me when the. when. columbo

lover, you should’ve come over - let's do f1 or tennis you can choose, male preference!

I'm currently a 3rd year in uni studying statistics with a triple minor holy hell, in CompSci, Business Analytics, and Mathematics. I'm in my uni's marching band and I play the tuba, I'm on staff and I adore my rookies. Literally the shortest person in the section but I love the jokes they're all good fun.

Something about my face screams to people to tell me all about their relationship woes/stories and I honestly don't mind I love getting to know them a bit more. I'm not huge on physical touch but I'll warm up to it if you're a close friend. Very fluent in sarcasm but I know when to pull back. My friends would say I'm very dependable and chill. My love languages are words of affirmation and quality time.

I love to bake when I have the supplies, huge marvel nerd movies + comics, I'm horrible at finishing tv shows I either binge it all in one night or it'll take me 5 months to finish one season, tysm!

i ship you with sebastian vettel!

— ok so i know seb isn’t technically on the grid anymore and he’s kind of old BUT if we’re talking younger red bull seb omg this is SPEAKING to me !! you seem like such a go with the flow person but at the same time super ambitious and just like you know exactly what you want ?? if that makes sense ?? correct me if i’m wrong but that’s the vibe i’m getting from this 😭 and i feel like red bull seb would ADORE that

— ok you have no idea how much i love this imaginary dynamic but i’m picturing seb being totally infatuated with you before you guys get together, and i’m talking like he’ll follow you around, flirt shamelessly and basically just do classic seb things, but (at first) you’d shoot him down every. single. time. mostly just because you find it funny watching him tie himself into knots BUT ALSO maybe because you’re a little intrigued 😏😏 i can imagine you’d keep up this pretence for a while wondering when seb will finally have had enough and move onto his next conquest, BUT WHEN HE DOESNT you begin to think that maybeee this guy is worth sticking your neck out for 😏

— of course once you guys are together, the shameless flirting still won’t stop. i mean who are we kidding it’s sebastian vettel being a flirt is part of his genetic makeup 😭 but you have this superpower where you can just not react and it’s so funny because seb will turn it into some kind of competition to see who’ll crack first (you always win 😉) honestly you guys are the funniest couple ever but in the driest kind of way. i genuinely love you both. if this was real you’d be my otp (i’m getting too invested 😔)

— mini head cannon bc i forgot to add it in before: seb is fully convinced you’re the smartest person on earth and if anyone argues otherwise he will FIGHT them. even if they’re arguing einstein is smarter he’ll still do it. the guy honestly worships you and it’s hilarious (but also v cute 🥹)

— you’re definitely kind of seb’s mental health support 😭 like he’ll tell you everything that goes on in his team, and i mean everything (even when he’s not supposed to 🤫) when he has a bad race, you’re there to listen to him and let him just vent out all his frustrations. when he has a good race, you’re always there to lift him up. i feel like the kind of mutual understanding you guys have is really rare. like, the kind of bordering on telepathy understanding where you can just tell how the other is feeling from one look 🥹 of course, seb’s a gentlemen so he always works hard to give you everything you could possibly want in a relationship. even despite his busy schedule, he always makes sure to take you out on lots of cute, thoughtful dates, and even sends you little notes throughout the day just to remind you how much he loves you 🥹 honestly he’s so cute i adore him

— and a final bonus headcannon !! i feel like seb himself can be a bit of a nerd when it comes to certain things (we’ve all seen him in grill the grid, the guy just absorbs knowledge) even though he may not be a marvel fan originally, when he finds out you are, he works sooo hard to get caught up with all the movies and the comic lore so he can talk to you about it 🥹 then of course come the marvel movie nights (instigated by him) where you literally stay up for hours bingeing as many of them as possible (seb definitely gets so invested and cries at infinity war and endgame 😭) he just wants to spend as much time with you doing things you love as possible !! 🥹🤍

Blabbing about this Musician!au I started last summer that has now also turned into a marching band!au because I got sad and nostalgic because despite how shitty it could be, marching band defined my high school life and social life and I couldn’t had asked for anything else.

I also don’t have every single prequel character (because this au is surrounding the prequel characters) in Star Wars smacked into here, and I gave up halfway through a couple of months ago in terms of brainstorming. Anyways, this is hella long so check everything out under the line if you’d like! don’t want to spam everyone with something that’s like, 4 pages long

Now, you might be asking. What instruments are these characters playing, or what are they doing in marching band? well, boy oh boy do I have some lore for you.

Anakin Skywalker: alright lets start of with the “Chosen One”. Now, I gotta say. He’s got some intense brass vibes, specifically high brass. But I don’t know. He didn’t really mesh well. And given his natural talent with the Force in canon, I thought that Anakin would be a sort of prodigy. And we all know the two instruments associated with that: the piano and violin. He’s more of a piano dude, so here we go! piano prodigy Anakin Skywalker. He also gives mad drumline vibes, and I can see him as either the lead snare, setting the tempo, or the main quad player. He’s brash, slightly obnoxious, but damn is he fucking good at what he does.

Obi-Wan Kenobi: I literally started this AU on the idea that Obi-Wan would play the cello. One of the defining quotes for him is that fucking “infinite sadness” quote. And we all know that cellos play some of the saddest pieces out there. (see: Elgar cello concerto) However, I can’t see him as a marching band dude. He doesn’t really give off color guard vibes (since that’s where most non-band people go to) so I have him as the resident student helper who everyone tolerates because he brings ice cream after band camp.

Ahsoka Tano: Ahsoka is a flute player. As a flute player, I have intimate knowledge on this. She’s like the chill flute player who’s competitive enough to keep her position as principal, but is also chill enough to not have a big ego that butts heads with everyone. She also gives mad color guard vibes. Also speaking about that from personal experience (am I lowkey projecting my own experiences on her? you didn’t hear that from me). She seems like the type to love swing flags and sabre, and is 100% captain by senior year.

I have Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka as siblings in this AU because I say so. Qui-Gon is around here somewhere as the resident hippie dad who lowkey smokes pot and will support his children while giving a big ‘fuck you’ to Dooku. 

Yoda’s also in here somewhere, and I love the idea that he’s an old Chinese/Asian man who refuses to speak english and will only do so with the most backwards grammar so his grandchild (Qui-Gon) and great-grandchildren (the trio) are forced to speak Mandarin/Cantonese to him (pick your poison). He just spends his days cutting up fruit and also might pull out his erhu if everyone asks nice enough. (I want to say he was a Peking Opera musician, but immigrated during Mao’s reign after he lost opportunities during the cultural revolution)

So, I know that it doesn’t make sense for a family to have 3 sets of twins and one triplet set, but fuck that I do what I want.

Cody Fett: okay so, Cody 100% plays the french horn. I don’t know, he just, he does. He’s got that air of sophistication because he can play the hardest brass instrument, but at the same time, he’s incredibly good at it and is matter-of-fact about it. He also would be the mello section leader (I was playing with the idea of drum major, but for now, leaving him as a section leader for now). He’s a bit uptight to be a low brass player, but cool enough to still be associated with the general brass group.

Rex Fett: I got Rex and Cody as the eldest Fett twins. Rex feels like a string player, so I have him on violin. I can see him be very hardworking and practicing diligently to the point where he easily sweeps through to concertmaster in high school and the local youth orchestra. He also gives of mad drum major vibes. I can see him copying music, handing out drill charts, and hauling the met around. Also, just think about Rex doing a fancy ass salute at competitions. Yes.

Next round of twins lets gooo

Jesse Fett: You could say Jesse has brass vibes. I see him as a reed person though. In concert band, he’s on clarinet. I used to think clarinets were as stuck up as us flutes but no they’re literally balls of chaotic energy ready to be unleashed. Just imagine Jesse blaming everything on his reed. I see him as the guy who switches to saxophone for marching band, though. He’s got the energy of the clarinet and the saxophone harnessed. Also, wouldn’t be surprised if he knows how to play the sousa.

Kix Fett: Y’know, when I originally made this AU, I had Kix as a musician as well. I’m gonna scratch that. He’s going to medical school, or at least, he’s planning to. He’s on the pre-med track and is dying in organic chemistry and wishes there weren’t so many pre-requisites. However, in high school, he definitely played the oboe. Of course Kix chose one of the hardest instruments to play. Also, just imagine him trying to make his own reeds. I don’t see him as a guy who’s in marching band. He’ll come to competitions and maybe football games if he’s bullied into it. Kix is the guy who’s classes are all AP and he’s dying inside.

Next round of twins yeet:

Fives Fett: shit, I forgot I gave them all real names. If I remember correctly, Fives is Frank. Anyways, trumpet vibes. Need I say more? He’s on the trumpet in marching band as well and he’s the dude who’s obsessed with DCI and always tries to play as high as he possibly can and absolutely demolishes his chops. I would say he’s section leader as well. He also hangs with the drumline at the back of the bus and always plays meme songs on blast and sends weird pictures to people’s phone via open airdrop.

Echo Fett: I think his birth name is Ethan??? I’m spitting thoughts not checking my old documents. Anyways. Echo feels like a string person. Specifically, low strings. So, he plays the bass. Upright bass. Whatever. You get what I mean. He sleeps in the case after school and hates hauling it everywhere. He was in marching band as a mello player (the easiest brass instrument to pick up for the activity so) but he was in a car crash that left him paralyzed from the hip down, and had to quit to recover. He never stopped playing, and found ways to adjust. (I do not know how exactly this would work, since I’m able bodied and also don’t play the bass, but I know he’d at least have a stool to sit on in order to lean his body on. let me know if you have other ideas i’d love to hear them!)

Finally, we got the triplets:

Dogma Fett: Dogma plays the bassoon. He’s a low reed kinda guy and between the bari sax, bass clarinet, and bassoon, he fits the last one the best. He and Kix moan over making reeds and he’s on the quieter side. He just vibes and plays all the low notes and has fun whenever he’s got some moving part. I see Dogma as someone who is only casually into marching band. He uses Jesse’s old student clarinet as his instrument and he’s always on time, knows his sets, and his technique is on point. He always finds himself roped into his brothers’ shenanigans though.

