#* | development.

i used to see the way the world could be, but now the way it is is all i see and...

earthquakes rumble the skin under his arms as a thick metal cable twists its way around his stomach and his lungs. either his hands are shaking or his vision is as he stares down at them, blurring against the grey-white of the tile floor and the pristinely clean toilet he can’t find it within himself to hunch over, knowing full well that the building acidity eating away at his insides isn’t something he'll be able to expel and walk away brand new.

a year in music: 2022

on december 31, ash shares a playlist to social media of twenty-two of his favorite songs released in 2022. it’s one of his few posts to social media of the year, but also something of a tradition he’s made with sharing recommendations at the end of each year. the playlist isn’t in any specific order and it’s not even necessarily a meticulously curated list of his top twenty-two songs of the year — just twenty-two he really liked over the course of the year and wanted to share. some might be a look into his musical inspirations or headspace during the year, but more than anything, they’re songs he connected with at some point, whether that connection was musical or emotional.

date: late october word count: 491 words. summary: ash decides to do a mini-concert for the base culture complex the opening series. notes: no one hates dynamite as much as ash i think (let’s all just be thankful polaris won’t release ptd or he might have lost it completely)

he’s not pressured into. at least, in the grand scheme of things, the amount of pressure put on him doesn’t live up to what he knows dimensions is capable of when they want to convey they’re letting him think it’s his choice only for the optics and ‘no’ isn’t an acceptable answer.

#taeyongpalooza stage aesthetic

the stage design for ash’s lollapalooza set was built around the world of his fifth studio album (and, unknown to the audience, his upcoming sixth studio album). key elements of the world, from shattered mirrors, to wings, to eyeball jewelry, were integrated into the set design and wardrobe. on-screen text led the transitions from section to section along with audio interludes to create an eerie atmosphere harkening back to ash’s most recent work.

it was much more theatrical in design than most of ash’s past stages, but as the first live performances of most of the songs on blacklight, they usher forth a more theatrically expansive era.

it’s one of ash’s favorite stages he’s ever done.

set list:

[audio intro] no silhouette

welcome to the show

so beautiful

dope lovers

[intermission] introduction ment

know me

no blueberries

scaredy cat

howlin’ 404

[audio intermission] mito

paranoia

noid

digital

god damn

nerves

[audio intermission] the unknown guest

bonnie & clyde

control me

broken love

bittersweet

[audio intermission] instagram mv narration

instagram

[intermission] closing ment

when ash was told he was going to be required to do a live before polaris’s comeback, he immediately turned to making a playlist. ash’s livestreams are notorious among polaris fans as being rare and rather untalkative if he’s not discussing the process of recording an album, which he got on live to do more in the past than he does now. his livestream consisted of the minimal amount of talking he thought he could get away with, and then he mostly went into singing along to the playlist and making a few comments on the song here and there.

though the live may come off low-effort, he did put some time into curating the playlist the songs he chose all fit one mood and are songs he knows well enough to sing along with. they’re all songs and artists he likes, so it is personal in that sense, which his fans will surely point out when antis start criticizing him for doing a lazy live.

ash x photography style

ash is pretty much entirely self-taught as a photographer and would still be hesitant to even call himself a photographer. it’s a hobby he picked up to give him something to do and another way to express himself, not something he sees himself as anywhere near a professional in. his interest in still photography came after he’d begun to explore cinematography and filmmaking. as a photographer, ash likes to play with light and has a particular fascination with experimenting with exposure and shadows. due to his interest in black and white and analog photography, he’s recently very into pinhole photography for the mood it creates. for much of his time interested in photography, he wasn’t the type who really liked to “stage” or direct photos too much, preferring to capture spontaneous moments as they happened. he doesn’t take a lot of photos of people, mainly because he’s a loser who doesn’t have people to take pictures of, but he’d like to experiment more with photography involving people — likely instances where people are a more a part of the scenery or where the human form is experimented with than traditional portrait photography.

photo credits: