#referenced techno neg

[leviathan-supersystem]

You seem knowledgeable on the USSR, can you do a debunking of this post, or link me a source which debunks it?

https://www.tumblr.com/sanson-ki-mala-pe/746822120828502016/soviet-antisemitism-a-hundred-years-of-recycling

i don;t have time to address every claim made here, but it jumps out to me immediately that the source they're referencing, "More than a Century of Antisemitism: How Successive Occupants of the Kremlin Have Used Antisemitism to Spread Disinformation and Propaganda" is quite literally published by the US Department of State, and that this document in turn uses as one of it's major sources the Romanian defector Ion Mihai Pacepa, a controversial figure who's various claims have been frequently called into doubt even by those sympathetic to his cause.

for example, in this book review by the national catholic register [link], the author of the review, who is plainly sympathetic to Pacepa's anti-communist goals, nonetheless casts doubt on many of the claims he makes:

In the article “Moscow’s Assault on the Vatican,” published in 2007, Pacepa  claimed he convinced legendary Vatican diplomat Msgr. Agostino Casaroli — later cardinal and secretary of state under Pope John Paul II — to let three Romanian agents, posing as priests, peruse the papal archives. Under scrutiny, Pacepa’s story began to unravel, with doubts expressed by historians and Vatican experts. Then the reason Pacepa claimed to have credibility with the Vatican collapsed: He said he had engineered a “spy trade” in 1959, exchanging jailed Romanian Archbishop Augustin Pacha for two spies caught in West Germany. But Archbishop Ioan Robu of Bucharest showed photos of the bishop’s 1954 crypt, explaining the heroic man was already dead when Pacepa claimed to have liberated him.

[...]

Vatican diplomats Cardinals Giovanni Cheli and Luigi Poggi were involved in negotiations with Romania and the Soviet bloc. Cardinal Cheli called Pacepa’s allegations “untruthful scenarios,” while Cardinal Poggi declared them “the product of a troubled mind and soul.” Archbishop Robu, who was consecrated by Cardinal Casaroli, emphatically calls the Pacepa account false: “We would know, it would be in our memories, if Romanian spies gained access to the Vatican Archives. It didn’t happen.”

[...]

In Disinformation, Pacepa credits KGB operations with everything from plotting the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy to provoking the rise of Islamic extremism. In each scenario, he portrays himself as a witness to history — when his true rank and job description would never explain access to these events or decisions.

another similarly anti-communist catholic source is the catholic review, the official publication of the archdioces of baltimore. [link] they write:

Mr. Rychlak, the author of two books on Pope Pius and World War II, said he thinks Mr. Pacepa’s account needs to be verified in the Soviet archives. “Pacepa’s timing is questionable. Why hasn’t this story been revealed until now? I hope the United States government will declassify any information it has on this important matter, to spare the time a Freedom of Information Act request takes,” said Mr. Rychlak. John Cornwell, the British author of a 1999 book, “Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII,” told CNS he has never heard the claims described by Mr. Pacepa and considers them “most unlikely.” “As a supporter of NATO and the Western Alliance, it’s not inconceivable the pope could have been targeted (by the KGB). But I haven’t seen any credible documents indicating anyone doctored material,” said Mr. Cornwell, whose book was criticized by church officials for its negative portrayal of Pope Pius. Former colleagues of Mr. Pacepa, 79, expressed doubts about his story. “Between 1960 and 1962, when he pretends he ran Vatican spies, he was in Bucharest, assigned as a deputy in the techno-scientific section of Securitate (the Romanian secret police), where he stayed until he defected in 1978,” said a former high-ranking Securitate officer who would not allow his name to be used. “In the chain of command he would not have had direct communication with the KGB generals. If he did, that would make him a Soviet agent, not a Romanian one,” the source added. “In 1959, Pacepa was in Germany under diplomatic cover. He was a captain in Cologne with a degree in chemistry and belonged to the techno-scientific section. Again, the KGB generals wouldn’t have taken him into consideration,” said the source, who believes Mr. Pacepa is trying to build a “mysterious aura” for himself in his later years. “Why did he wait 29 years (since his defection) to reveal this? If it’s true, it would have made so much sense to put it on the table in 1981, after the Soviet-Bulgarian plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II,” the source said. A former Romanian diplomat of the communist era, who has advised the U.S. government, expressed “deep doubts” about the account. “Pacepa is not a serious source,” said the former diplomat. “His book ‘Red Horizons’ (1988) is about one-third fiction. He takes some real facts, and then invents. “I’m afraid he is just trying to bring attention to his persona. He invokes the Vatican because the Romanian Securitate has been exhausted and is a marginal issue,” he added. “Pacepa does not document. Given the gravity of the affirmations he makes, in order to be credible, he must unveil the source, himself, or otherwise it is fiction,” said the retired diplomat.

given Ion Mihai Pacepa's overall track record, i would certainly like to see some other source verifying the various claims that the "More Than A Century Of Antisemitism" cites from him, most especially the claim that the USSR distributed copies of the Protocols in arabic in the middle east, a claim I cannot find any other source for.

Edit: also i should note that one of the major thrusts of the "More Than A Century Of Antisemitism" document is to smear all criticism of Azov in Ukraine as somehow antisemitic, which is just ludicrous. regardless of how you feel about the war in Ukraine, there are legitimate criticisms to be made of Azov Battalion and the role they have played there.

[harshr]

SEEK INSPIRATION: a playlist of various songs that inspired me during the creation of "Seek Comfort". Yes, this is deeply indebted to the ID:YD feature with Male Tears breaking down their influences, but I've long kept extensive notes on my songwriting process and am always excited to talk about the various ways my music comes together.

SEEK COMFORT // 40 Watt Sun - Reveal Patrick Walker is a brilliant songwriter, especially when it comes to his use of negative space and slow, subtle melodic shifts. As you're probably aware, I'm generally allergic to songs of this length, yet somehow he enables 9 minutes to pass almost effortlessly and then that final lift at the end is absolute magic. Needless to say, I take copious influence from Walker's craftmanship, but nowhere more evident than on "Seek Comfort".

DEVOTIONAL // Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American Hate to break it to you: "Devotional" is a pop-punk song and "Bleed American" is top-tier pop-punk. I'm not really borrowing anything specific from this particular track, but I've listened to this album so much that there's no doubt it has greatly influenced on my songwriting. To be fair though, I've also been writing/playing pop-punk since the mid-90s; I just don't usually allow those elements to creep into Harsh R material.

ARE YOU MY PEOPLE? // Distel - Majestik Distel's music is inherently unsettling and that's a feeling I often seek to emulate. Sparse rhythms + discordant tones is always the way.

HIDING PLACE // Die Kreuzen - Gone Away I celebrate the entire Die Kreuzen catalog, from their USHC classic self-titled debut all the way through to their proto-grunge/glam ends, but it's the quieter songs that have always been my favorite. In this particular instance, I'm referencing their mix of aggressiveness and vulnerability for my lyrics and performance -- readily apparent here on "Gone Away", but a common theme across their entire discography.

I WAS NEVER THERE // Kowloon Walled City - Backlit Ok, this one is a straight-up KWC rip. Much like 40 Watt Sun, KWC are another fine example of a band with a masterful approach to space and dynamics. There's a very good reason I had Scott Evans mix my earlier material.

INSTAGRAM WITCH // Trepaneringsritualen - Black Egg The music on this one is essentially my attempt at "P_rnogr_phy"-era Cure, but TRP was a direct reference for the vocal, especially for the timbre on the loud part. Otherwise: magic and darkness, secrets and light.

EMPTY SHELL (ft. RUNOTI) // Years of Denial - Human You Scare Me I've long been a huge fan of European-style darkwave and I think my record shows a marked shift towards that style, but it's most apparent on "Empty Shell". Years of Denial are easily my current favorite genre stalwarts, though they go further by incorporating elements of techno, noise, and beyond; I spend a lot of time picking apart their songwriting and production choices and do my best to incorporate some of those ideas into my own music.

REMEMBER DEATH // Merle Haggard - If We Make It Through December If you want to learn how to write a song then you learn from the best, and there is no one better than Merle Haggard. The chord changes and phrasing in "If We Make It Through December" are subtle and sublime; you'd probably never notice the intricacies until you try to play it yourself and that's exactly what I did. Or at least tried to do - this one goes a fair bit beyond my skill level and it's that challenge that pushes me to strive harder.

WAVE GOODBYE // Sevdaliza - Darkest Hour I've spent a solid amount of time with Sevdaliza's masterpiece "Shabrang" over the past few years (massive thanks to Terror Apart for the tip!) and there are so many ways it has affected me, but it's definitely the emotional tone that hits hardest, like a dark force pressing down on your soul. Also: it's not employed so much on "Darkest Hour", but I absolutely love the way the Sevdaliza manipulates her vocals and that's definitely something I'll be carrying forward into whatever I do next.

For non-Spotify users, check out the BNDCMPR playlist below. It's missing the major-label tracks, but you can always find those on youtube or elsewhere.

#seek inspiration #harsh r #seek comfort #songwriting #behind the scenes #influence #industrial #dark electronics #Spotify

[dodgebolts]

speepytwt went out in a horrible blaze so it was fun while it lasted

I only got here this year, I'm curious, in what way did sleepytwt "went out in a horrible blaze", if you don't mind me asking? Like does it not exist anymore or...

hi anon!

um. Well. I’m not totally sure about its state right now but I the sleepytwt I knew doesn’t exist anymore 😭 right after said mcc watch party in April, a Twitter burner posted a thread full of things they deemed harmful by sbi members, which led to sleepytwt falling apart, and there was a particularly hard pushback against techno a little later that led to things like sbi updates accounts trying to drop him and him getting a negative reputation among mcyttwt (which is what his dad was referencing when he said he didn’t know if the lgbtq+ community actually liked techno bc he was being accused of lesbiphobia and sent TONS of hate to the point of what I’d consider cyberbullying)

so definitely not one of the fandom’s brightest moments for sure—much like dttwt it ended up fracturing into its constituent subtwts (innittwt technotwt etc) and is more of a relic of the past, but not something to really think too much about over here on tumblr and definitely not a year and a half later 🫶 just a little bit of community history, I suppose

#lyss answers #<- might change the ask tag in the future but rn I’m feeling v uncreative 😭 #anon tag #discourse #but it’s like really old kinda useless discourse everything that could’ve been said has been said #I prob won’t answer more asks on this but anon feel free to dm me :> #just don’t want to publicly rehash old shit ykyk

[lyraissleepy]

okay so i’ve cropped out this persons name because i don’t want people to just go and be rude, but this take sits weird with me. no matter what country you’re from, 26000 dollars is a lot of money and it’s incredibly privileged to look at that and say it doesn’t matter; i can almost fully assure you that a young lgbtqia+ person in crisis isn’t going to ask if technoblade’s donation to the trevor project made their call for help possible, i think they’re just going to be thankful that someone will listen to them and help them in their time of need. this account later goes on to call techno’s donation “performative” which i don’t even want to try and unpack, but no matter what you thought about techno’s tweet and whatever you think about techno in general, surely it’s indubitable that 26000 dollars from him and roughly 100000 dollars from his fans and supporters is going to do so much good and has the power to genuinely save thousands of young lgbtqia lives, is this not the “actions over words” mentality that is so sought after?

