#Because every time I’m given a project and allowed to choose the medium I go with watercolor-

[rhysdoesstuff]

Testing New Watercolors!!!

[bestgirlsschool]

How to Choose a Right School for Your Child

Read and learn how to find the best school in jhunjhunu for your child. The first and most significant activity that parents have to do for their children is to plan for school. A child’s future is significantly improved by their attendance in school.

Your thoughts must be filled with a wide range of queries, such as “How do I choose a school for my child? How do I pick the best school? What aspects of a school should you take into account? Should we go for coding education or education for one gender? Will attending private school be beneficial or is public school superior? Is English Medium Education required, or may regional medium schools be considered instead?

Your ability to choose the ideal school for your child in India will be greatly aided by the answers to all of these questions. It can also be used as a checklist while selecting a middle or elementary school. Find the best school in India for your child by reading on.

How to choose the right school?

1.School Medium

Another important consideration when choose the best school for your child? It’s possible that you’re seeking for Hindi- or regional-language-medium schools. But allow me to explain why the majority of parents choose English-medium schools.

The most widely used language in the world is English. It is the language of technology, science, computers, the internet, and other fields. Today, all multinational corporations have completed the standard conversion in English alone. Additionally, English is used in 80% of the online news feeds.

English is becoming more and more significant with time. Additionally, it is now vital to educate your child in the English language.

2. Public vs. Private

The distinction between public and private schools is often unclear. Some parents choose public schools because of high school tuition costs. This is the first consideration when picking the best school. Let me expand on what I’ve already said about them.

Private schools come equipped with the overwhelming demand. The students are given a chance to introduce themselves to the world on a worldwide stage. They are capable of understanding what society currently needs and what they can provide for it.

But if you believe that every private school has exorbitant tuition, then I’m sorry to say that you are mistaken. Some private schools provide a top-notch education at a cost that a middle-class family can easily afford.

3. School Learning Approach

The ideal way to study in schools shouldn’t involve reading a lot of books and given lots of assignments. There must be some enjoyment, comprehension, or fun so that the students don’t feel like they are being burdened. It is a crucial consideration if you truly want to select the best institution.

You should educate yourself about the school’s teaching methods, such as the expectations for homework, project work, periodic testing or quarterly exams, smart classes, etc.

You should evaluate the teachers’ qualifications. Whether they are properly instructing students or not. Check to see if the teachers have any training as well.Check to see if the teachers have any training as well. You may simply check that because many schools include this information in their brochure.

It’s not enough to know how a school approaches learning; you also need to consider if your child will feel comfortable with it.

4. Coeducational School

You could be asking yourself, “Why not choose for single-gender education?” Your kid will feel more at ease and be able to speak well in the classroom if everyone is the same gender. However, have you given regard to her future? What about the company for which she will work? When she began working with people of the opposite gender, she was unable to overcome her hesitation.

It is therefore best to start guiding them in this regard today. Since early childhood, a co-ed environment has made it easy for your child to interact with people of the opposing gender. a crucial piece of advice for parents looking for the best school.

5. Extra-Curricular Activities

It is one of the most neglected criteria for picking the best school. Not all kids have the same aspirations of becoming doctors or engineers. Some people wish to pursue careers in acting or athletics. A student should be able to realise his or her dreams at school.

Studies alone won’t enable your child to develop, as I’ve seen many schools concentrate on them just in an effort to raise their test scores. The school must be involved in extracurricular activities that encourage pursuits other than academics in order to support your child’s holistic growth. Always bear this in mind when picking the appropriate school.

6. Affordability

The cost of the school is a significant consideration while deciding on the best option. Selecting a reputable or prestigious school will result in increased tuition costs. Therefore, parents must first understand their requirements and expectations. Going above your budget and upsetting your family’s financial plans is also a bad choice.

Numerous elements, including fees, trip costs, bus or auto costs, etc., can be used to assess the affordability of the schools. There are numerous expenses that you must cover.

Nevertheless, you must also decide whether or not you can avoid these charges. We advise you to look for another school if the cost is too high.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Hi miss raven I just want to ask you what is your thoughts about the yuu reveal going on in the fandom

Oh, you must be talking about the protag of the “TWST The Comic” manga adaptation (which is not the same as the anthology), Yuuken Enma!

I know some of my readers haven’t heard of him or seen him yet, so I’ll place my thoughts below the cut!

His design reminds me a lot of Nozaki-kun from Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun, doesn’t he? (Unrelated, but go read/watch it if you haven’t already, it’s a really good romantic comedy!!) Yuuken seems to be the reliable guy-next-door type (despite his intimidating appearance), as he is seen helping out a member of his kendo team in the manga prologue. Personally, his looks don’t appeal to me, but I know many of my friends in the fandom and artists I admire do like his looks!

The funniest part for me is that it seems a lot of people anticipated a smaller, cuter looking manga protag like Haruhi Fujioka from Ouran High School Host Club (and Yuuken is anything but that). The Japanese fandom had even taken to calling him Lobster🦞 instead of Shrimp 🦐!! There’s a lot of memes about it on my Twitter feed, and I love every single one of them.

A lot of scenes that happen in the story of the game reimagined with Yuuken sound hilarious, and I live for it! (Like, imagine Yuuken pitching in to fight Overblots because he knows how to use kendo, or just taking up most of the bed when he has to sleep over with Leona! And Floyd can’t call Yuuken “Shrimp”, haha) I think Yuuken has the potential to be a very interesting character when he gets to mingle with the rest of the cast, since he is shown to have a distinct personality of his own.

I was surprised when I saw him for the first time, mostly because I was expecting the manga to be from maybe a first person perspective to keep Yuu’s gender and look ambiguous. I’m glad that the team decided to make their own interpretation of Yuu, though! It gives him a chance to shine and be his own character. The story of the manga could also go a very different direction than that of the game, thanks to Yuuken’s unique personality.

I think this direction also works well given the change in artistic medium. A mobile game is more interactive, so it makes sense that the Yuu/MC of the game has more of a generalized personality. It’s easier for players to project themselves or their OCs because of the genericness of the responses. But a manga? It’s much more passive. You can’t really engage with the material, you’re just reading it and looking at pictures, not really giving any input or choosing options. In cases like that, it may be better to have a more defined main character for readers to root for, since interactivity is already lost.

One thing we should all keep in mind though: no matter how you feel about Yuuken, that doesn’t make your interpretation of Yuu/MC or your TWST OCs any less valid! Lots of people in the fandom, as well as Yana herself, have pointed out that while there is some overlap with the game Yuu, Yuuken is not canon Yuu. He is considered to be the manga team’s interpretation of Yuu, and they are allowed to have that—just as we as the fandom are allowed to have our own interpretations of Yuu, too!

I look forward to reading Yuuken’s adventures in Twisted Wonderland and how his soul shapes the story and takes it in a new direction~ I can’t wait to see how he gets along with al the students and staff at NRC (and RSA)!

[elsabarnitt]

CASE STUDY - ‘The Book That Grew’ DandAD 2020 Annual Graphite Pencil Award

1.     FRONT PAGE (slide 1)

For my case study I chose “The Book That Grew”, which won a graphite pencil in the DandAD 2020 awards.

On screen is the first image I saw that made me want to find out more, so I thought it was appropriate for it to be the first image you see. I’ll be honest, I only started looking into this project because this image looked cool, and I’ve never seen anything like it before so want to find out more. Looking in further I found high levels of collaboration, thought and a moralistic purpose to help a community become better.

2.     WHAT AM I GOING TO TALK ABOUT (slide 2)

I am going to talk about a book that was grown with the aims to improve farming practises.

Ireland heavily relies on farming as their main source of economic income.

This development of this book was a project which spanned 6-7months and was a collaboration between the Allied Irish Bank, Teagasc; Irelands agriculture and food development authority, Rothco a design agency and the artist Diana Scherer.

In this presentation I elaborate on the creation of this idea, the processes involved, the limitations and the design.

3.     WHY IT WAS MADE (slide 3)

Agriculture accounts for 30% of total emissions in Ireland which is its largest carbon emissions contributor. This can’t continue. The Irish economy is dependent on farming, with 6 billion euros of food and drink specifically reliant upon grasslands for their production. So for this level of farming to survive, it has to become sustainable.

AIB, the Allied Irish Bank has a business relationship with 35% of the farmers in Ireland and therefore this issue is of much importance to them. AIB partnered with Teagasc, who identified 10 tangible lessons and 10 pieces of practical advice to maximise sustainability and increase the profitability. The 10 steps help farmers to achieve a ‘perfect’ 10 rotations of grass grazing per year and produce 10 tonnes of grass per hectare – this is a powerful number that will greatly improve the sustainability of even the most efficient farm.

Hence, 10 being a major theme for this campaign. Which appears in their campaign video as well as the book.

This advice was compiled into a 22 page organically grown book using the very grass that Irish farmers nurture as the medium to carry these important lessons. And I believe this is a perfect example of getting the right message to the right people in the most suitable way.

4.     INTRO INTO IDEA (slide 4)

I contacted the Irish design agency, Rothco via Instagram with a few questions and the offer to have a virtual coffee. To my surprise I got a response and Rob Maguire and Fabiano Dalmacio on the Creative team at Rothco were more than happy to have a zoom call with me.

It was great to be able to hear first-hand, how an agency works with a well-established client relationship to anticipate issues and be able to be proactive about providing solutions. It was also great to explore the whole process and the problems they came across face to face.

From my research I realised they had a long-standing relationship with AIB, and so one of the questions I asked was “Did AIB come to you with a brief, or did you go to them with an idea?”

The answer I received was that: No brief had been released, but Rothco knew AIB was passionate about sustainability and they have a lot of ambitions to do greener work, and knew there was an agricultural brief on its way. They were constantly looking out for things, and said they have a WhatsApp chat where they send ideas to each other at all hours of the day and night.

Fabiano initially came across an article about a visual artist called Diana Scherer who used grass to sustainably make fabrics. His initially reaction was ‘this is really cool, and we have to do something with her’, so they contacted the creative director at AIB who suggested a book or an annual report, because if Diana can grow patterns and textures, she can grow letters and numbers. And from there they contacted Diana to see if it was actually possible, and even she wasn’t completely sure, which shows the risk everyone was willing to take.

Rob and Fabiano were also kind enough to send me photos they had taken of some testers and unused versions. Two of which are on screen now.

As you can see the number 25 hasn’t formed properly.

5.     DIANA (slide 5)

Diana Scherer, a German artist living in Amsterdam, explores the relationship of man versus natural environment. She has come up with a truly unique process, which no one else in the world knows how to do.

She has designed templates which had to be to a specific standard to allow grass roots to grow into them to form patterns. This is called ‘root-weaving’. I got told she is very protective of her work and didn’t show anyone else how to do what she does throughout the whole process.

She has a lab in Amsterdam where she curates her work, which is where the pages were all grown.

6.     LIMITATIONS (slide 6)

The Rothco Design Team went out to Amsterdam to visit Diana to learn about the limitations of her process. One of the main limitations of the technique she has created is that everything has be connected in the template.

For example, if there was a font, it all has to be connected otherwise the roots would simply not take to it. As you can see in this picture there are very small lines connecting each of the letters together.

This project was being curated during Winter, which in terms of gardening isn’t the best time. Diana informed the team that growing in Winter versus Summer would have quite different outcomes and urged them to wait, however due to the time limit Rothco were under they weren’t able to wait but had to make it work in Winter.

From the moment it was harvested the pages started to die. Due to the nature of the project the team decided against using a preservative as that went against what they were trying to achieve. Because of this they decided to have a photography project running alongside it so that you could capture what it looked like the moment It was harvested.

Another limitation was that the size of the page. This really mattered as that would be a deciding factor of how big the typography could be and therefore how legible it was. They decided on 11 x 17 inches, which is roughly the size of an A3 page.

7.     GRID SYSTEM, FONT, SYMBOLS (slide 7)

Due to the constraints I have just mentioned, the design team had to come up with a way to display all of the information in the most efficient and understandable way. They ended up condensing all the information they needed into a grid system inspired by the farmers fields using symbols to tell farmers what to do instead of words. I think its also important to say each page was set out to mimic the yearly calendar to make it easier for farmers to follow.

To the right of the screen I have displayed just a few of the symbols they used. The middle one being one of their field diagram designs.

Top left means Soil

Top right means fencing,

which I’m glad they have a key because I never would have guessed these otherwise.

When on the Zoom call with the creative team I asked what Type style they used and they couldn’t remember, however through one of the images they sent me after our call there were hints that it was ‘Helvetica’, and since comparing the book to this font I am almost certain it is.

SWITCH SLIDE (slide 8)

This is a close up of one of the pages to show you what the symbols look like in the book. Letters were also used as a symbol, for example the T and the F stand for Test and fertilise.

8.     TEMPLATES AND DIANA CHECKING THEM (slide 9)

As spoken about on the previous slides, getting the right size and making sure everything was connected was vital. Therefore, it wasn’t as easy as just choosing fonts and point sizes from a printing point of view, but you had to do it from a gardening one as the pages would grow pixel by pixel. Every time the design team would finish a template, they would send it off to Diana for her to then check it over and see if there was anything wrong with it.

An example that Fabiano gave was that they had some numbers on their templates and Diana would say ‘the size of the zero, you need to increase that otherwise it is going to close in on itself. If you wanted that circle edge you need to make it bigger’.

With this kind of collaboration and exchanging of information the outcome just kept getting better.

SWITCH SLIDE (slide 10)

Here is an image of a digital template beside the root woven version of itself.

As you can see the root woven version on the right hand side isn’t as legible as the digital version. The roots aren’t as bold and perhaps as structured as white is against a black background, however as they were working with nature, it was okay for it not to be perfect, and for the letters to not form 100% accurately.

9.     BOOK BINDING (slide 11)

The book was grown in Amsterdam and was being bound in Dublin by letter press printer and bookbinder Jamie Murphy of the Salvage press.

Each page took roughly 2 weeks to grow and then were all sent separately by courier. As this book is the first of its kind, one of the main challenges was finding the best way to bind it. Jamie was given several test runs that had failed to practice binding with. Everything was so delicate which you can see from the picture on the screen now so special techniques had to be used.

A challenge that Jamie faced was that Rothco were persistent on everything being made out of grass as keeping it as pure as possible was very important to them, so despite Jamie asking for some plastic features he had to find another way to do things.

Jamie burnt the grass in order for it to find a new life as an ink, and also used it to make more pages to act as dividers in the book to protect the delicate pages. Even the cords that hold the book together are made from bamboo

This all demonstrates that when a material such as grass is managed correctly it can work wonders.

10.  CHANGE (slide 12)

The Book That Grew toured round Ireland, and was given the title ‘The best Grassroots campaign of all time’, with the main event being the National Ploughing Championships.

I have been told the book had a very good reception there as well as the knowledge that some farmers have already implemented some of the lessons within the book.

I think that this project has huge relevance in today’s society as sustainability is becoming a top priority for a lot of businesses.

I started off this project with the impression that this was cool, however after researching further no wonder I thought this as it is the world’s first, every page, every word, and every diagram in a book to be formed by real grass roots as they grow. An aspect of this project that has really stuck with me is the fact that you had to wait for the book to make itself as opposed to being able to physically make it and therefore patience was key.

After speaking with Rob and Fabiano on the Creative team at Rothco, I saw the human aspect behind the project and saw the good that they are trying to make which is something that has really inspired me. It is bigger than just its typography which is what it won the award for.

