#I don’t have TIME a to study the the art style and create a meaningful homage to one of the greatest animiated series ever made

[blaithnne]

Live Mel reaction

[unoriginal-and-dumb]

heello do you have any tips for noobie artists? ur art is just so very neat to me :) plz never stop arting

Never do what I do unless it is drawing all the time

Use references!! Always use them!!! Seriously please use references never let a stupid little rat in your ear take that away from you, they are always so valuable

If you see art you like, don’t be afraid to basically try recreating the same exact thing. All you have to do is not claim it as youre own, and better yet don’t post it online! It’s for practice, people don’t need to see practice in the end it’s only for you

Tracing is NOT wrong. I’m tired of people saying ohhh tracing is bad don’t do it ITS LITERALLY NOT!!!! Just don’t trace over someone else’s work/images and claim it as your own it’s that easy. If youre struggling with hands take photos of your hands and trace over it! Break them down into simple forms until you have an understanding of them in a meaningful way!

Do some studies of specific things. Struggling with leg anatomy? Draw a page full of legs, just push and pull and scribble and see what works, study images and see how you can reproduce it or stylize it

Never feel like you need to find your own art style immediately, that task is practically impossible. Everything comes from something, be inspired by others take little art bits from styles you like and only then can you create your own style!! (I mean dawg my style can be broken down into adventure time, owl house, invader zim, gooseworx, eddsworld, sr pelo, a few others im probably forgetting)

Don’t worry about broadcasting your work, not everyone needs to know all that you draw, the internet can be a hateful place and it really does suck a lot but also try not to rely on strangers online for support on everything you do, I know it is hard and that approval feel good I cannot deny it but remember to keep some stuff for yourself, a little treat where nobody can criticize you :)

Try to draw everyday! Or having a sketchbook where you make it a goal to completely fill 2 pages a week, and if that’s too much then just some doodles! Art takes a lot of constant practice, and there’s really nothing more fun than just having a little sketchbook with you where you draw random stuff all the time. When I was doing that I would make 2 page mini invader zim comics

I feel like a bit of a hypocrite because I do maybe 1 of these things but i know they are really good, I have done them before and they were super helpful! But in the end I think the best you could do is just keep at it! Don’t let people get you down, do your own thing, break rules if you want, it’s all art and art is AWESOME!!!!!!!

[saffronapplemanga]

Let’s Talk Manga Demographics!

Colleen from Colleen's Manga Recs asked me to weigh in when someone had questions regarding manga demographics, so I made a Twitter thread. I figured I'd make a post here too since this topic has many misconceptions. I am someone who frequents bookstores in Japan, works in the industry with manga demographics being my special interest, and this is a manga blog after all.

There’s a lot more to demographics than this but here goes nothing.

Links to my other manga posts here

Link to my thread on Twitter. I could talk about demographics for hours but I tried to keep the thread concise and just address the question. (A little more detail in this post). I'm going to compare Japan and America because that's what I'm most familiar with.

The tweet I replied to was this:

---

First off — and say it with me — demographics are very important. Beyond reaching your target audience, they create various platforms and spaces for a larger variety of titles to be published, including more marginalized voices. Erasing demographics would only hurt marginalized works, like shoujo manga, which would be the first to go. Male oriented media/perspectives would become the default since we live in a patriarchy amongst other things. Titles would become samey.

No, gendered demographics are not necessarily reductive, usually people’s ideas regarding gender are. Sure, society can be weird about it, but gender isn’t inherently bad or evil. You are not as progressive as you think you are if you believe erasing gendered demographics is a good idea. That’s honestly a Gender Studies 101 take.

Some people say they don’t care about demographics or don’t notice and just read “what’s good”. That’s great, but yes you do notice, if even on a subconscious level. This is not a brag, but I can tell the demographic of any manga just by looking at the cover or a few pages even if I know nothing about it. There are meaningful differences obvious to those with an eye for it. Again, not a brag, but it’s there.

Not to be crabby but I’m tired of people who don’t know how the industry works arguing with me about these things practically every week. I’ll leave it at that for now.

———

With that out of the way — there are various factors that go into why a publisher labels a manga a certain way (combination of art style, writing, etc). There’s also a difference between how publishers in Japan and abroad do things.

Shoujo/shounen/seinen categorization obviously is a Japanese thing. (Josei isn’t really used in Japan and is often grouped with shoujo, but that’s another convo right now). In America, there’s different but sometimes similar labels used in publishing (young adult, for example) but it’s not a one-to-one. And these labels only apply to manga. They’re not used for manhwa, webtoons, or even light novel manga adaptions. Those are all different subgroups under the umbrella of comics. Calling a webtoon a shoujo is like calling The Walking Dead comics (a western comic series) a seinen. I’m not saying one is better than the other, they just have different categorization labels.

Even the LN manga adaption of The Apothecary Diaries, for example, is not shelved with the rest of the seinen manga. It is labeled a seinen on many ebook sites (more on them later) but there’s a separate LN manga adaption shelf. Why? I can tell when something is a LN adaption without being told because they do have different vibes and appeals, and thus different audiences. For sure there’s a Venn Diagram of manga, LN adaptions, and webtoon readers etc. but the Venn Diagram is not a circle.

Overseas publishers probably have more leeway on how they market things because of this. It’s a different market from Japan. EN publishers use imprints and this is meant to replace JP publishers using magazines (also printed on vols). In America, bookstores arrange manga by alphabetical order, no regard for demographics. That was so weird to me the first time I saw it.

Normally EN manga have imprints, but in Japan it's based on the magazine it's published in since each magazine has a “publishing house style”.

Even EN novels are organized in categories and then alphabetical order (by title or author). In Japan, it’s organized by demographic > magazine/imprint/publisher > then alphabetical order. Same for ebooks.

You’ll have the shounen section, but Jump titles are labeled on the shelf, and Square Enix titles are grouped together, then arranged by alphabetical order. This goes for both new and used. Even when there’s a separate area for new releases, they tend to group them this way.

To the left, I can see signs that say “seinen comics”, and the publishers “Shueisha”, “Shogakukan”, and “Kodansha” in the back. New releases are usually end-caps. The blue sign says “New Release Comics”. They tend to keep the demos together for these too.

Selling bundles of used series is common, so you can see in these pictures, the one on the left has signs on the shelves that say “Kodansha seinen comics”. Right pic is my local bookoff. It’s not explicitly labeled, but they grouped all the shoujo bundles on the same shelf.

Left: “shoujo comics/lady’s comics” (Josei is often referred to as “lady’s comics” in Japan). “BL-lady’s comics”. Right: the shelves are labeled “Champion”, “Sunday”, “Magazine”, “Jump” which are all shounen magazines.

Colleen had asked me about this for their video (my comment at the 32:04 mark, but watch the whole vid because it’s good!) I wouldn’t be surprised if the thing with Renta JP in the vid was similar to physical bookstores too, because of it’s part of marketing their “brand”.

We stan Colleen🫡

Since the magazines are sold in Japan and not just the tankobon volumes, readers there are likely more familiar with what series are published together under what demographic and what makes them fall under that demographic. Plus you HAVE to know the demographic to even be in the right section of a bookstore when looking for a specific title.

If they switched up what a manga is labeled as in the bookstore versus the magazine, that would muddle things and confuse readers. I can imagine they’d want readers shopping for one title to see their other titles next to it so they buy it. It’s all a part of their brand. But since the magazines aren’t sold outside Japan and the market is different, foreign publishers take liberties. Sometimes I wonder if they should’ve even used JP demos tbh.

Then the same Twitter user asked a follow up that led to more relevant stuff that I hadn't initially mentioned in the thread:

I picked up the Japanese tankobon of Hikaru ga Shinda Natsu (The Summer Hikaru Died) from my local bookstore back when vol.1 first came out and it was in the seinen section. Renta JP has it under “lady’s comics” (usually what they call josei, since josei is not commonly used there).

I’m not 100% if this is the reason or not, but if I had to say, BL and horror have a lot of history with shoujosei so they labeled it as such. And in brick and mortar shops, like I said, the publisher would want their titles together so people buy more of their stuff. Online, ebooks don’t have a physical shelf they’re on so the way you’re searching for it is different so they changed the label for online searches for what gets the most hits.

Horimiya is labeled shoujo on Renta, but I it is in fact a shounen. It’s not in the shoujo section at bookstores.

It's from a shounen magazine and I still consider it a shounen because of multiple reasons (like art, story style, etc.)

Again, they are playing around with the labels to optimize marketing for digital versus brick and mortar.

I call this ✨gerrymandering but for comics✨ LOL and there's a reason I used the word "gerrymandering" as it's basically the bullshitting of demographics and it's not a word that has a positive connotation.

But yeah, I hope this was informative!

[twilightmalachite]

Altered - Heaven and Hell 4

Author: Akira

Characters: Natsume, Rei, Kanata, Wataru, Shu

Translator: Mika Enstars

"Even though we got killED, we resurrectED, and step by step we made our way through this worLD."

Season: Winter

Location: Sakura Park (Cherry Blossoms)

⚠️ This is an import from a unproofed Twitter Livetweet!

Rei: Kukuku. Well, anyways, that is why we’re all performing in OO under names different than our usual ones.

And as what is essentially a safe choice, under the name of the temporary unit we’ve formed in the past for the Shuffle Unit project.

Wataru: Everyone here’s wearing the outfit for their temporary unit, right?

Rei: Mhm. In my case, I’m wearing the outfit for my temporary unit filled with love for my cute little brother, “Brothers Love-Love Brigade”.

Natsume: Don’t tell such sloppy and meaningless lies out of nowheRE. You’re wearing the outfit from your movIE— La Mort, rigHT?

Rei: Mhm. Hibiki-kun and I ended up fighting over Ran-kun, due to the overlap in members.

Wataru: I wanted to participate as Ultissimo as Nagisa-kun again, if possible!

Kanata: We have a surprisingly lot of “connections” with other people don't we? Remembering this made me “realize” that we are not “alone”—

I do think this is quite a “lovely” project.

Fufu, I am very “happy” to get to wear the “getto spectacle” outfit again.

Wataru: Ah, that’s the Kaguya-hime outfit, yes?

Shu: Hm, I see. Quite the psychedelic Kaguya-hime outfit that is.

Kanata: What, do you “dislike” it, Shu~?

Shu: No, just studying a design one wouldn’t find in my own wardrobe.

Wataru: Shu, you’ve become quite open-minded after being exposed to different cultures in Paris, haven’t you?

Shu: Hmph, even if so, I do not wish to dilute my own individuality that defines me by allowing myself to become too influenced by others.

Such as this. The outfit I am wearing currently, which I sewed by hand all for the Shuffle Unit project, for example.

Looking at it a second time, I don’t believe I was able to bring out my colors very well. I’d like to take this opportunity to create it again from scratch, with a more artistic rendition for this project.

Wataru: Do you not think you are already unique and stylish enough, as a cafe waiter?

Shu: While I am proud and believe I did well on that factor, I still do not believe this is sufficient as an outfit of an idol, who sings and dances on stage.

It is unsuitable for this project.

It is both out of my usual style, and my philosophy.

Rei: No, that’s what makes it meaningful. It’s because it is a Shuffle Unit.

It breaks us from our molds and allows us to encounter new things. It is that invaluable shedding of our skin that allows us to grow as idols time and time again.

With that in mind, I believe the Shuffle Unit project was surprisingly beneficial—or necessary, even.

Shu: The enemy of art is the absence of limitations, hm? Hmph, I suppose it’s can be good to break from your eggshell and venture out into the world from time to time.

Wataru: Fufufu, just do be careful not to have too much fun flying around, to where you’re unable to return back home.

I say this not to ridicule you, Shu, but as to remind myself.

Some migratory birds forget their homeland because they get too comfortable at their destination.

Rei: You’re more of someone from fine than someone from the Five Eccentrics these days, Hibiki-kun.

Shu: You treacherous bastard.

Wataru: I love you for being able to say those difficult-to-say things clearly, Shu.

Shu: Is that so. I loathe the part of you that refuses to remove their jester’s mask no matter how much anger is thrown at you.

Kanata: Wataru has become more “human” and approachable than he was in the past, though~.

Actually, that likely applies to all of us.

I am sure that that is a good thing. I am glad~, we’ve all become “human”.

Rei: That means a lot coming from you, Shinkai-kun. You were a child more detached from being human out of all of us.

Kanata: Ehehe.

Natsume: MhM. That’s rigHT, not only have we overcome trageDY, but we survived whilst holding onto many sparkling memoriES.

Even though we got killED, we resurrectED, and step by step we made our way through this worLD.

And once agaIN, we’re finally able to laugh together like thIS.

Rei: Mhm. We rejoice in the fact that we can.

The curtain may fall, but reality continues on. But that cruel fact is also salvation.

Ahh, it’s great to be alive, isn’t it?

Shu: Wait just a moment. When you look away with that sort of atmosphere, after having said something nice like that, the conversation always ends. At least, the atmosphere becomes one of closure.

Kanata: Your “bad habit” is showing itself, Rei.

Rei: Eh~? Aren’t you reaching a bit? I’m speaking like I usually do! Really, really! ♪

That being said, it would certainly be too early to wrap things up there.

Sakasaki-kun didn’t come here looking to lay back and enjoy the cherry blossoms, but with a hurried look to report something urgent.

Shu: Is there something wrong? I am keeping that troublesome Aoba at bay, as I’m in the same temporary unit as him here.

