#q reads trc

[aidenwaites]

He was a skater boy, I said see you later, boy 💀

#im not sure i like the silhouette actually but i DO like the emphasis it puts on his eye so 🤷‍♂️ #noah czerny #the raven boys #the raven cycle #maggie stiefvater #trc #my stuff #cw blood #cw gore #there he is!!! its finally out of my system!!! #i wanted to draw this purely to caption it with avril lavigne!!!! #q reads trc #trc fanart #gangsey

[robobee]

unfollowed you 1:10 pm december 12 2023 because i’ve clawed my way out of hell (trc fixation), havent read a book in several months, and am now an annoying hockey fan.

q: how do i fix this

a: become increasingly involved in and insane about sports

q: wait i AM insane about sports

a: if you feel like you’ve been wrongly unfollowed please email me with your favorite nhl team, least favorite nhl team, and #1 pathetic loser player. there are right and wrong answers so please choose carefully.

q: are you going to block me

a: yes

lizzie please we can talk about this ... I know what hockey is... erm.. it.. it has ice? .. i .. i make NORMAL TEXT POSTS TOO!!!

#WJHEWKSBAKHSSKSNS KIDDING IM. OBSESSED W THIS #save #ans #i gotta say it is fucking hilarious if this is yet ANOTHER mutual* who went from trc to hockey. what is in the water

[dreamertrilogys]

I posted 13,332 times in 2022

1,087 posts created (8%)

12,245 posts reblogged (92%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@literaturebf

@dreamertrilogys

@exitwound

@carfuckerlynch

@boymagnolia

I tagged 9,130 of my posts in 2022

Only 32% of my posts had no tags

#q - 2,524 posts

#fave - 1,599 posts

#z.txt - 1,072 posts

#art - 1,030 posts

#w - 1,003 posts

#ph - 959 posts

#trc - 413 posts

#p - 288 posts

#yeah - 251 posts

#mcr - 236 posts

Longest Tag: 146 characters

#about but i know my friend forgot and asked if this was zain’s house at first (😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 i know) and then later i had to pretend he just for

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

ur telling me the whole of dracula is like technically written like this

912 notes - Posted May 9, 2022

#4

tiktok nurses need to see this i think

1,945 notes - Posted August 24, 2022

#3

guy who is so so afraid to be earnest & sincere but will also die if he’s not

3,530 notes - Posted October 25, 2022

#2

biggest red flag is asking for the subtitles to be turned off

9,790 notes - Posted August 3, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

literally die

[ID: A sponsored post advertising Amazon Kindle that has been edited to read:

“2 months FOREVER of unlimited reading for $0.00

Get Offer LIBRARY

The kindle unlimited logo is also crossed out. /end ID]

46,515 notes - Posted July 22, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

[f1-stuff]

which pairings you read and your favourite tropes

thank you for sharing your stories ♥️

Helloooo! Thank you for the q! ❤️

Do you mean f1 pairings? Bc, in that case, it’s exclusively charlos (and chalex if em is writing it) LOL. When I have an OTP, it totally consumes me to the point I can’t see outside of it. Altho when I first started watching f1 and wasn’t yet deep into my charlos brainrot, I read a couple seblewis fics and maybe tried maxiel ? But it feels like that was a lifetime ago haha (outside of f1, I read stony, dinluke, ronan/adam (trc), james bond/Q, and arthur/eames (inception))

When it comes to tropes, it sorta depends on the pairing. But my top tag in my ao3 bookmarks is ‘angst’ apparently 😂 followed by hurt/comfort. I love a good soulmate fic, enemies/friends to lovers, slow burn, mutual pining, sharing a bed… Basically anything I’ve written is a trope I also love to read haha. This isn’t really a ‘trope’ but historical/royalty AUs are a big love of mine as well

#had to make this text small bc my response was getting long loool #anon #ask #rpf

[unloneliest]

I posted 13,683 times in 2022

That's 13,180 more posts than 2021!