Tup Fett: Tup plays the harp. I like to think he met Shaak Ti (we’ll get to her in a bit) when he was young, and she was playing with an orchestra. He met her backstage and she offered to give him lessons. Tup’s not really a part of high school orchestra but sometimes he’ll be brought in. He’s more involved with solo work and the youth orchestra more than anything. Tup’s another on where I don’t think he’d be into marching band. Though I can see him being in winter guard as the dude who just shows up and is lowkey rip and therefore is a hunk on the rifle. His technique’s good but they’ve never been able to saddle him into fall guard.

Hardcase Fett: (i’ve given up on remembering the birth names so i’m just gonna not) Hardcase is 100% low brass vibes. He can’t be anything but a low brass. I see him as a tuba player. He’s chill, laid back, but also reliable for being the foundation of the band sound. He plays the sousaphone in marching band and always blasts either Seven Nation Army or some other popular show tune right after rehearsals. Hardcase also can play the bari sax and no one knows when he learned how to. 

OKAY we’re done with the Fett’s! Jango and Boba are in here somewhere but honestly I don’t have enough brainpower to come up with what their roles are. Jango’s gonna be a good dad though. Maybe he was a musician and that’s why most of his kids are going into music. Or maybe he’s just a supportive father. Boba’s the youngest though, that’s for sure. And he’s a little shit. Don’t know if he plays an instrument (probably) or what it might be.

Now lets get into some other characters! There’s a lot. And I wasn’t even halfway done with the characters I wanted to include. What the hell was I on last summer?

Padmé Amidala: Padmé is a flute player who quit after freshman year of high school and started taking music production and music theory classes. She loved it so much that she decided that composing was her jam. Now, she’s highly successful and often works with well known pianist, Anakin Skywalker, on piano concertos. Also, she may or may not be dating said pianists but you didn’t hear that from me.

Satine Kryze: twosetters don’t shit on me but Satine feels like she’d play the viola. She and Obi-Obi-Wan definitely dated in high school but after a year broke up on mutual terms and are just good friends now. A lot of people feel like she’d have been a better political science/international studies major than a music major but she’s good so no one complains (until she gets into a fighting match with someone and wins smugly)

Bo-Katan Kryze: shes Satine’s younger sister and is a mad athlete. She doesn’t play any instruments but she’s deeply active and is on scholarship for college, on the pre-med track with Kix. She’s very scary and most people are too intimidated by her to approach.

Plo Koon: I originally had him as an asian man, but I can see Native American as well. He plays the euphonium and he’s just a sweet man. He helps out a lot with private lessons at local high schools and is often brought in to help with low brass during marching band.

Wolffe Koon: Wolffe and Gregor (get to him in a bit) were both adopted by Plo when their parents died when they were very young. Plo was their godfather and he took them in like they were his own. They’re cousins to the Fett brothers (though don’t ask me how I have no idea). Wolffe is an engineer and works close to home.

Gregor Koon: Gregor is Wolffe’s younger brother and had a short stint of musical interest in middle school but quit after he entered high school. Gregor was in a serious car crash during college that left him amnesiac for a year before some of his memories returned. He now owns a restaurant and sticks close to home. Wolffe often comes around to check up on him because his brain injury still impacts his current life in small physical and emotional dips

Kit Fisto: Kit gives off mad trombone vibes and it’s mostly because he seems incredibly laid back. He’s one of those brass players who’s just a nice guy and while jokes around, never got pulled into jokes as a student.

Shaak Ti: like I said above, Shaak Ti is most definitely a harpist. She has that ethereal quality I think is common in harpists. She’s a tall Indian woman and she loves her job! She’s a private lesson teacher and instructor at the conservatory on top of her job in the orchestra since she’s not called in often to play. She loves all her students and gives good hugs.

Mace Windu: Mace is the director of the Jedi Symphony, the orchestra which almost everyone is involved with. He is a bass player and he likes his more classical pieces over contemporary music. He’s good friends with Yoda and sometimes the old troll has to wack some sense into Windu and have him take on newer pieces. Windu 100% gives off unhinged director vibes because mistakes and lazy musicians definitely don’t end after high school/college is over.

Quinlan Vos: this lil shithead definitely is the obnoxious, slightly arrogant, but kind of deserving of that, percussionist. He loves his snare drum and is also in the drumline. He’s the same age as Obi-Wan and the two are close friends. Quinlan is definitely slightly unhinged and is always at the back of the bus causing havoc after competitions. He’s the guy that I (OP) hate but also can’t help but respect cuz yeah he’s annoying but at least he’s good.

Aayla Secura: Aayla is Quinn’s half-sister, and plays the French horn. Again, like Cody, she’s got this air of professionalism that I associate with French horn players and like, we gotta represent the girls in brass somehow. She just fits it really nicely.

I feel like now is the time to list who’s still in conservatory and who isn’t: Obi-Wan, Anakin, Rex, Cody, Jesse, Quinlan, Padmé, and Satine are all recent graduates. Ahsoka, Aayla, Fives, Echo, Tup, Dogma, and Hardcase are still in conservatory (at varying years of course). Kix and Bo are entering med school/frantically applying and banging their heads cuz MCATs. Wolffe and Gregor are older and have been in the field for quite some time now. Plo, Kit, Shaak, and Mace are all faculty/seasoned professionals.

Somehow, I was gonna bring in The Skiratas (with proper research cuz I know very little about them), Dooku, Ventress, the Oppress siblings, rest of Domino Squad, Cut Lawquene, the other CCs, and more. I designated a page out of my sketchbook for this and my oh my the flow chart was hella confusing. How I thought I was gonna handle that in the summer before my first year of college, I have no idea. Maybe I’ll brainstorm more in the future but for now, this is all I have :]]]

Also excuse some of my slightly unhinged language I started writing this a few days ago while slightly unfocused and tired and stressed so my language is a product of that

March 4, 2018, San Francisco, CA

I was really excited about this show, the second at the Fillmore in as many nights, because I knew they'd be changing the setlist up a fair amount, as they always do when they play more than one show in a row in the same place. I was even more excited when a bit before the show Flans posted on Facebook that there would be fifteen new songs, which was practically a full half of the show!

They opened with "Pencil Rain"--that one was definitely a surprise. I think the only time I've seen that song outside of the two Lincoln shows I've been to was at one of the Brooklyn New Year's Eve shows a few months before this. I don't think it's one of the absolute best songs on Lincoln, there are definitely other songs I'd rather see, but any song from that album is gonna be some degree of amazing, so it was definitely cool to see it.

Afterwards, Flans said that they know it's disappointing when bands play too many new songs (WRONG--or at least, wrong when the new songs in question are as fantastic as the ones on I Like Fun!), so when they said they were going to play a new song we should pretend it was our favorite song, and they will accept fake emotion.

They played "All Time What," then John said they should introduce the next song by talking about "what makes this song so this song-y."

The song was "Why Does the Sun Shine?", once again with JF singing and JL talking. The heat and light of the sun were caused by the nuclear reaction between "things made out of stuff, microscopic dust, the feelings that separate us, and death." (The last couple made it a very Linnellian list.) There was also some adorable spazziness from him.

After that Flans said half the show would be different than the night before and the other half would be "mind-numbingly the same." He said we'd see that the banter we thought was improvised wasn't (he was joking, but I did see them recycle some banter on this tour, to my slight disillusionment). Then John said that they wouldn't be playing the songs we came back for, and Flans said they were all about "delivering disappointment" and were like General Tso's chicken.

Then Flans said he'd just gotten Netflix and so has been watching a lot of Netflix, including a documentary he'd just watched about the czars. He said that also today "I went to a restaurant where everything was fried, because who wants to live forever?" and that he was "just living my vampire life." Then he said, "We have a day off in Eugene, because who would want a day off in San Francisco? And you wonder why we're bitter." Then he asked John, "How are your problems?" "My problems are awesome."

Next they played "Mammal," which was quite exciting, and then came the next episode in the continuing saga of "Will John Linnell ever manage to successfully sing 'Mrs. Bluebeard' without screwing up the lyrics somehow?" This time he managed to get very close to the end smoothly, and I was trying to somehow send him some sort of mental encouragement ("Almost there! I believe in you!"), but then he messed up the very end, siiiiigh. At this point I pretty much gave up and resigned myself to the fact that he was never going to manage to get it right.

Next they played "She's Actual Size." I've seen this song a ton, but outside of a couple of Apollo 18 shows in the past few years it's almost all been contained within the confines of the very very first shows I went to on the Mink Car tour, back when it featured the epic Dial-A-Drum-Solo bit with Dan Hickey, which made this another surprise. It is a good song both on the album and live, but I've never been a fan of part of the arrangement they've used all the times I've seen it, where towards the end it gets way slowed down and Flans is singing in falsetto and all that (I'm fine with his falsetto at other times, it just bugs me in this one specific instance). But up until that point seeing it was fun.

Next was "The Statue Got Me High," to my great disappointment on keyboard again, but this time I managed to push myself past that disappointment and still really dig the performance, which was good because it's very close to the top in my list of all-time most-beloved songs and I do want to actually be able to enjoy it.

After that John got his accordion on ("Oh now you do," I couldn't help thinking). He introduced the next song as being "one of our tired old songs." When they started playing I saw that was an assessment I most definitely would not agree with, as the song was another one of my all-time favs (it was in fact my favorite song way back when I started getting more deeply into TMBG when I was in high school): "Turn Around"! So I was thrilled about that, of course!

Next they played "When the Lights Come On," which remains my favorite of the new songs they've actually been doing live to see. Afterwards, Flans said that it was from their new album I Like Fun, "available on Bar/None records and tapes." Then he said they really do have it available on vinyl, and that the vinyl was made in the Czech Republic, which is where they make the good stuff. John said if you want "the flat ones that actually play" you have to go there. Then Flans said that records look like calendars, and then was joking about someone in the audience who made a noise like they thought that was "a cruel burn."

Next they played "The Mesopotamians." I'd actually managed to enjoy it the night before after feeling burned out on it for some time, but this time I felt sick of it again.

Afterwards, Flans pointed out that the Oscars were currently happening (I actually didn't know that until he said it--I don't pay much attention to that sort of thing), and that we were all "out of the loop about something that's going to be appalling everyone." Then he was talking about when they announced the wrong winner for Best Picture last year--"What a shitshow. That was the ultimate 'you had one job.'"

They played "This Microphone," and then another surprise that I was really excited to see: "Cyclops Rock"! That's one of my favs on Mink Car and it's totally kickass live (I am an eternal sucker for really high-energy rockin' Flansongs live), and it had popped up a couple of times at other shows I'd been to recently, but not much, so yeh it was a lot of fun.

