, Set in his semblaunt sene; He ferde as freke were fade, And oueral enker-grene. (sir gawain and the green knight, “gawain poet”, c. 1370–1390, lines 142-150)

middle english alliterative verse by and large rejects end-rhyming (however, the exceptions to that rule are absolutely my favorites—more later), and brings back the four-stress line (both his wombe and his wast || were worthily smale) although in a longer and looser form than was common in old english, probably because of linguistic shifts and because of evolution of the medium. it is so fun to read out loud. sir gawain and the alliterative morte arthure are probably your most accessible examples—they’re both available in facing-page translation by simon armitage, who isn’t my favorite translator of sir gawain but does a good job of retaining the stresses. piers plowman is also representative, but reading it, to me, is a little like being trapped in the donut shop my grandpa hangs out at with a bunch of other old guys, except without donuts—it’s very old-man-yells-at-cloud. but really my interest with them is less with translation than with the way that the language sits in my mouth, and the way that i think alliterative verse sort of pulls the lines forward in a way that end-rhyme doesn’t necessarily—it feels more propulsive, more churning. it’s like a water-wheel, if that makes sense? it plays off the natural stresses of the english language in a really engaging way, and differently from iambic pentameter, which tends to get most of the spotlight when it comes to naturalistic rhythm in english poetry. and there’s a playfulness to a lot of it (especially the rhymed poems), or at least a sense of the ability to play with language, that i love and that i think a lot of people don’t really realize existed in medieval literature (or think only chaucer was capable of it.)

however! the works from the alliterative revival that combine alliteration and end-rhyme are some of my favorite poems in the english language (for a permissive definition of “english”), because they tend to develop these incredible complex, elaborate structures of rhyme and meter. so there are two poems in this category that i’m going to talk about, and i can go for…a long time on the second one. i’m not really going to bring up sir gawain on its own much more because, no room, but it’s really one of my favorite arthurian works, in part because of the alliterative verse, in part because i just love the figure of the green knight and the awful castle hautdesert threesome setup; it’s also one of the more accessible examples of the core of the genre (at least to me—i bounced really hard off of malory, the mabinogion is fun but deeply weird in a way that might put off beginners, and i think chrétien de troyes really depends on how you’re introduced—english translations of french arthuriana tend to be prose translations, which is a whole different post but suffice it to say i don’t think they work.)

first is the three dead kings, which is an expansion on the “as you are so i once was / as i am so shall you be” type of memento mori motif that was pretty common at the time; three kings on a boar hunt run into three corpses who identify themselves as their ancestors and tell them to stop fucking around and take death seriously. so, thematically—i think memento mori art and literature is a lot of fun, in general; the combination of the focus on life’s transience with macabre and often enthusiastically ghoulish imagery—

Lo, here the wormus in my wome — thai wallon and wyndon! Lo, here the wrase of the wede || that I was in wondon! (the three dead kings, att. john audelay, c. 1426, lines 98–99)

—and the vision of life still continuing after death and among the dead, not necessarily solely in the sense of the resurrection but in a community of the dead on earth who speak to and concern themselves with the living, it’s just very fun. (afterlives by nancy mandeville caciola is an absolute blast on that front, by the way.) the three dead kings is also structurally complex in a really enjoyable way: it’s not bob-and-wheel (which you see very famously in sir gawain, the little two-word bob and four-line abab wheel at the end of each verse), but the five-line cdccd bit that i’d call a sort of wheel; and then the main body of each stanza has this very fun abababab scheme where the a- and b-words still half-rhyme with each other. from the stanza i quoted above, you get “fynden — fondon — lynden — Londen — byndon — bondon — wyndon — wondon”. i think it plays very well with the meter.

aside from that, i love the imagery of it; it ranges from, like i said, almost comically grotesque—the dead king whose legs are like leeks wrapped in linen, the worms wallowing and winding in the womb (interesting word choice, also)—to this very sere, wintry atmosphere; the last stanza has a half-line about the “red rowys of the day,” the red daylight, that i just love. and i’m a big fan of the way that, kind of like sir gawain in miniature, the three dead kings opens with this celebration of chivalric performance that’s suddenly pulled askew by the intrusion of supernatural—or, like, really, the most natural; what’s more normal than death, or than cyclical renewal?—forces.