REFLECTION

- I have found this case study project to be very helpful and very interesting. I feel as if I have learnt different ways to find out information as at the beginning of this project I found it quite hard and was coming across the same information over and over. Something that I think had hugely benefitted me was getting in contact with the design agency RothCo and I am so thankful they took time out of their day to speak with me. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://www.lbbonline.com/news/aib-releases-worlds-first-book-literally-grown-from-grass-roots

https://musebycl.io/makers/agency-grew-book-out-grass-support-irish-farmers

https://m.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/614/210434.html

https://marcommnews.com/aib-and-rothco-release-beautiful-new-book-literally-grown-from-grass-roots/

https://www.irishtimes.com/sponsored/teagasc-making-money-by-watching-the-grass-grow-1.1619570

https://www.thedrum.com/creative-works/project/rothco-aib-the-book-grew

https://www.thestable.com.au/rothco-aib-grow-a-book-entirely-from-grass-roots/

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

Barbie may not be out of the closet yet, but her fans sure are

Has there ever really been a gay doll? 

Well, yes and no. In 1977, "Gay Bob," marketed as the world's first gay doll, was sold through mail-order ads in gay magazines. And I'm sure that Mattel still thinks about the "Earring Magic Ken" fiasco of 1993, and his "necklace." 

But there's nothing inherently gay about dolls themselves – they're toys, pieces of plastic after all. In the same vein, there's nothing inherently gay about doll collecting as a hobby, as a passion, as an art form. 

Dolls are cultural reflections of the times, for better or worse. But doll brands like Barbie that are symbols of hyper-heteronormative, old-school femininity are being reclaimed and reinterpreted by adult LGBTQ collectors in a new way. And don't think the toy companies are unaware — they’re not, and they are absolutely involved. 

More recently the main way collectors are expressing this kind of love and solidarity, and where community can be found, is through the internet and social media. This is a space where the toys' brand narrative has usually been out of corporate hands. But companies like Mattel are in it now, noticing these LGBTQ fan communities, and vying for their digital eyes.  

Now THIS is what the Dreamhouse should look like.

Image: THE SIMPSONS/ Fox

Coming out of the (doll) closet  

Many adult collectors choose dolls because of the nostalgia associated with collecting toys from their childhood. Younger LGBTQ collectors aren’t connecting as much over the nostalgic dolls themselves, as much as they are using social media to connect with other gay fans. 

Tumblr user @dolljunk, who used to collect Barbies as a young boy, got into it again as a young adult through online fandoms. “Internet groups were a great way of connecting to other collectors. I had never even heard of [doll-related social media], let alone other collectors and when I went to my local library, I found a multitude of forums and fan sites that detailed how people collected dolls such as customizing, photography, and numerous guides for doll releases. It really opened my eyes to another side of playing with and seeing dolls.” 

LGBTQ collectors are also identifying with the messages of newer doll franchises, and the potential for what the dolls can represent. Monster High collectors in particular are mostly Millennials who never grew up playing with the dolls themselves, but with whom the brand's identity has resonated. 

Dott, a doll collector active on social media, introduced her collection, saying “I mostly collect Monster High, but there's some Barbies, Ever After Highs, and Descendants strewn in there." For reference, all of these brands were created after 2009. "Monster High's my main focus because...well, I think I connect with the lore the most. Unlike a lot of doll collectors, I love the lore aspect as much as, if not more, than the actual dolls. And there's something about the MH media that I just adored.” 

In an article from the University of Connecticut titled "Valuing queer identity in Monster High doll fandom," author Sara Mariel Austin wrote that "Monster High's recent ad campaign claims, 'We are monsters. We are proud.' Race, ethnicity, and disability are coded into the dolls as selling points. The allure of Monster High is, in part, that political identity and the celebration of difference..."

View this post on Instagram

The #Goochella monsters couldn’t get enough of the #FierceRocker’s freaky-fab cover of @LadyGaga’s song, Born This Way! 🙌💁🙌 Thanks for showing us that any dream is possible if you are brave enough to put yourself out there! 💪❤️ #KindMonsters #MonsterHigh

A post shared by Monster High (@monsterhigh) on Apr 21, 2016 at 8:05am PDT

If the messages intrinsic to these brand identities are like this, it's no wonder that LGBTQ doll collectors connect with these dolls on an emotional level. Social media doll communities like "Dollblr" and "Dollstagram" have also inspired other ways for a group that's traditionally marginalized to express themselves.

A passion for fashion: doll artistry and expression

Doll collecting is, inherently, at least somewhat escapist. There’s something that feels revolutionary about being constantly bombarded with the idolized bodies and lives of cisgender heterosexuals on social media, and then going “screw that! I’m gonna take this toy, make it a representation of me, and imagine a new world with it.” 

Utilizing dolls as an art form – through mediums like photography, clothes-making, customization/modification, and fanart – allow for LGBTQ collectors to envision a world free of toxic masculinity. Creating doll art in and for an online world allows a safe space for folks to literally “play” with their own femininity and subvert gender roles as they see fit. 

“It's something that's a nice escape from real life? We aren't worrying about gay stuff if we're rerooting a doll head, cause we keep pricking our fingers on accident, and our wrists and palms are sore from using pliers. In all seriousness, I think it's a form of self-expression,” Dott told Mashable about the physical art of doll modification and customization.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Barbination™ (@barbination) on Mar 10, 2019 at 3:31am PDT

The way that @dolljunk connects to his collection emotionally through art is similar. “Dolls and toy collecting [are] a great creative outlet...and can encompass fashion design, hair styling and face painting/makeup while also offering a way of creating new items,” he said. 

"It resulted in me becoming more secure in my identity and interests because Barbie, for better or for worse, is a symbol of hyper femininity that doesn't allow any room for toxic masculinity in her world. Being able to get in touch with my feminine side and interests was a big contributor to accepting my sexuality as being an intrinsic aspect of myself that didn't need to be changed,” @dolljunk said.

  View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Barbievette (@barbieboyvette) on Dec 31, 2018 at 1:52pm PST

And for many LGBTQ folks, especially gay boys and trans girls, that's incredibly important. Even Carlyle Nuera, who is now the lead designer for Barbie Signature at Mattel, sees the growth in these social media communities as being rooted in collective childhood experiences. 

“I think for a lot of us, in different ways, for different reasons, we feel repressed growing up," Nuera said. "Depending on our homes, our family situation, we might not feel safe expressing ourselves. I think a lot of people when they start to have expendable income, they kinda create this fantasy world, this beauty that they never really had access to as a kid. They can see it — and I think they can sort of create it with their own dolls, by customizing their own dolls, or with photography. And then also to share with other people, cause you can connect with other people [on social media].” 

Dolls are humanoid, so it’s easy to project our wants, desires, and dreams onto them. And if we alter their resemblance enough, they can mirror us back in ways we hope society will someday. 

Does life in the Dreamhouse have to be so straight?  

Toy companies, though, are already creating their own miniature worlds with their own identities for the dolls through tie-in media. With various outlets and extensions of their brand, they impose their own meanings onto the products. Mattel and Hasbro, for example, have their own TV shows and movies. Barbie has the Netflix series Life in the Dreamhouse; Monster High and Ever After High had their own movies and webisodes, and Hasbro has the massively successful My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic series.

They also have flashy social media accounts with good fashion photography and witty interactions. Barbie is now an Instagram influencer, as well as a vlogger with her own popular YouTube series. Mattel once ran an entire in-universe Monster High school newspaper through their Tumblr account. 

The presence of toy companies on social media is intriguing though, given that the minimum age for Instagram, Tumblr, and Facebook is 13. So who really is the audience for these branded doll accounts? 

While these companies likely don’t want to risk alienating the parents who buy dolls as toys for their kids, it's also seems fair to say they want to capture this LGBTQ adult interest in their products. There have been brand partnerships like with Crayola, meant to solely market towards kids. But when you have Mattel partnering with Lady Gaga’s Born this Way Foundation for Monster High, it’s obvious that they spend at least some time thinking about their messaging that can be subtly aimed at the LGBTQ community. 

Especially since in a lot of their media franchises, there's a heavy focus on messages about being yourself, accepting others, and celebrating our differences — great lessons for kids of course, but all of which resonate deeply with LGBTQ doll fans. 

Milissa C. is a big fan of the Monster High and Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse series, alongside collecting the dolls themselves. She believes that the connection between the brands and the fans is deliberate. "[We] members of the LGBT+ community are oftentimes made to feel like we are not normal because of our feelings and our identities. Monster High encourages people to celebrate what makes them unique, 'freaky flaws' [as the main character Frankie Stein says] and all. LGBT+ doll collecting communities will certainly imagine more of their dolls to represent themselves. Every time I see a post from the official Barbie Instagram accounts where Barbie is obviously having a date night with a lady friend, I think — bi queen!"

View this post on Instagram

It’s a museum date! Taking in the @mickalenethomas exhibit today at @mocalosangeles. See more from the galleries in Stories. 💙 #MickaleneThomas #barbie #barbiestyle

A post shared by Barbie® (@barbiestyle) on Feb 1, 2017 at 2:26pm PST

Connecting to the storylines as much or more than to the dolls themselves is a celebration of LGBTQ identity, in Dott’s case. “Mostly because Monster High's entire concept is centered around embracing who you are. Plus, it was my special interest when I realized I was a lesbian. Mattel never gave us any canon gay characters in that franchise, but I find it profoundly moving that lots of lesbians/bi girls see themselves in characters like Clawdeen [daughter of the Wolf Man] and Twyla [daughter of the Boogyman]." 

Yet, she's right — the representation so far hasn’t been that explicit. There’s a line between using broad metaphors to illustrate big concepts (mainly for kids), and allowing the diversity of the real world to exist and be seen on the small screen. 

Despite knowing that he is far outside the target demographic, @dolljunk says that toy brand media “influences or recontextualizes the designs of the dolls I collect. A good piece of toy tie in media often encourages its audience to invest in the universe they have created, and I've seen it result from kids to adult collectors to go on to create their own fanart or fan characters. That being said, in the future I really do hope they are able to innovate and modernize for an ever changing audience in a world with changing attitudes and values.”  

From the Ever After High episode, "Dragon Games." This was supposed to be "CPR". Yeah, right.

Image: NETFLIX / MATTEL 

Dott says she always hopes for more explicit inclusivity. “Put some canon LGBT characters in your doll and toy franchises. Show kids that it's okay to be gay or bi or trans! It hasn't got to be something big; maybe a boy character has a schoolyard crush on another boy, you know? Just something small like that to get the ball rolling. Companies still have to do better.” 

Not having canon LGBTQ representation is not unique to doll media, but because the companies have opened the door by putting these messages front and center, doll collectors engage with the media as a way of reclaiming identity, and then push the representation further than canon allows for. Toy companies arguably owe it to both children and adults, LGBTQ and not, to step up with better depictions of diversity because they're already toeing the line. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Barbie® (@barbiestyle) on Nov 21, 2017 at 2:36pm PST

Progress is being made, slowly but surely. There are new dolls and action figures coming out of prominent IRL figures and fictional characters who are LGBTQ. Last year on Instagram, Barbie wore a shirt that said "Love Wins." Even in doll-related media, companies are beginning to test to waters — in 2016, Mattel's movie series based on the doll line for Ever After High featured an on-screen kiss between two princesses.

For many collectors, it's not enough anymore to simply admire and collect these fashion figures. They want to see themselves in the dolls that they've been projecting onto for decades. 

So while we wait for the brands' next move, gay culture will keep claiming dolls because we know in our hearts that they're ours as much as anyone's. Barbie? More like Bar-bi. 

WATCH: Lady Gaga hopes award shows will become gender neutral

[less-than-hash]

Holes in the Firmament

Every dev I know has at least one dream game - stuff that they'd love to be able to make some day. The more ambitious these get - the more complex or long - the less likely they are to get made. And in a collaborative medium like games, the more people (and the more money!) involved in a project, the less control any given individual has over it.

This isn't intrinsically bad. (It can also be wildly valuable to a project and rewarding personally.)

But we devs still dream of those games we'd make if we had, say, the resources of a two hundred person studio, the backing of a major publisher, and absolute freedom.

Three of mine are behind the cut.

As a note, none of these reflect upcoming Obsidian projects. Nor are they projects Obsidian would likely ever make. They don't fit the studio's brand. Which is why I'm dreaming about them here, and not pitching them internally. 

So, first up!

A Squad-Based 1st-Person Firefighting Game with a Robust Relationship System and a Branching Narrative

I don't understand why there aren't more games about firefighting - though if I had to guess it's largely because making fire look good in-game is extraordinarily difficult. As is making an environment decay over time (though I suspect there are probably some pretty good, easy solutions for this using dev sleight-of-hand).

There are actually a Iot of interactive sim games about firefighting for training purposes. Much like war and flight, firefighting is something best trained without risking real life and limb.

Firefighting appeals to me as a gameplay space because it's actively protective - it's about limiting destruction and saving lives. But it can very easily be modeled with similar gameplay loops to shooters - ultimately both are about emptying rooms of danger - here it's just with water instead of bullets.

I could be water!

In short, firefighters engage in almost unequivocal good. They're heroic. They’re human. They’re flawed. And they brave dangers every day. But our industry basically ignores them.

Firefighting would give us the opportunity to set games in the modern world with people who, during their off hours, experience much more relatable struggles than your average freedom fighter, super spy, or elite soldier - relationship difficulties, debt, children, and the like.

So what would this game actually look and play like? It would likely be mission-based (calls come in of their own accord, after all), make use of movement and environmental hazards (not unlike a cover-based shooter), and have simple companion-direction mechanics similar to the Mass Effect trilogy or Spec Ops: The Line.

(Alternatively, the action could be dialed down a bit to focus on positioning a la Valkyria Chronicles.)

The gameplay would be focused on keeping your squad alive while saving as many people as possible.

Between missions you hang out at the station, or the bar, or at home - or try to balance all three, a la Catherine. You build relationships, helping your squad perform better together. You never recruit anyone, but your companions, your fellow firefighters, can die in missions, altering the narrative in both tone and content.

tl;dr: Mass Effect 2 meets Rescue Me with some dashes of Catherine

Next!

Narrative-Focused Urban Fantasy RPG/Immersive Sim

How does this not exist yet? Where's our Dresden Files or Hellblazer inspired RPGs? Or even The Magicians or Harry Potter, for that matter?

Where my Chilling Adventures of Sabrina RPG?

There's Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, which, while fantastic, is 13 years old.

While I'm looking forward to Necrobarista, that seems like a pretty tight, focused experience.

We've plenty of games with magicians in fantasy realms or in space - AKA BioWare's entire oeuvre - but few in the AAA space set in the modern world.

Unless you count superhero magicians.

Wait. Did Dr. Strange even get a game? Google suggests no. What’s going on here, videogame industry? Why won’t you suffer a witch to live?!

Honestly, I get to an extent why this is. There's a reason there've been Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse games, but no Mage games, either for Ascension or Awakening. Magic is broad, and often (especially in games) wildly destructive, which can be at odds with a modern setting (or rather what makes a modern setting interesting).

Art by Jason Chan, from Reign of the Exarchs by White Wolf.

But it doesn't have to be.

The flexibility of magic actually allows for a lot of different gameplay styles. You can do straight up first-person action like The Darkness or stealth survival like Last of Us. If I were to adapt Phonogram, a comic I love deeply, you can bet your ass there'd be beatmatch spellcasting.

