email epitaph records
oh dear you've found the secret slime cave lair of enforcer @ draggian universe where they put their awful little thoughts. created as somewhere to put my angsty thoughts about how falling in reverse sucks other than the void and annoying my friends.
This is stylized to what I'm comfortable posting online, so I won't go into too much detail about anything, but it's my stream of consciousness, so you could see almost anything. Potentially disturbing things that might be likely to come up include violent imagery / jokes, angst, mentions of IRL unpleasantness, unreality and surreal stuff, and religious imagery (deities, angels, demons) as applied to myself.
The most recent 100 thoughts are being shown. Anything before then is frankly none of your business, and the core concepts of anything that was actually worth keeping for informational purposes and not just live-blogging things I was doing, diary entries, or shitposts (as the kids say) are probably ending up on my Neocities.
made an expanded goat bios page on my neocities in response to some Goatlings Drama, and honestly, not sure why I didn't do it before; this is fantastic. I can go into all the detail I crave and be honest about all the Ronnie references! Of course, I've got 200+ total goats, so it's going to take a while to port everybody...
it's so much fun writing neocities bios for my goats because I can admit to all the ronnie references and include terrifying citations.
Give up on love, I'm trustless
Give up on trust, I'm loveless
And now it's time to let you go...
the neoquest i lizards are also fantastic, but those you can at least have as plushies. there should be a rattlecobrall petpet and/or plushie
santae is deeply appealing because it feeds off my deeply held desire to be friends with a rattlecobrall. this is what peak performance looks like.
baby me did not understand that neoquest ii was a video game in-universe and made a whole conservation petpage about those little guys and how they're vital in controlling rodent populations and stuff
i still think they should be a petpet. i mean they made the devilpuss also from neoquest a petpet because everyone liked it so much.
this song is probably supposed to be about failed activism or something but my only interpretation of it is in regards to the slime-controlled part of the falling in reverse fanbase (all of it)
every fucking thing i do on every fucking petsite is loaded with uber-powerful slime destroying magic. ronnie boy won't know what hit him
I AM the concept of problematicism or rather the horrible creature that sits on my shoulder and whispers slime at me is and goatlings ain't it
anyway i prevail is good
i'm just literally pure evil sorry. take anything i say with plenty of grains of salt. toss it over your shoulder to ward me off
Frankly, I think "you are talking about goat Neopets, calm down" would be a useful header / footer for every forum page.
I suppose I shouldn't be running my mouth over here about goat drama on something traceable to me, but who the fuck is going to look for it on my thoughts.page. That would require them to actually read and click through my Neocities vs. going "gasp! real person fic! doubleplusungood get them out of our good christian goat site! think of the children!" victorian pearl-clutching bullshit
i should draw Goat Ronnie. he's been a thing for a while, sometimes my monologue calls me that. not sure if he's a fusion of Ronnie and the anthro version of tehenforcer or something more resembling everybody's favorite worstboy iced out
as nice as it is that Ronnie is being quiet, I need a new Patreon song so I have something better to be mad at. need to remind myself what actual problematicism and disgust are
If rhetorical-you are going to try to persuade me to do / feel something based on claims of actions somebody has taken, rhetorical-you need to give me evidence. I am not going to form an opinion based on "I've been here longer than you; dude trust me." Nor do I appreciate the insinuation based on rhetorical-you bringing up your age for no reason that my requesting evidence for claims you're making is a function of me being young and stupid, or having nothing better to do. This unpleasantly reminds me of the FIR Subreddit in many ways.
Also, "sorry you're not aware, can't help you there" has never been a helpful thing to say to anybody. If I'm asking "if you're claiming these claims have been made, please tell me where", that's a reasonable thing to ask. I'm not gonna just take your word for it if you're trying to get me mad at someone.
If you don't have enough time to cite sources for your goat site callouts, then don't write them.
in other news, the new santae minimals are cool although i am wondering just how many different kinds of phoenixes we need. since there's the peohen, the pyrophoenix, and the new cash shop one
Using "traces other people's art" as a point of attempted outrage, on a site where all user-submitted designs are from folks who specifically entered them to get the chance to have them redrawn by staff to exist as on-site items and the designers are credited in every user-designed item, is the most bizarre Goatlings accusation I've ever seen.
(Don't look at the forums. There was a devlog post, ergo folks are getting pissy again.)
Remember, kids, if you're gonna make accusations against anybody, you need proof. Preferably actual quotes or screenshots if you're referring to online behavior. The only time an anonymous source is acceptable is if they're in an actual fucking war zone or are otherwise in danger if their identity is known.
Basically, if you want to claim the creator of a work of art is a terrible person, you need a source that's more reliable than an anonymous salt blog. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm not willing to get outraged at anybody unless I know why and have their actual actions so I can decide for myself if I think they're worth making a fuss about. If you're going to make accusations, I would like to know what your stake and agenda is in the matter. "This person is problematic" is completely useless unless you tell me what they fucking did, and ideally, give me a primary source.
do not speak to me of problematicism; you know who lives in my brain against my will
I seem to have recently picked up "wiggle / wriggle" as a vocal stim, in relation to something involving Salamander!Ronnie (logical conclusion from him being a slimy beast that lives under rocks in the muck) that I can't quite visualize or describe him doing with a humanoid body of his size, but is simply true. He wriggles, your honor. My word is law.
And this, of course, is my stream of consciousness (or scream of consciousness as the case may be) where there's a permanent home for the random shit that was previously scattered across random Notepad files or just texted to my friends and/or mother because I thought it was vaguely funny.