#if you disagree with any of this i’m happy to chat w you just drop me a dm! #i’m always open to being educated if anything i say offends you! #discourse #mcyttwt #mcyt #technoblade #referenced techno neg #techno neg #it’s not but i don’t want people who don’t wanna see techno neg to see this #sleepy bois inc #mcc pride #technoblr #techno #lyras going off on twitter again #dsmp

[madmaddyenby]

/rp /dsmp

ok so- c!tommy. we are all aware he’s traumatized, and experiences ptsd from being in traumatic experiences, this is basically fact.  while i’d like to talk how c!tommy experiences ptsd, i’d like to bring up a thing i haven’t seen mentioned a lot when it comes to c!tommy and his trauma- c-ptsd.  also known as complex-ptsd.   it occurs when someone experiences something traumatizing for a period of time.

[image description: A screenshot of text with the words “CPTSD stands for Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is a mental health condition in which a person might experience intense PTSD symptoms that coincide with other mental issues. CPTSD occurs in people who have been subjected to on going traumatizing experiences”. end description]

which, as we know, the exile arc fits the description of “ongoing traumatizing experiences” pretty fucking well.  the exile was basically just two weeks of trauma.  for a lot of reasons too, there was dream abusing tommy, tommy being isolated, tommys own depression/suicidal thoughts/bad mindset in general.   this would all be considered a ongoing traumatizing experience(s).  

ptsd is very similar to c-ptsd in how it develops, but ptsd occurs after one singular traumatizing event . (by the way, the event doesnt have to be life or death, it could be something like witnessing or hearing about a shocking event!!!)

symptoms of c-ptsd overlap with ptsd a good lot of the time, due to them both being trauma disorders.  however, there are a few differences.  here r some symptoms of c-ptsd, alot of which are ptsd symptoms that alot ofpeople with c-ptsd experience as well

reliving the traumatic experience

avoiding certain situations 

changes in beliefs and feelings about yourself and others

hyperarousal (jitteriness, being on alert, etc)

somatic symptoms (physical symptoms with no underlying cause)

lack of emotional regulation 

change in consciousness

negative self-perception

difficulty with relationships

distorted reception of abuser

loss of system of meanings

now, i’ll go over which of these fit our boy c!tommy, and how they fit for some of them atleast.  i will only be talking about the things that are a result from c-ptsd, but also c-ptsd works where it coincides with other mental illnesses a person has so.  its also important to note that within a person these symptoms might not stay the same over time, and not everyone who has c-ptsd or ptsd is going to experience it the same.   (so not talking abt how pain affects him after dying in the prison, though that is a clear sign of ptsd) 

reliving the traumatic experience

tommy’s done this with exile a few times, when revisiting logstedshire, when he saw the craters in logstedshire, when visiting dream in prison, when during the disc finale dream dug the hole and told him to put his armour in, etc etc, he’s even described himself as being trembly in the fingers near plain biomes, while visting logsted he mentioned how shaky it made him to be there, and when he visited logsted one time he had an immediate reaction to seeing a hole in the ground that came off as him reliving it. flashbacks come in from sensations during a traumatic event, like sight, feeling, emotion, etc, etc.  it seems like with these he’s experiencing more of a reliving the emotions kind of thing. 

avoiding certain situations 

i was originally not gonna include this one, but thinking about it, he kind of does in a way.   this symptom also includes keeping yourself preoccupied to avoid thinking about it, which is something c!tommy seems to do alot.  with focusing on building the hotel, and doing tasks, or grinding for supplies instead of actually thinking about it.  

changes in beliefs and feelings about yourself and others

c!tommy uh. does this a lot.  a lot of it stems from how during exile tommy was isolated and made to believe no one cared for him, and even if that wasn’t true c!tommy never really got much closure on that.  hes not really trusting ppl that b4 were really close to him, tubbo n ranboo for example

lack of emotional regulation

this can also be described as uncontrollable feelings.  this is the one i’ve wanted to talk about the most i think- because this is really fits c!tommy.  he tends to lash out alot, for example burning the flower c!ranboo gave him, there are a bunch more examples of this that include him yelling at others, that one time when he spleefed c!jack 

negative self-perception

yeah.  theres a few examples of this one, the one that first comes to mind is that time during the green festival where he was talking about how he was worse than everyone he didn’t wanna be (including his abuser, c!dream...) .  theres now when he was building his tower by the prison when he was saying he couldn’t use the cobble because it was too him, and people didnt like the cobble. alot of this i think comes from c!dream making him feel basically worthless in exile :(

difficulty with relationships

  Yeah. um.  Alot for this one!!! The first to come to mind is c!tubbo.  c!tommy and c!tubbos relationship is very very wonky, especially considering recent events with tommy feeling like he is being replaced with c!ranboo.  (which he isnt by the way! he just feels as though, which is a valid feeling for him to have :]) .  another person that comes to mind is c!ranboo.  he’s even mentioned how his and ranboos relationship goes back and forth quite alot.  its not very surprising to see that he has difficulty with relationships especially considering a lot of the reason that the exile affected him so badly was because he felt so alone and was so isolated from his friends.  another thing that comes to mind, is when he made c!sam sign that contract promising hat he’d be his best friend and protect him.  theres most likely way more that can be said here, but this is the first stuff that comes to mind.  

distorted reception of abuser

um... yeah.  this one.  this can also be described as , “ becoming preoccupied with the relationship between you and your abuser. It can also include preoccupation with revenge or giving your abuser complete power over your life. “  which is um.  yeah.  c!tommy.  he’s mentioned how whenever he’s around c!dream he feels like hes conditioned to be his friend (which. yea . he was .).  right after he left logstedshire this was very very prominent, he was the biggest c!dream apologist around (/j), saying things like “dream didnt do anything wrong” and even explaining how he wasnt sure about things when it comes to c!dream, that his mind became flip floppy whenever he thought about him.   right now, hes focused on getting back at c!dream, not fully for revenge, mainly for his friends and how he doesnt want c!dream to go around killing and reviving everyone, but the point still stands.  (this all makes me extra sad because he had gone to the prison the second time in the first place to get closure :(( )

loss of system of meanings

Systems of meaning refer to your religion or beliefs about the world.  This can also refer to getting a strong sense of hopelessness or despair about the world, which as of late mainly c!tommy seems to have.  mainly referencing in his stream where he visited dreams bunker, he was asking what the point was of finding things that made him happy if dream was just going to get out the prison and destroy it.  theres also a few things that also go with this, in one stream while he burnt down ponks lemon tree for sam nook he said  "thats still decaying, but yknow, arent we all." and that one time when he gave that hotel invitation to c!techno he was like “ahahha we could die tomorrow anyway” 

-

its also important to note that, “Any type of long-term trauma, over several months or years, can lead to CPTSD. However, it seems to appear frequently in people who’ve been abused by someone who was supposed to be their caregiver or protector. “ Which is.. fairly accurate in c!tommy’s situation.  c!dream might’ve not been a caregiver or protector necessarily but he was still someone that was looking after him yknow? 

there are most likely more things than what i layed out that show that c!tommy most likely also has cptsd, however this is just the stuff that i thought up :] add to the post if you’d like to!

(also this isn’t saying that c!tommy doesnt have ptsd, he had both ptsd and c-ptsd. also i am not an expert about ptsd, cptsd, or mental health in general, if i got any information wrong let me know)

#depression tw #abuse tw #suicide tw #suicidal thoughts tw #exile arc #isolation tw #ig ? #trauma tw #c!tommy #tommyinnit #dream smp #dsmp #meta #dsmp meta #long post #death tw #i can not stress enough that this is just the character #all roleplay and characters #not talking abt the real ppl! #also i hope the id for the screenshot works or whatever its the first time ive ever put one

[arcaneglitch]

Thoughts on Wilbur's lore story

The title from the first segment is “the view from the bottom of the ladder.” The bottom of what ladder? The social ladder? That would make sense seeing as Wilbur is currently something of a social pariah on the server

Tommy: “you just look like a dumbass building a road no one will use.” Someone already mentioned this, but there was a certain amount of exile parallel in that beginning bit with Tommy. Wilbur’s building a road in an attempt to get people to visit him, just as Tommy built a path through the Nether when he was exiled. Both told themselves that people weren’t visiting because it was too much work. If we’re sticking with this parallel, then Tommy’s line about Wilbur being a dumbass is all the more interesting. After all he did the same thing, didn’t he? His stance on Wilbur building the road would most likely echo Dream’s thoughts on Tommy building his road during exile. Which brings a wonderful analysis post to mind — the one that talked about Tommy having to “deal with” Wilbur in the same way that Dream “dealt with” him

Nonfungible burger lol

The fact that he specified American cheese tickles me

Tommy is so in character in this and I love it

Also Tommy sun metaphor my heartttt. Wilbur is such an inniter /pos

The glass of water even though Wilbur didn’t ask for it ;-; Tommy’s still trying to take care of him

Wilbur’s commentary on the fabrication of Las Nevadas was interesting here. It echoes a lot of the analyses about how Quackity is trying and failing to recapture the past — the desert built in a snow biome, the flashy yet empty buildings, the way he binds people to him via contracts

THE POEM. Holy shit I love the poem so much. First of all, Wilbur showing off that SAT vocab /j But mannn it’s just so fitting

The VP offer. I think on some level, Quackity is genuinely trying to get Wilbur on his side (yet another contract, I wonder what the terms were?). I’ve already seen some wonderful analysis posts about Wilbur’s interpretation of the VP position and why he reacted to it negatively so I don’t think I’ll touch on that much. Just know it’s not because he considered Tommy (his former VP) to be below him because it’s pretty obvious that Wilbur thinks the world of Tommy

“I don’t think about you at all,” Quackity said, like a liar. This is just a continuation of their dynamic throughout the burger arc → Wilbur wanting Quackity’s attention as much as Quackity has his and Quackity playing it off like Wilbur isn’t worth his notice

Quackity canonically called Wilbur cringe and that is funny

The elevator button moment, I’m sure we all know what that was referencing

The title of the second segment is pretty obvious considering the plot around Quackity’s horse. “Horseplay” is also another word for roughhousing

Legacy is mentioned again

Ranboo sees himself in Wilbur → this will be important later

Tubbo’s character seems a lot more carefree than he previously was. I don’t want to put too much narrative weight on that since this is ccWilbur’s interpretation of the characters

Revived Wilbur canonically smokes, it’s been confirmed. He also smoked while in Pogtopia

I thought it was interesting how Wilbur’s reasoning for stealing Quackity’s horse was “toppling the obelisk of tyranny.” He obviously said it to motivate Ranboo but part of me wonders if maybe he put it like that because he knew about Ranboo’s connection with Phil and Techno, the latter of whom is a known anarchist (Phil is a bit harder to pin down, but he certainly doesn’t seem in favor of government either considering how he helped destroy L’Manberg)

“In this hollow fact Ranboo found himself an accomplice once more.” Man, this one hits. Ranboo’s first experience on the server was being an accomplice to Tommy in destroying George’s house. And we know Wilbur wasn’t happy with how Tommy got exiled while Ranboo got off scot-free, prompting him to make Ranboo an accomplice again when he griefed Quackity’s restaurant

Wilbur doesn’t care about being seen, but that man has zero self-preservation so that’s not a shock

Effervescent (he used the word)

Ranboo defends Wilbur against Tubbo, even though he clearly feels apprehensive about what they’re doing. It feels like he’s defending himself moreso than Wilbur. He sees himself in Wilbur and he made the decision to place his trust in Wilbur. Ranboo doesn’t want his trust to have been misplaced, causing him to lash out when that decision is questioned

The paragraph about how Wilbur’s mind works is just *chef’s kiss* He knows his character so well and it makes so much sense that he’s often flying by the seat of his pants (spot the Hamilton reference kekw)

TNT again. Wilbur can’t seem to separate himself from it. It was to be his method of suicide (and would have been if Phil wasn’t there), and he continues to use it after his revival, often standing too close to the blasts

Tommy knows about the plan but Wilbur tells him that Quackity doesn’t care about his horse, because he knows Tommy wouldn’t be on board with it otherwise (old theme of attachments go brrrrrr)

“Quackity’s horse ‘Boner’ obliviously chewed old carpet across the room from them, completely unaware he was about to be detonated because he is a horse that cannot speak English.” This line takes me out every single time lmaoo. There was literally no need to add the last part but he did and it’s funny

Tommy’s statement about Wilbur lying and Wilbur’s denial. Tommy brings up the points where he was hurt most by Wilbur (whether it was intentional or not) — the pit and the festival. Wilbur saying what he believes to be true makes so much sense for his character. It also reiterates the fact that he sees himself as an irredeemable villain, whether or not that’s actually true (and it isn’t)

The comparisons to other liars holy shit. Schlatt was expected, I don’t think anyone was surprised by that. So was Quackity. But Phil. Ohohoho man. There’s a lot to unpack there and my brain will be vibrating over it for days (also you get his ass, Wilbur, because someone on that server needs to)

Final segment. For anyone who hasn’t seen the analysis posts about “hitting on 16,” it basically refers to a risky move in blackjack that, while resulting in you losing less in the long run, doesn’t mean you’ll win

Wilbur’s dumb little drawing my beloved

Quackity acts like he doesn’t care but gets excited when Wilbur shows up. They’re both so pathetic <3

It would have been really funny if the fuse hadn’t worked, let me just say that

Wilbur and Quackity proceed to get into the most frustrating fistfight ever

Something else that I would have died laughing at would be the rock bouncing back to hit Wilbur or Quackity after Wilbur threw it

Quackity’s not above biting someone in a fight. Tommy would be proud jzdghsldg

MMMMMMMMMMM THE ENDING. So we have Ranboo going out in self-sacrifice. It wasn’t necessary in that they couldn’t have gotten him out, but it was, I think, a necessary catalyst for Wilbur as a character. We come back to that line about Ranboo seeing himself in Wilbur. Both of them die, voluntarily, in explosions. Except when Ranboo dies, he puts Wilbur in Phil’s position, as a brilliant analysis post brought up. A consistent trait of Ranboo’s character is that he lacks a spine, often bending to the will of others. In that respect, it was a big step for him in regard to character development. He made the choice to die in that room so he could prove a point to Wilbur. In doing so, he also set himself apart from Wilbur — at least, Wilbur’s character as things currently stand. My hope is that Ranboo’s death will be the thing that starts Wilbur on the road to redemption and considering the fact that the next Wilbur lore will be a new arc, things are looking up for the Wilburians

#dream smp analysis #dsmp analysis #wilbur soot

[luuurien]

Vitesse X - Us Ephemeral

(Progressive Breaks, Atmospheric Drum and Bass, Vocal Trance)

Vitesse X's debut on 100% Electronica is a pastel, cerebral collection of progressive breaks and house, atmospheric drum and bass drenched in futuristic neon for one of this year's most outstanding and propulsive electronic albums. Her natural instincts for atmosphere and fiery temperaments make Us Ephemeral a fast-paced and glorious listen.

☆☆☆☆☆

Us Ephemeral is movement embodied. The tap of a foot is found in every hefty-four-on-the-floor, arms waving lightly in the air found in every dreamy vocal melody, every inch of skin contact from body to body on a dancefloor found in the breakneck drum and bass grooves. It's an album that demands your physical presence within the music, to give dance music the treatment it deserves, to give yourself the treatment you deserve. While this is New York artist Jordan Stern's first album under the Vitesse X name for the star-studded 100% Electronica label founded by chillwave heavyweights George Clanton and Negative Gemini, the nine songs that make up Us Ephemeral make it seem as if she's been at this since before she was alive, this eternal and effusive group of songs where not once can you be pulled off the ride. While all these songs are cloudy, midtempo mixes of atmospheric drum and bass, vocal trance, breaks, and even hints of her label's signature chillwave sound, it's the way Stern fixes you in one place while manipulating a neon water show around you that makes Us Ephemeral such a complete package. It's not a revolution for modern electronica, but it's for sure a highlight of it. Stern’s light and ghostly vocal leads pull from the angelic sound of vocal trance even when she's on beats with a more ethereal sound themselves, letting herself hang in the air along with all the other instrumentation around her. This makes the tracks that lean into the atmospheric and liquid D'n'B that much more arresting, and the songs where she pulls from house and EDM hit even harder when the beat gets that extra presence: the title track and Therma Maxima make perfect examples for the former with their urgent percussive grooves atop regal synths and floaty singing while the thrill of rave-ready Activation and Spaces show off how powerful her plainer dance songs can be when the vocals aren't put at the forefront. The trembling bass throbs and scattered techno hi-hats on Centrifuge Me bring a darkness to Us Ephemeral while keeping the momentum forward, showing how much love and control Stern has over her music even when it's constantly referencing the sounds of our past. The foggy and layered sound of Us Ephemeral brings that nostalgia into the light often, but the way it's brought these styles into a new decade gives it an oddly retrofuturist quality, Stern living in the utopian digital world those playing with these sounds back in the 90s might have imagined while creating the sounds fundamental to her work today. As she weaves all these beloved electronic sounds into the cybernetic fabric of Us Ephemeral, it becomes absolutely hers. Stern always makes sure her music is going somewhere, and that alone makes all these songs winners: how the sleek electric guitars on Rash Devices help shape the house/2-step blend with a sumptuous touch and Gated Bloom cuts out the haze in previous tracks to let the breakbeats shine and the mood be more nocturnal, that the full embrace of murky synthpop through Spaces fits the high-contrast sound of the album while swapping out her usual rhythms and penchant slamming straight down on the gas pedal. It's Stern's iron grip over the places that Us Ephemeral heads while always making things feel liquid and loose that allows her to not step too far outside the boundaries of your usual progressive breaks and D'n'B sound while still leaving you in awe of every track here. Someone without her skills could unquestionably make an album that sounds like Us Ephemeral, with all the rippling drum breaks and sultry singing you can get, but it wouldn't ever come close to matching how finely-tuned and glossy Stern can get all her songs to be. And again, Us Ephemeral isn't looking to reshape the world of modern electronica, it's an album made to stimulate and excite, and Stern makes that happen every time. It's how the "go!, go!  go!, go!" vocal chants and watery arpeggios on the title track are to be expected with the atmospheric drum and bass sound yet that doesn't matter a bit in the moment, how the shuffling drum leads and alien vocal croons driving Potential Energy skyward feel both like the soundtrack to a 2000s garage rave and the start of a cyberpunk chase scene, how the bubbly house finale Repress Reprise can be less out there than the other songs and yet end up one of the album's most memorable with its techy space synths and heart-pounding bead; not once is there a time where you question anything Stern is doing because the final product is just that good. It's one of the best albums this year purely off technical execution, tightly-wound dance songs that never lose their footing a single time. Vitesse X knows just what she wants to do, and Us Ephemeral brings her lightning-speed club music to a sublime peak right from the jump.

#vitesse x #us ephemeral #100% electronica #atmospheric drum and bass #breakbeat #chillwave #dance #dance pop #drum and bass #electronic #electropop #hypnagogic pop #indie pop #indietronica #jungle #liquid drum and bass #pop #progressive breaks #synthpop #tech house #techno #trance #2022 #10/10 #house

[technospotatoes]

FUNDY LORE ANALYSIS

Howdy, howdy friends! After about 6 hours of pure thinking, I have more Dream SMP brain rot-theory-analysis stuff for you! This week I’m on spring break, so unfortunately I’m not prolonging any assignments haha! Today my focus is FUNDY LORE >:) and I’ve sprinkled in a little IRL factoids for ya to enjoy! 

Please lemme know your thoughts, opinions and theories-- and as always, it’s gonna be a long one! 

Enjoy <3

TW/CW for brief mentions of derealization-- nothing in detail, just thought I’d let y’all know. Please be safe ily.

Fundy’s lore stream took place today, 3/30/2021. It's roughly 45 minutes, so if you have some time to kill, go watch it! It’s really well done, and his acting is incredible. I will give you a warning; it contains derealization. If you choose not to watch it, here’s a summary from Twitter! link

First, let’s talk about what we know of Fundy’s character so far. 

Fundy’s story throughout the events of the SMP are quite tragic. A few key staples are...

1: the death and betrayals of both Wilbur and Schlatt, as well as the absence of Eret-- all of whom he viewed as father figures (Wilbur being his biological father, and Eret his adopted father who failed to show up at his adoption ceremony. Schlatt was a source of validation and approval for Fundy). 

2: Jealousy of Tommy and Tubbo-- These two replaced Fundy’s position as Wilbur’s son during the L’Manburg eras, and Fundy became rightfully jealous towards them. He no longer felt valued by his father, and was only more negatively impacted when Wilbur made an attempt to mend that rift. 

3: witnessing the rise and ultimate fall of L’Manburg-- and even assisting in its destruction with Niki. 

Along with some other rocky encounters with his family members in the timeline, Fundy can be simply boiled down as a character with no stable relationships to his family, or those whom he considers family. However, he does deeply value his friends and the fun that he has with them-- which we can assume is one of his attachments (this will be important later). He takes pride in making mischief and carries a friendly persona… which makes him easily approachable. 

He does carry valid reasons to instigate villainous acts-- but he instead chooses to remain neutral due to his fear of losing something else close to him. 

I have a number of thoughts regarding Fundy’s character and his current lore, so enough stalling from me, and let's get into it!

Analysis of Stream:

The desert

When Fundy leaves his tower for the first time during the dream sequence, the world is no longer the SMP, but is replaced with a barren desert. From the title of the stream, we can infer that this desert represents Fundy’s Mind and contains the majority of what he thinks about. Deserts often symbolize loneliness or emptiness, and can also be synonymized with brutal honesty or survival. Fundy’s character is indeed alone (in terms of family), and has fought for his survival by being sly and mischievous through Schlatt’s reign of Manburg. Sand itself symbolizes the passage of time, or in other words, the inevitability of the future or truth. As we see in each of the 3 dream sequences, the mysterious bunker containing “truth” appears closer and closer to Fundy’s tower and also becomes more withered and worn on the inside, implying that Fundy cannot escape the coming of truth and future as time passes. 

The desert itself contains a replica of the Camarvan from the old L’Manburg days-- likely a representation of Fundy’s childhood that he holds onto dearly, in spite of his past trauma. During the first dream sequence, the van even contains Wilbur-- perhaps to mock Fundy’s pain, or remind him of it. During the second sequence, Wilbur is gone, likely referencing Wilbur’s absence in Fundy’s life, or his death. During the 3rd dream sequence, the Camarvan is replaced with what looks to be a crater, or the aftermath of an explosion. This could possibly reference the ultimate destruction of L’Manburg (and the destruction of the van), or it could be foreshadowing of the destruction in the future… 

Side theory, here! Tubbo just lost a nuke, and multiple people have vendettas against Dream / want him dead. The pit seemed like it was made out of black stone and obsidian, the same materials as the prison, so it is likely that this is an allusion to Dream’s possible escape.

Who is “He”?

On his 3rd visit to the odd bunker in his dream world, Fundy reads the 3rd book in the chest. Towards the end, this book warns him of a vague male character that Fundy should not join, or avoid at all costs. To quote the book…

“Do not join him. Whatever he asks of you. Do NOT join him. His plans aren’t as nice as they sound. His intentions aren’t what you think they are. He will use you. He will destroy you. Everything you ever loved, everyone you ever cared about. Do not join him.” 

