i think simon does end up physically back to where he started, mostly because i really want to explore the idea of simon emotionally hurting himself by trying to draw a line between himself and ice king. because the thing is that even if hes physically back to normal, he still is mentally afflicted by the remains of magic insanity and all the memories of those 900 years. hes extremely forgetful. he loses his temper more easily than before, or will start crying for reasons beyond his understanding. his physical coordination isnt as good as it was before. he feels godawful when magic queen puts the daily checklist back on the wall, because hes normal now, why cant he just remember to eat every morning? why is he getting lost 2 blocks away from his own home? why is he losing his temper over incredibly mild things?

its about the internalized hatred for himself. cutting a piece of his own identity away because hes not as well as he once was. he was ice king for longer than he was simon, but he doesnt want to acknowledge that it is part of his history and identity. itd be easier if ice king was a stranger who took control of his body for a while.

and he really needs to come to terms with the fact that he IS ice king, ice king IS him, just a different phase of his life, because pushing that fact away is only hindering his recovery.

lets rant about a person im starting to not like and lost of reasons why i dont

right uhh i need labels to get started

friend a: (hey pookie) FAV PERSONNNN!! ^^ i love them so much theyre so so cool and amazing and ahh best friend love ya

friend b: my first friend in this school!! i love her so much shes so so swag even if i dont tell her often how much she means to me shes sooo amazing

friend c: subject of this rant, we used to be rlly close but recently i stopped liking them as much

idk if theres anyone else im mentioning so thats gonna be it

okay so to start off (what i started off with anyways when i first ranted about this in the shower) is the fact that recently theyve been sending me tiktoks about really sexual things saying that its me and them. i know it is technically my fault for not being super clear on my boundaries and not saying whether somethings bothering me or not, but i just get so uncomfortable when you keep talking about about how you cum to me. i know that i make alot of sexual jokes with friend b, and for a while i didnt get why i was so uncomfortable with C making jokes about me, until i realised that its because with B i like them but with C i dont like them as much making me more uncomfortable towards them.

another reason is the fact that they lie, like all the time. even when it isn’t necessary. theyve said themselves that theyre a pathological liar, and that they have bpd, adhd, and depression and anxiety. which is why i never talk about any of my problems involving them. but literally i dont fucking get how they think im gonna believe them then 1st, none of them add up and 2nd, you lie to me when you know i know the truth?? like at some point i heard you talking shit about A, and when i bring it up you lie to me?? its just ugh. youve lied to my face so much i always ALWAYS think youre lying. you could be blatantly telling the truth but ill still think youre lying.

another mini thing is that you expect me to know so much about your past and your mental illness but you dont clarify anything about them?? like youve said “i cant do that and you know it.” but i seriously dont?? you havent told me anything about your bpd or how it effects you but you assume i know everything about it?? i cant just guess things im sorry

a really main thing is the fact that they keep insulting me (and many many MANYYYY others) on tons of things, more specifically about our insecurities. at some point, they kept on insulting my friend’s boyfriend’s face to the point they had to FUCKING COVER IT. AND THEY STILL CONTINUED?? and when mentioned that theyre a dick they say “oh i just dont know how to act nice”. LITERALLY. IF YOU HAVE NOTHING NICE TO SAY THEN STAY SILENT. actually you dont know how many new insecurities i have formed because of you. and ik i can speak for everyone you keep insulting “as a joke”.

another thing!! they are super contradictory and hypocritical. at some point they said something along the lines of “i know that you cant show affection very easily but still i think a little bit would be nice”. you admit yourself that you know i cant show affection that easy but then you still ask for it?? im fine with affection every now and again but you want me to always show affection. i cant be that fulfilling person for you and you know that but you still ask for it. plus; you have a partner yourself (oh also they keep telling different stories that dont add up like “i got to cuddle with my boyfriend” then say “hes gonna come over so i can see him irl for the first time!!”).

another note on the “fulfilling” part, i find myself almost always having to either convince you that i actually care for you or having to convince yourself not to kill yourself. its fucking exhausting. i have to repeat myself over and over and over and over and over again that i like you but you still say “yeah but bfr you dont”. i shouldnt have to do this constantly im tired of it. you are mentally ill, these are things you talk about to a fucking THERAPIST, not a 13 year old girl whos struggling herself.

TALKING ABOUT THE HYPOCRISY. right so they continuously say about how im not putting much effort into our friendship. but them themselves arent putting any effort into me. you talk about how if im distant you think i hate you, but when have you ever expressed actual interest in the things im saying? friendship goes both ways, not only do I have to make effort in getting closer to you, YOU have to make effort in getting closer to me.

literally you talk about how im never really interested in your interests, but i actually engage, i ask questions, i remember things. but you? all you do is answer with an uninterested “cool”. i know that youre struggling tho which is once again why i dont bring it up. literally you say im your favourite person, but when someone even dares tells you to talk to me you say “what is there to talk about? [my interest]?”

about your mental health, it is the primary reason why i dont bring anything up. because i know that youre suffering and i know that you’d say that thats the reason youre like that. but its so frustrating to have to continue to be your friend just because i know that if i leaved you’d do something drastic. im so exhausted and mentally drained because of this friendship.

you know yourself that i am struggling, you were at some point worried i was gonna kill myself. but you still continue to have to have me convince you that i dont want you to kys. “you’ll live” say that again to me istg.

alot of things ive already talked about on this account and my incognito account @imnooneyouknow so if you wanna know more check that out in the link below!! like and subscribe for more epic content!!

