Review – Batfort

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A Very Personal Review of EXO Chen’s ‘April, and a Flower’

Chen’s solo album flows like cool water. It’s a clean break from the EXO R&B vibes—Chen continues exploring his own musical personality with his first mini album, April, and a flower.

Our ‘Nature Boy‘ comes through with simple arrangements, focused mostly on piano and vocals. He wrote the lyrics for one of my favorite EXO songs, ‘Lights Out,’ and again contributed lyrics to ‘Flower’ on this album.

Chen shines in this arena. He’s at his best in songs like ‘Nosedive,’ with a focus on rest and refreshment.

I wouldn’t exactly call April, and a Flower an album of lullabyes, but it is a very easy album to listen to. ‘Lights Out’ was my go-to sleepytime music for a few months, and this mini-album is just the thing to put in your ears when you’re tired and worn down.

For a few minutes, you can run with Chen’s voice over sunlit, grassy fields with the wind gently blowing your hair.

Part of me was scared that this mini-album would be full of overwrought, cheesy ballads—but it is not. A+++ for keeping the arrangements sparse, keeping with the spare and natural visual aesthetic.

This mini-album’s biggest weakness is the flipside of its strengths. The songs flow a little too easily. They don’t stick in my head, but slide through in a moment of peacefulness that I can’t remember five minutes later.

I’m not sure that I would remember the title track, ‘Beautiful Goodbye,’ if I heard it out of context.

That said, the album has a great shape, building from lighter songs through an ~emotional journey~ to more impactful songs at the end.

On ‘Sorry Not Sorry,’ I’m happy to hear a descant above Chen’s vocal line. He usually takes care of high notes and descants in EXO’s material, so it’s nice hearing him get to take the melody for once, with the string sections getting the harmony.

I could swear that Chen is channeling Big Bang’s Taeyang on ‘Love Words.’ The song is great—perfect execution of drums in a ballad—but it gives me such Taeyang vibes. Maybe that’s the influence of the songs’s composer, Kenzie.

My favorite song on the album is ‘Portrait of You.’ It’s cinematic. It’s emotional. The melody moves through so many different textures and sections—the piano is a voice, not just accompaniment. (But this is expected: it was written by the brilliant Andreas Johansson.)

Such a perfect ending. I’d drift off to sleep to that song anytime.

Overall, I think this is a very Chen album, which is a good thing—though I wish that somehow they had worked enough hooks in amongst the calm to help me grab onto the songs. It’s good for him to differentiate himself from all the hype that surrounds EXO—and this album is about as opposite as you could get from that.

I have a feeling this will grow on me. It’ll definitely have a place in my earbuds the next time I need an oasis of calm.

A Very Personal Review of Tara Westover’s EDUCATED

2019-02-26 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

I’ve never met a Mormon woman who wasn’t obsessed with memories.

Tara Westover is no exception.

Educated: A Memoir is the story of Tara’s life until now, from her childhood on the side of a mountain in Idaho—no formal schooling, of course—through her decision to go to college, learn how to live in the “mainstream world,” and eventually get a PhD. It’s an exploration of memory and how we write history—just as much about Tara sorting through the shifting and morphing memories of her childhood than anything else.

It’s a story about education, yes, but also about family dynamics, what happens when one chooses to live set apart from the mainstream, abuse, coming-of-age, memory, and most of all, Mormonism.

I have a lot of thoughts, obviously, but no clear conclusion. It’s an interesting book in that it holds up a mirror to the reader in ways that we might not expect—which makes me suspect it a little bit. (More on that later.)

Tara and I share a lot in common. We’re the same age, and like her I had never heard of the Twin Towers until they fell on 9/11 (it’s not just a backwoods Idaho homeschooling thing, although I grew up one state away). I grew to really empathize with Tara by the end of the book, as she struggled to reconcile herself with her family. All families have problems, and while mine are but a tiny blip on the scale of abuse compared to hers, the sheer cartoonish realism of her family helped me put some of my own experiences in perspective.

One of the more memorable bits in the book, to me, was a part where Tara emails her mother about an abusive situation at home. In the moment, her mother agrees with her and Tara thinks that she has the support that she needs to stand up to her father. But when she actually goes to confront him, she realizes that what her mother had said was merely reflecting back to her what Tara herself needed/wanted to hear. Total house of cards. This happens multiple times, where people would say one thing in sober mind, but then completely recant when back under the influence of the abuser.

As Tara sorts through all that happened to her, she comes to doubt her own memories and her own perception of what happened. It makes sense that different people will remember past events differently (especially when they involve trauma, and why you need multiple eyewitness accounts for a truer picture), but DARVO is a real tactic used by real abusers.

That’s gotta make you feel crazy. It also made me start to wonder about the reliability of Tara as a narrator.