Surely you should be able feel free to do what you please—

Natsume: YeP, as you can teLL, I am generally able to enjoy my time with my nostalgic companions from Date Plan.

Kanata: Ah, that was the very first “shuffle unit”, very nostalgic.

Natsume: MhM. It truly feels like a reuniON, and while I could go on and on about the memoriES…

← prev | story directory | next →

[whiterosebrian]

To Be a Healer and Sage

You may have read before about my desire to be a healer and sage as a magical practitioner—in short, a real wizard.  I have thought of possibly going into complementary medicine in order to provide holistic healing.  However, how can I be a healer now?  I realized that I may have very well made a huge mistake.  I went to college to pursue a film degree, then I switched to a graphic-arts degree, then I finally earned a degree in media arts and sciences.  I thought that I could find a career as a creative professional and eventually create lovely work to reach out to the culture at large.  That, however, never happened. 

Should I have studied complementary medicine instead?  At the time that I started college, I was still a conservative-leaning Catholic.  I hadn’t even detached from the Christian Right yet—I could very well have been radicalized in the days before 4chan and Twitter!  I likely would have dismissed the concept of complementary medicine as total superstition—in fact, I very well might have.  If I wasn’t a pious Catholic convert and I did study complementary medicine, I could have spent the past fifteen years or so bringing more holistic healing into people’s lives.  Instead, I’ve focused on working hard to make my artwork and writing as good as possible (as well as learning how), trying in vain to find as much online support as possible in hopes of being discovered, and drifting from one menial job to the next.  I often fear that I wasted all that time, dooming myself to worthlessness.

I’m afraid that I can’t be a sage either.  For so much of my life, I have been an autistic loner.  My sensibilities were initially formed by cartoons and videogames.  I have relied on the support of my parents and various counselors to get through my days.  There was a period when I attempted outreach to people over the internet by befriending them in chats.  I am grateful to learn more deeply of human life.  However, I still lack the life experience necessary to really counsel people.  I also still have personality problems that one might expect to find in a child, not a man in his forties—I cry and I yell and I overreact too easily.  Many times, I fear that I am in truth an infantile freak, not worthy of even calling myself a grown man, much less anything remotely resembling a sage. 

It seems, then, that I cannot be a healer or a sage.  Yes, I’d like to be proven wrong, but so far, I seem to be nothing more than a loser.  How can I actually make a difference in people’s lives, much less our world?  I could very well be going through a low-key midlife crisis.  Then again, I’ve felt a sense of discontent for well over a decade.  What is wrong with me? 

Forgive me if this seems like whining.  I still wish to make a difference.  It’s possible that I will need to make a difference as an animist wizard.  No, I don’t intend to run away from the world—on the contrary, I wish to bring the spiritual powers of life to bear upon the society around me.  I could possibly find my voice as a poet—I just read through a thick book of poems from Langston Hughes (though ignoring the appendices with very minor poems), practicing performative reading much in the style of an bard or skald.  Should animist wizardry and performance poetry be my focus for the foreseeable future?  Where does my drawing fit, if at all?  Will I be able to write a high-quality, meaningful novel at some point?  Pardon me if you’ve seen words such as these before.  Pardon me if I end up saying similar things over and over again. 

[my-path-to-business]

My Path to a Print-On-Demand Business

Unleashing Creativity for Pillow Image Design

Hey everyone,

Welcome back to my journey into the world of print-on-demand (POD) 🌟. Today, I want to dive into the creative process behind designing pillow images, finding inspiration, and identifying a unique niche in a crowded market. And don’t worry, I’ve sprinkled in some jokes to keep things lively! 😂

Finding Inspiration: A Creative Adventure

When I first started designing pillows, I knew I wanted each design to be unique and meaningful 💡. But finding that spark of inspiration wasn't always easy. Here's how I navigated this creative adventure:

Exploring Online Resources: I began by browsing various online platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, and design blogs 📱. These platforms are treasure troves of ideas, showcasing everything from abstract patterns to detailed illustrations. I created mood boards to collect and organize my favorite ideas. It's like window shopping, but without the awkward moments when you realize you can't afford anything! 🛍️

AI Assistance: Leveraging AI tools has been a game-changer for my design process 🤖. AI can generate countless variations of a design concept, helping me experiment with colors, patterns, and styles that I might not have considered otherwise. However, even with AI, finding the right designs can be incredibly challenging. It requires patience and a lot of trial and error to create something truly unique. Think of it as trying to find a needle in a digital haystack, but at least this haystack won’t give you splinters! 🪡

Real-Life Inspiration: Sometimes, the best inspiration comes from the world around us 🌍. Nature, architecture, and everyday objects can spark amazing design ideas. I often take walks to clear my mind and observe the details in my environment, which often leads to wonderful design concepts 🌿. Plus, it’s a good excuse to get out of the house – and avoid my ever-growing pile of laundry! 🧺

Identifying a Unique Niche

With so many designs and styles out there, finding a unique niche is crucial 🔍. Here’s how I approached this challenge:

Market Research: I spent considerable time researching the market 📊. I visited popular POD platforms like Etsy and Amazon to see what types of pillow designs were trending 🔥. This helped me identify gaps in the market and areas with high demand but low competition. It’s like detective work, but without the trench coat and magnifying glass 🕵️‍♂️.

Analyzing Competitors: I looked closely at successful shops and brands 🏪. What themes and styles were they using? How did they present their products? By understanding their strategies, I could pinpoint what made them successful and think about how to differentiate my designs. Think of it as studying for an exam, but the exam is “How Not to Blend In” 🎓.

The Challenge of Standing Out

One of the biggest challenges I faced was creating designs that stood out in a sea of similar products 🌊. Here are a few strategies that helped:

Personal Touch: Adding a personal touch to each design made them unique ✨. Whether it’s a pattern inspired by an experience or a design reflecting a particular theme, these elements make my pillows special. It’s like adding secret sauce to a recipe – makes all the difference! 🍔

Quality Over Quantity: Instead of flooding the market with numerous designs, I focused on creating high-quality, well-thought-out products 🏆. Each design goes through multiple iterations to ensure it’s perfect. Quality over quantity, because who wants a bunch of mediocre pillows? Not me! ❌

Storytelling: Every design has a story behind it 📖. Sharing these stories in my product descriptions and marketing materials helps create a connection with customers ❤️. It’s not just a pillow; it’s a piece of art with a meaningful background. Plus, everyone loves a good story – especially one that doesn’t end with, “and then I woke up.” 💤

Early Challenges and Moving Forward

After one week of opening my store, I faced the harsh reality that I had no sales 😢. This initial hurdle was disheartening, but it also motivated me to delve deeper into the world of SEO and marketing. I'm currently working on optimizing my listings to increase visibility and attract potential buyers 📈. It's like trying to get noticed at a crowded party – time to bring out the dance moves (or in this case, the SEO strategies) 🕺. I'll be sharing more about my SEO efforts in the next series, so stay tuned! 📺

Final Thoughts

The journey to find inspiration and carve out a unique niche in the pillow design market has been both challenging and rewarding 🌈. It requires creativity, research, and a willingness to stand out. By leveraging various resources, analyzing successful shops, and adding a personal touch to each design, I've been able to create pillows that resonate with customers 💖.

Thank you for joining me on this creative journey. I look forward to sharing more insights and experiences as I continue to grow my POD business 🚀. Stay tuned for more updates and, as always, happy designing! 🎨

Warm regards, Ivo

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1726025240/punch-me-pillow-fun-home-decor-perfect

[delicatewerewolfsoul]

i painted the sunset in your eyes

pairing: minghao x reader

genre: art students, fluff, strangers to lovers

word count: 2k

a/n: hi @moonsolie! this is your secret carat admirer, hope you enjoy my attempt of a cute fic heh ❤

Once upon a time, in a big building full of college students, a story began, where two of the most famous students met, under the orange color of the sunset hitting on the windows, where one's admiration turned to love, and the other's curiosity to deep affection. That's how Minghao tells you he'll tell your story to people that ask, like a fairytale, where something that seemed too good to be true, finally happened and brought some sweetness into your lifes.

You are both ever the artists, you lived for romance and exciting adventures, deep emotions and meaningful glances. Minghao sighs as he looks at the board, theory classes when the most boring, even tho he was curious about learning, sometimes time didn't pass as quickly as he wanted, and whenever the teacher said the same stuff over and over again, he felt as if he was stuck on a loop, and that he would never get away from the circle, but as the teacher repeated the theories, time to finish was near, and then after everything, the bell rang, and he got out of the classroom excited, ready to go to the workshop, the place where he could get creative, away from the world, in his own, the one he created on the canvas.

His university was a huge building where all people minded their own business. Minghao on the other hand liked to observe, since every student had their own style, their own color and minghao was always fascinated by it, he was always interested in how every style showcased and highlighted each person’s personality. From colorful goths that were too bright for the world, to the coffee addicts with the office style that would easily be great in architecture, everything was fascinating to him, worth studying on it, taking time to understand it, take it in and then maybe paint about it. Maybe that was what made him popular, the quiet kid that didn’t talk much and no one knew much, but still had a strong presence and apparently knew everyone around him, better than they thought people did.

As he exits his class and heads towards the workshop, he notices you. Your back was against the wall and you were laughing at whatever your friend Jun was saying, you were completely glowing he thought as he observed you. Minghao was fascinated by you, for one specific reason, he couldn’t figure you out. Your aura, your expressions and your style were all pretty soft, gentle and sweet, yet your art style was powerful, sometimes even intimidating, a style that seems to have been made to shake the world. He remembers the first time he saw an art piece of yours. It had a bright shade on and thick outlines made of black and deep blue, it looked like it was made to get everyone’s attention on it. The message was bold, it made him understand how much emotions you might have put in it, yet it still shocked him. Many works of yours later and one thing stayed the same, the bold, dark colors with strong outlines. And he wanted to figure it out.

“Oh, so you finally decided to appear,” Joshua announces as Minghao enters the workshop. “What happened, did that famous student catch your eye again?” He continues as he pokes Minghao with his elbow and the second sighs, as this happened every time he was a little late. Not many people could read Minghao and Joshua was one of the only ones with that gift and Minghao really disliked it. “Anyways, a teacher of yours passed by some time ago and he said he had some kind of project for you, something he needed your help or something i don’t know, he said he’ll pass by again”. Minghao knew what was coming, he would have to use his talent, where he understood and helped other students find the spark for painting once again. He was used to this, yet it kind of annoyed himi as well, it wasn’t as fun to actually be made to use it, that using it on his own, the way he thought it was fun. “You don’t seem to like it that much,” says Joshua more softly, trying to help his friend share his thoughts. “Cause it isn’t.” answers Minghao, “it feels more like a job, and I don’t really enjoy it, I would love some challenge” he finishes and goes to finish his latest painting.

The teacher arrives some time later, just as Joshua finished for the day. He enters the room and Minghao is already prepared to hear the same thing again, but what the teacher says surprises him. “Minghao, I have something for you today. Some time later, another student will come here, but your project will be to prepare portraits of each other. I feel like you both need a small change, so I arranged that as your monthly project so make sure you both have a great time, okay? I’m expecting those in a month, have a good day”. Minghao was stunned. He actually wasn’t expecting something like that, but it sounded interesting, he couldn’t wait to see who was partnered with.

Minghao’s favorite time of the day would have to be the time when the sun was setting down. The time when everything changed color according to the color of the sunset. Everyday a different color, from a bright yellow or orange color to a bright purple. And everything around him had a similar shade to that and it was so satisfying for him, that it made him always try to paint during that time. Today there was a lot of humidity in the air and that signaled that he maybe would finally be able to see again a purple sunset that he loved. And that time he feels a soft tap on his shoulder and he sees you, a bag around your shoulder and a soft smile, as the sunset colored you peachy, a sweet lovely color that he would swear fits exactly your vibe. “Hello, the teacher said I’ll find the person I’m assigned with in this room, is this supposed to be you?” you answer softly and Minghao nobs at you. He was stunned, he definitely wasn’t expecting you. It was definitely a challenge, because he had no clue how to draw you, which was a first for him. Well then, he had to get to know you first.

The first thing that Minghao learned about you, was that you enjoyed reading books and that long walks at night to get inspiration. That would kind of explain the deep colors you used but not the strong, intimidating feel he got from it. “You might ask why my works are so strong” you say to him and his eyebrows shoot up. That had to be the first time someone had somehow read his mind and it gave him chills, but at the same time he didn’t hate it. For the first time he welcomed it. You were something different, and he felt like he wanted to be something important to you and he didn’t know what to do with that feeling. “That must be from the need I have to make a difference, to point out to the people ‘look, this is important’ and make them think.” you say and then sip your coffee from the coffee shop you and Minghao agreed to meet with you once a week after classes to discuss and learn more about one another. One meeting turned to two and then to three and that resulted in meeting even more to discuss even more ideas, yet you felt like you knew too little about him. But he let out too little about him, the meetings felt more like classes than friendly meetings. The most important thing you knew, was that he enjoyed the sunset and fragrant tea, that he liked cats and to experiment with fashion. You felt like you knew only the top layer of his complicated personality and you wanted him to trust you, you wanted him too open up to you, and after that maybe you could express that tang you felt in your heart whenever you met it, or the warmth on your cheeks when he smiled at you.

