Interview with Séance Scythe | Asian Drag/Music/Emo Scene
Séance Scythe is a creative – in the truest sense of the word. Based in Manila, he dabbles and excels in music, writing, cosplay, drag and various visual arts. The 24-year-old is also the frontperson of the band Séance and the Kleptokids. “I just love making things.” he says warmly.
“Séance is a very cool name! I’m curious to know how you got it.” I asked on a Discord chat.
“A lot of people always say - well, at first at first assumption - they're always like, did you get your name from Klaus from The Umbrella Academy? That is definitely a part of it, but this is how it started: a few years ago on Twitter - not a few, Jesus Christ. That was 2018. Oh my god. I feel old. I was on Twitter, and there was someone named Coven. This person tweeted, ‘I changed my name to Coven. Wouldn't it be so cool if someone was named Séance?’ And I was like, wait. They're cooking. What the fuck? And so I just kept that in the back of my mind. I was like, Séance, that sounds amazing.”
Being transmasc nonbinary, he started using the name before he socially transitioned, which helped him channel the kind of person he wanted to be: “I do consider it as part of my name, but there's definitely an aspect to being called [Séance] where it kinda makes me lock in to that persona, if that makes sense. I like being called Sésé because it kinda takes me away from the - I wouldn't even really call it a facade, but there is an element of, like, "oh, I'm THIS person right now because I'm Séance right now." Sorry if this sounds convoluted, but basically, it feels like a part of before I even started using it as my name, Séance felt like, I would always say that he was a better part of me.”
Both Gerard Way’s Umbrella Academy and RuPaul’s Drag Race played a part in finding himself a name that feels as fated and natural as Séance did. When he started watching Umbrella Academy, he grew especially attached to Gerard’s favorite character Klaus. It made perfect sense to him because of his appreciation of Gerard himself. “It shares a connection with one of my biggest inspirations and one of his creations who I happen to empathize with a lot. So it felt really, really personal.”
It started as a drag name for him, but he was in college at the time and didn’t have the opportunity to do drag just yet and had to continue using his dead name. When the pandemic started, he started to use the name on YouTube and other places online. 2022 was when he decided to fully embody the persona of Séance, an “idealized version” of himself.
“It became less of a character and more of my identity. Initially, I went by Séance LeVey, inspired by Sharon Needles and her reference to Anton LaVey in a song. I loved how ‘Séance LaVey’ sounded, but later I didn’t want to share a name with someone who scammed people. A few years later, I dropped ‘LaVey’ and became Séance Odysseus, though I eventually dropped "Odysseus" too as it no longer resonated. I later added ‘Scythe,’ though I rarely use it now.”
I asked him about Kleptokids, and he answered that it was between Kleptokids and Kleptocats - he wanted it to have a K. He ended up choosing Kleptokids because it sounded weirder, which makes it stick in people’s minds better. “I had this lyric about one of my relatives who kept stealing from us, and it said something like, “Kleptokids and their Kleptodads”. So I was like, oh, shit. Kleptokids. And also because when I was in elementary school, I got in trouble for stealing money from a wallet I found on the ground. Yeah, and then I got suspended for it.”
“I don't know if I regret it because people always have a hard enough time spelling Séance sometimes. So sometimes people say kleptoids. Sometimes they say cryptokids or, like, cryptoids, so I'm like, damn. Sometimes my mom calls me science. I really should put that on a shirt, science and the crypto kids or something.”
His journey as a performer started in the order of music, drag, then cosplay. Attending local shows in his local music scene since he was 16 years old played a part in how he saw himself existing in the scene - when asked if being a young, active performer and queer person in the scene made him particularly susceptible to creeps or queerphobia, he recalls a period of time in 2017 where tons of local bands were getting exposed for such offenses. “I felt, especially pretransition, pre-realization, I always felt like these men were so freaking shady and creepy, they could get away with anything and nobody cared.”
From his observation, the crowds of the shows back then were a lot different from the crowds now. He noticed the crowd getting younger and etiquette slowly being forgotten. “I feel like it's lost on a lot of people now to not be loud in certain parts of a set. And I hate sounding like a fucking, I don't know, killjoy or something. It's literally, like, a really, really serious part of the set or - one time, I was talking about my friend who died, and then someone was like, “Woo!!!” and I was so fucking pissed. I was so fucking pissed.”