The other thing I started doing this past summer is keeping a "journal". It's literally just bullet points. Namely, I had the idea of "oh, if I keep track of my edgy outfits every day, then it makes it like a fun My Immortal-esque overindulgent edgy fanfic". I realized that what makes me an edgy fanfic protagonist is not the extravagance of my outfits; it's that I wear this sort of thing All The Time. But the journaling does seem to be working in a way that requires less effort and unlike a prose-form 'diary', has no expectation of ever being seen by anybody or being entertaining to read. I do bullet points of "what did I wear today", "what did I do today", and "rose / thorn / bud" -- the only mindfulness thing of use I took from some required first year seminars my college did. As in, what good happened today, what bad happened today, and what am I looking forward to.
One of my issues with trying to do "journals" previously is "okay, but I didn't do anything interesting today. It's not worth writing down. Who would ever want to read this?". I don't have any expectations of anybody, including myself, reading this, because frankly, it's about as trivial as this most of the time. Just saying "what did I do today" allows for entries of the likes of "not much" or "basically just played Santae all day" or "classes and that's basically it" or "spent most of the day unconscious". There's no expectation of being interesting like I feel like a more standard "journal" would have.
that's a slash as in either of the above, not hundreds of thousands of words. Most I've been able to do in the span of 1 day is the ~20,000 of the Ronnie werewolf story.
(I mean, I've got no issues with output since I suspect I probably write a couple hundred / thousand words a day just in texts and my screaming into the void "blog" on thoughts.page, but I mean actually doing creative writing and trying to take on my backlog.)
Writing is easier, in part because I can get it done really fucking quickly courtesy of my typing speed, so I think I will experiment with keeping up 4thewords and "do my daily 15 battles with X number of words, because I can't do any more without paying for a monthly membership" as part of my regular dailies along with my pixel cats, goats, dragons, Neopets, etcetera.
I can get "into the zone" and generally enjoy doing art / writing when I'm doing them, I just need that push to Start Doing It, and a daily streak / gamification model seems to work for that. Of course, art, at least, is still taxing both in terms of MP and HP, that I think that pretty much saying "I will do daily streaks for Whatever-tober and Art Fight, but that's it" is reasonable.
The kind of gamifying Habitica did didn't work for me, but the models of 4thewords, Art Fight, and self-directed daily streak challenges do. I suspect it's that the incentive of a game element, or keeping up a streak, or whatever, only works if it's a thing that I want to do as opposed to a way to make myself do a new thing.
I've fiddled with other gamifying self-care apps and they've had a similar issue where it's "okay, why?" and that putting up checklists of ~positive self-care things I did every day~ just isn't how I operate. It feels needlessly tedious vs. just doing the thing. Pokemon Sleep, however, has worked unexpectedly well as a "go to sleep and eat, or at least feed your Pokemons breakfast / lunch / dinner at vaguely reasonable times, regularly" because if I don't go to bed at a reasonable hour, I don't get a good grade and XP, so if I stay up late, I've gotta have a good reason. (or to put my Go+ on my bed at 11:30.)
Or maybe it's just that I've got enough EF that I don't need gamification to get me to do basic maintenance tasks and things on my checklist (and if I'm depressed enough for those to be a problem, the little Finch critter or Habitica quests or w/e isn't going to help), but do need it in order to get started on things that require more concerted cognitive effort e.g. doing writing or art.
According to the interview with Max from summer 2023, Ronnie at one point was in charge of driving the tour bus. That seems like a terrible idea, even if he was sober at the time. Don't let the pigeon drive the bus!
Some musings about the latest fanfic segment, which you'll see along with the rest of the story when it's finished. Publishing unfinished stories on Neocities is a great way for me to forget about them and not end up finishing them, which is why I don't drop anything until it's completed.
Ronnie kind of poorly attempting to do the rap parts of Eminem songs to hype himself up before concerts is documented with one of the Epitaph Tour 2007 webisodes (only one seems to have survived to YouTube), so it's true to life. I'm not doing any more Eminem research than looking up what the opening of a reasonable album for him to have on CD would be, because it's not a line of questioning that interests me. I respect Em as an artist -- I appreciate him for actually improving and he's a lovely example of what using "politically incorrect" imagery in art to make a point actually looks like and how to draw a distinction between an asshole persona and yourself, but his work simply isn't the sort of thing I'm interested in listening to and researching thematically speaking.
I'm picturing Ronnie's car being a somewhat janky (as the kids say) model year ~late 90s, 2000 or so black sports car that he bought from somewhere that advertises that they don't require a credit rating on the side of the road. What he actually drove in 2006 is unsurprisingly not detailed, and it seems like a reasonable guess for what someone with the aesthetic sensibilities of a 13-year-old boy and sudden disposable income would acquire. That's also pretty much what Arlo's car is, save the difference in model year (his is roughly model year 2015).
Same reason his phone is assumed to be a 2005 model year Motorola Razr, since it was the Cool Kid Flip Phone and has an edgy name and all, so seems like the sort of thing he'd buy. (after its release in 2007 -> 2024 in Dudesverse timegap, he buys an original iPhone and is absolutely overjoyed by it because that's cute.)
Likewise, I don't know of any historical documentation of him driving unsafely, but, well, LOOK AT HIM. (plus it is a parallel to Arlo, who runs several red lights because he's too busy thinking about Spark in the original Guys Being Dudes.)
The only mention of a car in the relevant era in I Can Explain is the anecdote ca. 2008 where he was in the car with his unnamed girlfriend and threw a full slushie cup at her for suggesting he needed to go to rehab. The inherent humor of the word "slushie" aside, that's mostly ice. That would HURT. So, uh, yeah...after the fight, everything goes downhill. And he doesn't name said girlfriend which would provide some elucidation on the whole Mandy Murders thing. Unsurprisingly, the make and model of said car, or even who was driving, is not discussed. I wouldn't expect it to be, since it's completely irrelevant.
Plus even if I wanted another Internet community (which I don't) or to port my stuff somewhere besides Neocities (which I don't), I get the impression that this site is mostly for Serious Writers (TM), and I doubt they'd be receptive towards my Pokemon Go / Escape the Fate crack fic. I mean, I learned about it through the SFWA blog, which I ended up on this afternoon for some reason.
