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I can has Panic!
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 18:02One ticket for the NYC show procured. Now for Boston. *waits*
ETA: Boston also accomplished. \o/
ETA: Boston also accomplished. \o/
Obsessed much?
Saturday, December 8th, 2007 23:29I am working on the Big Damn Map for Auriel. I combed through old versions of the BDM, and as of my deciding to update my lj, there are 128 streets named. I counted. /o\
Which sounds fucking awesome, right. And yet, 128 names covers all the east-west streets in the Eastern Sector, and less than a third of the north-south streets in the Eastern Sector, and absolutely nothing in the Western Sector.
I need ~400 names total. *headdesk* Fortunately I don't need a complete map to write stuff. I just need to remember to keep the map compliant with whatever is in the stories.
(Also interesting to note: apparently when I am this tired, I am suddenly dyslexic.)
Which sounds fucking awesome, right. And yet, 128 names covers all the east-west streets in the Eastern Sector, and less than a third of the north-south streets in the Eastern Sector, and absolutely nothing in the Western Sector.
I need ~400 names total. *headdesk* Fortunately I don't need a complete map to write stuff. I just need to remember to keep the map compliant with whatever is in the stories.
(Also interesting to note: apparently when I am this tired, I am suddenly dyslexic.)
Many many things.
Sunday, October 21st, 2007 20:40• Happy birthday to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kisingchaos9 and ladysorka!!!!
• I have completed my take-home midterm for Gender & Society. I think I accidentally went over the time limit, but that's just what happens with me (at least when I manage to focus on something).
• Directly related to the above, I'm stimulated again with regard to that semi-academic bandom thing I said I was going to write. I'll jot down my thoughts over the next few days, try to give it some structure.
• Note to self: "brb, South Station at ass crack of dawn."
• MBTA trip planner hates me. :(
• As a result, I'm going to actually go to South Station at the ass crack of dawn tomorrow, because I need to see what time I can get there by. Then I will go to campus and hang around the library until class. \o/ I am insanely devoted.
• Or perhaps just insane. Even more insane than you're probably thinking. All shall be revealed in due course. *mysterious*
kisingchaos9 and ladysorka!!!!• I have completed my take-home midterm for Gender & Society. I think I accidentally went over the time limit, but that's just what happens with me (at least when I manage to focus on something).
• Directly related to the above, I'm stimulated again with regard to that semi-academic bandom thing I said I was going to write. I'll jot down my thoughts over the next few days, try to give it some structure.
• Note to self: "brb, South Station at ass crack of dawn."
• MBTA trip planner hates me. :(
• As a result, I'm going to actually go to South Station at the ass crack of dawn tomorrow, because I need to see what time I can get there by. Then I will go to campus and hang around the library until class. \o/ I am insanely devoted.
• Or perhaps just insane. Even more insane than you're probably thinking. All shall be revealed in due course. *mysterious*
Essays on Bandomgate.
Thursday, September 6th, 2007 21:26I linked to impertinence's essay this morning, but it's worth linking to again.
***
kalpurna has a whole lot of awesome things to say. Here, let me quote extensively:
***
ETA: I also have to include this essay in list format bybelladonnalin.
***
I'm seriously considering writing a semi-academic paper or something on these bands and how they're challenging heteronormativity and stuff. I wish I was taking "Gender and Society in Modern America" instead of "Gender and Society in Modern Europe" because I could write it for class. But I'll pitch the idea to Professor Frader after class on Monday and see what she thinks. It'll probably be short and not-academic enough that I'll just stick it on my lj when I'm done, but whatever.
impertinence's essay this morning, but it's worth linking to again.The world is changing; attitudes towards gay people are changing. I want to make it very clear that, regardless of what you think about the band members' sexualities, they helped to change things within their demographic. In the isolated environment of adolescence, they sparked discussion and controversy. I watched it happen.
And that kind of talk is worth a hell of a lot.
***
kalpurna has a whole lot of awesome things to say. Here, let me quote extensively:When members of a dominant culture appropriate aspects of an oppressed culture for entertainment, they characteristically do two things: first, they take stereotypical characteristics and exaggerate them for comedic effect, for people to laugh at, and secondly, they distance themselves personally from identifying with the group in question. They get the audience laughing at the characters, while making sure that offstage, they are not subjected to any of the hate or bigotry that goes along with that. They say "this is entertaining" and "this is not me" with the same breath. That is what blackface entails, and that is, to me, the most hateful thing about it.
When FOB and MCR began their flirtations with gender and sexuality, they were literally doing the exact opposite of what I have described above. They were deliberately taking on the degradation, the hatred, the inflammatory remarks. And they didn't use stereotypes to do so, they used behavior. They encouraged their audience to cheer for men physically expressing affection and sexual interest in each other – not for lisps and rainbow tuxedos.
...
