The AEC officials and the volunteers for Labor and the Greens were awesome. The volunteers were patient and enthusiastic and got everyone roughly sorted, and then there were extra AEC officials to double-check we were in the right queues. However, all this meant that we were split into two different categories heading to the poll booths, and each side of the room had only two people crossing off names and giving out the voting slips. Ordinarily, there’s at least four people per electorate doing this (in all the previous elections I’ve voted) in the major polling centres. We really needed at least three people each to cover the two main electorates covered by my suburb.

Seventy. Minutes. To. Vote. I don’t mean “seventy minutes after leaving my house”. I mean “seventy minutes after arriving at the school and standing in queues on a very sunny late-autumn day at ten-freaking-thirty-in-the-morning”.

I know by US standards that’s nothing, but in Australia anything over the hour mark is heading toward unreasonable and I’ve never had to wait that long to vote in all my life. Never. Even at this previous location, which is always been a busy polling centre where I expect some wait, I can usually get out in forty or fifty minutes.

Again, the officials and volunteers were awesome. Props to them all, and double props to the super Greens volunteer I chatted with, who wanted to know how long I’d taken so she could advise other folks.

But standing in a queue for seventy minutes, even with my phone and its hundreds of digital books, has my legs and feet aching, and the AEC didn’t provide near enough officials with the combination of electorate change and historically busy location. The situation would have been difficult at a quieter location, and here it was just absurd.

All I can say is that we’d better have bloody voted out the Liberals, because if I had to stand there for seventy minutes just to see Scott Morrison and his pack of misogynistic, heterosexist, cissexist, climate-change-denying arseholes come back into power ... I don’t even want to think about that.

(If there was any warning emailed out, I didn’t get it. Maybe it’s in the spam folder?)

Me: I despise Google but Chrome is now my default fucking browser, you absolute fucking arseholes.

However, I am now going to have to spend who knows how long logging into all my accounts and setting up Chrome, just in case I didn’t have better things to do on a Saturday morning.

(Which I did. Like everything I am trying to get caught up on.)

I’m so mad. So fucking mad. I’ve lost everything that made the internet usable to me. (And I have no idea how I’m going to Google those specific command lines in uBlock Origin because I can’t remember what half of them even were.) And it took me hours to find a colour-change add-on that cut down on the glare of Tumblr New Blue while allowing me to custom-choose which pages I want to change (only Tumblr) and the thought of having to do that all over again is just fucking unbelievable.

To make this a bit easier on myself, and also because my right hand isn’t working that well right now, I’m going to divide this into multiple posts. So this some of the power, symphonic, sympho-folk, gothic and power-prog artists in my main playlists.

I should note that I am an autistic with auditory processing disorder, so I do not listen to music primarily for lyrics and cannot promise that any one of these songs won’t contain problematic content.

I didn’t include Nightwish or Amaranthe because I know that you know of them, @dps-winston, but if you want my recommendations on either I can provide that. It’s also worth noting that I’ve often gone for bands’ lead tracks to give some idea of what their general sound is like. Also, not all these bands are actively together or recording.

Also, as someone who’s been listening to symphonic metal for a long time, I am not always a fan of the genre’s shift away from gothic metal undertones into pop-metal undertones, so the songs I list demonstrate that. There are other songs by bands like Sirenia, Xandria and Delain that are going to have that pop-metal tone if that’s what you enjoy. It’s just that I--while I shake my cane and ramble on about the good old days--came into the genre when it was paying homage to gothic metal, and I miss that.

Amberian Dawn: Mythological/fantastic gothic power metal. Unlike most of the bands here, they don’t go for anywhere near the same degree of orchestration, but there’s still backing choral pieces. Earlier songs are more often operatic; later songs are a bit less so.

Examples: River of Tuoni (early), Fame and Gloria, Cherish My Memory (Remastered)

Amanda Somerville and Michael Kiske: Two of metal’s famous melodic voices join up in that soft/melodic corner of power metal. Their first album is slow and blah, in my opinion, but City of Heroes has some rocking songs, and the title track is pretty much the Hero’s Journey set to song.

Examples: City of Heroes, Walk on Water.

Avantasia: A long-running (usually concept album) project from power metaller Tobias Sammet and a range of guest vocalists from the power, symphonic and prog corners of metal. More symphonic-power and power-prog than true power metal. Songs like “Runaway Train” are fucking epic.

Examples: Runaway Train, Twisted Mind.