Next they talked about how Dial-A-Song is back. Flans said some of the songs have had "startling" videos that have gotten Youtube comments just saying something like "Fuck." John said, "That's the response we've been hoping for for 35 years." Then he said his favorite comment they've received is "What sorcery is this?" He asked Flans if he objected to the "Fuck" cos it needed a parental advisory (this amused me cos Flans swears like crazy), and Flans said not at all.

Then they returned to the previous night's discussion of this Tony Robbins guy. Flans said, "He's not an evangelist cos he doesn't have a soul," and told us again that he'd just watched a "fake documentary" about him. John said their conversation wasn't accurately conveying how "completely crazy" he is. Flans said that he "uses disruptive language to break down barriers of communication," which basically means saying "fuck" to "someone who looks related to my great-aunt." John said that was disruptive, and Flans agreed that it was "like being slapped in the face is disruptive." Then John said that if they tried they could be "the Tony Robbins of rock bands."

They closed out the first set the same way they did the night before: "Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had a Deal" straight into "Birdhouse in Your Soul," which is seriously SO MUCH ROCKIN' OUT AT ONCE, it's almost too much.

The second set started with the Quiet Storm contra-alto clarinet version of "Older" like usual. Then Flans made Marty play part of some Phil Collins song again (or maybe it was a Genesis song and not him solo, I don't even know, I hate Phil Collins and did not recognize it).

They played "I Like Fun," and then Curt got out his euphonium. Flans said the euphonium is what they give you in band when you're too small to play the tuba, and John said euphonium isn't the real name of the instrument, it's a euphemism (a joke that made the word nerd in me happy).

So next they played "Shoehorn with Teeth," which is always a ton of fun live, and I really loved it on accordion (what, as opposed to all the songs I don't love on accordion?). Marty was playing some big bell, and Flans was trying to figure out what it was. Then, he said it wasn't what he thought it was, and he was just confused cos he was getting high from the pot people were smoking. John said it was particularly stinky pot (I'm reasonably bothered by the smell of pot just as a general rule, but I can confirm that whatever people were smoking here seemed to smell even worse than usual), and Flans said it's what they say is "the good stuff" on cop shows. Then John said something about a character played by Tony Roberts in Serpico, who's supposed to be the cool cop but isn't really. Then they were saying that their cultural references are going to be very specific now--they're only going to talk about him, Tony Robbins, Tom Robbins, and Tom Robinson.

Next they played "A Self Called Nowhere," and I know I'm writing some variation of "it was so incredibly special for me" in every single one of these reviews, but that's because it's always true. I know the first time is always going to be the most special time, just because it was the first and I'd been wanting this so intensely for such a long time, but something really great about the times I've seen it since the first couple is they've included Curt on trumpet (since he wasn't with them for the early part of the tour), and I always think he adds so much to the songs he appears on.

Next they played "How Can I Sing Like a Girl?" I saw that one on accordion a ton when they were doing it duo a lot on I think it was the Join Us tour, and it was great that way--I preferred it duo just cos my heart is now and forever all about duo stuff, but this arrangement was fantastic too.

Next they played "Istanbul," the duo version with them being really silly. During the part where Flans is saying "Take me back, please take me back," in falsetto and John's saying "Nooooo" in a really deep voice, John said "Even Tony Robbins says no" one of the times. Like the other times I've seen them do it duo on this tour, the full band came back for the crazy jam session at the end.

They played "Particle Man," then did another awesome big surprise song: "Dig My Grave"--GOD is that song fun live. (It's only just now occurring to me how many of the songs that I was happily surprised by during this run of shows are from Apollo 18, and having the thought that they would've needed to rehearse them for the Apollo 18 show they'd done the previous month, so that's probably why they were sprinklig them into the set here and there.) There were strobes during it, and afterwards Flans said they should've mentioned that there were strobes, but they'd forgotten, and John said that after there were strobes they couldn't remember anything (they'd had roughly the same exchange at the aforementioned Apollo 18 show). Flans said it was like how the kick drum gives you a heart attack, and then recessitates you, and John said Marty always has to play the kick drum an even number of times or they'll die. Flans said "Clear!" (all dramatically like they do on medical TV shows), and then said he doesn't even understand why they say that, and John said "I think that's a Scientology thing." Then Flans said maybe it's just a blessing.

They played "Wicked Little Critta" (as usual the best part about the song for me was watching the closeups of John's hands on his Kaoss Pad and keyboard that were being projected on the screen on the back of the stage--that's about the only time I actually like the screen being there, normally I just find it unpleasantly distracting), and then another big surprise song: the title track from that album. That stirred up a lot of Feelings for me, as it was the very first song they played at my very first show.

They played "I Left My Body," then Flans said that they'd someday figure out a way to do a three-night stand. He said they'd probably have to become a jam band. John said people didn't seem very enthusiastic, and Flans said they'd be drawing an entirely different crowd. John asked if people were yelling "Gross," but then he figured out that they were yelling about the Black Crowes, and Flans explained (like the day before) that there was a poster in their dressing room from a time they played five nights in a row here at the Fillmore and that the poster was "mocking" them.

Someone was yelling out for "Spider" and Flans said that they'd play it even though they're from New York, where the rule is you're not allowed to play requests. He said he'd gone to a sandwich shop where a woman asked the guy to heat up her sandwich and he said "We believe you'd prefer it cold." They actually did play it, but John looked so unenthusiastic when Flans said they were going to. But I mean he didn't really have much choice, he would've looked like a jerk if he'd refused to after Flans already said they were going to. Anyway it was an interesting version of the song, particularly since he played it on accordion (he just happened to already have it on for the following song).

The next song in question was "Subliminal," my reaction to which can be summed up by the "Oh fuck yes" that popped into my head as soon as they started playing it. As my friend Ant put it "That song is better live than it has any right to be," and it's another classic I've only seen a handful of times. I was disappointed by the lack of fake backwards singing at the end, but otherwise it was perfect.

Next they played "Let Me Tell You About My Operation" (my current fav Flansong and absolutely amazing live, so always a welcome addition to the set!). Then there were band intros and the main set wrapping up with "Doctor Worm."

The first encore started with "Spy." During the improv part (which is really what makes that song live), John was playing a sample I heard him employ at several other shows, but I'm not sure what the source is, it's just a woman singing "Now the night has gone."

Next they played "Fingertips," which I've always really loved live but I'm sorry to say I've been getting into burnout with it just recently due to overexposure. However, this particular performance did feature a notable variation: During "I Walk Along Darkened Corridors," Dan appeared up in the balcony and finished the song there! (He actually might've shown up there earlier than that, I'm not sure, but that was when I noticed him.)

The second encore started with "Ana Ng," so between that and "Everything Right is Wrong Again" the previous night I got both my tattoo songs in San Francisco. And they closed the show with "New York City."

So all in all this was a most excellent show. After my prior frustration on this trip with having no variation in the setlist between the first show and the second, it was really exciting to get so many different and exciting surprises between these two Fillmore shows.

The final and really not very exciting JL wardrobe report: the long-sleeved black shirt made another appearance.

Voice Training Through Singing

All right, so you want to sound like the girl you are, right? Well, you already do, seeing as your voice sounds like you, and you’re a girl, but most people don’t understand that. I never could find a single, comprehensive guide for vocal feminization that included a step-by-step process (though I never paid for any of those programs either, so they may be there) but I did find some that gave me important information on certain sections and stumbled through the rest myself.

By “stumbled through” I mean that I tried to do everything at once instead of one step at a time, and took a lot longer than I should have to see any results. I also nearly caused serious damage to my voice a few times, at one point losing it entirely for a day. As I’ve thought about the different aspects of what I’ve done though, I was able to easily separate them into steps that build on each other instead of throwing everything into a blender and hoping that what comes out is what you want.

I won’t be adding any before/after clips to this, for privacy reasons as well as lack of a decent sound setup at the moment, but I have been correctly gendered every time I am on the phone or going through a drive-through for the past few months, and I’ve been doing this for about a year. Most of the things I do heavily involve matching the voice of various singers, which I can do easily thanks to nearly a decade of music training. If you have trouble with this, I would recommend using headphones to start with; they make it mucheasier to tell if you are at least harmonizing well. Eventually your ear will probably get better and you can pay more attention to your voice instead of the singer’s, at which point you can quit using the headphones if you want.

You might also end up getting really good at matching voices, and that’s not even the coolest part. Do you like singing right now, and have some male artists you like to sing along with? You won’t lose that with this! All it will do will make your range increase, and eventually raise your “normal” voice in that range. Here’s a good example of the sort of thing we’re going for (I can’t hit the highest notes yet, but I can hit most!)

Step 0. Self-care – Don’t overdo it!

Before we get started, it’s important to note that going too high before you’re ready (or warmed up), or doing too much too fast can really hurt your voice. I’m trying to get into a more responsible schedule for the last bits of mine, but I tend to do most of my training in the car, which means I end up with days at a time of not doing anything beyond using my feminine speaking voice, followed by 2-3 hours in a single day of nonstop training. Needless to say, that tends to push my voice a bit harder than I like if I’m not careful.

Most people already know what it feels like when you start to lose your voice, and definitely pay attention to those symptoms, but a new one that I noticed after starting this training caught me off guard. Often the first warning sign that I’m pushing too hard is that I start coughing and feeling like I’ve got something stuck in my throat. Nothing’s actually there, but that doesn’t change the fact that the coughing happens. Just be aware of your body, and try to stop if you notice signs of strain. After all, any voice is better than none!

If you do end up pushing things a bit, hot drinks like tea or coffee can do wonders to relax everything again. My personal treatment is freshly brewed black tea with about 2 tablespoons of honey in it. It won’t make everything magically better so you can go right back to it, but it will make it so you have a voice the next day.

Another trick to help with a strained voice, though it may bother you, is to talk as low as you can. Not deep (you don’t need to try singing bass opera parts!), but low and smooth (like you’re pretending to be a guy trying to seduce someone quietly). Do that for a few minutes and it should loosen everything up again, at least enough to get back a normal speaking pitch.

Step 1. Basic Anatomy – Your Apple is your friend

Normally this section would be a boring, basic section with odd pictures that have long names of things we don’t care about. As you’ve probably guessed, I don’t care for that approach much, and I’m also very impatient. So, here’s a quick rundown of what you need to know, and at the end you’ll be able to see just a bit of progress too!