Something about her story feels too on-point for me. She’s raised in the backwoods of Idaho by a larger-than-life version of the people who think God created the Remington bolt-action rifle to fight the dinosaurs and the homosexuals. (And I don’t say that to be funny. That 13 second clip has done so much to fracture America, don’t even get me started.) Her family is made even more dramatic and scary through the abuse of her brother and the burn wounds of her father. She escapes the fate of her sister and sisters-in-law by going to college, where after a heroic struggle becomes a perfect student. She even gets her Harry Potter-charmed life at Cambridge complete with choirs and house meals in the great hall.

I mean, college-aged me would have romanticized the hell out of her life.

But literally being in the Middle East when Osama bin Laden got taken out? Come on. Even lampshading that event as she’s describing it had me thinking “Is this girl for real?”

Truth is often stranger than fiction, but when your story provides easy opportunities to dunk on the n-word, the Illuminati, and white supremacy, while simultaneously tying homeschooling and skepticism of the medical establishment to the trash-strewn backwoods of Idaho that are clearly meant to be left behind—I start to notice how closely your truth reinforces the Current Narrative.

When there are footnotes all over the book defining conflicting versions of events, I understand. Memory is a slippery thing. When there are disclaimers like “The italicized language in the description of the referenced exchange is paraphrased, not directly quoted. The meaning has been preserved” on quotes of the emails sent from other people, I get that maaaaaybe your academic pride want to keep the prose clean and free from the “errors” made by the other party in the exchange.

But when both of those things exist in context of a very convenient narrative, can you blame me when I get a little bit suspicious? I didn’t learn how to “close read” a text for nothing.

Then I feel bad for questioning the victim. You can never doubt a victim, you know.

So let’s believe her story.

Even then, what bothers me the most about the book is how little it addresses Mormonism.

Tara’s family are Mormons. The Mormon church plays a background role through the whole book. Tara’s dissertation topic involves Mormonism, something she’s proud of because she views it dispassionately, as a scholar not an acolyte. A large, softly-spoken part of the story is her distancing from the faith of her childhood, dramatized when she refuses the offer of a priesthood blessing from her father.

I know a little bit about the Mormon church. I’m not an expert by any means, but I have some background. And from what I know, this would be a huge deal.

The center of Mormon faith is the family—and the family revolves around the patriarch. Families are forever—so a woman can never truly escape her husband. Even if he’s delusional and bipolar. Even if he’s enabling his abusive son to terrorize the rest of his family. Even if that means agreeing with your daughter in private, but turning on her in public.

This memoir never addresses it baldly, the impact that Mormon family dynamics have on the rest of the story. There’s this conflation, this blurring between Mormonism and small-town Idaho, with prepping and unschooling and essential oils. No question of how the Mormon church structure, or its beliefs, contributes to the abuse. No question about how this could happen in a community, under the eye of a church, without anybody saying something. Maybe that’s just how the Mormon church operates.

Let’s talk geography for a moment. Tara’s hometown of Clifton is about 120 miles from Salt Lake City. Contrast that with North Idaho, which is a 600 mile drive from Clifton. North Idaho is where the Ruby Ridge standoff occurred, which features prominently in Tara’s fake memories from her childhood. These memories set the tone for how we should view her family: preppers, permanently at odds with the federal government, possibly white supremacists. But not Mormons.

By the end of the book, Tara confronts herself—but I never feel like she confronted her faith. She sidesteps away.

As I finish the book, I’m feel that I’m meant to come away with the impression that everyone who distrusts the federal government is guilty of something (anything from not getting a birth certificate for your kids to being a white supremacist, take your pick). That you should get educated, let you go astray from the Current Narrative. That this book is meant to warn us MAGA-country folk away from our lives of sin, and to reinforce to the city-folk that us country folk are ignorant and worthy of scorn.

I will say this: Tara’s struggle with reconciling her father’s world with the “real” world tugged at my heartstrings. I deal with this myself, trying to figure out how to reconcile my knowledge of the spiritual world with how to live in the world that we see every day. I certainly would not want to condemn my own children to a life of economic dependency because of my beliefs, no matter how strong.

So thank you, Tara, for giving me an example of what can happen when we withdraw too much from the world.

God calls us to be wise as serpents an innocent as doves. Educated provides an example of how difficult it is to walk that line.

As with all of the Very Personal Review series, I’m no expert in this category. I can’t always connect a book with broad context or deep history, but I still like to share my experience and thoughts.

A Very Personal Review of Mike Cernovich’s HOAXED

2019-02-11 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

I’m having difficulty writing about Hoaxed in much the same way I had difficulty writing a review of Scott Adams’ Win Bigly or Dangerous by Milo Yiannopoulos. So difficult that I didn’t post a review of either of those books.