the second poem is pearl. (the linked translation is not my favorite; simon armitage has a facing-page one that’s pretty good, but my favorite overall is marie borroff’s (rip), who also did my favorite sir gawain.) i’m going to do my best not to just go on and on about pearl for ages, because this post is already very long, but it’s also, i think, one of my favorite poems, period. its structure is very hard to talk about briefly, because the way that it’s built is integral to its subject. in brief: 101 stanzas, each of 12 lines in abababab-bcbc rhyme, divided into 20 cantos (the 14th canto has 6 stanzas, the rest 5), for a total of 1212 lines. within each canto, the first and last line of each stanza repeat these linking words and phrases (except the first line of each canto, which does so to the final line of the canto preceding, and the final line of the poem, which paraphrases the opening line.) this is all because pearl is in part about heavenly geometry, the square/cube of the heavenly city (12 furlongs on a side, filled with 144,000 maidens) and the circle/sphere of the pearl, and the way that those two shapes are interposed on each other—there’s a lot of structural/behind-the-scenes numerology and geometry to talk about, but like…i won’t right now. it’s also, in the poem itself, something that can’t fully be talked about—

An-under mone so great merwayle No fleschly hert ne myȝt endeure, As quen I blusched upon þat bayle, So ferly þerof watȝ þe fasure. I stod as stylle as dased quayle For ferly of þat frelich fygure, Þat felde I nawþer reste ne trauayle, So watȝ I rauyste wyth glymme pure. For I dar say wyth conciens sure, Hade bodyly burne abiden þat bone, Þaȝ alle clerkeȝ hym hade in cure, His lyf were loste an-under mone. (pearl, “gawain poet,” c. 1370–1390, lines 1081–1092)

briefly—the narrator sees the heavenly city and nearly dies on the spot, only protected by the fact that this is all taking place in a dream-vision. borroff translates a bit of that as:

As a quail that couches, dumb and dazed, I stared on that great symmetry Nor rest nor travail my soul could taste, Pure radiance so had ravished me.

like…i love that. so much of pearl is about mortal and divine perception, about the unknowability of death and the depth of grief and the final breakdown of the consolatio as a literary-philosophical genre, and about the way that the dead who have transcended death and come out the other side are residing because of that transcendence in a fundamentally alien sphere of cognition, marked out by the impossible-to-withstand radiance of the heavenly city.

but what pearl is about-about, it’s generally agreed, is the death of the narrator’s young daughter. she is the pearl who he lost; grieving her, he falls asleep in a garden and has a dream. in this dream, he wakes up in a fantastical garden or forest, divided by a river, and on the other side of that river is a beautiful young woman who identifies herself, and who the narrator identifies, as the “pearl”. the rest of the poem is a back-and-forth between the narrator and the pearl-maiden, which is largely him asking questions and her explaining biblical parables to him. but describing the conversation as that really does it an incalculable disservice, because what it is is, on the one hand, a grieving parent asking these very human, tender questions of his lost child—are you really her? why did you have to go? where are you? are you happy where you are?—while the child offers only these very stern, cold rebukes—þou most abyde þat He schal deme—and abstruse explanations of the parable of the vineyard; and on the other hand, someone who has been made greedy and grasping and willfully uncomprehending in his grief, refusing to understand that the child he lost is happier where she is now, and that she can be happier there, and that he cannot join her before his decreed time. and he’s not at fault for being that way, but he’s thinking in ways that are fundamentally limited by the mortal realm that he can’t yet exit and she’s thinking in ways that are incomprehensible to people who haven’t also undergone the same apocalyptic, in the word’s sense of “unveiling” (but also, i mean, she’s in the heavenly city), reorientation of thought and being. it’s a very tender poem that i think also manages to prefigure some of the staples of eldritch horror.