A lot of gameplay mechanics we take for granted are actually damned-near magical. 

Maps that point you where to go and tell you where your enemies are? 

Dropping from a second story window without difficulty? 

Regenerating health? 

Items that make you smarter, stronger, or more likable? 

Bullet time? 

Rewinding to an earlier point in time to avoid death or a bad decision? 

So that's another question a developer has to answer: if magic comes in so many shades, what color is yours? What are you hoping to accomplish?

For me, the presence of magic in the modern world demands a layer of secrecy that implies other layers of secrets. A modern world in which magic functions immediately deepens. What else lurks out there? Where are the other magicians? How are they using their abilities?

Additionally, magic is surreal. Bend and twist reality, and you're forced to look at it from new angles. If you can tweak people's emotional responses to you, how do you know the relationships around you are real? 

And that's before you realize your dreams literally might come true - especially the nightmares. Is the face in the mirror a reflection, or something sinister and jealous? Is the ghost haunting you your literal past reaching out to reclaim you?

My dream modern magician game is an open-world immersive sim in an urban setting. Drop Prey, Dishonored, or BioShock style gameplay into a sprawling city filled with physics objects ripe for transmutation and NPCs waiting to be enchanted. Add an otherworld accessed by stepping through mirrors (the entire map within is reversed).

It's about what power can accomplish, what justifies its use, and what its limits are.

Populate the world with a few powerful magician NPCs with their own agendas; dozens of NPCs to chat up, learn more about, seduce, and manipulate; and a threat that could consume reality's very soul if someone doesn't step up to deal with it. Shake. Serve.

tl;dr: Dishonored meets Vampyr by way of Hellblazer and Hellboy

And finally!

Friendship Simulator 2019

My favorite parts of the Persona games and Catherine are the things outside of the core gameplay loops. The bits where you're hanging out with your friends, chatting with them, finding out more about them, and guiding and supporting them (or tearing them down).

Or hiding in the toilet to text your significant other.

One of the things I love about Persona 5: Dancing Star Night in Starlight is that the narrative is almost solely in this mode. It's entirely about learning more about your fellow Phantom Thieves.

Lest you think I uncritically and unabashedly love it, P5D has some major narrative problems - it entirely fails to pay off its initial premise, for example, and there's no persistence to the player choices or (player-driven) reactivity within the narrative.

Nor does the way the player "progresses" the narrative make a tremendous amount of sense within the fiction of the world.

Sorry I got distracted.

Point is, from a narrative perspective it's a game about getting to know people better - literally exploring their lives - and then supporting (or undermining, if you're terrible) them.

Similarly, nothing the player says in Persona (or, for the most part, Catherine) has any impact on the game. The player might progress a Social Link more slowly by being an ass to the protagonists' friends, but they'll still increase that Link over time, provided they put time into it.

And I don't want to be dismissive here. Time management is one of the major ways in which the player engages with the Persona games. Outside of combat and maybe monster-training, it's probably the most important mechanic at play. Taking longer to max out a Social Link means you're missing other content and missing opportunities to increase your stats. Or maybe the Social Link doesn't get completed at all. (Sorry, Haru.) Or maybe you’re not powerful enough to overcome the next Shadow in time and your game ends. Those are non-trivial consequences.

But the story of the Social Link, or the story of the game, will never change based on (the vast majority of) the player's interactions with their buddies.

Despite that, the games give the player a lot of freedom as to when (or whether!) they approach those relationships.

On the other end of the spectrum, Life is Strange (and Before the Storm) does a fantastic job of letting the player get to know the characters around Max (and Chloe) and responding logically to the player's choices.

The kid who has a crush on Max (Warren, I think?) remembers what the player promises him and then responds to whether or not the player follows through on it.

If Chloe plays A Game That Absolutely Involves Neither Dungeons Nor Dragons with her friends, they'll refer to it excitedly later and ask her to join in another round.

The TellTale games are also pretty good at this, especially Wolf Among Us, but that'll take me a bit far afield.

What Life is Strange does not provide the player is any control at all over the flow of the narrative. When the player completes a narrative beat within a scene, they're rushed along to the next scene, which is never one of their choosing. There's plenty of flexibility within the relationships (and within many of the smaller subplots), but little within the game's larger structure.

Ultimately, Persona provides little variability, while Life is Strange provides little narrative control.

I want to make a game that grabs the strong aspects of both of these while jettisoning their weaknesses.

(Far, far easier written than done!)

Basically, I want to make a game focused on the exploration of relationships. Where the personalities are the mysteries to unravel, and the interpersonal relationships between characters the dungeons to be navigated. Where the inner demons are the beasts in need of slaying - not through mystically entering the subconscious and doing battle with the Shadow, but through conversation.

I want a game about building a community, a family, and helping it come to support itself.

I think that one essential change that would make this significantly more doable is discarding the larger threats to the characters, especially those supernatural in nature. The relationships among the cast of Persona 4 are propping for the story of the Midnight Channel Murders. Arcadia Bay's pending apocalypse distracts from the relationships that seem to be the actual core story of Life is Strange.

(I find Before the Storm a stronger narrative than the original Life is Strange in large part because it's not being torn in multiple directions.)

Which isn't to say that there can't be threats, obstacles, and dangers. The world presents all manner of difficulties. Most of them requiring far more challenging and interesting solutions than "stick a sword in it."

That's a lot of abstraction, so what would this game actually look and play like?

Well, as I mentioned above, I think the Persona games, esp. Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 already do a fantastic job of providing the player the framework for exploring a space and approaching relationships at their own pace.

Add into this characters that the player can engage with in order to learn more about them (not unlike Vampyr), help with their problems, and build (or break!) relationships with them or others, and you have something of an open-world interpersonal relationship game. 

The narrative of these relationships would change based on the player's actions (both in regard to how they interact with the character and how they deal with (or fail to deal with) the character's problems). So would the player's reputation, which impacts their interactions with other characters.

(The reputation system is actually one of my favorite ideas in Pillars, but I think we sometimes fail to use it to its full potential. I certainly know I do.)

Side note: in this dream game, the relationships I'm describing are not expressed in a systemic way. They're not ranked like Social Links, and they don't have reputation bars like in Dragon Age or Tyranny. It's much more akin to Life is Strange here, with each character containing their own narrative(s) to be navigated.

Over time, you bring some of these characters closer to your protagonist, recruiting a tight-knit circle that helps you face the game's primary conflict. These relationships bounce off of one another. You can never make everyone happy, after all, and some people will never get along. Late game play requires that the player balance these relationships and help forge friendships or avoid catastrophic fallings out.

Yeah, but what is that primary conflict? 

Potentially anything the world could throw at a person. A lot of television shows have provided us a framework we can borrow from. Veronica Mars comes immediately to mind. (Or one of my favorite films, Brick.) Then there's Lost, which is overtly about building communities and relationships in order to survive. The Wire is another possibility. (Imagine playing as a Stringer Bell type trying to build a crew while maintaining relationships with rival crews.)

My point being that we already know what these kinds of stories look like. We just have to be brave enough to make a game that's focused around understanding other people rather than shooting them.

tl;dr: Life is Strange meets Persona, minus the strange and the personas

And that’s three glimpses into my brain. Into my dreams.

You may have noticed a few through lines. I'm pretty clearly interested in making games:

Set in the modern day

That tackle modern, realistic (and I use that term extremely loosely) concerns

That are largely non-violent

With non-linear narratives

That involve exploring the lives and feelings of non-player characters

And give those interpersonal relationships systemic narrative bite

Obviously, the projects I've been involved in recently don't check off every one of those boxes on my wishlist. That's generally how it is, if you're making games with other people.

But if you're very, very lucky, you get the opportunity to work on projects that scratch at least one or two of those itches.

I've been very, very lucky.

Cheers, <3 <3 <#

[dailythranduilproject]

DTP Interview #6 Elbenherzart

Hello to all our friends and followers of Daily Thranduil Project!

Today it’s @elbenherzart‘s turn for our fandom interviews. She is a really talented professional illustrator, who has produced many beautiful artworks inspired by the world of Tolkien. She works with traditional media as well as with digital ones and has a lot of other creative talents, like sewing awesome cosplays. I hope you are curious to find out more about her, so without any further delay, I present you here with her answers to the questions we had asked her:

General Questions: 


Username(s) we can find you under: 



Either ElbenherzArt or my real name, Christina Kraus. :)




What Media do you create? 



For digital paintings I use Photoshop and for my traditional stuff mostly inks or ballpoint pens. I almost never use pencils, because I find myself erasing all the time. 

Are you self-taught or did you go to art school? 



I am mostly self-taught. Tho I have a bachelor degree in Intermedia Design. This gave me a few design and composition fundamentals I can apply to my images, but didn't teach me to draw or to paint. Also I have a lot of other professionals as friends who help me with critiques and reflection of my art. I always wanted to go to Art School but the programs in Germany are pretty shitty for it. All you learn is like drawing with a pencil bound to a stick, drawing with your not-drawing hand or drawing with a blind fold. It's complete garbage and I envy people who can afford programs such as the Swedish Academy of realistic Art where you actually learn useful drawing and painting fundamentals instead of fooling around. 




Which artists have influenced your style?



That is a tough question. I admire a lot of artists but I guess my digital work is mostly influenced by Magic-the Gathering or Dungeons & Dragons artists, since this is the direction my work is heading too. 



Which are your favourite artists? 



I'd say Peter Mohrbacher, Jana Schirmer, Cynthia Sheppard, Jason Rainville...but hell, there are a lot. I can't pick a favourite.



Where can we find your work? 



On my website, Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Deviantart, Artstation and on Behance. 



What would you say you are best known for in the fandom? 



I'm not even sure I'm known for anything in this fandom. XD But the work I did based on the Silmarillion so far sells the best on Conventions and I get the most comments on it.  




Do you have a favourite pairing? 



Yes of course, but it's kind of controversial I'd say. ;)



Do you have a favourite creation of yours you are especially proud of? 



I'm kind of proud of my latest piece, Celebrimbor's Smithy. It was a tough one, since interior scenes are very hard in general for me. The work on this piece took a whole month with a few breaks of course. 



Do you have a favourite fictional character, besides Thranduil of course?



That would be Kylo Ren/Ben Solo from the Star Wars Universe. 



What other fandoms are you part of?

 

The Star Wars Fandom, tho I'm barely active there. I have a Tumblr blog dedicated to it, but I mostly just reblog stuff and did only one Star Wars related painting so far. The fandom is kind of toxic with its stupid ship wars and anti culture going on.



Do you do commissions?

 Yes. :)

Any advice/words for others in the fandom? 



That is such a general answer, but stay true to yourself, do what you love and don't give others shit over characters/pairings you don't like. Treat people the way you want to be treated. Be kind and respectful, you don't know what people are going through.
If you are an artist, or want to be one; only self reflection, critiques and hard work will get you moving forward. You need to be able to see your own flaws.  For that you need to seek out people who can give you an honest opinion about your art. (Not your friends or family.)
Vanity is the downfall of every professional artist. You can be proud of your work, but never vain. 
(You can always ask me for porfolio reviews or advice if you want by way. :))



Personal Questions: 


Favourite Book? 

The Silmarillion. 



Favourite movie? 

Currently Star Wars-The last Jedi.




Do you have a pet peeve? 



Littering. When I see people throwing their trash onto the walkways or streets I get furious. Take it to the next trash bin or home! It's not difficult.



What country are you from? 

Germany! 



Who do you think you might have been in a past life? 



Probably a cat. Sleeping and eating is all I want to do. :)



What do you like to do in your spare time other than create the media you work on?



When I'm not drawing or painting I'm either binge watching series on Netflix (currently Outlander <3)  or I'm with my friends/boyfriend. Sometimes I write Fanfiction, but mostly I'm reading it. I also try to travel as often as possible and sew my own costumes when time allows it.

 

When did you join the fandom?



I think back in 2007. Not really sure actually.  Definitely more than 10 years ago.

Follower Questions:

@floranocturna asked: 

You are a very versatile artist and I have been admiring your very cool cosplays already for a while, especially your Celebrian and Celeborn are amazing! Do you sew all the cosplays yourself?

 

Thank you and yes, I sew them usually by myself :).

What inspires you to cosplay a specific character? 



Honestly it's mostly the robes. If I like the aesthetic of a character, I want to cosplay him/her. XD Of course I also have an eye on the character and need to like him/her.



You are very ardent about being vegan. Will you tell us a little bit about your reasons and why is it important to you and should we maybe all think about how can we help to preserve nature instead of destroying it? 



This is a loaded question and I'm unable to answer it with just a few words. Feel free to ignore this text if you are not interested. 
As I learned that raising livestock for meat, eggs and milk generates 14,5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the second highest source of emissions and greater than all transportation combined and that it's the leading cause of deforestation, biodiversity loss and water pollution, I knew that I had to act and change my diet, because I simply couldn't live with that knowledge and not doing something about it. And of course the killing of millions of sentinent animals every single day. The meat industry is the most powerful industry in the world and they try literally everything to make us continue to buy meat, to make it cheaper and to leave people in the dark about the consequences for our planet and our health. Here the Pharmaindustry comes in. The meat industry is their biggest customer (80% of their money is made from antibiotics they sell to farmers and animal factories) and sponsor, feeding billions of pills to animals each to day to alter their flesh. It's all about money, control and very fucked up. Like always.
 If the grain that is used to feed our first world country livestock would be given to people in Africa or other third world countries where children starve to death, no one on this planet would need to suffer from hunger anymore. It's all pretty messed up and a paradox. 
The only way of preserving nature in the long run is going vegan actually. I know that a lot of people don't like this thought, but that's mostly because they are misinformed (I was too, everyone is in the beginning) and fear either deficiencies or they think they can only eat vegetables and fruits. But that's not true. There are so many vegan dishes and sweets out there people are not even aware of. Oreos for example are completely vegan. A lot of junk food is. Cake, Ice cream and chocolat can be vegan too. It's all just a matter of replacing the eggs and there are plenty of alternatives. When people think about going vegan, they think about all the things they can't have anymore. Instead, think of the things you gain from it. You support the environment, save lifes and it's beneficial for your health. You are less likely to get cancer or diabetes. You don't have to give up your beloved sweets or junk food. I mostly eat the same things I ate before, just with egg replacement and almond or oat milk instead of cows milk. The only thing you have to keep in mind is B12. I take a pill everyday for it and you should too if your are vegan. If you do that you are completely safe and won't suffer any deficiencies if you live on a wholesome diet. 
This wall of text may imply that I try to preach or what ever, but I simply state facts. It's up to everyone if they choose to act or not. I don't judge people for not going vegan. It takes a bit of effort, research and people will judge you for it. If you want to have more information I recommend the Netflix documentaries „What the health.“ and „Cowspiracy“. They are all based on researchable facts and explain a few statements I've given here. Also you might want to take a look at „Why we love dogs, eat pigs and wear cows“.




@beelovesbutterfly asked: First of all, thank you for sharing your lovely artwork. What is your favourite art medium?

@themirkyking asked: Which method of creating do you prefer? Digital or traditional, and why?

For my personal taste and fun I prefer traditional mediums. It's much more relaxing than digital art where I have to stare at a screen all day. Also I love the smell of paint and texture of paper. But for client work I definitely prefer digital since it's easier to change mistakes and I'm able to finish something faster. What makes the pay a lot better. 

Thank you so much Christina for taking the time to participate in our series of fandom interviews for @dailythranduilproject. It was a pleasure having you!  