Now I know most of us don’t like our Adam’s apples (me too!), but the technical name for what it covers is the larynx, so I’m going to call it that instead. You can feel where it is, right? Touch it, then swallow. Feel how it moved? Now try doing that without swallowing. Chances are that you can’t right now, but that’s okay! Swallow again, but this time hold your larynx at the highest point, where it feels like it pulls back slightly, then let go when you need to breathe.

Doing that exercise a few times a day will get you to the point that you can move your larynx up at will, which will help out with resonance and tone later on. You may even notice a difference if you try talking with your larynx up instead of relaxed, though it’ll probably be a bit difficult at first. This part took me about two weeks to get right, but since I haven’t met anyone who’s tried the same thing I don’t know if that’s fast or slow. If you want to, feel free to send me some feedback on how long it took you (On any of the sections, for that matter)!

Step 2. The Voice – Raise the Voice, not the Pitch

Now you can move your larynx up and down. Great! But you’re only halfway through the basics right now. Go ahead and try to keep your larynx up for the rest of the training, but if you can’t don’t worry; this part can be done without that.

I’d like to point out here that, while I was trained musically, it was notin singing (I was a tuba player), so some of the terms I’m using are probably not correct in that sense. I’m going to use them anyhow though, because it makes sense to me and I’m pretty stubborn, so just roll with it.

Sing a note in the comfortable part of your range. Doesn’t matter how loud, but hold it for a bit. Feel where the vibration is? I’m going to guess that it’s right around your collarbone, at the base of your neck. That’s called “Chest Voice,” and it’s almost always a masculine thing. This next part is kinda tricky to explain, so bear with me.

Now try to picture your voice as a light or an orb or something that’s in that area. It doesn’t matter what, so long as you do it. Raise that light/orb/whatever up slowly while you hold the tone. The sound will probably shift up as you do; that’s fine. The important thing is to note the different feeling of where the vibration is. As it reaches the halfway point in your throat you might feel a sudden change. That change over is what I call the “Throat Voice” and is probably where your voice will want to go for a while during training.

Once you get past Throat Voice and visualize the light/orb/whatever entering your mouth you’re officially using “Head Voice,” a.k.a. where most women talk from. Congrats! Now go even higher, till you have to pull your larynx back almost to where it goes when you swallow. You probably sound like a really bad Mickey Mouse or chipmunk now, but that’s normal. This is the upper range of your voice, what I call the “Falsetto.” Once you’ve got the hang of moving between these (and moving your larynx up during them as well) you can move on. I think this part took me about six weeks to really get down.

Step 3. First Steps – a.k.a. Why I do this in the car

This is where we begin the real training! Quick question: Do you like My Little Pony? If so, that makes this step a lot easier. If not, then you’ll have to use “chipmunk” songs or go look up “nightcore” on Youtube and find some songs you like. Actually, I’d do that last one anyhow, especially if you find some that the originals feature a male singer.

Either way, the point of this step is to find some songs you like that force you to use that “falsetto” range you discovered last step. At first you won’t be able to do much in that range that doesn’t sound like a squeaky wheel that somehow learned to talk, but as you keep at it you’ll start to get a little more flexibility up there. Remember though, you’re not going for a “good” sound right now; you’re trying to match the song as best you can. Read more here.

My concept of a WarioWare version of “Everything You Know Is Wrong”

Got this idea after watching the latest episode of WarioWare Tooned which uses the chorus as the intro.

*music starting 13-Amp syncs up the DJ at the organ sounds. Following with 9-Volt, 18-Volt and 5-Volt when guitar music plays "I was driving on the freeway in the fast lane With a rabid wolverine in my underwear" Dribble showing his mad driving skills while Spitz keeps him in check while the "wolverine" is actually similar to Ralphie just hops in the backseat. "When suddenly a guy behind me in the backseat Popped right up and cupped his hands across my eyes" A customer they don't remember picking up mugs Spitz, hurts the "wolverine" and ties Spitz up and returns him to the assistant seat, leaving him helpless on his service and then cups Dribble's eyes. "I guessed is it Uncle Frank? or Cousin Louie? Is it Bob or Joe or Walter? Could it be Bill or Jim? or Ed Or Bernie or Steve? I probably would have kept on guessing But about that time we crashed into a truck" Dribble panics as he tries to stay concentrated on his driving, while swerving like what happens if you lose a microgame in Cruise Controls. However, he eventually crashes into an incoming truck, flinging him and Spitz out the road. "And as I'm laying bleeding there on the asphalt Finally I recognize the face of my Hibachi dealer Who takes off his prosthetic lips and tells me" As Dribble lays down with his right arm and left leg broken, bleeding with Spitz laying down next to him, dead. He gets a glimpse of who causes this disaster happens to be Mitzi the Alien. First chorus Along with scenes with the Nintendo Powers (what I nicknamed their garage band), It also features Mona speeding up to be right on time, when suddenly two Pizza Dinosaur employees set her motorcycle engine on fire with a well-aimed match, causing her motorcycle to explode and flinging her to the side-grass sideways of the highway. As she tries to limp around with one of her leg broken, a wolfish Ruffington starts chewing away her femur which happens to be chewy, because everything you know is wrong. (Don't worry, Mona isn't that affected.) "I was walking to the kitchen for some Golden Grahams When I accidentally stepped into an alternate dimension And soon I was abducted by some aliens from space who kinda looked like Jamie Farr" Features Dr. Crygor taking a midnight snack when suddenly he accidentally steps into one of his inventions and got transported to an alternate dimension and then got abducted by Shroob-like aliens while Orbulon cameos. "The sucked out my internal organs And they took some Polaroids And said I was a darn good sport " The aliens took pictures of Crygor while they dissect him. (He's still alive because this song's everything you know is wrong) and then they treated Crygor like a good sport. "And as a way of saying thank you They offered to transport me Back to any point in history that I would care to go And so I had them send me back to last Thursday night So I could pay my phone bill on time But then the floating disembodied head of Colonel Sanders started yelling " Crygor was transported back to his lab, but the impact somewhat made him unconscious. Then Penny and Mike heard the loud thud and then overreacted because they think Crygor drink something extremely poisonous that he passed out. Second chorus More scenes with the Nintendo Powers, plus Kat, Ana, Cricket, and Mantis star this segment. It was a normal moment of them battling each other until a pesky Splunk shove a boulder to a red button that drops the platform they are on and drops them into a abyss of weirdness. During their freefall, Mantis was captured by a Blargg. After Cricket, Kat, and Ana landed on the white land, they sped through the tunnel of weirdness in worry and fear until they found a little, innocent, orange turtle. However as Ana tries to pet it, the turtle transformed into a large dinosaur similar to Bowser and King Koopa from the Super Mario cartoon and it eats her which led Cricket and Kat sent scrambling away in fear from this monster as it chases after them. Music break Along with more Nintendo Powers scenes. The scene cuts to Ashley and Red pacing into the night looking for missing ingredients when a door appeared out of nowhere. Hoping it's a pathway to the missing ingredients, they both go inside. They did not foresaw this entrance being a alternate world of weirdness that they cannot even predict. *tuba sounds While they trot in the prehistoric-like area, they saw Cricket and Kat being chased by the dinosaur which they attempt to stop it only for the dinosaur to pull out a extendable hand to pull Ashley and Red inside its mouth scaring Cricket and Kat even more. Inside the dinosaur is not flesh and guts, but rather another twisted dimension. *guitar riffles After a twisted portal, they landed in an unfortunate area where people see witches and demons regardless of personality, evil is nearby. Thus, they tied up Ashley and Red to a wooden stake and set the fire to the sticks below and they both cries as they slowly burn away- or had no effect because, broken laws. *guitar strikes (5-Volt, 18-Volt) "I was just about to mail a letter to my evil twin When I got a nasty papercut" Jimmy T. planning to deliver a letter to his "evil twin" (Jimmy P.) But suddenly he got a papercut within the envelope. "And, well, to make a long story short It got infected and I died" Jimmy T. dies by the severely bleeding paper cut. "So now I'm up in heaven with St. Peter By the pearly gates And it's obvious he doesn't like The Nehru jacket that I'm wearing He tells me that they've got a dress code" Jimmy T. heads to join heaven, except "St. Peter" (recasted by the Sewer Guru) didn't accept Jimmy's red jacket due to a dress code. Jimmy looks at him with confusion. "Well, he lets me into heaven anyway But I get the room next to the noisy ice machine For all eternity And every day he runs by screaming" Jimmy was let into heaven, but he's forced to take the room next to the noisy ice machine which he's completely hurt in the ears by it due to not being his preferred dancing music while the Sewer Guru runs around hyperly in circles. Final chorus More Nintendo Powers scenes. Orbulon was floating in the sky when suddenly lightning strikes his Oinker, knocking him out from it. Atfter landing on his stomach, he was cariied by a stream of "WAAAAAs" yelled by a disembodied Wario head with lights of other WarioWare employees flickering as he streams ending with a messed-up Cricket, who got mauled by the faux dinosaur, kicking him to the stars. *another Nintendo Powers break. Orbulon went banging on bells and flippers like if he's in a pinball machine with the space between the flipper being the exits. The parody ends with the band yelling, "Everything You is Know Wrong" within the chorus, finishing the song with Orbulon falling from the ceiling right in front of them.

Voice Training Through Singing:

This one’s for the girls

All right, so you want to sound like the girl you are, right? Well, you already do, seeing as your voice sounds like you, and you’re a girl, but most people don’t understand that. I never could find a single, comprehensive guide for vocal feminization that included a step-by-step process (though I never paid for any of those programs either, so they may be there) but I did find some that gave me important information on certain sections and stumbled through the rest myself.

By “stumbled through” I mean that I tried to do everything at once instead of one step at a time, and took a lot longer than I should have to see any results. I also nearly caused serious damage to my voice a few times, at one point losing it entirely for a day. As I’ve thought about the different aspects of what I’ve done though, I was able to easily separate them into steps that build on each other instead of throwing everything into a blender and hoping that what comes out is what you want.