and i love how the structure plays into that; the alliteration is looser than the three dead kings—there’s basically no caesura (the || that shows up sometimes in three dead kings and is more or less mandatory in old english verse), and sometimes there’s only 2 alliterations to a line, because the lines are shorter, or none at all—but it’s still got these wonderful repetitions of sound across the stanzas, tied into the repetition of the key words at the beginning and end. the whole thing builds up and up and then collapses back onto the beginning, as the narrator gradually believes he’s understanding more and more and then, in his attempt to ford the river before his time, is thrown back into the mortal world; the poem’s like an impossible staircase. it’s this massive crystalline structure enclosing a deeply human core. there is, to my knowledge, nothing else like it. it—and the other works, including sir gawain, attributed to the “gawain poet” on the basis of stylistic similarities—survives in a single manuscript, cotton nero a.x, which fortunately survived the ashburnham house fire in 1731.

to close off on the alliterative revival at large, it fell out of fashion over the 1400s; in england, the chaucerian tradition—end-rhymed iambic pentameter—dominated, and while alliterative-meter poetry still had some currency in the scottish court that ended with james vi/i stuart’s ascent to the english throne and transfer of his court to london. in modern usage, alliteration as its own technique does crop up in poetry—and i’m always happy to see it—but alliterative meter (as in, four-stress lines, or even the looser form of sir gawain or the three dead kings) is much less common and most people encounter it either through translations of beowulf or through some of the poetry in the lord of the rings (from dark dunharrow || in the dim of morning…)

#.ask #anonymous

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gloomsday · 6 years

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21 questions writing themed!

Created by @jxsminewrites. I was tagged by @rosecorcoranwrites

rules: tag 5 or more other writers. if you aren’t tagged, feel free to use these questions anyway and consider yourself tagged!

1. Short stories, novels, or poems?

short stories and novels.

2. What genre do you prefer reading?

lit fic, magic realism, occasionally fantasy. i love a good bildungsroman.

3. What genre do you prefer writing?

it used to be fantasy without question, but at this point in my life i'm more interested in exploring particular themes and characters through literary/realistic fiction with an occasional nod to magic realism.

4. Are you a planner or a write-as-I-go kind of person?

both, nowadays leaning more on write-as-i-go. for me, short stories don't require more than an idea and some semblance of an ending--though sometimes not even that. for my most recent novel, i plotted out somewhere around five scenes that i wanted and approximately where they should be in the story, and then filled in the rest with whatever came to me and what seemed natural for the characters. it was magical. i've been less successful planning out a novel scene-by-scene, but in, say, a fantasy novel with political intrigue and lots of moving pieces, planning and pre-emptive worldbuilding is probably much more necessary than a modern, character-driven, meandering story about a rock band touring the united states.

5. What music do you listen to while writing?

mostly post rock (explosions in the sky, godspeed you! black emperor, caspian, sigur ros, mogwai, etc.), electronic (four tet, burial, oneohtrix point never), music that directly inspired the scene i'm working on, "albatross" by fleetwood mac on repeat for hours (literally).

6. Fave books/movies?

movies: the darjeeling limited, there will be blood, little miss sunshine, amelie books: the catcher in the rye, aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe, the little prince

7. Any current WIPs?

i've been talking about it a lot, but wax engine parade is my current novel in progress! i've been making slow progress since blasting through national novel writing month last november with over 55,000 words. i'm somewhere in the realm of 65,000 words right now, so i've slowed down quite a bit because i'm worried i'll burn out before i can finish, but i love this story with all my heart, whaow :~)

8. If someone were to make a cartoon out of you, what would your standard outfit be?

large rectangular glasses; a ridiculous, slouchy beanie with a huge pompom in the back and wild, wavy hair sticking out from under the hat like a cloud; huge over-ear headphones over top of the beanie; layers upon layers of shapeless clothes (or a wool sweater); skinny jeans or leggings; knee-length socks; scarf; boots.

9. Create a character description for yourself:

she was an odd bird of a girl, silly and apologetic and often sad. she owned records but no record player, danced in the kitchen with no music, and cried when she was happy.