289 posts created (2%)

13,394 posts reblogged (98%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@milfygerard

@lesdienne

@asterlark

@elytrians

@hoob-gooblin

I tagged 7,161 of my posts in 2022

Only 48% of my posts had no tags

#tmg - 408 posts

#mcr - 376 posts

#jam posts - 306 posts

#leverage - 302 posts

#trc - 281 posts

#q - 208 posts

#yell - 195 posts

#queer tag - 156 posts

#omgcp - 136 posts

#scream - 113 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#w  last limit of bhakti i know my listening experience isn't the average i just have permanent brain worms about eliot spencer from leverage

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

have any tumblr tmg fans seen the sanguinare speculation? i’ve seen discussion on the subreddit - apparently there were postcards given out at the merch table last night with a qr code leading to this website (front of the postcard was the image from the website). folks on the subreddit are thinking it might be a surprise album drop, especially considering how long it’s been since they last released new music & the original plan for dark in here.

246 notes - Posted May 18, 2022

#4

season 2 eliot..... they put gender in him

285 notes - Posted April 29, 2022

#3

rewatching s3 e1 of leverage is like. top ten pictures taken moments before a disaster (eliot realizing he hasn't escaped moreau's influence over his life and that from here on out he will be living with either the inevitability of the team finding out about his past or the reality of them having found out). rewatching the rest of season 3 is like watching him be put through a slow motion hydraulic press. it's soooooooooooooooo

376 notes - Posted September 11, 2022

#2

listen. i always liked werewolves more than vampires, and that’s because i just never really got the appeal of vampires - i was like, vampire-neutral. happy they existed because i know how much my friends love them. so i’m fairly certain the absolute first thing i said when i surfaced from reading @thebibliosphere‘s hunger pangs: true love bites is “i get it about vampires now.” 

i absolutely did not go into reading expecting to adore vlad as much as i do, but oh my god, is this what enjoying vampires has been like for the rest of you this entire time????? why did nobody tell me! seriously!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i cannot recommend reading this enough, i’m never going to shut up about how much i love this book, & yes, that’s fully with the intent of being a fandom pied piper & dragging you all into this interest with me.

611 notes - Posted February 11, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

for anyone who was missing it: the annotated mountain goats is back online!

for any tmg fans who haven’t heard of the annotated mountain goats before: it’s an awesome resource for lyrics & info on songs, and it’s been an absolute cornerstone of my goats listening experience since i started listening - check it out!

736 notes - Posted February 16, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #jam posts #YELLING. here's how my blog can still be about the leverage wip i started in 2017

[ketterwraith]

no, you dont touch my boys.

#trc #raven boys #blue #blue sargent #thenaspeaks #i feel this mysterious fog #when i read #the raven cycle #reads #q.

[ketavinsky]

the dream pack on instagram: skov and swan.

#the raven cycle #the dream pack #reposting because my q fucked up my tags but. anyways #skovswan #blake skovron #swan #png #trc #im gonna go read tfc and have a lil cry over neil

[discoveryinthedark]

EU PASSEI UM ANO SEM CONSEGUIR COMPRAR ESSA PORRA DESSE LIVRO E AGR TÁ 10 REAIS???????

#q odio #trc #personal #so im finally gonna fucking read call down the hawk #istg i couldn't find anywhere to buy this fucking book in ebook form for so long that i lost all interest #peguei ranço #mas #10 FUCKING REAIS Q ODIO #maggie stiefvater #vamo marca 5 minutinho sem perder a amizade fdp

[stardecksystem]

This is an updated list! Some info was changed and others were added! [Note: gonna be adding more info as alters front to write their own]

We have a LOT of shared interests. So if anyone wants to talk about any of them don't hesitate to talk with any of us!

Master interest list to be made later!

Alter Intros!

Name: Quentin "Q" Milo

Age: 22

Pronouns: he/him

Little bit about him: I am a co-host! I like writing and reading a whole lot; my favorite books are TRC, AFTG, Simon Snow Trilogy, The Magicians, RWRB, and Violet Eyes. I am a herbalist witch and I really enjoy smoking(anything but tobacco). I'd like to think I fit the dark academia aesthetic.

Name: Reine

Age: 22

Pronouns: she/her

Little bit about her: I'm the other co-host, I enjoy fire and also reading. Violet Eyes is my personal favorite book. I'm a bit hardheaded ;p I've got other stuff I am interested in and stuff but I guess you just gotta talk to me to know me~

Name: Derek

Age: 23

Pronouns: he/it

Little bit about him: I relate heavily with Ronan Lynch from The Raven Cycle. I'm kinda a bitch but I promise I'm fun. I like dead things and video games. The sky makes me happy.