I won’t be adding any before/after clips to this, for privacy reasons as well as lack of a decent sound setup at the moment, but I have been correctly gendered every time I am on the phone or going through a drive-through for the past few months, and I’ve been doing this for about a year. Most of the things I do heavily involve matching the voice of various singers, which I can do easily thanks to nearly a decade of music training. If you have trouble with this, I would recommend using headphones to start with; they make it much easier to tell if you are at least harmonizing well. Eventually your ear will probably get better and you can pay more attention to your voice instead of the singer’s, at which point you can quit using the headphones if you want.

You might also end up getting really good at matching voices, and that’s not even the coolest part. Do you like singing right now, and have some male artists you like to sing along with? You won’t lose that with this! All it will do will make your range increase, and eventually raise your “normal” voice in that range. Here’s a good example of the sort of thing we’re going for (I can’t hit the highest notes yet, but I can hit most!)

  Step 0. Self-care – Don’t overdo it!

Before we get started, it’s important to note that going too high before you’re ready (or warmed up), or doing too much too fast can really hurt your voice. I’m trying to get into a more responsible schedule for the last bits of mine, but I tend to do most of my training in the car, which means I end up with days at a time of not doing anything beyond using my feminine speaking voice, followed by 2-3 hours in a single day of nonstop training. Needless to say, that tends to push my voice a bit harder than I like if I’m not careful.

Most people already know what it feels like when you start to lose your voice, and definitely pay attention to those symptoms, but a new one that I noticed after starting this training caught me off guard. Often the first warning sign that I’m pushing too hard is that I start coughing and feeling like I’ve got something stuck in my throat. Nothing’s actually there, but that doesn’t change the fact that the coughing happens. Just be aware of your body, and try to stop if you notice signs of strain. After all, any voice is better than none!

If you do end up pushing things a bit, hot drinks like tea or coffee can do wonders to relax everything again. My personal treatment is freshly brewed black tea with about 2 tablespoons of honey in it. It won’t make everything magically better so you can go right back to it, but it will make it so you have a voice the next day.

Another trick to help with a strained voice, though it may bother you, is to talk as low as you can. Not deep (you don’t need to try singing bass opera parts!), but low and smooth (like you’re pretending to be a guy trying to seduce someone quietly). Do that for a few minutes and it should loosen everything up again, at least enough to get back a normal speaking pitch.

  Step 1. Basic Anatomy – Your Apple is your friend

Normally this section would be a boring, basic section with odd pictures that have long names of things we don’t care about. As you’ve probably guessed, I don’t care for that approach much, and I’m also very impatient. So, here’s a quick rundown of what you need to know, and at the end you’ll be able to see just a bit of progress too!

Now I know most of us don’t like our Adam’s apples (me too!), but the technical name for what it covers is the larynx, so I’m going to call it that instead. You can feel where it is, right? Touch it, then swallow. Feel how it moved? Now try doing that without swallowing. Chances are that you can’t right now, but that’s okay! Swallow again, but this time hold your larynx at the highest point, where it feels like it pulls back slightly, then let go when you need to breathe.

Doing that exercise a few times a day will get you to the point that you can move your larynx up at will, which will help out with resonance and tone later on. You may even notice a difference if you try talking with your larynx up instead of relaxed, though it’ll probably be a bit difficult at first. This part took me about two weeks to get right, but since I haven’t met anyone who’s tried the same thing I don’t know if that’s fast or slow. If you want to, feel free to send me some feedback on how long it took you (On any of the sections, for that matter)!

  Step 2. The Voice – Raise the Voice, not the Pitch

Now you can move your larynx up and down. Great! But you’re only halfway through the basics right now. Go ahead and try to keep your larynx up for the rest of the training, but if you can’t don’t worry; this part can be done without that.

I’d like to point out here that, while I was trained musically, it was not in singing (I was a tuba player), so some of the terms I’m using are probably not correct in that sense. I’m going to use them anyhow though, because it makes sense to me and I’m pretty stubborn, so just roll with it.

Sing a note in the comfortable part of your range. Doesn’t matter how loud, but hold it for a bit. Feel where the vibration is? I’m going to guess that it’s right around your collarbone, at the base of your neck. That’s called “Chest Voice,” and it’s almost always a masculine thing. This next part is kinda tricky to explain, so bear with me.

Now try to picture your voice as a light or an orb or something that’s in that area. It doesn’t matter what, so long as you do it. Raise that light/orb/whatever up slowly while you hold the tone. The sound will probably shift up as you do; that’s fine. The important thing is to note the different feeling of where the vibration is. As it reaches the halfway point in your throat you might feel a sudden change. That change over is what I call the “Throat Voice” and is probably where your voice will want to go for a while during training.

Once you get past Throat Voice and visualize the light/orb/whatever entering your mouth you’re officially using “Head Voice,” a.k.a. where most women talk from. Congrats! Now go even higher, till you have to pull your larynx back almost to where it goes when you swallow. You probably sound like a really bad Mickey Mouse or chipmunk now, but that’s normal. This is the upper range of your voice, what I call the “Falsetto.” Once you’ve got the hang of moving between these (and moving your larynx up during them as well) you can move on. I think this part took me about six weeks to really get down.

  Step 3. First Steps – a.k.a. Why I do this in the car

This is where we begin the real training! Quick question: Do you like My Little Pony? If so, that makes this step a lot easier. If not, then you’ll have to use “chipmunk” songs or go look up “nightcore” on Youtube and find some songs you like. Actually, I’d do that last one anyhow, especially if you find some that the originals feature a male singer.

Either way, the point of this step is to find some songs you like that force you to use that “falsetto” range you discovered last step. At first you won’t be able to do much in that range that doesn’t sound like a squeaky wheel that somehow learned to talk, but as you keep at it you’ll start to get a little more flexibility up there. Remember though, you’re not going for a “good” sound right now; you’re trying to match the song as best you can.

There really isn’t too much else to this step. You just have to keep at it till you are able to match the songs, or at the very least are able to move around the range without sounding like a Disney character anymore.  I use songs from MLP and some nightcore songs as well for this, in particular any songs that have multiple singers to maximize the flexibility and control (yup, I’m still working on this part a bit, but I reached what I’m saying here in about two months). Once you are happy, onto the next step!

  Step 4. Pitch – Removing the Turtle Shell

You know that part in the original Dragon Ball anime where Master Roshi had Goku doing a bunch of weird tasks while wearing that really heavy turtle shell? Then he got to take it off at the tournament, only to find he’d gotten a ton faster and stronger without noticing it? Yeah, that’s kinda what the last step was for us, and now it’s time to see the results! Unless you’ve been skipping ahead (can’t judge here!) this will be the first step where a real, usable feminine voice starts to take shape. Excited yet? I hope so, because this is also the second longest step, and the one with the least guidance.

All you need to do in this step is find songs that aren’t in the “falsetto” range and learn to match them while using Head Voice. As you start singing, you may notice that you revert to Chest Voice, or that your larynx drops again, or any number of things. One positive thing you should notice, however, is that you are much better at being aware of how your throat and larynx feel as you speak and sing, which translates to being better at imitating a singer. It really comes down to trial and error at this point.

One recommendation I would have is start with Queen songs, then move into your chosen artists. Queen’s songs are pitched perfectly as a jumping off point for raising said pitch, as most are right where the masculine and feminine ranges overlap, without worrying too much about tone or resonance. Those can come a bit later, especially resonance (which gets its own step later). Disney songs are another excellent choice, though you have to be careful at first. The male parts also make for a good vocal warm-up, to help avoid straining anything.

As for other artists with women singers that work well for beginners, go for someone with a “husky” voice. My personal starting band (after Queen) was Blackmore’s Night, and I moved into LeAnn Rimes, Trick Pony, and a few video game songs once I got more advanced (If you are curious, I recently moved into singing a few Jordin Sparks and P!nk songs, as well as only having a little trouble with some of the more famous Disney songs like “Part of Your World” and “A Whole New World”).

One thing to watch out for here, especially as you start moving into higher pitches and approach the alto range, is a tightness or fatigue in your jaw after singing. That comes from using your jaw muscles to force control over a pitch above your current non-falsetto range, and that can actually hold you back considerably.

I looked this up after hitting a plateau for nearly two months and found a singing coach that referred to the fix as “lazy jaw.” Basically you should be able to hold a note while moving your head around (even if it is slowly) or moving your jaw with a hand. Once you work that in your tone will improve as well, so double win!

Once you start to get the raw pitch down you’ll probably notice that there’s still something different between yourself and the singer, which is where the next part comes in. There isn’t really a point where you are “done” with this step, but I reached a decent point in around six months with the original songs.

  Step 5. Resonance – Why a Choker Can Actually Help

I don’t wear a choker, mainly because I can’t find any that are affordable and fit me, but the title does not lie. This step is all about the little shifts in vibration and position of the larynx that I, at least, couldn’t feel without something touching it constantly, hence why a choker would help. I just use a free hand and lightly touch just above and below the larynx occasionally.

This part is a little iffy, and I’m still working on the fine-tuning of my own voice, so the guide might go a different way than your voice wants to. I would strongly recommend recording your voice every now and again during this step, or possibly getting someone’s advice, especially if you have trouble recognizing perfect harmony while singing (for me that’s where I can’t hear any difference at all between the singer and my voice). I can offer a few pointers though.

First, you should have enough control of your larynx by now to have some sense of how far “forward” or “back” your voice is as well as the “up” and “down” of Chest/Throat/Head. If you want to sound airy or breathy, then move your voice “forward” and “up.” If you want to sound husky of earthy, “Back” and slightly “down” are the directions to go. Don’t forget that where your larynx and voice are will affect your pitch a bit, but with practice you can go lower in pitch while still maintaining Head Voice.

Second, try to only vibrate half of your throat. Sounds confusing, I know, but the most feminine voice I can use right now only vibrates below my larynx, not above. I have heard other people discussing the exact opposite, but I do know that masculine voices use both above and below, so as long as half is still I think it’ll be fine. Just use your ears (or a friend’s!) to figure out which one works for you, and try not to stress too much about it. I still have issues with this a lot on certain songs and artists, and I’ve been working on this step for 8 months now. Remember, your goal isn’t actually to be a perfect singer (at least, not for this guide), it’s to develop a feminine speaking voice.

Third, add some heart! I know it sounds corny and cliché, but if you can feel the singer’s emotions and add that to your singing it can make a lot of this automatic. Masculine resonance mainly uses volume for emphasis, but feminine resonance tends to use pitch and emotional emphasis instead. There is a big difference, even if it doesn’t make sense at first why.