10. Do you like incorporating people you actually know into your writing?

yes? doesn't everyone? my past and present friendships, family relationships, etc. have completely shaped my understanding of the world, so i don't think i could write believable characters without pulling from that bank at least occasionally. which is not to say i simply throw the entirety of a person i know into a novel and call it good. i'm always pulling traits and qualities and quirks from people i know and imbuing existing characters with them. write what you know, eh?

11. Are you kill-happy with characters?

no. give me a good reason for a character death and i'll usually (USUALLY!) let it slide, but i find kill-happy authors as a whole to be rather boring and unimaginative.

12. Dream job?

literary journal editor or literary agent.

13. Coffee or tea while writing?

tea.

14. Slow or fast writer?

usually pretty slow, though occasionally i'll surprise myself and write 200 pages in a month, so who knows. i tend to fixate on perfection, even on first drafts, so it can be difficult for me to move on and actually make progress. i’m actively trying to move away from that mentality though!

15. Where/who/what do you find inspiration from?

i answered this in the last writing ask, but i've found immense inspiration in music and specific musicians/role models, friendships with creative people around the world, art, history, personal experiences, nature, etc.

16. If you were put into a fantasy world, what would you be?

definitely a traveling bard interested in collecting lore and unique musical artifacts from around the world.

17. Most fave book cliche? Least fave book cliche?

favorite: found family least favorite: love triangles

18. Fave places to write:

my bed. that's not a euphemism--them's just the truth.

19. Fave scenes to write?

drug-related scenes, sex/romance scenes, anything related to music, characters being silly.

20. Most productive time of day for writing?

the first twenty minutes after i wake up.

21. Reason for writing:

i love the characters i create so deeply and want to tell their stories.

not tagging anyone but if you’d like to do this, please do so (you can say i tagged you if you wanna :D)

#writing #ask

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imaginendrv3 · 7 years

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For the anon who requested the guys being first time fathers/seeing their newborn baby for the first time:

Yo its Mod Gonta! This is my first time posting a prompt on here and I spent a lot of time on this one so I hope the anon who requested this and everyone else here enjoys!

Rantarou Amami: -is probably the most calm out of everyone in this situation -He’s very slightly nervous that some complications could possibly happen and you or the baby could get hurt. -When the baby is born, he is smiling so much his jaw begins to hurt, but he can’t stop smiling anyways. -“S/O, they look just like you!” -He’s literally the chillest dad ever. He barely lectures his children at all. -His child ends up having tiny double ahoges just like him and he finds it adorable. -Is very supportive of his child and everything they do! -They want to play basketball? he’ll go to every game! They want to become a musician? He will pay for everything! -His favorite thing about being a dad? teaching his kid how to ride a bike.

Kokichi Ouma: -He acts like he’s chill when his S/O is going into labor but he’s internally screaming. -When the baby comes out he immediately takes the baby in his arms and is in awe over how cute and innocent he looks. -“You’re gonna be the most evil supreme leader some day!” -The nurses have to stop him from feeding Panta to the baby. -is a huge jokester for a dad! -all of the kid’s friends find him to be the coolest dad ever, but the kid finds him somewhat embarrassing -likes to prank his kid a lot, but his pranks towards the kid are quite harmless (airhorns, putting honey on the doorknob, etc) even the SHSL supreme ruler has slight morals when it comes to kids. -He likes to purposely embarrass his kid sometimes just to annoy them. Sometimes he’ll blast inappropriate music out the window when going to pick up his kid from school. -Kokichi also likes to send his kid memes while they are at school. -Basically he is more of a best friend than a father.

