blog post archive! :3
xxherlastwalkxx
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01/03/24
these past few days i watched revolutionary girl utena. i don't have much to say. i didn't understand it particularly well. but o. m. g.
best thing i've ever seen. can't recommend it enough
if you want to watch it, both sub (which i watched) and dub are available on youtube! (you have no excuse to not watch it now. ha.)
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12/03/23
i finished sailor moon yesterday. like all 200 episodes. yeah. it's maybe a little embarassing that i finished the whole thing in six weeks but i prefer to pretend that's impressive. i don't really have much to say here, go watch it if you haven't seen it i guess lol. i just felt the need to talk about sailor moon because it's one of the only things bringing me real happiness these days. i guess i'll just start saying opinions now.
1. jupiter is the best sailor guardian. i won't take counterarguments. mercury is a VERY close second in the later seasons COUGH that one episode when she writes lyrics to a song she found online. pluto and saturn are also awesome but they're not super involved in the series so i feel like they can't get top three by default. i love both of them though. maybe we'll get more of them in crystal. i sure hope so.
2. michiru is SOOOOOOOOO overshadowed by haruka and like i get it because haruka has a more assertive personality but it's still sad because michiru is really cool too. like the other two outer guardians, i wish these two were just like... in the show more? lmao. and like as themselves, not just as sailor guardians. i feel like we really missed out on the actual personalities of the outer guardians, especially considering how half of the show is the other guardians being little idiot middle schoolers.
3. I WANT FISHS EYE BACK. I WANT HIM BACK. HE DESERVED SO MUCH BETTER
4. sailor moon doing moon tiara action a few times in the later seasons made me so happy. and i would go to unreasonable lengths just to get a second supreme thunder dragon.
5. the series should've been set ten years later because usagi would've loved fall out boy
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11/26/23
guys. you'll never believe where i was yesterday. yep that's right. canada.
yeah so i was at this concert. it was pretty cool i think. now's the part when i rant about it.
i made the mistake of only looking up the openers the day before the concert. and, concert aside, i wish i did that sooner because both openers were pretty solid hardcore bands. i don't know how popular the two groups are, but much of the crowd seemed to know their songs and their lyrics fairly well. avoid was the first act, and like i said i didn't really know their songs, but they put on a great concert. the whole band was super energetic and the vocalist really knew how to lead a crowd. i did feel a little like a lot of their songs sounded fairly similar, but the performance aspect of their set was incredibly well done and the crowd was super into it. super impressive for an opening band. stray from the path followed, which i was really excited for even if the most i had heard from them was their new album, which i only listened to once or twice. their set was a little less interesting than avoid as far as crowd participation was concerned, but the energy in the room was really high and, frankly, i liked their music more. most of the concerts i go to are local hardcore shows, so maybe it's just because i'm more familiar with how they ran their set and the kind of energy they had.
and, of course, silverstein. woah that's like my favorite band or something. i think the most interesting part of their set was the setlist, so i'm going to rant mostly about that. this was also my second time seeing them live, so i was already a little familiar with the kind of show that they put on. i recommend taking a look at their setlist before reading on, which you can find here!
ok. starting things off with bad habits was awesome. possibly the best song they could open with. a beautiful place to drown is an album that works inredibly well live, and especially this song. but then. playing smile in your sleep second??? that was crazy, it was kind of really cool though. it was weird hearing it so close to the start of their set, as it seems they tend to play it later in their set or even encore with it, but i guess it was kind of nice to not be standing there thinking "when are they going to play it hey hey when are you guys going to play the the smile in your sleep song your biggest song you know that song yeah." they then played two songs from this is how the wind shifts and, establishing a pattern they would continue throughout their set, they played one of the pairs of coordinated songs from the album tracklist. for those that are unaware, if you split the tracklist of the album into two and put them side by side, the song titles line up with each other. (a better place ... to live and to lose, massachusetts/california, etc.) honestly, with the album dispersed throughout the set rather than playing it front to back, on brave mountains we conquer was the best song to start with. the crowd went crazy for this one. in silent seas we drown was, as expected, way better live than on the album (no hate on the album recording, just a comment on how well it translated to a live setting). it makes me a little sad that infinite can't have aaron gillespie when they play it live but it's still a good song so you have to take what you can get i guess. massachusetts and california was another big hit with the crowd, massachusetts is one of the band's biggest songs and california is just really good. they then went to misery made me, playing ultraviolet and the altar/mary. ultraviolet goes without saying. the altar/mary is a crazy song to throw in the middle of their set lmao. it's like if in their early days they played bleeds no more as their like third song. it was still great, don't get me wrong, i just think it's kind of interesting where they placed some of their more popular and crowd pleasing songs considering how they wanted to finish with the double closer of sorts from this is how the wind shifts. more on that later.