(the 8,211 words today in the top bar of 4thewords isn't really accurate; it counts words you copy and pasted in so a lot of that is the Ronnie's Awakening draft stuff I've already done. yeah that's right I'm actually working on some fanfic.)
Signed up for an app that gamifies writing to try to make myself do more of it. I'm gonna add working on the fanfic at least in little chunks that my free plan supports to my dailies. I don't intend to do anything with the forums there or publish anything through there, but it's fun enough.
https://app.4thewords.com/account/theenforcer
Said app technically has social features where it's got forums and you can share and publish your work through there -- I'm not going to. It's a word processor that gives me shinies when I write X number of words in X minutes, until I do my 15 monsters per day.
if your only engagement is following it on tiktokblr, you are not "in" any given "scene", nor can you call folks who are your "friends".
Yes, I'm aware that I'm being a bad scientist by not giving citations, but just...click on a couple of random songs on their AZlyrics. You'll see what I'm talking about pretty shortly. Now, I would honestly recommend them if you like that sort of thing (crunkcore etcetera) and don't mind gross and incoherent lyrics. They are honestly really fun musically. Like, it's not pure hatred, just one thing that I care about that they are doing really badly.
I guess that tells you how effective they are at...something, since I don't usually get grossed out, especially not by fiction or textual descriptions, but how they describe sex acts is just...gyaaargh no.
Like, I try not to be mean, but after checking the lyrics for all their songs to see if they got any less stupid over time and were worth inquiring into further, I feel like I physically need a shower. I'm fine with a wide variety of horny songs, but that is just...not it, chief.
You can click through their AZlyrics to see the rest of it. It's not even successfully edgy because it's just...stupid. It reminds me of the stuff I wrote to gross out my best friend when I was, like, 12.
Okay, I think I've heard enough. All their other songs' lyrics are basically just as stupid. ...why. Why are you like this. You're doing a really fun job. Maybe practice some moderation with the autotune and learn that you guys can't rap, but there's some fun stuff going on there! I like what you've got going on musically! But I can't enjoy it for its musical value because I'm too busy being grossed out by whatever the fuck you're trying to say. Evidently the fact that they've been Like That for 10+ years means that it's a motif. It's a core theme. And it's...really gross. You are presenting vaguely sexual mental images I very much don't want to see.
Also, they can't rap, but that's pretty standard so I don't hold it much against them.
They're even worse when they're overtly trying to be horny.
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/isetmyfriendsonfire/reesespiecesidontknowwhojohncleeseis.html
I like the genre fusion they're doing. If they weren't so...gross and weird and stupid, I'd really like them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzcGePsFQSo
This is possibly an even more illustrative example. It's perfectly well-executed screamo / metalcore / whatever it is...save the problem of the lyrics. Like, I get no one listens to this genre for the lyrics, but this is just unacceptable.
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/isetmyfriendsonfire/butthenunsarewatching.html
Some bands are best scene and not heard. That's a pun I came up with this morning in reference to why Dying Is Your Latest Fashion is good not because of Ronnie-boy, but in spite of him -- it's got the good parts of his vocal deliveries with none of his him because the lyrics are incoherent.
Well, incoherence isn't always a positive trait. Sometimes trying to be random is just as illustrative of your character as being autobiographical can be. I Set My Friends On Fire is the choice to accompany my dailies this morning, since it is a small enough output that I can take it out before my 11:30 class. They're a weird combination of various metalcore genres, electronic stuff, and crunkcore -- all of which I like. I think what they're doing musically is really interesting! Problem is that they're...incredibly stupid, lyrically speaking, and that incoherence also shines through musically. They've been added to the "if you like FIR, you might like this" list in that they're a very similar kind of stupid to Fashionably Late, save being more faux-deep or horny vs. egotistically incoherent.
Also, this is a band I learned of through what might be the most period-accurate and organic method possible -- they had an ad insert in my CD copy of Dying Is Your Latest Fashion. Epitaph was really signing anybody vaguely punk-related in the late 00s, weren't they?
the combo of hawthorne heights going back to the OG silence in black and white emo stylings on the rain just follows me with the fully embraced middle-aged father aesthetic (they are not even Trying to be edgy) is just completely delightful. they're also a lovely example of a band who's maintained the same basic style and vocal production all the way through, but have satisfyingly evolved them over time so they don't feel stagnant.
these are just dads (and I appreciate the Hawthorne Heights guys being willing to admit they're balding)
https://youtu.be/4s4kctCrWnw?list=OLAK5uy_nvS6wRWV9UU2bbLycXAj_X20r0eH1jiHo
I will say -- I found I Am Human and Chemical Warfare kind of lackluster when I assessed them over winter break 2022, since they're much more on the power-ballad end of things and more rock v. metal, which is not where Craig's strengths are, but I will say that a lot of the songs on there are actually really strong lyrically and the albums maintain a cohesive thematic core.
Also, if this was not written to be an LGBT pride song, I don't know what it is.
I'm so good at symbolism. I've realized that even though I'm totally fine with using feminine-coded ADs for FIR songs if thematically appropriate, it just feels...wrong for Escape the Fate, and I'm trying to come up with an explanation that doesn't summarize to "Craig is more of a man than Ronnie-boy will ever be."
If you're curious about what my stream of consciousness in Notepad form, and symbolic connections for song goats and thought processes behind my AD choices, look like, here you go.