Because I keep my eyes open to what’s going on in the “new right,” there was very little “new” information (for me) in those books, which makes me think they’re not relevant and therefore not worth passing on.

What I forget is that while something may not be new to me, it can still be new to others.

That’s why I’m writing about Hoaxed.

Hoaxed focuses on fake news—hit pieces, media manipulation, rhetoric.

“All media is narrative,” states Mike Cernovich to open the documentary, “And we’re in a war of narratives.”

For the next 2 hours, Cerno takes us on a tour of the underbelly of the media: talking to the subjects of media hitpieces (“I know all about the rotting cadaver that is Washington”—Anthony Scaramucci), exposing tactics of manipulation (“All photographs are accurate, and none of them are the truth”—Peter Duke), and providing historical accounts (such as the utter lie that led to the first Gulf War).

During this guided tour, Mike (or others speaking for him—such as a great segment with Ryan Holiday) also shows us how he himself uses media tactics to get attention and influence. The “funhouse mirror” effect.

But the spotlight isn’t limited to Mike. “New media” plays a big role in Hoaxed as the hero—the people who are out taking action with what Tim Pool describes as an “entrepreneurial attitude.”

When Tim describes how he runs a one-man shop, doing the work that would take 4-5 people in the mainstream media, I can understand why they hate the new media so much.

It brings to mind another new media figure who is also hated by the mainstream media: Pewdiepie. His segment “Pew News” gets more views than any mainstream media show. He beats them at their own game while mocking them mercilessly (“But I’m not supposed to share my opinion!”), and they can’t do anything about it. The more hitpieces they write about him, the higher his credibility grows.

Speaking of YouTube, the visual style of this documentary owes a great debt to it. In fact, for a documentary about the news, it feels much more like a YouTube videoessay than a ponderous 60-minutes style news show. I’m going to bet that’s deliberate.

The visual style bounces all over the place, switching emotional tone as we are guided through the movie’s narrative. The directors (Scooter Downey and Jon du Toit) use a myriad of clips from media sources to frame each topic—using newscasters’ own voices to convict them.

I especially like the tactic of layering a voiceover onto completely different footage. This can be used for comic relief—talking about an “artful dodge” over a clip of George W Bush ducking out of the way of a flying shoe—but also for dramatic effect—layering someone else’s recitation of a Trump comment over footage of Trump himself speaking, breaking the “spell” that’s normally cast when voice and image go together.

This technique is used to great effect in the comic version of Watchmen to advance multiple narrative threads at once, and it works well in Hoaxed.

My main issue with Hoaxed is that it feels a little bit like preaching to the choir. The film does highlight media hoaxes that pertain to other tribes—like Black Lives Matter and the abominable treatment of Bernie Sanders at the 2016 DNC—but the treatment of each subject feels covered with a veneer of MAGAism. (Almost like the film is trying to wake up the MAGA crowd more than reach across the aisle.)

Back in college, I took a mass media course from an acerbic long-haired hippie who brought in his guitar to demonstrate resonance and taught us about yellow journalism and how the media acts as a PR machine for the government (or, to be more precise, the deep state). Far left guys like him have long been critical of the establishment media, and their voices would have added depth to this film.

I would have loved to hear from someone like Caitlin Johnstone, for example.

But that’s okay. Hoaxed is still a worthwhile movie. It’s one that you can watch with friends, and have a meaty conversation afterwards. I watched it with my brother, and we stayed up half the night talking.

One of the reasons for that is the ending. Hoaxed ends on a perfect note—Stefan Molyneux’s telling of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” Stefan weaves a beautiful story, and the directors shot compelling cave footage that illustrates the point beautifully.

Never before had I connected the “Allegory of the Cave” with the life and death of Jesus Christ, but this film—without explicitly stating it—illuminated a little bit more of how Christ, a man, is also the logos, the Truth, the Word.

So that leaves us with…the most despairing of all happy endings? I struggle to describe this. I love the ending, because it’s so hopeful. We can leave behind our chains and embrace Truth. We can turn away from the darkness of the cave to the Light of Life.

Yet we cannot force others to see, or to leave behind the shadows of the cave.

Where we cannot change minds, we can plant seeds. Provide little off-ramps from groupthink. Poke holes in accepted narratives. Reach out to people who are questioning.

And Hoaxed provides a way to do this.

Disclosure: I backed the Hoaxed project on Kickstarter.

Regulate, Regular-Irregular, and NCT 127’s magnificent SIMON SAYS

2018-11-27 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

With the release of the repack album Regulate and its single “Simon Says,” NCT 127 completes the Regular-Irregular cycle.

“Cycle” seems like the wrong word to use. It calls up Wagner and epics and possibly Vikings. This is just k-pop. And yet, it fits.

Perhaps this is because with the “Simon Says” video, we loop back to the very first teasers for “Regular.” Our group, as office workers, dreaming of something better. Fully fledged, those dreams became the “Regular” video.