(bye)

i think we need a global medicine reform. not just talking about third world countries without healthcare like the us of a, but like. the fact that doctors are seen as authorities over patients and how much medical abuse and malpractice this allows to happen.

i understand that there needs to be a system to ensure misinformation doesn't spread and that the scientific consensus of which illnesses exist and how to treat them is respected and widely accepted or that at least you are able to find a doctor who knows their science

but

the current system doesn't really do that. not if you have anything other than a common cold, in my experience. like yes im talking from a perspective of chronic physical and mental illness but even when i had a sinusitis and later an allergic reaction to the prescribed antibiotic, the doctor was very sexist and blamed me for it??? why is this a common experience.

what made me think of this was the fact that self diagnosis is The Ultimate Evil™ and doctors are the authority on my body according to everyone, meanwhile doctors have yet to give a shit about my problems or even believe me when i say what my problems are.

i like the idea of empowerment and that if doctors don't help me i gotta help myself, but i'm baffled by how much resistance i am met with. i get why; misdiagnosis can be dangerous, but why is it worse if i do it than if a doctor does??? im at least not endangering other people???? blaming patients for shitty gaslighting doctors and their consequences is victim blaming plain and simple.

i am also bothered by the way diagnosis works. a diagnosis is basically that a doctor said "i think you have this". but a specific illness that you may or may not be diagnosed for might not actually be a clear-cut thing. scientists still don't really know what POTS is or what causes it. BPD is just a cluster of 9 traits that you need to have 5 of to get diagnosed, meaning that 2 people with BPD might have completely different experiences with "the same illness" but where one illness ends and another begins is often a social construct especially when it comes to mental illnesses.

so why do the labels even matter that much? i keep being told not to care so much about labels but its facts that i need some kind of diagnosis to get the help i need, because of the insurance and the jobcenter and the university and future employers want me to have a diagnosis on paper before providing accomodations.

and these labels that will define my life are slapped onto me by doctors (or sometimes they aren't even if i'd need them) and therefore doctors are authority figures that get to define how im allowed to understand my own conditions, but if i try to take my life into my own hands and say "fuck it im gonna help myself if you dont and im 99% sure i have chronic fatigue syndrome and im gonna act accordingly cause i dont wanna get worse" then suddenly im being Bad or.. something? and it hurts me so much. i know that i have the tendency to self diagnose and then hold on to the label as tightly as i can but i think that's the fault of a system that requires a label and then doesn't provide any. how am i supposed to not care what people think and not be dependent on the validation of doctors when i am not allowed to validate my own experiences or get help without any form of external, doctor-approved validation?

OK, im finally gonna fucking say it, Self Diagnosing is inherently harmful even if you’re right, because theres many people who aren’t and base it off stereo-types, i have genuinely seen people on her be self-diagnosed with disorders that prevent you from knowing you have them, and even tend to convince diagnosed people who have them that everyone else is wrong, i’ve seen people BLATANTLY FAKE being autistic or ADHD to simply use it as an excuse to attack people, then theres the people who trisha paytas DID to kin 2.0 yes i understand not everyone has the money for professional diagnosis, but by self-diagnosing you’re making it easier for people who don’t do their research to simply claim to have a mental disorder biased off of stereo-types and further stigmatize whatever illness it is, and thats fucking harmful, shit i’ve seen someone GENUINELY SAY they have like 7 different hard for professionals to diagnose disorders, then go “i’ve seen like 12 different psyches and they’ve all told me that i don’t have them its hard to find someone competent” mental disorders aren’t a sexuality, they’re not just something you can identify with, and they’re not a new way to kin, thats not to say you’re not struggling, because you are, and certain disorders like depression and anxiety i do believe someone can figure out if they have on their own, because those show clear signs and are much easier to figure out and diagnose, but things like personality disorders? DID? autism??? no, because its too easy to for you to get it wrong, and don’t get me wrong i 100% understand what its like trying to figure out what makes you different from neuro-typical people, why everyone seems to perfectly fit in while you feel like you belong to a different puzzle, but for everyone like you who can figure out, see the signs, theres 15 other obnoxious children who just want a label that makes them stand out and aren’t willing to genuinely research what they claim to have anywhere else from this god-awful website if you can’t get a diagnosis because of money, or parents who don’t believe in mental illness/that their child couldn’t possibly be mentally ill, why not just describe yourself as neuro-divergent without a specification? that way you can be clear you have issues neuro-typical people don’t face but don’t know exactly what disorder you’re struggling with? i often just call myself neuro-divergent or ND because i don’t like telling strangers my disorders or issues because they’re private, 

TBH this could all be solved if attempting to get a diagnosis was free or cheap, but hey, american healthcare am i right?

im gonna ask you a question. so, right now i identify as female (cis). and i'm not sure about it. how did you realize you were nonbinary? i tried out they/them pronouns once and i didn't like it. but like. sometimes i don't feel right with my name and my pronouns and my body. but that just might be depression or me zoning the heck out haha. i'm young, i have time. but i just want help? ? ? haha thank you and i really love your blog

Aw, no worries, nonny.  

So I’m going to preface this by saying that everyone’s experience is unique, I’m not a professional anything, take anything I say with a grain of salt and do your own research and come to your own decisions.  I will also mention that I have Borderline Personality Disorder, and one of the major symptoms of BPD is a lack of identity, sort of the… throwing yourself into things and other people and other people’s styles and making that who you are over and over and never quite feeling like you have an identity that means “you”.  I mention this because that’s one of the things that currently has the biggest impact on me of all my BPD issues, and that has colored my entire gender journey, which in turn colors my advice and thoughts about it.

So as far as me realizing I was NB, it was a looooong process.  I felt kind of dysphoric and maybe not-female for literal years, then I came out as trans because I figured “this probably means I’m a trans guy” and it felt MUCH better but still not quite right.  After a couple years I went “yeah, not quite a guy either. …I guess that means I’m neither?” and that’s pretty much how that happened.

All that said, I’ll mention the following things: 

1) the more I recognized and processed the internalized misogyny I have, the less dysphoric being read as female has become.  It’s kind of plateaued and I think I’ve mostly just hit “i’m nb but more comfortable on the feminine side of things than I used to be” but hey, who knows, right?  I mention this one first both to get it out of the way and because of stuff you mentioned in your ask.  It’s not unheard of at ALL for cis women to feel very dysphoric about their bodies and uncomfortable with their womanhood.  It’s not universal, though, it’s just a possible option.  Our society hates women and teaches women to hate themselves, but whether you’re just a woman dealing with the fallout of living in a deeply misogynistic society or a trans person is something only you can decide.