A bunch of choices I'm pretty satisfied with, none being too bank-breaking (if I'm gonna shell out for Lovesick, it is NOT going to be for I Am Human), 2 songs that are being omitted because they're about getting wasted and are about 30% "fuck" by volume, and two that I really like and deserve the best they can get, which means they'll remain AD-less until something suitably edgy comes out or I break my bank to acquire something appropriate.
we won't back down
on to the next one
something
let it go
behind the mask
masqling AD (obvious symbolism, but uber-expensive and does not exist in usershops...what other ADs are there with literal masks)
thief AD (not exactly a mask, but it's got a hood and a bottom half of face mask?)
peafowl / RAD (sort of has a masquerade vibe? is also pretty and I want an excuse to use it)
thousand wishes AD (i feel like there's something there with the "remnants left of a time once known / we can never go back to that place" to connect this AD, but can't quite explain why)
issues
day of wreckoning
prepare your weapon
world around me
the final blow
until we die
forget about me
you're insane
risk it all
desire
one for the money
fire it up
i alone
father, brother
losing control
apologize
just a memory
live for today
remember every scar
breaking me down
alive
get up, get out
i won't break
let me be
end of the world
broken heart
four letter word
lovesick (expensive as balls but is the best illustration onsite of "love is a four letter word"...)
candy heart (cheaper ad that also has hearts out the wazoo)
i will make it up to you
thousand wishes AD (wishes? loyalty? making it up to [someone]?)
winter star trail (it's kind of got that vaguely-melancholic-but-trying vibe)
bleed for me
do you love me
i am human
goats are not human, and I am not either. but for completionism's sake...
rainbow flight (the rainbow of human diversity! idk if this is officially a pride song, but I'm not sure how else to parse it)
if only
empire
riot
digging my own grave
resistance
dead to me
lightning strike
invincible
chemical warfare
about alcoholism pretty blatantly? There are lines I could use, but...frankly, it's sad enough and doesn't have the theatrical absurdity of most FIR songs that it would almost feel disrespectful? If there were a goat that had the album's canonical gas mask apocalypse aesthetic, it would be fine, but there's not, and I don't want to think about which of the goats that exists looks most like an alcoholic...
could take the name, but not apply an AD until something suitable for the aesthetic comes out.
Aquarius (cup-bearer / drinking of something nondescript?)
erase you
not my problem
burn the bridges
demons
hand grenade
ashes (broken world)
midday sun
royal tide rad
wait for regal dag winner?
my gravity
spaaaace!
planet uranus
walk on
around the sun
spaaaace
aurora (just bc it's pretty)
shut up and listen
over it
uh...there simply are not goats I am not already using that evoke a breakdown, which is the whole theme of this song
cancer AD (vaguely reminds me of the "drowning in my sleep" line and I'm using a couple of other spacey / zodiac ADs for other songs on this album so it's kind of thematically connected to them even if not the song itself, like with Sea Punk RAD for It's Over When It's Over. Does it have anything to do with the song? No, because it's not visualizable, but it does go well with the other goats from that album.)
monster
yeti ad (it is a monster, and one of the only monstrous-looking ADs I don't have already)
kind of deserves better...wait for something edgier?
what is this even supposed to mean (also I think I would appreciate a love interest giving me bats?)
https://genius.com/Escape-the-fate-let-me-be-lyrics
you know, I think Ronnie-boy's problem is that he doesn't have enough to do. The whole "third place" thing is a bit hokey, but ultimately, he spends ~9 months of the year on tour, and the other 3 curled up into a little ball. And even his being curled up into a little ball at home is still steeped in FIR nonsense. He needs somewhere else to go. Saraya needs to drag him to the local community center (his stupid gated community probably has one of its own, so that its celebrity clientele don't have to interact with non-rich and/or white riffraff) and sign him up for a pickup basketball team or a couple's cooking class or something. He needs something to do that's not FIR-related. Hell, you can probably find community center classes for "middle-aged ex-skateboarders trying to relive their youths without breaking anything". You know he's still got his original 00s skateboard in the basement somewhere. And he's so comically edgy and self-absorbed and incompetent at everything he does that the idea of him doing absolutely Anything mundane is hilarious.
Okay, I get that "haha, money idioms don't work with inflation" is a rather uninteresting line of questioning, but has anything in real life ever been a dime a dozen? I've seen things during, like, back to school sales and party favors that are 1 cent each and things with bulk discounts, but 12 is typically too small for those.
Please excuse me from work today; I can't come in on grounds of being evil.
Once data is lost, it's lost. Doesn't matter whether it was lost to compression, censor bars being drawn on it, pixelation, or just regular time. Once it's gone, it's gone, and if not preserved, there's no way to get it back. You can fill in new data to try to approximate what the original looked like based on a dataset of similar things (this is what the likes of waifu2x and the entire field of historical reconstruction do), but ultimately, that isn't going to be the original.
And if we're talking about digital data, it can't be any higher quality than the equipment it was recorded on. You can't zoom and enhance a photo into being higher resolution than the file you have is. No matter how high quality your microphone and speakers are, there's going to be some amount of compression of the original audio just to get it into a computer-compatible form. Even if you go back as far as you can with digital audio to the original pre-mixed tracks, those are still limited by the mic they were recorded on. The only way to get "higher quality" is to either do some digital manipulation and re-mixing / remastering to get better-sounding-to-human-ears results from the pre-existing digital files, or reuploading your original files in a less compressed format, or to manually record the entire thing again on higher quality equipment.
This is why I don't understand why Escape the Fate / Falling In Reverse vinyls exist. No matter how much funky mixing you do, an album that was recorded digitally in 2008 is still an album that was recorded digitally in 2008. There are 3 reasons that people like vinyl despite it being a kind of shitty audio format, seeing as it degrades every time you play it and isn't very shelf-stable.
"Nostalgia". I'm putting this in quotes because vinyl-philes typically weren't alive when it was the leading audio format. My mother, who was a music person there for the vinyl -> cassette -> CD progression, was overjoyed when cassette tapes happened because they were so much more portable and forgiving. The vast majority of EtF / FIR fans weren't meaningfully sapient when vinyl was the leading audio format. There's also no nostalgia in listening to an album on vinyl that wasn't on vinyl in the first place -- if the point of nostalgia is evoking older ways of doing things, or the way that you accessed something when you first were exposed to it, a vinyl of a 2000s album shouldn't evoke it because it's not accurate.