Name: Louis

Age: 22

Pronouns: he/him

Little bit about him: I'm a gatekeeper but I do a lot. I'm one of the eldest alters. I enjoy numbers, they make a lot of sense. I do a lot of the ~adult~ things. I love reading and researching things. Beautiful notebooks and pens make me happy.

Name: Jane

Age: 19

Pronouns: she/her (doll/dolls maybe?)

Little bit about her: I love soft things like teddy bears and poofy skirts and blankets. I take care of memories and stuff like they're files. That's the easiest way I can explain my role in the headspace! I help Louis a lot with order in the headspace but I also tend to front when dysphoria gets too bad for the body. I love the stars and plants and being outside. I also like tea and cake. :)

Name: Teddy

Age: 28

Pronouns: he/him

A little bit about him: I'm Rocking and Rolling, man! I like cats and coffee, anime and rock music. I really like cooking and romantic poets! I make the best burgers on this side of the coast.

Name: Zeke

Age: n/a

Pronouns: they/he/it

Little bit about them: I'm a nonhuman alter. I have interests but it's not really anyones business. I probably won't post a bunch I'm not a fan of being perceived.

Name: Kiki

Age: 16? 19? It's hard to say a lot of the time

Pronouns: she/they

A little bit about her: last time I was here scene culture was still a thing. But!!! I guess there's a reason I'm not dormant anymore. It's chill there's so much coolerr things now a days. I like neon colors~, Homestuck, and sour candi. Im really cool and a little loud so apologiesss XP

Name: Edwin

Age: "25"

Pronouns: he/him

Little bit about them: I'm a vampire. [More info to be added soon]

Name: Simon

Age: 21

Pronouns: he/him

Little bit about them: [more info to be added soon]

Name: Jareth

Age: "Very Old"

Pronouns: they/he

Little bit about them: [more info to be added soon]

#alter intro #did #did system #disassociative identity disorder #uhhh hi! #this took so long to make amd now my head hurts #im going to bed now thanks

[dykefever]

hello hello, of course I’ve immediately forgotten which numbers I chose for the game but! I think it was 7, 12, & 20 :)

heyyy hi!! literally every time i go to ask someone for one of these games i have to repeat the numbers in my head on loop lmaooo

7. What story/headcanons do you feel the proudest of?

definitely remus in here we are, again. he's my fav guy ever! him smelling like biscuits particularly behind his ear, wearing glasses, getting really surprised and confused when he sneezes etc. just everything. here we are, again is also the story i'm still most proud of. it grew to a lot bigger than i anticipated and i just adore it. there's so much love in it and i'm still happy with how i brought them back together again after so long apart <3

12. Who is your favorite author?

i answered this here - maggie stiefvater due to my trc reread. i reckon also jonathan franzen. i haven't read his stuff in a while but i went through a phase of reading quite a few of his books and his writing is phenomenal! his characters make me want to bang my head against the wall but in a, like, good way (sort of).

20. What feedback makes you the happiest to hear?

absolutely ANY feedback is amazing! from my mutuals in particular makes me so happy. i'm like twirling my hair whenever one of y'all comments anything on my fics!! but i adore feedback that points out specific bits in my writing they really enjoyed- whether it be something the character is doing or my writing, it really helps me improve and it's also just really nice to hear :)

writer q's

#ask game #mads tag

[aidenwaites]

"Kill them with kindness" wrong. Wild creature stampede🧍‍♂️ 🦌🦌🦌🦌🐐🦌🐎🐅🐅🐆🦌🦌🦌🐅🦌🦌🦌🐎🦌🐎🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🐐🦌🦌🦌🐏🐅🐐🐅🐅🐐🐐🐐🦌🐐🦌🐐🦌🐐🦌🫏🦌🦌🐎🦌🐎🐅🐅🐆🐅🐐🦌🐐🦌🐅🐃🐆🫏🐆🐃🦌🐐🦌🐐🦌🦌🐐🦌🐐🦬🫏🐆🐆🫏🐆🫏🐆🫏🦬🫏🦌🫏🦬🐐🦬🐐🦬🐐🐆🐃🐆🫏🐆🐃🐆🐐🦬🐐🦬🐐🦬🐐🐆🐃🐆🐃🐆🐆🐃🐆🐐🐆🐐🐐🐆🐆🐃🐃🐆🐃🦬🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🐆🐅🐅

#this is about adam parrish. btw #q reads trc

[homunculiii]

I posted 2,112 times in 2021

67 posts created (3%)

2045 posts reblogged (97%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 30.5 posts.