In “Simon Says,” office dreams have turned into a nightmare.

Or at least a weird fashion dystopia featuring a giant table fit for a cabal of villains.

“Simon Says” is a fabulously NCT 127-type of song. It’s rhythmic, bass-heavy, a little bit grotty, and weird. This is why we like NCT 127, because they provide something different from a typical refined, pre-packaged k-pop release.

For me, standout bits of this song are, in no particular order:

The “fishbowl” mixing effect (similar to “Boss”) with lots of ear candy—there are many layers of distortion and ad libs that blossom when you listen with headphones
Haechan and Taeil lead the vocal line to victory with that bridge—one of the best moments of the song
I love the nod to the choreo (and dystopian concept) of Baekhyn and Loco’s “Young“
The bass. This one bites a little bit harder than “Cherry Bomb” or “Limitless”
Vans with shoelaces tied around everybody’s ankles over their pants
The octaves—seriously, the vocal line killed on this song
Best English line ever: “Bless me, achoo”
I can’t stop dancing to it

The music video wasn’t super-exciting, but I can deal with that. I’d like to get a dance practice video to get a good look at the choreography, but I’m not holding out for a masterpiece. Apparently they learned this choreo in an insanely short amount of time while they were promoting “Regular” in the US.

Side note: I love the timbre of Taeyong’s voice. It has this stretchy, almost creaky texture to it.

Turning to Regulate, the repack album, I prefer the original. The concept and song selection on Regular-Irregular is already fantastic, and I don’t feel like the addition of new songs made it any better. The Korean version of “Chain,” while great (…off the chain, you might say), doesn’t match with the vibe of this album at all. It’s jarring to me, and not in a good way. “Welcome to my Playground” doesn’t grab me.

The one exception is “Simon Says.” It enters at just the right time—directly after the dream-turned-nightmare of the interlude—and that war chant at the beginning helps to set off the “irregular” portion of the album.

Conceptually, this comeback was a success. The overall concept of Regular-Irregular/Regulate is pretty cool, albeit a bit complicated. Hey, it’s NCT. Complication comes with the territory.

Some of the details of execution could have been done better, such as the other b-sides in the repack, but I don’t think they detracted enough from the overall concept to be a problem. The biggest issue, for me, is the title track. I still dislike “Regular” and don’t see that changing anytime soon.

I can deal with that. Concept is king.

NCT 127 will always be “NCT one-twenty-seven” to me, instead of “NCT one-two-seven.” You’re welcome.

A Very Personal Review of Vox Day’s JORDANETICS

2018-11-25 / childlike empress / 5 Comments

This is less of a review and more of a reaction.

When I opened Vox Day’s Jordanetics last week, I was expecting something similar to what Vox has posted in his blog and uploaded in his YouTube livestreams: a fairly straightforward takedown of Jordan B Peterson and his views. The takedown would go a little bit too far (it’s a bit much for me to fathom going that hard at someone with an admitted mental illness, but then again I’m a girl and I don’t go hard at anyone), would probably make a few wisecracks about the all-meat diet, and would pull apart JPB’s books in a way that people couldn’t ignore.

What I did not expect was the stake to the heart.

But more on that in a bit. First, a look at Jordanetics: A Journey into the Mind of Humanity’s Greatest Thinker.

I particularly liked how the book was structured at the beginning—a mix of social proof, evidence, and reasoning. First we have an introduction from Milo Yiannopoulos, who has been personally lied about by Jordan “don’t say things that aren’t true” Peterson. Milo’s writing style is always a little abrasive, but it’s good to get a third angle on things.

Then, we have an introduction to how Vox got involved, in typical Vox style. There are a few parts of this book that are going to stick with me for quite some time, and Vox’s analysis of JBP handles citations and evidence is going to be one of those things. It’s one thing to make small errors or fail to understand statistics well (quite common among university faculty). It’s quite another thing to cite the complete opposite conclusion from what the authors wrote in a study. That is bending evidence into a pre-formed conclusion. It’s straight-up fraud.

This analysis is followed by a very long list of quotes pulled from YouTube comments, an analysis of like/dislike ratios, and a transcript of the Voxiversity video on JBP (let’s be real: the transcript doesn’t do the video justice—the comedic timing of the editing is superb). This part is highly skippable and mostly receipts. It’s somewhat equivalent to a grumpy dad saying to a group of rowdy kids, “I wasn’t going to come downstairs and break this up, but y’all wouldn’t stop so now I’m here.”