Better sound quality. This is, on a basic level, true. Vinyl transcribes the literal sound waves in the recording studio directly to the disc, without any of the smoothing out and compression that cassettes / CDs / digital files do. Some people like that more "raw" quality of the sound. Of course, this only works if the sound was actually recorded to the vinyl directly. You're not going to get better sound quality from burning the data from a bunch of digital files to a vinyl, which I assume is how the EtF / FIR vinyls were produced. Getting the original lineup back together, or re-recording with the new lineup, onto obsolete equipment would be more trouble, and more equipment that a modern band probably wouldn't have, than the fake-nostalgia-vinyl would be worth. So this one is out. Also, that only applies the first time you play it -- any lossy format degrades a bit every time it's played / accessed / changed, but vinyl is even worse because you're literally slicing grooves into the disc with needles. It doesn't take that many plays for a record to become warped, or even one play can do it if your needle isn't properly placed or you put the disc in wrong. And that's if it doesn't get warped from improper storage. A vinyl recording hypothetically has the best possible sound quality of a recording...the first time. And only if the recording was originally on vinyl.
The sleeves are bigger, so their album art looks cool on your wall and there's more space for liner notes and other such goodies. As a lover of CD booklets, this I get. When I acquire the This War Is Ours vinyl from the VIP package I'm going to in December, I'm probably putting it on my wall after documenting and scanning all the liner notes. Question here is -- if this is the main reason that people buy vinyls of albums that weren't originally on them, why bother with the record at all? I can't imagine that whatever witchcraft they do to copy a digital album to vinyl isn't expensive. Printing, even a fancy sleeve with various goodies and lyric booklets and all in it, is a lot cheaper. And since you don't get the nostalgia factor or sound quality with a port of a digitally recorded album, this is all that's left. So why not just make a "vinyl sleeve" and sell it as a poster?
wanna know what hawthorne heights has that a lot of its contemporal peers lack? screaming! it just adds so much to the vibes, and they're generally doing better on setup than many of the poppy emo folks that came after them.
On one hand, it's fun seeing first EPs be completely different from what a band did later as they figured themselves out. On the other, it's also fascinating seeing all the basic elements of somebody's style being laid out early and getting refined over time.
But at the same time, it's still clearly what will eventually become Hawthorne Heights. You can see the style they have later in their better-known work. I really like assessing bands via going through everything they've done in chronological order because you get to see connections like this.
Current assessment: Hawthorne Heights
I'd recommend the proto-Hawthorne Heights / A Day In The Life work for anybody historically interested in the genre. Bonus for actually being fun. They're like emo-era FOB except actually interesting, and present an interesting "missing link" between the still-mostly-hardcore stylings of Rites Of Spring etc. and the mainstreamed mid-00s poppy stuff.
Maybe it's the middle schooler in me, but I love the phrase "intellectual masturbation". It's so evocative. See, it's just like the regular kind -- best done alone or in conjunction with mutual pleasure from a willing partner, and not in public because nobody wants to see that.
No one has ever learned anything from an "um, actually".
https://voyagela.com/interview/meet-stephen-rezza-culver-city/
and yet, he looks more masculine than most metalcore guys. good for him (and I wish him a recovery from his brain cancer, yikes.)
The name is Stephen according to the wiki page (one of the sites that ports things from Wikipedia that -pedia deleted for not being relevant...), so they're...probably a guy?
kingdom of giants' clean vocalist on abominable might top Max and the Sleeping With Sirens guy for how girly they sound. they've got both the pitch and for lack of a better word, they don't have masculine-sounding enunciations? Like, how they do their vowels reads to me as more feminine and I'm not quite sure why.
I have honest intentions of getting through the Music Scene Spreadsheet backlog sometime soon, or at least checking off everybody I've seen live / will see in the near future. So what's on the FreeTubes at the moment (go download it; it makes Yewchube actually enjoyable and respects your data and time!) is Kingdom of Giants, one of the openers from Blessthefall in September 2023, all 3 of whom I really enjoyed...leading me to be totally wiped when the band I was actually there for came on. Anyway, look at this EP cover. This is the coolest shit I have ever seen.
One of the folks on the Santae name hoarder chat mentioned, organically, that they intentionally grabbed Zombified "first edition" (as in, the name had never been used before they got it) in reference to the FIR song. Taste aside, and that I don't think it really belongs in a "Midwest Emo" playlist (nor am I convinced there's any difference between Midwest Emo and emo from everywhere else), I got mildly excited and replied "uh, hello, fellow Falling In Reverse knower-abouter", to which they responded "you mean there are people who don't know about FIR?" and someone else followed up with stating that they'd seen them live 3 times. This is more than me since I don't really think that they're worth seeing live more than once.
On one hand, new possible research-colleague friends if they're willing to go to DMs? On the other, even though I don't do that on Santae to the same extent (although I do have some names that allude to the vibe and "Escape", "Reverse", and "Ronnie" FE), mentioning FIR on a petsite is MY intellectual property and I need them to acknowledge my superiority in the field.
the hell did this happen; I literally just bought this shirt
well, at least the holes are on the back so it's still publicly acceptable if I have a button up or jacket on over it.
note to self: don't buy shirts from lookhuman again???
heh, and they got the grammy nomination ronnie-boy was trying so hard for, as did his known behated spiritbox. good for y'all!
I think the rap verse on this song is rather corny and has little to no reason to be there -- what would be intimidating with either rap instrumentation or metal setup on its own can become corny if combined because it's just too over-the-top masculedge. (and you can argue the lyrics in Mr. Ice-T's verse aren't that intimidating) But the fact that these boys from Australia with less than 10 years of releases under their belt got a collab with motherfucking Ice-T probably gave Ronnie a meltdown, so it gets points for that.