I added 1,178 tags in 2021

#q - 448 posts

#tlt - 302 posts

#txt - 65 posts

#hs - 64 posts

#tlt spoilers - 63 posts

#trc - 62 posts

#dimension 20 - 54 posts

#taz - 44 posts

#fma - 38 posts

#lotr - 38 posts

Longest Tag: 130 characters

#because the actual kids and teens reading those stories need to read about themselves being heroes and standing up to danger alone

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

i remember when i was a kid watching h2o i really shipped rikki and cleo cause i identified with cleo and had a huge crush on rikki, but when i go into the tag nobody else seems to be into them so i’m afraid to rewatch it in case they don’t have the chemistry i thought they did when i was 9 😅

12 notes • Posted 2021-12-05 07:59:10 GMT

#4

oh shit i thought hen people here said nandor and guillermo were gay it was like the way we normally say it on here where its not actually serious to canon but damn guilllermo literally has a thing for him in the text huh

20 notes • Posted 2021-11-03 03:29:02 GMT

#3

when u promised to help ur crush kill a guy so u get drunk and get ur immortal professors to fuck god in the dining room to distract him and u think it maybe set the mood so u go in for the kiss but shes not over her dead girlfriend or a literal frozen corpse and rejects u hard

21 notes • Posted 2021-08-28 06:41:46 GMT

#2

watching dimension 20 the seven when ive watched fantasy high season 1 but not 2 is weird cause i genuinely have no emotional investment in zelda/gorgug and as a result i cannot comprehend why samzelda is not the biggest ship in the series

41 notes • Posted 2021-10-20 10:19:53 GMT

#1

buffy au where instead of the weird centuries old vampire falls in love with a 15 year old trope angel falls in love with giles and his whole thing with buffy is him trying to win over his crush’s daughter figure

46 notes • Posted 2021-03-16 00:35:55 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #txt #sure whatever i’ll post that

[yuuikida]

A03 stats: Q&A

Was tagged by the wonderful @joeys-piano. Please check them out after this post!

So I had to look into my stats which I don't normally do but let's see what I have to show for my stuff~ How many works do you have on AO3?

Currently, I have 284 works but keep in mind, about 90% of them are oneshots because I can dish those out faster than actual stories/series. What’s your total AO3 word count? Total word count is currently: 1,410,073 (oh sweet jesus PFFFT) I probably written a lot more in my fanfic.net days years ago but I didn't think it was that much, holy cow. XD

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they? Thing is, I am a Multifandom person but some series had to create such a spark in me that makes me go 'oh wow, I want to write for this' so just because the series is amazing, doesn't mean I'll write for it, if that makes sense. -BNA 'Brand New Animal' (1)

-FNAF (4) *disclaimer: it was more for another series than this one* -Shiritsu Horitsuba Gakuen ( AU story of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles) (7)

-Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle (26)

-Zombieland Saga (1)

-Sarazanmai (1)

-Bungou Stray Dogs (225)

-Kekkai Sensen (Blood Blockade Battlefront) (36)

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

[These ones are in the triple digits because why not XD ] -For you

-In the morning

-Avoiding Fate

-Love bites

-Sweet and Savory

What are your top 5 fics by comment thread count?

-Avoiding Fate

-Acquiescing Fate

-Rockstar

-The illusion of Living

-Even gods don't know (it was a four way tie but this one had more kudos than the others.)

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

-I should have replied to comments but I'm very bad in doing that. Like I'll just repeat 'OMG THANK YOU' and it doesn't feel very genuine and while I feel bad for not responding as much as I wanted to, I don't want to be redundant on it.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

-I don't really have a fic that has a angsty ending, most of them are pretty happy, at worst, bittersweet but not angsty.

Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?

-BRUH I LOVE CROSSOVERS. I haven't been able to do them lately though which is sad but if I have an idea, I'll try and write it. The craziest one was the two TRC/BSD crossovers when I was going into BSD and coming out of TRC, in like 2016-ish???

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

-Hate? No. Questionable and/or nitpicky, yeah. The fandoms I write for are amazing for the most part so I never had actual hate for my fics but odds are I'll jinx myself and may get one anyway LMAO.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

- I do write smut but I haven't really written an actual smut fic in a while. Like I'm trying to do that in BSD. I'm more into reading it than writing it for reasons. I like explicit smut, like down and dirty but sweet and nice at the end.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

- Once. Someone commented on a Tanizaki/Kunikida oneshot that I did and asked if they can translate it into Russian and I was like 'O-Oh, sure' and they sent me the link of that fic to what was their version of fanfic. That has never happened before and I still can't believe it.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

- A lot when I was in the Tsubasa fandom. The reason I stopped though was because I felt as though I wasn't getting anywhere with my writing. We do RP that gets formatted to fics and that was fun. I just wanted to write stuff on my own.

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

-Currently it's KunikiDazai from BSD

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

- Ahaha.....you mean just 'one'?

What are your writing strengths?

- Dialogue

-Descriptions

-Characterization

-Overarching plotting

What are your writing weaknesses?

- summaries

-writing action scenes

-consistency

-lack of variety in words

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

-I mean, just make sure it's as accurate as possible. Sometimes it is hard to do that if one isn't used to more than one Language. I mean it's not to say that they couldn't but add translations at the very least. I'm not good with that sort of thing, my apologies. ;w;

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

- It's a tie between D.Gray man and Black Butler

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

- Not a fic but a series called Welcome to Kunikida's Candy shop!

It's a what-if series, something that I'm apparently good at for some reason and I hope to get to certain points that really make this series shine~

[won't tag because meh so everyone is free to do this!]

#writer #fanfiction #tag game #about me

[chibifatou]

rules: answer these questions and tag some people you are contractually obligated to know better

@fvae fae thanks for tagging me!!❣️

name/nickname: anya/ann and there are too many nicknames pls

gender: female

star sign: pisces

height: 1.63m

time: 18:29

birthday: 4 march

favourite solo artists: lorde and syml

song stuck in my head: like you do - joji

last movie: it was so long ago i dont even remember

last show: the queen’s gambit

when did I create this blog: january 2020

what do i post: shit posts, gifsets and rbing what beautiful people make

last thing i googled: ‘vine three people dancing na na na’ PLQJSJW I wanted to show it to my brother

other blogs: @robbguette aka skam crack blog. I post there once a decade when I remember that it exists

do i get asks: sometimes🥺

why i chose my url: robbe + angel!! because of robbe😌 and im really happy about it

following: 69

followers: yes

average hours of sleep: around 6

lucky number: 4

instruments: once tried to learn how to play guitar

what am i wearing: pyjamas💅

dream job: anything that will make me happy pls im begging

dream trip: I still think that the one trip that I planned but was cancelled bc of corona was a dream trip🥺 it was to the netherlands and belgium (including antwerp). Also any trip with my bestie aka my dream travel bud

favorite food: hmqmdmq pizza??

nationality: russian

favourite song: i will say three just bc I can okay - ribs, the night we met, space oddity

last book read: master and margarita

top three fictional universes i’d like to live in: right now i can only come up with trc universe!!! imagine living ur life while ur friend’s dad is turning into a tree and then ur other friend has a raven as a pet that he found in his dreams and in ur free time u are trying to find a dead welsh king with ur gang— wow

I’m tagging @lesbeanfatou @q-meeee @tsjernobyl @nyttvera @birthdaysentiment @indimlights (feel free to ignore💞)

#tagging game

[landlordrecords]