2) I have known more than one cis female lesbians who identified as nb and don’t anymore, or identified as a trans guy and now identify as nb or cis.  There is a lot of bullshit that most of us are trained into unknowingly about hating women and hating ourselves, and when we find ourselves loving women, it just compounds like… EVERYTHING.  So if you’re a lesbian or bi, this could be something to keep in mind.

3) my most dysphoric moments were also tied to what I would consider my most disassociated moments.  When i’m struggling so hard to even feel a connection to my body, things that make me actively NOT identify with my own body are like that much worse.  It could also be the other way around, but either way, they can feed into each other.  Mental illness can be a huge influence on your identity.  That doesn’t mean your identity is wrong just because you’re mentally ill - i firmly believe that part of the reason I identify with nonbinary so hard is because it’s sort of an “in-between, unspecific, not really anything” sort of identity to me, and that’s how I feel about my identity at large most of the time.  That said, identifying as NB has been a source of relief and joy, so even if it IS stemming from my BPD I don’t give a shit because it makes my life better.

4) It’s okay to change.  If you’re cis now, and you identify as NB or a trans guy later, that’s okay.  If even later, your identity shifts again, that’s ok too.  Some people find who they are young and never really stop feeling that.  Some people are really fluid and have a complex and ever-evolving relationship with their identity.  Neither one is wrong. Your labels are for YOU.  To make YOU feel like you have a handle on yourself.  As your understanding of yourself changes, your labels might change too.  That’s ok.  Anyone who tells you it’s not is not worth your time.

5) You are valid.  I know that’s basically a meme at this point and it’s a funny one, but the thing is that you are.  You are you.  You’re allowed to be you, and feel your feelings.  The important part of any of that is how you REACT and ACT ON those things. 

6) You’re allowed to tell people no when they ask questions.  You’re allowed to say “that’s personal” or “I don’t feel comfortable answering that” or “sorry, you must be at least a level 5 friend to unlock that part of my backstory” or whatever.  You do not have to feel obligated to explain yourself and your identity and how you came to that identity and how it affects your sexuality etc etc ad nauseum to everyone who asks. It’s okay not to answer questions about things that people technically have no right to.  It’s also ok to answer them if you’re down for it, but you’re not being rude by saying “no, that’s too personal, I’m not comfortable with that”.  If they push it, THEY’RE the ones being rude.

7) The last and possibly most divergent from the original topic thing I’m going to say is possibly the most controversial?  And it’s more about attraction than gender, but in my experience, dealing with one inevitibly means dealing with the other at the very least inasmuch as where they intersect, but that experience is why I’m including this. Unless nothing else has worked for you, I would stay away, at least initially, from the split attraction model.  That’s the x-sexual/x-romantic split, and identifying them separately.  I am not saying they’re bad or that they can’t be useful or helpful, but the thing is that they are mostly of use to the ace community, and only to a limited extent.  Diving into them when you don’t need to can just over-complicate things; as much as labels are for YOU, it also doesn’t help to be overly specific.  If you can be sexually attracted to both guys and girls but you’re only interested in being in relationships with girls?  Sure, you could say you’re bisexual homoromantic (as a girl that is) but unless that is something that is NECESSARY FOR YOU, you could also just say you’re bi with a preference, or say you’re a lesbian because yes i think bi women who are still attracted to guys physically but have no intention of or desire to be with men can call themselves lesbians if that’s more comfortable for them.  I say this mostly because I and more than a few people I know have done the split attraction model because it’s what is being done or w/e and it messed with them being able to actually deal with issues they were having and correctly identifying their sexualities and etc etc etc.  It’s not intrinsically bad or harmful or wrong, but it’s also not intrinsically good, and it’s not useful for anyone.  Unless you think it’s absolutely the only way to find your identity, I would largely steer clear of it for yourself.  I put this last because it’s the least related to your actual question.

…I can’t think of anything else rn.  Use the identifiers and terms that you’re comfortable with but don’t feel bad or ashamed of changing them if you realize they don’t apply anymore.  Don’t feel like you have to identify things super-specifically just because it’s common practice.  Uh…. idk, i’m a wee bit tipsy but hopefully some of this was even a little bit helpful?  GOOD LUCK MY SMOL ONE, EVEN IF I CAN’T HELP I’M HERE TO LISTEN IF YOU NEED AN EAR OR A SHOULDER!

Album of the Year #5: Bedwetter (Lil Ugly Mane) - volume 1: flick your tongue against your teeth and describe the present.

Album of the Year #5: Bedwetter (Lil Ugly Mane) - volume 1: flick your tongue against your teeth and describe the present.

Artist: Bedwetter (Lil Ugly Mane)

Album: volume 1: flick your tongue against your teeth and describe the present.

Label: Self-Released

Release Date: January 29, 2017

Listen:

YouTube

Spotify

Bandcamp

Apple Music

Background

Bedwetter is the latest pseudonym of Travis Miller, best known as Lil Ugly Mane. For a more extensive history of Miller and his work as Lil Ugly Mane before the release of this album, check out my /r/indieheads For Your Consideration write-up on Oblivion Access, as this background is going to mainly focus on what led to the release of his debut project under the Bedwetter album.

After releasing Oblivion Access in late 2015, Miller, as Lil Ugly Mane, formed the group Secret Circle with frequent collaborator Antwon and Wiki (of Ratking) in 2016 and the group has released a few singles, including “KEEP IT LOW”, “SATELLITE” ft. Despot and “Tube Socks”, since the formation of the group. The Bedwetter project was teased in December 2016 with this Facebook post and the release of the singles “selfish” and “stoop lights.”

Finally, volume 1: flick your tongue against your teeth and describe the present. was released on January 29, 2017 on the Lil Ugly Mane Bandcamp after a concerning post on Facebook that has since been taken down. A day after the release, Miller made a new statement on the Lil Ugly Mane Facebook page after receiving a few emails from people asking about the album and what led to its release. The statement is, as below:

I keep getting emails from people.

I wrote this the day before Bedwetter was recorded.