"Year" and "track number" are right next to each other in Windows Explorer's properties. One day I'm gonna switch them by mistake while editing metadata for a song I just downloaded. Yeah, this is a shining example of metalcore from the Roman Empire.
In other news, I've been reading through the Comics Curmudgeon blog, since it's in a genre of trope-commentary/analysis-comedy I enjoy and another one that's got 20+ years of stuff to go through, so is great for the thing I do while standing in line for weeks on end. Anyway, I found it hilarious that this person from one of the reviewed strips of an October 2006 post who's clearly intended to be very bad news, and is described by the Curmudgeon as "whose gender I was unable to determine", is...literally just Ronnie. Although they might have a more masculine jawline?
https://joshreads.com/2006/10/you-take-the-high-road-were-quite-happy-with-the-low-road/
Meanwhile, the foster pets I'm trying to get to zap cool colors so they can be adopted out on popularmonster are steadfastly refusing to.
the ray is fired at SO_LEGIT...and she changes color to Ice!
yeah, they're just mocking me with the colors I'd totally be seeking out if I didn't already have them, aren't they
sometimes you can tell when a band's prioritizing brutality over lyrics. or maybe they just really like saying fuck?
Alpha Wolf - DarkSoul EP (2015)
Also, obligatory biologist reminder that while there are animals that have strength-based dominance hierarchies, wolves aren't one of them. The "alpha" wolves in packs in the wild are just the rest of the pack's parents. You do see strength-based dominance hierarchies when wolves who don't know each other are put together in captive environments, but that's not representative of how they behave in the wild.
The idea of an 800s-ish AD Chinese bureaucrat writing a sternly worded government proclamation directed at crocodiles brings me so much joy. It's like the "go on, git!" minor running gag in the Dudesverse in reference to Pokemon. (a lot of the stories featuring this aren't written yet, but it shows up in the Go Fest 2023 story with the jewelry shop owner vs. Rayquaza) It's about as effective as shooing away a Rayquaza with a broom would be.
...crocodiles are not very bureaucratic beings. but dragons are, and it's pretty spelled out that Chinese dragons are literally just crocodiles but long. I wonder if that's the reason for the proclamation being directed at the crocs? (hehe. crocodiles but lóng.)
Even if the government officials didn't necessarily "believe" in dragons, or if the appropriate respect was the least of any farmers faced with attacks on livestock or themselves' concerns, there might well have been enough of a religious lobby associating the crocs with dragons that not offending them (or the crocs) was relevant, therefore addressing it as "please leave or we will be forced to take action" and an eviction notice as opposed to official statement "let's get to killing these crocodiles" would be less likely to draw their wrath.
and you don't want the dragon king of the south coming down to complain about you mistreating his cousins
the crocodiles file a discrimination lawsuit with the jade emperor
I had a dream about fictitious FIR songs again. There were 2 of them, and dream-me was shocked to find they were actually good and reminiscent of the style I used to like. I actually remember the chorus melody and a chunk of lyrics / what the general theme and structure was for one of them, so I'm tempted to write the damned thing. This is the immediately jotted down after I woke up section.
Honestly, given that the boy is from Vegas, and does put a little banking on the whole Sin City thing at least in his personal lore if not FIR songs, the fact he hasn't done a gambling-themed song is slightly baffling. It's almost too easy to use for edge even without the low hanging fruit of Russian Roulette.
Chorus >
I fucking hate myself
But I didn't think I'd fall this far
To save myself
I'll flip the script and play the card
To break myself
Could end it all, it's not that hard
It doesn't matter
The club and dagger
But in the cards
I'm still your ace of hearts
classic FIR melodic chorus ^^, main verses rapped, it's got an obligatory 2020s pre-PM 2024 breakdown. card / gambling motif throughout which means it's better than real FIR songs in that it's got a coherent symbolic language. same theme of "this is not sustainable and I want to kill myself but whatever you still love me". Actually write / attempt to a capella record concept of this? This is the only fictitious dream song which I actually remember what it sounds like
i am extremely normal about this
(this vip includes a group q&a with the band. i don't know how many people will be there or how much time I have but I am Getting An Answer once and for all re: the Mandy Murders query. also I hope that I am able to get close enough to Mabbitt that I can get something signed and present tribute. which will be respectively white and black edgy bunny plushies because the man needs a dead rabbit)
you see my vision here, right?
why your favicon cube. did somebody forget to change from the default
is it still a reverse harem if the core of said harem is also a guy? I'm trying to figure out if the phrase "more like falling in reverse harem" makes any sense.
Claiming anything to be "canon" or "accurate" when it's not is one of my biggest pet peeves because it's misinformation and also just stings of insincerity. You can just think that eldritch abomination angels are cool without claiming they have textual basis they really don't, or get your rocks off Christianizing Light Flight (which also rancors me for the same reasons Abrahamic Arceus does -- why can't we let original fantasy worldbuilding be itself...) without claiming that's FR-supported when it isn't.
It just feels like folks who are insecure in liking things and need to insist that it's "the true way" to feel justified. Or they're just whiny, entitled assholes who think any opinion that isn't theirs is wrong.
And it's not D&D, because D&D just uses "wyrm" and "drake" as synonyms for dragon. I know it's where most of the modern fantasy dragon types came from, and seems to have invented the idea of dragon powers differing by color along with Pern.
Some historical and linguistic notes Flight Rising users don't seem to understand:
The pan-Mesoamerican feathered serpent deity (Quetzalcoatl / Kukulcan / Quq'umatz), from what I can tell, was literally never depicted with wings. He's either a wingless snake covered in feathers or with a feathery crest or mostly human with some snaky / bird qualities. Strictly speaking, you can call snakes with feathered wings and 80s hair "feathered serpents", but neither Coatls nor Auraboas as breeds have much of anything to do with "Quetzalcoatl" beyond the pop culture Western-dragon-yassified image. And also, "coatl" just means "serpent" and is not a subspecies of dragon.
