you should sleep with the light on

Ashnikko - Chokehold Cherry Python

Weedkiller and healing from the overturning of Roe v. Wade

This album is so healing and cathartic and I haven’t been able to stop listening to it on repeat since it came out. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so seen or understood in my entire life, and I just need some room to rant about it lol. Fair warning that this is pretty long.

When the news about Roe v Wade came out I was so angry and upset I couldn't stop shaking. I truly never thought I would live to see this happen. I felt disgusted and afraid and angry and violated, and it felt like no one cared or understood just how horrific and repulsive this is for people with female bodies. Every time I hear about another state restricting abortion rights or refusing to track maternal mortality rates or making birth control harder to access I want to vomit. I know pro-lifers think we're just being dramatic when we say these things, but it's so visceral and horrific to have your bodily autonomy taken away, to feel like you're being crushed by this huge machine that neither knows nor cares that you're a sentient being, not just a vessel. It truly gives me the same feeling that you experience when you watch a movie with body horror and gore. It's not political, it's as intensely personal as anything can be. And although I could find plenty of people expressing sadness at this situation, I couldn't find anything that captured this visceral horror and disgust that is so overwhelming all the fucking time. I felt lost and wrong, like I was less than human in this society and a fool for not knowing my place before. Like the disgust and horror I was feeling made me disgusting because no one else seemed to be feeling it. I think, like most of us with a female body, I felt that I had no right to be horrified that I was being reduced to flesh for men to use, like I should’ve already known that’s all I was.

This album did more than encapsulate and validate that horror. It wrapped it up into a little ball and took aim at it and blasted it into pieces, and left me seething mad and ready to rip the world a new one. World Eater alchemized this horror into a tangible enemy, a machine that kills for pleasure, and WEEDKILLER let me smash that machine to pieces. You Make Me Sick! let me scream to the world that I’m mad, I’m disgusted, I’m dangerous, and I’m allowed to be. Chokehold Cherry Python was like Daisy on steroids, the avenging angel returned darker and more disturbed because the world she inhabits is sicker than we knew. Worms is hysteria and numbness all at once, when the world makes you vomit until you’re dry heaving and only able to laugh at how absurdly cruel this life really is. Cheerleader let me take pride in my femininity without feigning weakness. And Possession of a Weapon made me feel like a dark, wounded goddess, my body grotesquely reduced to pieces in someone else’s chess game, but still in possession of the pussy weapon, the vagina dentata that disgusts and frightens the people who want our bodies to be pliable and abusable.

And then there’s songs like Super Soaker, Moonlight Magic, and Don’t Look At It that express queer female sexuality without shame, because even in an apocalyptic cyberpunk wasteland we’re still only human and our desires deserve to be celebrated. And Want It All, which makes me remember that however fucked up this life is I still want every last piece of it, even the ones that hurt.

The most emotional songs on the album for me were Miss Nectarine and Dying Star. Miss Nectarine is such a delicate and beautiful story about a vulnerable time of life, and so heartbreaking and moving. I think a lot of us relate to the experience of discovering a piece of ourselves that our immediate world is hostile to, and wanting to be strong enough to save ourselves and the ones we love from this reality – wanting to play hero – but being crushed and heartbroken instead. That feeling of powerlessness and heartbreak is especially visceral for me right now, wondering if I or someone I love will be put through forced pregnancy or even killed because of this new political reality I never thought I’d live to see.

Dying Star as the last track was so unexpected, but so, so necessary. It’s like this album transformed my fear and self recrimination into righteous fury, but at the last moment instead of being consumed by it I was given a chance to want something soft. To want the world to listen to me when I say “ouch”, to mourn the magic in me that was drained away even when I repressed myself and behaved like a lady and very politely asked not to be killed. To feel not just angry but hurt that even when I shrink myself and try to be what I’m supposed to be the world still grinds me under its heel. The anger doesn’t drain away – the anger is legitimate, the anger is allowed – but I’m allowed to be gentle, too. To have longing. To have a broken heart. To dream of something or someone that could soothe this pain. The legislation around female bodies is like a dying star, collapsing in on itself and creating this black hole of howling horror and fear. I have been trapped in its orbit, circling and circling the same pain, and breaking orbit might pull me apart but it’s what I truly want. At least, it is now that Ashnikko has allowed me to feel my rage and my disgust and my power and my helplessness, to own them without shame, and then to look beyond them and search for something more.

Sorry this is such a novel, I’ve just been so emotional about this album ever since it came out. The very first time I heard Ashnikko I just knew that finally someone got it. Finally there was a person out there who wasn’t forcing theirself to play nice or perform femininity in the way that was expected. Who wasn’t ashamed of being exactly who they were, feminine and masculine energies combined, expressing gender and the lack thereof in ways that I had never seen before but that felt intuitively right. And honestly this album took it even further. I am so freaking grateful that Ash released this, listening to it was a journey but it was a journey that healed my heart.