Vox acknowledges that people like myself, Owen Benjamin, and others feel “bewildered” or “tricked” at how we could be taken in by this guy. Even after knowing about his involvement with the Trilateral Commission, his judgement of the Brett Kavanaugh situation, and reading this book, part of me still likes some of JBP’s messages. It’s tough to sort through the lies while still holding onto appreciation for the small truths, such as his admonishment to “do it badly.” I set very high standards for myself, so to see myself “failing” in the first steps of a new venture is disheartening. I like having a touchstone that things still worth doing badly when you’re first getting started, even though I know there are many other ways to get that touchstone.

With that in mind, Vox then dismantles many anticipated objections to his arguments, from “JBP is a respected academic” to “How do I know that you aren’t the one lying about him?” I particularly liked the response to latter objection, because it illuminates quite a few other cultural battles that are going on at the moment.

With the (lengthy) preamble dispensed of, Vox proceeds to take apart each of the 12 rules while weaving together an argument of how, following an ancient pattern, JBP is another in a long line of false teachers. It is a line of argument that I was not expecting, especially from Vox. It is an argument that punched me in the face, and for reasons that had nothing to do with Jordan Peterson.

You see, I am drawn to gnosticism like a moth to a flame. A gnostic view of the world is one in which there is hidden knowledge, and that to find salvation one must find and uncover those secrets.

It’s not surprising that I’m drawn to this way of thinking. I am a seeker. I am intelligent and highly intuitive, someone who has always loved fairy tales and myths. I’m the type of person who is always aware that there is something that I do not know. I’m fairly emotionally obtuse, so I’m always learning new things about myself (uncovering hidden knowledge, you may say.)

You might be this type of person, too.

In grad school, I remember learning about the sophists, and how they used rhetoric to essentially “manifest” the reality they wanted. That type of thinking hasn’t gone away, and in fact flourishes today more than ever. I rely on the Jung-influenced MBTI in my interactions with people, and it’s been on my list for so very long to dive into Jung’s writings on archetype and the psyche. I am fascinated by persuasion and conspiracy theories and little known facts.

As a Christian, I’ve been careful to avoid the occult—but setting that personal boundary has not erased its allure.

Over the past year or so, I’ve started to notice that many of my main influences are very gnostic-based. I’ve started noticing patterns of thought repeating around me. Every once in a while, I would stop and think to myself “I really need to examine the origins of this.”

It would be useful to identify the gnostic influence in my life and in my thinking, but it would also be hard. So I ignored it.

Which brings us back to this book, and this particular passage, which is included in the chapter on rule 11:

For, as long as Satan is not integrated, the world is not healed and man is not saved. But Satan represents evil, and how can evil be integrated? There is only one possibility: to assimilate it, that is to say, raise it to the level of consciousness. This is done by means of a very complicated symbolic process which is more or less identical with the psychological process of individuation. In alchemy this is called the conjunction of two principles.

—Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (as quoted in Jordanetics)

I had a physical reaction to reading this. I am not kidding when I describe it as a punch in the face or a stake to the heart. Remember what I said about not actually having read Carl Jung’s works? This is why that’s a problem.

You see, the way to salvation is not through “integrating” evil through a “very complicated symbolic process.” The way to salvation is through Jesus Christ, and Him only. The narrow path.

To follow Christ, one must reject evil—not integrate it.

This revelation changed the landscape in my heart. Now, it is not merely an intellectual exercise to trace the influence of gnosticism in my mind, up to and including Jordan B Peterson. It is now a matter of right thinking, of the utmost Truth, to sort out the wheat from the tares.

This is not something I can ignore any longer. I need to sit down and do the work of sorting through what I’ve learned in my life, where it came from, and how it contributes to my intuitive “filter” of the world. I do not expect this work to be fun.

It is not often that I have this type of reaction to a book, let alone share it on my blog. I have no doubt that I will write more about my de-gnostificating journey here, and I hope that it will help you, dear reader, if you are anything like me.

Overall, Jordanetics is a worthwhile read, especially if you have enjoyed JBP in the past. I am thankful that I stayed away from his Biblical lectures, because I didn’t trust him to present the Bible truthfully.

Now I know why.

A quick and dirty review of Ben Settle’s Persuasion Secrets of the World’s Most Charismatic & Influential Villains

2018-11-13 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

I’ll keep this short, because to go long risks the review being longer than the book.

This is not a book of persuasion techniques. If you want to learn how to be a PUA or a bomb-ass copywriter, this is not going to teach you any “tips and tricks.”

Instead, you’ll find 10 lessons that teach you (or remind you), of the successful frame from which a villain operates.

Becoming a villain doesn’t actually require any villainy, no lawbreaking, no nefarious deeds—you just have to be the kind of person who most people say “that guy is a selfish asshole,” who upon further inspection is a good-hearted dude with a backbone and little patience for fools.

If you are the type of person who wants to forge strong relationships but hates “hanging out,” this is a book for you.

This is the “Little Golden Books” of pocket motivation. Pull it out for a refresher every couple of months.