I bet a few characters instantly came to your mind as to who this person that Future Fundy is warning us about, and I’m going to list who I first thought it could be below: 

Technoblade and the Syndicate. Now, I disagree with this option, even though Techno has the outright power to destroy anything and everything like he’s done before. However, because of the creation of the Anarchist Syndicate and their accommodating ideals, it would be out of his character or set of ideals to suddenly destroy Fundy’s attachments to purely demonstrate his power. Also, Fundy no longer represents any forms of government, so he does not pose a threat to the Syndicate. 

I did theorize here that Fundy could be Harpocrates, but that would imply that he goes against the warnings of his future self. (Also not to mention the placement of this stream in the timeline would have to be much later in the past.) But the more that I think about it, the more likely it could be. It wouldn’t necessarily be out of character for Fundy to join the Syndicate and side with Techno against the warnings of his inner voice, but he has been a spy before… 

BBH / the Eggpire. This is also not a likely option for our “he” character, because it is more likely that this dangerous person is not associated with a group such as the Syndicate or Eggpire-- in other words, he operates alone. The Eggpire has plenty of members and those who oppose it, even BBH tried to recruit Fundy and failed. Our “he” has not had an interaction with Fundy yet, and I don’t think that the Eggpire would make an effort to reach out to him again. 

My theory is that Quackity is our “he” figure. As I’ve stated before (see my C!Sam post here), Quackity has proven himself to be an effective manipulator, and could easily persuade Fundy to join his side. Quackity has power over Dream at this time in the plot, and is using it to gain knowledge about revival. He could use his acquired learning from Dream to make a deal with Fundy through using Wilbur’s revival to appease his interest (and provide a chance at healing, given his tough past). Not to mention his cameo at the end of Fundy’s lore stream-- There’s plenty more involvement in the lore that we are going to see from Q. 

The Mysterious Figure

During the final dream sequence of Fundy’s lore stream, he opens the door to his tower, only to see a dark figure, staring into the world… or rather, the absence thereof. This Figure has no other significant character details besides the black hood/cloak and no ign, so we have no evidence as to who it is. I’ve seen plenty of people theorize that this person could be BBH (because of the similarities in cloak design) or they could be the “he” Fundy’s logs are warning him about. But I disagree-- I strongly believe that this mysterious figure is neither of those options, rather, The Mysterious Figure is someone completely separate in this story. Here are a few people I think it could be: 

Wilbur/Schlatt-- both of whom are dead, and could manifest inside Fundy’s mind as spirits or ghosts. 

Dream-- he causes paranoia in many of the younger characters of the SMP, so I wouldn’t put it past him to haunt Fundy like he did Ranboo (the voice in his head). 

Fundy-- a form of himself from the future, or a representation of his conscience (wants, desires, etc). 

Or a guide/protector to Fundy’s mind-- we could see more of this figure if episodes like this stream occur in the future. A character similar to that of the Inbetween or Other Side.

It is important to note that at the end of the sequence, the Mysterious Figure chased Fundy up the tower in fear, causing him to sleep and escape the dream world. I think Fundy would only react this way if he felt directly threatened, so this figure is likely someone unknown and intimidating, or familiar and repulsive enough to cause behaviour akin to a sort of PTSD. It is possible that this figure doesn’t have malicious intent, because there was a bed placed on top of Fundy’s tower. The figure was likely supposed to guide Fundy to this bed to escape the dream world, but this encounter probably did not go according to plan, due to Fundy’s reaction. 

His Internal Monologue

Through the presence of fear and doubt we can learn about the deeper parts and truths of a character. This is the case with Fundy: while he is distressed and afraid in his dream world, through the provided angst we learn about what Fundy truly wants. Fundy states that he wants this dream to end, and he wants to go back to his friends and his old life. He longs for the times where he can just have fun again and prank people, when his friends were there for him. Except, sometimes they weren’t. He states he would join parties and join groups only to watch them disappear as he started to get attached to them. Now, whenever the word “attachment” is uttered anywhere I immediately think back to Dream’s speech, perhaps Fundy is becoming more aware of what he could be endangered by.

Deja Reve

There’s no theory attached to this, just some super cool stuff I found. :)

The reveal of Fundy’s powers instantly set off a flag in my mind the second I heard it. His “powerset” or ability is one of foreshadowing, whatever he dreams about, could happen or is linked to the future. Now, the reason I bring this up is partly because I think it is cool, and it is actually a REAL thing. And I’ve experienced it. Let me introduce you to Deja Reve. 

Deja Reve isn’t really a condition or illness, rather it is a “creepier” form of its more popular counterpart, Deja Vu. When translated directly from French, Deja Reve means “already dreamed.” This word is a descriptor for a specific sequence of events: you dream something, and it happens later, in real life. No, I’m not making this up, and yes, it is real. I’ve had this happen to me multiple times. 

Deja Reve isn’t so simple as “i dreamt this so it will happen tomorrow”. In my case, I would have a particular dream, for example, I went to a Subway with my mom and she discussed with the manager about having my sister work at that location. The morning after I would forget the dream like any other, but many weeks later the exact event I dreamt would happen. I can remember it now, right down to the sandwich I ordered and the way my mom moved across the establishment to talk to the manager-- it was word for word, vision for vision. Each time Deja Reve occurs, I freeze, and I think I’m experiencing a second copy of life, or rewatching a movie. It's super weird, but cool. If something like this has ever happened to you, leave a comment below, I’d love to hear your experiences!

Now I bring this up because many people mistake these sorts of things as having foresight or being able to prophesize-- but it's not the same thing. Deja Reve occurs more often in the younger population, and becomes less and less active as one gets older. Because Fundy is still relatively young in the SMP timeline, I think that not only is this a cool ability set for him to have, but it makes sense for him psychologically as well. There is no clear cause or reason behind why individuals experience Deja Reve, but personally, I believe it has to do with the condition of your brain and it’s experiences to past trauma. Kids who experience trauma find elaborate ways to cope, and usually defer to their imagination. Due to the fact that most of Fundy’s trauma occurred while he was very young in the SMP lore, it is definitely plausible that his amplified, or “more woke” application of Deja Reve, is a product of his past. 

Number Symbolism

I’ll keep this section short, because this post is already miles long, but similar to the previous section, this is something SUPER COOL that I noticed :]

Each book that Fundy reads has a specific number of pages… haha big whoop, Biz, that’s not weird. But did you know that some numbers have symbolism? Did you notice that the 3 books in each dream sequence each had 87 pages, which symbolize family, organization, and idealism? That number symbolizes what Fundy WANTS, but also what he’ll never get if he’s not careful. The first two times he read that book he didn’t finish it… He didn’t achieve his goal? 

Did you also notice that the signed book had 22 pages? That number symbolizes redemption, intuition, emotions, duty and diplomacy-- qualities that oddly correlate to warnings. This number represents what Fundy will NEED to be, in order to survive his future. Also, a Catch 22… take that as you will ;) 

Sidenote… 

Ok this is the last mini section before the end, but another thing that immediately popped into my head during Fundy’s lore was the factor of derealization. Nothing major, but the other times we’ve seen this storytelling or manipulation technique used was during...

Ranboo’s Panic Room / Prison Visit-- believes derealization

Karl and escaping the In Between-- fights against derealization

Fundy’s notebooks-- questions derealization

I have a feeling that whenever derealization is being used, it’s intended to distract the character from the true evil, to prevent them from tracking their own course or fulfilling their own story… So I’ll be excited to see where Fundy takes his. 

GAAAAAAAAAH IT’S DONE, FINALLY. And Congratulations! You made it to the end!! If you have any thoughts or theories, comment below, shoot me an ask or DM, I’d love to discuss with you! Follow me for more in-depth analysis content, I will be doing as many of these as I feel inspired to do in the future. :] 

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING <3

#dream smp #dream #goergenotfound #sapnap #technoblade #dream smp lore #dream smp theory #dream smp analysis #my work #its fundy #fundy #tommyinnit #tubbo #quackity #ranboolive #ranboo my beloved #bruh this took so long #it better not flop #lmao #lore stream

[sam-grey]

I’m not sure if it’s intentional, but Tommy and Tubbo’s characters have been drifting apart. Tubbo spends all his time in Snowchester and Tommy has been spending his in the SMP. We don’t see them interacting very much at all although they’re still friends regardless. (I didn’t know this right away though because due to the Exile Arc we’re used to seeing Tommy and Tubbo apart)

I suspect that their characters are gonna be drifting further apart, not in any clearly intentional way, but it’ll just be a natural distance the way any other friends would drift apart with time.

Tommy has, however visited Technoblade and they honestly don’t seem to harbor any negativity towards each other, and Techno’s been mentioned A Lot when referencing Tommy, by Niki, Jack Manifold, Bad, Ant, etc, all with ill intent towards him.

This would be very bad for Tommy if it weren’t for the fact that Techno and Tommy don’t hate each other, which I am certain that no one knows except for them two and maybe Ranboo, since he was there when Tommy visited (read: stole from him).

I think that although Tubbo and Tommy will drift apart, Tommy and Techno will drift back together.

Especially when it comes to the Syndicate.

Because when Tubbo said that he expected Tommy to have moved to Snowchester with him and they would have a new country there Tommy unsubtly changed the subject and didn’t answer him.

I, personally, think that he grew to like Techno’s ideals of individualism and doesn’t like government, especially with how every other government has ended with corruption.

I can see Tommy going back to Techno/Techno reaching out to Tommy and him joining the Syndicate.

(This is obviously just conjecture, but I can really see this happening)

#tommyinnit #tubbo #technoblade #dream smp #dsmp #snowchester #the syndicate #mcyt #long post

[infinitedeaths]

i am Actually Fuming.

cc!techno really came out here and said ‘age doesn’t matter i’m gonna make my character 3 years old hahaha’. man misses the point: c!tommy, c!tubbo, and c!ranboo had ALL been referred to or referenced as teenagers for months. c!technoblade is implied to have been around for decades?? changing the character’s age now would be a logical fallacy and also just piss people off, while the apologists decide to use that to be assholes.

like just say you don’t care about the story or the community that’s built around the DMSP roleplay, dear gods. I already had the feeling he didn’t but this just cements it for me: he doesn’t care about it.

Which fucking sucks because his direct influence on shit in the story has affected things negatively. and i don’t mean just like, plot wise? i mean like. man kinda ruined the scene/reunion for clingy duo during the bedrock bros arc. i’ve always felt his stream on the egg made that feel way less serious than it originally was, because after that stream, it always felt less serious than before his stream for it.

also, for fuck’s sake, the whole thing about the red festival pisses me off so much. like, ah yes, tommy and tubbo didn’t warn anyone! even though tubbo was told RIGHT BEFORE THE FUCKING FESTIVAL? and tommy was busy convincing wilbur to NOT blow everything up.

tommy also had like. zero reason to not think techno knew about it. he’s an ally and dream knew about it so why wouldn’t techno?? its not like techno communicated at all during this time period god. especially because a lot of the stuff techno says could be implied that he knows about the TNT?? like i legitimately recall him saying something about destroying lmanburg with tommy around before the red festival and idk that kinda, to me, would imply he knew about the TNT.

literally, all of those discord messages from techno read as ‘i’m an asshole who thinks people who enjoy the roleplay and also enjoy analyzing it are stupid, haha fuck you’. congrats, you’ve alienated me at the very least, because that behavior is shitty.