Ashnikko, if you ever read this, thank you so much.

live a villain, die a icon

Welp, that settles it! This is my favorite song from Weedkiller!! 🔥🔥

*inhale*

IM A TICKING TICKING TICKING TIME BOMB,

LIVE A VILLAIN, DIE AN ICON!!

YOU SHOULD SLEEP WITH THE LIGHT ON

🔥CHOKEHOLD CHERRY PYHTON🔥

hey. telling you again. ashnikko's debut album weedkiller is really good.

good morning ashnikko weedkiller

WEEDKILLER is such a good album but Dying Star in particular is absolutely wrecking me asflgahalfhajk

Chokehold Cherry Python!!

songs I associate with fairy tail characters but it gets more and more random pt. 1

lucy heartfilia -> space girl by frances forever

lucy's not a full space girl but. celestial spirit keys and all. also this song is so gd cute and lucy is gd cute

cana alberona -> the cult of dionysus by the orion experience

I think this one's pretty self-explanatory. cana is the life of any party. this song could also go for the guild as a whole.

loke -> hello kitty by avril lavigne

this is pure vibes and also because loke is a kitty.

juvia lockser -> stay with me by matsubara miki

this one is also vibes but softer vibes. I think juvia really likes older, almost jazzy music. she especially loves dancing to it while she bakes for her friends :]

gajeel redfox -> the devil went down to georgia by the charlie daniels band

listen. if there's one man who has the audacity to challenge the devil himself to a fiddle contest, it's gajeel redfox.

sting eucliffe -> ievan polkka by loituma

he knows this song by heart, and he can sing it. his voice is so pretty, and you get lost in it. you have no idea what he's saying, but you agree.

mirajane strauss -> chokehold cherry python by ashnikko

I wholeheartedly believe that mira listens to the loudest, heaviest music in existence with the sweetest smile on her face.

wendy marvell -> the gummy bear song by gummibär

weird kid wendy is one of my favorite headcanons. she is so so sweet and kind and she will be so earnest while telling you about the hidden dark lore of the gummy bear song. also probably listens to nightcore.

＃🛸👛💽🛍️ CHOKEHOLD CHERRY PYTHON

Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha x Ashnikko - Chokehold Cherry Python

spotify / youtube / tracklist under the cut

a playlist for claws, my queer horror wip. this is the audio vibes of what i want this book to feel like, so eat it with both hands. messily.

claws taglist: @belovedviolence @foxboyclit @coven-archives @mjjune @revenantlore @sarandipitywrites @noblebs @k--havok @asterhaze @verba-writing (ask to be +/-)

Filter - Happy Together Jazmin Bean - Yandere Ashnikko - Tantrum Poppy - EAT FKA Rayne - Side Effect Anya Nami - Unsubstantial Mallavora - Disorder Jake Daniels - God Halsey - Lilith (feat. SUGA of BTS) (Diablo IV Anthem) deadmau5 - My Heart Has Teeth (feat. Skylar Grey) Sleep Token - Sugar MEG MYERS - Jealous Sea LYELL - Eraser Nessa Barrett - madhouse No/Me - Pass The Knife Cloudy June - Pretty Pills for Broken Hearts Ashnikko - Worms My Chemical Romance - Mama Hey Violet - Like Lovers Do Mother Mother - Oleander MEG MYERS - Heart Heart Head Emilie Autumn - Opheliac Ashnikko - Cheerleader Kim Petras - There Will Be Blood Baby Bugs - Autotheist Mother Mother - Calm Me Down Rina Sawayama - Frankenstein EURINGER - The Medicine Does Not Control Me Palaye Royale - Debilitate (feat. Pussy Riot) TOOPOOR - Crazy Girls RAYNE - My Strange Addiction Foreign Figures - Dark Room Ashnikko - Moonlight Magic K.Flay - Blood In The Cut Air Traffic Controller - This Is Love James Hype - Drums (Feat. Kim Petras) Kerli - Where the Dark Things Are elegant slims - Not Human ✝✝✝ (Crosses) - Vivien The Neighbourhood - Lurk Nine Inch Nails - Closer Editors - Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool Queens of the Stone Age - Sick, Sick, Sick Ashnikko - Chokehold Cherry Python Dreadlight - Grenadine Evanescence - Going Under Emilie Autumn - Liar - Manic Depressive Mix By ASP Kriill - Your Eyes, Will I Ever Deftones - Change (In the House of Flies) Sleep Token - Alkaline VIOLENT VIRA - God Complex Dessa - Matches to Paper Dolls Allie X - True Love Is Violent Sleep Token - Atlantic Digital Daggers - Crazy Lucius - love is the disaster Ethel Cain - Inbred Kim Petras - Claws

Tagged by @farramint to post 5 songs I've been listening to recently :}

And a secret sixth option for a beloved mutual

Tagging @gen-kenobi @boghermit @ryttu3k @the-nicette @reservoirmonks