Persuasion Secrets of the World’s Most Charismatic & Influential Villains is available on Amazon.

BTW, this is a good heuristic: if a lot of people (especially online hate mobs or liberals) say that someone is an “asshole,” go check them out. I guarantee you there will be something real underneath the persona.

A Very Personal Review of EXO’s Don’t Mess Up My Tempo

2018-11-04 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

Like many fans around the world, I had November 2 marked on my calendar—finally, an EXO comeback. It had been over a year since the last full album release.

With that immense and quietly building space of expectation, new music would be 1. immediately welcomed by EXO-Ls worldwide, but 2. with a group at the top of its game, eventually there will be a below-average release. No pressure.

With Don’t Mess Up My Tempo, EXO pulled it off…mostly.

Tempo

Tempo feels comfortably EXO. It’s fun in the vein of “Call Me Baby.” The chorus is singable. The sound engineering and f(x) are incredible. The harmonies are on point—specifically the bit where Xiumin and Sehum sing and rap octaves over each other, and of course the a capella section. This is a song that knows the best of EXO and how to present it to its fullest, morphing and reprising itself through funky descending bass lines and soaring vocals.

As the members grow as artists/performers and head into their late 20s (Sehun, the youngest member, is currently 24 years old), they’ve transitioned from a young group in search of a sound to a self-assured group who knows their strengths. If you were wondering which group reigns as the VOCAL KINGS of k-pop, this is your receipt.

I will not be surprised when a bunch of other acts come out with a capella tracks next year.

The music video isn’t super-innovative but the glitchy light effects are really cool, like the boys are holograms. Chanyeol shines with his blue contacts (I picked a good bias).

Sign

I don’t recall grotty bass lines (reminiscent of NCT 127’s “Limitless”) being a popular back then, but this song reminds me of an alternate-universe Korean version of an early 2000s boy band song. (Maybe it’s the “bye bye bye” part?) We don’t deserve Baekhyun and his vocals.

Fun fact: I keep mishearing one of the lyrics as “Honestly, pikachu”

Ooh-La-La-La

This is a song that makes you really appreciate SM’s sound engineers. It’s such ear candy—from the subtle pop of a record-player effect to the way that the layers of sound are so airily pieced together. The guitar riff is beautiful, almost “island feeling,” like you could play it on a ukelele and sing on a beach and it would sound just as good. Otherwise it’s a simple song; I want to hate it because it verges on saccharine but I also kind of love it. Like a popsicle on a hot summer day, but that’s French themed with a big whiff of fresh island air.

Gravity

“Gravity” is the song that “Power” wanted to be. I’m loving 80s club feel to this one, with the sample from “Power” in the intro, and the powerful yet funky bass line (SM is really good at those). Lyrically, I love the interplay between Korean and English; the chorus creates a rhyming pattern in Korean that begs for a declarative singing of “GRAVITY” to round it out—but instead of giving us the relief in the first round, they build anticipation through a full seven lines before finally giving us the payoff. It’s great—I haven’t had a song keep me on the edge of my seat lyrically like this before. Especially since most of the lyrics are in another language!

With You

EXO would like to float over fluffy white clouds with you. It’s ballad with undertones of traditional Korean music. Sweet, but not particularly memorable.

24/7

Love it or hate it, this song builds from a distinctive whistle to a very Motown-ish throwback (disclaimer: I’m not a Motown expert). I’m not a fan of full-on falsetto songs (with the exception of Big Bang’s “Cafe“), but this one is really well executed. The call-and-response structure is interesting, and the vocals are on point.

Bad Dream

If any of the songs on this album grew on me, it’s this one. I went from “okay I kind of like this one” to “obsessively listening on repeat” in less than an hour. This song is all over the place musically, somehow combining a bouncy synth, gorgeous guitar riffs (but not enough of them!), a dolphin-like pealing sound, and an absolutely beautiful-yet-rough moving bass line that reminds me of something that I can’t quite place. The vocals shine on this one, with more technical acrobatics a la “Stay” from last year’s winter album.

Damage

HYPE.
Sehun’s E-X-O is back.
It’s a jam.

Smile On My Face

One of EXO’s b-side staples is the R&B ballad. Most fans love them. This incarnation is very soothing, and Chen’s harmonies are heavenly. Moving on.

Oasis

Like “Been Through” from last year’s winter album, I bet that “Oasis” will be a popular track on the album with American fans. To me, it sounds more like Western pop than k-pop. It’s not a bad song at all–the melody is gorgeous–it just feels like anthemic indie pop.

Overall: Don’t mess up a good thing

This album feels sonically cohesive, and darker than The War (which would make sense, considering that this is an autumn album). SM is good at matching album “tones” to the season, as you can see in the differences between Red Velvet’s summer vs fall releases.