#cc!technoblade negative #he just keeps dumping gasoline on the fire and its like please stop #anyway i'm putting this under a read more because jfc

[spacetwiga]

leave c!phil out of bullshit 2k21 -- a not so tiny post by a new enthusiast

As someone who finds both common fanon and actual canon to be quite fun, I really think the general DSMP fandom would benefit greatly from a few things in general: the greatest, in my opinion, is learning to accept that popular fanon won’t usually be the canon you receive. Another, of course, is that POVs are golden, but with these two things being flimsy in being accepted, they are the major flaws that cause about 90% of the absolute messy takes that gain traction, oftentimes poisoning a canon character's ability to exist in the story.

My biggest beef regarding this comes from how y’all treat c!Phil, so here I am, being annoying on main side! 

TL;DR... Just because someone acted like like a guidance to others, doesn’t always mean that they'll want to be the father figure role for everyone that breathes. Similarly, pinning down a character on a single trope is wack, so don't be surprised if they grow away from it.

Baby’s first little dsmp rambling below!

(Warning: it's long as hell)

The Dream SMP plotline is not written out like most popular media. With so many moving parts in the form of daily streams and the wonderful tool of live improvisation, it makes perfect sense that such a giant cast would not always be on the same page. Adding onto that, it also makes more sense that a vast majority of the cast will be placed into supporting roles, as the story needs to have characters that serve as narrative anchors and others that function as the links in a chain, all weathering the storm that is the plot.

Screentime, of course, plays a major factor into canon exposure -- in terms of the Dream SMP, POV matters equally, if not more, too. 

It’s a pretty neat way of showing things, but in the end, the fanbase has a lovely (read: godawful /lh) way of analysing characters, particularly when it relates to how they interact with others from their fave character’s POV. The tendency to analyse things from a single character's POV is fine, but not when attempting to critique the greater whole of a conflict. Both sides, no matter how wrong they may seem to be, matter.

Adding onto the fact that everything is live, there are things that will spiral out of control, casual words being skewed and thus having the potential of a single line seemingly contradicting the entire ‘story’ that the fanbase has made. If it directly affects a fave's POV in particular, one is more likely to take offense, as bias immediately bars one from trying to see the other person's side of things.

POV is important. 

Which brings me to c!Phil, and how critics tend to ignore his perspective to prop up another character, or justify the tearing down of another.

Improvisation is both a blessing and a curse; the fanbase, however, loves to test out the latter. With it, the fanbase starts crafting tales to justify it...And so begins the mess that is c!Phil discourse.

Say it with me, folks: c!Phil is not supposed to be your fave’s fluffy father figure... unless you’re c!Wilbur!!!

😃☝🏾Dadza is good...👉🏾😎👉🏾 But fandom wants the excessive, idealized version.

-- birb 2k21

Family dynamics are generally loved for their potential for comfort, particularly those of a found family nature. Fandom in general tends to lean into them wholeheartedly, with most major bases having at least one prominent group present; SBI, of course, is no different. From fanart to popular fanfiction, it's arguably the biggest group dynamic alongside the Dream Team, and for that, a precedence was set. 

c!Phil, if he ever joined, would fix everything! All of the ‘kids’ would turn to their new mentor and everything would turn out fine! This all knowing, morally just character will chuckle at their antics and wacky hijinks will follow! Fun times, right? /s

The hope for it, however, has long since been shattered, and frankly, good for him!

To go a little ooc, cc!Phil has stated multiple times that, while he was friendly with a lot of the cast as c!Phil, his only paternal link (at least biologically) lies with c!Wilbur. Simple, right? It should be -- there are multiple clips of him saying this -- but fans choose to ignore it in their critiques, generally citing favouritism or downright neglect for the character’s flaws. From 'favoring' Techno (who, in canon, holds the highest link in friendship outside of c!Wilbur's familal link) to 'neglecting' to visit Tommy (who he barely knew, and also assumed, like many others, that he was fine), these critiques weigh heavily on the scale that judges Phil’s so called father figure trope. 

The story, however, has only leaned into (and persisted with) that for c!Wilbur alone, and adding onto it, there is an established acknowledgement from both ccs. That confirmation should hold the most weight, especially since both Phil and Wilbur seem alright with it. Even so, that familial has yet to be explored much for both characters, particularly regarding c!Phil, who has his debut (at least narratively) in a scene that feels opposite to the classic fatherly role.

c!Wilbur denounced accepting that helping hand to fall entirely into his explosive end, setting a precedence unlike most fatherly types arriving to save their kid. Usually, fandom narrative would love a close save, father and son uniting to heal and build up what was broken, but c!Phil’s entrance inks his story in failure. Angsty, right? We love angst!

And yet, as the story ticks on, the bad takes pile up.

Why? Well, I’l used to think that it is a “funny haha” type thing; a way to grieve for a character that was lost, as Alivebur was genuinely a great character. However, with the plot slowly progressing c!Phil’s story to evolve away from the ‘mentor the kids’ trope , I should have seen a storm on the horizon.

It should have been seen from the moment he stabbed c!Wilbur in the chest, but optimism is one hell of a smokescreen.

Built up fanon, however, is probably the greatest fog to ever exist.

There are lines before the button room confrontation that paint a picture of Wilbur seeking out the approval of his father (who seemed distant, at least from his POV), as well as hints to the SBI dynamic, but with the countless dismissals/retcons from CCs involved, as well as little to no consistent canon acknowledgement of this team dad role...Why base an entire hate piece of c!Phil just because popular fanon isn’t real? 

Why, for the sake of building up a well rounded character, would one place the title of a communal parental figure on a grieving father who has little attachment to the community involved, especially when most of them are too busy delving into their own issues?

Furthermore, why go for Mr. Philza Minecraft: Angel of Death, CEO of KEKW, Functioning Immortal????

It’s madness, luv, and frankly, antis cannot let c!Phil process any of his grief (or flesh out his character) without his contributions being fatherly. His role has been idealized to the point where he is not a character on his own, but an accessory to the happiness of other characters. That is not how the world works, and in a conflict riddled server like the dsmp, arguing that it should be like that is counterproductive.

c!Phil had his own shit to deal with, and as he slowly uncovers how fucked up the server actually was, he merely adapts to it. He learns to play the game by his own rules, and people become mad that he’s succeeding in his own way. It's as simple as that, particularly when referencing his initial exposure to the world he now inhabits.

c!Phil is a man who used to hear of his son’s success from the letters he received, words spinning tales of won revolutions and newfound friendships. To a father, those letters are more than enough to assume that all is well, and with it, he had no reason to check on his son, who was already old enough to be carving his path alone. For him to arrive and see just how broken his son actually was, and then, in front of faces he only vaguely knows, kill said son... There's a lot to take in.

He shouldn't have had to care about L'Manberg in those moments, not when he had his son in his arms, dead by his own goddamn weapon; his son who, to his knowledge, was doing pretty well up until he caught wind of his plot. Yet, he does.

He gives them the benefIt of the doubt, even ignoring the one person he has shown to have deep history with (c!Techno) to assist the nation in defeating the withers and rebuilding what was lost.

c!Phil stays in a nation that has seemingly brought his son right into his demise, holding in that grief to help people who he assumes have the chance to rebuild, to reform. For a moment, he trusts that the system can turn into something positive, offering to hunker down and do what he can to help. That’s the start of a fatherly type role for most -- with many expectations rising from fans to ‘fix’ all these traumatized characters.

In another plot, perhaps critics could have gotten the tropes they want from c!Phil, but to blame the character for reacting negatively to a world he barely knew, right after seeing it ruin his son and target a friend...Maybe the need for a "father figure" only stems from making their faves happy.

Characters that don't directly support your fave are not inherently awful characters. Critique based on that alone is...flimsy, really, but honestly, you can use to to show how they process things.

Which brings me to the events leading up to Doomsday, and with it, the steady rise of c!Phil’s defining traits.

Say it with me, folks: c!Phil is one of the most loyal members on the server, but loyalty doesn’t mean he's blindly following along!

😃☝🏾Butcher Army take this L👉🏾😎👉🏾 Found it in the L’Mancrater

-- birb 2k21

The butcher army arc, while nestled among the mainline story of Tommy’s exile (which I will not even mention, because those dadza takes about visiting may deserve a post on their own), allows for c!Phil to see into the minds of those who had once been with (or even against) his son’s plans. Sure, he may be witnessing them after the eve of their newfound traumas, but this is an important observation to make when comparing how easy it was to denounce his affiliation to them and side with c!Technoblade.

Unlike the new Administration, slowly dipping deeper and deeper into their own form of power hunger, c!Technoblade’s base desires had never wavered. His trust in others, however, had, still nursing the sting of a betrayal, but with no conflict in sight. He is reforming, finding comfort in his solitude, and still maintaining contact with those he trusts.

Techno's Compass, for one, is a major example of their mutual trust. Despite being on opposing territories, they are civil enough to trust each other, just like old friends.

Thus, when you take two old friends who are more than used to conflict -- one grieving and one betrayed, but both seeking neutrality -- it shouldn’t have surprised the antis that c!Phil would place c!Techno’s whereabouts (and life, mind you) over some government he barely knew. 

And yet, above all else, c!Phil starts off as a neutral party for everyone's sake, forgoing potential conquest for peace.

To c!Phil and c!Techno, it’s like fighting back to back, knowing that one can always trust the other to fend off those just waiting to take advantage of your blindspot, while also quelling the need to imagine your partner turning around and doing the same. That sort of friendship is forged through many, many hardships.

They betray what little trust he had built in them. That’s on them.

c!Phil is aware how untrusting c!Techno is, and while c!Techno feels safe enough to give his all for c!Phil, he never exploits it to get ahead, which is something L'Manbergians felt okay with doing.

They take a book out of the playbook used on c!Techno, for c!Techno.

They went after yet another person who was close to him, using their power and influence to hold an execution under the guise of seeking justice. If c!Wilbur, at least pre-corruption arc, sent letters to his father, one would at least expect some of his old ideals of freedom and fairness to leak through into his friends, right? To see those c!Phil assumed would hold similar ideals immediately skew towards a darker, brutal side, particularly in threatening others to get what they wanted...Well, shit hit the fan.

c!Phil does not have that strong relationship with any former L’Manbergians, and despite there being potential for such, it didn't work out that way; instead, however, those characters manage to mistake his kindness for weakness. They take his preferred neutrality as a way to exploit him, to gain in such a way that he lost agency...

No more Mister Nice Dadza, and honestly, he’s justified in that notion.

They’ve lost his trust, time too short to have gained that strong link like c!Techno’s or c!Wilbur’s, and with it, came the inevitable association with Doomsday.

c!Phil knew c!Techno’s intentions from the beginning -- which had only wavered into dormancy because he had grown tired of fighting, understanding that the cycle he wishes to break is not worth his efforts -- so the agreement in participating is effortless. 

c!Dream was there too, of course, but in their mutual quest for eradication, it’s made canon that c!Techno and c!Phil hid away most of their arsenal, despite seeming overprepared. They have no loyalty to c!Dream; they’re smart enough to play along, however. He was a means to an end.

There’s no lies present in their relationship; c!Phil needed someone who didn’t try and pull wool over his eyes, and c!Techno let him see.

c!Techno needed someone who wouldn't stab him in the back, and c!Phil stayed true as his hidden sword.

Which is why, as the two joined forces, ideals aligning and power synergized, they didn’t think twice about nuking the nation to bedrock. Mutually agreeing that the system needs to die, they did what they could, and they succeeded.

How cool of them, tbh LMAO.