Please check out Christina’s blog and her page at DeviantArt for all her awesome artwork! And if you happen to be in Cologne on May 12/13th 2018 you can go and visit her booth at the RPC Germany!

@floranocturna ^^

[mirandacmoon]

Project Proposal

Photography has always been a form of expression and exploration for me. Whenever I can’t sort through thoughts or I need to process something I turn to creating photographs. I’ll get an image in my head of how to express what I’m feeling or thinking, and after creating these images the words finally come to me on how to work through whatever I need. It’s like the visual sparks the necessary words, leading to many of my photos having a story to go along with them. Due to my process most of my photos have been portrait focuses, although occasionally I’ll have a still life that captures my message. One might think that means I should branch out, try something new. But why push absurdly outside my comfort zone, to the point of feeling lost in the art, when I could refine my skills with what inspires me to create even better images? With this mindset I have decided to focus on creating a collection of self portraits for my project.

As to not limit myself too much I’m not forcing myself to make extreme conceptual portraits for every image, although I have been known to pull a deeper meaning from some of my simpler images before. I’m choosing to explore myself simply because I feel I have changed so much in the past year, grown out of who I used to be while holding firm to my core, but have had so little time dedicated to my photography process that I’ve explored none of it. Choosing self portraits that are at least semi-conceptual allows me to do this. Every image I create for this project will be a self portrait in some form, and considering the current condition of Covid-19 they will all be shot in or right outside my apartment. This limits my background variability greatly, but I’m willing to accept the challenge to see what I can create. The idea is that myself and my ideas are the focal point, my struggles or thoughts front and center in whatever way I need to frame them. They may come out more conceptual, fantasy, or casual fashion shoots, but no matter the image the meaning explored will be shared. This project will be a period of self exploration and acceptance while honing my abilities with a camera.

To make this project possible I will be using my normal Canon Rebel T6 using the basic 18-55 mm lens it came with, possibly switching to my 58 mm wide lens or 2X telephoto lens if the image calls for it. I have two softbox lights so I don’t have to simply rely on room lighting, and of course a trusty tripod with a remote shutter release to make these self portraits possible. Any necessary editing will be done on 2015 Adobe Photoshop, and hopefully the final product will include some printed photographs along with a collection of the digital versions. I own a Epson XP- 15000 as well, and although it is made more for art prints I’m hoping with the right photo paper I’ll be able to make some high quality prints from my photographs.

My inspiration will be pulled from a variety of sources. Of course the concepts will need to be pulled from personal experiences and thoughts/feelings, but for how to set up the image behind these concepts many resources will be pulled. Pinterest and Instagram are large pools of resources for my photographs, looking at what other photographers have done, or even getting inspiration from a different art medium, simple outfit, or color theme. Since these are more photo specific than for the entire project I plan to do research before every image I create, giving an update on my findings and work every week.

On top of my research I plan to create sketches before shooting each self portrait. This part of the process will help me identify ideal poses, props, and post editing that I will need, saving me time during the actual shooting process. Of course I plan to share my preliminary sketches compared to the final product in my updates, discussing how my ideas might’ve changed mid shoot or how I pushed the idea further off the page. I haven’t explored this process much in my practice, but would like to include it in this project to help refine my abilities and ideas as a photographer.

Overall this project is one centered on myself. I am the model and the photographer, I’m generating the ideas and expressing them in my images. I have to pull inspiration to create images with meanings I want to express. I control every aspect of these pieces and therefore I can push them to be better than before. Here you all will be able to see my process as well as my final products, something I have never shared before out of fear of it ‘not being the right way’ or it making me less of a photographer. I’ve attached some of my photographs to give an idea of what I will be creating, and a bar for me to improve from. I won’t include my paragraphs of meaning behind each one, but hopefully their meanings can still come across with just an image. With my final images in this project I will be including a paragraph with each one, it's simply not in my nature to not include one at this point. But in the end I hope to create a collection of self portraits that truly express who I am at this point in my life, and that those images may speak to viewers as well.

Project Outline:

7-10 concepts will be explored and shot for this project

Concepts to be explored will be chosen throughout the project, however all of them must relate back to myself and be expressed in the form of a self portrait shot in/around my apartment.

Deadlines starting Feb. 1st, ending May 1st:

Every Friday an update will be given on research. This includes anything pertaining to my project and other artists/photographers similar to what I’m wanting to portray in my work.

Images will be photographed and edited throughout the weekend

Every Tuesday an edited, final photograph will be given with a description

Every Thursday a ‘behind the scenes’ post will be made. These will discuss my initial thought process and inspiration for the image, show preliminary sketches, unedited photos, as well as discuss any problems I faced along the way.

Any additional photo challenges will be posted on their due dates

[doodlewash]

Great ideas are happening at Da Vinci Paint Company! I’m so thrilled to share with you an awesome project that I’ve been working on with Marcello there, to kick off an upcoming line of 8ml Da Vinci watercolor tubes (adding to the collection of 15ml and 37ml watercolor tubes). These little 8ml tubes are perfect for trying out some new colors at a great price!

Painted Using Only My “Shiny” Da Vinci Watercolor Trio

So, we thought a fun way to introduce them would be to invite a trio of artists, (one of the three being me!) to choose their favorite three Da Vinci Watercolor tubes and create three new watercolor trio products (which I’m pleased to say are all available to purchase now! Read on to learn more about the project, the other artists, and my own “Shiny” Da Vinci Watercolor Trio and mixes!).

We thought it would be fun if these artists could also share their great ideas about color mixes and painting, or as we like to call it when using Da Vinci paints – a #DaVinciMoment.

About Da Vinci Watercolor Trios

As many of you who’ve seen my watercolor illustrations in my blog posts know, I’m a huge fan of using a limited palette as well as painting with Da Vinci watercolors (if you’re visiting me for the first time today, hey there, welcome! Nice to meet you!) The idea behind this project was to have each artist select only three Da Vinci watercolor tubes to create their personal trios.

Painted Using Only My “Shiny” Da Vinci Watercolor Trio

These aren’t necessarily triads, or colors that are evenly spaced around the color wheel, but simply three colors that we each felt, when used in various combinations, produced some really lovely mixes. Each artist was given about 9 colors in those cute little 8ml tubes, and had to choose only three. This bit turned out to be tougher than I expected!

I’ve used duos and quattros, but getting to a mix of just three colors was actually a fun challenge. Next up, I’ll share more about our trio of artists, a little about myself if you’re new to Doodlewash, share the trio I personally chose along with some sample watercolor illustrations, and provide a mixing chart showing how I mix the colors. 

(If you want to know a bit more about Da Vinci watercolor you can also check out Jessica Seacrest’s review here on Doodlewash.)

Our Trio of Artists

And now, presenting our trio of artists! Is it me or should there really be a way to add a drumroll to a blog post? Okay, so the first artist up is me and most of you who visit this blog often are used to reading my rambles and already know a lot about me. For those of you who are wondering who the heck this guy is, then I’ll take a quick moment to share a little bit about my myself, via this little interview each of the artists completed.

Charlie O’Shields – Doodlewash®

My name is Charlie O’Shields and I’m the creator of this very site, Doodlewash®, which is a global community of watercolor painters, illustrators and sketchers. I’ve featured over 440 artists painting and sketching on every continent (yep! Even Antarctica!) and host a community where artists who draw and use watercolor can post and share their work right here on this site. If you love watercolor painting and sketching, then please join us!

I’m also the founder of World Watercolor Group and World Watercolor Month in July – a 31 watercolors in 31 days challenge to raise awareness for arts education.

What do you like about Da Vinci watercolor?

Da Vinci watercolor is rich and vibrant and contains a rewetting agent makes it behave very similarly to honey-based paints, which I had used exclusively prior to discovering Da Vinci watercolor. And if I need to grab a color that I don’t already have waiting in my pans, they work beautifully straight out of the tube! I had the pleasure of visiting Da Vinci Paint Co. in California, U.S.A. and watching how the colors are created. The attention to detail and demand for quality is stunning. And at the end of the process, all of the colors are lovingly hand-poured. It’s a rare and wonderful thing to witness in this day and age of automation and I was immediately smitten with both the paints and the company.

Why do you paint?

Once I started sketching and painting each day, I quickly realized it was amazingly therapeutic and calming. After a long day at work, coming home to create a little watercolor illustration became something I not only looked forward to doing, but something that helped me transition my day and relax into my evening feeling refreshed. Okay, I admit, it also became a completely unstoppable habit. I recently just passed the mark of 1,000 days of consecutive watercolor painting and sketching.

What do you love to do besides painting?

I’m a big kid, so I also enjoy playing games on my phone as well as console games on Xbox and Playstation. I grew up during a period when arcade games were all the rage and I guess it just stuck with me. I also love Lego and creating things with those little colorful bricks. I have shelves full of Lego architecture sets mixed with random Star Wars memorabilia. When not playing with toys, I do also like to read lots of books, even the ones written for adults and without pictures.

Favorite Things Trio

Dessert (really any kind)

Funny childhood memories

Getting lost in a good book

Bucket List Trio

Publish an illustrated memoir

Go on an African safari

Learn how to speak French

Completing The Artist Trio

I’m happy to introduce my two lovely artist friends who agreed to be guinea pigs for this first outing of the project. I say that because I didn’t have all of the idea in place before just jumping in and going for it. Something that will not surprise my regular readers in the least.

I don’t like to set severe parameters as it allows the artists to help complete the idea. You can’t know where to build the sidewalks until you see the paths that people make. And they both forged a brilliant path indeed! So thank you Tonya and Jennifer for your patience and your wonderful ideas that made this project truly come to life! Check out their links below and read on to learn more about my Da Vinci watercolor trio and an overview of how I mix colors with wonderful paints.

Tonya Lee – Scratchmade Journal

Tonya Lee lives in the Appalachian Mountains with her family of four and one cat. She enjoys nature study, sketching, gardening, and limited interaction with city life, but she’ll happily fight traffic for a great restaurant, museum, or thrift store.

Visit Tonya at Scratchmade Journal to learn about her Da Vinci trio!

Jennifer McLean – Just Add Water Silly

Jennifer McLean is a watercolor and mixed media artist and an avid reader, so you’ll always find either a book or a paintbrush in her hand.

Visit Jennifer at Just Add Water Silly to learn about her Da Vinci Trio!

Charlie’s “Shiny” Da Vinci Watercolor Trio!

SO, what did I ultimately choose for my watercolor trio? Well, a little set of my three favorite Da Vinci watercolor tubes that I use to make shiny happy things, of course! For those who know me, they know I love painting shiny metal things and glassy objects. I think they’re a joy to paint, and particularly suited to the watercolor medium. I can barely paint a flower without jamming it into a glass vase, sneaking in my chance to paint something shiny!

Painted Using Only My “Shiny” Da Vinci Watercolor Trio

There are many ways to paint glass and metallic surfaces, but as an illustrator, one of the tricks I personally enjoy to create an illusion of realism is to really push contrast. By this, I mean deep blacks next to nearly pure whites. This creates a “shiny” look that can be amped up to make something metallic or softened a bit to create the effect of glass. So, I present to you now the three Da Vinci Watercolor tubes in my “Shiny” Trio.

Terra Cotta (PR102 – Semi-opaque)

This is undoubtedly one of my favorite Da Vinci watercolor tubes. It’s a rich color when used with just a little water and dilutes to a lovely reddish and ruddy pale color that can be used to add a bit of random warmth to areas of my watercolor illustrations. I don’t often paint people, but have mixed it to create pleasing skin tones as well, with just a bit of Quinacridone Red or Opus (Vivid Pink) and a touch of Yellow Ochre. With a bit of Nickel Azo Yellow it can become a lovely, glowing orange.

Cobalt Blue (PB28 – Transparent)

Though I had previously used Ultramarine Blue, this little tube has become my number one go-to blue. It’s a deep and bright blue that can be used on its own to create shadows under objects or mixed with Terra Cotta to create a very balanced neutral gray. It can always provide the right tint to shadows in a snowy landscape, or more likely in my case, a dollop of whipped cream (be sure to always add a touch of yellow to whipped cream. Though paintings are always calorie-free, there’s a bit of fat there in reality and yellow helps add that bit of decadence).

Nickel Azo Yellow (PY150 – Transparent)

This color is created with one of the two pigments used in Da Vinci’s Quinacridone Gold, which I also enjoy. The color looks incredibly dark and not yellow at all in the pan and dilutes with water to create an impossibly sunny and bright yellow. It’s rather magical, so I have to admit that this is also part of the allure. I can also use it in a low to nearly no-water fashion to create depth and a darker, browner edge when I want a bit more outline to an area of my watercolor illustrations.

My Mixes, Or Finding My Da Vinci Moment

Here’s a little color wheel showing mixes you can get from this trio. Note, that since this isn’t a triad, you won’t be able to get a red/purple from this mix. My core triad is Cobalt Blue, Nickel Azo Yellow, and Quinacridone Red, which creates a very beautiful and balanced primary palette of all transparent colors, but lacks the punch to create deep, dark grays or blacks. That’s where Terra Cotta comes in and saves the day!

As for swatches, I swear I started with traditional swatches, but I was growing frustrated with the process. I’ve never actually made swatches before and began to wonder why. Perhaps it was painting inside the box or mostly it was because the usual approach requires drying time. I have the patience of a 5-year old child and rarely ever let my paint dry completely in my quick daily paintings. I work in a circular fashion to let bits sort of dry while working on others.

Painted Using Only My “Shiny” Da Vinci Watercolor Trio

So, something about the usual swatch method just didn’t feel like a fit for me. I tried a couple times and both were messy failures. I felt like I was losing my marbles. Hey, wait?! That’s it! I’ll make some marbles instead!

My Watercolor Marble Mixing Chart

So, I invented this little alternative doodlewash approach to traditional swatches. This is based on something I actually do often, when I want a lightening quick test of new colors and/or combinations. Which is pretty much all of the time, given my short attention span. I make a quick circular outline of the marble by using less water and getting a more saturated version of the color for the exterior of the marble.

Then, I rinse my brush and wet the center with water creating a rough approximation of a marble, leaving bits of highlights as dry paper. After that, I quickly add bits of color, letting the watercolor do what it likes and popping in a shadow at the end with a wetter wash of a diluted version of whatever color mix was left on my brush. I used only one color, then made some marbles adding two colors, and then some more adding bits all three colors.

In just a few seconds, this quickly shows me how the color granulates, how it mixes with other colors, how it can perform to create shadows, and even how well highlights stand out in various color combinations for my shiny things. The entire full chart you’ll find below took less than 10 minutes, about 20 seconds a marble, but to my brain, at least, shows me all I need to know about the colors and how they might work together.

I went back in to be a bit more helpful and organized them with a color key below, in case we don’t all share the same brain. The first little box is the color I started with for the outline (in a more saturated lower water form) and a general idea of the amount of the other colors present that I quickly dropped into the wet wash in the middle and then diluted to create the shadow. One note, if the center is too dark, I just push the wet color out of the way towards the edge which creates an even stronger outline of the marble and lets me see how the pigments interact together). It’s also a lot of fun! And I always feel like I learn a bit more when I’m just messing about like a kid.

Charlie’s “Shiny” Da Vinci Watercolor Trio – Two Color Mixes

What I love most about these particular colors is the depth and range you can get from using only two of them at a time. Nickel Azo Yellow in particular is like getting a few colors in one if you play with the less diluted version of the paint. The marbles on the bottom left and far right look like they have more than two colors in them, but it’s mostly Nickel Azo Yellow with just a bit of Cobalt Blue. In the middle far right, you can see an example of the shiny orange that happens when just a bit of Terra Cotta is added instead.