Lastly, if you are still using headphones or earbuds, take advantage of that to really match the singer! If you think you are close, but it sounds really bad and wavy, that actually means you’re really close (within a half-step, to use proper music terminology) so keep moving up and down to get it. Very few things are as satisfying as singing in perfect harmony with a feminine singer for the first time.

  Ending – You’re Still Here?

As I mentioned in the last step, this is about as far as I’ve gotten in my own training, so I can’t share anymore tips. Basically you take all the skills and awareness you got learning to sing (which is its own useful skill, I might add) and apply them to your normal speaking voice as well. In my case the pitch of my voice started raising without me even thinking about it, so I only had to train myself to automatically use the correct resonance and Head Voice before I had a convincing, feminine voice.

The only other thing I have done that is not in the steps above is try to sing parts of the Broadway musical Wicked to improve my volume in my voice, but all that seems to have done so far is shred my voice whenever I try. I can’t say I recommend that, and if you follow the steps above instead of trying to do it all at once like I did you may not even need it!

Once again I would like to mention that this guide is based on my own experiments and trial and error, so Your Mileage May Vary is definitely applicable here. Feel free to contact me @twilightdreamersmith on Tumblr if you need something clarified, or if you have any suggestions as to something I missed.

Happy training!

"Be awesome"; 16-year-old with terminal diagnosis looks to inspire others to live life to its fullest CLARKSVILLE, TN (WSMV) – Never get in the way of your potential. A 16-year-old is sharing those words. He hopes his story will inspire us all to make the most of the time we have. At 16, Dylan Lawrence of Clarksville has a truth he wants to say. “Everyone has the potential to be something awesome,” he said. It’s why Dylan’s learned to play so many things. “Tuba, piano, guitar, bass guitar, ukelele, that’s five,” he smiled. “Why stop at one?” His dad and stepmom said this is just who Dylan’s always been. “He just sees something and goes, ‘I bet I could do that and then he does it,'” said Dylan’s father, also named Dylan Lawrence. “He’s like a sea turtle, y’know?” said Susan Lawrence, Dylan’s stepmother. “You put him in the water, and he goes.” “Sea turtles, those are my thing,” said Dylan. The way Dylan had it pictured, he’d study hard, learn even more about sea turtles, and become a marine veterinarian. Dylan’s story has led him somewhere he didn’t picture. “It’s a diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, which is a brain tumor, back of my brain,” said Dylan. Dylan began radiation treatments at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, but the kid ready to learn everything was given a terminal diagnosis. “I have six to eight months left before my symptoms start coming back,” he said. “Just a few days after his diagnosis, he was crying and said, ‘I don’t want my life to be pointless,'” said Susan. “It won’t be. With every breath in our body, his life will not be pointless.” True to Dylan’s words, so many are proving they can be awesome. Infinite Ink in Hopkinsville just got Dylan, his dad, and stepmom matching tattoos, sea turtles. Monell’s at the Manor donated a huge Christmas dinner. A GoFundMe page is raising money to send Dylan to places he always wanted to go, including Hawaii later this week. “I’m going to see so many sea turtles in Hawaii,” he smiled. Monday, on Dylan’s last day of radiation, came a surprise. Members of the Metro Nashville Police Department lined the street as Dylan’s family drove by. “It’s a reminder that people are good,” said Dylan, referring to all the things people have done for him. “Some people are incredible. If you can see me and use me as a lesson to better yourself, then good. I’m gonna live my life, live it to the fullest. Not gonna waste a second. Y’all make me feel so loved and grateful. Thank you for being so awesome.” To make a donation to his GoFundMe, click here. To follow Dylan’s story, click here. WSMV.com is now with you on the go! Get the latest news updates and video, 4WARN weather forecast, weather radar, special investigative reports, sports headlines and much more from News4 Nashville. >> Click/tap here to download our free mobile app. 

Jessica At DragWorld UK

If you’ve been paying attention over the last few weeks (or if you’ve been on my Instagram at practically any point yesterday) you would have known that I went to DragWorld UK yesterday. Needless to say I had a blast, but I want people to have a more in-depth view on why I enjoyed it and why I would recommend it for any crossdressers or trans people who are looking to build confidence in themselves.

Let’s go through this picture by picture then.

The Journey.

This was the first picture of the day, the train ride up to London. This was, by far, the most nerve-wracking experience I have ever had. I’ve been out as Jessica before but only during the evening/night time; going out during daylight hours meant I was a much easier giveaway as a guy in a dress and wig.

Fortunately there was no trouble, and I had my friends around me if there was, but there are a few things we did to make the trip as easy as possible:

1. Plan a route, then plan a backup route.

Obviously you need to know where you’re going and how to get there, but it’s important to have a fallback plan too. This way if your original route doesn’t work you know exactly what to do, rather than standing around wondering what to do while also trying to hide from prying eyes.

2. Wear sunglasses.

I wanted those sunglasses because I thought I looked good in them, but they helped so much with travelling too. Hiding your eyes makes you more difficult to recognise, so it doesn’t matter if people know you’re a bloke in a wig since they can’t tell who you are.

It also means you can look around without people knowing, which is really handy for the next point.

3. Don’t go looking for trouble.

I’ve mentioned this before but it’s worth repeating: people will notice, people will stare. I am by no means flawless; my voice has the pitch and subtlety of a tuba and I’m constantly forgetting to keep my legs closed like most other women do when wearing skirts.

People knew, most people stared, some people talked and a couple even asked me. Apart from the couple that approached me (they were really nice by the way) I completely ignored the rest. The sunglasses meant I was aware of them but I didn’t need to react, just to keep an eye on them.

Reacting to stares and comments would have only made the situation worse and, at the end of the day, their meaningless glares and whispers made no difference to me.

4. If possible, travel at ungodly hours.

My friends were complaining most of the morning that we had to leave at 6 in the morning, but they completely understood why. Travelling earlier meant that fewer people were awake and on the trains, meaning it was significantly less likely for anyone to start anything.

Like I said, there were glares and whispers, but no-one could really be bothered to do anything about it that early in the morning.

Arriving At DragWorld.

Sorry about the grumpy face here; I’m not the biggest fan of queuing. 

I’ll be honest, when we arrived I was quite disappointed on the lack of men in drag on arrival. I think in total I saw 3, maybe 4 while we were queuing to get in; obviously this is no fault of the convention producers, just something I thought I’d comment on.

The best thing, however, was that by this point any confidence issues I had while travelling had completely disappeared. The sunglasses were off, the heels were on and the conversations began.

There was not a single bad vibe in the entire building, and no one had a problem with throwing around compliments on anything they could (my heels were popular, JustFab better send me some commission for the amount of advertising I did for them in that queue).

There’s not much else to say at this point; I mean, it’s queuing... not exactly exciting content to comment on.

Finally We’re Fucking Inside.

Ok in all honesty the queue wasn’t that long, I just really don’t like waiting.

The first thing we did was run straight to the DragWorld sign for a group picture, and it is by far my favourite picture from the convention (despite the fact that standing amongst 3 beautiful women only emphasises the fact that I’m simply a falsely-glorified crossdresser).

The muscle-definition on those legs though... If the magazine fails I’ll just model socks instead.

Inside was genuinely overwhelming. Despite having all day I felt like there was so much to do without much time to do it. Makeup shops, wig stand, drag queens... it was hard to know where to start and what I wanted to do the most.

At this point I should give some kind of recommendation on what to do, but to be perfectly honest I wouldn’t know what to say! I spent about half an hour just gushing followed by another half an hour making sure my makeup was perfect (I’m a vain creature leave me alone).

The only advice I can give is to take it easy. It was extremely easy to get overwhelmed by everything and want to visit it all NOW. It’s all going to be there all day, just take your time and make your way through one stall at a time. You don’t need to rush anything.

Holy Shit Everyone Here Is So Nice What’s The Catch?

Fuck me I am the definition of glamour and class...

I’m gonna be down to earth here. I’ve worked on conferences and conventions before (both as a volunteer and for a full time job) and I can easily say this was the friendliest and most welcoming audience I’ve ever experienced.

Everyone only had nice things to say about each other, even when in disagreement. I saw two people debating over the best winner of Ru Paul’s Drag Race and it was a genuine debate, not a heated argument.

Every single person I spoke to only had nice things to say about my look. Even when I forced them to give some kind of critique or something for me to work on (believe me, it was difficult to get people to say something negative) everything was said in a constructive manner and was still backed up by some kind of compliment.

I met a lot of people; men, women, queens, kings, and everything in between. I’m so glad I got to make new friends and even got to meet someone who, for some unknown reason, was a fan of this blog (if you’re reading this; hi there! hope you ended up getting Katya’s autograph).

I know this is obvious, but I still want to mention it for the more cautious reader. By this point, there was not a single confidence issue in the entire building. Some people were outspoken and others were more shy, but not a single person was felt uncomfortable about their appearance. I think that’s extremely important and certainly something I would’ve loved to have known 7 years ago when I started this blog.

Some Last Advice.

I could go on all day about my time at DragWorld, but I’ve got an appointment with my bed and it’s not good practice to kill your audience through boredom.

I’m going to be uploading a photodump of the remaining pictures from DragWorld at some point during the coming week, but I just want to leave you Queens with some final advice on what I’d recommend at conventions like this:

1. Get involved.

There was a fair amount to do at DragWorld, and I went for as much as I could. Dress up booths (the hat above is unfortunately not mine), makeup stands, even meeting other Queens; there was so much to do and it was all worth doing.

I’m not telling people to jump out of their comfort zone (they had lip-synch battles and there was no way I’d be joining in on that), but try to push yourself. I’m not an overly charismatic person (shocker I know) but simply talking to other guests was such an enriching experience.

2. Don’t Worry Too Much About Your Appearance.

When I first saw another Queen in the queue my first thoughts were something along the lines of “holy shit they look amazing/why did I leave the house this morning looking like a bin bag smeared with lipstick?”

There were plenty of Queens who looked so polished; some where working the convention and some were guests. I could’ve spent the entire day worrying about how I didn’t look as good, or I could just enjoy myself (I took the latter).

The second I stopped mucking around with my makeup was the second I started to actually enjoy myself. By the end of the day I had completely forgotten I even had makeup on and didn’t top my lipstick up until I accidentally left a mark on some poor guy’s face (sorry about that!)

