In which our fair blogger talks a bit about her critical theory and new critical approaches.
It’s been a nicely theory laden past couple of weeks here at HU, and I’ve enjoyed seeing Noah and Caro argue Lacan and Freud and Foucault. Suat has his own lenses with which to approach comics: he’s always got some wonderful, surprising old comic art to reference and post in relation to whatever we’re peering at. Richard has a rich and interesting knowledge of capes and artists and writers and storylines. And our collaborators and columnists will no doubt have their own ways of thinking or talking about art.
And then there’s me, wandering around being snobby about manga art and sticking my tongue out at Clowes and rolling my eyes at Alan Moore and generally being, I suspect, a bit odd.
In watching the different critics talk about their work as critics, I’ve been thinking about my own stance and my own influences. I’m familiar with some of the modern critical thinkers like Lacan and Freud, but I don’t particularly find them interesting. I don’t find the old critical thinkers like Aristotle all that interesting either. To me, they’re one voice, and to be honest, these single voices are too…. I’m not sure what.
Dull? Un-interactive? Non-collaborative?
Maybe if I was able to argue with Caro and Noah about Lacan, he’d become more interesting, but since Lacan makes my eyes glaze and I end up saying things like “‘m awake, really, just resting my eyes there for a second, um what?” it wouldn’t be a very interesting conversation.
But what has occurred to me, over time, is that while I don’t have that conversation, I am still busy having critical conversations. And these other critical conversations seem both omnipresent and invisible (isn’t everyone having these conversations right now? No? What do you mean no?)
And these conversations inform everything I write and very much inform how I approach the art in question. So I’m going to talk a bit about the critics I’m wandering around soaked in and what that means for me as a comics blogger and then I’m going to talk about a new project. Ahem.
So these conversations that I’m having, that I participate and read and revel in, come in a variety of forms but are in general created over at the great morass of feminine critical art thought that is LiveJournal. Fandom, yes, I’m talking about fandom. There’s a whole weird, complicated set of social rules, mores, and activities in fandom but at the moment, we’re having several interesting conversations, as one does at a big party, and it helps to think of the critical thought as something of a salon and a collaborative effort.
Instead of an icon like Lacan, I think of broad topics with a twisting path of conversational threads, often centered around either wank or a communal discussion of a notable issue. So it’s, say, the Gabaldon Wank this past week, and in that wank, we’ve been talking about fanfic versus profic, how art is created (ie, not in a vacuum), authorial rights, porn, BDSM in published works, why gay characters always have to be evil/sadistic/die/fuck the opposite sex, and whether Marion Zimmer Bradley got screwed over by fanfic (answer: no).
Now, I understand that every community has conversations like this, and it seems as though of some of these topics are discussed via forums or blogs in comics, but one of the most notable aspects of the fandom I run in is two things: One, there’s a lot of private conversations (locked, so, like private parties) where people refine their ideas amongst friends and can talk more freely and two, there’s a lot of effort put into truly collaborative linked, meta works so that the conversation can be read as a whole.
There are individual people who gather links and then post them to create a new conversation (with or without their own take), there are communities whose sole purpose is to find interesting critical posts and wrangle the links together (like MetaFandom), there are communities where the links are wrangled and then new conversations take place (like Unfunny Business or FandomWank), there are wikis, and on and on. It’s all based on the idea that many people are having a group discussion and that the group discussion itself is worthy of note, and that anyone may join in at any time and be of interest.
This is not to portray fandom as a nice place, because it isn’t. It’s kind of like getting a lot of sharks together and tossing in a penguin to play with. Manga critics: not nice people!
But this is a very much a difference from, well, the folks who run things round these here parts. I remember reading the “welcome” post from the head honcho here, Gary Groth, (who I’d never heard of) and being shocked at the rudeness and also the lack of buy-in, to use an annoying business term. He doesn’t think the web provides useful or interesting criticism. And he said so in his welcoming post to his new online critics!
Odd.
In my neck of the woods, you never know who will be the next awesome commentator or the coolest writer or the worst troll. Could be anyone (there was an infamous incident of a TV producer getting banned once, fer instance). Conversations of note aren’t just a few of the same people talking, but tend to get metafandomed and then spread like wild fire until posts reach many hundreds of comments and the poster has to take a valium and go offline for a few days (not a joke, and I have seen this happen several times). Sharks, like I said. Also manga critics: still not nice.