It’s been almost three weeks since the project started and you both didn’t exactly know how to put everything you felt for each other on the canvas. Minghao had too many complicated feelings about you and was confused about what he actually was feeling. You on the hand were still trying to figure him out. He was more definitely affectionate and open to you from when you first met him, but still mysterious, like he was keeping something to himself, like he was trying to keep a safe distance from you. Him not being that open didn’t really help you, instead it was making it more difficult for you to put his true colors on the paper. “Another ruined try?” Jun says as he peeks in your room as he hears a displeased grunt leave your mouth for the second time this week. “Just paint him on a pink cloud with some hearts around him and get done with it. You have a crush on him right? It’s almost valentines anyway” he says and you look at him shocked with a little annoyance in it. “Are you kidding me? I… might do, but still, this guy is a big question mark and he confuses me. I try to ask him stuff and his answers are so vague, I feel like I get nothing… Even though I enjoy spending time with him, I’m not going to lie.” you sign, letting your head fall back. “Minghao vague? How bizarre, this guy usually is very specific with his answers, even his answers are short, at least that is what Joshua said to me” he says and that makes you think, what made him act like that? Was he flustered?

“Was someone flustered when meeting with their crush yesterday?” Joshua teases when Minghao enters the room the next day. Minghao sighs, but can’t deny that he actually did have feelings for you, it was obvious anyway. But he passed the stage of realizing it, and into the stage where he wanted to say it. “I will confess” he says suddenly and that stuns Joshua, not used to his friend acting like that, but glad he made that choice “cause I think I finally found that answer”.

It was the day before you had to show your works to your teacher and you were heading to the workshop, to show Minghao what you had actually come up with and for you to see what Minghao’s painting finally looked like. You step into the room and your heart is about to burst from excitement. Your hands have a strong hold on the painting and for a moment you’re hesitant to show it to him, afraid he might not like it, but as he shows you a smile, all your worries fade away. You place your painting next to his and you reveal both at the same time. Minghao gasps at your painting, light shades of blue and pink with details that made it look like he was underwater, he was stunned, this was so different from what he was used to see from you, so pretty and delicate. “It’s so pretty, it reminds me of jellyfishes” he laughs and you laugh along with him, “this is so different from your usual style”, he continues admiring the painting and you smile, glad he liked it. Then you take a look at his. Different shades or orange and pink, sweet peach color and a light in your eyes that seemed real. You were stunned. “You might already know what this means, but this is how you looked the first time you entered this room. I’m sorry for being such a pain in the ass this month, it probably seemed like I didn’t like you, but I in fact liked you more than I thought I would so…” he takes a deep breath to ease his nerves and relax, before continuing “would you be my valentine… maybe?” he tilts his head and you laugh, before nobbing and hugging him.

[saturnsummer]

permanently inked (G rated)

notes: since everyone freaked out over beam’s tattoo on twitter, i was very much inspired to write a situation when joonhwi gets a tattoo and sol finds out. here's a G rated version, which slightly more details than my twitter one!

joon has always liked the idea of having a tattoo

no, he doesn’t mean the kind you see on mafia gangs or yakuzas. he means the dainty one of fine calligraphy and those minimalistic arts.

but he was never certain of what to get. a ramyeon bowl seemed like what a child would think. having inked the name of his mother or father seemed…too odd. after all, he didn’t grow up with them.

but his uncle…it was a different story.

his uncle from the beginning was his superman. from a young age, he loved sitting in the lap of his uncle while reading reports and asking his uncle the meanings of words of ‘perjury’ and ‘defamation’.

even after his passing, when all the truth had been dug up, he tried all he could to stay angry at his uncle. but all he found was guilt, shame, and regret.

but why does he so badly want something to remember his uncle by?

so when he found himself looking at different tattoo designs, he knew that he wasn’t going to be forgetting about this idea any time soon.

he scrolled through many, many ideas. traditional calligraphy. pictures and outlines. but none of them appealed to him. they were all too cliche or not to his liking at all.

and him as a future prosecutor? he rather have a tattoo somewhere hidden so his clients wouldn’t be scared off.

then he finally stumbled upon a photo of someone’s designed tattoo. it was nothing too complicated, minimalistic and in pure black thin ink.

but what struck him was how it was an outline of a man, with spectacles alongside a lady with long hair.

at that moment, he just knew that this was the design he was going to use. he immediately went to flip through different photos of him and his uncle, but as soon as he started looking at the most recent one, his heart sank.

because all he could remember was how angry he felt towards him, and how misunderstood his uncle must have felt. how lonely he was to die alone with no one by his side. how…he died for the sins of another.

a tear slipped as he shut his album. he quickly stored the album back into his cabinet, but a printed picture fell out and fluttered to the floor. picking it up, he managed a small smile.

it was a photo of him and his uncle on his tenth birthday. he was all smiles, in his favourite power rangers shirt, and his uncle, looking so much younger than before, rid of burdens, tears and troubles, actually giving a smile.

it was the most memorable birthday of joonhwi’s, considering that it was one of the birthdays that his uncle gifted him his favourite action figure along with new books and a playstation 2.

staring at the photo, he couldn’t help but be reminded of the times his uncle would come home with different ramyeon flavours and cooked them in a special way.

eighteen years later, he has still not figured out how to recreate the taste of the ramyeon of his childhood.

with that, he took the picture, stuffed it in pocket and headed out the front door of his dorm room.

but he stopped as he locked the dorm room. what would jiho say? or his new girlfriend, sol? tattoos weren’t a big thing in korea. will they shun him, like society does? or will they accept him despite the permanent decision?

just at that moment, sol called him as she asked if he wanted to have lunch. he hesitated, and asked if he could meet her at the entrance of school. sol just hung up and joonhwi went ahead to the entrance.

there, her hair in a high bun and in a simple sweater and shorts, stood his girlfriend of one month. greeting her with a small peck, she blushes as she ask what’s up.

“what? what do you mean what’s up? how do you know im troubled?”

“everything about your voice says it. spill it, what is it?”

joonhwi couldn’t lie, especially not to her. bringing her to sit at the plush chairs of the lobby, he tells her about his want of having a tattoo, how he wants one to remember his uncle by. not the one that died, but the one from his childhood.

“joon, that’s so sweet of you. you sure? it’s permanent, you know. you won’t regret it?”

“no. sol, it’s been on my mind since i was, what, 21? i just never knew what to get. and…you’re not mad? you’re not disapproving of me?”

“how could i? joonhwi, when i said i’ll be rooting for you in your uncle’s place, I meant it. you aren’t impulsive like i am, and you’ve said it. you wanted it since 21. it’s been seven years, I think it’s a decision you won’t let go, no?”

and he finally realises that the entire time he’s talking she’s been smiling the whole time and nodding while holding his hand in his lap.

sol was never one to judge, and he couldn’t have loved her more at that moment when she kissed his knuckles and pulled him up telling him “come on now, let’s go!”

and with that, hand in hand, all thoughts of lunch was forgotten as they headed to the streets of town to a tattoo shop, safely hidden away from the main streets.

joonhwi had done plenty of research for this particular shop. he has seen the work of the artist, the way her steady hands created straight lines and thin minimalist styles of art. it was what he wanted.

nervously, he explained with the lady what he had in mind as the lady sat patiently and listened, tracing the photo over with tracing paper and asking if she could take a photo.

he contacted the lady a couple more times, as she forwarded different designs, styles and artworks over to him. with sol, they spent hours deciding on the best design.

sol and joonhwi went through the designs in secret on their quiet nights at the bleachers as sol pointed out her concerns with one design and he sat, chocolate milk in hand as they zoomed in on the fine details and shortlisted them.

ultimately, they concluded on the one he always wanted; a minimalistic piece that just outlined his uncle and him. no special shadings, colours or anything. thin, neat and simple. his uncle would have liked it, considering how he knows that the only reason why he is neat is because he observed the way his uncle would adjust the books on the table to perfectly align with the edge.

on the day of the appointment, joonhwi thought of where to put it. he knew he had to keep it hidden away, so somewhere on his arm wasn’t the best idea.

“joonhwi, how about your chest?”

“?”

“well…you said you want to hide it, after all, our future jobs aren’t exactly best for tattoos. having it on your chest would be the best, wouldn’t it?”

sol made some sense. it was a good spot to keep it concealed, yet meaningful enough. his uncle was always going to be in his heart and he will always be remembered.

so as the tattoo artist imprinted the design blueprint on his chest, just above his heart, he stared at the mirror with the design.

he was finally doing it.

sol came over behind him as she stepped in front, looking at the tattoo on his bare chest. her fingers traced it lightly before his hand caught hers.

“you sure?”

“i am. i am now.”

“it looks beautiful.”

leaning back onto the chair, sol grabbed onto his hand and squeezed it for comfort.

“if it hurts, just squeeze my hand, alright? it’ll be over in a bit.”

the artist got to work, as she dipped the needle into the ink, needling the ink permanently into his skin. joonhwi’s eyes were shut as he held his breath from the sting.

sol rubbed his biceps as she whispered to him. “you’re okay, it’s alright. shall we get ramyeon or army stew later?”

joonhwi knew sol was trying to distract him. and so he did his best. he chatted about their meals later, what should they do with the next week before they get back to school with their regular lessons. sol suggested to start studying, but joonhwi only agreed if sol were to take it easy and not cram. as a 3L, she didn’t need to faint again.

sol was right, though. distracting him worked, as the artist finally finished her work on him and wiped the blood and ink, before cleaning it. she stuck a clear film on it, and advised him on how to properly care for it for the next two weeks.

as promised, sol and joonhwi dined out at a army stew restaurant in town they always wanted to visit and they had a nice quiet lunch, a rare day for them to be on a date alone and eating out.

jiho found out the night after, as he noticed the different aftercare products on joonhwi’s desk. he didn’t say anything or ask, but nodded in acceptance. (secretly, he thinks his hyung looks cool.)

as they met with the group on casual study sessions, bokgi pointed out the plastic under joonhwi’s white shirt and joonhwi finally announces he has a tattoo.

“HYUNG THAT'S SO COOL WOAH” is what bokgi says before earning a smack from sol who clicks her tongue disapprovingly. “min bokgi, don't get any ideas of having a tattoo!”

bokgi was about to argue back, but realised that he was indeed about to say he wants one too. joonhwi just laughs as he wraps his arm around sol's waist.

when they find out what it meant, they fall silent.

"it's lovely. i think it's poetic" yeseul says, but the tension was still there. they knew how much joonhwi respected, admired, hated, resented his uncle. despite all the emotions and thick tension, joonhwi stood up, "come on, they're serving dakgalbi today, let's discuss our weekend plans over lunch."

two weeks later, as joonhwi removed the bandage on his chest, he smiled at the permanent memory of his uncle, now engraved on his chest above his heart.

maybe he did enjoy his childhood.

his emotions were always temporary. his anger, guilt, shame, happiness, sadness. but one thing he knew he wanted was permanent was his memory of his uncle. the one he grew up loving, the superman he looked up to.

the uncle, seo byungju, that raises him like his own son.

[9worldstales]

MCU: Loki and Midgardian clothes

So, I’ve seen some fans wondering how could Loki fix Mobius’ tie since Asgardians clearly do not wear ties…

…and it made me wonder ‘is this a mistake or Loki was actually familiar with Midgardians clothes?’

So let’s start with the sources at our disposition to answer this question.

SOURCES MENTIONED:

Movies: “Thor” (2011), “The Avengers” (2012), “Thor – Ragnark” (2017)

Series: “Loki” [More exactly a scene from: “Marvel Studios' Loki | Official Trailer | Disney+”] (2021)

Comics: None mentioned

Direct-to-video animated film: None mentioned

Motion comics: None mentioned

Books: “The Art of Thor” (2011), “The art of The Avengers” (2012), “The Art of Thor: Ragnarok” (2017), “Marvel Studios: All your questions answered” (2018)

Novels: “Thor: Ragnarok - The Junior novel” by Jim McCann (2017)

Webs: None mentioned

Others: “Thor” old movie script

Okay, now we can start.

So, as weird as it might seem at first, the second answer, which is that Loki is familiar with Midgardian modern attires, might be the intended one, right from “Thor”.

Let’s go back to that movie.

Thor is clearly unfamiliar with present day Midgard as a whole, and so are his friends.

We’ve various moments in which Thor shows he’s unaware of present day Midgardians customs, like when he can’t realize he’s in doctors’ care and thinks they’re attacking him (in a deleted bit, when they tell him they’re trying to help him, he demands they bring him healing stones, showing he has no idea how Earth’s healing system work), or when he breaks a glass asking another believing he’s showing appreciation for the drink, or when he enters in a pet shop, demands a horse and when they tell him they’ve only dogs, cats, birds, demands one of them big enough to ride.

It doesn’t mean he never went to Midgard, in the movie there’s the implication he had been on Midgard before...

Thor: We're going to Jotunheim. Fandral: What? This isn't like a journey to Earth where you summon a little lightning and thunder, and the mortals worship you as a god. This is Jotunheim.

...and there was a cut scene in which he recognized being on Midgard and even calling it ‘Earth’.

Thor: Blue sky... one sun... This is Earth, isn't it?

And there’s another cut scene that says that yes, Sif and the Warriors Three had been on Earth… but a thousand years ago.

Volstagg: Is it just me, or does Earth look a little different to you? Sif: It has been a thousand years... Volstagg: Things change so fast here. You leave for a millennium, and it's like the whole neighborhood's gone.

