• Member Since 4th Dec, 2012
  • offline last seen March 7th

Meridian Prime


Your friendly local hollow eyed demon baby.

More Blog Posts67

  • 212 weeks
    TWO STORIES. FOUR DAYS.

    LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO


    (No really though I'm pretty proud of this one. Give it a try.)

    1 comments · 272 views
  • 212 weeks
    Still still STILL alive...?

    Er

    I'm here? 🤷

    I don't have many excuses this time.

    My computer turned out to be a pain and half to actually put together, and also it turns out that depression sucks. Who knew, huh?

    Read More

    6 comments · 282 views
  • 230 weeks
    Still STILL Alive

    Currently working on the whole 'pictures of my new place' thing I promised in the previous blog--my shitty old laptop is starting to give up the ghost and I don't trust it enough to transfer my pictures to it, so I'm waiting on a rebuilt desktop.

    Read More

    2 comments · 278 views
  • 240 weeks
    I'm Still Alive

    Aaaaand I have a decent reason for my long absence. Decent-ish, at least?

    Essentially, I found out around April that I would be moving to Japan to teach English for a year (minimum, potentially longer). As you can imagine, I then spent the next few months freaking out a bit and trying to get ready to go.

    Read More

    11 comments · 381 views
  • 272 weeks
    Slightly Belated Seasonal Greetings!

    Real life has been trying its hardest to keep me away from anything remotely creative recently, but I have managed to write a Christmas-y story for the Jinglemas collab over the last month. Seeing as we're now free to post them to our own account, I've just put it up - I hope you all like it! It's a comedy piece, although a lot less dark than my

    Read More

    3 comments · 390 views
Jul
5th
2018

“God Bless America” – Or, Musings On Independence Day II: Electric Boogaloo · 12:46am Jul 5th, 2018

So fun fact, it’s my birthday today! Born on the Fourth of July, baby!

'MURICA

I’m also, however, British. It never fails to amuse me that I’m born on the day most people reading this celebrate kicking my lot out of your country.

Anyway, I’m turning 22 today, and as I have only recently returned to the site I thought it would be nice to do a follow up to a similar post I made on the day I turned 20, now two years ago - one that instead was more of a goodbye note. It’s been quite a tumultuous couple of years to be honest, both in my personal life and on the slightly larger scale of world politics – or more specifically, the politics of the good ol’ US of A.

I have to confess, I do not envy you your Cheeto covered amoeba that has (somehow) masqueraded successfully as a human being. Brexit continues to be an awful mess and has more guaranteed long-term consequences – but Trump may end up going anywhere. If we’ve learned one thing about him in his first two years in office, it’s that the man is impossible to predict – he can always make a dumber, crueller decision.

So here’s to you, America. Good luck with your President – but until then, I’ll be singing this song, and staying on the other side of the Atlantic.

Which brings me to more personal matters – but let’s start with the music. That song is the seventh track on the album 22 by Parva, the name under which the band that would become the Kaiser Chiefs released their first and almost totally ignored album. Which is really a shame - I genuinely love this album. It stands shoulder to shoulder with their later work, and in some ways I prefer its harder musical style, and darker tone. Unfortunately, it's quite hard to find it in decent quality these days - please forgive the substandard sound in the youtube links (and the terrible Window Movie Maker videos that accompany them).

I had to take a long train ride earlier today (by British standards that is - a mere 3 hours) and spent a good part of it listening to this album - in part due to the obvious connection between the name of the album and my age, but also partly because it seemed appropriate to listen to the very first work of a band that has had a defining influence on my life as I step into a new part of it.

The Kaiser Chiefs second official record (third if you count 22) Yours Truly, Angry Mob, was the first album I ever bought for myself. While there is music that I have known for longer that I love just as much, it is my parents music - the Chiefs marked my first foray into music alone, almost exactly 10 years ago at age 12, shifting through CDs in a service station on the M40. I loved that album instantly and fiercely, and while I don't perhaps think of it as the musical masterpiece I did at the time, I still enjoy it now at 22. So again, it feels appropriate to return to this band as I find myself on the cusp of true adulthood. No more student life for me - I have to find a job, find a house, and figure out what, exactly, I want to do with my life.

No biggie.

And like many other graduates, including I suspect those that profess otherwise, I don't have the slightest clue what I want to do with my life, or indeed what I want from it. To be sure, I have a lot of ideas of things I might like to do - but it feels alarming akin to a 5 year old excitedly declaring their desire to be a fighter pilot, an astronaut, or a firefighter. A little more specific, perhaps, but no less varied in breadth. Then there is of course the ever present fear of most young people in the West - will I actually get a job, particularly one that I even remotely enjoy? Parents and friends are soothing and optimistic, but a quick look around is enough to see that jobs are scarcer, less well paid, and less stable for new graduates than they have been in quite a while.

22 feels appropriate in this context too. The track Good Bad Right Wrong certainly feels like it encapsulates a lot of my own feelings of inadequacy (and it could apply to some of the people around me too).

Country In C, a strong contender for my favourite track, also feels oddly prescient - both the lyrics and the tone match my current pessimism and fears about the state of the world at large, and where we're going. When frontman Ricky Wilson's questions "What are you going to do, when the bubble bursts?", I find myself with chills I definitely didn't have when I first heard this album.

Last, but not least, I found myself turning back to more recent music. In particular, Bon Iver's album 22, A Million, which was released only a couple of months after my previous "Musings On Independence Day" and which I immediately fell in love with. The title track especially has a special place in my heart - the appropriately named 22 OVER SOON. It's a hypnotic, glitched out hymn to the end of a relationship, but very much felt to me like a eulogy to the family that I had known my whole life until then. It still feels like a fitting send off to the aspects of my life that are now gone forever, but which I can now look back on a great deal more fondly than I could when they first started to disappear.