It’s a mixed bag - just like with any scene, he says, the kids are extremely passionate and the older people know their shit. He finds that surrounding himself with a mixture of both helps keep his perspective fresh and grounds him, while still not letting people’s opinions influence his art too much. “If it's constructive, you know, especially from people who know better than me, then obviously, I'm going to listen. Especially if it's about my live setup and my sound, which is also a big part of why I haven't played a show since June as Séance and the Kleptokids, because I wanted to upgrade my live setup and also focus on getting a job because because I need to live - I graduated earlier this year.”
“I wish I had the luxury to always focus on music, but I don’t. I took some time off to just be myself and be a better artist, better performer and take a lot of time to reflect on my life and everything as a whole. I feel rejuvenated in a lot of ways.” he reflects on the break.
photo by xbloodysykes
Séance always knew he could be funny with drag. He recently did his first show for a friend’s project at his university - he went by Sir Ving Cunt. “It was so stupid, but yeah, I loved it. It was just for my friend’s project, him, me, and another trans guy who performed as a drag king. It was very DIY, very fun. In 2024, I did a show for a queer organization within my university. They invited me and I got paid and everything. It was a Dorian Electra song called Flamboyant. I also did Killer Queen by Queen. And Man to Man by Doreen Electra because it started to become like a tradition almost. I consider that my proper drag debut.”
He’s been attending drag shows as a spectator for longer than he’s been performing, but he noticed that there aren’t many exclusively drag king shows. “I'm not even talking about, like, assigned gender at birth or anything. You know? Just drag kings in general. I feel like it would be lovely to see more of them in the scene. I’d say that my drag is very mixed, but I usually just call myself a drag king. I feel like I haven’t seen enough of [the drag scene] to be honest. I’ve seen the ones that are more towards comedy, performing, and I’ve seen the ones that use it as a tool for activism. The thing about local scenes is that there’s always more to see. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. My foot is barely in the door.”
“I’ve been wanting to cosplay since I was literally 16. My dream cosplay is Ramona Flowers, and I know people are probably going to make fun of me for that, but I just love her so much. I adore her. I have a tattoo of her door on my arm. I just have an attachment to Scott Pilgrim Versus the World. Literally my favorite movie in the entire world. I've always considered myself geeky and nerdy, but never had the confidence to really cosplay anything, (probably apart from the members of My Chemical Romance) until like last year. The first cosplay I put together, I think, was rainbow dash. I love My Little Pony. I went to a con as Rainbow Dash and my friend Trini was Cyclops aka Scott Summers. It was really funny when we would stand next to each other because people would be like, “what is going on?” I put together my Crowley from Good Omens cosplay last year as well, for a halloween party. I just told my friend to drag me around, we dress up and have fun. That's how I got into the scene.”
Touching back on the subject of being susceptible to creeps, he recalls specific instances: “Random people I don't know putting their prop sword to my throat or something as I’m cosplaying as a demon and they're like, ‘I'm a demon slayer. I'm slaying you.’ This creepy guy who wouldn't leave me alone and literally followed me around the mall just to talk to me and say ‘Hey, I'm not creepy’ it was weird. It happened at two separate cons, the same guy. Crazy shit.”
“So far not a lot of queer folks. I also feel like it's a Filipino thing to not be as open with bigotry to someone’s face. They’d probably insult you online, but it’s pretty rare for someone to come up to you and call you a slur. I guess because a lot of people still perceive me as a girl because I’m very androgynous in my expression, they have a lot less confidence when it comes to trying to say that kind of shit to me, because they think, oh wow, a pretty girl or whatever. There are times when I take off cosplay and I have to kinda sit with myself and cry because I’m like, poof. I enjoy cosplay so much but it kinda fucks with your head a little sometimes. But I remember breaking down so hard after my first con. That was an experience for sure.”
“There's more to be seen in the cosplay scene, but I think one of the things I love the most about the cosplay scene, like cons and stuff like that, is that there is so much room for different levels of cosplay. You can go really, really simple, you can go all out, and it would still be fun.”