Kiibo: -Obviously a robot can’t get anyone preggo, so he adopts a human baby with his S/O! -Does a TON of research on taking care of human babies before he gets one! -When he gets his human baby, he’s amazed at how adorable they can be and that all humans once started out this small! -HELICOPTER DAD ALERT -“where are you going? Get home before dark! its unhealthy to stay up too late! Do your chores! Get your homework and studying done! Finish your fruits and vegetables!” -encourages his child to be respectful to everyone. Does not tolerate an ounce of disrespect and will lecture his child if they disrespect anyone. -He is a master at helping his kid with their homework and studying for tests; his kid ends up getting straight A’s in all of their classes just because he’s amazing at tutoring his children. -D r e a d s parent-teacher conference day -Poor Kiibo gets so many weird and disturbed looks from the teacher. -“This teacher is a robot racist!”

Shuichi Saihara: -Oh boy he’s a nervous wreck -he’s shaking, sweaty, and very red in the face while watching his S/O go into labor. -“What if I’m not a good enough father??? What if I let something happen to my child??? Will (S/O name) be okay???” -When the baby is born, it looks a lot similar to him. It has beautiful grey eyes and long eyelashes -he’s very surprised that he managed to hold his baby without dropping it after it was born. -The kid likes to take his baseball cap and wear it around the house, and he just melts whenever the kid does this because its really adorable. -He even lets the kid wear the baseball cap to school sometimes. -Shuuichi tries to distance his kid and his job from each other as much as possible, he doesn’t want his child to see anything disturbing. -His child thinks that his job is really interesting though, and considers their dad a hero. -Shuuichi tends to spoil his child a lot unintentionally, its just so hard for him to say ‘“no” when his child asks for the toy they want.

Korekiyo shinguuji: -He tries to stay calm about having a child, but is a bit nervous. -“Will it be frightened by my appearance???” -cannot believe his sight once he sees his child for the first time, “What a beautiful human baby!” -If the baby starts crying in the middle of the night, he gets up and rocks it, singing it to sleep. The baby falls asleep so fast because his voice is so soothing -If the child ends up growing their hair out, he likes to braid and style their hair in a bunch of neat and unique styles before they go to school (the kid’s friends are jealous) -Lets the child play with his hair and won’t get mad if they knot his hair by accident. -He reads his child a bedtime story every single night before they go to sleep, he has a whole stack of books filled with bedtime stories to tell his child. -Whenever the child has nightmares, he lets the child lay on his chest while he reads them a calming poem. -After the child ends up falling back asleep, Korekiyo falls back asleep himself and its literally the cutest thing ever. -He sometimes tells his child creepy folktales that involve misbehaving children so his child won’t misbehave, but he makes sure it isn’t too scary. -Him and his kid love to bake and cook together! They just both genuinely enjoy it and its just a cute bonding activity for them.

Gonta Gokuhara: -He is filled with so much anxiety on the delivery day. -“What if the kid doesn’t think I’m a gentleman?” -Once the baby is born, he is stunned and amused by how adorable it is and how small it is compared to him. -The baby smiles and coos at him when Gonta holds it in his arms for the first time, it feels very safe and secure in his arms. -His s/o will have to help him out quite a bit with raising the baby, due to his upbringing he doesn’t know too much about raising a child properly. -He loves to find new insects for the child and let them keep some of them as pets! of course not the poisonous ones, though. -If his child is male then he preaches to him about being a gentleman and makes sure he treats everyone with respect. -especially women -If his child is afraid of bugs then he is willing to help them get over their fear! -Is respectful if his child is not interested in insects, though -Like Shuuichi, he has a problem saying no to his child since he is too nice. He ends up unintentionally spoiling them. -But if you aren’t acting like a gentleman or if you intentionally kill a spider? you’re grounded

Ryoma Hoshi: -Before the child is born he is hoping to god that the child won’t grow taller than him. -After the child is born, his depression starts to improve a lot -It makes him so happy to have a child in his life !! -Tries to be a strict dad but whenever his child does something cute he m e l t s -He likes to take his child to the park afterschool everyday and practice tennis with them -its a very cute bonding activity for them and they both enjoy it very much and have a lot of fun!! -He sometimes loses his patience with the kid and gets angry with them, but will feel bad and apologize profusely later. -The child ends up growing w a y taller than him and he is pretty upset about that. -He likes to tease his child about them being tall as much as the child likes teasing him about him being short.