New L’Manberg tugged too hard at the sleeping tiger’s tail; they shouldn’t have expected it to roll over.

Their openness to each other was known.

There was no need for underhanded plays, for hidden betrayals, for undisclosed words.

Their loyalties were strong.

They were in sync.

In conclusion (maybe, maybe not...this shit is long holy heck)

😃☝🏾 I may hate this analysis in 30 minutes👉🏾😎👉🏾 Or I may make a part 2. Fuck it!

-- birb 2k21

And that’s what makes c!Phil an interesting character: He tends to be critiqued in reference to chatacters who have very well wronged him, have no affiliation to him or get associated to him through popular fanon. There's a lot to cover that I haven't (from Ghostbur to the whole Tommy 'dilemna') but overall I'm digging what I have now and if I ever get more energy, I'll continue!

c!Phil enthusiasts, I hope I did you proud LMAO. It's my first forray into this side of tumblr 👉🏾👈🏾 I'm a lurker.

c!Phil antis, you can either act respectful or go argue with a wall. I got experience dealing with antis on Tumblr; I am immune to BS.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed. Signing off!

- BIRB.

#dream smp #dsmp #philza #ph1lza #this one's for the c!phil enthusiasts hello hi ily all #I have spent the entire afternoon writing this while the power is out lmaoo #fandom leave my mans philza minecraft alone challenge #god i don't even know how long this is I'm so sorry #i let a little bit of my c!techno enthusiasm shine through too

[howaminotinthestrokesyet]

Behind The Album: The Downward Spiral

The band’s second studio album was released in March 1994 from Nothing Records and Interscope Records respectively. The release represented a concept album from Trent Reznor detailing a person’s descent into depression and ending in suicide. He would combine the record with qualities of industrial rock, techno, and metal. Much like Broken, this stood in stark contrast to Nine Inch Nails debut Pretty Hate Machine. He first thought of the idea for the record while staying in a European hotel just after the touring Lollapalooza Festival in 1992. Along with the rest of the touring band, the singer had felt this very negative vibe towards their live performances. His original vision for the project was to explore a fictional character with major psychological issues. This fictional character in the end turned out to be Reznor himself as he used this concept to speak on his particular issues at the time in the lyrics. At this time, the Nine Inch Nails front man was at war within the group with Richard Patrick, while at the same time gradually becoming a much harder drinker. Reznor made a conscious decision to distance the sound on this album from the harshness and loudness of Broken. For that reason, he tried to minimize completely any use of guitars and synthesizers, but instead sought an atmosphere on the album of “ texture and space.”

Nine Inch Nails recorded The Downward Spiral at 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles, which stood as the house in which Sharon Tate had been murdered by members of the Manson family. Reznor had first bought the house in 1992 during the recording of Broken. He named the studio that was built there Le Pig After what was scrawled on the wall in blood after the murder. He would later produce Marilyn Manson’s debut album there, Portrait of an American Family. Both the Nine Inch Nails front man and manager John Malm stayed at the house for 18 months while recording Broken and The Downward Spiral. Later in 1993, the sister of Sharon Tate, Patty Tate confronted Reznor about exploiting her sister’s death by recording at her sister’s former home. The encounter did affect him profoundly causing the singer to change his perspective. “For the first time, the whole thing kind of slapped me in the face. I said, 'No, it's just sort of my own interest in American folklore. I'm in this place where a weird part of history occurred.' I guess it never really struck me before, but it did then. She lost her sister from a senseless, ignorant situation that I don't want to support. When she was talking to me, I realized for the first time, 'What if it was my sister?' I thought, 'Fuck Charlie Manson.' I went home and cried that night. It made me see there's another side to things, you know?” Once again, Reznor would collaborate with producer Flood for this record, but it would be their last. They would both have major creative differences moving forward that could not be resolved. One example of these differences came in the song entitled “Just Do It” that did not appear on the finished album. The producer believed Trent had gone too far with that particular track based on the entire concept of the album.

Over the years, the album has been interpreted in a wide variety of ways that make it difficult to pin down. Some of these themes include nihilism, self control, self abuse, depression, and madness. The one interpretation that people did agree on unanimously represented the idea that the entire record is semi autobiographical meaning the fictional protagonist is Trent Reznor. That same person has gradually been going insane through the effects of drugs, alcohol, religion, society, and finally decides to end it all. Some accused Reznor of copying a well traveled theme of angst within grunge music only a few years earlier. The music on The Downward Spiral represented something new, unique, and very unconventional. As noted before, Trent incorporated several seemingly different genres into the record including technical, metal, rock, and electronic. He would regularly utilize distortion and other noises In unstructured ways that listeners were not used to at the time. This meant that the formula of following verse and chorus went out the window with Nine Inch Nails. Another unique trend on the album came with Reznor’s use of new time signatures that were off the standard beat. Another quality found within the music emerged with his singing as it alternated between whispers and screams. He did not rely on too many samples either for The Downward Spiral with the primary ones being one from the George Lucas film THX1138 and an Iggy Pop drumming sample. The singer has noted that the two primary inspirations for the album emerged in David Bowie‘s experimental Low and Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Nine Inch Nails released the tracks “March of the Pigs” and “Closer” as singles, while “Hurt” and “Piggy” did make it on the radio, but not as singles. He was frustrated by the fact that “Closer’s” lyrics were widely misinterpreted as a song about lust, but Reznor intended the lyrics as a theme of self-hatred. The song “Hurt” subsequently released in 1995 made reference to hurting yourself and an addiction to heroin. The track would get worldwide fame a few years later when Johnny Cash covered the song. Reznor would say this about it in interviews. “I wasn’t prepared for what I saw, and it really then, wasn’t my song anymore. Then I got a CD in the post. I listened to it and it was very strange. It was this other person inhabiting my most personal song. Hearing it was like someone kissing your girlfriend. It felt invasive.” As time passed, the singer would make the statement that Johnny Cash covering one of his songs probably meant more to him than winning a Grammy.

The Downward Spiral did suffer from numerous delays from Reznor. He had hoped to finish the album in 1993, but setting up the studio to his liking took longer than expected. At the same time, he was trying to educate himself on how to write songs vastly different from anything he had ever recorded. Another reason for a further delay came in the fact that halfway through the album he suffered a massive attack of writer's block. The record became a massive hit for the band as it debuted at number two on the Billboard charts eventually being certified quadruple platinum by 1998. In the first week alone, The Downward Spiral sold 119,000 copies. Some very early listeners of the record predicted that Reznor had affectively killed the profitability of the band with the release. The singer did not disagree with this assessment as he saw the commercial value of it as quite limited, so the huge sales surprised him quite a bit. Critics almost universally praised the album commenting on its brutal honesty, darkness, and offbeat sound. Robert Christgau of The Village Voice gave it an honorable mention, while the New York Times review found the music to be quite abrasive, but meant as a compliment. Jonathan Gold of Rolling Stone likened the album to cyberpunk fiction popular at the time. Tom Sinclair of Entertainment Weekly had this to say about it. “Reznor's pet topics (sex, power, S&M, hatred, transcendence) are all here, wrapped in hooks that hit your psyche with the force of a blowtorch." In the end, the record would make many best of lists ranked very highly. Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums Ever saw the release as number 122 in 2020. Spin Magazine’s Top 20 albums of the past 25 years gave it the 10 spot. The legacy of The Downward Spiral was felt by both Reznor, his touring band mates, and the rest of the music world. Its success would lead to fame and notoriety that the singer had not envisioned, nor was he prepared for it in a mental health way either. The group had to deal with rumors left and right referencing Reznor‘s depression, possible death, and even a crazy story that he had been friends with Jeffrey Dahmer. The record also led to countless imitators including Motley Crue. Reznor would later say that The Downward Spiral was an album, where the actual truth self-fulfilled itself, meaning all the darkness, depression, and other negative themes came true in his own life.

[gavinhalm]

Glittering Beasts: Jeremy Blake's Time-Based Video Portraits and the Archive

Jeremy Blake achieved initial art world success in the late 1990's with a series of works that blended his background training in painting with digital technologies in which he combined digitally scanned, abstractly painted shapes with more realistic imagery to create large audio-visual, screen-based video projections. His achievement in this realm has been hailed as something of a major turning point for painting because of this unique hybridization (JBW, 9), but the more interesting aspect of his work may be his highly abstract, poetic approach to narrative and story telling.

Though there is little question that Blake created a new way in which to combine painting and technology, this fact probably would hold more interest for those who would wish to find art historical precedents of a traditional "painterly" nature (AMC, 4), at the expense of the narratological experimentation he produces in his pieces. Also, within these narratological explorations, there is a distinct shift from his early work, which dealt with abstract architectural spaces and fictional characters of the artist's creation, to a set of later works which take as their subject actual persons of historical and pop-cultural note.

Early Work

In a series of short tripartite video works between three and seven and a half minutes–Bungalow 8, Guccinam, and Mod Lang–Blake deals with themes of urban space and architecture, real and imagined (Teine, 144), which all obliquely engage issues of urbanization, Hollywood superficiality, and environmental concern. In these pieces, Blake utilizes the software platform After Effects (or, more precisely, worked with an animator friend at the LA-based motion graphics design shop, We Are Royale, using After Effects †) to create video panels of color and vague geometric shape, combined with colorations and "texture mapping" (to borrow a term from 3D modeling) derived from his own painted textures to render cool, almost lifeless architectural spaces (Teine, ibid).

What these early works also do is to abstractly and critically illuminate the hedonistic social structures of image-obsessed Hollywood and their materialistic movers and shakers, especially in Bungalow 8, a notorious pool-side cabana at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and Guccinam (Teine, 145), and anticipates the direction Blake was to take towards more concrete narrative issues in his work.

--

Mod Lang is the start of Blake's more narrative phase and "stars" a fictional character of the artist's devising that is a hybrid of a 60's rock and roll star (a slight referencing of Keith Moon of The Who) and a famous architect, with no particular connection to a historical person but which symbolizes that era's plethora of famous designers of various stripe. In Mod Lang, Blake uses his painterly skills to create a work that doesn't actively show a character per se, but instead subsumes traditional filmic characterization into a complicated set of shifting, quasi-architectural spaces, thus trading a "physical" character for a set of subjective referents which turn physical space into a kind of psychological construct. 

It should be noted that this is very different from, say, "first-person perspective" films like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly which project the main character's gaze out of his own eyes in order to interface with the “real world”. Instead, Blake’s first-person perspectival gaze in Mod Lang is one that actively creates the world in which the character exists through the artist's use of abstract shapes of an architectural nature, as well as almost psychedelic painterly colorations.

In short, Blake achieves an unacknowledged shift in first-person, filmic characterization through his various painterly-techno-filmic techniques in Mod Lang. The closest film-historical approximation that one can conceive of is perhaps Stan Brakhage's Dog Star Man, but even here this particular film is closer to the works we will discuss in Blake's later phase because of its combination of filmed reality and abstract painterliness executed on the film negative's surface.

Later Work (the Winchester and Wild Choir Trilogies)

The later portion of Blake's oeuvre, consisting of the Winchester Trilogy (2002-2004) and Wild Choir (2003-2007) that he mostly finished before his untimely death by suicide in 2007, are works that engage actual historical figures of varying fame. Also, these works throughly intertwine Blake's earlier interest in architectural space with the psychological being of each of their characters through the use of historical research, in the case of Sarah Winchester, to more physical archival/material research in Wild Choir.

Winchester Trilogy

The Winchester Trilogy is Blake's move into more structured narrative concerns and in this set of films, the artist takes on the (in)famous history of Sarah Winchester and her "Mystery House", as it is currently called. 