With this album, there are no surprises. EXO has dialed in their sound. It’s like they’re now a “middle aged” group instead of a hungry young wolfpack. I’m glad they’re making cohesive albums now instead of random collections of singles, but on the flip side there were no songs that catch me by surprise, no “Forever” or “El Dorado.”

When I first listened to The War last summer I was immediately and utterly obsessed with “Forever.” It grabbed me in a way that few songs do. None of the songs on DMWMT have grabbed me in that way, with the possible exception of “Bad Dream.”

I like this album, but I don’t LOVE it. Like…there’s nothing wrong with this album but I’m also not obsessed with it. It’s clean. It’s well balanced. It shows off EXO’s skills in a variety of ways. But I honestly can’t see myself listening to it much, other than picking off a few favorites to add to my epic EXO playlist.

It says something that I listened to NCT 127’s Regular-Irregular again before I settled down to write this review.

[Update: I’ve been listening to this album on repeat. Oops! It’s great, the end.]

It may be relevant to note that I’ve always preferred the young, exploratory phase of a musician’s existence over the polished and complete work that tends to be produced later on.

I’m done: an incomplete book review of The Fountainhead

2018-10-11 / childlike empress / 1 Comment

I first read The Fountainhead when I was 18. It was a joy to read—never before had I read something that spoke so directly to my soul (Lord of the Rings excepted). I stayed up until 2am reading it during a week that I was teaching at a summer camp. I was enchanted.

(Yes, I realize that is weird to say about a book involving architecture and politics and NYC.)

This summer, I re-read The Fountainhead. While I still greatly enjoyed it, I was less enchanted. Now that I’m older, it’s easier to see the flaws and holes in Ayn Rand’s thinking.

However, I was struck at how much it could have been written today. It’s a book about media and public opinion just as much as it’s about architecture and the “ideal” man. If I were to pair it with another current book as a double-feature, I would put it with Vox Day’s SJWs always Lie. SJWAL lays a groundwork of theory, and TF dramatizes an SJW takeover.

That’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’ll do another post sometime when I’m more awake that talks about the weaknesses in the book.

What (or rather, who) I’m here to talk about is Dominique Francon. I loved her when I was 18 and I was surprised at how much I loved her today. She embodies a solid 1/3 of my own character, someone who is competent, cognizant of the world, but not of it.

In many ways, Dominique embodies the struggle that many of us have—the ability to see beyond what the crowd wants and what the media tells us we should feel, but the compassion and the weakness to try to get other people to understand and think for themselves. Even writing this sentence makes me second guess myself. This blog is a form of shouting into the void. Perhaps it’s futile, but reasoning with a CROWD will never work. You can only reason with individuals.

To punish herself for this greatest of crimes, she decides to degrade herself to the lowest possible depths by utterly obliterating her own Will. Her last act as a free woman is to marry Peter Keating, someone who evokes so many feelings in me that I can’t come up with a pithy description for him. As a man, he’s repulsive—very much seduction along the lines of “I did everything you asked, why don’t you want to jump my bones?”

Dominique lives for years without expressing a Will of her own, or really any desire or personal thought. Such exquisite discipline.

Now, I’m not saying that this is a good way to live. In fact, I think it is an absolutely horrible way to live and that nobody should do it. I firmly believe that the Human Will is one of the most beautiful and powerful things on this earth, and that it is a terrible and tragic event for any human being to submit his or her Will to anything short of God the Father Almighty. That said, I understand Dominique’s reasons for doing so. She was punishing herself.

And so Dominique will stand as my inspiration during the next few months at my day job, during which I will cease to have any opinions of my own. After my post last night and a good talk with a coworker who knows what’s up, I’ve decided that it’s no longer worth it to try to exert any of my Will at my job. I’m done. With a few exceptions* (there are some lines I absolutely will not cross), I will no longer provide any extra value at work. Minimal thinking, minimal creativity, just getting the job done. My boss gets what he wants.

I said so this afternoon, in a conversation. “Whatever you want.” My Ne/Fe picked up on a reaction—he was pleased, like I had finally submitted to his wishes. If that’s what he wants to think, fine. I’m done caring, in the way that I normally care about the work that I do.

I’m going to save all my caring for the work that I do for myself, on my own time. It’s going to become what I labor over in love, not my day job.

During the times when it gets tough to stomach because something is wrong and it would be so easy to fix, I’ll think of Dominique and her resolve at going to bed with a pawing, mumbling half-man every night and hosting high-society parties with not a hair or word out of place.

Some people might call this malicious compliance.

They might be right.

It’s a review of Alt-Hero #3: Reprisal

2018-08-07 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

First things first: the pink rifle makes me laugh. This is a really chill issue, so if you’re hoping that Rebel will use that rifle in fray…calm down.