Ayreon: Pretty much the epitome of melodic prog concept album projects, by Arjen Lucassen and another range of famous metal guest vocalists. It’s still power-prog, but it leans more into the prog than Avantasia. I very much recommend listening to Ayreon as a whole album first over individual songs, as much as I adore Day Three: Pain.

Examples: I’ll always recommend first The Human Equation.

Crimfall: Folk-with-a-bit-of-symphonic metal. I’d say something like the later Nightwish sound combined with early Eluvitie and a dash of Howard Shore’s The Lord of the Rings with even more outrageous bombast and shifts between clean and grunt (beauty and the beast) vocals. This band goes all out between softer breaks, so it isn’t just a wall of noise. (Although the start of “Until Falls the Rain” is fucking massive.) If you don’t like grunt vocals or harder folk, this may not work for you, but if you do, Crimfall.

Examples: Until Falls the Rain, The Last of Stands, Wildfire Season, Where Waning Winds Lead

Dark Princess: Gothic metal with ... well, I can only say emo undertones, but a similar sort of pop-metal sensibility as Amaranthe. They’re a pretty accessible entry to the melodic metal genre for folks new to the idea in terms of hardness, comprehensible vocals and song lengths.

Examples: Cry, Stop My Heart, The Key.

Delain: Symphonic/goth metal in their earlier albums; gothic power-pop metal, more like Amaranthe, in their later ones. I prefer their earlier albums, and their songs that lean hardest on the pop metal rarely do it for me so I won’t list them here, but Charlotte Wessels always sounds gorgeous. Damn do I love “Sleepwalker’s Dream”.

Examples: Sleepwalker’s Dream (early), Here Come the Vultures (later), Masters of Destiny (current)

Edenbridge: Symphonic/operatic metal, more like early Nightwish. I don’t like all their songs, I admit. They’re at their best, in my book, when they’re willing to move away from a close adherence to the Nightwish or Epica sound with more diverse instrumentation; “Wild Chase” is seriously good fun.

Examples: Wild Chase, Remember Me, Higher

Elis: Gothic metal. A lot of their songs sound fairly similar to me, but if you want less orchestration and more gothic sounds with grunt vocals, chorus and guitar, they’ll provide. (RIP Sabine.)

Examples: The Burning, Salvation

Elvenking: Folk meets light power metal with some acoustic songs between, and I have to say there’s something a bit Pratchett-esque elvish or Goblin Market about the weirdness of some of their songs, lyrically. But they’re light, fantastic, folky fun; just don’t expect them to always fit the Tolkien mould. High fantasy Elvenking are not, and that’s why they work.

Examples: The Wanderer (acoustic version), The Cabal, Trows Kind

Epica: If you’re looking for a more existential/spiritual/philosophical take on Nightwish, Epica will provide in the symphonic/operatic/gothic metal sphere. They’re bit more classical-feeling than Nightwish and, at the same time, more gothic, with grunt vocals threaded through the operatic elements. They’re big, bombastic and dramatic, with a touch of Therion about their music.

Examples: Our Destiny, The Essence of Silence, Tides of Time

Kamelot: Symphonic power-slightly-prog metal with a fair bit of drama. We don’t talk about Roy Khan, but I do like his vocals slightly better than that of his replacement, Tommy Karevik. (Karevik is still good, though.) They almost always have One Really Big Romantic Power Ballad, often with a guest female vocalist; it’s practically a contractual obligation.

(Epica are named after Kamelot’s Epica album, FYI.)

Khan examples: The Human Stain, March of Mephisto, A Sailorman’s Hymn

Karevik examples: Insomnia, Under Grey Skies (with the aforementioned Charlotte Wessels), Vespertine (My Crimson Bride)

Leah: A one-woman soft/melodic Celtic metal band, often with doom and prog undertones. Not all her stuff is quite as metal as I prefer, but if you want a break from the bombast melodic metal likes to throw at you with vocals more akin to Enya than Tarja, Leah will do that.

Examples: The Northern Edge, This Present Darkness

Leaves’ Eyes: Symphonic Norse metal, most of the time, but there’s a few albums between that are more like symphonic folk or Norse/Celtic rock. I vastly prefer them when they’re leaning harder to metal, like King of Kings. (Their best album, in my book.) We also don’t talk about Liv Kristine, but I do prefer her as frontwoman.

Examples, all Liv Kristine: Halvdan the Black, Blazing Waters, Froya’s Theme, Elegy (which, because pronouns, sounds like a sapphic love song)

Pyramaze: Fantasy-style softer power metal with a slight dash of prog. It’s very traditionally DnD/fairy tale fantastic, but it’s more toned down compared to Dragonforce. You’re all but required to sing “blood will be shed” and “the UNICORN” in the same way Shakespeare demands you holler “dishonour not your mothers”.