It may well be the case that right now, the mainstream opinion among twelve-year-old girls is that boys kissing is hot. This was categorically not the case ten years ago. If there is a market for stagegay, it is not one that these bands could possibly have been expecting to tap into when they started out. Personally? I think that the fact that middle schoolers will look at a picture of two boys kissing and say "hot!" instead of "eww!" is fucking amazing. That is awesome. And MCR and FOB didn't come around to take advantage of that – they created that.
... Consistently, over and over again, My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy have responded to "fags!" with "hell yeah, motherfucker, now deal with it." They don't say, "No, but we're really straight!"
...
All of this means that no matter what's going on in their personal lives – no matter who they're sleeping with, or what their sexual identity may be – the members of these two bands have chosen to say, "Whether or not I'm gay, I want you to treat me like I am, and I'm going to push you to wonder if I am, and I'm not going to back away from that if I get shit for it. Queer people are my people." Because these bands exist, you can be a 14 year old gay kid growing up in some small town, and you can go to your first concert and watch your idols make out on stage while a thousand people cheer, and then one of them picks up the microphone and says, this is a song for anyone who has ever felt alone.
***
ETA: I also have to include this essay in list format by
belladonnalin.***
I'm seriously considering writing a semi-academic paper or something on these bands and how they're challenging heteronormativity and stuff. I wish I was taking "Gender and Society in Modern America" instead of "Gender and Society in Modern Europe" because I could write it for class. But I'll pitch the idea to Professor Frader after class on Monday and see what she thinks. It'll probably be short and not-academic enough that I'll just stick it on my lj when I'm done, but whatever.
Yeah, I'm in bandom. I love these bands. I love this music. I don't care if you're not into it. But I do care if you rain on my parade about it. Don't call me stupid or otherwise insult me just because my squee is different from yours.
Differing musical tastes do not need to end friendships. But if you really can't stand my music and you can't stop yourself from insulting me and mine, please defriend me, right the fuck now. Seriously, just GTFO.
Music and me (an essay, I guess)
Monday, July 30th, 2007 00:30I remember it as through a window fogged over: newly sixteen and standing in the tool shed behind a friend's boyfriend's house, listening to their band. And in an indoor soccer arena, once, and several times in some old building whose original purpose I could never figure out (I only saw it after dark), which had no stage, just a patch of astroturf.
I perched in the back seat of her car, her hand out the windows holding a cigarette, a different punk cd in rotation every time we felt like it. I was deliriously happy that such awesome people thought little ol' me was cool enough to be included, and sometimes I think I might have been in love with all three of them.
Then they broke up (my friend and her boyfriend, and also the band), and I went to another school, and that was the end of that part of my life.
***
Then, there were the Libertines, less than six months later. I owe them a lot. I remember, fuzzily because the memory can block out acute misery as well as physical agony, being seventeen and sitting behind my boyfriend in math class, bored and depressed as fuck, taking shitty notes in black ballpoint. And eventually, I'd give up on trig because my mind was a wreck, and I'd start writing on my left hand and forearm. Lyrics, sometimes, and always always always libertine like a tattoo.
For six of the worst months of my life, they were everything to me, and I'm lucky to have had them. Not that they saved me from suicide, exactly, because I'm pretty sure I'm 100% incapable of killing myself no matter how much I want to. But they gave me enough bright moments during that time that I was more-or-less okay with waking up alive every morning. They got into me heart and soul, and I've never regretted it. (Got my sanity back on a temporary basis, after all, and a few half-decent poems too.)
***
And no matter how intense the high of my time being "with the band" nor the paradoxical low at a time when everything in my life should have been great, I'm kind of thankful that I can just sit back and listen, and be a devoted fan if I want, without needing it so badly.
Because as much as I love music, I love my independence a little more.
I perched in the back seat of her car, her hand out the windows holding a cigarette, a different punk cd in rotation every time we felt like it. I was deliriously happy that such awesome people thought little ol' me was cool enough to be included, and sometimes I think I might have been in love with all three of them.
Then they broke up (my friend and her boyfriend, and also the band), and I went to another school, and that was the end of that part of my life.
Then, there were the Libertines, less than six months later. I owe them a lot. I remember, fuzzily because the memory can block out acute misery as well as physical agony, being seventeen and sitting behind my boyfriend in math class, bored and depressed as fuck, taking shitty notes in black ballpoint. And eventually, I'd give up on trig because my mind was a wreck, and I'd start writing on my left hand and forearm. Lyrics, sometimes, and always always always libertine like a tattoo.
For six of the worst months of my life, they were everything to me, and I'm lucky to have had them. Not that they saved me from suicide, exactly, because I'm pretty sure I'm 100% incapable of killing myself no matter how much I want to. But they gave me enough bright moments during that time that I was more-or-less okay with waking up alive every morning. They got into me heart and soul, and I've never regretted it. (Got my sanity back on a temporary basis, after all, and a few half-decent poems too.)
And no matter how intense the high of my time being "with the band" nor the paradoxical low at a time when everything in my life should have been great, I'm kind of thankful that I can just sit back and listen, and be a devoted fan if I want, without needing it so badly.
Because as much as I love music, I love my independence a little more.