Bassline (& 2020 in general): Re-e-wind

 What a strange year, as everyone, everywhere has said a million times… Writing-wise, I’d been doing Record Collector magazine since 2014, and uDiscover (the Universal Records online mag) for not much less, & that all just seemed to (understandably) stop dead with the onset of the pandemic. Since then, I’ve polished off my chapter on the work of Simon Morris and the Ceramic Hobs for Palgrave, & that’s about it, so you’re more likely to find me over on Twitter at Sniffy (@philblackpool) / Twitter these days, blurting out the odd sentence. I hence thought it might be time to revisit a very old piece…

Like many, I’ve been working from home for much of the year, and although I’ve occasionally wanted to pull out my own eyeballs, it has generally been very pleasant for a voracious music-lover. I started by catching up on the vast majority of my insane, years-deep second-hand vinyl buy piles, and then chomped through a load of ‘long listen’ stuff I’d had on the backburner forever (including, astonishingly, eventually getting through something like 40 hours of Pan Sonic live sets someone had dumped online). I graded hundreds of releases for sale on Discogs, and revisited umpteen musical thangs extensively, including 90s gabba, Sun Ra, music hall, Schoenberg, dancehall reggae, the acknowledged worst albums ever, happy hardcore, Italian house, bounce and makina (I’ve lost track of how much time I’ve spent checking out youtubes to try to identify a couple of most-wanted bounce and makina tunes), Britpop (!), cosmic disco, and Belgian popcorn. It’s been an extraordinary year, packed with cultural discovery and rediscovery. In amongst this, in no way ashamed of my abject love of Discogs, and already having used and edited it for many years, I read the entire guidelines and decided to go hard on sorting out stuff I care about on there. Seeing they’d finally added various more recent ‘styles’, I’ve spent the last month and a half doing a ridiculous amount of edits on a dozen or so niche genres of importance in recent times (footwork, Jersey Club, yadda yadda). My tweakings around Bassline and UK Funky eventually drew me to the attention of UK Garage legend Karl ‘Tuff Enuff’ Brown, a fellow Discogs obsessive not so keen on the editing side of the site, who wondered if I might give him a hand sorting out the mess of his own and his label’s (2Tuf 4U) discographies. His entertaining phonecalls were enough to convince me.

I dug out all my stuff related to Karl’s label to listen to along the way, and found myself noticing how much UKG has been back in the spotlight of late (key, and brilliant, article here: RA: Like A Battle: The Push For UK Garage's Future (residentadvisor.net) ). While by no means unaware of this (I’ve had some lovely promos from Kiwi and the like of late, plus some moodier bits from various El-B worshippers), my status as a confirmed middle-aged semi-retired raver had hidden much of this from me. This leads me onto one of my big philosophical points of recent years: I listened to dance music avidly before I ever went out dancing, and listen to it now in lockdown, and in semi-retirement. There is far too much an emphasis among ever-rejuvenating dance music correspondents on ‘the club’ as the only way to enjoy dance music, but we know that OG disco fans are 60+ and unlikely to be out every weekend these days – is their experience now worthless? Online fans talk up their love of dance music for exercise soundtracks, bedtime calming soundtracks, etc: this is reality. Dance music is as valid to all these people as rock is to people who haven’t been to a gig in 40 years.

The style I felt myself most drawn back to was bassline (largely via Karl’s low-key issue of some DJ Q material). My love of UK Garage and all its offshoots largely stems from how physically removed I have been from it from virtually its entire history. Only my 2000-03 stint in Essex perfectly matched the garage waveform, and that was the 2-step era, quite the opposite of bassline. Despite being largely a northern phenomenon, Blackpool is largely untouched by bassline, being all about punk and bounce to my mind. An instant love for me circa 2007, bassline feels like one of those genres with unfinished business, but remains one I’ve rarely danced to. Cut off in its prime, it is now back, enormously popular, and rightly so, but, due to the vagaries of the digital music world, some of its key material remains tough to access in any decent form.

I originally wrote the piece I have butchered for this one in March 2008, on Myspace (remember that), in reaction to the exciting waves of bassline and UK funky then reinvigorating the world of UKG. It looks a bit embarrassing now, with more writing experience, although I continue to applaud my own willingness to be open about my innocent appreciation of things I love but am not truly part of.