Examples: Tears of Hate, Legend.

Serenity: They’re Kamelot’s brand of symphonic power metal with a more power-metal-leaning vocalist and fantasy or historical vocals. They’re pretty much what power metal would be if it stayed power metal in theme but tried for Kamalot’s sound and styling. For all that it’s hard not to see them as a Kamelot knock-off, I do enjoy their music.

Examples: Velatum, Rust of Coming Ages, When Canvas Starts to Burn

Sirenia: Gothic metal evolving to symphonic metal. I vastly prefer their earlier albums; their middle albums have lost uniqueness (in my opinion) as they moved towards the Nightwish-adjacent mould, just with grunt vocals. Morten Velend’s vocals, though, are good: he’s deep and gravelly while still being clear. And the recent album has that discordant note again, albeit now over Amaranthe’s pop-metal base. Sirenia is a Revolving Door of Female Vocalists, though!

(If you like Morten’s vocals and want Sirenia’s orchestral gothic stylings sans female lead vocals: Mortemia’s Misere Mortem. If you prefer the earlier Sirenia songs, see early Tristania below.)

Examples: In My Darkest Hours (early), A Shadow of Your Own Self (early),  Sirens of the Seven Seas (middle), Dim Days of Dolor (recent), Love Like Cyanide (recent)

Sonata Arctica: Power metal, sometimes with fantasy or historical themes, but a bit toned down compared to Dragonforce or Rhapsody of Fire. This is why I listen to them a lot more than I do the others, as full-out power metal isn’t really my jam. Also, you have got to listen to “Fullmoon” because werewolves.

Examples: Fullmoon (Revisited), Flag in the Ground, The Last Amazing Grays

Tarja: For the sake of completeness, I should mention that Nighwish’s former frontwoman has recorded several of her own albums, but the first two are only ever okay for me, and I don’t connect to the later gothic-pop-metal tones of the later ones. I really notice the lack of Tuomas in her songs.

Examples of songs I don’t hate: Until My Last Breath, Die Alive

Therion: Unclassifiably melodic? Well, there’s fantasy, symphonic, orchestral, choral, prog, mythological and spiritual elements bound into something that’s wild and unique. Nothing else sounds quite like Therion, and their tracks vary in terms of additional tone, instrumentation, theme and styling. It’s as dramatic and all out as all fuck.

Examples: Call of Dagon, Enter Vril-Ya, Son of the Staves of Time, Adulruna Rediviva

Threshold: Soft power-prog, somewhat like Kamelot but sans orchestration. I do find a lot of their songs to be similar, and their early stuff doesn’t speak to me at all, but the songs I like I really like.

Examples: Stars and Satellites, Small Dark Lines

Tristania: Their early (Morten) albums are discordant gothic metal with doomier-style orchestrations, mostly grunt vocals against a choral background. Their later albums ... they’re just standard goth metal. If you like harder vocals leaning into doom but with more orchestration and symphonic elements, Tristania’s early albums are great. Not a fan, at all, of their later stuff, but I’ll link a song for comparison!

Examples: Beyond the Veil (early), Opus Relinque (early), Year of the Rat (later)

Visions of Atlantis: This is another band that’s had a few different vocalists and have changed tone along with them, but they’re mostly fantasy/mythological symphonic metal. (The earlier albums have a consistent operatic power metal vibe not present on songs like “The Deep and the Dark”.) I don’t mind when autoplay offers me their songs, but they’ve never been a band whose discography I absolutely have to own.

Examples: Mermaid’s Wintertale (early), Return to Lemuria (recent), The Deep and the Dark (recent)

Within Temptation: If you’ve heard Nightwish and Amaranthe, you’ve probably heard WT, but just in case you haven’t, they’re a symphonic metal stalwart. Not all their albums work for me--sometimes they sound far too same-ish and sometimes their more experimental songs don’t hit the mark--but Hydra is fantastic.

(I do love And We Run as is. Ironically, I can’t stand What Have You Done; I wish they’d gotten Mikael Stanne or Morten Veland over Keith Caputo. Just think what that song would sound like with grunt vocals!)

Examples: Edge of the World, The Last Dance, Murder and, because I’m contractually obligated to mention it, Paradise (What About Us)

Xandria: A fairly standard gothic/symphonic/operatic metal band, but they’re another Revolving Door of Female Vocalists Band with resulting shifts in tone, so the mood of their albums shifts from gothic to full-out operatic depending on vocalist. I don’t always like all their songs for this reason! Neverworld’s End is my favourite, probably because it’s the most Nightwish-esque.