And on the subject of dragon subspecies...saying "um actually that's not a dragon, it's a serpent / wyrm / drake, and everybody knows that wyrms are wingless and legless and drakes are wingless"...I have no idea where the fuck this came from? Wyverns and amphipteres appear in medieval heraldry, but from what I can tell, "wyrm", "drake", and yes, "serpent" are historically speaking, just synonyms for "dragon" anywhere they appear. I have no idea where the notion that different words for "dragon" meant different body shapes came from, or why it's so widespread in dragon pop culture, because I can't find one iota of basis for it. Like, the vast majority of pre-medieval / Renaissance dragons, including the Greek drakones from which we literally get the word "dragon", are legless snakes with spiky bits, and "drake" / "wyrm" / "serpent" seem to just be synonyms for "dragon". Hell, "wyrm" and "serpent" get used to refer to any serpentine creature, including actual worms, snakes, and lizards!
So if you've got any idea where the origin of those stupid dragon infographics claiming different terms for dragons equal different body shapes is, please let me know, because I've found nothing either historically or in influential fantasy media that explains it or why the Dragon Um Actually crowd is so invested in it.
there are 883 natural rattlinz on santae. i own 57 of them (6.4%). and for just pennies a day, you can help increase that percentage! to be honest I'm not sure if I want to repaint the ones who weren't designed for specific colors now unless something absolutely Perfect happens because it may have become my thing
In all seriousness, if I were to run out, the place I'd go would be seeing whom that I haven't already assessed is signed to relevant labels / on multi-artist compilations. Like, I've got the Lollipop Magazine CD with 100+ tracks and the Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam soundtrack sitting on the hard drive because I know they're gonna make more work than they remove, and that's a much more "organic" cross-genre cross-section of a given cultural zeitgeist than Wikipedia or something would be. And there are a lot more Tony Hawk games, and other edgy pre-widespread-music-streaming 2000s games with licensed soundtracks. And there are more Lollipop Magazine CDs, but those are incredibly hard to find. (which you'd kind of expect from promotional CDs from a small punk rock magazine 20 years ago but is still annoying.)
Once I eventually finish the current list (as if that'll ever happen), my plan is to actually make a Flight Rising forum asking for recommendations based on my spreadsheet, and to continue to scour around for if folks do new collabs or whatever. But since given that I track bands who warrant assessment by approximate number of albums or equivalent, the average length of an album is somewhere around 40 minutes, and there are 409 releases currently "pending", that's not gonna happen any time soon.
Now, some of those are more -core bands so the album length is closer to 20 minutes, and some folks' release amounts have more short EPs than others, but 40 minutes is still a reasonable average length and either way, it's a lot. And there is the possibility of some of the bands turning out to be bad, or not what I thought they were, or some albums being too poorly mixed to be listenable without pain, in which case they'd be skipped, but either way, 409 x 40 minutes = 11.4 straight days cumulatively. I'm not going to run out any time soon.
Unless it's a very small or recent band, or the VERY -core end of hardcore punk with < 2 minute songs, I can expect to invest at least 2 hours in a full assessment of most anybody (and few bands have the courtesy of being bad enough at first launch to make me decide they're not worth investigating further). I'm not totally convinced that I wouldn't die before having the time to fully assess everyone listed as relevant genres on Wikipedia, let alone the more thorough and specific wikis. I'll save that for Mr. CRPGAddict for the time being, unless I get REALLY bored.
And frankly, I've got better things to do than click through every band listed as "emo" or "metalcore" or whatever on Wikipedia (at least for now) and the method of "what do people actually talk about / what connections are there between bands that form organically" works a lot better for the stated goal of scenemo spiritual cultivation and getting a knowledge of anything someone is likely to bring up whilst trying to befriend me.
As I described the spreadsheet as to the guys I had that lovely conversation with while waiting in between bands at Wage War, "this is a scholarly fucking pursuit." (Yes, I do turn up the swearing a tad when I'm in edgy contexts. Cultural signal. It's also a bit of an emotional shield.) This is a scholarly fucking pursuit, so I'm going to use proper anthropological research methods, i.e. not taking other classifiers' word for it without going in and verifying myself.
But, well, it checks an entry off the spreadsheet. In between folks whom I've seen / will see live, folks who have singular songs / albums in my library that I want to look into in more detail, and recommendations / things I've seen organically mentioned, I've still got 55 distinct bands on the "to assess" list.
My only policy is that all discoveries need to be "organic" i.e. I need to learn of them through word of mouth (including Internet mouths), direct recommendation from another sapient being, seeing them live, hearing a song in the wild, weird CDs I get at used stores, them collaborating with a band I know I like, or basically anything that's not a wiki list or an algorithmic recommendation. The principle of that is (a) personal pride in curated consumption and (b) it seems to give a better sense of who's actually Relevant vs. the list writer's / Wikipedia / TVTropes editors' personal boner, and can elucidate connections between bands that a list by genre or whatever may not necessarily pick up on.
And I'd say the weird CDs have done a pretty good job at exposure to folks whom I wouldn't otherwise be aware exist, many of whose only records of existence are Discogs and maybe, if you're lucky, an auto-generated playlist on YouTube Music provided by their label with single-digit view counts. (The Vex, the one I got an EP from at the store in Reno and really liked, doesn't even have those.)
And, like, you don't go about doing research on anything else by clicking through "everything listed under this category on Wikipedia" and just taking their word for it, so why would I? What bands do people actually consider culturally adjacent to the scene I'm interested in, and is that backed up by their behavior and sound?