All i could do, all i can do is write poems and basically a polemic yelp review into the notepad on my phone.

what else can i do.

im not gonna get into my own shit on some specific level because fuck you, i dont know you. pay attention to yourself.

but i feel like this is the best way i can explain shit.

polemic yelp review of american heath care system:

"After a lifetime of avoiding this shit. Ignoring this shit. FInding myself confused.

After 3 months of sleeplessly, anxiously glaring into the eyes of an old monster that suddenly grew a new head.

3 months of forgetting who i was. What i was doing.

I knew something had to happen. I'd known this for a while.

I had been reaching out

Calling.

Emailing.

After continuous unsuccessful attempts for months to contact psychiatrists and doctors, I reluctantly checked into the hospital today.

I thought maybe i could get a much needed psych evaluation and hopefully receive some sort of treatment, perhaps even simply a referral and/or an appointment to go see somebody else who could provide that.

I didn't know what else to do.

What else are you supposed to do.

For six hours I sat nervously twitching and in a freezing waiting room.

Whimpering old men being completely overtaken by their Alzheimer's.

Vomiting children.

Bleeding Fingers.

Ugly loud sagging losers who were obviously constantly there.

Begging for attention with some new ailment and concern.

Their broken humilated spouse at their side.

I was anxious and horrified by the idea of a potential forced or even voluntary intake to a psychiatric facility.

Surrending my freedom.

Surrender of my routines.

After six hours of constantly reassuring myself I was doing the right thing, I was finally seen.

Led down a hallway into a bare concrete cell with a small bed in the center. Dim lights. scratches on the drab walls.

Grates in the floor to catch whatever bodily fluids they have to hose out of there.

One of the walls was one of those steel doors that the corner store pulls down at the end of the night.

Not sure what that was about.

Empty though.

A bed and a chair.

Somebody had carved "slipknot sucks" into the plastic bed that was bolted to the floor. Seems fitting.

You're the same, you're basically just a stupid fucking sad teenager right now. You're pathetic. Good luck getting better idiot.

I was given a gown and my belongings were inventoried and confiscated.

I sat and waited in my gown.

Eventually, Two skittish nurses and some community college educated social worker baby-talked their questions to me as a lurching police officer glared at me disgustedly over their shoulders.

I'd chosen to go in at a time where I was feeling okay so i would be fully able to articulate and describe the symptoms I was experiencing so I could potentially receive the most accurate treatment. I thought that made the most sense.

I didn't want to wait until I was in the midst of some anxious episode and having to hyperventilate my troubles out thru a salty humiliated fog. I thought that made the most sense.

I sat and calmy described my symptoms. I tried to convey how terrified i was. I tried to tell them i couldnt do it anymore.

This was received with a couple bored nods and sparse notes being jotted down on a clipboard.

Eventually i was hurried along and any complexity of my disease was all quickly reduced to two simple questions:

"Are you suicidal? Do you wanna hurt anyone else?"

No.

No I don't. I can't think of anything I wanna do less than die, I can't think of anything that frightens me or gives me more anxiety than the uncertainty of what happens when you die.

No.

No I don't actively want to hurt anyone, to be honest, the fact that I voluntarily came in here could be seen as an indication that I'm absolutely exhausted and desperate to stop hurting myself and everyone else by not confronting this shit for so long.

wrong answer.

I was discharged. handed back my clothes, given a xeroxed list of some websites about suicide prevention and a "feel better" or some other equally patronizing verbal pat on the back.

Back right where I started.

Nobody is gonna help me.

Our current mental healthcare system is absolute shit.

Absolute shit that absolutely incentivizes violence and self harm by categorizing it as the sole interpretation of "severity" worth treating.

By making the idea of treatment feel so utterly hopeless to people who already exist and drown in their hopelessness.

Fuck your resources. Fuck being understaffed. Fuck your stupid priorities. You're incompetent .

Here let me clear out some space for you. Free up some of your time. Empty some rooms.

On hurting yourself:

This is a complex issue, but to briefly put it, I believe a suicidal individual should not only be afforded that right, but after some legislatively decided period of time and therapy and education to ward off impulsiveness and melodrama, the same way they treat anybody undergoing assisted suicide. A process. they should be given a safe clean environment and chemicals to facilitate their decision, no matter the reasoning. grow up.

On hurting someone else:

This is not a complex issue. As far as recidivist violent degenerate squealing psychopaths...rabid dogs just need a bullet to the head.

I've read old yeller.

They dont care. Neither do I.

boo hoo.

Conversely:

lock them in a room and keep them safe.

Is this really that hard?

"Are you an immediate threat to yourself or others are you?"

How about instead of prioritizing that question we focus more on:

"Im so tired and exhausted of constantly hurting myself and everyone around me"

Be passing over someone like me, a person who, on their own volition, came to you for help. A person who desperately wants help. You are simply and plainly creating more and more and more people who will eventually be slobbering immediate threats to themselves and all of mankind.

It creates that understanding.

In an already fractured damaged mind it is an entirely reasonable assertion that you would potentially have to commit an act of violence against yourself or others just to receive treatment. even if you didn't want to.

even if that wasn't a real compulsion.

a last resort.

This system has a very real potential to turn people who voluntarily seek help, people who aren't yet completely overtaken by their illness, into violent suicidal monsters because you are dangling their own treatment on a string in front of them, scoffing at their pitiful attempt at recovery and demanding they need to do more.

"well shit, if you want help yr gonna have to try a lot harder than that buddy, haha, comeback after you snapped a random person's neck in a grocery store and cut off all the fingers on your left hand with some scissors, fucking poser".

I'll get better one day.

Not today.

Maybe I'll have fingers.

Maybe I won't."

thanks for the well wishes.

i'm fine.

i'm just angry.

i'm not the only person dealing with this and i've lived a full, somewhat interesting life.

i hate that you are dealing with this.

Review

I don’t really know where to begin with this. volume 1, since its release, has been an incredibly difficult album to listen to due the the background and the depressing lyrical content. This isn’t the first album of 2017 to bring out a similar reaction in me, as the same can be said about Mount Eerie’s A Crow Looked At Me. Both are extremely painful looks at the narrator’s mental health and the events that led its deterioration. For Phil Elverum, it was the death of his wife, Geneviève, after her battle with cancer. For Travis Miller, it was the failure of the American healthcare system when his cries for help were silenced.