It leads to some fascinating theory. You can read posts like How to Suppress Discussion of Racism which was brought about by fandom discussions of various artistic works. That’s easily recognizable as theory and criticism.
But there are other aspects to the weird world of fandom. One aspect that I love is that nothing is sacred. Fandom writers write about, work with, and criticize everything. TV fans talk about comics, comic fans talk about audio books, book fans talk about commercials, real person fans talk about music, it’s all mashed up and spun around and shaken not stirred. And it makes for some, well, pretty weird art.
Because, like its approach to critical theory, fandom thinks pretty much anyone can play in the sandbox and use whatsoever tools they’ve got lying around to create art. Want to read one of the best takes on a gay relationship between two characters on a TV show? Read about them as GirlScout cookies in a multi-media piece here. Not work safe. Yes, you read that correctly. Not safe for work gay cookie porn. It’s got over nine-hundred comments and it’s really, really good. Trust me!
But that’s the thing about fandom. You can love TV today and comics tomorrow. Or love comics and then love TV. You can use your powers as a lawyer or as a sculptor or, god save us, a knitter. Podcasts. Videos. Audiobooks. Comics. Novels. Poems. Theories. Archives. Charity auctions. Social networking code. Anything and everything rolled into one big, gooey pile of confusion and collaboration.
I suspect that most of the critical comics world doesn’t know about fandom’s take on comics (manga or American) because fandom is so damn messy, and wading through a thousand and one posts on Adam Lambert’s hair or Rape Culture 101 doesn’t appeal to them, or feels irrelevant or uninteresting. Fandom blogs are a lot less single-focus than comics blogs seem to be. My own blog, while sometimes discussing modern class theory as shown in fantasy and SF, is currently discussing nail polish.
Just as a for instance.
But the mismash of media makes for a lot of interesting art. It means that feelings, themes, plots, and characters are re-interpreted and re-invented time and again by many people in many ways. Art that started out as a TV show becomes a written and drawn comic. Comics become stories. Novels spur audiobooks. And comics, including modern American mainstream comics, become perfume.
Oh yes. Perfume. Officially licensed , commercially sold perfume.
This is not like that wretched Spiderman lip gloss crap. (GROSS, people. GROSS. Do. not. want.) That was an attempt by The Powers That Be to commercialize a product that would appeal to girls just in order to make some random bucks. Hint: speaking as a girl, if you can’t match MAC’s lipglass, I ain’t touching it, and I’m sure as heck not putting anything associated with Spidey’s goo near my lips. Ew.
No, what I’m talking about is a re-imagining of the comic, the characters, through a different sense entirely. What is Hellboy as a scent, rather than a visual image or written story?
Which is the question I shall be addressing in my upcoming posts. What is the Hellboy character as a scent? What is the comic? How are they related, and when the scent is realized, what emotions does it evoke? How successful are such imaginings?
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab‘s perfumes are well known in fandom circles and are usually referred to as BPAL. They’re a small perfumer, working in tiny batches, handmixed, and without a major in-person retail outfit. The scents themselves have quite a fandom following on their own, but one of the most fascinating aspects of BPAL is the way that they explore imagery, ideas, and characters through scents. For a long time, they have had a series of perfumes that evoke places, Shakespearean characters, Lovecraftian horrors, Alice in Wonderland, and deities. They have also explored art pieces as scents, as in the Salon series. (There was also a limited edition floating world series, but it’s gone now.)
When I mentioned the idea of this series to Noah, he seemed startled, but encouraged me to proceed. “Truly bizarre”, in his words. I think it’s a bit difficult to startle Noah and I’m quite pleased to have managed it. In my world, switching from medium to medium is quite common, and can result in some truly spectacular art. Or some truly eye searing horrors, such as the infamous Care Bear BDSM story (which I would like to forget thankyousoverymuch).
What this means is that I will be exploring comics and scent. Comics re-imagined in a new sense, literally, from the visual and verbal to the sensory input of the nose. Hellboy. Witchblade. Neil Gaiman’s works. Boom Studios. Sachs and Violens.