Charlie’s “Shiny” Da Vinci Watercolor Trio – Three Color Mixes

When you mix all three, the fun really begins as the saturation boosts even a bit more and interesting and often subtle interactions take place. The top far left marble’s shadow begins to resemble the sand on the beach, while the top far right’s shadows reminds me of a beach at sunset. The middle far right ended up looking like a Superman marble so I just let it be. It does show the nice pairing of warm and cool colors, but mostly I love it because it looks like it once belonged to Superman.

Charlie’s “Shiny” Da Vinci Watercolor Trio – Neutral Mixes

For the neutrals in this particular trio, I often only use Terra Cotta And Cobalt Blue to mix light and lovely grays. All three will mix to a brown, which can be useful, but also loses some of the transparency so I stick with just these two colors. Then I use very low water mixes of them to get either a brownish or a bluish black.

This provides the high-contrast look you see in many of my glass and metal illustrations. And though I use a sepia ink pen in my work, I can use this mix to add a quick black outline for effect when I’d like something to pop forward more or have a greater sense of contrast (yep, just with the same regular round pointy brush I was already using, hence the wiggly line work).

The feathered highlights in the lower left on the plate? My friend the paper towel. Used to quickly blot, lift and dry the paint before it bleeds to create a hard edge.

Charlie’s “Shiny” Da Vinci Watercolor Trio – Watercolor Marble Mixing Chart

Here’s the full chart of my marble mixes and neutrals so you can see how it all looks together. This is admittedly a rather unique way to swatch color, but I hope you’ll find it helpful. To me, it really shows what these colors can do together and the fun mixes you can create!

Painting Other Shiny Happy Things

These three lovely Da Vinci watercolor tubes aren’t just for glass and metal, of course, they can be used to paint lots of other shiny happy things as well, from puppies to sunflowers. The sunflower is an example of the greens you can get from this palette. I typically use Leaf Green to get a very bright spring green, but Cobalt Blue and Nickel Azo Yellow mix to create a lovely natural sunny green color.

I’m rather found of painting food, and I use Terra Cotta and Nickel Azo Yellow often to create the crust of pies and even for corn flakes with bananas on top as shown below.

Lastly, I’m a huge lover of animals, particularly dogs. Yep, you can even use only my “Shiny” Da Vinci Watercolor Trio to create furry friends as well, from puppies to continental bulldogs. The “blacks” you can create in this trio are also great for border collies as well in achieving both the bluish black and brownish black found in their fur.

Not many dogs are purple, so the lack of a true red in this palette makes it work, but if you would like a bit more purple or lovely bright red, simply add a Da Vinci watercolor tube of Quinacridone Red and you’ll have a quattro palette that will allow you paint anything on the planet! (here’s an example of those 4 colors via a couple glasses of wine, which I’ll be enjoying now that we’re at the end of this post! For the record, it is in the evening that I’m writing this.)

Da Vinci Watercolor Trios Are Available Now!

Click Here To Buy My Trio And Make Your Own #DaVinciMoment!

I hope you enjoyed my overview of mixes in my “Shiny” trio and if you’d like to purchase a set for yourself, well now you can! Each trio is only $19.95 and includes a little brochure with information about the artist on the back and opens to reveal their mixing chart as a reference. My trio contains colors that would cost a quite a bit more if purchased separately, so it’s really a wonderful deal!

Also be sure to check out Tonya’s post and Jennifer’s post. They both share their gorgeous trios, and the wonderful art and mixes they created with them. For a limited time, we each receive a portion of sales, so thank you so much for supporting your fellow artists!

And also, for a limited time, these trios come with a sample of Hahnemühle Cézanne watercolor paper if you buy now! 

Whew, that was a lot to cover in one post! Hope you’ll love these new Da Vinci watercolor trio sets, hand-selected by artists. I can’t wait to see what you’ll make! Happy Painting!

Da Vinci Watercolor Trios are available now! Click Here To Buy Them ALL And Make Your Own #DaVinciMoment! 

Introducing Da Vinci Watercolor Trios! - Make a #DaVinciMoment with these new 8ml tube sets from a trio of artists! My own trio is available to purchase now! Check it out! #doodlewash #WorldWatercolorGroup #watercolor #watercolour Great ideas are happening at Da Vinci Paint Company! I'm so thrilled to share with you an awesome project that I've been working on with Marcello there, to kick off an upcoming line of 8ml Da Vinci watercolor tubes (adding to the collection of 15ml and 37ml watercolor tubes).

[shirlleycoyle]

LA Is Partnering With an Infamous Crime-Reporting App to Track Coronavirus

On Wednesday, Los Angeles announced a contact tracing partnership with Citizen, the crime reporting app formerly known as Vigilante. Citizen is now rolling out SafePass, a contact tracing feature meant to track symptoms, find testing sites, get alerts when exposed to COVID-19, and share diagnostic information.

"The County's partnership with SafePass is a valuable tool to help slow the spread of COVID-19 throughout the region," said Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger at the press conference. "The success of the SafePass app relies on a continued sense of community impact among our residents by asking individuals to do their part to protect themselves and their neighbors."

Citizen has come a long way since its days as Vigilante. In November 2016, days after its public launch in New York City, it was kicked off the Apple App Store amidst concerns the app would actively encourage vigilantism either through racial profiling or violent responses. By March 2017, the app was back after rebranding itself as “Citizen”. 

In a 2017 Medium post, the company insisted that while the Vigilante was removed from the App Store for "a violation of Apple's App Store Review Guidelines, with concerns centered around user safety,” things would be different with Citizen. The company traded a masked defender logo for an all-seeing eye and removed a feature that allowed users to "report incidents" directly to Citizen, but preserved nearly every other aspect of the Peter Thiel-backed app. (The crime reporting feature was added back in earlier this year)

Citizen went on to secure $12 million in funding from Sequoia Capital and expanded to San Francisco. In an interview with TechCrunch, founder Andrew Frame said "The name has changed, but the mission has not." Frame defended the Citizen app from criticism further, telling TechCrunch that the company did not have a relationship with NYPD: "We don't really coordinate with them… We have no official relationship."

For years, however, the Citizen app and its staff have acted as if such a relationship exists. In Community Manager Dennis Prince Mapp's own words: "We're trying to unite [local community members and the police] and show that we're all human. We're trying to humanize the app and trying to humanize the NYPD."

Earlier this year, Motherboard filed Freedom of Information requests with every city that Citizen operated in at the time (Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix). The NYPD claimed that it had had no communication or relationship with Citizen; an appeal was also rejected. Oakland and San Francisco both said it has no emails from Citizen. But emails from the Los Angeles’ Mayor’s office from last year, obtained by Motherboard, show that Citizen set up a meeting with the city’s gang violence and youth development coordinator. A member of a local nonprofit who was working with Citizen told the Los Angeles Mayor’s office in an email: 

“Citizen has become so vital and intertwined within the safety infrastructure of New York that the FDNY is now mandating the app on department-issued phones in order to triage, prioritize, and respond to breaking information,” they wrote. “I’m reaching out to you because Citizen is launching in Los Angeles in just a few weeks and I think that this is a great opportunity for our community to re-imagine safety with Citizen.”

A spokesperson for the FDNY said that the Los Angeles’ Mayor’s office was given inaccurate information. “The information provided below in that email is inaccurate. There is no policy within FDNY mandating use of the app in question.” The spokesperson added that some firefighters may use the app informally. A freedom of information request filed by Motherboard with the FDNY has not yet been returned.

Email obtained by Motherboard through FOIA request.

At best, the Citizen app seems to be a glorified "transcription service for emergency radio” that encourages people to "go out to stream and document incidents that are unfolding around them." At worst, it is just another in a long line of fear-mongering surveillance platforms that offer paranoia-as-a-service. Even as violent crime nationwide drops, apps like Citizen, Nextdoor, and Neighbors have thrived by becoming playgrounds for racial profiling that turn community members into vigilantes and override privacy or safety concerns in the name of order. 

In early September 2017, a Citizen spokesperson claimed that user safety surrounding its crime-reporting feature wasn't the real reason Vigilante was removed from the App Store all those years ago. "Vigilante was taken out of the App Store for more technical reasons, dealing with geo restrictions and developer technicalities," the spokesperson said—in other words, it was removed for privacy violations. But according to a 2019 Washington Post investigation, Citizen was one of many apps found to violate its own privacy policy and share personally identifiable information with third parties regularly. 

None of this seems to have deterred public officials from partnering with Citizen to make the SafePass app. It won't be Citizen's first foray into the realm of contact tracing, either. CoinDesk wrote an extensive report on Citizen's first contract tracing feature, SafeTrace, which raised numerous privacy red flags. 

One major issue emerges almost immediately when reviewing documents laying out how Citizen’s technology would utilize "GPS location data, Bluetooth low energy, WiFi fingerprinting, and Cell Tower triangulation in a rich feature set providing highly accurate contact proximity and duration data.” Both Citizen and LA County insist the datasets built from this program will remain anonymized, but it has long been established that it is relatively easy to “reidentify” such datasets—especially with GPS data.

Both the press release and SafePass’ website emphasize the use of "Bluetooth technology," but upon closer examination it is clear SafePass is also using GPS data just like its predecessor. On its promotional page, there is only one mention of GPS data buried at the bottom, in the FAQ section as an answer to the eighth question "Is my contact tracing data safe?" to which the one mention of GPS reads: "All GPS data collected by the Citizen app is deleted after 30 days."

Citizen's privacy policy talks a little bit more about GPS data: it will be deleted 30 days after collection, collection operates on a rolling basis, and while you can choose to share your location or revoke Citizen's access to your data, the app will not function if you do so.

In a statement to Motherboard, a Citizen spokesperson said: ““We will retain your bluetooth data, GPS location data and identity verification information for 30 days from collection on a rolling basis, and all other personal information for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this policy and to support other Citizen app features you might use, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law, or an individual requests that we delete information about them.”

There’s also no information provided as to what data isn’t deleted, important because the app collects much more than GPS and Bluetooth data. Ángel S. Díaz, counsel at the Brennan Center—a New York-based public policy institute—shared on Twitter that he had analyzed Citizen's contact tracing app when it was pitched to NYC and found its privacy protocols lacking at best. The app gave little information about what it did with "location data, copies of gov-ID, COVID-19 diagnosis information, and undefined 'health information,'" nor did it communicate what it is allowed to do with undeleted data even if "anonymized" or simply "aggregated." Diaz wrote that it's "easy to imagine Citizen's desire to integrate this data into hotspot alerts for users of its crime alerts service." 

And while the privacy policy communicates that users can opt-in to sharing information with government agencies, it doesn't specify in its privacy policy which—users don't know if their personally identifiable information is being shared with only public health agencies or law enforcement and immigration authorities. 

A Citizen spokesperson told Motherboard “Identity verification information: When a user submits their COVID-19 diagnosis to us to enable tracing, we may request a copy of the user's government-issued ID or use other means to verify the user's identity to protect our community against platform abuse and fraud. We will delete your identity verification information within 30 days from collection.”

Given Citizen’s poor privacy track record and history of being used for racial profiling and vigilantism, even standard policy sections seem weird and leave one wondering why Citizen isn’t taking extra steps to assure users that their data will be secure, anonymous, and shared only with public health agencies. Díaz cites a section of the company’s policy that states "To the extent necessary to continue to provide contact tracing services, we may share some or all of your personal information in connection with or during negotiation of any merger, financing, acquisition or dissolution transaction involving the sale, transfer, divestiture, or disclosure of all or a portion of sp0n Inc.'s business or assets."

It's hard to think of few companies that would be worse candidates for a contact tracing partnership. Ideally, the project should be run on open source code with open standards that can both be replicated anywhere else and made as transparent as possible. Instead, an app desperate for yet another rebrand has somehow swindled Los Angeles County into providing a chance at more users, more data, and more paranoia-as-a-service.

Jason Koebler contributed to reporting.

LA Is Partnering With an Infamous Crime-Reporting App to Track Coronavirus syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[gretagerwigarchive]

Greta Gerwig: “I have a lot to be euphoric about right now”

by Helen Bownass, Feb 27, 2018.

source: https://www.stylist.co.uk/visible-women/greta-gerwig-interview-lady-bird-oscars-2018/192489

Did you ever imagine that this tale of a teenage girl navigating her life would affect so many people on so many levels?

I certainly wrote it wanting people to identify with it or be able to see themselves in it somehow, but 
I never expected it to be on the level that it has been. Doing the London Film Festival [in October 2017] was the first time I had this sense that it was connecting. People were saying, “I’ve never heard of Sacramento, but I’m telling you, that’s my story”, 
and that was very emotional
 for me.

What I’ve always
 loved about movies is that they are something that allows people to understand commonalities between a human experience, even though it might be a highly specific story that doesn’t seem like it would be universal, but somehow it is.

How do you feel about the volume of conversation around your Oscar nomination?

I know how much it’s meant for me: the women I’ve looked up to and their visibility as artists of the cinema has shaped my ability to think that I could do this. Whether it’s Agnès Varda, Sally Potter, Sofia Coppola or how much it meant to me when Kathryn Bigelow won the Oscar… I came to them through repertory programming [a cinema that shows a repertoire of old and art-house films] and that spotlight being placed on female directors changed things for me, so I can only imagine that it probably changes things for other people.

Until it’s closer to 50/50, I say keep shouting about it, because it might reach a girl or woman who hasn’t directed or is looking for the courage to do it and move them to make that step.

Fifty per cent of directors being female by 2020 sounds
 great in theory, but
 how will we actually get to that point?

When I think about
 moving forward, I think 
the fact that there aren’t
 more female directors 
has to do with a lack of
 taking a chance on 
someone. Experience 
aggregates; if someone
 doesn’t take a chance
then they don’t get that experience. By the time [a woman] gets all the
 way up the ladder when [producers] look round and say, “Who could
 direct it?” – but women
 weren’t given an
opportunity in the beginning.

Fifty/fifty by 2020 is an incredible goal, but some of these things will need to be persistently tackled for years because you don’t get to an all-male hiring pool in five years – you get to an all-male hiring pool by having 90 years of ‘this is how we do it’. You need to actively push the other way.

I look at statistics of kids graduating from film school and it’s half women, so they’re there. Something happens between half of the people who graduate from film school who are women, to there being no women directors. 
I think when these things aren’t talked about, they become invisible because it’s like the air we breathe, and pointing it out makes it obvious.

Have you thought about what your personal role is in changing this?


I’ve been very impressed with women, like Reese Witherspoon and Margot Robbie, who have started their own production companies and hire female directors. This is something that has been percolating for me, and I would love to figure out how to help other women get movies made.

Did you do an inner cheer when Natalie Portman called out the all-male best director nominees at the Golden Globes?

I actually didn’t see that until the next day because I was backstage. My favourite part was the way she backed up from the microphone, as if she just dropped it.

We’ve all witnessed the power of Time’s Up in a post-Weinstein world. How do we ensure that isn’t just for an elite voice? How do we ensure that this is being talked about across all of humanity?

When the leaders of Time’s Up wrote their response letter, it was to women across all industries. Being able to back that up with a legal fund so that women who didn’t have resources could get legal aid if there was a harassment situation in a workplace is very thoughtful and it’s very important.