Stop fucking recommending me shitty, misogynistic videos about men dissing metal frontwomen while I’m trying to put together the links for a post.

For a while I’d been doing so well in not being subjected to ridiculous, hateful bullshit on YouTube. So well. Hah.

Although I did discover that I’d missed Sirenia’s latest album release and it’s fucking discordant mess hinting at early Tristania and recent Sirenia merged with Amaranthe’s pop-metal styling, and I think that’s actually working for me. It’s not An Elixir for Existence; it’s not Misere Mortem. But it’s all over the fucking place and that kind of speaks, a bit, of Beyond the Veil, albeit in a very 2018 context.

And I’d missed Delain’s “Masters of Destiny” which is bringing me back into the fold after grumping over the last few albums because holy fuck, Charlotte Wessels.

(I could write another post on how I’m not fully on board the shift many symphonic metal bands took towards the pop-metal sound in the last few years, as someone who’s been a metal fan almost since the very beginning of the genre. The symphonic metal genre, I mean!)

So, yes, while the autoplay feature has done me good, I don’t want to see this misogynistic bullshit, YouTube. Please stop. Please.

[image description: a white, freckled person in a blue-check buttoned shirt over a grey T-shirt, hir head tilted, showing off a dark blond haircut that’s short on the back and sides and a little longer in the fringe, the fringe swept to the viewer’s left. Ze has thin eyebrows and dark grey-ish eyes, and ze wears a bead ring pendant on a blue cord around hir neck in trans pride colours. Ze sits in front of a lemon wall bearing a display of squishy plushes and Disney Tsum Tsum plush; above hir head rests a white shelf bearing the spines of many Tamora Pierce books.]

From the right angle, you don’t actually know that the new swept-to-the-side fringe I have is covering up a bald spot the size of a twenty-cent piece.

(That’s where the cyst was: right in the centre of my head, about a centimetre above the clump of swept hair. My GP assures me that follicle regrowth takes between one and three months, and I’m only a little past the first month, but I’m impatient. There’s one single strand starting to come back and the rest is all nah, not yet.)

Considering what the hairdresser was working with, I can’t fault her. I prefer my hair with less fringe, but if I’d known that she’d pull this one off, I wouldn’t have delayed getting it cut--something that bothers me in terms of dysphoria and autism because I can’t stand hair over my ears. It’s one of those things where it shouldn’t be bothering me that much and I know it could easily have been so much worse, but I’ve realised that while I don’t care too much about looking whatever “attractive” is, I do feel this social pressure to hide my scars/cysts/lumps/dermatitis. And having a bald spot right at the front was distressing me, hence my keeping my hair long for longer than I could stand./p>

(Although we’re going to try for another biopsy in the hope we can figure out what’s causing said dermatitis, so I’m going to have to not manage it so we can do a biopsy in full flare and avoid the “well, it’s inflamed but we don’t know why” result the first time around. The biopsy isn’t fun, but having my hand look like dragon scale, along with the discomfort, for the days preceding it is going to be the worst bit. It’s fun to touch for stimming, but it’s less fun to live with in all other respects.)

Yes, my body is easier to live with when I possess a sufficient level of fuck Western ableist social norms about appearance, but it’s also nice when my hairdresser can just give me a fringe, you know?

Also, while I have no fucking idea what to do with my face in photos, ever (thanks, autism), balancing my iPad on my knee and cropping out the bottom makes a good angle for looking like I’ve a flatter chest. The whole I really don’t know facial expressions thing always makes me awkward about taking photos, but at least that’s good to know.

(So I don’t care about being “attractive” but I do care about my appearance when it comes to being scaly, showing my bald spots and lacking allistic, neurotypical facial expressions. Ableism.)

nonbinary-aigis replied to your post:

Me: I’ve got these pads I’ve had for like five...

big same i am such a tiny person and its hard to find pads that arent uncomfortable and tampons are a HUGE no for me

It’s not something I ever see talked about that much! I’ve seen discussions about thickness and length, but width is just this silent assumption that one width fits everybody when it doesn’t. It so doesn’t.

(Do you get the pressure sores from the sides of the pad pressing up against your skin, because it’s too big and they sort of fold over and crumple? I get them most of the time. So much ouch.)

sevenraptors replied to your post:

Me: I’ve got these pads I’ve had for like five...

I’ve been thinking about possibly getting some of the period underwear that many people can wear without leakage for a full day (and then just wash in washing machine). For people with very heavy flows definitely does not work.