I don’t know all of these comics, so I’ll be reading them and smelling them at the same time. I’m curious, as some of the folks around here have no doubt actually read all of the comics in question, if anyone has favorite characters whose scents they’d like to see reviewed or explored. Are there characters you think I’d find particularly intriguing? Is anyone already familiar with these scents and have a favorite? Is BPAL completely new to you? Have you experienced comics in a different medium yourself that you’d recommend I check out (such as, I don’t know, the comic fandom version of cookie porn?) as I go through this exploration of re-imagining?
Or, you know, do you now need a valium and a lie down after finding out about the Care Bear thing?
I bought some of the Neil Gaiman scents for a CBLDF fundraiser (all the comic scents on BPAL are designed to raise money for either the CBLDF or the Hero Initiative). Mr. Nancy smells like lime Tostitos. I have no idea if that’s an accurate evocation of the character, but I like the scent.
I’ve been slowly working on a line of scents for my own online comics, because “Smells Like Webcomics” is an irresistible tagline.
I really like the charity aspect of BPAL’s work, too. It makes me not mind the cost of this project so much (I’ll be buying quite a few scents to try…)
Lime Tostitos, eh? *laughs delightedly* I didn’t read that one of Gaiman’s, but I got some of the Stardust scents a year or so ago, and really loved the way the Market smelled. Just like I imagined it.
I’d love to see webcomics scents!!
I don’t think I’ve read any of the things you mentioned; I know Hellboy is supposed to be good and Witchblade not so much though (for what that’s worth.)
To respond to your critic vs. fandom though….I think there’s lots of worthwhile things happening in fandom. At the same time…in the first place, I doubt that the fandom is really quite as separate from critical theory ideas as you’re suggesting. I find it hard to believe that coffeeandink doesn’t have at least some passing familiarity with queer theory and feminist theory, as a for instance. American feminists in general don’t really like Lacan much…but I bet there’s some not completely insignificant percentage of your interlocutors who care one way or the other about Judith Butler, or even Eve Sedgwick. Or if not them, then feminism and anti-colonial studies and anti-racism more generally. I guess it’s possible that no one has read any of the actual texts that they’re getting (some) of their ideas from — but that doesn’t mean that they made the ideas up themselves. If you don’t want to acknowledge your foremothers, you don’t want to acknowledge your foremothers, but that doesn’t mean those folks haven’t influenced you.
“One aspect that I love is that nothing is sacred. Fandom writers write about, work with, and criticize everything.”
Again, my experience with the fandom is pretty limited, and mostly second hand, but I think you may be idealizing a little. Every community has its limits and its sacred cows. The fact that such an important part of LJ communities involves limiting access to private groups strongly suggests that it’s not just all about openness and everybody participating. On the contrary, from what I’ve seen, there’s an awful lot of insularity in the fandom — and it’s pretty easy to step on something that someone thinks is sacred. My (very limited) experience has been that it’s not at all hard to freak out people from that neck of the woods…and I’m pretty sure that I could come up with various topics that fall outside the eclectic stew of interests too (maybe there’s lots of death metal slash, for example, but I’m guessing not. (And no, Metallica slash doesn’t count.))
None of which, again, is meant to say that Care Bear BDSM isn’t a wonderful thing. But Lacan can be good to. Maybe they can even live together — object petit a slash anyone?
I adored the Witchblade TV show, and I’ve got the ten pound (nearly literally) comic, so we’ll see I guess. *looks at its size nervously*
Or if not them, then feminism and anti-colonial studies and anti-racism more generally. I guess it’s possible that no one has read any of the actual texts that they’re getting (some) of their ideas from — but that doesn’t mean that they made the ideas up themselves. Sure, but I think that a lot of them are writing their own Racism 101 or Class Theory or Anti-Colonianism theories, which is, I think different. I’m not saying they don’t like Lacan or Butler or whoever so much as they are writing their own theories and referencing them, which feels very different to me. Maybe I’m not reading the right comics blogs, but I don’t see as much theory creation as I see theory application.
Sure there’s tons of insularity in fandom, and it’s easy to freak them out, and I’m not saying it’s warm and fuzzy (they’re sharks), but I do think that when it comes to art, they are willing to turn their gazes to pretty much anything, whatever strikes their fancy (and there is some stuff that doesn’t, granted).
maybe there’s lots of death metal slash, for example, but I’m guessing not. I don’t really like death metal, so I’m not up on it, but I do like Finnish doom metal, so I can hook you up with doom metal slash. Lots, actually. Are there specific death metal bands you’d like to see slashed?