Now, Loki was a babe in 965 AD and “Thor” takes place in 2011. Sif likely doesn’t mean exactly 1000 years but, what’s more, we don’t know how exactly Asgardians age in the MCU.

Does their childhood last as much as ours and then their aging process slow down so as to allow them to live 5000 years? Or their aging process is proportionately all slowed down and they remains babes for years?

I tend to think their childhood is fast and then they have a slower aging process once they reach a certain age, but anyway this is irrelevant. Even if Loki visited Midgard 1000 years before and was familiar with its customs back then, well, things, as Volstagg points out, are changed a lot.

So… where do we can get an idea if Loki is familiar with Midgard or not?

When Loki goes to see Thor, he shows up dressed up in 21st century Midgardian attire.

In “The Art of Thor” is said:

Said Craig Kyle, “Loki wants to look good, he’s a man of style… Loki actually has three looks, Thor has one.” In addition to the three costumes he wears in the otherworldy realm of Asgard, Loki also makes a brief appearance in a suit and tie. Said Tom Hiddleston, “When he turns up on Earth in the movie, [he’s] very GQ.”

(For who, like me, is not familiar with the term GQ, it is used to describe a guy who is dressed nicely, very sleek, or very sexy to the ladies, The term comes from the men's fashion magazine named GQ (=Gentlemen's Quarterly).)

They don’t really explains why Loki decided to dress up like that, but the fact he chose to is meaningful.

Loki was going to see Thor, and he only let Thor see him.

He appears in the room Thor was, presumably after waiting for a while inside it but invisible since he complains about how he thought Coulson would never leave. When Coulson is back, Loki has magically disappeared again.

People doesn’t see Loki, not even when he tries to lift up Mjolnir.

Long story short, Loki’s attire is not to disguise himself as a human among humans and walk among them unnoticed, as he just doesn’t let them see him at all, and if he were, his very fashionable outfit would likely draw more gazes than anything else (compare it with Coulson’s plain suit), especially when he tries to lift Mjolnir while all around it there are scientists dresses in scientist garbs and guards dressed in guard uniforms.

So we can see Loki didn’t need to dress as a human to see Thor, he could have very well gone there in his normal Asgardians clothes, like he does when he goes to visit Laufey...

...though he could have forsaken the armour when visiting Thor, and just show up in his normal attire.

Instead Loki picked up a stylish Midgardian outfit to go meet his brother. Be it an illusion (more likely) or real clothes, Loki knew how a fashionable 21st century Midgardian would dress and decided to dress as such even though there was no need for it. This implies a familiarity with Midgard, or at least with its dressing style, which I genuinely doubt could have been a topic of study for Asgardians... even though Odin too was familiar with Midgardians attires as, when he bans Thor to Earth, he changes his clothes into modern, ordinary, definitely not fashionable Midgardian ones.

Loki knows the secret paths between words, it can be he travelled to Midgard and, once there, grew to like the elegant style we have.

But yes, this doesn’t necessarily mean he could learn how to fix a tie, as his clothes might be an illusion.

The final bit of “Thor” is a bit of a confusing thing as it shows Loki (dressed in Asgardian clothes) invisible to other people’s eyes controlling Selvig...

...which is confirmed by “Marvel Studios: All your questions answered” which describes that scene as:

Loki controls Selvig as he examines the Tesseract.

If Loki had controlled Selvig for an extensive period he might have learnt to tie ties as Selvig wears one.

However, although this scene was created and directed by Joss Whedon, this scene is kind of forgotten when “The Avengers” rolls around.

In it Selvig is free from Loki’s control until Loki uses the sceptre with the mind stone to turn him into his servant.

Now… “The Avengers”.

The story starts by night, with Loki arriving in the S.H.I.E.L.D. research center in which Selvig is studying the Tesseract.

Natasha Romanov, Bruce Banner, Steve Roger and Tony Stark are all warned during night. It’s possible it’s the same night, maybe it’s the night after.

It’s full day when Steve Roger travels with Coulson. The following scene shows Loki remembering his talk with the Other and then we’ve Steve reaching the Helicarrier and meeting up with Natasha and Bruce.

Then Loki shows up at Stuttgart Museum again dressed up in 21st Century attire with his sceptre disguised as a cane. This time Loki is sort of disguising himself, as he’s actually planning to draw attention on himself but, at first, in a subtle manner so it makes sense he dressed up as a Midgardian to move among Midgardians so as not to alert common people but end up being tracked by SHIELD because they can see him on monitors and recognize him… something they wouldn’t be able to do had he been invisible.

Loki drops his disguise only later, after he has sent a holographic image of Dr. Heinrich Schafer’s eye to Barton. He confront with Steve and Tony and vanish his armour… remaining in Asgardian clothes. He’s short after taken by Thor, who then argues with Steve and Tony until Thor decides to get along with them and Loki is carried on the Helicarrier all in the same night.

Natasha takes care to inform us Loki killed 80 people in 2 days. This should mean Loki is on Midgard by two days.

Why all this is relevant?

Again Loki dressed up as a stylish Midgardian,

...his clothes similar to the ones he had in “Thor” yet vaguely different (in “Thor” the coat is green, in “The Avengers” black and the scarf motive is slightly different) and even knew that, in order to disguise the sceptre, he can’t mask it as, let’s say, a pitchfork but a cane. It’s true, since he’s been on Earth by 2 days, this time he could have gotten that knowledge by Barton or Selvig.

“The art of The Avengers” again doesn’t tell us much apart that:

“Joss and Kevin both wanted a different look for Loki in The Avengers, in part for the fans and in part to serve the story,” Visual Development Supervisor Charlie Wen said.” For Loki, his costumes evolved from the super-clean look of the Asgard from Thor to a much grittier and more lived-in look to show the changes he’s gone through since then.” “For Thor and Loki, much of our inspiration came from Jack Kirby’s original character designs,” Wen said. “Loki represent mischief. He is a cultured traveller.”

But, if we put clothes aside, Loki is also aware of how:

Loki: The humans slaughter each other in droves, while you idly threat. I mean to rule them. And why should I not?

It’s something Thor didn’t seem to know/realize.

This seems to imply Loki knows about Earth’s history or, at least, of its present situation. Yes, he might have had a crash course in history of Earth courtesy by Clint or Selvig, but he might have also learnt it by himself in trips on Earth since Odin didn’t seem interested in Earth beyond protecting it from some attacks from creatures from other realms (he helps against the Frost Giants, however he doesn’t seem aware of the Skrulls and Krees walking on its surface nor he cares to check what humans do with the Tesseract doing nothing when Red Skull uses it to produce weapons) so he might not have bothered having his son learning about Midgard’s history and situation.

The last time we see Loki dressed as a human is in “Thor: Ragnarok”.

In it his clothes are much more simple than usual as he only wears a black suit, no scarf, no coat.

In “The Art of Thor: Ragnarok” there’s actually not one but 2 arts for more elaborate suits with coat but they were clearly discharged as Loki never wears them in the movie.

“Thor: Ragnarok The Junior novel” which is based on an earlier script says:

They were dressed in regular Earth street wear – shirt and slacks – and Thor carried an umbrella. His hair was swept back into a ponytail. Loki’s magic was projecting an illusion onto the duo.

...which seems to imply the scriptwriter originally didn’t even think dressing Loki stylish… and anyway mostly focused on Thor... so it’s possible Loki’s attire in the movie is a compromise between the scriptwriter, who though to dress Loki in shirt and slacks, and "Thor: Ragnarok” Visual Development Supervisor Andy Park who wanted to put him in an elegant and stylish suit as the other Visual Development Supervisors had done.

Still, the scriptwriter too thinks Loki is aware of how, if Thor wants to keep an object in his hands, it has to look like something ordinary and how an umbrella can fit the bill. As it didn’t rain during Loki’s short permanence on Earth, the fact he knows umbrellas exist and is acceptable to carry them around seems to imply Loki has an idea of how Earth works.

So all this to say… yes, Loki might be more familiar with Earth than it looked like and he might have learnt how to make a tie or, at least, how to fix it since this is more what he seems to do in that scene in “Marvel Studios' Loki | Official Trailer | Disney+”

We can only wait and see if “Loki” will give us more explanations about this scene or it will just toss it in and not bother to explain it at all.

Meanwhile I’ll have fun thinking before things went wrong Loki used to come on Earth and look up on fashion magazines and love the idea of how good he would look in such clothes that he began to dress up according to Midgard fashion style each time he got to set a feet on it.

[reachexceedinggrasp]

Would love to hear about your beefs with Lucas because I have beefs with Lucas

(Sorry it took me three thousand years to answer this, anon.)

They mainly fall under a few headings, with the third being the most serious and the thing that I am genuinely irl furious about at least biannually (and feeling unable to adequately sum up The Problem with it after yelling about it so often is a huge part of why this post has been in my drafts for such a long time):

1. His self-mythologising and the subsequent uncritical repetition of his bullshit in the fandom. Obvious lies like that he had some master plan for 10 films when it’s clear he did not have anything like a plot outline at any point. We all know the thing was written at the seat of various people’s pants, it’s blatantly self-evident that’s the case. There’s also plenty of public record about how the OT was written. Even dumber, more obvious lies, like that Anakin was ‘always the protagonist’ and the entire 6 films were his story from the beginning. This is preposterous and every time someone brings it up (usually with palpable smugness) as fanboys ‘not understanding star wars’ because they don't get that ‘the OT is not Luke's story’... Yeah, I just... I cannot.

Vader wasn’t Anakin Skywalker until ESB, it’s a retcon. It’s a brilliant retcon and it works perfectly, it elevated SW into something timeless and special it otherwise would not have been, but you can tell it wasn’t the original plan and there’s proof it wasn’t the original plan. Let’s not pretend. And Luke is the protagonist. No amount of waffling about such esoteric flights of theory as ‘ring structure’ is going to get away from the rigidly orthodox narrative and the indisputable fact that it is Luke’s hero’s journey. Vader’s redemption isn’t about his character development (he has almost none) and has no basis in any kind of convincing psychological reality for his character, but it doesn’t need to be because it’s part of Luke’s arc, because Vader is entirely a foil in Luke’s story. It’s a coming-of-age myth about confronting and growing beyond the father.

All attempts to de-centre Luke in RotJ just break the OT’s narrative logic. It’s a character-driven story and the character driving is Luke. Trying to read it as Anakin’s victory, the moral culmination of his choices rather than Luke’s and putting all the agency into Anakin’s hands just destroys the trilogy’s coherence and ignores most of its content in favour of appropriating a handful of scenes into an arc existing only in the prequels. The dilemma of RotJ is how Luke will define ethical adulthood after learning and growing through two previous films worth of challenge, education, failure, and triumph; it’s his choice to love his father and throw down his sword which answers the question the entire story has been asking. Vader’s redemption and the restoration of the galaxy are the consequences of that choice which tell us what kind of world we’re in, but the major dramatic conflict was resolved by Luke’s decision not the response to it.

And, just all over, the idea of Lucas as an infallible auteur is inaccurate and annoying to me. Obviously he’s a tremendous creative force and we wouldn’t have sw without him, but he didn’t create it alone or out of whole cloth. The OT was a very collaborative effort and that’s why it’s what it is and the prequels are what they are. Speaking of which.

2. The hubris of the prequels in general and all the damage their many terrible, protected-from-editors choices do to the symbolic fabric of the sw universe. Midicholrians, Yoda fighting with a lightsabre, Obi-wan as Anakin's surrogate father instead of his peer, incoherent and unmotivated character arcs, the laundry list of serious and meaningful continuity errors, the bad storytelling, the bad direction, the bad characterisation, the shallowness of the parallels which undermine the OT’s imagery, the very clumsy and contradictory way the A/P romance was handled, the weird attitude to romance in general, it goeth on. I don’t want to re-litigate the entire PT here and I’m not going to, but they are both bad as films and bad as prequels. The main idea of them, to add Anakin’s pov and create an actual arc for him as well as to flesh out the themes of compassion and redemption, was totally appropriate. The concept works as a narrative unit, there are lots of powerful thematic elements they introduce, they have a lot of cool building blocks, it’s only in execution and detail that they do a bunch of irreparable harm.

But the constant refrain that only ageing fanboys don’t like them and they only don’t like them because of their themes or because they humanise Anakin... can we not. The shoddy film making in the prequels is an objective fact. If you want to overlook the bad parts for the good or prioritise ideas over technique, that’s fine, but don’t sit here and tell me they’re masterworks of cinema there can be no valid reason to criticise. I was the exact right age for them when I saw them, I am fully on board with the fairy tale nature of sw, I am fully on board with humanising Anakin- the prequels just have a lot of very big problems with a) their scripts and b) their direction, especially of dialogue scenes. If Lucas had acknowledged his limitations like he did back in the day instead of believing his own press, he could have again had the help he obviously needed instead of embarrassing himself.

3. Killing and suppressing the original original trilogy. I consider the fact that the actual original films are not currently available in any form, have never been available in an archival format, and have not been presented in acceptable quality since the VHS release a very troubling case study in the problems of corporate-owned art. LF seizing prints of the films whenever they are shown, destroying the in-camera negatives to make the special editions with no plans to restore them, and doing all in the company’s considerable power to suppress the original versions is something I consider an act of cultural vandalism. The OT defined a whole generation of Hollywood. It had a global impact on popular entertainment. ANH is considered so historically significant it was one of the first films added to the US Library of Congress (Lucas refused to provide even them with a print of the theatrical release, so they made their own viewable scan from the 70s copyright submission).