I’ve seen so many mixed reviews on those (for a while I was watching a few YouTubers review different US-based products) to really not know for sure how they’ll work for me, but they are starting to sell a brand of them in Woolworths, now. I think it’s one of those things where a lot of personal experimentation is necessary.

Since I went on my iron tablets because pernicious anemia, I went from moderate reasonably stretched out over five days to same amount over three with one shall we say enthusiastic middle day. It’s not unreasonably heavy all up compared to many other people, but the uneven distribution is not kind! I can’t imagine using the washable underwear on that middle day. Well, no, I can, and nobody wants that.

(I actually have a hoard of products because I’d grab them whenever they were on sale on account of the expense when they’re not. Probably about six months’ worth. So I’m waiting for underwear sales of sufficient cheapness. And I should move the Satan Pads to the medicine box for dressings. Did I ever tell everyone that a sanitary pad, cut up and the back stuck to a bandanna, works really well for a non-sealed dressing that doesn’t slip for a head wound? After my cyst removal, I used those for dressings. The nurse said I could use a pad instead of buying dressings from the chemist, and I came back and raved to her two weeks later, because they work so much better than the professional dressing she first gave me. Raved. Always have a bandanna and a sanitary pad on you in case of zombie apocalypse or cyst removal.)

I prefer Libra. Well, not prefer. Best tolerate? They have the “Girl” (sigh) branded pads which are slightly narrower than the normal ones, and I’ve found that the longer “Girl” pads are easier because they buckle and poke less; the length holds them a bit better in place. But the Girl pads are branded as fitting for smaller bodies when they’re really not that much narrower, just thinner.

(It’s kind of funny in a I give up at this cissexist world way. Libra aren’t too bad on the whole aggressively-gendering approach: the packages are blue, there’s no floral prints and you get the interesting random facts on the wrappers. So, of course, my non-binary arse uses the products literally and obviously branded “Girl”, where their other products are labelled by size and thickness. I laugh. I absolutely have to laugh. But yeah, Libra, maybe don’t explicitly state that only people of a certain age and gender use your smaller-sized products? And more width diversity?)

Me, five seconds in: Hey, it’s not so ba--

Me, six seconds in: THESE TOO-WIDE PADS ARE THE EPITOME OF SATAN.

I barely tolerate the sensory hell of menstruation with the good pads that don’t manage to twist themselves into positions that twist and poke into places causing a pressing I absolutely cannot ignore.

The one single brand of pads that don’t completely drive me into overwhelm by twisting up and hurting me because they’re all too wide are a complete and non-negotiable necessity.

Seriously, some folks with uteruses have a smaller pelvis. Pads do not gently curve downwards with any excess material as manufacturers seem to think; instead, they twist and press up into spaces that have no business being so pressed. For folks like me who can’t make other products work that well, please make narrower pads. Not thinner. Narrower. Menstruation wouldn’t be nearly so much a problem for me if I had pads at least a centimetre narrower--and I’m pretty sure there’s folks who’d prefer pads at least a centimetre wider, for that matter. This one-width-fits-all thing? Not so much.

Companies here in Australia provide some variety for length and thickness, but I’d love to see them offer that same diversity for width. Please.

She was really good about it, she made the conversation as easy as possible, I directed her to a few neopronoun resources online that she wants to show other clinicians, she wants to talk to a non-binary friend of hers to inquire after therapists, and I was treated like a human who should have the basic right to be who I am and use the appropriate words to describe me.

Part of me feels good that I’m being treated with basic human worth in an area where I’m so rarely respected this way and can’t expect it from anyone else who isn’t, most of the time, also transgender/non-binary/non-cis.

Part of me wants to scream and cry because I’m not asking for anything that every other cis person doesn’t take for granted and I can’t be sure of it because what I had today is so exceptional. And this? This just being treated like a person? Shouldn’t be exceptional. Shouldn’t even be up for question.

It’s amazing, but it’s an amazement that can’t be disentangled from pain.

I’m glad, so glad, that I’m now more officially me who uses those pronouns. But I’m also sad, too, that I can’t just simply be glad about it, and given more than five minutes to think it through it gets tangled up with a history of dehumanisation and erasure--not to mention coming back home to a space where I’m shoved back into an erroneous box by people who claim to love me.

(On the positive side, I’m on the second draft of Birds of a Feather and Ein is just about to meet Ihrne’s secret queer underground, so I think I have some complex feelings on the subject of finally being freely accepted while living in a larger society where that acceptance is minimal/conditional.)