There’s many intersections in the cosplay, music and drag scenes for him – art and cosplay go hand in hand, being active in and knowing people involved in one scene leads to knowing people active in and involved in the next, which has also led him to find new opportunities. “That's also why I know a lot of people. I enjoy all these different scenes. Even just as a spectator, though I want to participate more.”
On the amount of support he sees artists and performers receive, Séance feels like he gets a decent amount despite not having released a lot of music, but he also said there could always be more support for lesser known acts. “I already had, like, experiences where people have just been really, really sweet. Like, people who have never seen me live before will approach me after a show and be like, ‘This inspired me to do this, this, this’ and it's really sweet. I wanna remember these things, so I like to write them down somewhere.”
He says that the funding for these spaces is decent too – it’s just hard for the performers and artists themselves to sustain living on playing music alone. Like many, he wishes he had enough privilege to fully focus on it. He feels that people in his scene are usually willing to shell out a reasonable amount of cash to watch local bands perform. For the drag scene in particular, he notices that the same people tend to get booked for the same shows all the time, making it a little hard to get your foot in the door due to the lack of connections a newcomer might have. However, he states that he wouldn’t necessarily call this an issue.
Séance developed his drag style because of the subcultures he’s already in. He says he’s heavily influenced from punk and goth culture. “Sharon Needles played a part in it, but yeah, ever since we knew more stuff about her it kinda shook my faith, in a lot of ways. Jinkx Monsoon became my favorite, my number one soon after realizing all those things. I also take a lot of inspiration from the vocalists and musicians that I look up to. I think a big part of it is also Gerard Way.”
“And just I love the color black, and I love being spooky, and I love being a whore.”
I asked if Drag Race Philippines impacted local drag scenes in any way. He thinks that because Drag Race in general made drag more mainstream, it definitely draws in more crowds. “I don't even really think there's a bad side to it, except maybe if they were being disrespectful. I know that there's a lot of controversy that surrounds drag race when it comes to, like, how people perceive and view drag and things like that. But I feel like in our local context, it made it better.”
“If someone does attend the show, you know, not really thinking much about whatever, but then they leave it feeling more impacted than before, then that's all you can ever ask for as a performer. You know? Like, especially if you're the kind of performer who likes to incorporate activism as part of your number. So it's definitely powerful. Drag will always be political in that sense.”
Locally, he hasn’t seen a very specific “emo” scene since the definition of the term isn’t widely agreed on. But emo as a subculture and the music itself is a huge component of Séance’s cosmos of art and music. “Apart from [emo] being my introduction to falling more in love with music, then getting into the western influences of it and everything, the beauty as well of the style and the subculture. I feel like a lot of things that I would that I was already experiencing and thinking about, I felt a lot more seen when I discovered the emo community and genre of music.”
“It felt like they were saying a lot of things that I was already feeling when I was a teenager, and I'm feeling it again now as an adult. So it's everything. It's everything. And I know that there's a lot of dirtiness in the past associated with the word, and people don't wanna be associated with it or they say it ironically, but I feel like there is some pride in it. And you know, sure, I'll probably call myself an emo. Absolutely.”
He says it also plays a big role in his own writing and his music, sonically. He confirms that he is planning on releasing more music. Séance and the Kleptokids has acquired more members since 2022, making them a full band. They’re now working on a single and their album, called Star Nymph, which he’ll consider his debut. “I'm really, really excited about it. No set date yet, and I have been conceptualizing this since, like, 2022. I've been conceptualizing it and then making music, and then redoing it, and making it again, and just, you know, finalizing the final track list and everything. But the concept, the aesthetic, I feel like I've got it down.”
“I'm just so excited for 2025. There's big things coming for sure. I'm still having to play around with the demos and people who will listen to it, help me produce it and everything, and getting more comfortable with more instruments and such. But, yeah, overall, I feel confident and super excited, especially after that break I had. And, you know, let's write some more shit.”
Séance can’t wait to share more of himself with hopes of also resonating with people along the line. “I do try my best to not let what other people think affect the things that I'm making because I don't want it to purely be for the consumption of other people. I also want it to be a reflection of who I am at that specific point in time.”