Well, unless your research topic is "what does Wikipedia / TVTropes / whatever consider this to be", but Wikipedia's genre listings are...they are not immune to the problem TVTropes and MetalArchives have of "list the band as either whatever genre you deem less embarrassing if you like them, or call them something derogatory (e.g. metalcore, nu metal, or emo) if you don't". And the fact that 3 genres I like happen to be used as derogatory terms means that I basically don't take wikis' or music sites' word on anything except a very vague idea of "okay, this is probably some flavor of punk / metal and therefore worth checking out".
I guess that anyone can sound harder than they actually are when seen live with big speakers?
I must say that I'm disappointed in my latest assessment. They sounded a lot more interesting live, but maybe that was because I'd been primed by an actually interesting band, or just the heat of the moment.
yeah i might be acting wordier than usual and doing more live-thinking to push my election angstspiral thoughts off the edge. what's it to you? all these words are coming naturally from my brain channeled through my keyboard to you. it's like my hands are touching your eyes. you want a stream of consciousness well here you go (more like scream of consciousness amirite)
(my issue with terms like "problematic" or "performative" as they're used is that they do NOT contribute to clear communication, which you really need if you're talking about anything important, because they've been so watered down. I do also think they're personally stupid, but that's not the main factor.)
I have thoughts on the term "unalive" and TikTok's both absolute failure at using auto-censors in lieu of moderation and the abuse of a feature that's supposed to be for accessibility because of it. None of them are nice. I try hard to not be a prescriptivist language-wise, despite my tendencies to that end. As long as what you're trying to communicate is clear, it's appropriate for the setting you're in, and you're not pulling words from marginalized communities outside of context because you think they're neat, then it's fine. It's not hurting anybody. But in regards to the second...there is NO FUCKING REASON to use the word "unalive" outside of TikTok censorship (and frankly, I'd say little even there), especially not in what is supposed to be an edgy song that...namedrops the word "death" in other lyrics???
So, uh, no, Fame On Fire did not become any edgier or more interesting, or any less annoyingly modern (for lack of a better word) through my chronological assessment. I think the issue is really the same as a lot of the very poppy emo bands (All American Rejects being the big one) -- they aren't that different musically or thematically from modern pop radio, which I simply don't like, and the loud guitars aren't sufficient. And the proclaimed genre-bending elements from their venue bio simply don't exist.
okay, apparently I DID actually have Liars And Monsters and The Final Blow downloaded; I just forgot I'd ever listened to them and never copied them to my phone, which explains how the former happened. all right my escape the fate credentials are reassured
the kanabo should be a weapon item like the candy kid and ghoulish butterflies bp. I love baddies that give you the means to defeat them
hot boys forget to do their pokemon go dailies for 3 days in a row
thank you to neocities / thoughts / fr neighbor sneek for teaching me a new and delightful word
Wikipedia - Limerence -- "Limerence is a state of mind resulting from romantic feelings for another person. It typically involves intrusive and melancholic thoughts, or tragic concerns for the object of one's affection, along with a desire for the reciprocation of one's feelings and to form a relationship with the object of love."
not applicable in the romantic sense because extremely aro nastyboy who only loves the girls [for a non-binary value thereof] who hate to love because they're just like xem (in a strictly abstract sense), but that's a fun and funky enough word i might misuse it for my own special interest. well, i would if not for the matter that the association of any romantic symbolism whatsoever with it severely grosses me out because uh slime
now, my feelings for world's prettiest human max green are another matter
stylesheets and links override inline style to make sections transparent, dingus. but to be honest, the floating "here" is funny as balls so i'm leaving it
It took 13 songs between the EP and first album, in chronological order, to get to the first appearance of a metal scream. Surely they had a notable stylistic shift sometime in between Levels and the most recent 2.
Fame On Fire - Now and Forever (ft. Trevor Wentworth)
(psst -- I'm using Yewchube links again for anybody who actually deserves streaming royalties [Falling In Reverse is served through local files] because I got sick of changing Invidious instance links every 2 months. Go download FreeTube and one of the browser extensions that makes Yewchube links redirect to there from your browser. I got it a while back and honestly I don't know how I lived without the combo of it and 4k YouTube to MP3. and if you want 4k YouTube to MP3 without paying their subscription cost, inquire here but you didn't hear it from me.
to clarify, when I say "anyone I have / will see live", I mean "will see live" in the near future. I'm not trying to predict every concert I'll ever see for the rest of my life. That would be rather morbid, and extremely difficult, especially given that if my plans go according to plan, my concert access will likely be limited on grounds of not as many bands touring in Canada. I mean checking off the folks I've seen before, and will see in the near future, so everybody I haven't assessed yet from my 2023-24 concerts, and the folks I'm planning to see in January.
Currently assessing: Fame On Fire (trying to check off everybody I have / will see live before the spring 2025 concert season starts.)
I liked the segment of their work I saw live. It gave me vaguely early FIR-esque vibes, but I'm thus far...not seeing that? Now, maybe it's a matter of them changing their style to become heavier over time, since I am still on the first album. But this is...not working for me, and I can't quite place why. It's not really any notably different from either the early-FIR-"pop with loud guitars" stylings or the most extreme light end of "generic metalcore". But it's lacking in...something, and I don't know quite what. I mean, it's okay for things to just not work for me -- I'm not obligated to like everything just because someone who's nominally in my scene produced it, and I have realized that I do prefer the harder end of modern generic metalcore, but I feel like there's something actually Off here beyond personal preference and I can't figure out what. (This is something I've noticed all throughout Levels; I'm just citing this song as an example.)
Anyway, bands that start out lighter / more generic and become heavier / gain more unique elements later are not uncommon, so maybe Fame On Fire is one. But, well, thus far I'm not seeing the claim from their venue bio that they "push the boundaries of rock, pop, hip-hop, and heavy music by being unapologetically themselves."
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