Kaito Momota: -Is very excited to have the baby! -He does a lot of shopping ahead of time while his S/O is pregnant! -The first things he buys are a space mobil and glow in the dark stars for the ceiling -if his baby is crying he will take it outside and gaze up at the bright stars and moon at night with the baby. -Is the dad who constantly takes photos of his kids when his family goes on trips! -Also the generic dad who wears an apron and flip flops and flips burgers on a grill in the summertime -buys his kid pajamas with stars and moons all over them -Will sometimes scold his kid if they do something wrong, but he keeps his composure and tries not to get too angry. -He still apologizes later though -Teaches his kid about all of the different planets and stars and shapes in the sky when they look up through his telescope together -The kid ends up getting all As when they learn about space in science, thanks to kaito.

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gjgriff736 · 5 years

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Well, folks. My week back at it has been unbelievably busy. I went to New York Comic Con and attended book launches for Saeed Jones and Zadie Smith. I’m tired! This is gonna be a long one, so stick with me. Okay, let’s get to it.

NEW YORK COMIC CON

So this year, I went to New York Comic Con no longer a newbie. I went with the focus of someone who knew how things work. Was it perfect? Of course not. But did I have fun? I absolutely did.

Instead of killing myself to try and make every single panel, talk and event, I strategically chose what I would do. I mean, I have a regular job so I had to take that into consideration (Note to Self: TAKE THE WEDNESDAY BEFORE NYCC OFF!). So I skipped Thursday and Friday and just made sure to show up on Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday was a day of panels, which meant I basically stayed inside the Hulu Theatre at Madison Square Garden all day. I attended panels for The Walking Dead, where Danai Gurira (Michonne) talked about her last season with the show, and we all learned that Lauren Cohan (Maggie) would be making her return. Cailey Fleming, who plays Judith Grimes, came to her first NYCC and she handled the crowds like a pro.

I had a break until the next panel, so I made my way to Johnnie Walker’s pop-up for the brand’s Game of Thrones-inspired whiskey tasting. At one of New York City’s art galleries, I was able to taste A Song of Ice, which was smooth and tasted great in a mixed drink I tried called Queen in the North, and A Song of Fire, a spicy and stronger version. Guests sampled both whiskeys, struck a pose in the photo booth (including yours truly) and interacted with each other. It was a lot of fun.

Afterwards, I headed back to the Hulu Theatre for the Castle Rock panel. Attendees were treated to the Season 2 premiere episode and it was BANANAS!! Season 1 already had me on edge, but Season 2 is going to be absolutely crazy. The audience was not ready for what happened in the episode and neither will the rest of you. Lizzy Caplan as Annie Wilkes is a dream! Get ready for her take on an iconic character when the show airs on October 23.

Once the screening was over, the cast took to the stage for a lively discussion about the season, even though they couldn’t say too much without spoiling anything. I was fine with that because I want to be surprised. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be more than surprised when I watch.

Once the Castle Rock panel was over, it was time to prepare for Outlander, a show and book series I adore. I’ve been to three screenings/panels for the show so far (twice at NYCC) and it’s ALWAYS a great time.

One of the things that happens between panels is what I call the Seat Shuffle. Hulu Theatre is not cleared out after each panel, so attendees who stick around for the next one have the chance to move to a better seat, if they can. I already had a pretty good seat for Castle Rock, but I moved anyway. I found an even better seat closer to the stage and sat with some die-hard fans of the show. We talked, laughed and sang songs during a contest we could have easily won had we jumped on stage to participate (if you don’t know the words to the Saved By The Bell theme song, I don’t want to know you).

As always, the Outlander panel was so much fun. The cast was so funny and very gracious to the fans. David Berry, who plays fine ass Lord John Grey was especially charming and I was psyched to see Duncan Lacroix, who plays Murtagh, on the stage. One of the funniest things during the panel was hearing the cast say lines from the show in a New York accent. Caitriona Balfe won that challenge easily when she delivered her lines sounding like she grew up in the Boogie Down Bronx.