3. Bring Flats Holy Blistering Fuck Bring Flats.

I like to think I’m a strong-willed Queen with a high pain threshold (I’m not, but I’ll go on pretending), but I am so glad I bought flats with me.

I managed to last half the day in heels, but by 1pm(ish) my feet were ready to fall off and I was walking like I was trying to avoid dog shit in the park. Needless to say it was not a glamorous look.

After switching into flats the walking became a lot easier to handle, and I got just as many compliments on my flats as I did on my heels. No one really cared that I had switched, and anyone I spoke to about it completely agreed.

Well... I did say I could spend all day talking about DragWorld. I’ve got so much more to talk about however I need to save some material for the magazine.

By the way, the magazine now has a site and I’m aiming to go live in September! I’ll announce on both this blog and my Instagram when the first issue is out, or you could subscribe now and get an email notification instead.

Just a heads-up though: I’m paying for this magazine out of my own pocket and I need it to be self-sustaining through subscriptions to justify keeping up. If I can’t see that happening after the first month I may have to take it down, possibly for good.

If you’re looking to do me a favour, subscribe sooner rather than later and don’t leave it to others. I’ve made the magazine quite cheap (especially in comparison to other magazines) and it’s already lined up with tonnes of content from myself and other fabulous crossdressers.

Thanks for reading this beast of a post. Like always if you have any questions please send them my way, and make sure to follow me on Instagram if you haven’t already!

- Jessica Blaise x x

Whenever anyone begins a statement with “Everybody thinks you . . .” they are automatically wrong.

oct 28

Hey Mr. Moses. what would you like to talk about?

Tell me all about the first hallowmas. Why did you decide back in 97 that W/Inferno F.S. needed a halloween show and how did you go about preparing?

In a very real way Inferno had been celebrating Hallowmas long before we were making music. Back in Jersey we were a mischief gang long before our musical ambitions usurped the name. Some members were not so pleased about the decision. “just keep using Sticks and Stones! Who cares who’s in the band?” but i thought it was time for a radical break and there were so many bands called Sticks and Stones. And a lot of the gang members could play something, the one’s who couldn’t we gave a drum. So instead of having a private bacchanal we had a public one. Worked out. Amedeo Modigliani comes to mind for some reason.

Where was it held, who played? What was the turnout like? Any surprise guests?

It was at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, New Jersey. Which is funny as the booker there really didn’t like Sticks and Stones but I had changed my name and band so i don’t think he cared enough to care (there are knowns and known unknowns). what was his name? oh, Todd Abramson! I used to call him every other day in SAS to get a gig! He finally gave in and gave us a Thursday night. In an eerily similar story to the Florida/Gwar story I told the other night, Todd called a couple days before the show and said “The Hoodoo Gurus are playing Thursday” and I said “Oh cool, i’d love to play with the Hoodoo Gurus! ‘mars needs guitars!’” to which he replied “No, you don’t understand. The Hoodoo Gurus are playing. You’re not.” and hung up. I had to tell this to the band who of course blamed me and not The Hoodoo Gurus.

Decades later I told this story doing the acoustic thing in support of Kevin Second’s acoustic thing at Maxwell’s and was promptly told I was banned from Maxwell’s again. Oh no, not the briar patch.

What was the turnout like?

We’d only been playing out a few months but we did have 3 or four singles out so it was well attended. The Village Voice listed it which I remember being impressed by. Too bad they are stopping production huh?

Any surprise guests?

Charles Maggio from Rorshack showed up. I think Jon Hiltz from Born Against was doing our sound. Lamar Vannoy from being Lamar Vannoy was there. Scott and I hadn’t seen him for a while. Oh, and my sister was there! I’ll see if I can dig up a picture.

Might you know the set list?

Oh, I can’t remember. It must have been the singles and Astral League. I do remember that background singer Kika Von Kluck had been away for awhile and wasn’t prepared for the ‘Choreographed’ slam dancing on stage during “Lust For Timing” . She is a tiny little thing and got flung up into the air! She was very angry.

Did you get paid? If so how much?

I never deal with the money. Filthy, filthy stuff.

What were the big milestones w/if's had passed heading toward hollowmas 1?

Well, I’m not sure people remember (or care) that we were a recording project before we were a live act and that we put the live band together while doing The Bridgewater Astral League record which i don’t think was out yet so we were very new at it. Oh, we built a recording studio and gentrified Williamsburg while recording every crusty punk band on the Lower East Side. That took awhile.

Where do you feel like the band was as a unit?

A bunch of loonies who hung out at Sweetwater Tavern on N.6th when they weren’t hanging out in a giant garage on Keap Street. I know the word “cult” gets thrown around a lot but I think “community” is more appropriate. We are very tight.

Did anyone stick out as particularly nervous?

No, we were all lit. I think it was the first time my eyes started to bleed. I also remember that our Euphonium player Sandra Oglethorpe wore a nurse’s uniform and afterwards she wore it for every gig. Thought it odd but never said anything.

a Euphonium  is a valved brass musical instrument resembling a small tuba of tenor pitch, played mainly in military and brass bands in case you were wondering. She also played the Tuba when Xtal wasn’t around.

Why does Inferno go all out on Halloween?

It is our holiday, It is the way we mark time, it is the holiday unmarked by a patriarchal tyrant and if you ask people for candy they give it to you. a gift!

If you don't mind just apply all these questions to this year and that should be enough and if it isn't ill send over a few more. I just want to do a sort of cheeky compare and contrast of hallowmas 1 and hallowmas 20.

Ha, as i was just saying to our manager Mr. Cashman; things have always been this crazy and i don’t expect it to ever be any different.

Also, does any part of you miss the point when it wasn't such a big deal and it was a little more DIY?

It is still very DIY. I’m over at Warsaw twice a week checking out the projections, up all night writing Hallowmissives and filling out postcards and in clubs every weekend ducking and a weaving your shot glasses. Like life this job does not get any easier, just different.

by all means if you have anything else to ask-

Jack Terricloth

Green point, Brooklyn

10/28/17

earlier than i am usually up-

https://youtu.be/fWIX43WjxaA

http://smarturl.it/hallowmas

I know that modern aus are cliche, but hear me out: -Dustin's snapchat being almost all face swaps (with pictures of celebrities and with the others) and A+ zoomed in videos of Mike doing regular things like look through drawers that look ridiculous zoomed in really slowly, and Will's is funny photos of signs and the sky and Mike and sometimes motivations bc look at him. He lives motivating people w Dustin you can see it in him -This isn't really modern perse but. Holly being OBSESSED with sailor moon and Mike watching it with her??? And El and Will teasing him about it and calling him Tuxedo Mask?????? Yes please -Mr. Clarke is super fond of the kids because even though the Internet could easily help them they still ask him -Everyone calling Mike "dat boi" and whenever they take a bad picture of them and he says not to use it, just putting the frog emoji on his face -Additionally, when Mike gets irritated and fights w someone in their groupchat the rest of the kids just send frog emojis to spam him -Mike's name in Lucas's phone is literally just 'living frog emoji'. It's such a running gag because Troy used it so much it basically became a meme bc it was so cliche it wasn't even hurtful anymore. Mike is just a frog now -They don't have AV clubs at school really anymore, so them being theatre techs??? I know that's not rlly modern but it's a solution -Mike gets really tired of the harambe memes Dustin always finds a way to make and telling him to "let them die like the gorilla did" and everyone cracks up -Will's Instagram feed is more lit than all of other kids put together -SERIOUSLY this kid is an aesthetic mastermind with all his cute selfies and art and doodles?? -Jonathan's Instagram feed is equally as bomb bc his photography is so rad. He gets a job bc it's so good like yowza -Els Instagram is mostly iconic creep shots of the boys and ADORABLE selfies that make Mike like ✨✨✨ inside -This ones less serious but MIKE "it's not a phase" WHEELER IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE -Firstly, my beautiful bi child, secondly, EMO MIKE WHEELER SLDDNFLS -Lucas not letting himself be defined by modern expectations of black youth and being suuuuper cool and vocal -He will Call Anyone Out. He will call you out. Your family out. His friends out. If he needed to he would call himself out he's awesome -Don't tell me his Twitter name isn't 'black lives matter' every February BC it is. The rest of the time it's lucaslucaslucas bc of frickin Mike Wheeler -Lucas is also a tuba player. Don't fight me on this he plays tuba -AND he's in marching band bc just imagine him in a marching band uniform -It's cute isn't it. You know it's cute -Mike and Will are choir kids and Lucas and Dustin tease them relentlessly about it bc they're both sopranos and it's hilarious -El and Dustin take woodshop together and make ridiculous statues that clog up the Wheeler basement for some reason -Max is a staunch anti-terf feminist and her and Lucas team up as the Dynamic Duo to call everyone out on their shite -It's very fun to watch bc they don't hold back. They will rip you to shreds they are woke little kids from all their experiences okay -El always gets called a boy and whatever else because even though this is 2017, for some reason that's okay??? She's fine though it doesn't bother her -The groupchat between the boys and El is called either "campaign chat" (it was originally made to plan d&d and now it's memes or "don't talk it's sleeping time" bc the only time it's active is at night, when the kids aren't together -Mike and Will have broken the 10 hour FaceTime limit before, when Will was sick and Mike was ""sick"" and they face timed for literally that entire time, just giggling and talking -All the boys, meaning well, congratulated Will when gay marriage was legalized in the states. Will was very confused by this and said "you know I can't get married right now right?" (Tags blogs I thought would like this @elevenknope, @dadharbour, @promiseleven, @finnxwheeler, and @worldupsidedown)

Victims of Turkey's 'postmodern' coup seek justice

Twenty years later and the victims of Turkey’s “postmodern” coup are still seeking justice for the impact the military’s measures had on their lives.

The army’s declaration on Feb. 28, 1997, when the coalition led by then Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan’s Welfare Party was presented with an ultimatum that led to the collapse of the government, targeted what the generals viewed as overtly religious policies.

It led to a situation that had wide-ranging repercussions across Turkish society, especially for women who choose to wear the headscarf.

Kubra Y. was a 23-year-old law student at Istanbul University when Erbakan’s reforms -- which had allowed thousands of head-scarfed women to attend university for the first time -- were reversed.

Kubra, who asked for her surname not to be published, told Anadolu Agency how she was forced out of education and saw her promising career put on hold until 2011, when the Justice and Development (AK) Party ended the ban on headscarves in universities.