Miller’s music, specifically his work as Lil Ugly Mane, is deeply important to me. MISTA THUG ISOLATION and the singles he released before Oblivion Access were all extremely formative in developing my music taste and opened my ears to a lot of new sounds and expressions. Up until the release of volume 1, Miller had always took a more abstract approach to his mental health struggles, and even outright denied his music as Lil Ugly Mane held some deeper meaning. I implied in my write-up for Oblivion Access that it was the first time we were truly hearing a Travis Miller project, but it’s safe to say after listening to volume 1, I might have jumped the gun.

The album begins with the short but cryptic “john”, a remixed and chopped up reading of the Bible verse John 1:1, repeatedly fixating on “was God” before roughly transitioning into “man wearing a helmet.” Distant piano chords, rain, a chopped up female vocal sample, a father talking about his child, a jury reading out a verdict, a man asking another if he and his wife have thought about moving, a father now being interviewed about his child being kidnapped, another female voice that’s hard to decipher but is definitely talking about this child, and a drone playing behind all these people talking leads into the album’s first verse, as Miller describes another person’s childhood memories like ripping bark out of trees, pretending to be Superman, and wearing mismatched pairs of Chucks. These memories quickly turn into just that as we now cut to Miller describing this child being kidnapped: “He's a sitting duck, didn't hear the car pull up / Thought his arm broke when they shoved him in the trunk.”

This story continues as Miller further describes the child’s circumstances after being thrown in the trunk at an almost breakneck pace, seemingly trying to through the story as fast as he can before he breaks down. It’s all extremely traumatizing to hear, as the child begins to fear the worst as he looks back: “He miss his mom's affection / He miss the dinosaur blanket on the bed that he slept in / Miss throwing sticks so the dog would go fetch 'em / Missed makin' forts in the woods with his best friend.”

In the third verse, the car eventually reaches its destination and the child is carried to the kidnapper’s shelter, being led down into a dark stairwell into a lair, the only thing he can see being the “bluish glow of television flickers.” As the child continues to describe their worry at what’s to come, the listener is hit with a gut punch as “he” becomes “I,” as the child Miller was describing the whole time was really himself, revealing the origin story of where his battles with mental health begin as the hook plays on with Miller asking himself questions about this event, with all the answers being “I just don’t remember,” as he has repressed his memories of the kidnapping.

While “man wearing a helmet” looks at his past, “stoop lights” cuts to the modern day, with running static/crinkling, a dizzying string sample, synthetic bass, hi-hats, bass drums, and hand claps building the song’s foundation, as Miller begins rapping about what it’s like to be inside his head with no pretensions or greater abstract meanings. His self-hatred has evolved beyond hatred, as Miller simply wants nothing to do with himself any longer, retreating to alcohol and substance abuse to take away the pain of living, pushing himself towards death. The only light he sees are literal ones, as his description of watching them flicker in the hook leads further describing his problems with alcohol and how it’s led to his family leaving him behind.

Miller’s descriptions of his deteriorating mental state are as compelling as they are downright disturbing to here. It’s still slightly jarring to hear the man who rapped “Slick Rick said treat 'em like a prostitute” talk about alcohol abuse and depression so openly, but that’s what makes volume 1 so fascinating, as it’s essentially Miller throwing in the towel, no longer resorting to an exaggerated gangster persona or gross abstractions, but trying to describe what’s happening in his head and around him without any bullshit.

This no bullshit approach is best put to use in “haze of interference”, which starts off with a repeating sample of a man sing-talking “I’m not sure what it was,” with the rest of the song seeing Miller at not only his most angry, but his most desperate, backed behind menacing synths, distant piano chords, boom bap drums and rattling hi-hats that go back and forth in intensity. One of my favorite lines of the whole album comes out of this first verse and it’s such a simple, but perfect description of crippling depression, as Miller raps towards the end: “Greener on the other side, how about nothing's green.” The second verse sees Miller spitting with more fury than we’ve ever seen, rapping at himself expressing his anger with himself at how he deals with his problems, how he shows himself to his friends and family, and most importantly how his fans see him, with Miller breaking from rapping at “you” to rapping the line “You're treated like a muse, are you happy now, Travis?”

The whole song could end there and still leave a massive impact, but Miller keeps going lamenting the fact that he could disappear and almost no one in his immediate life would notice or care, going from referencing the Jonas Jonasson novel The 100 Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared to straight up saying “If I was glass I'd revert back to sand.” Miller ends the verse by completely shattering the fourth wall he previously damaged with the final lines “I'm standing by a microphone and yelling at a wall / Pick a thousand names, you're still nobody at all,” delivered as Miller’s voice finally cracks as the song plays out for another two minutes with a fuller Jandek sample seen in the song’s intro, before sourly fading out.

And that’s the last we hear of Miller on volume 1, as the second-to-final track “this in not my stomach” features a bizarre and disturbing whisper behind a brooding instrumental, with the lyrics possibly hinting that the song is written in the perspective of the depression itself, trying to convince the host body it’s inhabiting to cut out its stomach, almost like an entity from the Black Lodge. Then, the album ends with “cave yourself over,” a lo-fi piano ballad that simply allows you to sit there and think, taking in all you’ve heard.

volume 1 sees a man afraid. A man backed into a corner. A man calling for help. A man who simply just wants to be understood after purposefully obscuring himself for so long. Music was always the thing Travis Miller could resort back to, something to distract him from his mental troubles. Travis Miller the person and Travis Miller the musician were always supposed to be separated. Then, he finally tried to get help and was humiliated, forcing the two to converge in what became Bedwetter. While mental health awareness is at an all time high in America, there’s still a ton of progress to be made as can be seen by Miller’s story. The final note I want to leave this review on isn’t my own, but Miller’s, as it’s the final paragraph of the album’s Bandcamp description:

I really thought today someone would recognize my courage, as i handed over power just to reconcile my purpose, that I needed something urgent. I was eager just to learn it. I just wanna person, lord I'm weary from this burden.