they then played this is how, followed by the wind shifts, and it was really cool that they played the layered, full version instead of just doing this is how followed by just the wind shifts. after establishing one of the songs, it was really cool that they built on it instead of just playing a different song. a better place was fantastic and to live and to lose is possibly my favorite song from this is how the wind shifts. i really wish there wasn't a group of three or so drunk guys standing relatively close to me who kept saying misogynistic stuff and making gross jokes. that was hard to ignore but the song was great so that's cool! it's just a shame that i spent so much of that song trying to actually listen to the song instead of thinking about how gross men can be. next, they played afterglow, which really was a song that was meant to be played in a live setting. i so wish that we could get more dead reflection content, but i get that the show was celebrating a different album so i'll forgive the lack of aquamarine. for now.
the next two songs were voted on by the audience! at the beginning of the set the crowd was told to go to set.live and vote for a song that they wanted to hear, and the options were your sword versus my dagger, smashed into pieces, vices, the artist, and one other that i forgot. i think it was another song from rescue but i could be wrong. my brain is trying to tell me that it was sacrifice, but that's probably not correct. if any of you guys went to one of the tour dates and remember, please please please email me and let me know. erinbutepic@gmail.com. you can also just email me if you want to. [update. i was right, it was sacrifice.] if someone else out there is even remotely as interested in silverstein as i am, i love you and we deserve an extensive email conversation thread. i, of course, voted for vices because why wouldn't you. it's one of the best songs they've ever written, which is off of the best album album that they have written. my ideal outcome would have been smashed into pieces and vices, but apparently i couldn't make that happen even after telling the three others that came with me to also vote for vices. sad. they did play smashed into pieces, which i was very excited about. i was so sad at massachusetts is for lovers when they didn't play this one. it's so good. it's amazing that when broken is easily fixed songs still sound so good with the band's matured, modern sound. the other song that won was, obviously, your sword versus my dagger. hoping that any of the other songs could beat this one was totally wishful thinking at best, and i'm really glad that i got the chance to hear it live, but i'm still a little sad. vices my beloved.
hide your secrets and with second chances were great, i'm not going to comment much on those because i've already talked a lot lmao. they then played a cover of one step closer by linkin park, which was actually pretty cool. i checked their setlist from their show on friday, which ended up being the exact same as the setlist i got that saturday because people don't appreciate shipwreck in the sand enough, and i was a little skeptical about the cover, but it was fun to hear live. i think it's a little weird that they carried the cover over from their misery made me tour, but the crowd was super into it so whatever. it was still cool. they then played my heroine, which goes without saying, followed by stand amid the roar, which i was really happy to hear live. it's such a cool song and a great opener to a great album. they "finished" their set with in a place of solace, which in theory sounds a little weird as a set closer, but it was actually really nice. it was ambient enough where it felt like a good closer while powerful enough that it didn't feel like a letdown, if that makes sense.
but woah! woah! hey! you haven't played two of the most important songs yet!! how can you just leave already??? yep. that's right. encore. i honestly forgot that it would have been just paul to come back on stage to play arrivals alive before the whole band comes back for departures. it was a really cool moment. it was the sort of "encore that ends with shane alone on stage singing mary" that every silverstein setlist needs. i wish the audience got quieter for arrivals, i mean they got quieter but like come on. why are you talking at a time like this. people clearly have no respect for the classics these days. see, again, my comment on to live and to lose. the show ended with departures, which i think goes without saying. i was skeptical when i found out that the set was the album dispersed throughout the greatest hits, as originally i was expecting a more discovering the waterfront fifteenth anniversary tour where they played their greatest hits, then an acoustic set, then the album. of course, there was no expectation for an acoustic set, but i thought at least that the album would be played front to back. but it worked out really well. honestly, i think this was the best way they could've done it. it highlighted the subtler details of the album, most obviously the song pairs, and was an experience for the crowd that wouldn't have happened if the album was played front to back. i love this band. so cool. so good. they better do a fifteenth anniversary shipwreck in the sand tour.
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11/11/23
ok so this is totally random but yesterday i decided that instead of sleeping i had to find this video game that i used to play sometimes as a kid and omg i was not dissapointed. it took me seven google tabs and probably half an hour but i finally found it. and here it is.
i don't even have any childhood memories attached to this thing lmao. it's just a funny little game i want to mention lmao. i had to do my research because i remember basically nothing about this game. i could've found it more easily if i had more too look up than "what's that ps1 game where you have to save those weird little fur things." i played it on playstation but apparently it was released on sega saturn, pc and, three years after its original publication, gameboy color. i may have to download it on my computer because you can still find it online. the basic plot is that some creepy guy named baron dante one day showed up on the peaceful volcano island and kidnapped all your friends. you then have to save the gobbos and king rufus. i started laughing when i saw that king rufus is just a normal gobbo but with a little crown. he's so cute i can't believe baron dante could be so evil.
yeah i mean i don't really have much to say about this game. i am personally a big fan of the low-poly minimalist sort of designs that these old playstation games have, though. honestly i should buy a playstation. i'll let you guys know if i can ebay one of the things for a reasonable price but we'll see about that. if i ever get my hands on anything, we all know what game i'm playing first.