The fact that the films which made that impact cannot be legally accessed by the public is offensive to me. The fact that Lucas has seen fit to dub over or composite out entire performances (deleting certain actors from the films), to dramatically alter the composition of shots chosen by the original directors, to radically change the entire stylistic tone by completely reinventing the films’ colour timing in attempt to make them match the plasticy palate of the prequels, to shoot new scenes for movies he DID NOT DIRECT, add entire sequences or re-edit existing sequences to the point of being unrecognisable etc. etc. is NOT OKAY WITH ME when he insists that his versions be the ONLY ones available.

I’m okay with the Special Editions existing, though I think they’re mostly... not good... but I’m not okay with them replacing the original films. And all people can say is ‘well, they’re his movies’.

Lucas may have clear legal ownership in the capitalistic sense, but in no way does he have clear artistic ownership. Forget the fans, I’m not one of those people who argue the fans are owed something: A film is always a collaborative exercise and almost never can it be said that the end product is the ultimate responsibility and possession of one person. Even the auteur directors aren't the sole creative vision, even a triple threat like Orson Welles still had cinematographers and production designers, etc. Hundreds of artists work on films. Neither a writer nor a director (nor one person who is both) is The Artist behind a film the way a novelist is The Artist behind a novel. And Lucas did NOT write the screenplays for or direct ESB or RotJ. So in what sense does he have a moral right to alter those films from what the people primarily involved in making them deemed the final product? In what sense would he have the right to make a years-later revision the ONLY version even if he WERE the director?

Then you get into the issue of the immeasurable cultural impact those films had in their original form and the imperative to preserve something that is defining to the history of film and the state of the zeitgeist. I don't think there is any ‘fan entitlement’ involved in saying the originals belonged to the world after being part of its consciousness for decades and it is doing violence to the artistic record to try to erase the films which actually occupied that space. It's exactly like trying to replace every copy of It's a Wonderful Life with a colourised version (well, it's worse but still), and that was something Lucas himself railed against. It’s like if Michaelangelo were miraculously resuscitated and he decided to repaint the Sistine Ceiling to add a gunfight and change his style to something contemporary.

I get genuinely very upset at the cold reality that generations of people are watching sw for the first time and it’s the fucking SE-except-worse they’re seeing. And as fewer people keep physical media and the US corporate oligarchy continues to perform censorship and rewrite history on its streaming services unchecked by any kind of public welfare concerns, you’ll see more and more ‘real Mandela effect’ type shit where the cultural record has suddenly ‘always’ been in line with whatever they want it to be just now. And US media continues to infect us all with its insidious ubiquity. I think misrepresenting and censoring the past is an objectively bad thing and we can’t learn from things we pretend never happened, but apparently not many people are worried about handing the keys to our collective experience to Disney and Amazon.

4. The ‘Jedi don’t marry’ thing and how he wanted this to continue with Luke post-RotJ, so it’s obviously not meant to be part of what was wrong with the order in the prequels. I find this... incoherent on a storytelling level. The moral of the anidala story then indeed becomes just plain ‘romantic love is bad and will make you crazy’, rather than the charitable reading of the prequels which I ascribe to, which is that the problem isn’t Anakin’s love for Padmé, it’s that he ceased to love her and began to covet her. And I can’t help but feel this attitude is maybe an expression of GL’s issues with women following his divorce. I don’t remember if there’s evidence to contradict that take, since it’s been some time since I read about this but yeah. ANH absolutely does sow seeds for possible Luke/Leia development and GL was still married while working on that film. Subsequently he was dead set against Luke ever having a relationship and decided Jedi could not marry. Coincidence?

There’s a lot of blinking red ‘issues with women’ warning signs all over Lucas’s work, but the prequels are really... egregious.

[talvin-muircastle]

Am I Queer? It’s Controversial.

This is going to be long, and it’s going to cover a lot of ground, so please bear with me.  

Recently, this article came to my attention:

https://www.healthline.com/health/gender-nonconforming

I have spent a fair amount of time questioning my own sexuality/identity, and having it questioned by others.  Now approaching five full decades of life, I feel comfortable saying:

I identify as Male, and Straight.

I am Gender Non-Conforming by the standards of the culture I come from.

But I am not comfortable saying this qualifies me as “Queer” or otherwise under LGBTQIA+.   

That article (which is by no means the Last Word on the subject) identifies several areas where I do not conform to my AMAB status as culturally defined:

I have long hair.  But I also have a thick beard and moustache, and I like that combination.  Still, I grew up in a place where long hair on a guy meant you were A) Queer or B) into Heavy Metal.   Even though my teen years saw me sporting a military-style buzzcut more often than not, I tended to hang out with the Metalheads.  My long hair continues to be a point of contention with my conservative relatives and in-laws.   Some of them think I am a Hippie, which is funny because I am allergic to Cannabis.  Wanna watch me fight for breath and puke?  Blow weed smoke in my face.  

I am a Stay-At-Home Dad and Homemaker.  I have been the breadwinner for this family, but that is not part of my identity.  I am quite content to let my wife handle that part of things, and so is she.  I have been a Dad longer than I have been a father, in fact:  for most of my life I have been mentoring teenagers that find their way to me seeking advice, comfort, acceptance, and guidance.    I spent a lot of time worrying about what career should I follow, and it took me far too long to understand and accept that Dad was what I was after.  A woman seeking motherhood as a career is validated, a man seeking fatherhood in the same context is not conforming.  

When I was younger, I got hit with one hell of a double-standard: while wanting to be a Dad as a goal is not acceptable, I was supposed to go out there and sow my wild oats.  OK, I wasn’t really supposed to get girls pregnant, but I was supposed to try.  Wait, what? Try that again?  OK, if you were a teenaged boy in the 80s and 90s and I am pretty sure before that (not sure after, AIDS changed a lot of thinking all around), you were not supposed to get a girl pregnant, but you were supposed to make an attempt as often as possible, in fact you were supposed to score but fail.  If you are confused, don’t feel bad: I was living steeped in this paradox 24/7/365 and came out of it real confused.

Meanwhile, I was looking for a long-term, meaningful relationship with a woman who could be a partner in my life, and avoiding the one-night stands I was supposed to be after according to the standards of my culture, and so many of the people around me—parents, teachers, peers—decided that I must be Queer.  And that was Not A Good Classification To Find Yourself In in Rural Tennessee of the 80’s and 90’s.   Lacking real support, I entered adulthood like a trainwreck still skidding down the tracks, confused as hell and desperately trying to please people whose opinions mattered to me far more than they should.  I did finally find that relationship, and we celebrate 21 years of marriage this month.  Meanwhile I can’t keep track of who has gotten divorced and remarried from that crowd anymore.   

I am not a fan of American Football.  (I am not a fan of soccer, which is football to the rest of the world, but that’s not going to get you labeled Queer in the USA as yet.)   Even so, I got recruited to be the Football Manager for my high school football team, and then I spent several years studying to be an Athletic Trainer in college as an add-on to my English and Education degree.  The fact that I spent 7 years of my life on the sidelines of football games (and basketball, and baseball) and still do not really understand the rules of those sports should have been a clear sign to me that I was trying to conform and failing badly.  An American Male of my generation is supposed to like these things, he is supposed to scream at the television or scream from the stands when watching a game, he is supposed to have a Favorite Team and Wear Their Stuff.

Yeah, that’s not me.  I don’t like combative sports.  I like things that involve grace, beauty, and art.   Figure skating (either gender, singles, but especially pairs) is fun to watch.  The more artistic of gymnastics events are nice (uneven bars and vault are kinda boring, but I love watching floor exercise.)  Watching someone do tricks on a skateboard is more interesting to me than an MMA bout.  I enjoy the art of it.   I used to watch WWF Wrestling as a kid, but I found I enjoyed the “story” more than the violence.  Martial arts practice that is done like a dance is more interesting than watching two people try to kick each other in the face for real.   

I’m told I am supposed to like these things.  I am told that not liking them makes me less masculine.  

This extends into online gaming as well.  Oh, I like some combat games.  We aren’t going to talk about how many hours I have played the XCOM series.  But…I don’t like PVP or multiplayer. I like the story arc, and accomplishing things.  Minecraft?  I like building, and killing mobs is very secondary to that.  In single-player I usually just go peaceful mode and explore the world, build grand railways and tunnels, create comfortable houses or make a home under a lake with a glass roof under the water.  In World of Warcraft I spent more time exploring the world and getting cool screenshots than worrying about getting Phat Loot and XP.  I would take a whole afternoon just to escort a couple of new players through dangerous territory so they could find their friends.  

I have gotten a lot of grief over that.  I am supposed to go out and kill kill kill stab stab stab get the loot!  

And I am supposed to get more than the other person.  It’s competition.  Men are supposed to compete.  And if you can’t get more than the other guy you go dump buckets of lava on his house and laugh at the noob.  

I hate that.  

By the standards I was raised with, I am gender nonconforming.  I most definitely do not conform to the expectations that were laid upon me from my youth.

Does that make me Queer?   I am not comfortable claiming that.

The standards I was held to can also be considered Toxic Masculinity.  They hold that Queer==Less Of A Man.  “Queer” is not “Less.”  I was raised to think it is, but I have learned, and grown, and I know that it is not.  I also do not accept that I, myself, am Less.  The very premise of me being labeled Queer by those people is wrong on all counts.   I am different. I have always known that.  I believe that “Man” and “Male” can encompass more than violence, bullying, and competition.  I also know full well that many who identify as “Woman” and “Female” embrace those as ideals as well.  

I am no stranger to violence.  My life has often been violent.  I have fought off muggers who were armed with knives, I have stared down the barrel of a gun, I have been beaten because someone else wanted to establish himself as the dominant male in our school just after he moved there.  I am not a pacifist: the only reason I have not killed another human being in self-defense is because I was outnumbered.   I just don’t feel that defines my gender, and I have been told it should.  I fight to survive and to protect others, not to prove that I can.  

Others who look like me are guarding statues of Columbus with their Assault Rifles because they feel their masculinity is threatened.  This is another area where I do not conform to my expected gender roles.   Not only do I not feel my masculinity is threatened by BLM, or Pride, or the existence of Trans folks, I no longer feel my masculinity can be threatened.  I spent so many years under attack from “my” side, and gotten so much support from “their” side, that I now understand that my gender is not about what THEY think.  It is MY identity. I OWN it.  I am who I am regardless of their perception of me. Nothing someone else does can take that from me. 

And if anything about me is Queer, it is that: the understanding that my identity belongs to me and not to those who seek to mislabel me.  

I have been told by some in the Queer community that I am welcome among them, and I am grateful for that.  So, so many of my stories can be prefaced with, “There I was, the only Straight Guy in the room, when:”  I am proud to be an Ally.  

But calling myself Queer?  I’m not comfortable doing that.  I could, and I know some who would accept it.  But I feel it is more important to me to break the toxic definition of Masculinity and show that things like nurturing, caring, creating, dancing, loving, uplifting, and oh yes parenting, these ARE Male Qualities, always have been, and should always be.   No criticism of GNC folks who take the Queer label intended or implied: they are not Less, they own their own identity, they are valid.   They are themselves, and have a right to be. 

I am me.

I am a Man.

I will never be the Man they wanted me to be, and I am PROUD of that. 

Happy Pride Month.  

Don’t let the bastards get you down.

[babyarcadesoul]

Best Content Writing Course in Lucknow

content writing course in lucknow

ECT offers the best content writing course in Lucknow. I attended the Batch No 50 (Oct-Dec 2020) of ECT’s Content Writing course and here is my personal experience of studying at and then freelancing with them.

Table of Contents

Best Content Writing Course in Lucknow

About Me

A Few Words about My City Lucknow

Knowing content writing

Benefits of content creation career

How to Become a Content Writer?

Why ECT’s Course is the Best Content Writing Course in Lucknow?

ECT Content Writing Course

Why I chose ECT

Writer’s Bio

Best Content Writing Course in Lucknow

Before, I talk about the best content writing course in Lucknow, let me introduce myself.

About Me

I fell deeply in love with writing since I had finished my graduation, but before that, I couldn’t realize the significance of good writing. Initially, my perception of writing was bewildered. I thought good writing ability can’t be attained, it is a natural ability awarded to the chosen ones. I wouldn’t be so wrong until I learned the content writing skill. Fortunately, I got the chance to learn from a perfectionist who familiarized me with the craft of good writing.

A Few Words about My City Lucknow

I spent most of my childhood studying and learning in my hometown, Lucknow. It used to be a very different place unlike it is today. Previously, it seemed almost like a suburban small town where most of the people worked in the government sector. It molds our thinking towards conventional methods of learning and earning. We were rather philistine compared to the awareness of the other developed cities of India. The part of the city where I fostered is miles away from the national capital but years away in terms of sophistication.

Now, our city is transforming. Lucknow has a flourishing history of art and literature. It nurtured many renowned poets and writers in the past. We are embracing changes and building a modern city orchestrated with the old traditions.

Knowing content writing

Content writing is beyond good writing, it empowers you to think, research, and create high-quality, meaningful content to aware, educate and entertain readers. It is a driving force behind all successful marketing campaigns. It offers the opportunity to the business to connect and grow the prospective customer base. Therefore, quality content writing is packed with utility and brimming with inspiration. Quality content writing has relentless empathy towards their audience.