Favorite Lyrics

Crouched down by the tree at his neighbors

He liked the way the bark ripped off like paper

He pretended he was Superman, eyes had lasers

Every step he took turned earth into craters

Little brown jacket, Lee jeans with a cuff

Bowl cut, blue and yellow mismatched Chucks

“man wearing a helmet”

Waking up in situations

Feeling like I'm living in suspended animation

Guess I'm still sober on occasion

And that's enough for me to rationalize inebriation

“stoop lights”

I told you I ain’t right, you knew it going in

Just shut the fuck up if you wanna be a friend

I don’t want to stretch you more than you extend

I don’t want to spit in the hand that you lend

I did it to myself, I get what I deserve

Thoughts in my head, feel like a raw nerve

I’m lookin' for an answer, I don’t want to hurt but

I just want to sleep when I’m tired of earth

“stoop lights”

Foggy little planet where your groping hands to touch a scream

Greener on the other side, how about nothing's green

Bashful baby boy, so distracted by my toys

Rode a tractor from Wyoming to Chicago, Illinois

On a carpet of the 50 states, part of me disintegrates

The only thing I'm left with is the part I can't articulate

“haze of interference”

You're never getting better, you're addicted to the madness

You're treated like a muse, are you happy now, Travis?

“haze of interference”

If I was glass I'd revert back to sand

Scattered through the sea, I could pass through your hands

None of this will happen, nothing will ever

The things that I believe can never ever happen

I'm standing by a microphone and yelling at a wall

Pick a thousand names, you're still nobody at all

“haze of interference”

Talking Points

How does volume 1 hold up to Travis’ work as Lil Ugly Mane? Is it better, worse, or a whole new beast entirely?

What are your thoughts on the production? Is it a natural evolution from Oblivion Access?

What do you think about the album’s lyrical content? Does the album’s desperate origins come across in the writing?

I also want to open up this thread as a discussion for mental health. How have you dealt with your own mental health troubles? Are they similar to Miller’s experiences?

And finally, where does this album land on your year-end list?

Thanks for reading and big thanks to /u/TheRoyalGodfrey for letting me do this again this year and for bringing Album of the Year over from /r/hiphopheads! We’re currently in the midst of our third Album of the Year series over at /r/indieheads, so if you want to come over and give us some love, that’d be greatly appreciated! You can view what we’ve done so far and what we’ve got coming up over here, and make sure to come back tomorrow on this subreddit as /u/ImWaal talks Rick Ross’ Rather You Than Me.