Situated on the outskirts of San Jose, California, the Winchester House exists at the complex nodal point of a number of geographic and historical convergences; being in the same general vicinity of not only the birth of cinema (near the famous “Farm” of Stanford University, where Muybridge created his proto-cinematic oeuvre), but also a mere few miles from the birth of the personal computer via Apple Computer in Cupertino--All of this adds to the subject matter of Sarah Winchester and her labyrinthian house filled with ghosts, and combines into a fascinating nexus of forces and information.

In brief, Sarah Winchester was a wealthy widow of the son, William Wirt Winchester, of the famous gun maker, Oliver Winchester, who invented the repeating rifle--the "Gun that Won the West". Sarah was thoroughly and continually haunted by what she thought were the ghosts of those that perished at the receiving end of her family's creation, became despondent with guilt over these deaths, and eventually decided to build an incredibly complex house with such things as stairs that lead to nowhere, floors without covering, thus exposing only beams, and other such “neurotically”-driven architectural fancies.

In the Winchester Trilogy, the techniques used by Blake vary from hand-held 8mm film of the house, hand-drawn tracings of the exterior, to the overlaying of a variety of scanned-in, painted shapes in order to render "physical" the ghosts and specters that haunted Sarah (JBW, 12). Within this disparate matrix of materials, Blake importantly links her visions and paranoia to issues of Western expansionism in the United States while culling fragments of pop imagery taken from Western genre films to incorporate into his work, thus borrowing heavily from filmic conventions of narrative and suspense (JBW, 14). Also, the artist devotes a whole part of the trilogy to filming the three Century Theatre movie domes built in the 1960's that are on land only a few dozen feet from the Winchester House, thus bringing the story of one woman's house and history into the larger context of violence as portrayed in the mass media (BOW, 46).

The end result is a work that skillfully intermixes, interleaves, and overlays the psycho-physical reality of Sarah Winchester/House (they are, finally, one and the same), media culture in general, and also the greater historical forces at work during this period in history in the country as a whole, thereby erasing not only the distinctions of the imaginative/personal/physical, but of the imaginative/personal/historical--There is no difference between Sarah Winchester, her house, or US history concerning the American West in Blake's work, and all of these elements are visually integrated into a singular quasi-narrative, poetic presentation that is neither literature, nor film, nor (history/portrait) painting, but instead a fascinating genre-leveling combination of all.

Wild Choir

The three parts that constitute Wild Choir ("Reading Ossie Clark", "Sodium Fox", and the unfinished "Glitterbest") are, respectively, about a 1960's-era fashion designer (Ossie Clark), a contemporary "Generation X" singer (David Bermen), and a 1970's punk-rock figure (Malcom McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols–Teine, 163). 

In this trilogy, Blake utilizes a variety of archival materials including journal entries, poetry, interviews, photographs, music, and other relational materials (commercial and otherwise) in order to create what could be termed "psychological portraits" of the subjects at hand. In his work, the layering of Blake's usual painterly techniques and archival materials are used in a more literal/referential way than was done in the Winchester Trilogy and this allows for what would seem to be an even more "truthful" narrative to emerge.

What is arguable is whether this later attempt does justice, through its use of so much archival material, to Blake's earlier explorations of poetic narrative. Does the inclusion of the archive create a fuller portrait of the "sitters"? Or, to paraphrase Derrida from his Archive Fever, does the archive cover up more than it exposes or illuminates? And if so, is this in a sense a step backward for Blake in regards to creating a new kind of psychological portrait?

Even if the house of the Winchester Trilogy and the journals and other archival materials in Wild Choir are conceptually readable as similar kinds of texts, the more subjective rendering in the Winchester Trilogy (partially through an absence of archival material) creates a more enticing atmosphere in which to construct a sense of the portrait's sitter, as the sea of sign-and-signifier baggage that comes with dealing with so much archival material arguably ends up painting a mental portrait too similar to that which we could create ourselves by going to the library, or researching on the internet, the lives of the people in which the artist has an interest. ††

--

In Sonja Teine's PhD thesis on Blake, the only book-length publication on the full body of his work at this time, the author believes the Winchester Trilogy did not actually portray an individual (Teine, 160) and therefore is significantly different than Blake's later "psychological portraits" of fashion and music stars in Wild Choir. But, within the Winchester Trilogy, it is the intertwining of the psychological and architectural spaces of a historical person that dislocates Teine's position which would place this trilogy more on the side of Blake's earlier architectural interests rather than the later, psychological portrait phase of his work.

Indeed, this all begs the question: should there be a difference between the psychic/psychological forces at play within Mrs. Winchester and her house, and the similar forces at work in the diaries and writings of the three persons that were used in the trilogy that followed Winchester? Is writing more descriptive of what it means to be "human" than architecture? Especially in relation to the very personal, psychological architecture constructed by Sarah Winchester?

Teine's seemingly strongest argument, in which voice-over narration of the journal entries and poems of the three subjects in Wild Choir take conceptual primacy in illustrating a portrait over the music which accompanies Winchester (Teine, 161), falls apart because there is no convincing rationale for stating that a literal voice speaking from a written text makes for a portrait (in Blake’s multimedia artworks), whereas the lack of one does not.

Stepping even further out, Teine’s entire thesis (ironically) revolves around the idea that the Wild Choir trilogy of famous personages is a "crypto self-portrait" of Blake himself (Teine, 54), which is an impossibility given the categorization discussed above because there is a lack of any personal writings or texts by/about Blake in his artwork. The somewhat pop-interpretive, quasi-Freudian notion that an artist (Blake) “resides in”, “occupies”, or even “haunts”, their own artwork (either of the trilogies) through their very creation by the artist’s hand also will not hold when what constitutes an artistic (multimedia) “portrait” is set in such an dichotomous fashion.

In short, whether or not there is a "literal" bringing-into-being of the portrait's sitter through vocalization of his/her own words (via journals, or recordings, or what have you), there is still the possibility of portraiture outside of archival texts like the ones used in Wild Choir.

It is the opinion of this writer that Teine's categorization of the Winchester Trilogy as an earlier work concerned more with the architectural than with psychological portraiture does a disservice to the work because it is more valuable to think of it as a piece which is the start of Blake's growing concerns with narrating the interiority of historical personages, and thus it categorically falls on the side of the later Wild Choir.

Glittering Beast in the Archive

In the end, Blake trail-blazed new narrative pathways with his video portraits, especially with his portrait of Sarah Winchester and her house, all of which moved between traditional storytelling and poetic abstraction to the point that they have little precedent within the history of either film, literature proper, or fine art portraiture. 

With the growing significance of the archive within Western artistic circles at the time of Blake's suicide in 2007, it is not surprising the artist might have felt a pressing need to engage the intellectual monster of sorts lurking within all of those journals and writings he found so alluring. It is sad that he is no longer with us so that we could have seen how he would have emerged from this labyrinth, either with another ground-breaking body of work, or injury from his fight with this most 21st century of Minotaurs.

Notes: 

† Subject discussed during a business email exchange (2008, while working at Dentsu America) between myself and We Are Royale, who were also responsible for the “dream sequence” inter-title animations directed by Blake for the film Punk. Drunk. Love. (2003).

†† One of the most exemplary artists who is able to consistently transcend the potentially overwhelming weight of interacting with archives is Christian Boltanski.

Bibliography:

Teine, Sonja. Jeremy Blake's Time-Based Paintings: Sodium Fox: Fragmented Crypto Self-Portrait, Lambert Academic Publishing, Saarbruken, Germany, 2012.

[AMC] Jeremy Blake: All Mod Cons, Blaffer Gallery publication on occasion of exhibition of the same name. Terrie Sultan, Director, Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, 2002

[BOW] Blur of the Otherworldly: Contemporary Art, Technology, and the Paranormal with texts by Mark Durant and Jane Marsching. DAP Publishers, New York, NY, 2006.

[JBW] Jeremy Blake: Winchester with texts by Jeremy Blake, Benjamin Weil, and Mitchel Schwarzer. SFMOMA, San Francisco, 2005.

#jeremyblake #aftereffects #video #videopainting #narrative #abstract #archive

[tinymixtapes]