Benefits of content creation career

Content writing is a lucrative career. The foremost benefit of a writing career: you can earn for doing something you cherish. The potential market for good content writers is enormous, and opportunities are open around the globe, from blogging to publishing. The requirement of good content writing is not restricted. They have the privilege to choose for round the clock and freelance assignments.

Moreover, content writing provides a chance to work wherever you desire and write whatever you like. Therefore, a content writing career increases your confidence, fuels your creativity, and makes your voice heard. It provides tremendous personal gratification that comes with both fame and fortune.

How to Become a Content Writer?

If you know the art of expressing thoughts, congratulations, you can be a good content writer. Content writing is a skill-based career. Therefore, no specific degree is required to grow as a content writer. However, owing a degree in literature, arts, journalism, psychology even in science would be the icing on the cake. Your familiarity with the topic and drafting ability decides the growth of your content writing career. Hence, if your writing is compelling and content is relevant for readers, you have a good content writing career ahead of you.

However, proper guidance from experts can instantly launch a career in content writing. Numerous online and offline courses are available that can improve your writing skills. Nonetheless, few of these courses are certified by the government. If you are planning to work for some content industry or start your business, a certificate issued by a reliable authority increases the visibility and credibility of your craft. Online content writing courses also help experienced writers, acquiring additional skills like editing, recognizing, drafting, removing, and refining the ambiguity from the content. Therefore, it proves helpful for all kinds of genres of writers.

Watch the following video to know exact step-by-step process to become a content writer.

Why ECT’s Course is the Best Content Writing Course in Lucknow?

Today, with emerging culture and education, Lucknow is firmly looking to a promising future. This contemporary city is moving forward along with the magnificent legacy of the past. Students are exploring the novel styles of learning and employment. Hence, enthusiastically embracing the online methods of improving technical skills.

Both, fresh graduates and nonconventional learners, are choosing online learning courses. After the devastating pandemic, people of tier two and three cities recognize the significance of additional skills and learning in a virtual environment. Thus, good content writing courses have tremendous potential for delivering better career options for distance learners.

Things are changing now; I’m tempted to mention that the majority of online students in our city are in between 40-60 years of age. Most of them are retired and housemakers, seeking online content writing courses to utilize their unoccupied time. Therefore, they appreciate online content writing courses and found it flexible to connect the class. They responded, “online content writing empowers them to pen down their life experiences and stories without facing the awkwardness of attending an offline class with teenagers”.

I think online content writing has a remarkable capacity to transform the personality. Accessibility to the internet made it possible to access anything from your smart device. However, the internet is flooded with lucrative success and money-making stories, but it’s all up to you, knowing your requirements and budget before making any choice. It is quite hard to put in long hours and money without ensuring returns.

ECT Content Writing Course

If you are an aspiring writer, receiving training from a recognized institute can help you grab a project. ECT, a renowned content writing institute authorized by the government of India. It has been teaching the effective ways to feed the best content writing along with in-hand experience of varied forms of writing such as technical writing, copywriting, article writing, medical writing, etc. Moreover, it empowers students to thrive in stiff competition.

ECT offers both online and offline classes, but maximum benefits can be reaped from online training. ECT online content writing classes are accessible, affordable, and flexible. It is an advantage for learners of different geographic locations to save money and commuting time. Therefore, I would recommend an online content writing course for people living in different towns like me.

Why I chose ECT

While exploring a good medical writing course, I discovered ECT, a content writing institute. Since I was oblivious of any form of writing and needed to start from the essentials. I was perplexed in the beginning until I attended the demo class of ECT. It was triggering for me to learn from the expert. Fortunately, I got familiar with all forms of writing including medical writing. Good writing is a culmination of habit, knowledge, and rules, and everyone is capable of producing good content writing. Hence, I chose what I found beneficial to me. Indeed, it taught me to learn beyond books.

The most valuable lesson that I learned in ECT was good writing is like mathematics, either you know it or don’t know it. But, both crafts can be earned by practice and guidance. Therefore, the difference between a good writer and a bad writer is hard work and proper guidance.

Before enrolling, you may request a free demo class.

Click here and fill in your contact details to request a free demo class.

Visit Us :- digital marketing training .

Writer’s Bio

I spent plenty of my time in classrooms and laboratories. I learned the craft of writing from the expert and started freelancing for an enormous boon to my growth. I got the opportunity of working on a variety of writing projects. I managed to refine my writing abilities beyond the fundamental knowledge. Currently, I am involved in publishing book chapters, research articles, and blogs with credits that go to my name. The essential growth that I have accomplished so far solely attribute to freelance writing projects offered by ECT.

[markwatkinsconsumerguide]

Consumer Guide / No.111 / American musician, Barbara Markay, with Mark Watkins.

MW : Why decide (initially) to switch from making classical music to pop?  

BM : It happened during my first year at Juilliard College toward the end of the school year. It was in their new building at Lincoln Center, and I was practicing the piano in one of their practice rooms on the 5th floor, which had windows and a beautiful view of the streets below and the whole Lincoln Center area. I was taking a little break, and was looking out the window and thought to myself that I should be down there experiencing life and meeting interesting people, instead of practicing piano all day long! I had gotten into the Juilliard prep department / pre-college division when I was 10 years old, and had been a classical pianist for a long time. Maybe it was time for a change!  

After that day in the practice room, I started to think about this more and more, especially every time I got a practice room with a “window on the world” so to speak. I started to think about all those people walking around on the streets, and who among them was actually going to be interested in listening to classical music. I thought that I might be wasting my musical talent on my present studies as a pianist and composer, and that I was much more interested in talking to people and finding out what they were thinking and why they said and did the things they did.

I became more and more interested in writing lyrics, which turned into my first pop songs. I realized that I could communicate the music I had inside me via pop music better than just performing classical music, because I could write about the whole new exciting culture of the times with no narrow, preordained musical style restrictions, or older musical rules. I could write and say whatever I wanted to! It was a brand new world for me! And so much fun! I still appreciated and loved classical music, and graduated from Juilliard college at the end of the four years, but I was now writing these funny, risqué, pop songs, just piano and voice, and everyone I played them for loved it!    

We had academic studies as well as music classes as part of our program, and one of these classes was English literature, which I suddenly was great at. I don’t know where this understanding of human beings came from, or my love for reading English literature, but one day my English teacher, Beatrice Taub (who also taught at Columbia University), asked me after class if I really really was sure, that being a classical pianist and composer was really what I wanted to do with my life, because I was exceptionally good at literature. She suggested that I might take some extension classes at Columbia University to explore it further, maybe transferring to Columbia eventually.    

It was then that I realized that these songs I was writing were going to be a better career path for me because they involved both writing and music, and I got that encouragement to continue with pop music. There was also another class I took that the music students would take together with the actors, that also was encouraging me to continue to write pop music.

Some of the people in my class were destined to be really famous actors, and one of them was Robin Williams. I felt more at ease in this class because they were mostly all actors, and had broader interests than the music students, I felt. Robin asked me one day to play some more of my songs for him, because he wanted to do a show out of them. He said he just loved the humor and the music I had put to the songs. He said he wanted to do some kind of a musical review with it.  He was very funny even then. Just a natural comic, but also a great actor. Nothing came of it at that time, but my songs were eventually made into many musical reviews years later.

That was the beginning of my pop musical career.    

Christopher Reeve, Kevin Spacey, Christine Baranski (1974), Kelsey Grammer, Kevin Kline, Patty LuPone, William Hurt, and more, were all actors who were part of the new acting department at the new Juilliard building at Lincoln Center. Eventually, years later, they would put in a classical guitar department, and a jazz department, which would have been unheard of before the new building came into being. Before these new times, Juilliard considered classical guitar to be “folk” music, and jazz wasn’t even on their radar. I guess someone was thinking like me, and these other forms of music needed to be heard and expressed as well as traditional classical music. So I think it was in the 1980s they got Sharon Isbin (fabulous classical guitarist) to head up the new guitar department, and Wynton Marsalis to head up the new jazz department to get these new genres started at the new Juilliard.  

So much for my very formative Juilliard years!  

These early songs were part of my piano & voice comedy act that was very popular at the time. A lot of people compared me to being a musical Joan Rivers. ‘It’s All Rite’ was part of this set of songs. I went to the UK on vacation soon after graduating college, and met Lee Allen, a music promoter with Carousel Artists (I think that was the name of his company) who booked me on a college tour of England and Ireland. Eventually, I put a small group together and performed everywhere. I played at the New University of Ulster, Belfast, and I opened for 10CC at, I believe, Kings College in London, and played many other colleges as well. What a great time I had, and everyone really liked the songs, including the risqué ones! And I just loved England! But then it became time to return to the states.    

MW : Where does your music fit in terms of categorisation / the music scene?

BM : It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that I started writing more serious pop songs, not the early comedy stuff anymore. That was just after I had put out ‘It's All Rite’, the 12” dance, salsa single version of the song, and it was such a huge international hit. After that, I got interested in metaphysics - the invisible world so to speak - and more philosophical and spiritual matters. I found my first and very great meditation teacher, Anne Elizabeth Cooper, in New York City, and studied metaphysics with her for two years. It absolutely changed my life! I developed a totally different point of view of everything! I started writing songs more along these lines, and also songs about how people relate to each other on deeper levels. I needed to grow as a writer and artist, so this new path I took expanded my views of life and consciousness level.  

Some of my early pop albums like Change To Come and Heart Like A Song contain some of my favorite and most prized songs, like ‘Still Need You’, ‘Change To Come’, ‘I Am The River’ and ‘Fallen Angel’ from the Change To Come album.  And from the Heart Like A Song album, my favorites are, ‘In The Silence’, ‘You Are What You Believe’, ‘Hands Of The Artist’ and ‘All That I Am’. You can tell by just the titles how I had shifted focus and had finally grounded myself in more meaningful songs that brought in a brand new audience.

After those two albums. I continued expanding to world beat grooves with the Shambhala Dance album, which won best dance/dub/club album of the year (New Age Reporter finalist 2005 Lifestyle music award!). ‘Atlantis’, the first cut on the album, got great reviews and lots of airplay, even today it’s still being played. It’s been called “a meditation through movement”, and, “an exotic voyage of mysterious flamenco, Asian and middle eastern melodies, full of powerful world beat grooves beautifully blended together to create an atmosphere of intense, vital emotions both sensual and meditative at the same time” (Wind and Wire magazine, April 2005, Bill Binkelman).

I continued exploring different styles with a meditation album, Heaven And Earth, which is a continuous 50 minute meditation. I got and still get a lot of plays in the yoga studios and meditation classes with this one and the Shambhala Dance album. But you can see how my shift to more metaphysical and spiritual music has carried me into these different, but related styles. I even composed a musical rendition of the ancient, venerated prayer, ‘The Great Invocation’, given to humanity by ascended Tibetan master Djwhal Khul. I have shifted styles as I matured and explored a more expanded and deeper understanding of what I wanted to express musically.  

MW : How are you using social media to stream / promote your music on platforms such as Spotify, iTunes etc?.  

BM : It’s great! You can see all of the albums and singles I’ve done on Spotify, iTunes, and the other streaming services right away. So can all the other artists who put content out there. Everyone had to switch to streaming for the great international exposure. There’s nothing like it!  

MW : Two of your early records were banned. Did you set out to challenge the mainstream with titles  ‘It’s All Rite To F*ck All Nite…’ and  ‘Give Your Dick To Me’?  

BM : I was never really “banned”. What happened is that I produced the first 12” dance single version of  ‘It’s All Rite’, and took it to all the record labels, which were mostly all in New York at the time. Everyone absolutely loved the record! Everyone absolutely wanted a few copies for themselves and their friends. But nobody had the balls to put it out into the market!!!! They were all afraid of repercussions, censorship, and their reputations! So I decided that I would put it out myself, something nobody had done at the time! I thought the record needed to be heard. I found a pressing plant in New Jersey, who were fine with pressing it up, then I went to an art store and got some “press type” and designed my own album cover. I got a friend of mine to take a picture of me, and voila! I had an album ready to go. I had no monies to promote the record, only just enough to record it and press it up. I figured that if I could get it heard by some people, maybe I could get some interest in it and maybe sell a few copies.

At that time, in New York and across the whole country, there were record pools, which were organizations of DJ’s who played the music in the dance clubs. I sent a 12” record (CD’s hadn’t been invented yet) to a list of record pools around the country, and to my surprise, I got a great response. Everyone wanted a copy to play. It was a salsa dance groove, something kinda new for mainstream clubs at the time, but the song was funny and danceable so everyone liked it and wanted to hear it. This was a time when you couldn’t get any airplay without a record label behind you. It was payola all the way. But what I could get was club play, and these DJ’s kept asking me for more and more records. And now people were asking the DJ’s where they could buy the record. So I had to get a distributor to put the records into record stores.

By this time, the record was being played in most all the clubs in the United States, but with no place to buy it.  My first thought was to go to Sam Goody, one of the biggest record stores in New York at the time, and see if they would sell the record. They said yes, showing me a copy of some dance/club charts they had in the store that said that the record was #1 on the charts!!!!! I had no idea about these separate dance/club listings and was really excited that it was already charting. But there were about five dance charts around at this time, and ‘It’s All Rite’ was #1 on all of them! It stayed #1 for about five or six months in a row! It was a sensation! This started in about May of 1978, or 1979, I think, and ran thru September. Sam Goody gave me the very hard to get whole window display of my record, so did Colony records, another big record store in New York City at the time, and the rest is history! Other record stores followed.  