Since Season 5 was still being filmed, there was no screening of the premiere episode, but fans did get to see the new trailer for the season. As always, Claire and Jamie have to deal with some mess, but they deal with that mess together and still very much in love.

And finally, I watched the Season 10 premiere of The Walking Dead. The gang is in full-on training mode after the Whisperers massacre, Carol and King Ezekiel are still broken up (dammit), Michonne is still kicking walker ass and this season looks like we’re gonna see an Alpha/Carol showdown.

Sunday was not as busy, but I did attend a couple of cool book panels. The highlight of my day was meeting and taking a picture with author N.K. Jemisin, and folks, I was a damn geek. I am normally very cool when I meet celebrities or authors but for some reason, I geeked out when I met Nora (yes, that’s how she introduced herself to me so that’s what I get to call her now). But she was incredibly gracious and handled my spazzing like a champ. After that, I walked around so I could take pics of all the cosplayers. As always, attendees went above and beyond. See all of my pics from NYCC below.

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SAEED JONES

The next evening, I had the pleasure of attending the book launch for Saeed Jones’s new memoir, How We Fight For Our Lives. The launch was held at BAM Fisher in Brooklyn. The event began with a reading by a young student named Jada Wilkinson, a senior in high school chosen to read her work. This young queen read her poem, “Removal,” which was powerful and moving. With her amazing blue hair, strong voice and beautiful smile, Ms. Wilkinson had our attention and received a rousing round of applause when she was done. I hope to feature her one day on this blog, and I made sure to meet her (and her mother) to tell her so.

After the reading, Mr. Jones came running out to give Ms. Wilkinson a giant hug and to congratulate her on the poem. He then read from the poem at the beginning of his book called “Elegy with Grown Folks’ Music” and then part of the first chapter. I loved the poem because it perfectly captures how kids feel the first time they realize that their parents were other people before they were parents.

After his reading, Mr. Jones was joined on stage by playwright extraordinaire Lynn Nottage. The two of them together made for a truly wonderful talk, both providing the audience with the kind of engagement you hope to have when you attend a book event. Mr. Jones is gregarious and witty, with a personality that makes you want to be friends with him immediately. Ms. Nottage provided the soothing but also empowering side, drawing the audience into her own experiences and how she reacted to the book. This talk was something special, and I’m always grateful to be able to attend these events. See pics below.

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ZADIE SMITH

People, this was the talk I had been waiting for. I have been a fan of Zadie Smith’s since I read her debut novel, White Teeth in college. I’ve read just about all of her books and essays (I still need to read Autograph Man) and I was lucky enough to see her at BAM’s annual event “Eat, Drink & Be Literary.” But this time, I would get to see her up close and personal. She did not disappoint.

Held at the Barnes & Noble Union Square location, fans listened to Ms. Smith read from her new collection of short stories, Grand Union. Her voice is made for reading and I was soon in her thrall (yes, I know that sounds dramatic). Once she was done, Ms. Smith and The New Yorker‘s Vince Cunningham engaged in a great discussion about the book and what her life is like now that she lives in New York full time. One of the things Ms. Smith says she enjoys is people watching. If you’ve never done it, people watching in New York City is a blast. You will see so many different types of people of all ages, sizes, temperaments, etc. I love people watching in NYC and often wonder what they’re thinking about as they walk by. It was nice to know that Ms. Smith enjoys doing that, as well.

After the talk, guests were given the chance to have their books signed. Before you ask, of course I got my book signed. And I got to chat with her briefly, as well. I kept my cool and spoke to her like a normal human being. She was absolutely lovely. See the pics below.

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And that was my week! I had such a great time and I hope the rest of the year proves to be just as full of literary goodness. Stay tuned.

My Week: Comic Con, Saeed Jones & Zadie Smith Well, folks. My week back at it has been unbelievably busy. I went to New York Comic Con and attended book launches for Saeed Jones and Zadie Smith.

#BAM #BAM Fisher #Barnes & Noble #New York Comic Con #NYCC 2019 #Saeed Jones #Zadie Smith

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