It’s something that’s obviously in all walks of life. It’s really important to move this on to people who don’t have resources or the same amplification of their voices.

So if you have a voice you should use it?

Yes, it’s partly that, and it’s also about where does the attention in the media go to? The New York Times did an incredible piece about auto workers [exposing how women working at two Ford plants in Chicago faced a culture of harassment, published in December 2017], which was using their powers of investigative journalism to shine a light on something important. Focusing on it in all industries is something that you can raise your voice about and that is another way to use that power to change something.

Do you think as a female filmmaker there is more pressure to prove that you can make a successful film?

I think some of that is changing now. Before, there was a sense that every time a woman directed a movie everyone would wait with baited breath to see if it did well or not, because the feeling would be that if it does well then this is good for women and film, and if it doesn’t then it’s bad. I think we’re looking at a time where the numbers, hopefully, are shifting, so every time it’s not a trial over whether people like films about and directed by and written by women; it just becomes another movie.

I certainly felt in ways that I wanted to be as prepared and as ready as I could be because I wanted to make a good film, and I also knew that if the experience of working with me was good, it might make it that much easier for the next woman who comes along.

Writer and director Aaron Sorkin said that a “cloud of euphoria” surrounds you wherever you go. Do you think that’s true?

I think I have a lot to be euphoric about right now; I’ve had a lot to be euphoric about for a very long time. I’m incredibly lucky that I get to do what I love – I get to be around people who are artists of the highest calibre and I am able to see a road where I continue to do this, so I think euphoria is a pretty [good] response to what is going on.

How do you maintain that with the volume of travel and press you’re doing for this film?

I’m pretty good at sleeping on a plane, but it’s never great sleep. I’ve always slept a lot. If I don’t have eight hours of sleep I tend to see everything more negatively and it takes me longer to finish things. When I began my sophomore
 year [at Barnard College, New York] I made a list of priorities 
and number one was to get eight hours of sleep. Everything else fell under that.

Do you still write a list of priorities?


Sometimes I have too many
 things that are important to me. When you’re writing resolutions or priorities you can get very ambitious, and it creates mores stress because you’re not accomplishing the things that you didn’t have time to accomplish in the first place.

It’s helpful for me to focus on ‘What is the actual thing you’re going for? Sure, it would be lovely if you had an extra three hours
 in the day, but if you don’t, what is the thing you really want to do?’

Do you find it easy to recognise what it is you really want? Often many people know there’s something but don’t know how to get to it.

If I’m honest with myself I generally know what it is that I want, it’s just it can get covered over by other things. Sometimes it takes a long time to achieve those goals – for example writing a movie takes a while. Because it’s such a long process, when I would think about the whole thing it would overwhelm me, and I would get scared and think, ‘What if it’s terrible; maybe I should let someone else direct it?’ I would go through whatever my insecurities were.

In a way, it was always, ‘Get it to the next step: just get this scene done. Just get this draft done. Now just give this draft to a friend to read…’ Taking every step as its own action was helpful because it broke it into something that I could wrap my mind around.

You’ve been in the film industry for many years, but this is your first solo-directed project. Where do you go when that is recognised at the highest level critically?

I think no matter who you are, making a film always feels like jumping off a cliff. But if I had to choose my problem, I’d chose this one. If my biggest bellyache is, ‘How will I ever top this?’ then I think that’s OK [laughs].

How do you think Lady Bird will change your career?

When I was going into this, my concern was that I wanted it to reach as many people as it could, but I was mainly thinking about trying to make it easy to make the next one because I want to make a lot of movies. So much of filmmaking is meeting people who will take a chance on you, and it’s easier to take a chance if it worked out the first time. What’s beyond lovely about this moment is that it makes it easier for me to make films now because it went well.

Which other women in the arts should people know about?

Novitiate by Maggie Betts is a beautiful film – and an interesting companion piece to Lady Bird. It’s a completely different vision of Catholicism. It was her first film and I thought it was great. But Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Oh my God I love her – I eat her books whole.

I also love the writer Maggie Nelson. I first read The Argonauts and now I’ve read almost everything she’s written. And Durga Chew-Bose is a brilliant writer; she’s published a book of stories that are beautiful called Too Much And Not In the Mood.

How do you think female artists will evolve with the culture around them now?

I think whether it’s in cinema or other mediums, there will be more and more women contributing their voice to the story of what it means to be human, and that voice has been left out for almost all of human history. I always think about the fact that it was less than 100 years ago in the United States that women got the right to vote, so it’s a crazy amount of transformation that is going on and I couldn’t be more excited.

I love literature from the 17th century, but I’m also vividly aware that there is so much of that time that we don’t know because [women] weren’t writing or participating. As you increase the number of people who are women that are making art, you get a much richer vision of what it means to be human.

[intheclique]

CLIQUE talks ‘Kane Hannay’

In the words of Kane Hannay,’

‘Let the fun commence…’

Respected DJ.

Well-oiled producer in music.

And all-round nice guy.

Kane Hannay is no stranger to music production and the scene in Newcastle.

From an un-decisive young career taking him to ventures in photography, and the arts.

Kane Hannay separates himself in knowing exactly what he wants to do.

From hosting RUDOSA apart of his co-created brand ‘Raw Material’ to producing music like, ‘Intermittent Signals’ & his remix of ‘Outlander’ : ‘The Vamp’ he most certainly is making a very mature and well signalled named for himself in not only the North East but throughout the Industry as a whole.

As we sit down on this not so sunny day.

What lies ahead for the future of Kane Hannay?

Let’s find out…

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Hey Kane

First off thanks for taking the time to talk to us this afternoon.

It’s awesome, no problem.

Bit miserable isn’t it?

Yeah, aye its been bleak like.

How’s your day been?

Aye it’s been alright, not too bad. Been at work since 9 so looking forward to making some tunes.

How you been handling lock-down?

It’s been alright.

I haven’t really been anywhere other than work.

Other than that, it’s just been pretty much finishing coursework. Now that that’s all done it leaves me time to produce as much music as I can over the summer holidays.

I’ve actually got a remix I’m working on at the moment for another upcoming artist, ‘Vollans.’

Lee (one half of Acid Enigma) messaged me about producing a track to feature in a various artist compilation for ‘ESCALATE’ so that should be sick! So just being a busy bee…

So, tell us how’d you get into music?

Well… I’ve been into it for years and especially when I was younger, I’m talking like even at nursery age.

I have always been into it for years and especially when I was younger, I’m talking as young as nursery / reception age.

I have always been into music, might not be the same as what I’m into now but I have always been deeply interested in it. I remember being a small bairn dancing at the top of the stairs with my parent’s old hi-fi system and a little disco ball.

At the age of 12 I got my first controller. It was a Numark Mixtrack Pro. The bee’s knee back in the day. 

I think around then I was listening to dubstep. However, over the years it progressed from that to electro house, garage, tech-house, and then finally for the last three years I’ve been glued to techno.

At 14 I got into the production of music. A friend from school was making tunes on his laptop and I was hooked. That’s when it all started. I was coming home every night after school and cooking up a new track.

At 16 after finishing my GCSE’s I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I wasn’t the best student academically, so 6th form wasn’t an option. I had to visit Newcastle College where I found a music production course for electronic music. I picked up loads of good tips and got to meet some brilliant people there. At 18 I started the 3-year degree course. I’m coming into my last year this September.

Tell us about your latest song ‘Intermitted Signals.’ How did it come about?

So right, it’s funny because it’s; ‘the fastest song I’ve produced’in a while.

3 days max. Including the mastering.

It’s a fast-paced industrial track that consists of hard punchy drums, a trippy rolling lead and a calling vocal. (Link to track.)

It was for a project for college. I was running late, and I had to make an EP. Normally I’d spend days on a loop before eventually arranging it.

I simply must work my best under pressure. *chuckles*

Amazing stuff, so is it just techno you’re into? What else makes you move?

I pretty much listen to techno all the time. I do occasionally listen to jungle, and I love the old school drum and bass. I take some inspiration from it because it consists of heavy sampling which I find is my strength in the production of music.

I still listen to bits of house music as that’s what most of my DJ mates play.

You co created RAW MATERIAL tell us a little about it?

So, I came up with the idea about two years ago of creating an imprint called ‘Raw Material’ for dark industrial techno. It didn’t come to life till about a year ago when a module on our course was based around putting on an event. Me and co-founder Adam. (who I couldn’t have worked without) assembled a team amongst other students on our course. We were given a budget from the college £200 per student. There were seven of us in total. So, we looked at various venues in the toon to put a night on mid-week.

We were close to securing ‘The Cut’ however we had £1400 to put on a night and I wanted to go the extra mile of booking a headline act. I knew exactly who I wanted.

A huge inspirational artist of mine who I have been following since his first release on ‘SUARA’ back in 2018. We went over budget and I spend a grand out of my own pocket to pay for the extra costs.

As this was a side project for me, I wasn’t interested in continuing it after the first event. However, seeing how happy and how hard people were going for it. It felt amazing seeing it and it pushed me to another one in the future.

Although I lost lots of money, seeing how happy people were made up for it to think that we were able to make an event like this happen.

I’m hoping to recruit passionate upcoming techno artists in Newcastle to be a part of future events to support big artist bookings and for ‘Raw Material’ to become the leading event in Newcastle for techno.

Who’s your ideal booking?

Oooooo its always changing. It’s not necessarily who I want to book but more of which bookings can you bring crowds into.

I don’t intend on doing this for-profit bit I need to make sure I can make my money back. My ideal booking would be Glasgow’s finest ‘SLAM’ however there are many different artists like ‘Paula Temple, Rebekah, SHDW & Obscure Shape.’

I’m actually looking after lock-down to get a club booked but honestly, I think Newcastle could do with a booking like ‘SLAM.’

Who’d you like to collab with?

Collaborations I don’t normally think about but if I could at the moment I would choose ‘MRD’ or ‘Blicz.’ I love ‘Kahyia’ and would love to learn how to produce tracks like that.

I love the sounds and vibe in Gate 212 from ‘Blicz.’ Both artists own some amazing gear which I would love to try out.

Favorite Gig?

Since turning 18 I’ve attended a fair number of gigs in the toon. Loads of amazing nights out but if I had to choose one it would be ‘LOOP’ presents ‘Amelie Lens’ at ‘Digital Newcastle.’

It had the strongest line up support from ‘Farrago’ and ‘Milo Spykers.’ The sets were unbelievable. Proper hard and driving techno and it was ‘PACKED.’

Still wish I could revisit that night again.

Favorite Festival?

I’ve never been to a festival *shock* * facepalm* although I will eventually go to one.

Whisky or Beer?

Depends but I like well, quite like ‘Jack Daniels. Whisky it is ha-ha.

Perfect night out?

I’m not really into your typical student nights out in Newcastle. I’m more over a raver ha-ha.

My ideal night out would be like ‘APEX’ or ‘LOOP’. Basically, anything Techno.

Who influences you the most?

Pretty simple, RUDOSA.

I honestly think the stuff that he does like hiss DJ school, his own production style, the music he plays in his set. It’s unbelievable. He’s helping so many producers as well like myself.

I sent him a track and he gave me feedback to work on. He’s doing so much for the scene and that’s why I look up to him.

Honestly if it wasn’t my event he was playing at. I’d be all over the dance floor… ha-ha * true story *

Where do you see yourself in 3 years’ time?

I would like to have a full love set sorted by then. I recently bought a ‘Xone96 mixer’ and it connects to Ableton so hopefully 3 years’ time I can perform a full hour or twos set for a side project.

I’d hope by that point to have actually pulled a finger out and actually send an EP off to a decent size label like ‘SUARA.’ It’s a big label but pushes a harder style of techno as a pose to your Drumcode and WATB.

I’d like to have my tracks played out by bigger artists in the scene. But who knows what the future holds.

Any advice for those starting out?

My advice would be don’t pull a ‘Kane Hannay.’

Actually, watch tutorials on YouTube to learn how to do things because that’s probably the reason it’s taken me so long to get where I am with my production. I can’t watch a video without trying something random on Ableton. However, this has allowed me to be creative with my productions.

If you’re DJing and want to be the next ‘Amelie Lens, SNTS,’ or whatever. You need to produce music. Anyone can DJ but it’s your music that sets us apart from the next Artist.

Don’t sign your tracks to small labels. There’s no point in spending days making a tune to send it off to a label where no one will listen. Aim for larger or medium (well known) labels.

And go into your email and send them demo’s off to DJ’s and producers.

Shy bairns get nowt…

Thanks again Kane. Have an amazing evening.

CLIQUE

[seraphaltima-blog]

An open letter from Mateus’ Goblet Ward 12

And so I'm inspired to write my first, and hopefully only, tumblr post.

It's come to my attention that certain cranky people are quite suddenly extra cranky about Mateus' housing situation. That is to say: Mateus, which up until now has had the distinction of being the smallest server replete with open housing plots, suddenly has none left. This is in no small part due to the fact that SE has recently locked Balmung (among other worlds) and marked us as a "preferred server," causing many from Balmung--which hasn't even had so much as an apartment open in close to a year, if I understand correctly--to see us as the new promised land of milk and honey and housing. As such, we have officially unofficially been designated a secondary roleplaying server.

Do I feel sorry for Balmung's housing woes? You know what--no. Not at all. They crammed something like 25,000 people on a server intended to hold about 7,000, assuming the population was appropriately spread throughout the datacenter. Which, okay. That was their choice! But people don't seem to realize that it was a choice. Either you get to have the bustling community of dozens if not hundreds of characters everywhere you go and the rich market board full of any product you could dream of buying... or you get to have a small server with open spaces while tolerating an atmosphere I've heard described as "depressing" or even "skeletal" and a low-supply economy that may force you to be more self-sufficient than you'd prefer. They made their choice, and yet many felt entitled to have their bustling server AND open spaces of their own. SE did a fantastic job of obliging with the addition of apartments, which saw housing woes healed on basically every server but Balmung.

"But random internet person," you say, "what does any of this have to do with Mateus?"

Many people feel entitled to own a house. They feel that even knowing there are only 2,160 plots (soon to be 2,880) on any given server, they can and should be allowed to go at their own pace and have free access to any content they like, including housing. They want a house of their own, but they don't want to accept that lots of other people want it badly enough to work harder for it than they did. As such, when all the housing plots evaporate out from under them on account of people who wanted it badly enough, they get upset. And they find other places to direct their irritation--soandso is denying me a home--instead of directing it inward. At the end of the day, that upset person has had literal years to acquire a house of their own. Now that opportunity is lost, and it's no one's fault but theirs.

So Mateus is out of houses, and people are complaining because they feel like they lost out forever. That now they're at the mercy of vicious plotflippers or camping for auto-demos. That this dream that hasn't mattered to them enough to act on will now never come true.

"But random internet person," you say, "what does any of this have to do with you?"

Well you see, fellow random internet person, a fair amount of the hate people are feeling is being lobbed toward myself and my friend, because people see something we did as very unfair. They don't have the courage to speak to us directly about this, of course, but they talk a lot of crap behind our backs, and we're not stupid and find out about it.

A little about me first, so you might perhaps come to understand why I care so much.

I've played FFXIV a long while. I had a legacy character from 1.0, but I restarted on Gilgamesh on zero-hour of 2.0 beta phase 4, in which any character you created was going to be carried over to the real game. I watched as it grew to immense proportions. You see, it had been designated the official BlueGartr and Reddit and, somehow, generally raiding server. Gilgamesh was where you went when you wanted to get shit done. I didn't pick Gilgamesh for that reason. My husband was friends with some people who wanted to be there.

