The Post-Traumatic Manifesto, covetous, and The Nature of Hopeful Art

Overture:

I will be discussing the album The Post-Traumatic Manifesto by WeevilDoing and the song “covetous” by GHOST and Pals. These are are pieces of art that discuss some EXTREMELY triggering concepts with ZERO ambiguity, including:

These are pieces of art about being brutally, deeply traumatized, and the nature of how people ended up traumatized. I very staunchly stand on the side of art that is willing to be transgressive just for the sake of it, but this art that is transgressive because it documents real shit that happens to real people and how it makes them feel. I believe it is unethical to force people to prove that they're “licensed” or whatever to talk about a triggering topic just because it happened to them, but both GHOST and WeevilDoing have explicitly stated that these works are based on real life experiences, and I genuinely believe both are fucking gorgeous works of art that should be experienced by anyone willing to stomach them. With that said, there is a reason “covetous” is the only song I've ever gotten an 18+ warning for on the vocaloidlyrics miraheze, and “Chocolate-Box Girl” is the only song I've seen that has been outright excluded from having its lyrics hosted on the site (for context: “Zako” by Hiiragi Magnetite was allowed under the Akita Neru version, and other songs just as blatantly about CSA like Utsu-P's “Adult's Toy” or, of course, “covetous” by GHOST remain on the site). While this essay will not delve in depth on the songs and their topic, I do fervently recommend both and suggest that people listen to both in full.

I also want to start by saying this: I am going to say a lot of things that indicate that I do not like The Post-Traumatic Manifesto. I want to make it abundantly clear that, aside from a few technical qualms and matters of taste, I think it is one of the most fascinating albums I have ever heard, and that the majority of people who will find and listen to this album will fucking adore it. I do not want people to come away thinking that WeevilDoing made “bad art”, or that they have made anything other than a masterpiece. I want more people to listen to this, to have the experiences I didn't, to have gorgeous and difficult conversations on the nature of mental health, mental healthcare, trauma, everything. I want someone to find this album and have it awaken within them a feeling that, like the characters depicted within, they too can find hope and salvation. We good? We good. Let's go

Act I:

A few days ago, I was scrolling through a few tags on VocaDB, and kept noticing a single album across a plethora of the most interesting ones to me. I clicked into the page for The Post-Traumatic Manifesto by WeevilDoing and was greeted with this across the page. Genres: experimental, electronic, industrial, noise pop, industrial pop. Subjective: healing, sad, bittersweet. Themes: concept album, PTSD, inner conflict, self-harm, depression, suicide, disability If you have known my artistic tastes, both past and present, you should know this shit is like catnip to me. Within the hour, I had the album pulled up on my phone, excited and ready to listen to something that could have been my album of the year. Forty-one minutes later, I was sitting around wondering just why I felt so disappointed, nearly repulsed, to the point where it was the least favorite thing I had encountered in half a decade.

I think it's easiest to start with the less controversial parts. While VocaDB lists this as an industrial and experimental album, I think the “noise pop” tag here is probably most apt. Even within that space, this is a little closer to the poppier end than I generally find myself enjoying. I'm also just...befuddled at the choice to use SeeU here. There's a 15-year-old song from a Korean producer literally making fun of how poor English-language SeeU songs tend to sound. “Splitter Girl” would likely be one of my favorite tracks on the album if it was intelligible. English-language vsynth is already playing on fuckin'...Producer Must Die mode. It's not that WeevilDoing is a poor tuner (in fact, they're a fantastic tuner. “Caliber Girl” is fucking gorgeous on that front), but this just hubristic. I also personally tend to like music where the vocals are mixed a little quieter into the mix, feeling like part of the instrumentation rather than rising above it. Vocals here tend to stand out a little too much for my preferences here, but that's an extremely minor thing.

It's also worth stating that this wasn't originally an album meant to be listened to in a single sitting. Each track was released serially, alongside a carrd.co page for each character explaining who they are, giving them a sona, and a short blog post from each of them. Listening to this as an album robs it some of the breathing room each of the characters needs and deserves. Thankfully, an interlude gives room between the two songs I think need it most, in the transition between “Caliber Girl” and “Chocolate-Box Girl”. I think the sequencing of the songs in the album (something I do care about) is great. Mayyyyyyyyyyyybe I would move “Refraction Girl” somewhere else, but beyond that, zero complaints. If these were my only issues with the album, I'd sit it solidly next to something like All Hail West Texas by The Mountain Goats, something where I can see exactly why and where people love it but ultimately is something not for me. I'd've listened to it, told people I know to listen to it, and promptly put it down and never think about it again.