In the end, despite my worries, I find myself in a much better place than I was two years ago. My family is healing, however slowly, and for all my fears about the world I still believe in that Promised Land - I still think things can and will get better. There are terrible things in this world - but we've done a pretty good job of wiping out many other terrible things already. In many ways, I think that FiM's central message - that the bonds we build with other people can have transformative power - has more relevance to my life than ever before.

And honestly? Looking back on my life, I've found a lot of good things to carry forward. Hell, this site is one of them. Coming back to Fimfic, and seeing that a lot of the friends are still around and still there to welcome me back, that's been fantastic.

I'm kind of on my own now - truly independent, for the very first time. The future looks scary - but it also looks bright. To once more quote Mr. Wilson, yesterday was a weird one, there's a lifetime 'til tomorrow".

Happy Independence Day, everyone.

Report Meridian Prime · 223 views ·
Comments ( 8 )

Well, welcome back. :)

Happy Birthday!

Celebrate another year in this mad, bizarre, terrifying, splendid, cruel, and not really coherent world. And good luck for all the things that will come.

* Honestly, I find one of the saddest, most frightening parts of the political woes we're experiencing on both ends of the pond to be the increasingly-likely possibility that they are in fact deliberately interconnected pieces of a larger whole. But this doesn't strike me as an especially appropriate venue for venting my feelings on that front; suffice it to say, I wish you too good luck, and I just hope we both get SOME kind of Good News in this arena at SOME point.

* Happy Birthday, my friend! I share your existential worries about My Future As An Adult (and I'm a good several years older than you to boot XD; ), but I AM happy to hear you feel better about where you stand now than you have in the past. That sort of feeling can be fleeting and tenuous some times, but that's all the more reason to hold on to and make the most of it while you have it, and you have always struck me as the kind of intelligent, determined person who can do that exact thing.

* I am always fascinated to get a sampling of other peoples' tastes in music, because I'm always exposed to some interesting new corners of The Music World that I'd never really noticed or appreciated before, and that holds true here. Thanks for the little writing playlist. 8D

* Like you, the good people on this site have been a real source of support and motivation for me, and that's among the many reasons I was so glad t'see you showing up around here again. ^_^ Thanks for continuing to be an inspiring person and an engaging writer. :heart:

I've been without a computer the last few days, hence the lack of replies - I saw most of them via my phone, but I hold a deep and abiding hatred for smartphone keyboards so I waited until I got back so I could reply properly.

4895003
Thanks man! It's definitely good to be back. ^_^

4895040
So fun little story that this pic reminded me of - as you may know, Donald Trump is coming for a state visit to England on Thursday. Unusually, he is meeting with the Queen at Windsor instead of Buckingham Palace - and when I wondered aloud why this was, the son of a family friend that happened to be near by piped up with:
"Oh, the Queen is legally allowed to kill people with a sword inside the bounds of Windsor Castle."
Now I looked this up and it's false - but there is some debate over whether the Queen is actually above the law in Britain. So, given other recent developments, Thursday may end with a deposed Prime Minister and a dead President via old lady with sword. Isn't world politics fascinating?

4895080
Thank you! Not what I expected to be picked out of this rather rambling post, but appreciated all the same. :pinkiehappy:

4895325
Thanks Kettle! And a better description of the way of the world I have yet to see. I'll take that luck too - it always comes in handy. :ajsmug:

4896073
Had to give this comment its own space - there's a lot to discuss!

* It's interesting that you bring that up - the increasing connections between Brexit figures and Russian oligarchs has certainly been alarming, but while I think it's impossible to deny that Russia pushed a narrative both here and in the US, I think the scarier connecting factor is the jingoist, backwards-facing politics that allowed that narrative to be so effective. No matter what shady nations/organisations/persons were pulling the strings, the fact that the strings were ready and waiting to be pulled is (in my opinion) the more damning truth. But yes, probably shouldn't get into long political discussions on a fanfiction site. I second your hope - let Good News find it's way to our ears as fast as possible!

* Being a REAL ADULTTM is certainly harder than first advertised, and you're definitely right about it being a fleeting feeling. It definitely disappears whenever I look at my bank account. :twilightoops:
As for the latter section of this, it was really touching for me to read, and I wish I had more to say, but all I have is this: thank you. :heart:

* OH MAN you have no idea how happy this made me. Sharing music with other people, and particularly finding stuff that speaks to whichever individual I'm talking to, is genuinely one of my greatest joys in life. I have such a wide breadth of music taste (the only genre I can definitively say I haven't dabbled in is the harder end of metal) that I always find some shared interest - but when I find something they don't know, which I know they'll like? That is really special.
So yeah. If you ever want more music recs, I've got 300,000 songs in my library. There's probably at least a few you don't know. :twilightblush:

* Now this just warmed the cockles of my heart. I really am glad to be back, and responses like this are a good chunk of why. I'll accept your thanks, on the condition that you accept them for the same thing! :raritywink:

4898614 Flattered you set aside the space just fer me; thank you. ^_^

* Agreed entirely on all of this.

* No worries; "thank you" is plenty ;3
,
* Same goes t'you! Sharing music is one of my special little Favorite Things To Do (especially when I'm driving with friends/family, it's the beeest), so if you're ever curious, hit me up. 8D

* tee hee. cockles. x3

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