“We are a lost generation with our hopes and dreams stolen,” she said. “I had always wanted to study law as I believed I could help establish the justice that society needed. It was my biggest dream.”

The block on her academic career was a serious blow for a young woman from Istanbul whose poor family had struggled to send her to university.

“Words cannot describe the happiness of a poor teenager who achieved getting into university,” she said.

“And words cannot describe the injustice, humiliation and despair of a university student who was thrown out of classes because of her beliefs.”

Even before the military’s intervention against the Welfare Party’s Islam-inspired policies, Kubra said she had fought during her education against “those who were getting more disturbed each day as the number of educated Muslim youth increased”.

A series of diktats from the military-dominated National Security Council were aimed at forming a more secular government led by Erbakan’s coalition partner Tansu Ciller, of the center-right True Path Party.

Enemies of religion

However, President Suleyman Demirel asked Mesut Yilmaz, leader of the Motherland Party, to form a new government.

This new administration set about enforcing the council’s orders.

Private schools or foundations with suspected links to religious or conservative groups were shut down and the roles of openly religious people in public institutions and life -- whether it be politics, universities, the civil service, judiciary or military -- were restricted.

The ban on the headscarf was the most obvious manifestation of these policies and was the issue around which protest formed.

Across Turkey, demonstrations led to violence as the police used batons and tear gas to quell the outrage of pious crowds.

“I was actively involved in most of these protests and projects to stand against the tyrants,” Kubra told Anadolu Agency.

Istanbul University’s campus in Beyazit Square was the scene of many clashes with the police over the years. “First, we were accused of holding illegal protests and later they called us terrorists,” Kubra said.

“I suspect that the police officers sent to stop us were specifically chosen from among the enemies of religion. They did not care what we were fighting for -- they treated us so cruelly.”

Kubra, now a mother of three, described how her headscarf was burned at one demonstration and how another time she was hospitalized after being beaten by police.

“The most difficult thing in life is to fight such a mentality of hatred,” she said.

Persuasion rooms

Tuba K. was another of the thousands of young women whose dreams of a career were interrupted by the coup.

Now aged 42 and teaching at a private school in the central province of Konya, she graduated from university eight years late because of her refusal to remove her headscarf.

“It was such a humiliating moment,” she said of the time she was banned from final year classes at the geography teaching department of Selcuk University in Konya.

“We were asked to submit new photos showing us uncovered during final year registration in 1998,” she told Anadolu Agency. “Some friends found female photographers, while others photoshopped their pictures to make themselves look bareheaded.

“But the problems were just beginning. One day, a lecturer came in and asked all the covered students to leave the classroom. He, however, promised that he would not record us as absent. And he was the most tolerant one.

“All the other lecturers just took the minutes which would inform the administration that we were not obeying the rules.”

Official warnings were followed by reprimands, which later turned into weekly and monthly suspensions from the university, Tuba said.

“You do not have another option -- you will either take off your headscarves or we will interrupt your education,” she quoted lecturers as telling covered students.

Those who refused to abandon their religion and remove their headscarves were forced to attend “persuasion rooms” as the authorities attempted to break their resistance.

“They were all afraid for their own careers,” she said of the teachers who tried to enforce the ban.

Careers on hold

As in Istanbul and other cities, police were soon a regular sight on campus and officers were ordered to prevent covered students from entering university buildings.

“After a month-long suspension from school, I went to see what my friends like me were doing,” Tuba said. “To my surprise, I saw that most of them were taking off their headscarves at the entrance to the campus and others were wearing wigs.

“Police were shouting to them to be quick and treating them in an inhuman way. What a horrible and shameful situation this was?”

Tuba dropped out of university until 2005, when parliament passed a law allowing those who had been excluded from university to return to their studies -- although she still had to remove her headscarf.

However, she remained unable to pursue a teaching career until 2013, when the ban on headscarves in public institutions was lifted.

Like many other women whose careers were put on hold, Tuba now wants some form of restitution for those charged with offenses such as terrorism or making religious propaganda during the post-1997 period.

For women like her and Kubra, there have been lesser but still perceivable injustices.

Because of the delay in her law studies, Kubra is now too old to start a career as a judge while Tuba had to pass the KPSS public service exam before taking up teaching -- something she would not have had to do if she had graduated earlier.

However, they take consolation in the fact that even women in the armed forces are free to wear the headscarf now.

It was not just covered women who fell victim to the crackdown on religion.

Tragic period

Yasar Degirmenci was heading an investigations unit in the Directorate of National Education’s office in Eyup, Istanbul, when he was sacked in 1998 over his “sympathy for covered students and teachers”.

At the time, nearly 15,000 teachers were suspended, discharged or forced to resign. Degirmenci’s opposition to such action marked him out for dismissal.

“I did nothing against the law,” he told Anadolu Agency. “It was my ideology and [my] legitimate fight against the headscarf ban that got me dismissed.”

He was eventually reinstated years later. “It was such a tragic period in Turkey from every point of view,” Degirmenci said.

He said none of the politicians, generals, judges and journalists from the late 1990s media “have yet accounted for what they did back in those days”.

Outside of education, pious Muslims in the armed forces also bore the brunt of the measures.

Officers whose mothers wore the headscarf or whose fathers were bearded were unable to invite their parents to their own weddings and hundreds of others were dismissed from service.

Degirmenci also criticized the “so-called religious people” who failed to stand against the generals’ injustice. “Muslims failed the test as they were concerned about their own futures and interests,” he said. “February 28 destroyed the nation's structure and its values.”

Kubra also warned against complacency, which could allow similar oppression to return.

“Never become listless,” she told Anadolu Agency. “There will always be tyrants.”

source

2012

In winter my cravings surprise me. Wanting to be fucked by angry muscular men; wanting to eat things that bleed when you poke them with a fork. My skin is bad from the lack of sunshine and I have this terrible haircut that makes me feel like a 12 year old boy with a name like Pete or Philip; a tuba-playing, hot-pocket-eating little brother from 80s movie hell. But people stare straight into my eyes as I pass them on the street. I'm pretty, despite purposeful damage. My value has yet to decline.

It’s winter and I drink constantly in an evenly-paced trickle throughout the day, as if from an IV. I pose naked for art students and my upper back is decorated with self-inflicted scratch marks. I dislike the art students as a whole, though some of them seem all right individually maybe. I always feel like they’re going to say snide remarks about me to each other later. Anyway I stand around naked in front of them in a cold room for hours, several days a week.

One night I end up having a drink with, and then going home with, one of the squarest-seeming art students. I don’t like it and I don’t like him. But we meet three times, and I always want to cry afterwards for inexplicable reasons. He says things like “why do you wear such uncomfortable shoes?" as if my rather sensible flat mary jane shoes are evidence that I've tarted myself up just for him. He rents a room in a Victorian mansion, and his room is pristine and childlike, the focal point being a twee collage made out of differently-sized buttons. He is maybe 3 years younger than me and flippantly handsome. He always wears a catholic medallion, but I never bother to notice which saint is watching over him when he cums on my face.

He makes repetitive statements about how much I love his cock. It is a struggle to keep from pulling back mid-gag and telling him that nothing about it is special; that I’m just kind of a slut. Worse than a slut: lonely. He says most girls don’t like sucking him off because it’s just too big. If I liked him as a person, this might be an okay thing to say, but I feel a swelling, disproportionate hatred towards him. He refuses to hit me when I ask. Like all the young men I've known, he doesn’t seem to have any fantasies that he is able to verbalize. I try to self-immolate on his cock and his ego, glistening and wholesome and not yet bruised by the world, so basically useless to me. Then I go home and drink some more.

I am as bad as all of them, I think. Complicit. Terrible. Worse. I’ll stop soon.

I imagine myself as an old woman living alone, inviting strangers into my sad little home just to show them pictures of what I look like at 24. "I was beautiful," I'll insist, as they try to back away like they're in the witch's cottage from hansel and gretel.

A married man who works for the government pays me for my company. We have the kind of bantering camaraderie that exists in sitcoms about polar opposite types of people. The dynamic is poisonous in this case, but I don't hate it, even though we once had an argument about rape that resulted in me crying and him saying “You could really use a class in rhetoric”.

I consider him my friend. He is definitely my enemy, though, and probably yours. I like it when he calls me his mistress. He encourages me to do slutty things with other people in between our visits. He sends me surprise gifts of lingerie and sex toys that I don't use. Asks me to pick out anything from a website called discount-stripper dot com and I send him agent provocateur links instead. He takes me to the same depressing strip club on numerous occasions, where I once discussed Seasonal Affective Disorder with one of the strippers for a really long time and then she asked me where I bought my stockings.

This man’s wife is regularly away for long intervals and I visit him.

I wander around the house wearing my leopard coat inside-out, feeling the fake fur against my skin. I'm otherwise naked except for thigh high socks and a pendant on a chain: two clamshells plated in silver, hinged together to form a locket, full of pills. The man has stocked his refrigerator with diet coke and those “girly” vodka drinks that frat boys force each other to drink as a humiliating hazing ritual. He has supplied various weird foods that adhere to my dietary eccentricities, and I think about how nice he can be, kind of… He’s told me that he is a better person because of me. That he is more respectful of women now, and more hesitant to make racist jokes. Well gosh, I am a regular ambassador of social justice, I think.

One time I tell him that I am ready to die, that I tried and failed before but I'm always ready and will likely try again, when the time feels right. He pets my head and tells me he's here for me. But later when I'm handcuffed and he's inside me, he snarls in my ear that he wants to break my spine, he wants to hunt me like a deer and dismember me in the basement.

He leaves me alone in his large house full of wedding pictures and loaded weapons. There's a bear skin rug that he shot himself. Last night, he fucked me on it while I wore an electric dog collar. He zapped me harder every time I whimpered. Eventually I began to cry, and I told him to keep going, but he stopped and removed the collar and I cried myself to sleep. I woke up alone on the fur rug, like a baby bear curled against its mother. Now I have little burn marks on my neck.

So my cravings surprise me. Empty and full feel almost the same, and they both hurt. As above so below. It gets dark early and I get drunk early. I take a painkiller from inside my necklace and I look at their photo albums. What if the wife walked in and found me? She could shoot me with the rifle over the fireplace and I wouldn't care.

Darkness falls like a blanket over a birdcage. I wonder if this whole time period will be easy to forget later, in the spring, when my hair is longer and life happens in the daylight.