Artist: Bedwetter (Lil Ugly Mane)Album: volume 1: flick your tongue against your teeth and describe the present.Label: Self-ReleasedRelease Date: January 29, 2017Listen:YouTubeSpotifyBandcampApple MusicBackgroundBedwetter is the latest pseudonym of Travis Miller, best known as Lil Ugly Mane. For a more extensive history of Miller and his work as Lil Ugly Mane before the release of this album, check out my /r/indieheads For Your Consideration write-up on Oblivion Access, as this background is going to mainly focus on what led to the release of his debut project under the Bedwetter album.After releasing Oblivion Access in late 2015, Miller, as Lil Ugly Mane, formed the group Secret Circle with frequent collaborator Antwon and Wiki (of Ratking) in 2016 and the group has released a few singles, including “KEEP IT LOW”, “SATELLITE” ft. Despot and “Tube Socks”, since the formation of the group. The Bedwetter project was teased in December 2016 with this Facebook post and the release of the singles “selfish” and “stoop lights.”Finally, volume 1: flick your tongue against your teeth and describe the present. was released on January 29, 2017 on the Lil Ugly Mane Bandcamp after a concerning post on Facebook that has since been taken down. A day after the release, Miller made a new statement on the Lil Ugly Mane Facebook page after receiving a few emails from people asking about the album and what led to its release. The statement is, as below:I keep getting emails from people.I wrote this the day before Bedwetter was recorded.All i could do, all i can do is write poems and basically a polemic yelp review into the notepad on my phone.what else can i do.im not gonna get into my own shit on some specific level because fuck you, i dont know you. pay attention to yourself.but i feel like this is the best way i can explain shit.polemic yelp review of american heath care system:"After a lifetime of avoiding this shit. Ignoring this shit. FInding myself confused.After 3 months of sleeplessly, anxiously glaring into the eyes of an old monster that suddenly grew a new head.3 months of forgetting who i was. What i was doing.I knew something had to happen. I'd known this for a while.I had been reaching outCalling.Emailing.After continuous unsuccessful attempts for months to contact psychiatrists and doctors, I reluctantly checked into the hospital today.I thought maybe i could get a much needed psych evaluation and hopefully receive some sort of treatment, perhaps even simply a referral and/or an appointment to go see somebody else who could provide that.I didn't know what else to do.What else are you supposed to do.For six hours I sat nervously twitching and in a freezing waiting room.Whimpering old men being completely overtaken by their Alzheimer's.Vomiting children.Bleeding Fingers.Ugly loud sagging losers who were obviously constantly there.Begging for attention with some new ailment and concern.Their broken humilated spouse at their side.I was anxious and horrified by the idea of a potential forced or even voluntary intake to a psychiatric facility.Surrending my freedom.Surrender of my routines.After six hours of constantly reassuring myself I was doing the right thing, I was finally seen.Led down a hallway into a bare concrete cell with a small bed in the center. Dim lights. scratches on the drab walls.Grates in the floor to catch whatever bodily fluids they have to hose out of there.One of the walls was one of those steel doors that the corner store pulls down at the end of the night.Not sure what that was about.Empty though.A bed and a chair.Somebody had carved "slipknot sucks" into the plastic bed that was bolted to the floor. Seems fitting.You're the same, you're basically just a stupid fucking sad teenager right now. You're pathetic. Good luck getting better idiot.I was given a gown and my belongings were inventoried and confiscated.I sat and waited in my gown.Eventually, Two skittish nurses and some community college educated social worker baby-talked their questions to me as a lurching police officer glared at me disgustedly over their shoulders.I'd chosen to go in at a time where I was feeling okay so i would be fully able to articulate and describe the symptoms I was experiencing so I could potentially receive the most accurate treatment. I thought that made the most sense.I didn't want to wait until I was in the midst of some anxious episode and having to hyperventilate my troubles out thru a salty humiliated fog. I thought that made the most sense.I sat and calmy described my symptoms. I tried to convey how terrified i was. I tried to tell them i couldnt do it anymore.This was received with a couple bored nods and sparse notes being jotted down on a clipboard.Eventually i was hurried along and any complexity of my disease was all quickly reduced to two simple questions:"Are you suicidal? Do you wanna hurt anyone else?"No.No I don't. I can't think of anything I wanna do less than die, I can't think of anything that frightens me or gives me more anxiety than the uncertainty of what happens when you die.No.No I don't actively want to hurt anyone, to be honest, the fact that I voluntarily came in here could be seen as an indication that I'm absolutely exhausted and desperate to stop hurting myself and everyone else by not confronting this shit for so long.wrong answer.I was discharged. handed back my clothes, given a xeroxed list of some websites about suicide prevention and a "feel better" or some other equally patronizing verbal pat on the back.Back right where I started.Nobody is gonna help me.Our current mental healthcare system is absolute shit.Absolute shit that absolutely incentivizes violence and self harm by categorizing it as the sole interpretation of "severity" worth treating.By making the idea of treatment feel so utterly hopeless to people who already exist and drown in their hopelessness.Fuck your resources. Fuck being understaffed. Fuck your stupid priorities. You're incompetent .Here let me clear out some space for you. Free up some of your time. Empty some rooms.On hurting yourself:This is a complex issue, but to briefly put it, I believe a suicidal individual should not only be afforded that right, but after some legislatively decided period of time and therapy and education to ward off impulsiveness and melodrama, the same way they treat anybody undergoing assisted suicide. A process. they should be given a safe clean environment and chemicals to facilitate their decision, no matter the reasoning. grow up.On hurting someone else:This is not a complex issue. As far as recidivist violent degenerate squealing psychopaths...rabid dogs just need a bullet to the head.I've read old yeller.They dont care. Neither do I.boo hoo.Conversely:lock them in a room and keep them safe.Is this really that hard?"Are you an immediate threat to yourself or others are you?"How about instead of prioritizing that question we focus more on:"Im so tired and exhausted of constantly hurting myself and everyone around me"Be passing over someone like me, a person who, on their own volition, came to you for help. A person who desperately wants help. You are simply and plainly creating more and more and more people who will eventually be slobbering immediate threats to themselves and all of mankind.It creates that understanding.In an already fractured damaged mind it is an entirely reasonable assertion that you would potentially have to commit an act of violence against yourself or others just to receive treatment. even if you didn't want to.even if that wasn't a real compulsion.a last resort.This system has a very real potential to turn people who voluntarily seek help, people who aren't yet completely overtaken by their illness, into violent suicidal monsters because you are dangling their own treatment on a string in front of them, scoffing at their pitiful attempt at recovery and demanding they need to do more."well shit, if you want help yr gonna have to try a lot harder than that buddy, haha, comeback after you snapped a random person's neck in a grocery store and cut off all the fingers on your left hand with some scissors, fucking poser".I'll get better one day.Not today.Maybe I'll have fingers.Maybe I won't."thanks for the well wishes.i'm fine.i'm just angry.i'm not the only person dealing with this and i've lived a full, somewhat interesting life.i hate that you are dealing with this.ReviewI don’t really know where to begin with this. volume 1, since its release, has been an incredibly difficult album to listen to due the the background and the depressing lyrical content. This isn’t the first album of 2017 to bring out a similar reaction in me, as the same can be said about Mount Eerie’s A Crow Looked At Me. Both are extremely painful looks at the narrator’s mental health and the events that led its deterioration. For Phil Elverum, it was the death of his wife, Geneviève, after her battle with cancer. For Travis Miller, it was the failure of the American healthcare system when his cries for help were silenced.Miller’s music, specifically his work as Lil Ugly Mane, is deeply important to me. MISTA THUG ISOLATION and the singles he released before Oblivion Access were all extremely formative in developing my music taste and opened my ears to a lot of new sounds and expressions. Up until the release of volume 1, Miller had always took a more abstract approach to his mental health struggles, and even outright denied his music as Lil Ugly Mane held some deeper meaning. I implied in my write-up for Oblivion Access that it was the