Doom metal makes a lot more sense than death metal, actually. But you learn something new everyday…. You’ve got Deicide slash, you think?
“but I think that a lot of them are writing their own Racism 101 or Class Theory or Anti-Colonianism theories”
The truth is, hardly anyone in comicsland talks about lacan. They don’t give a crap any more than the folks in the fandoms do.
Most people who review comics do exactly what you’re saying; they come up with ad hoc ideas which refer in general to received bodies of knowledge, rather than looking to particular theories or texts. I’d argue that there are some problems with deliberately refusing to learn from people who have already covered the ground you’re walking on — for one thing, you tend to end up wandering around the same turf a lot. But, on the other hand, it’s not like you can’t have great conversations or come up with great ideas the way you’re suggesting either. And it’s not like academics don’t say the same things over and over too.
I could talk to some degree about why I think theory is worthwhile — but mostly it just comes down to reading books with ideas that excite me and wanting to figure out how those ideas fit in other contexts. If those books aren’t the ones you’re interested in, that’s fine. But not wanting to read Lacan, or Freud, or philosophy in general certainly isn’t a signature virtue of the fandom.
I’ll see what I can find for Deicide slash. How do you feel about Ville Valo and Bam Margera? Because I can hook you up there. Finnish doom metal for the win!
I guess I’m not arguing that fandom is anti-theory. I’m sure someone out there is slashing Lacan (there’s a whole founding fathers fandom, so I’m sure someone, sometime slashed Lacan…) but I do think they’re doing more than randomly covering ground together. Some of the stuff is, at least to me, pretty formal (albeit dead weird). I’d be interested to hear what you like about theory, by the way.
I guess I’m thinking of playing with ideas the way they do the cookies, but also with things like TV Tropes http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage or story kink lists. While it might sound absurd, I do think there’s a lot of understanding about story structure/readership going on in things like Kink Bingo and Cliche Bingo. It forces a creation of story (or in astridv’s case a comic) based on a series of pretty formal plot/character ideas.
Partly what I’m getting at is my critical influences–not what *ought* to be, but what is for me as critic. One of the reactions that surprised me recently was the discussion of Junjou Romantica. It’s one of my favorite comics ever, but I mentioned that the characters were stock, and that surprised a couple of readers. It’s possible that the characters struck me as so stock because that series of tropes is very common in fandom, maybe, more than it just is common is comics. And also, stock character tropes is something that fandom has, oh, I don’t know, taught me to look for again and again, while appreciating that the stock types are well-loved/effective. So I’m trying, I suppose, in part to answer why I look at the comics in that way. Every naughty comic I look at is in a sense filtered through the view of kink bingo squares.
Also, I found this but could not manage to read it. RPF about comics creators, where Gail Simone and Frank Miller–well, I was mucking around looking for Lacan/Freud slash (because it would be funny) and found this, and now I can’t NOT share the link. So I’m linking it. http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/54/theadventures.html
But I’m not endorsing it!! *flaps hands*
I sneer, and also spit upon, your Ville Valo. He’s not even metal! That’s emo/goth nonsense — which I totally expect to see slashed. Death metal is (a) really, really aimed almost exclusively at guys, (b) almost entirely disinterested in sex as a subject or selling point. It would just be bizarre to find an active slash community based on death metal — not impossible, necessarily, but you’d definitely have to show me it existed for me to believe in it.
Slashing Lacan wouldn’t really be the same as using Lacanian theory. On the other hand, even from my very passing acquaintance, I know there are critical concepts that come from and are used by the fandom communities — Mary Sue, for example, the (very useful) jumping the shark. I do think those qualify as theory, and you can do interesting things with them. On the other hand, from what I’ve seen, the impulse with most of that stuff tends to be very nuts and bolts; as you say, it tends to be about labeling tropes and discussing how they “work” or don’t. Which can certainly be interesting, and is a very established literary critical mode (Northrop Frye was into that, I think.) But it doesn’t really get at what I most like about theory, which is that it tends to be a way to open a text out in surprising ways into other issues and concepts — to talk about gender, or religion, or language, or how society or the world works.