Soon I realized that I needed a bigger distributor, so I contacted several in all the sections of the US, like the South, the Midwest, North Central, East Coast, West Coast, etc. They kept asking me for more and more records. I couldn’t figure out where the records were going. So one day I called my local one stop guy in Long Island City, and he said they were all going overseas. I asked where overseas, and he said, “Everywhere! Especially Holland.” Apparently, 12 miles off the coast of Holland was a ship that had a radio station broadcasting from it, and they could play anything that they wanted. My record was the number one request! Nobody could do anything about it to stop them, because they were in international waters. 12 miles out!!!

Since this was my first big hit, I was inexperienced as to what I needed to do next. It wasn’t too much later, about December of that year, I got a call from WEA International in Holland (Warner Brothers, Electra & Atlantic records all together) who said they wanted to license my record. It sounded great to me, so I took the deal. They published it in Europe, South America, England, Japan, Asia, etc. and promoted it in all the clubs. And I finally got legitimate airplay on it, because on the “B” side I had recorded the “clean” version, called ‘It’s All Rite To Truck All Nite’. Lots and lots of airplay everywhere! Finally!  

It became #16 on the Billboard pop charts in the Benelux countries, and #2 on the charts in Paris, Michael Jackson being #1 at the time. WEA asked me for another single to put out, and I gave them, ‘Give Your Dick To Me’, and that was also very successful. I did the same thing with the “clean” “B” side, ‘Give Your Flesh To Me’.    

So the bottom line is that if you have a record that everyone wants to hear, nothing will stop it from being heard. The people decided they wanted to hear ‘It’s All Rite’, and it squeezed itself through the cracks to be a big hit.  Also, it started a new trend in music of what could be heard and played. Several DJ’s told me that I had really done something BIG with that song. They said it changed the music business forever! It opened the door for new things to come into the market, and then the people could judge for themselves whether they liked it.    

Now getting back to your original question about being censored/banned, I really didn’t have any criticism for doing the record. People just wanted to get a copy of it and enjoy it. And I didn’t set out to “challenge” the system. I was simply expressing my views on what people were really thinking, and I did it via a danceable, funny, comedy record. I was just having fun!

Now, a lot of people took it seriously, literally, and that’s ok. Everyone has their own interpretation of things. That is what Art is for. To make people think. And that is what, ‘It’s All Rite’, did. It made people think, laugh, dance, party, and feel good! Remember, this was a time when Lenny Bruce had set a new standard, Joan Rivers was on the scene, along with Richard Pryor, George Carlin, etc. By the time I came along I took it all for granted that I would be able to put this record out. I wrote it when I was 19 years old and still in college, so that’s what you write when you’re that age. I didn’t care at all what people would think about me or this song!    

Nobody I was aware of wrote anything negative about this “outrageous” song.  One of the many reviews I got for my act (when I was performing all my funny songs with piano & voice around town in the late 1970s) was from Michael’s Thing, an LGBT magazine, New York City’s #1 weekly entertainment magazine and “going out guide” with reviews, comics, of all the performances, Art in the city, new and noteworthy etc. which said about my act, “…...she (Barbara) makes you laugh while she stabs you in the back!”  I got nothing but praise for putting this song out! The LGBT community loved what I had done and fully supported me, along with great reviews from the Village Voice, and a nice write up from Billboard magazine by Roman Kozak. I also played at Huey’s Bar, a gay men’s bar, on Hudson street (west side of New York city near the Hudson river) for several months, through that whole summer, just piano and voice. It was a big hit!  

MW : Tell me about your involvement with Carly Simon’s Coming Around Again album?  

BM : I was doing synthesizer programming for a few of the songs on the album. The arranger I was working with was doing some arrangements for her new album, and I got to do some of the synth programming. It was lots of fun to be involved and to go to the recording sessions.    

MW :  …and the Michael Jackson (BAD) video…. also include any thoughts on Jackson’s charisma, ability (song & dance)….  

BM : I never got to meet Michael Jackson, but I did get to meet Martin Scorsese who was really really interesting! He was asked to produce the video for the song. He came up to the office one day to discuss what kind of extra scored music was needed for the BAD video, music before the song started, and after the song was through. He was very intense, a real thinking kind of guy, and someone who knew what he wanted. He also has a great sense of humor! He impressed me as someone who really knows people. Meeting Scorcese was actually more exciting for me than meeting Jackson as he’s a real character!!! A mature adult!  

MW : You’ve worked with Bruce Willis as a backing singer. Tell me about those times … also include your views on his abilities as an actor turned singer…  

BM : Bruce Willis is a really great actor, and can play almost any part. That includes as a blues singer. The show we did was as his backup singers (along with two friends of mine) for the opening of the new Hard Rock Café in Austin, Texas. It was a very long day, full of rehearsals on stage with the band, and waiting for Bruce to arrive. As we tested mikes and stage positions, we could see a huge crowd starting to form in order to get a good view of the coming show. The press was there, and reported close to 100,000 people waiting to see this opening.

Bruce eventually got there, extremely exhausted. By the time the show started it was dark out, and everyone was excited. Then came the big moment when Bruce Willis came on stage, and everyone went wild! The band started to play and he started to sing. I was shocked by how well he could sing, and put over a song. It was a real “performance”.

He may not have all the technique of a “professional” singer, but what he has is better. He can make you get into the song, feel the song, …it’s not really the voice but the performance that’s spectacular. So close up to me. I could really see why he’s considered one of the great actors of our time. Acting, singing and performing are all connected. And he puts it all together beautifully.    

MW : Describe a typical weekend….before lockdown and during…

BM : Well, I used to love to go to the ocean and watch the sunset a lot, then meet my friends for dinner in one of the great restaurants by the beach or in town. Before lockdown there were great movies to see, not just at home (these days) but at the real movie houses. Plenty of them around in the “old” days. During lockdown everyone has to stream movies at home. At least streaming is safe!  

I also used to like to work out at the gym, but you can’t do that yet, so I’m hoping that sometime in the near future that will become viable again. Sometimes it’s fun just to take a ride up pacific coast highway and breathe in the sea air and see the beautiful scenery. You can still always do that.

There are lots of farmers markets around town, so I always go on the weekends to shop for fresh, whole, organic fruits and veggies! That’s always fun, and sometimes I go with my friends too.

Eating good, fresh, organic foods is my entire “Health Plan”!  You are what you eat! So far, so good!  And I can do this all year long. And during this lockdown, we just all wear masks. It’s fun being at the farmers markets and seeing all the chefs from all the great restaurants in town shopping for their weekly recipes with those big shopping carts they push thru the market. They buy whole boxes of produce and everything else sold there.  

MW : What is your favourite…Carly Simon single?

BM : I think that would be  ‘Mockingbird’, especially the 2015 remaster. James Taylor sounds great on this, and the two of them together just fit together perfectly. This remaster is from Songs From The Trees (a musical memoir collection). I’m glad they did this, because this is a classic! You can hear all the instruments clearly, the voices are very present, and the whole thing is a pleasure to listen to. Musical tastes change, but the classics will remain with us from “gentler” times.  

MW : AND your favourite… Bruce Willis film?

BM :  (I can’t choose just one!)

The Whole Nine Yards : hysterically funny!!! I laugh every time. The Fifth Element is a real classic! I see it again every time it’s on TV. Bruce Willis is fantastic in that “deadpan” character he plays. And the score by French composer Eric Serra is superb. Hip, powerful, rhythmic, smooth, jagged, everything needed to match the screen scene.

But the music stands alone if you just listen to the score by itself without the movie. I think they sold a lot of the music score. The Sixth Sense -  so powerful, and metaphysical! It’s right up my alley! And Bruce Willis has a knack for finding well written screenplays! That’s a big key to the success of the movies he’s in.

And since they’re so well written, he has an opportunity to really show off his talent and get into those great parts.    

MW : AND your favourite… Michael Jackson album?

BM : I think I like the Thriller album the best. I love the songs, especially, ‘Beat It’, ‘Thriller’, and ‘Human Nature’. And it was so well produced by Quincy Jones, with pounding gritty grooves, and great songs.

MW : List, in order of preference, your Top 10 singles & albums of all-time…

BM : (I have the original CD’s of this music, and still call them CD’s, but I’m sure this music is all streaming/downloads by now!)

1. Famous Blue Raincoat: songs by Leonard Cohen, studio album by singer Jennifer Warnes: exquisite, perfect singing of songs with her crystal clear voice! What a superb collaboration this was! I wish they had made more albums together like this one! A true classic! When I first heard it I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! Songs so well written, songs with a real message, and so well sung and produced.    

2. I also love Leonard Cohen’s, ‘Hallelujah’, sung by anyone! It gives me chills every time! Powerful and hauntingly beautiful! The best cover of it that I love is K.D. Lang’s version. (I think it was on her album, Hymns Of The 49th Parallel, 2004).  

3. Bach: Sonatas & Partitas: violinist: Itzhak Perlman: The sub-title of this 2 CD set put out by EMI classics says it all: “Great Recordings of the Century”, which is aptly titled!!! I can listen to this album at any time, and it will put me into a deep trance. I can’t stop listening.

Itzhak Perlman is an absolute master of the violin, and these solo compositions are not only some of Bach’s finest works, but Perlman’s rendition of them is flawless. He understands what the composer was trying to accomplish, and every time I listen to this it feels like he is showing us the true soul of humanity! The longing, the passion, the “reaching to the Light”! The thing about this kind of classical music is its very high vibration! I think it does make you smarter!

4. Then we have Jorge Aragao and his live album entitled Ao Vivo (which means “live”). Another album I have listened to for years. He’s a Brazilian singer/songwriter, and the songs are all sung in Brazilian Portuguese. But don’t let that stop you from listening. It’s exciting, passionate and very well recorded. It has the whole flavor of Brazil in it! Recorded in 1999.

The last song is a great rendition of ‘Ave Maria’. A true classic! (I took a great vacation to Brazil for a month once in the mid-2000s and this album is the real deal! The Brazilians absolutely Love him!)  

5. Edith Piaf: 30e Anniversaire 2 cd set (probably on all the streaming services by now). All the songs are beautifully recorded, written, produced and her voice is extraordinary and present. It gives you the whole culture and passion of the French. It always puts me at a French café with friends and great great food! If you’ve never heard Edith Piaf, it’s well worth a listen.

There was a wonderful movie on her life called La Vie en Rose which I also recommend to get the whole feeling of this music. And I listen to this music often, especially when I’m feeling like there’s no culture west of New York City! She saves the day every time!    

6. John Lennon: Imagine: I think everyone knows this is a classic! It’s a positive message!  

7. The Eagles: Hotel California the whole album, but especially the title song, ‘Hotel California’: It never gets old!    

8. Bach: English Suites performed by pianist Andras Schiff: he’s a Bach specialist, and has a great insight into what Bach intended with this great recording: Part of my regular listening.    

9. Buena Vista Social Club: it really gives you the heart and soul of Cuba. I think the reason this album was such a hit when it was first put out is the huge amount of heart, passion, and honesty it evokes. You can feel it’s the real deal. Nothing fake here!  

10. And last but not least, two albums that were put out by Putumayo a while back, called Brasileiro and Samba Bossa Nova. They are compilations of several Brazilian artists and styles, including bossa nova, folk, light samba, and I think some other styles too, beautifully put together. They are calming, gentle, rhythmic and haunting, and a great way to wake up in the morning. So many positive vibes! So musical and unpretentious!

MW : Where / what was the best meal you’ve ever enjoyed and what was the company like?

BM : Well, all I can remember is that it was in a Paris restaurant, and I was taken there by a record company executive to discuss publishing my music through a Paris company. I remember she told me that the closer you get to Paris from anywhere in the world, the better the food gets!!!

And I wasn’t disappointed!

The meal was some kind of spectacular steak, mousse au chocolate for desert, and fine red wine throughout the meal. Cheeses for dessert! (that was more dessert after the dessert!) And it was the atmosphere and vibe, not just of the restaurant, but of Paris, and the French people and their culture that I found so fabulous! I love the French and they loved me back!!!!  

MW : What can we anticipate coming from you later on in 2021?

BM : I’m currently thinking about something along the lines of my previous Shambhala Dance and Heaven And Earth albums. Worldbeat and with a sleek groove.

It takes time to compose something like that.

It will be announced on my website when it’s done. www.barbaramarkay.com  and I will put it out on the streaming services / downloads as usual.    

(c) Mark Watkins / May 2021

[francescoliettihongkong]

The Colorful World of Francesco Lietti

Defined by a creative style that’s rhythmic, patterned and high-contrast, Francesco Lietti is both a visionary and an idealist. His works are rendered in bold and highly saturated hues that capture the imagination in an instant. Lietti recalls his arrival in Asia as a fascinating moment filled with vibrancy, energy, and beauty of its people, landscapes, and cityscapes.

He encapsulates all senses in his painting allowing the experiences and adventures to be immortalized. Inspired by travel and discovery, he brings his views onto the canvas. Lietti immerses himself into the process through different in-depth stages of elements, layers and colors. His works are featured in private collections worldwide and his exhibition at the Taipa-Houses Museum provides a glimpse to a life akin to a kaleidoscope.

📷

Tell us about your journey from architecture to art.