“I spend a lot of my time alone. And because of that, I also have nowhere to put a lot of what I feel, as a kid and as a teenager. That is just incredibly isolating. So I didn't really have anywhere else to turn to except words on paper mostly. Back then, I would just spend a lot of time writing in my notebook. And then when I got an iPhone I would write a lot of my stuff in my notes app and just never share it with anyone. A lot of it is just coping with life, coping with loneliness that I've always felt, undiagnosed mental illness when I was younger, and just the growing pains of existing, really. And when I got diagnosed with bipolar and OCD, I would journal even more.”
For a lot of us who grew up on modern social media – and when I say modern, I’m referring to smartphone era social media – it’s getting increasingly exhausting to be on it. It’s the obvious result of being flooded with right-wing content, general negativity, constant forceful comparison to others and having to either willingly, forcibly or subconsciously feel like you have to maintain a certain image regardless of how big or small your platform is. Fuck that!! It’s no surprise then, that people including Séance revisit older forms of social media, especially ones where long-form content is common, and create for themselves a safe space within it. Although toxicity was never foreign to those platforms either - just less saturated now. “I've taken quite a liking to Spacehey and LiveJournal, specifically. LiveJournal in particular. Oh god. I love LiveJournal.”
“Having your own blog that's also separate from, I guess modern social media. It helps you to slow down and really sit with yourself and it's so nice because it's kinda like screaming into the void. Especially when I started and I had, like, what, 2 or 0 subscribers. It was awesome. Whether people would like it or not, it just felt good to have an outlet.”
Séance was an English literature major in college which made him very fond of poetry. He likes the method of “learning the rules before breaking them” - his style is structured yet loose in terms of rules. “Mostly, what drives me to write is to express myself as an outlet, but also because I feel like if someone somewhere can genuinely feel like they resonate with the things that I say, then it would also be worth it, even being in that vulnerable position of sharing something that, people can literally, like, see right through you.”
“I know that a lot of it is cloaked in metaphor, but there's a reason why I didn't wanna share my writings when I was younger. It's because growing up and having a very Christian family and not really understanding all the things that were going on inside me. I did not wanna share stuff about my writing because it was very, very transparent when it comes to, like, queerness. Then in the last few years, transness.”
Despite studying literature, writing for over 10 years, and experimenting with different platforms, he still has moments where it’s hard for him to share his work with the public because of it stemming from such a personal place in his heart. “You'd think someone like that would be more comfortable with sharing stuff that they do. Right? But I still struggle with it deeply. I feel like it's an imposter syndrome thing. But, genuinely, it's a lot, and it still takes a lot for me to put it out there.”
“I can be as dramatic on LiveJournal as I wanna be. There are times when it feels like I'm very self conscious about how pretentious I probably sound, but at the end of the day you just gotta get over yourself. Yeah, there are gonna be times when some people will find the things that you write pretentious, but who cares? If I spent so much time thinking about how pretentious I sound, I really would not get anything done.”
Before I started aflowerdrops I told myself writing is my “weak point”, my attempts to write anything even slightly long-winded ended up badly because that was also the time I had never properly tried anything like that before! What writers (look, it feels silly calling myself that just yet) need is low pressure environments that you can literally just YAP in, for the lack of a better word. Write about your interests, write about emo!!! Write for yourself, write in your notebook and on blogs like Séance does. Lots of people believe art can’t be taught - just keep writing to get better, better for yourself. It’s fun. (Reminder - we are still open to submissions! If you want to write something on aflowerdrops, get in touch and we’d love to publish it for you)
Wrapping this up, here’s a closing message from the amazing Séance himself, and his links - go follow him!
“It means a lot to me, genuinely. I haven't done an interview in a hot minute. So I always love the chance to yap and talk about this stuff, but I always get really scared sometimes because I'm like, what if I talk too much? I don't know. So again, thank you so much, Mio. I really, really, really appreciate it. And thank you to everyone at aflowerdrops and anyone who’s reading this!”
“The readers can find me on Instagram, it's g0re.f4iry. For my music, I am Séance and the Kleptokids on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, Bandcamp, basically almost every streaming platform where it's available. If you go to my Instagram, I have a linktree over there to show basically everything. We have band merch.” [The band can also be found on TikTok and Instagram as seanceandthekleptokids]
Written by Mio | aflowerdrops. Turn notifications on for us, and follow us on Instagram so you don't miss an update!
had such a great time with this, thank you for giving me this space, aflowerdrops <33
you're welcome <3 :)