Not that LJ communities don’t talk about that stuff too. And in some sense it’s just that different people are engaged by different ideas in different ways. But I’d just argue I guess that there are some things you can do with theory that seem worthwhile to me that your description doesn’t convince me are necessarily happening in LJ communities. (Though, of course, the reverse is no doubt the case as well — that is, there are kinds of thinking and discussions happening in LJ communities that aren’t necessarily going to happen with theory.)
If you’re willing to accept a parody/cartoon metal band, there’s a VERY active slash fandom around Metalocalypse’s Dethklok — multiple LJ communities, Y-Gallery clubs full of explicit fanart, tons of fic all over the usual archive sites, you name it.
See, and I think that LJ communities are doing the interesting gender and social mores work, often inside a story itself. When they run genderswap or mpreg fests, for instance, they’re opening stories in a way that is really amazing and not something I see elsewhere (of course sometimes they’re garbage, but). I mean, sure some of the tropes in the kink bingo cards are straightforward, but I see them used in a lot of ways that create quite surprising twists and turns. LJ trumps most of the bisexuality studies I ever found (like the trope differences between woke up gay, only gay for you, and gay along).
That’s one the great things, I think. Have you ever heard of Remix? It’s where fandom takes fanfic stories (and only some fandoms qualify) and they rewrite fannish stories. Sometimes they’re pretty straightforward rewrites, but a lot of times, they pick strange points-of-view, like a bystander or switch the protag’s gender or end the story tragically or whatever. Remix is all about opening the story, turning it inside out, and then shaking it all about.
Did you ever read astolat’s genderswap fic about Master & Commander?
http://www.intimations.org/fanfic/master_and_commander/five_things-world.html
It’s pretty great, I think, as an exploration of sexuality and assumes some interesting things about preferences.
Also, Ville Valo is love metal, man!!
Maybe I should Lacan another try…
Smilla, parody/cartoon metal really wouldn’t upset my paradigm the way death metal slash would.
Cannibal Corpse would probably be easier to find than Deicide; since CC is still active.
VM, fiction certainly deals with all sorts of issues and ideas. Criticism is, or can be, a way to engage with those issues and ideas from a different perspective, and connect them more explicitly to other conversations. Though, like the fics, the results aren’t always pretty….
Well, I’m not having any luck with Deicide, but there are a few sites with Children of Bodom fanfiction — although for the sake of your threatened paradigm, you may be happy to hear that this one (http://z10.invisionfree.com/Children_Of_Bodom/index.php?showtopic=5) has the fic posting rules publicly visible, but the actual stories are restricted to logged-in forum members; this LJ community (http://community.livejournal.com/cob_fiction/profile) is dedicated to COB fic, but all postings are f-locked, and this site (http://www.fanficpata.net/browse.php?type=categories&id=20) actually has the fics unlocked, but they’re all in Finnish. (Running those through Google Translate does confirm that they’re Just What It Says On The Tin — and also adds some unintentional humour because the machine translation can’t quite cope with Finnish non-gendered pronouns.)
Not terribly surprising results, really — a lot of bandslash and other forms of Real Person Fic gets posted to locked communities and forums rather than more open fic archives, even in more female-dominated fandoms; so it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of death metal slashfic was discreetly staying low-profile…
Children of Bodom is not as paradigm-shattering as Deicide or Cannibal Corpse would be, but I’m still impressed….
I’m coming to the conversation late, but I think it’s worth pointing out that a lot of the singular voices that Vom doesn’t like were actually the written account of a group dynamic.
For example, not all of Aristotle’s ideas are necessarily Aristotle’s ideas. He had his share of disciples, and many of them were probably quite smart. They argued and hashed out ideas and eventually Aristotle wrote it all down (and thereby took all the credit).
A lot of the “great” philosophers of history are simply the guys who who ran the club, or who wrote it down first.
Never underestimate the power of fic finders! Bwahahaha! Actually, Deicide fic may exist, too, but it’s going to be lost in a Google morass because it’s also the name of a Bleach chapter now. Too bad.
Richard,
Hmmmm. I guess I want to say that I think that’s different–yes, there was some community, but it was a very small, top down one, more of a pyramid than a soup, whereas the net (for good and ill) makes it much easier to get silenced voices out there. I’m not saying fandom is necessarily happy-go-lucky, but I do find that a lot of marginalized groups (POC, women, non-heterosexual, non-cisgendered, disabled…) are able to be included pretty loudly at times, whereas I think Aristotle’s academy type setting feels more like a rock star plus groupies. Is that making any sense? Although some others were on more equal grounds (the orators, I think).