Feature: SONICA 2018

Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, is a strange place. --- Monday: Cankarjev Dom Empty halls always give off that unintentionally eerie feeling that nobody should belong there. That their purpose is outside the purview of the humans that built them. The more cavernous they are, the more you get this feeling. Cankarjev Dom, or Cankar Centre/Hall, is an example of this. It is fascinating that this, the largest exhibition hall in Slovenia, would be the opening venue of SONICA Festival. The festival didn’t even use the main spaces of the hall, but rather a smaller stage — Kosovelova dvorana, or Kosovel Hall — located in the lower basement of the building. It only amplified that smallness. Friday: ROG Factory After concluding the night’s activities at Cankarjev Dom, I went to an abandoned factory just a little east along the Ljubljanica River for a club night. Upon entry, it felt like I entered a Berlin joint, complete with a blasted-out concrete space for where people could stand, a makeshift bar, and lots of smoking. Alleged Witches, a local house DJ, opened with a two-and-a-half hour set that was of acceptable techno with sparks of ambient. Actress followed with techno, too, though with sprinkles of his established sound. After watching for a legally-mandated 15 minutes, I left, returned here, and wrote these words. Lee Gamble is playing in a bit, but that’s at 3 AM. That’s something I would’ve done 5 years ago, maybe even 3 years ago, but that ain’t me now. Wednesday: +MSUM Tomoko Sauvage (Photo: Lana Špiler) Entering the Museum of Contemporary Art, also known as +MSUM, was a bit disjointed, if only because the doors look like wing tips. Still, walking in, I noticed the crowd gathering around this one gallery space. It’s always good to have that. Just that bit of overfill to show that people are genuinely interested in what you have to offer. Tomoko Sauvage was the key act of the night. The Japanese artist primarily performed using a piezo-based mic setup, two bowls filled with water, among other stuff. I’ve always had a certain fondness for piezo-based surface recordings, especially because we can’t often hear these vibrations, even if we can feel them. Sauvage resorted to sound manipulation that worked effectively for the materials she was using, creating a unique environment from within the space that makes it more appealing to the listener. You sort of drift into and out of the space without ever moving. That takes a certain level of sophistry in your craft, and I look forward to more of Sauvage’s work. --- Even the name is strange. Lyub-li-ahn-a. Those j’s are weird. Majbe thej form a conspiracj (yes, you pronounce it like y). I guess that’s why the locals just use the pronunciation “Loub-li-ahn-a.” Alas. It is by no means exotic. Many elements of the city I felt a compelling connection to past American and European cities I’ve managed to stumble my way into the last 10 years: Köln, Berlin, Santa Fe, Detroit… Chicago. Its smallness stirs memories of Providence, an emblem of my childhood I have not set foot in for longer. --- Saturday: Klub CD Sometimes, an earnest moment changes everything. I don’t know where I was, or, rather, where my head was, while at Klub CD, the rooftop restaurant and hall of Cankarjev Dom. Performing in front of me was William Basinski. He’s an odd sort: Despite being this avant-garde figure, he had the look, disposition, and dress of a rock star. He joked about wanting to catch the prior night’s club activity. But perhaps that was the point: His piece, A Shadow in Time, was designed as, in his words, “a funeral mass” and “calling home” to David Bowie, the epitome of cool. Perhaps fitting given it was he who refused the rites of burial and all that remains of him scattered in particles to the winds around Bali. Thursday: Kino Šiška Lifecutter (Photo: Lana Špiler) The oldest cinema in Ljubljana, the space has been converted into a concert hall on the lower levels. The structure reminds me of multiple cavernous concert halls I’ve descended into throughout my life, though it feels more in shape like an actual music venue than the various rectangular configurations of previous experience. The act first noted on the bill is a Slovene artist by the name of Lifecutter, who immediately gave off an imposing, spooky vibe appropriate for fall with his dithering samples and incongruent rhythms. That set the mood for the first 15 minutes of the set, building up a dark tension in the room. Had he cut off his set at 20, 25 minutes, it would’ve been a solid performance. But it lasted 45 minutes. The latter half of the set was filled with familiar techno and house patterns, grooves that ultimately did little to inspire the imagination. It roused the crowd into dancing, certainly, but I kept wanting him to go back to what he was doing at the beginning of his set. He did ultimately return there in the closing minutes, but by then, the impact was measurable. Monday: Cankarjev Dom The opening act of SONICA 2018 was Tristan Perich, of renowned One-Bit Symphony fame. Utilizing a single synth, he did a buildup of multiple looping patterns that in theory should allow the listener to drift in and out. But it felt similar after a while, as if he were running through the motions of what a synth set should sound like. There was hope that it would build up to something, but it didn’t go where I would’ve expected. Thursday: Moderna Gallerija Below are notes taken verbatim from an occurrence on Thursday at Moderna Gallerija, the Museum of Modern Art, near Tivoli Park. No context given. Use your imagination. * #3: Hunch! * #2: Hey, someone I can relate to * #4: Speaks better than #1 * #5: Has a pulse to the ground * #1: Unsure about what they’re saying * #6: Ljubljana needs less techno * #8: Jazz is bad jazz is bad * #7: A key to… all over the place? * #9: Those are certainly four words Friday: Cankarjev Dom The headline act was a new piece called Sacred Horror in Design by Iranian musician Sote with German visual artist Tarik Barri and a couple of Iranian partners. The structure of this long, winding set piece at first harkens to the emotional minimalism of Jerusalem in My Heart. But it’s not that simple, really. There is a pain, a sadness that circulates and shifts throughout the piece, whether in the background imagery or when the traditional Iranian instrumentation is distorted through various effects. It’s something that you can feel there. Even the moments where fear is meant to be invoked, it comes through as anguish. The tapestry brought about by Barri’s visuals served as an assertive complement to Sote’s composition. Whether through simple tears or bleeds that cut through the imagery or invocations of Persian-Islamic culture, the melancholy that is powering this piece shows. Saturday: Mestni park Tivoli Marco Barotti’s Swans (Photo: Lana Špiler) While wandering through Tivoli Park looking for ducks, I accidentally stumbled upon Marco Barotti’s sound installation, Swans, overlooking the pond. I stood there for a few moments, trying to make sense of the tiny spectacle, but it felt strangely monotonous. I moved on to find a small number of ducks in the pond and an old man struggling to feed them (only to be thwarted by pigeons). Wednesday: +MSUM Following Sauvage was a DJ set by James Ginzburg. For the most part, the crowd just ignored him and either stood around, ate at the little cantina next to the gallery, or smoked outside. Perhaps it was for the best: the set felt like second-hand James Ferraro or OPN with a side of Deafheaven. --- Instead, its strangeness comes from a calmness about it that accepts its minor absurdities. The prevalence of graffiti everywhere with little more than a shrug. A goofy meme referencing a short film when a new train opens to Italy. An anecdote of a taxi driver nonchalantly taking a tourist around the city as riots were occurring. Photo: Ze Pequeno This isn’t bad, mind you. It grants the opportunity to question things. --- Friday: Pritlicje In which a thing may have happened (among others). Thursday: Kino Šiška Giant Swan (Photo: Lana Špiler) To close the night, Giant Swan took to the stage… and then one of them immediately jumped off it. Taking an aggressive stance with the crowd, a drum & bass set soon followed. The setup they had was definitely one you would find among anyone who came from Brighton or Bristol. The energy they injected into their set certainly merited a comparison to Fuck Buttons, and unlike my previous experience with a live set of the latter, the crowd actually got into it. Much credit to that, a rarity in such settings. I just wish I could feel the same about the music. While I was hoping for the bombastic energy and tension-building that I’ve seen many a good Brighton and Bristol act pull off, what I got was the other type of music I hear from those cites: Meandering repetitions that never quite get out of their groove. I failed to understand their appeal, but at least the crowd was happy about it. Make of that what you will. Saturday: Klub CD The work was eerily reminiscent of the works of both The Caretaker or (especially) Tape Loop Orchestra. The first act, which Basinski claimed was comparable to a New Orleans-style funeral march, brought about a different angle. It wasn’t really a body going home. It was the body, the self going home, turning inward in ways that one couldn’t anticipate. Perhaps that is what looking at things in retrospect does to you. Understanding the purpose, the meaning of things that have come before. Many laid down to understand what was happening to them. Others, like myself, observed both outward and inward what was happening. A forgotten sadness encroaches. Photo: Ze Pequeno Monday: Cankarjev Dom The second act was Yair Elazar Glotman and Mats Erlandsson, who played a selection from last year’s joint effort, Negative Chambers. Joining them were local musicians Katarina Kozjek, Anastazija Krenn, and Žiga Murko. Now this was something. While Perich attempted to demonstrate something resembling intensity, Glotman and Erlandsson, et al. were intensity. The pull into the ethereal immediately brought to mind the works of Motion Sickness From Time Travel and the like, as well as the modest drawing that creates a sensation of envelopment yet isn’t overwhelming. You’re in a strange setting in these situations because of it. And yet… it felt right. It was something that could set the tone for the festival. Friday: Cankarjev Dom Container Doxa (Photo: Lana Špiler) “The situation remains excellent.” Container Doxa would conclude the night at Linhart Hall. Of the Slovene acts that played throughout the festival, they were the most interesting. They opened the piece with an empty stage, while the members stood in the crowd, imitating birdsong. One by one, the group assembled and delivered a performance as fragmented as their arrival. The bouncing of instrumentation played off of each other very effectively, while an arresting visual display stood at their backs, with Tine Grgurevic reading through a mechanical treatise that played off like a sinister lecture. As some would remark, there are limits to futurism. Container Doxa’s piece hinted at these limitations in terms of the piece. It showed how it’s so hard to walk the line between the pristine cosmopolitanism of futurology and dystopia… and how we lean hard toward the latter than the former these days. --- The 10th running of SONICA Festival in Ljubljana, operated by the Museum of Transitory Art, focuses on the matter of “sensitivity,” and whether it is necessary to oblige to it anymore. The context of our times certainly gives us reason to ask this question. Of course, many here would be uncomfortable to even consider it. SONICA graciously invited Tiny Mix Tapes to attend and to become part of their talks. In turn, I, on my own 10th anniversary of writing for TMT, have been sent to cover… and to talk. I will avoid the trappings of nostalgia tripping as much as I can, though I probably already screwed up in making note of prior cities. Oh well. Not the worst thing that can happen in a festival review. --- Tuesday: Ni v Sloveniji/non in Slovenia É engraçado. Falou esloveno mais bem de italiano. Porque é…? Meh. Culpo Portugal. Thursday: Kino Šiška Aïsha Devi (Photo: Lana Špiler) The headliner of the night was Aïsha Devi. It is worth noting her purpose here at this point: She is representative of the potential not of electronic music (that in and of itself is a different matter), but of SHAPE, the European Union’s attempt at creating a centralized platform for artist development throughout its member states (disclosure: TMT is a SHAPE media partner). While many of the acts this week are connected to SHAPE in some capacity, either as active members or alumni, Devi represents one of its bigger success stories, making a significant impact on the electronic music scene. So it makes some sense to have her around, especially with a new album to tout. Her set at Kino Šiška was a dichotomy of sorts. On the one hand, her music remained the same: A miasmic hodgepodge of dissonance with some foundations of brilliance that screamed missed opportunity. On the other hand, her performance actually worked to her favor, with her jumpy mannerisms and distorted movements working up the crowd. Friday: Cankarjev Dom The return to Cankarjev Dom would also come with an upgrade. In lieu of Monday’s visit to Kosovel Hall, SONICA booked Linhartova dvorana/Linhart Hall, a vast concert stage that was almost certainly double in capacity. It felt like a true concert hall in scope, compared to Kosovel’s lecture-like space. To open the night, Canadian artists Jason Sharpe and Adam Basanta took to the stage in an intense barrage of sound. The post-rock narrative worked to their advantage in this situation, built on call and response between Sharpe’s instrumentation and Basanta’s looping. It’s worth noting the prior descriptions of the concert hall fit well here. Acoustics in a venue tend not to matter as much in electricified music, since the sound is already partially shaped and adjustable. However, in acts such as Sharpe’s and Basanta’s, where a greater emphasis is placed on sound design and manipulation, the acoustics start to matter a lot more. Which is to say that Linhart Hall played as much a role in turning the duo’s sound into its own thing as the effects on display. Saturday: Klub CD As the music shifted to act #2, which was intended as a transmission to the spirit of Ziggy Stardust, of Starman, of the Thin White Duke, and of all his other iterations, the mood changed. There was little chatter in the crowd. People were just drifting. And in that moment, everything felt strangely earnest. There was an inexplicable sincerity projected by Basinski’s music, even as he remained decked out in glam rock attire. It made me think about not just what I was doing in Ljubljana, but also what I have been doing generally. Sometimes you get the clarity you look for in unexpected places. As the loops weaved through and about, I felt an urge to question my actions and roles as a Writer of MusicTM and supporter of the Chicago DIY scene, as well as a passive supporter of DIY scenes everywhere else. Have I done enough? Have I put in enough effort to truly help communities move forward? Has my own hesitance at being a social person, and the insufferability that has permeated much of the social internet, created an unnecessary crutch to prevent me from doing more and actually be a helpful person? These are weird questions to ask in the middle of an ambient performance. But perhaps this was the only time I could really think about anything beyond the scope of this report, really. And perhaps it was necessary. The priorities had changed. http://j.mp/2C3YUhs

[tomperanteau]

New article has been published on The Daily Digest

New article has been published on http://www.thedailydigest.org/2017/08/14/former-trump-assistant-threatens-matt-drudge-with-serious-consequences-if-he-continues-jihad-against-steve-bannon/

Former Trump Assistant Threatens Matt Drudge with Serious Consequences If He Continues ‘Jihad’ Against Steve Bannon

Former Donald Trump assistant and political consultant Sam Nunberg went off on H. R. McMaster and Matt Drudge Sunday in an interview with The Daily Caller.

Numberg was particularly upset with The Drudge Report’s recent attacks on Chief Trump Strategist Steve Bannon.

Nunberg threatened Matt Drudge with “serious fooking consequences” if he continues his “jihad” against Steve Bannon.

Nunberg told The Daily Caller that he was “very perturbed” by the Axios story and tied in Bannon’s reported downfall to the Drudge Report, which continues to link to stories that are negative to the White House chief strategist.

“Matt should go back into his hobble hole in Miami and listen to techno,” the former Trump campaign adviser said. “Matt should understand that people like me can blow him the fook up. F-o-o-k, Conor McGregor. Blow him the fook up [sic].” (Nunberg was referencing Irish MMA fighter Conor McGregor, who pronounces “fuck” as “fook.”)

Drudge has not made it known why he doesn’t favor Bannon on his site. However, he has previously suspected Bannon of leaking in an email reviewed by TheDC, and he is known to link to articles that paint reported Bannon foe Jared Kushner in a positive light.

“Matt should understand there will be serious fucking [READ MORE HERE]