 The most notable misstep in my original piece was the presumption that bassline would become the latest enormous chart sensation. Like happy hardcore before it, the ball was, in reality, fumbled. Instead of hoped-for freaky innovation, the producers also opted, as many in years gone by, for smoothed-out commerciality (in unholy alliance with low-grade grime crossovers), although the main adversarial issues seem to have been police crackdowns and the London-centric ‘cool police’. Although I was long aware of such problems with Niche in Sheffield (the genre’s spiritual home), it appears that the police interference had a devastating effect across the board ( Banned From Sheffield: How Jamie Duggan fought for bassline… And won (ukf.com) ). This largely explains why many of the bassline producers gravitated towards the largely wack bass house/house & bass style so beloved of teenyboppers in recent years. Thank heavens that era is now largely over.

Niche reputedly specialised in an arguably unholy mixture of dated late 90s speed garage and ‘bassline house’ (think ‘Let Me Show You’ by Camisra, and MK’s ‘organ house’), way past their sell-by date (I still only really like a handful of Shaun Banger Scott bits in this style, one single 2009 Brummie CD EP, and one Virgo remix). Ultimately, though, this experiment unexpectedly created something magical. The crucial element here is the 4/4 beat. While undoubtedly skippy, the vast majority of the material favoured had a firm 4/4 beat, always favoured across all key scenes in the north of England from northern soul onwards. When they ran out of tunes to rinse, in time-honoured fashion, they made their own. Long, rumbling walls of bass, organs, and hoppy-skippy beats, with raggafied samples and gunshots over the top. Popular in Birmingham as well (pretty much the centre of a vinyl glut at the time, and now notable in the popularity of DJs such as Chris Lorenzo and Hannah Wants), B-side titles hinted of coke overload. Disenfranchised by London’s movement away from the holy 4/4 (despite a slight revival in the early noughties), and via messenger services and the like, northern producers began to exchange a new hybrid in the mid-00s which took these speed garage and bassline house influences and updated them with current R’n’B bootlegs, with influences from grime (regional grime producers were key here) and, most notably, with rococo basslines. Its most obvious comparison point was Sticky’s garage productions, concurrent with the early grime era. Southern producers such as Agent X, Delinquent (who featured Gemma Fox on their magical 2006 ‘Boxers’), and Dexplicit (Fox again, 2005’s ‘Might Be’) ran with that, and the north lapped it up. Key early pointers also included DJ Narrows’ superb 2001 4/4 tune ‘Saved Soul’, and early 00s DND work (Artwork, later part of dubstep supergroup Magnetic Man). A notable increase in output came in 2006, and 2007-9 were the genre’s original glory years. And the bulk of producers and up-&-comings delivering serious anthems to the scene came not from London and the south-east, but from Leeds (T2, Wittyboy, Nastee Boi), Bradford (TS7), Manchester (Murkz, Burgaboy, Subzero), Nottingham (Virgo, IllMana), Leicester (JTJ, H20, FB & Zibba), and Wolverhampton (EJ, TRC, Brett Maverick). EJ’s Ejucation mix series (all up on Soundcloud) is a good place to start, beginning as the bassline house began to be overtaken by the pure bassline numbers.

Distribution for serious UK garage music has often been woeful, with only high street compilations & the chart singles (‘Heartbroken’ by T2, ‘What’s It Gonna Be’ by H20, etc) making it all over the country, and this helped stymie the true development of bassline, although vinyl prices, dreadful video promos, and the leap to digital in some ways didn’t help. Years on, as an incorrigible vinyl fanatic, I still only have handful of bassline 12”s. Yes, you can now access this stuff the world over via Youtube etc, but decent, high-quality copies of full-length tunes (they are often hacked about to great effect, but in a way which obscures the original intentions, in the mix) are not always the easiest to come by, although the classic producers are increasingly putting out digital compilations of their original work. Material that would, for previous genres, be fiended after, is lost to being just more online links. At the time, I looked high and low for 12”s, succeeding only rarely, largely on the flip of UK Funky releases. The (mixtape) audience, going by comments online, were often extremely young, are probably now still only in their mid-twenties, and are seemingly happy enough with this chaotic model. Bassline originally, as all rave genres, largely ran off mixtape boxsets, and a 2007 ‘Pure Bass – Fantasy’ box from Stoke remains my key document of that era: seven bassline CDs, with many tracks repeated, but packed to the gills, with most tracks only lasting a minute or two in the mix. As with all rave mixes, it has taken me years to suss the majority of the track IDs. In the Resident Advisor piece linked above, DJ Q (from Huddersfield) talks about thousands of lost bassline tunes, the bad side of the digital revolution. My recent Discogs ferreting suggests more bassline tunes than one might imagine did make some sort of decent release, but too many only made white labels, promo CDs for commercial releases (before being snipped from the main release), mix CDRs, or Youtube’s grainy depths. Classics such as TS7 featuring Bianca’s ‘Seems Like’ appear to never have had any decent release whatsoever, despite TS7 going on to be a big name in bass-oriented house, and Bianca Gerald having kept at the vocal turns ever since.