Alt-Hero #3 picks up where issue #2 left off. We learn more about the American crew of — what are they? Heroes? Mutants? I’m unsure of what they’re called or what to call them.

Our ragtag band of misfit heroes, if you will, find themselves in a position to make Moves (yes, with a capital M) against the trained, financed, coordinated global force we met in issue #1.

While less action-centered (and the action that did happen was more cloak-and-dagger stuff than hand grenades and explosions), this issue focused more on setting the plot pieces in place, and developed more of the characters. We visit more places, meet a few more people, and get to know more of the characters that we’ve met before, like Soulsight and Michael Martel.

The focus hovers primarily on Rebel, pulling in her family and looking at what makes her tick (but not how she got her powers). Rebel and her family exude all the positive characteristics of a Southern family–gentility, that put-togetherness that Southern women have, a love for Johnny Walker and football, and a deep hatred of those damnYankees.

I like the art a lot more in this issue. You can really tell it’s improving–like 2 months in to a diet plan when you suddenly realize that your pants are loose. I really like the cross-hatching and inking on the panel above. The artist used a lot of silhouettes and shadows in this issue, which helped keep the visuals dynamic. And I was not even once confused about the correct order of the speech bubbles and panels. Miles ahead of issue #1!

And you know what caught my eye? The coloring. It’s not Dave Stewart of Dark Horse levels of greatness (not that I’m biased) (I am), but it’s really nice in this issue. Bright, but not garish. It has that masculine “I don’t care about colors” attitude, but with enough polish that the pages look cohesive. There’s some nuance and gradient, which takes off just enough edge.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Aside from a handful of favorites, I’m really not a comics person. I don’t plow through series and I find that the art style is really, really important to me. (And I like a more stylized art style than most superhero comics.) But I’m enjoying Alt-Hero. It’s fun. The issues are packed with interesting stories and characters. I’m never bored. The plotlines are relevant to real life, on a 1:1 level (fighting Antifa in the streets) but also on a symbolic level (we must use our unique strengths in the battle against evil).

It’s refreshing to finally (FINALLY!) have an entertainment venue that shares my values in the comics of Arkhaven and the books from Castalia House. The authors don’t go around covertly insulting me in the very show or movie or comic or book that I’m trying to like. I don’t have to sigh and look past Trump Derangement Syndrome. I can relax and enjoy, which is a lot of what I want from escapist entertainment.

I’m also inspired. I like this issue. It’s quiet, but it reminds us why we fight. Why we care. Why it’s important to do something to stand up against the evil in this world.

Easier said than done, but it’s a little bit easier with examples like Alt-Hero.

FYI I’m an Alt-Hero backer

A Second Look at the Strong Heroines of Alt-Hero

2018-06-28 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

What do a chain-smoking French supermodel and a constantly-speeding Southern firecracker have in common? (Aside from the superpowers, of course.)

There will be spoilers in this post, if you’re still keeping track.

I realized belatedly that contrary to what one might expect from a racist sexist homophobic alt-right publisher like Arkhaven, the Alt-Hero series features a handful of very strong female characters.

In issue #2, Shiloh Summers is introduced peacefully washing her blue Mustang convertible wearing daisy dukes and a Confederate flag bikini top. She then proceeds to drop some red-headed, green-eyed Southern charm to get out of a speeding ticket, specifically aligns herself with Alabama (as a Pacific Northwesterner I really don’t get it, sorry) and speeds on her merry way–right into a trap laid for her by the Feds. Even though she raises “hayell” before getting caught, alas, somebody has to get broken out of an armed facility, and that person is Shiloh.

Part of the rescue team is another badass female character, Ryu No Seishin, who delivers the immortal line “We’re here to rescue you.” Ryu can shoot flames from her fingertips and has amazing hair. I want to know more.

Back in issue #1, on the other hand, we meet Dominique Jeanneret through a pop and a clap of her powers facing off against the EU. A chain-smoking red-headed supermodel, she puts up a good fight against the regular-guy squad until she gets taken out by a punch square in the face from Captain Europa. And though she is wooed by the Global Justice Initiative, she knows how to negotiate and keeps her option to smoke, always.

Am I going crazy? Two redheads? This is not that big of a comic book franchise (yet), so how could there possibly be room for two such visually similar characters?

Ah, here we go: We have one redhead taken into custody in the EU, fed a pack of lies but offered a lucrative salary, who then unthinkingly joins the bad guys. The other redhead is taken into custody in the United States, but is instead broken out and joins the ragtag band of vigilantes who are, one presumes, fighting on the side of good.

A tale of two red-heads. Two ladies who are, in the core of their character design, offensive to someone, somewhere. Two ladies who are feisty, who can look after themselves, and who are fighting on opposite sides of the line. Mirror images.

If there’s a transatlantic showdown, I hope we get a cover of them facing off against each other.

Batfort

Style reveals substance