Hee, yes, searches also tend to get muddied a lot because there are quite a few fic writers out there who are big fans of metal and list their favorite bands in their profiles on LJ or the Pit of Voles, but their actual fic is all about Yu-Gi-Oh or Sonic the Hedgehog. (I’m not making those examples up, either!)
I’d not be surprised at all if someone out there wasn’t writing RPF about bands like Deicide or Cannibal Corpse — Rule 34, folks! — but the odds are very good that if it’s out there, much of it’s under f-lock or hidden in passworded forums; and especially for the Scandinavian bands, there’s probably a lot of fic written in languages other than English. Real Person fic is something of a polarizing subject in fandom — many folks who are quite happy to pair up fictional characters, abstract concepts, or even inanimate objects have ethical qualms over writing about real people, and some can be quite outspoken about their disapproval of the practice. It also probably doesn’t help that there have been some fairly notorious cases of the more, ahem, reality-challenged sorts of fans ACTUALLY BELIEVING that their favorite RPF pairing is really really real, insisting that these actors’ or musicians’ real-life SOs are part of a conspiracy to hide the truth, and otherwise making a sorry spectacle of themselves as they act out based on their delusions. So that makes for a lot of reasons that some RPF fans prefer to keep their fanworks on the downlow — they may be concerned about not wanting to potentially distress the real-life subjects and family members of their fannish imaginings by stumbling across publicly-posted porn, they may not want to squick or stir up debates with their fannish friends who are troubled by RPF, and they may prefer to keep these interests discreet so as not to be associated with the tinhat brigade.
Okay, I’ll bite…what’s rule 34?
I had a scarring experience with Obama slash incidentally; I was supposed to do an article about it, but started reading it and just go squicked out (as they say.) Some things just should not be (at least, not in my brain. Others may be stronger.)
XKCD sums it up pretty nicely: http://xkcd.com/305/ — if something exists, there’s porn of it. (along with the corollary Rule 35 — if porn of something doesn’t already exist on the internet, merely asking about it ensures that some *will* be made.)
And TvTropes (beware, beware) goes into a bit more detail — http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleThirtyFour
While the named and numbered “Rules of the Internet” meme got its start on 4chan, the general concept definitely predates the image boards. Years before the birth of /b/ or Uncle Ghastly’s invention of the Google seppuku game, I had a particularly twisted group of friends who would challenge each other by trying to think of fetishes or fanfic pairings that were too weird to possibly exist, and then going looking to prove ourselves wrong.
Okay, I’ve now listened to Children of Bodom. My paradigm is so, so not even slightly rocked. They’re way more like Him than they are like Deicide; they sound all romantic and glammy. It’s emo new metal. There’s death metal influence around the edges, but this is just not anywhere near Slayer, let alone Cannibal Corpse.
Which is kind of a relief. Don’t want to have to readjust your paradigm at the drop of a hat like that.
Noah, Dethklok is a fake band but it’s had real tours with Mastadon and …And You Shall Know Us By the Trail of Dead. Are the, er, metal enough? Because I’ll look for crossovers if they qualify… ;-)
Fake bands just don’t work, even if they’ve had real tours; wikipedia says trail of dead is art rock, not metal at all!
I know it’s kind of ridiculous to put in all these caveats about what is and is not metal enough — but that’s kind of the thing about extreme metal. It’s obsessed with authenticity in a very male idiom. It’s just not at all about fluid, anything goes pleasures. It’s about really rigid formal structures and embracing death — which is why I don’t think it works naturally with the fandoms you’re talking about (obviously fandom is really important to extreme metal — it just works rather differently.)
I can imagine there being black metal slash… Darkthrone? Nachtmystium? Entombed (they’re hardly metal at all now, I don’t think)? But death metal (even for a band named Rimfrost!) seems unlikely….
Noah– that’s why I asked, because I don’t know enough about metal to say who’s X or Y. It’s understandable!
Fair enough!
Never ask a metalhead to start discussing what is or is not metal enough, is maybe the moral. it’s just not worth it….
VM: Sachs and Violens?
Let me save you some time here- eau de merde!
Can I just say that I really enjoyed this post and I am grumpy that I’m too busy catching up after vacation to comment on it for real? Thanks Vom.