Unfortunately for me, The Post-Traumatic Manifesto has a tenth character, with her own song, and in one fell swoop loses me entirely. Objectively speaking, “Nurse Parallel, PMHNP” is the gorgeous and correct way to end this album. A soaring anthem of hope, and likely an anthem describing the creator's own hope through inpatient therapy. It's likely most people's favorite track off the album, and I can't fucking stand it.

Intermezzo:

So, this is where the turn happens. The next part of this is gonna be pretty abrasive, and a lot less cohesively structured. It's a ramble. Maybe get a drink of water or something before you go in.

You ready? Let's go.

Act II:

“covetous” by GHOST and Pals is a song about your father wanting to kill you so he can rape you. I discovered it the same day I listened to Manifesto, and the dichotomy to my reaction to the two is why I'm writing this in the first place. It is pulsating, grinding, industrial darkness. It is vile. It is aggressive. It is threatening. It is raw. It is unambiguous. It is voyeuristic. It is a window into the worst things that people can feel, can do. This is what I want. This is the feeling I get from art that can't be bought anywhere else. I have enough music spreading messages about how you can get better if you just do the right things society asks of you. Go to therapy, take your meds, put down the knife, put down the blunt. Do all these things, magically things get better. I don't fuckin' care. I'm glad it worked for y'all, but it ain't worked for me. I want art that lives in that pit of darkness in your chest. I want art that reminds you of its buried presence, ripping it out from deep within your heart and making you stare at it. That black, pulsating mass that infects from within and without. “covetous” is bleak, terrifying, despair-inducing. It is what almost art is afraid of being. The same societal forces that tell you “Go to therapy, get a job, and you'll find friends that way” are the same ones that scare people away from making art about how shit just fucking sucks sometimes, that people do things to you that leave you feeling angry, hurt, alone, scared, weak, and that all you can do is fucking sit in it. The VN space calls this “utsuge”, literally “depressing game”. I feel no connection to folks who are getting better and channel that feeling into art. It's not that it's bad, it's that I can derive no value, no meaning from it. When art talks about how it gets better, it loses me. When art talks about how trauma can linger, festering like a wound, it grips me. It is a feeling I know all too well, and it's one I don't particularly get to share too often. I didn't go through what GHOST went through, but I'll be thinking about that bridge in “covetous” long before I can pick a favorite track from Manifesto. I don't want bittersweet, leaving you with a slight lasting saccharinity as relief from off-putting bitterness. I don't want kintsugi, strands of gold leaving that which was broken looking more beautiful than when it was fixed. I want bitterness that leaves you begging, not for sweetness to override it, but for something to wash it away clean to let the agony you just went through resonate throughout your mind. I want to cut myself sweeping up the shards of broken glass from a dropped plate, a reminder that brokenness is a state that itself produces something worth feeling.

This is something that Manifesto could never be, nor should it have tried to be that. It is not a lesser album for telling its story the way it should be told, but it is an album I cannot fathom caring for as a result. Earlier this year, I encountered viagr aboys by Viagra Boys, an album where I struggled to pick out a single thing I enjoyed, surrounded by friends who loved it and who were excited to hear me rave about it when I finished listening to it. The best thing I could say about viagr aboys was that the first two seconds of “The Pyramid of Health” reminded me of “Sex and Candy” by Marcy Playground, a song I actually liked. Despite being full of songs I absolutely enjoyed more than the entirety of viagr aboys, Manifesto immediately landed itself at the bottom of my list of albums I listened to this year, and even relistening to it to write this did not warm me to it at all. If anything, I enjoyed it less knowing that “Nurse Parallel” waited for me at the end of it all. This is a uniquely frustrating relationship to have with a work of art, but I would rather be frustrated and honest than lie about enjoying something I didn't.

Encore:

Writing this was mostly an excuse to explore my own emotions on how art depicts hope. Yes, the fact that I am using the term “hope” for art like “Nurse Parallel” while describing “covetous” as “despair-inducing” is because I have been recently going through the Danganronpa games with a friend. If you can find a better dichotomy of terms, please feel free to send them to me by snail mail. They end up on my back porch a lot, I'm sure one of them will relay the message to me. If you derive literally anything of value from this then uhhhhhh...

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