So it was crowded, and I wished it wasn't. I didn't really have a basis for comparison, though, having only really played on Gilgamesh in 2.0+.

I obtained a house in Gilgamesh when the subdivisions were first added, which was not long after they were first-first opened up from being FC-only to allowing for personal homes as well. My house was in the Goblet--ward 8 plot 54. Despite there being plenty of homes available to choose from, I chose the last ward's subdivision quite on purpose, looking to carve out my own little sanctuary of peace and quiet. Well, a noisy FC moved in next door that liked to trample all over my fence and roof, so... so much for that. Still, I loved that house and put a lot of effort into the decor, which was tons of fun. I like to think I did a great job, but everyone thinks that, I guess.

So fast forward a bit--we're in Heavensward now. I started a project that called for leveling an alt with the same name and appearance of my main. I picked Behemoth. It was still a big...ish? server, but it was nowhere near the size of Gilgamesh, and I finally felt like... I had been holding my breath without knowing, and finally I could breathe. So when a third alt was required for my silly project, I actively sought out the smallest, quietest server I could and transferred/fantasia'd my old legacy character there.

That server was Mateus, and to me, Mateus was perfect. Mateus felt like home. Random encounters with people were rare but incredibly friendly, and with Mateus’ inflated economy, I soon bought a home of my own with the money I'd made from PotD drops. For my home I chose a literally entirely empty ward. That first night, I watched the Moonfire Faire fireworks for hours from atop my roof, over a sea of empty plots, feeling at peace.

That screenshot is dated August 11, 2016. Less than a year ago. Housing was released to Free Companies on December 14, 2013, and expanded to allow for personal purchases on September 16, 2014. And yet, nearly two years after literally anyone could buy a home of their own, on Mateus, many wards of the Goblet were like this. Even the more in-demand areas of Mist and Lavender Beds had areas that looked like this.

Mateus showed no signs of getting bigger. At all. Homes were bought by whatever newbies were curious to play with them, and yet they were being demolished at roughly the same rate, as people streamed away from this "corpse" of a server toward the promised lands of savage modes and ex primals and real economies. Meanwhile I spent more and more time on Mateus, to the point where my small cluster of Gilgamesh friends were concerned that I was on the brink of leaving. Because to me, Mateus was perfect. Mateus felt like home.

Around this time, I got to chatting with a lovely person from Leviathan with whom I share some unique/niche interests. In September, we started alts on Mateus together, and we bought them houses together in the Goblet. Ward 12, plots 14 and 20, across the Brimming Heart from each other. We made a free company for ourselves, to share materials and gil, and when we leveled that up and saved up enough money, we bought ourselves the medium in the same area, plot 19.

We decided we really loved playing together--and that we really loved playing together on Mateus--so having no real attachments to Gilgamesh or Leviathan, we transferred our mains. And we bought them houses, too, once we were able to, seeing as how our savings had been wiped out by the transfer limits. But we worked together to earn the money, as we had the previous three homes, and we bought them. And we decorated all five houses together. Coming up with ideas, making lists, splitting up the work, placing things and playing with them until we got just the desired effect. It was the most fun we'd ever had playing this game. Our own tiny paradise, carved out just the way we liked it.

We finished those first alts to 60, and we started another pair. Because you see, our alts have a specific theme to them--a set of characters from this game, of which there are 15--and we wanted to have them all. It didn't start out being about houses. We just loved making and leveling alts together. So I'd have 7 and my extra character for my side project, and she'd have 8. We had always planned it that way. And, well, we were only two houses away from owning all seven around the brimming heart, so we completed our collection when the second pair of alts hit 50.

Or so we thought.

We did some really amazing things with houses six and seven. Made rooms and scenarios unlike anything we had ever seen. Things we thought would be impossible with the items available in XIV. We had found our true love in this game, and it was decorating. We began to talk about what this or that character's house would be like. When we wanted a break from leveling, we would pick a ward or five and ride around and look at every single house there. I'm serious, if you owned a house on Mateus at that time, we visited it. All of you.

The few other homes in our ward kept auto-demolishing. The mansion in 30 went first. We worked and saved and worked and saved, and it devalued and devalued for weeks, because there was no demand for it at all. We both had alts at 60 on another server--my aforementioned Behemoth alt, and hers elsewhere. We moved them both to Mateus and bought the mansion just before Christmas.

The next house to disappear was 27. That had been a cute little female elezen who always ran around in WHM AF, who was only like level 53ish... but one day their theretofore pristine chocobo stable stopped being cleaned, and a little over a month later their unsightly orange and blue default-colored house had evaporated. We only had three not-us neighbors left, and many of the other wards were in the same boat. We decided on an ambitious project given how disconnected our new mansion was to the Brimming Heart, where the rest of our homes were: we would claim the entire eastern half of the ward with our 16 characters, once they were all at least 50.

I mean, hell, clearly no one else wanted them. People were leaving, not moving in.

So we leveled and bought and decorated, leveled and bought and decorated. These homes were not just being claimed and left unused. They were, and still are, loved. We always go into a house with an idea. A theme. An intent. Furnishings are chosen with care. There are meanings in everything that no one will ever know but us. Symbolism. Look, we're nerds, okay? The weirder it looks, the more symbolic its intent. Probably. These characters we're paying homage to, we love them.

The next house to evaporate--and this was a huge surprise to us--was the mansion at 13. We knew for a fact the owner of 13 was still actively playing. He simply didn't want the house anymore and let it go. He never did anything with it, so perhaps he just didn't enjoy decorating as content. We knew exactly which character to put in it--someone who deserved a mansion but only had a cottage. Now that we had the chance....

So we took someone out of the Brimming Heart and moved him up there instead. And we were left with a hole where once there had been a sea of 17 beautiful matching black stone homes.

We wanted to fill the holes, and we still had so many ideas, and there were still at least a thousand empty houses on Mateus. That's when started to make extra free companies and move certain characters around to new plots in order to expand on their ideas.

Today, there are no more plots left on Mateus.

But long before that happened, there were no plots left in Ward 12. We own 28 houses -- 16 personal, 12 companies. Two of these thirty homes in the ward are not ours. We owned the whole ward even when this was posted, drawing sudden attention to the fact that this so-called corpse of a server had some meat left on its bones -- food for carrion birds, should someone desire a feast.

And then SE closed Balmung and Gilgamesh, and Mateus was invaded. And suddenly, people care about Mateus housing for the first time in nearly three years. Suddenly, people think we are *the* worst people. Because how dare we enjoy the game in the manner we chose to enjoy it.

How dare we?

How dare you.

You, who finally deign to set foot in my home. You, who hated Mateus for all the same reasons I felt it was perfect. You, who would take away the last year of memories I've made with one of the best friends I've ever known. You, who don't care about the fact that we have cultivated something unique, interesting, and amazing, because you feel it denies you the chance to throw up a hideous paissa wall and plop a chocobo stable and a garden plot in front of an otherwise unused black hole with Dragonsong screeching away in the background. You, with your head so buried in your cliques that you thought we came from Balmung within the last month and achieved all this thanks to SE’s allowance of free infinite gil transfers, not realizing we wanted to be here, that we love it here, that we worked our asses off for all this from nothing but the million gil each we were allowed to bring with us from our mains.

How dare you.

If you would look at something other than the placards in your impotent rage that the same FC tag is on a few of them, you just might notice you're standing in one of the best goddamn wards in the entire game. But more than that, you might just realize you're walking through the last year of our lives. You're seeing what we love, our passion, our reverence, our teamwork, our achievement.

And you demand we just give it all up. Because suddenly, these houses that have been here for years waiting to be loved… suddenly, now, you want one.

No.

Anyway, you're welcome to come look. We aren't quite done. We have a few closed homes, even (to our shame) a couple of yards that still need done, and some homes that want for some added detail since the doubling of furniture slots. It's all on hold for just a short while thanks to Stormblood. But we have ideas, plans... and we'll be right back to our housing obsession when we're done leveling our first few things to 70.

Please look forward to it. I know I am.

Final notes:

1- I don't claim to speak for my friend. For all I know, she'll be horrified I've posted this. If you take issue with anything I've said, take it up with me. My main is Seraph Altima.

2- We are not affiliated with any similarly named individuals on any other server. If you think you can send a tell to someone on Balmung and be speaking to me (or someone who can speak sense into me), especially after I've gushed about how much I love Mateus, you are an idiot.

3- As our houses are our passion, we are both happy to answer any questions you may have about our ward. Just talk to us.

4- While we do not roleplay ourselves, you are welcome to explore our ward and use it for any roleplay event or storyline you like. You have open and ongoing permission. If you take notice of the theme of our ward, you can see it's a perfect place to go if you'd like to write something about your OC being tricked, lured, or tempted by something otherworldly.

5- I'm well aware I'm not going to change any minds with this. People will say "but we couldn't save in time" or "but my friend just started" or "but if you love decor so much, why not give others a chance to love it, too." But we built this together, and I'm not giving it up, and you're not changing my mind, either. I just want my perspective out there, because right now we're just being demonized. Every story has two sides.

6- If you really want someone to demonize, the people in Goblet 12sub -- all those homes owned by FCless characters, whose homes are closed or, in some cases, entirely unbuilt -- actually did what you thought we did. But you know what? Whatever. They still put the work in before those without homes.

[madstars-festival]

JOE DY: “GREAT IDEAS CONTINUE TO INSPIRE ME”

We are honored to welcome Joe Dy – one of the most awarded creative leaders in the Philippines – to our Final Jury at AD STARS 2020.

After joining McCann Worldgroup Philippines in 2015, Joe Dy helped steer the agency to become one of the most awarded in Asia. He’s currently channelling his talents into several yet-to-be-revealed creative ventures after stepping away from his role at McCann earlier this year to embark on a gap year. 

An inductee to the Philippine Creative Guild Hall of Fame, Dy has a shelf crammed full of awards from Cannes, Clio, AD STARS, LIA, ADFEST – to name a few - as well as being a certified barista, a comic book geek, and a former sportswriter. We are delighted that he will be joining our Final Jury this year.

In life before McCann, Dy worked everywhere from BBDO Guerrero to JWT Shanghai, JWT Manila and Leo Burnett Manilla, where he first cut his teeth as a copywriter.

In times of crisis, creativity can help to bring people together. Are there any inspiring projects taking place in the Philippines to help with COVID-19?

Innovation is always welcome but given the complicated mix of challenges with which the Philippine population struggles, I’m finding more inspiration and more value in ingenuity over innovation during these difficult times.

Whether it’s mobile wet markets being brought to the slums, or repurposing those big water dispenser jugs and turning them into face protectors, or food services repurposing their inventory into selling DIY fast food and deconstructed meals, there are countless examples of ingenuity being displayed not just by creatives but by people whose only objective is to survive. We’re all working on the same brief, the same problem, and all around us are reminders that there are many ways to attack it.  

And each one is really reminding us that creativity will always be essential to problem solving.

Meanwhile, with a lot of brands having preached social good over the past decade, now is the time for them to put their money where their press releases are. I think when this is all over, we will remember which brands walked the walk, and which ones are all talk. This is a time for brands to prove which among them we can genuinely trust.

Do you think this pandemic will change consumer spending habits long-term?

Specific to the Philippines, the penetration of e-commerce and cashless transactions had been slower than the rest of the world. An affinity towards cash and a distrust towards digital security have long stood as key barriers. But with more people forced to adjust to the so-called new normal, we are finally learning to trust these digital ecosystems.

Perhaps more importantly, with more households embracing these new ways of dealing business emerging, we’re also rediscovering the value of earning a consumer’s trust. Brand loyalty may be an archaic notion but these days every transaction, every touchpoint, every brand experience is the consumer entrusting you to take care of them. To keep them safe and secure. Brands will do well to recognize the importance, and fragility, of that trust.

You joined McCann in 2015 and since then it has become one of the most awarded agencies in Asia Pacific. What were the creative/leadership strategies that led to this success?

I’ve always believed that key to creative success is having a strong genuinely creative culture. An environment where passion is nurtured and bravery is encouraged.

We all know that several elements go into making great work happen; strategy, ideation, crafting, selling, production. So many moving parts, so many minds and many voices, all held together by trust. With a team of great people whom you trust, you just need to get out of the way.

A culture of trust lets everyone on your team feel they can share any idea, be honest with feedback and that their POV will be taken seriously. Trust makes it clear to everyone that you are all interested in shared success as opposed to personal agendas.  

This also allows me to be tough on the work. I’m able to push them further and guide the work towards the desired standards, because they know that I have their best interests at heart. That they can trust me to take care of the idea.

Great work takes great trust.

You’ve received countless accolades, but your ‘Lives’ campaign for Fully Booked is especially renowned. Do you enjoy writing for radio? Can you remember how this concept came about?

I actually cut my teeth doing radio ads for a retail store back when I was a junior writer in Leo Burnett and it remains close to my heart. One of my earliest mentors taught me that radio may be a tough medium, but it’s what separates the hacks from the real writers. It really tests one’s ability to paint images, create experiences and persuade minds with just words.

Fully Booked is one of the biggest book chains in the Philippines and has a large inventory of literary classics in all its branches. When “Lives" first came about, we were trying to come up with a way to communicate how reading a book is like living another person’s life.

We observed that one life is measured with age, and the other with page numbers. Once we arrived at the idea of twisting every page number into a character’s age, we knew we had something special.

It was one of those ideas that just excited me when it was first on the table. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy but my gut was telling me to trust the idea. Key to its success is our belief in the idea. Because it would sustain us as we wrote dozens and dozens of scripts, while testing the structure against several novels.

Working on the campaign were some of the creatives whom I trusted the most. I knew they would put the most care, effort and had the most patience to see this through to the finish line. Throughout the course of the three year campaign, we explored different genres. To arrive at the final material, we wrote for about 30 novels, multiplied by several drafts, each script meticulously crafted down to every single word choice. Among a few I remember that didn’t make the cut The Old Man And The Sea, Metamorphosis, Ready Player One and Norwegian Wood.

I remember insisting that each line needs to hit three things: It must call back to a key milestone in the novel, that each combination of numbers and situations must twist the image in your head (especially the start), and it must evoke an uneasy emotion. Then, all the lines put together must cohesively tell both the story of the novel, and a provocative story on its own.

And we were very particular with the sound design and music too. Each script was scored with much care and restraint, with just the right touch of sound effects at key moments to create that visual mystery we were trying to capture.

Over the course of the campaign we produced 9 scripts, 7 of which picked up metal. So thankfully, all that hard work ended up being well-rewarded.  

You’re currently taking a gap year… what are you working on?

Stepping away from the industry for a while will force me to test and re-channel my creative energy on other ventures, including helping out in the family business. I’m already exploring a few possible enterprises that I’ve been meaning to get into, and this has me toying with new business models and designing new product experiences.

I’m also looking to invest some time in further reinventing myself. Maybe take some courses and learn another discipline or craft. The last couple of times I took a break, I took a course in principles of entrepreneurship, learned a bit of code, and became a certified barista!

Is it true that you come from a family of entrepreneurs? What did you learn from them?

I picked up a lot from my family, especially my father, is grit, bravery and business instincts. But one value that sticks out is the importance of trust in business. Despite coming from humble beginnings, he would always stress the importance of integrity over profit. He always reminds us that it’s easier to earn back money than it is to earn back trust.

You once shared some advice for young creatives: “Choose growth over validation. Choose to be in a position that forces you to be better.” Do you still live by this mantra?