first time we were truly hearing a Travis Miller project, but it’s safe to say after listening to volume 1, I might have jumped the gun.The album begins with the short but cryptic “john”, a remixed and chopped up reading of the Bible verse John 1:1, repeatedly fixating on “was God” before roughly transitioning into “man wearing a helmet.” Distant piano chords, rain, a chopped up female vocal sample, a father talking about his child, a jury reading out a verdict, a man asking another if he and his wife have thought about moving, a father now being interviewed about his child being kidnapped, another female voice that’s hard to decipher but is definitely talking about this child, and a drone playing behind all these people talking leads into the album’s first verse, as Miller describes another person’s childhood memories like ripping bark out of trees, pretending to be Superman, and wearing mismatched pairs of Chucks. These memories quickly turn into just that as we now cut to Miller describing this child being kidnapped: “He's a sitting duck, didn't hear the car pull up / Thought his arm broke when they shoved him in the trunk.”This story continues as Miller further describes the child’s circumstances after being thrown in the trunk at an almost breakneck pace, seemingly trying to through the story as fast as he can before he breaks down. It’s all extremely traumatizing to hear, as the child begins to fear the worst as he looks back: “He miss his mom's affection / He miss the dinosaur blanket on the bed that he slept in / Miss throwing sticks so the dog would go fetch 'em / Missed makin' forts in the woods with his best friend.”In the third verse, the car eventually reaches its destination and the child is carried to the kidnapper’s shelter, being led down into a dark stairwell into a lair, the only thing he can see being the “bluish glow of television flickers.” As the child continues to describe their worry at what’s to come, the listener is hit with a gut punch as “he” becomes “I,” as the child Miller was describing the whole time was really himself, revealing the origin story of where his battles with mental health begin as the hook plays on with Miller asking himself questions about this event, with all the answers being “I just don’t remember,” as he has repressed his memories of the kidnapping.While “man wearing a helmet” looks at his past, “stoop lights” cuts to the modern day, with running static/crinkling, a dizzying string sample, synthetic bass, hi-hats, bass drums, and hand claps building the song’s foundation, as Miller begins rapping about what it’s like to be inside his head with no pretensions or greater abstract meanings. His self-hatred has evolved beyond hatred, as Miller simply wants nothing to do with himself any longer, retreating to alcohol and substance abuse to take away the pain of living, pushing himself towards death. The only light he sees are literal ones, as his description of watching them flicker in the hook leads further describing his problems with alcohol and how it’s led to his family leaving him behind.Miller’s descriptions of his deteriorating mental state are as compelling as they are downright disturbing to here. It’s still slightly jarring to hear the man who rapped “Slick Rick said treat 'em like a prostitute” talk about alcohol abuse and depression so openly, but that’s what makes volume 1 so fascinating, as it’s essentially Miller throwing in the towel, no longer resorting to an exaggerated gangster persona or gross abstractions, but trying to describe what’s happening in his head and around him without any bullshit.This no bullshit approach is best put to use in “haze of interference”, which starts off with a repeating sample of a man sing-talking “I’m not sure what it was,” with the rest of the song seeing Miller at not only his most angry, but his most desperate, backed behind menacing synths, distant piano chords, boom bap drums and rattling hi-hats that go back and forth in intensity. One of my favorite lines of the whole album comes out of this first verse and it’s such a simple, but perfect description of crippling depression, as Miller raps towards the end: “Greener on the other side, how about nothing's green.” The second verse sees Miller spitting with more fury than we’ve ever seen, rapping at himself expressing his anger with himself at how he deals with his problems, how he shows himself to his friends and family, and most importantly how his fans see him, with Miller breaking from rapping at “you” to rapping the line “You're treated like a muse, are you happy now, Travis?”The whole song could end there and still leave a massive impact, but Miller keeps going lamenting the fact that he could disappear and almost no one in his immediate life would notice or care, going from referencing the Jonas Jonasson novel The 100 Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared to straight up saying “If I was glass I'd revert back to sand.” Miller ends the verse by completely shattering the fourth wall he previously damaged with the final lines “I'm standing by a microphone and yelling at a wall / Pick a thousand names, you're still nobody at all,” delivered as Miller’s voice finally cracks as the song plays out for another two minutes with a fuller Jandek sample seen in the song’s intro, before sourly fading out.And that’s the last we hear of Miller on volume 1, as the second-to-final track “this in not my stomach” features a bizarre and disturbing whisper behind a brooding instrumental, with the lyrics possibly hinting that the song is written in the perspective of the depression itself, trying to convince the host body it’s inhabiting to cut out its stomach, almost like an entity from the Black Lodge. Then, the album ends with “cave yourself over,” a lo-fi piano ballad that simply allows you to sit there and think, taking in all you’ve heard.volume 1 sees a man afraid. A man backed into a corner. A man calling for help. A man who simply just wants to be understood after purposefully obscuring himself for so long. Music was always the thing Travis Miller could resort back to, something to distract him from his mental troubles. Travis Miller the person and Travis Miller the musician were always supposed to be separated. Then, he finally tried to get help and was humiliated, forcing the two to converge in what became Bedwetter. While mental health awareness is at an all time high in America, there’s still a ton of progress to be made as can be seen by Miller’s story. The final note I want to leave this review on isn’t my own, but Miller’s, as it’s the final paragraph of the album’s Bandcamp description:I really thought today someone would recognize my courage, as i handed over power just to reconcile my purpose, that I needed something urgent. I was eager just to learn it. I just wanna person, lord I'm weary from this burden.Favorite LyricsCrouched down by the tree at his neighborsHe liked the way the bark ripped off like paperHe pretended he was Superman, eyes had lasersEvery step he took turned earth into cratersLittle brown jacket, Lee jeans with a cuffBowl cut, blue and yellow mismatched Chucks“man wearing a helmet”Waking up in situationsFeeling like I'm living in suspended animationGuess I'm still sober on occasionAnd that's enough for me to rationalize inebriation“stoop lights”I told you I ain’t right, you knew it going inJust shut the fuck up if you wanna be a friendI don’t want to stretch you more than you extendI don’t want to spit in the hand that you lendI did it to myself, I get what I deserveThoughts in my head, feel like a raw nerveI’m lookin' for an answer, I don’t want to hurt butI just want to sleep when I’m tired of earth“stoop lights”Foggy little planet where your groping hands to touch a screamGreener on the other side, how about nothing's greenBashful baby boy, so distracted by my toysRode a tractor from Wyoming to Chicago, IllinoisOn a carpet of the 50 states, part of me disintegratesThe only thing I'm left with is the part I can't articulate“haze of interference”You're never getting better, you're addicted to the madnessYou're treated like a muse, are you happy now, Travis?“haze of interference”If I was glass I'd revert back to sandScattered through the sea, I could pass through your handsNone of this will happen, nothing will everThe things that I believe can never ever happenI'm standing by a microphone and yelling at a wallPick a thousand names, you're still nobody at all“haze of interference”Talking PointsHow does volume 1 hold up to Travis’ work as Lil Ugly Mane? Is it better, worse, or a whole new beast entirely?What are your thoughts on the production? Is it a natural evolution from Oblivion Access?What do you think about the album’s lyrical content? Does the album’s desperate origins come across in the writing?I also want to open up this thread as a discussion for mental health. How have you dealt with your own mental health troubles? Are they similar to Miller’s experiences?And finally, where does this album land on your year-end list?Thanks for reading and big thanks to /u/TheRoyalGodfrey for letting me do this again this year and for bringing Album of the Year over from /r/hiphopheads! We’re currently in the midst of our third Album of the Year series over at /r/indieheads, so if you want to come over and give us some love, that’d be greatly appreciated! You can view what we’ve done so far and what we’ve got coming up over here, and make sure to come back tomorrow on this subreddit as /u/ImWaal talks Rick Ross’ Rather You Than Me.