T2 hit biggest, with ‘Heartbroken’, a gorgeous, smashed-vocal garage dub so popular that it even inspired a Jersey Club refix. His catalogue was immediately deep, although I get the impression he has stopped adding to it. One complaint about bassline, including some of the T2 work, regards the untutored vocals, which can sometimes be rather flat, and certainly lacking in dynamics compared to the dazzling US vocalists featured on some earlier UK garage pieces (I refer here, as always, to TJ Cases’ remarkable ‘Do It Again’). I kinda like that - it shows amateur enthusiasm not far removed from punk, and most obviously links to lover’s rock, as does the production at times: it gives a feeling of melancholy entirely suited to the vocals. Other bassline heroes include TS7, who briefly brought to the fore sassy female garage MC T Dot. His productions also include ‘Smile’, one of my very favourite bassline tracks, full of that Simon Reynolds-quoted 'weird energy’ possessed by DJ Hype & co in the early nineties. Male bassline vocalists such as Ideal also remain unfairly forgotten, although some of the female vocalists have gone on to work in related genres since bassline’s peak.

Paleface, an ex-member of London garage rap crew Stonecold GX, runs Northern Line Records (FB, TRC, Wittyboy, Nastee Boi), something of a quality mark for bassline productions, while also making highly successful UK Funky tunes as part of Crazy Cousinz, and later progressing into commercial house territory. He chronicled much of bassline’s high-water mark (including being married to Kyla, since sampled by Drake). Wolverhampton-based Northern Line signing TRC proved particularly adaptable, spewing out a legion of original tunes and remixes before retreating for a while to grime. Leeds’ Nastee Boi was a favourite of mine at the time, with his pitch-black gangsta bassline tunes, but pushed on towards a mixture of underwhelming R’n’B vocal cuts and nursery grime toons. Wittyboy started similarly punishingly but also went smoother, unbalancing the classic bassline rough and smooth combination.

Now that the dubiously poisonous rep of Niche has been dispatched, the key bassline acts have returned to their key battleground, and the genre seems in full throttle again. Much of the new material seems a little one-dimensional to me: producers invariably big up Bristol’s My Nu Leng as, I suppose, a bridge from bro-step to 4/4. Everything, as acknowledged by the DJs, is huge drops and nothing much else. It still sounds pretty hot though – not the updated lover’s rock of a decade ago, but worth supporting. Bassline is NOT finished!

#bassline #bassline house #niche #organ house #brostep #speed garage #uk garage

[mallahanmoxie]

Are there any fictional characters that resemble you, either in appearance or personality?

god THIS is the q of my lifetime. you know the people that have face blindness? i have that but it's with characters that resemble me. i honestly believe i havent encountered any i truly relate to and i feel like if someday i do, it'd be somewhat akin to running into a clone of yours accidentally and then i'd just have to. eat the book or something. it's one or the other, baby, the prophecy said so. i think id probably find them annoying.

now characters i fancy myself as is another thing entirely. always weirdly attached and projecting onto sirius black. back when i read trc, gansey really resonated with me — actually think if i was rich, i'd be most like him. only read half the series. obviously peter pevensie, role model. idk what to tell you other than the fact that weirdly i do not relate to women much. hmm. food for thot

#i think watching yourself on the screen or reading about it but it not coming FROM yourself would be inherently uncomfortable #and in my case the distance that discomfort would create would probably make me oblivious to our similarities #representation? not for me #i like to see everybody else feel included tho!! #anonymous