Putting that into context, I guess the question to ask one’s self is whom do you trust with your development?

With your growth as a creative and as a person. Someone who will tell you what you want to hear and that you’re great, or someone you can trust to challenge you and cares enough to make your development and welfare a personal objective as well. Someone who sincerely has your best interests at heart. That doesn’t mean validation isn’t important. But it shouldn’t be empty either.

You’ll be judging the AD STARS Awards 2020. What are you most looking forward to?

I approach judging the same way I approach being exposed to the ideas. I’m always excited and I always review every piece of work with the thought that someone believed in this piece of work enough to enter it, so I want to see what they see as well. Great ideas continue to excite me.

I still have faith in the power of a well-executed idea. These days, we are constantly told to trust the data, trust the data. While I do believe in data, I also believe that data can show you the numbers, but it’s creativity that will allow you to influence it.

Joe Dy is judging the Diverse Insights, Outdoor, PSA, Place Brand, Radio & Audio categories at AD STARS 2020, which are free to enter. Submit your work before 15th May via www.adstars.org

[acnposts]

On Anger

I had a similar discussion in a different class and in it, I said that I pick an choose which non-Black people I will talk to or just straight up cancel after they say something or do something offensive. A white boy in the class said that I was being self-righteous and judgemental because who am I to determine who is worthy of that knowledge and my forgiveness (see entitlement!). My response was that I am someone who has to protect my own peace so if I feel like its a waste of time I won’t bother. I do not exist in this INSTITUTION OF HIGHER LEARNING to educate other people. If people wanted to learn, there are many intellectuals that are willing to teach them. No one is entitled to my time or my energy. This does not mean I am silent on issues, it just means that go about it in a way that isn’t detrimental to my own health. This is not a convenience thing for me, it's more of an assessment of energy costs to me vs. educational benefit to the person. If they are the type of person to “not hear me because of the way I am speaking”, (I can usually tell by the way they handle “less difficult” nonracial disagreements), then I won't bother with them but I might say something to other people who have witnessed the event. 

I think that alot of the times people don’t consider how constantly having to teach other people how to be decent human beings and treat Black people like humans can take a toll on Black people. They don’t realize that this person that they are trying to squeeze answers out of is human too, with their own feelings and their own stresses. Its just an overall disregard of black people as individuals existing outside of other people's expectations/they images people project on us. Like, why can we just exist/be outside of an object other people can use for their own purpose (for knowledge/wokeness points, validation, and guilt alleviation)? 

However, I do acknowledge that my opinions and feelings are helpful and that my “anger expressed and translated into action in the service of our vision and our future is a liberating and strengthening act of clarification, for it is in the painful process of this translation that we identify who are our allies with whom we have grave differences, and who are our genuine enemies.” I know that it can be used for good but, like Dr. Lou said, it takes a certain amount of patience, and I think maturity to be able to do something positive with anger. If I feel like I am not in a clear headspace to do that kind of work, my attempt at doing it will just fall flat so it is sometimes best that I take a minute instead of just reacting. That way when I do speak up, it makes a positive impact on people instead of coming off as disorganized and fueled purely on emotions and not facts (because people will ask for receipts so I have to have them). If that makes sense. 

I do want to be a benefit to the community and I understand the gravity and importance of that work. I believe that if I can focus on people who are just ignorant (lacking knowledge) instead of people who are stupid (lacking the mental capacity for knowledge), I will be able to facilitate more change. You can’t really fix stupid. Its a fixed trait at that point. The person has a personality disorder that no amount of my teaching can help. Some people are just disagreeable. Whereas, people who just don’t know any better, will be able to hear me no matter how uncomfortable it might make them because they are open to knowledge.

If my methods are wrong, let me know if you want. Its always good to learn how one can be a better (Black) citizen.

Other things I liked that Lorde Said:

“Hatred is the fury of those who do not share our goals, and its object is death and destruction. Anger is a grief of distortions between peers, and its object is change.”

I think this is an important distinction to make because some people (who are lowkey revealing thier own hatred in doing so) will mistake the two and claim someone is being divisive and hateful when addressing racial issues.

“We cannot allow our fear of anger to deflect us nor seduce us into settling for anything less than the hard work of excavating honesty; we must be quite serious about the choice of this topic and the angers entwined within it because, rest assured, our opponents are quite serious about their hatred of us and of what we are trying to do here... Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change... I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. ”

-Lorde, Uses of Anger

Here’s Griffin with the assist:

“I am optimistic in believing if I step into the space that resistant cries have created, maybe, just maybe, something about my resistant voice in this moment will be heard, taken in, and taken seriously. Maybe...Reminding me of the significance of self-definition and self-determination, Lorde (2009) says, ‘‘If I do not bring all of who I am to whatever I do, then I bring nothing, or nothing of lasting worth, for I have withheld my essence’’ (pp. 182–183). Having been barred from bringing my angry essence for so long, since angry emotions are outlawed for Black women who wish to be welcomed, I yearned for a medium through which my voice could be heard...I began to wonder if I could channel my anger productively and manage to see more than just red. I imagined myself peering purposefully inward to question how I understand who I am, our world, and how I move through our world. Slowly grasping how to do so, I listened closely when Lorde (1984) told me that ‘‘Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change’’ (p. 127). Given the vulnerable enormity of doing such work from a Black feminist standpoint, in response to the queries of why? Why try, why write, why speak, why stay, why struggle?, akin to Jones in ‘‘sista docta,’’ ‘‘I believe that the work can be transformative’’ (Jones, 2003, p. 240). Also, mirroring Houston (1992) and Collins (2009), I feel obligated to use my access to class and academic privilege to advocate for women who look like me to have access to voice. ”

-Griffin, I Am An Angry Black Woman

These really got to me because I do acknowledge that sometimes I have been afraid to show my emotions because of how people have reacted in the past, but now that I am a little wiser, I realized the importance of my perspective. I can’t continue to censor my own truth in a world that is already constantly trying to censor it. 

And to finish:

“I AM Angry. I am angry at the absurdity of our absence. I AM Angry. I am angry at my silence and yours; at my complicity and yours; at my world and ours. I AM Angry”

-Griffin

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”

-James Baldwin

“Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.”

-Malcolm X

People are always assuming I’m angry and telling me to calm down whenever I question something, ask about something or say anything at this university, period. I think because of that, I definitely internalize that feedback so sometimes in moments when I should be angry I just skip right into sadness and do nothing. After reading this, I definitely want to have less of those moments because they don’t serve me or my people. I care about my people so I should try to make sure future generations have it easier. There’s no need to spare people my anger at injustices brought against me and people I love because as Malcolm X also said, “Anyone depriving you of your freedom isn’t deserving of a peaceful approach.”

“To embody the prideful tenacity that Black womanhood brings forth, I will do the very things that Black women are discursively disciplined not to do. I will rant Black Feminist Autoethnography without a hint of regret, and I will do so with my head held high believing that I am worth standing up for in a world that crudely tells me otherwise! Planting my feet in defiance, I will finish just as I have begun—weary, depleted, ‘‘shaken, though not shattered’’ (Yancy, 2008, p. 2), and convinced that I am a brilliant woman of color who is worthy of sheer honesty, deep contemplation, and everlasting celebration.”

-Griffin

[pansexualseaanimals]

Pop the Bubble

"There's no such thing as a wrong opinion." Ummm yes, yes there fucking is, Margaret. If your "opinion" is that one human or group of humans who it just so happens can be partially differentiated from you (by factors such as languages spoken, the color of their skin, the place of their birth, the place of their ancestors' births, whatever deity/deities they do or do not believe in, physical or mental ability, or what type of built-in palette for attraction exists in their brains and in what way they are attracted to people who match said palette) are less important than you, or are less deserving of rights, freedoms, basic quality of life, happiness, etc. (or that their gaining of rights and freedoms infringes upon your already-existing rights and freedoms but lol oh my gosh let me NOT get on that soap box today), because of those differences, your opinion is bullshit and I will call you out on it.

If your "opinion" is that it is okay/you are justified somehow in mistreating others or treating others differently - whether on a surface level or otherwise - than how you treat people you perceive as "like you", because of these differences and the notions you've picked up/had taught through years of family life, about people with those differences, your opinion is bullshit and I will call you out on it. Especially if you've never even attempted to have a little understanding and move outside of the bubble that was forged around you by whoever you got those notions from in the first place. Especially if your "opinion" is something you picked up from your blood family/friends/religious group/etc. and have never questioned it or subjected it to criticism or objective speculation (because y'know, if you did all that, you'd eventually form your own opinion, well thought out and backed up by your own reasons for why you think that way). Especially if your "opinion" in any way supports the idea of harming said people??? Like. Stop it. Stop it right now. You need a mother very badly. You need a mother to sit you down and tell you exactly what the fuck you're doing wrong with your life, child. Honestly.

I understand that people fear what they don't understand. That is part of our instinctual nature, from waaaaay back in the day when our ancestors first said "Hey, that new fire thing is useful but let's not touch it with our hands again." That primal fear of the unknown was pretty effing useful when we weren't so developed, when we only occupied a small fraction of the planet's surface and didn't even know we were on a ball of space dust spinning around a gigantic plasma furnace at around 600 million miles a year (which is only one of trillions of gigantic furnaces, by the way, that are all in this gorgeous gravity-dance thing called a galaxy, which is only one of countless numbers our minds can’t even fathom of other dances in this huge ballroom blitz we call the universe. ...Yeah, I know, moving on. I just. I just really love space, okay?).

Our dependence on those instincts for survival has diminished since we've spread to every continent, learned things about ourselves and the world around us, and basically became less ignorant as a species. But in all the time since then, something that hasn't changed, is that we're all still human. And the great thing is, another part of our nature, the opposite of that primal fear, is our curiosity. Humans are curious by nature. We like to know things. We like to learn and figure out stuff that we don't understand. Knowing a thing we didn't know before (as long as we don't learn it from some condescending douchebag that thinks they're better than us and treats us like we're dumb or inferior for not knowing x thing), or solving a puzzle or issue that was a challenge to us in some way, is naturally stimulating to us and makes our brains do the chemical-release thing that makes us happy. And that's AWESOME! But that, like any part of our instinctual blueprint or whatever you want to call it, can be overridden. It can be quieted down to a faint whisper. You see it all the time in children who don't want to read. I've never seen that trait as a preconceived notion that reading isn't fun - they pick up the idea from somewhere. One of my personal theories is that they're eventually boredom-scared away from reading by being smothered in all the wrong books. This is especially easy if the child doesn't have enough positive examples in super-early childhood to counteract the way that their school years can tend to make some part of their mind equate the concept of "books" with the concept of "school", or at least certain concepts about school (which in themselves are usually picked up, whether from friends or older siblings or the way school can be projected in an unflattering light in certain mediums). Usually negative concepts. Like reading boring chapters and essays on subjects they care less and less about because they're not being taught in an engaging way. Or all the homework that could be viewed as a stimulating experience but instead is relegated to The Obstacle blocking the child from whatever it is they want to do after their long, exhausting, and mind-numbing day at the office. Yes, I just went there. I went to all of those places. I went there, took pictures, came back, and made 8 x 10 inch prints.

...How did I get on this subject? Oh yeah.

So, our curiosity is an essential part of who we are as a species. It's how and why we've explored so many places (lots of times not in the best of ways, because we as a species are also fallible and have done some really fucked-up things, but let's save those rants for another day), built so many wonders, developed life-saving medicines (and in doing so, lengthened our overall life expectancy), and flown to the stars. It's how and why, as of a few years ago, one of our species' creations has reached interstellar space. I mean, if that doesn't blow you away, I don't know what will. Our curiosity is one of the most awesome things about us! And despite how fallible we may be and how effed-up and bloody our history is, we are also awesome in a lot of different ways, and we have the potential for even more awesomeness, and the potential to reduce - and maybe even completely do away with in the far-off future? - the horrible things we do to each other and to the planet.

So why do we let that fear win over our curiosity when it comes to our interactions with our fellow humans? Well, I think it has to do with the table-fed notions I mentioned earlier. I think that when we get an idea from - or an idea is inspired by - a person, institution, or what have you that we feel some sort of high level of devotion for, we're more inclined to take that opinion/idea/statement as gospel (ahahaaaa... haaaa... I feel bad but also I don't), or at least to not view it so much under the same objective lens we would use to view anything else. So we take it as our own. It becomes part of who we are (Look, I know a lot of people hear phrases like that and run for the hills and/or want to fight over it, but we're all made up of lots of small parts that make a whole. if something is a part of who you are, it's only a part. It doesn't define you as a person. Taking on a label to say "I'm like this" or "I like this particular thing" is not harmful and is actually beneficial from a social point of view, and it's not taking away your individuality unless you choose to let it do so. No one facet of you can define you completely. Humans are creatures with multiple dimensions. If you... Oh my gosh I am not going to start rambling about this. If you don't understand that one grain of sand is not the entire beach then I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO TELL YOU). And if we look at things subjectively instead of objectively, if we don't allow criticisms of our own views and opinions, then we can never grow as people. But more to the current topic at hand, if we are given, or develop, biased views against another group of people and never challenge those views or never seek to understand any world outside our own, any way of living or existing other than how we've been taught, then we will continue to be divided by our own stubbornness and pride. And the sad thing is, it's stubbornness and pride in regards to opinions and views that we weren't born with. Yes, maybe initially our response to seeing a person who is outside what we have typically come to expect as a "person" from our upbringing, could be fear and confusion, because of our primal instincts. But then our natural curiosity should take over from there. After we've taken a step back, we should all be able to go "Oh hey, that's new and different, which is awesome, so let me learn more!" but at some point we're taught not to. At some point the behaviors in our environment slowly seep in and plant the seeds of "We're us and they're them and us is all that matters" or something similar. Okay, maybe I'm starting to get a little heavy-handed with this. You might be saying "Okay, I get it" over and over. I just have one more thing to say:

There are people who claim that we need to do away with whatever differences we can, or at least not acknowledge them. They claim that our differences drive us apart and divide us as a people, as a nation, as a species. I couldn't disagree more. Refusing to acknowledge our differences is not in our best interest, because our differences make us who we are. Differences shouldn't be used as some kind of idiotic leverage to make a person look better or worse in any sort of situation, and neither should they be swept under the rug and treated like they don't exist. Differences should be celebrated. Don't miss out on what could be an amazing friendship with someone just because you've been fed the idea that they're "wrong" or "lesser" somehow because they're bisexual, Pagan, black, deaf, aromantic, autistic, have a different denomination of Christianity than you, just to name a few, whatever it may be. Likewise, don't miss out on really getting to know that friend because you'd rather avoid what makes you different instead of embracing it and letting it be just another thing you love about that person. It's okay to be nervous about something you have no experience with; no sensible person will ever ask you to control initial reactions or feelings you can't really control. That's not what's important anyway. What's important is, after taking that step back - whether literally or figuratively - you then step forward again with a desire to understand. When we remember that we're all human and celebrate our differences, it strengthens our bonds and brings us closer together.

I know I've been really preachy or whatever lately. Y'all don't have to read all of these mountains of text. I just have a lot of feelings about how we could all treat each other so much better and. Just. Humanity is great and I believe in us and our potential and. Blah. Stuff. Either way if any of y'all HAVE been reading these half-ass essays in their entirety, I have a strong urge to bake you something because oh my gosh you deserve it why are you doing this to yourself? XD I love y'all. Catch ya on the flip side~