I’m an architect and I studied in Milan. I also expanded my studies in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts, La Seine, and also at the Clerkenwell College of Printing in London where I worked. I came to Hong Kong in 2006 and worked in an architectural firm for a few years. I’ve always painted since childhood and then on the side here, I’ve started doing residencies with schools. I do collaborative painting with educational institutions and it expanded to that, it usually lasts for a week and it’s been a meaningful venture for me. I am based here now and I saw an opportunity on this line of work and I am now a full-time artist (smiles).

How did you end up working in Macau?

The Italian Consulate is very generous with me. In this case, the consulate consulted with me and I thought it’s a great opportunity. I created a few new pieces for Art Macao and exhibited a few I’ve made already. I have a lot of paintings that were inspired by travels in Asia; some of the paintings are about Shanghai, India, Singapore and discovering destinations. I added a little bit of Hong Kong and a tribute to Macau, of course.

What do you think about Macau’s art scene?

I honestly don’t know much about it but I know it’s flourishing. I would definitely love to explore more. I also did a show in Sheraton Grand Macao Hotel a few years ago in cooperation with the Italian Consulate. They put a few pieces up for auction for charity and that was quite a remarkable event.

Have you explored Macau? What did you think about it?

I went to museums and explored amazing works of art. I go there at least once a year and visit Fernando of course. I have had many opportunities to explore Macau and Taipa and I love taking my time to just walk around.

What do you think about Macau architecture?

I like the sense of nostalgia. I like the old streets and the feeling of a historical setting. It’s reminiscent of old Portugal. I quite like the Grand Lisboa and Zaha Hadid’s Morpheus at City of Dreams.

How would you describe your art?

It’s abstract, naive, landscape and urban vision. But, I am becoming more realistic more recently and less abstract.

Who buys your artwork?

Mostly expats who want to bring back memories of Hong Kong to their home. I also get travelers who long for memories of places. I work on original paintings and I can be commissioned for specific pieces. All my works are one of a kind!

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How long do you take to finish a work of art?

It varies depending on the pieces, brief, size and other factors. If it’s less complex, I would be able to do two to three artworks in a month.

Tell us about your work of art in Macau.

It’s a little bit about the city as a whole. Macau spaces are not as dense as Hong Kong. I feature my favorite buildings while also combining the contrast of old Macau and modern casinos and hotels. I was trying to find an image in my mind based on my principles and eventually, I painted according to my experience. There are a lot of elements like the plazas, old houses and views from a certain distance that will hopefully enthrall spectators.

What is the goal of your artwork?

First of all, I tell the stories for myself and return to the memory and feeling that I truly enjoy. When I find people who share the same sentiments as I do, of course that’s even more gratifying. If you can see your story in my painting that’s what an artist aims to capture. I have created 344 artworks since I arrived in Hong Kong and my aim is to keep every piece unique in a certain way.

Is there any place you want to go to capture a place?

I particularly love Busan in South Korea but I would love to go somewhere in South America. Of course, India fascinates me very much.

Colors of Asia: Painting by Francesco Lietti is available on Amazon. The book is inspired by Francesco’s jaunts in Asia while creating a visual story of people, landscapes, and cityscapes. The book is priced at HKD $295.

Source URL: https://cutt.ly/Yv86qFT

[funknrolll]

Celebrating Prince: discovering a timeless artist and his meaningful and impactful art. Part 2. The early 1990s: Diamonds and Pearls, and Love Symbol eras

Hi music lovers, as I anticipated yesterday, this music addiction is going to celebrate Prince and his amazing and timeless work!! The article will be split into a few little articles. I hope you enjoy this new format and these articles!!

As I said yesterday, let me say that I have heard so many things about Prince’s artistry. Some comments came from uneducated people who did not even take a second of their lives to understand, and do research on his art. Hence, I think the time to shed some light on Prince’s art, has come (finally). I hope to help some of those people understand this artist better and to finally appreciate him the way he deserves. We owe Prince big time. Today’s music and musicians  owe Prince everything. Without him, many of the artists we listen to today, WOULD NOT BE EXISTING. As we all know, Prince loved to experiment with music, trying out new music genres, new styles, new harmonies, melodies, rhythms and so on. This is one of the factors that led this legend to create a unique, wide and broad vault. There are so many songs of his that I love so much and that I find relevant for this article. The ones I chose, are going to prove that Prince and his music did not just revolve around sex and sexuality, (even if the artist through his music took the topic to another whole level). Through the article, we will see that Prince was more than all that I mentioned above. He was an extraordinary human being, blessed with so many enormous talents, with a beautiful mind, a uniquely pure soul. A true gift of God. With this in mind, let us start this article.

This is the sequel of the article I posted yesterday, so in case you guys missed it, check the previous one out✨

One year after Graffiti Bridge, Prince released Diamonds and Pearls. On this album, I picked 3 relevant songs to prove my case study. These gems are: Walk Don’t Walk, Money Don’t Matter 2Night, Push.  Walk Don’t walk is perhaps my favorite song in Prince’s entire vault. Back in 1999 during the interview with Larry King for Cnn Prince was asked to describe his music, and he provided an extremely insightful, wise and interesting answer that depicted perfectly the purpose and meaning of his music. Prince: “The only thing I could think of, ‘cause I really don’t like categories… but the only thing I could think of is inspirational”. In my opinion, he could not have chosen a better word to describe his art, and this song is indeed the epitome of motivation. Personally, I remember this was one of the first songs of Prince I discovered, and I instantly loved it! Through the metaphor of walking the way the artist gave us such an important and inspiring lesson that is to say that we should always walk our paths, no matter what. Even if everyone is choosing a different way, we to stay true to ourselves, and therefore be unique. Even if people try to put us down or to persuade to change ourselves, we should always keep going because:

“The sun will shine upon you one day, 

If you’re always walking your way”

Indeed, good things will happen someday, if we keep walking our ways without looking back. Moreover, another interpretation that might be given to these lyrics is that even if society dictates its rules, we have to keep walking our ways and stay true to ourselves. Even if everyone tells us no or that we are not going to make it. Additionally, another lesson that lays behind these lyrics is to be brave enough to go out of our comfort zone, be bold and not to look for the easiest way. In fact:

“Walk on their side of the street Don't walk where it feels the best “

To conclude, as I said previously, the fulcrum of this song is to be unique, stay true to ourselves, and to get out of our comfort zone even people or society tells and dictates otherwise. Only by being ourselves the sun will shine upon us one day.  Moreover, one of the recurring themes in this song is the act of walking which might be related strictly to the peculiar arrangement. In my opinion, there might be two methods of interpretation. Besides the beautiful message this song is delivering, the arrangement is an extremely important part. As we can hear the leading instruments in this masterpiece are the keyboard and the drums. The keyboard arrangement is characterized by ascending chords and it might be used to enhance the meaning of the song. As we know Prince was a perfectionist and he surely left nothing to chance. Therefore, in my opinion, the arrangement for the keyboard might be used to help the listener visualize a long difficult walk that eventually is leading to a beautiful destination. This is just my interpretation of this song and I might be wrong, but I love to see it this way. Moreover, through the unique environmental sounds such as the honks of the cars in the street, the song gains even more plenitude and eventually the idea of a real walk. I really love how Perfectionist Prince was. The way he crafted music is something so special from the way he wrote the lyrics, to the arrangements and the compositions and the performance. He was a virtuoso, a real maestro in what he did. Another song that got straight to my heart is Money Don’t Matter 2Night. Another meaningful song. The lyrics of this masterpiece are pretty self-explanatory and eloquent. Indeed with this monumental piece of art the artist is delivering an urgent and poignant message: in today’s world we got to a point where people would do anything for money included send children to war and kill our beautiful. Through the painful yet beautiful lyrics and the arrangement the artist is giving an impressive, powerful and emotional depiction of the ugly effects that money and greed could do to people.  On the other hand, through the choruses, the artist expresses his point of view about money which is that we should care more  about being decent people, with values and love to give before we think and care about money. In Prince’s words:

“Money don't matter tonight (don't matter) It sure didn't matter yesterday Just when you think you've got more than enough That's when it all up and flies away That's when you find out that you're better off Makin' sure your soul's alright (soul's alright) 'Cause money didn't matter yesterday, (don't matter) And it sure don't matter tonight”.  

Furthermore, what impressed me the most is the last part. Indeed, with extremely vivid lyric makes it easy to visualize the images Prince is depicting in this song. For instance, in the following part, the artist is portraying some sad and painful situations where money and greed are contributing to kill our beautiful earth, our children, our environment:

“Hey now, maybe we can find a good reason To send a child off to war So what if we're controllin' all the oil, Is it worth a child dying for? (is it worth it?) If long life is what we all live for Then long life will come to pass Anything is better than the picture of the child In a cloud of gas And you think you got it bad”

This is another powerful example of how a timeless masterpiece can be applied to our world today as we live in a situation where money and greed are ruling people’s hearts and minds. We live in a world without compassion, where we would do anything for money. We live in a corrupted society. We live in a world where we would even kill our children and our environment for greed. Everything for money. Hence, I strongly believe that this powerful song applies perfectly to the world today. Prince was highly educated and extremely “woke” and he knew all the dirt and all the sorceries that were happening on this earth, and through his music, in particular, with this song, he was trying to educate people on this significant topic. Furthermore, as we can hear, this song is totally different from all the other ones on the album. Indeed, it is a blues song and it sticks extremely well with its lyrics. 

Among the songs on this album, Push is my third favorite one. With this song, Prince goes back to his signature funk and r&b sounds that we all love so much. This is perhaps one of the most motivating songs in Prince’s vault. Indeed, with these straightforward lyrics genius himself is teaching we should do whatever we can to reach our goals. There will always be people who try to put us down, but we must do whatever we can to reach the top. We are never too young and never too old to push ourselves to the max without stopping until we reach our goals. This song is a huge source of motivation.

well, every time you get some (Push) people want to take it back (p-push) They rather see you on the run (push) Then see you get it like that (Every time) every time they stop you Change up like a sock (push) Every time they try to clock you (push), tick more than they can tockOoh, push (I push) don't let them pull you down Push (I push) until you get to higher ground (higher) Push You're never too young, never too old Yeah, push Don't stop until you go 

 In 1992, Prince released LoveSymbol where the Symbol made its first appearance ever. One of the most enigmatic songs on the album is 7. It took me some time and some research to understand the meaning of this masterpiece, and it turned out that the artist crafted another deep and meaningful piece of art. As regards to this masterpiece, I would say that it is drenched with symbolism. Some believe that the meaning of this song is to be found in the number 7 or the number of God, that symbolizes spirituality and divine power. On the other hand, some other people believe that the number 7 is connected to the 7 capital sins. Personally, I would agree with the second theory as in the lyrics Prince says clearly that he would have “let all the 7 fall”, and then “Smoke them all”. 

Moreover, the whole lyric gives hints about the fact that the number 7 is related to the 7 capital sins. Indeed, if we take an attentive look at the words of this song, we will find many symbolisms, even from the first chorus with which the song begins. Indeed, starting with the chorus: 

All seven and we'll watch them fall They stanwd in the way of love And we will smoke them all With an intellect and a savior-faire No one in the whole universe Will ever compare 

The number 7 is related to something evil that is standing in the way of something purer which is love. Moreover, as Prince was extremely spiritual and God-loving, I would assume that the gesture of smoking all the 7 might be related to an act of purification most likely when we purify our homes from the evil. In this case, Prince is suggesting that by smoking the 7 deadly sins, he is also doing an act of self-cleansing of his soul from the evil. Eventually, according to the artist, what will defeat all the 7 sins will be his intelligence and his savoir-faire.  Regarding the kind of love the artist is talking about, it is the love between two soul mates, which is the ultimate love that transcends space and time, that cannot be compared to anything. A love that will eventually defeat all the 7 sins.

No one in the whole universe Will ever compare I am yours now and you are mine And together we'll love through All space and time, so don't cry One day all 7 will die 

Furthermore, as I mentioned, this song is drenched with symbolic metaphors taken from the Bible, and in some other cases, the lyrics hint to Jesus Christ and the Gospel.  

And I saw an angel come down unto me In her hand she holds the very key Words of compassion, words of peace And in the distance an army's marching feet (one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four) But behold, we will watch them fall 

Indeed, as we can see from these 5 lines, Prince might be referring to Jesus. In fact, the key mentioned in the lyrics might be a metaphor referring to the belief in Jesus which leads to the practice of compassion and peace. Moreover, the army Prince is referring to, might be the external world corrupted by the 7 sins. 

And we will see a plague and a river of blood And every evil soul will surely die in spite of And seven tears, but do not fear Four in the distance, twelve souls from now You and me will still be here we will still be here 

With “a plague and a river of blood”, the artist is referring to the prophecy in the book of Revelation. Specifically, he is talking about the second plague in the book which is, as the song suggests, the blood in the rivers and in the oceans. But eventually, love will rise above, and evil will die.

Revelation 16:3,4 "And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea, and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea.  And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters, and they became blood. " 

There will be a new city with streets of gold The young so educated they never grow old And a, there will be no death four with every breath A voice of many colors sings a song, That's so bold Sing it while we watch them fall 

These are the last 6 lines of the song and they could have a double interpretation. After all the evil and the 7 sins will be defeated, those who will have chosen love over evil will be entering the “city with streets of gold”. With this, the artist might be either inferring to the old city of Jerusalem or to the Kingdom of Heaven as we can see in the book of Revelation. 

Revelation 21, 21“The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass.”

I would agree with the second theory, as in the second line Prince is mentioning people who never grow old. Moreover, in the third line, the artist is mentioning the fact that there will be no death. In the fourth line is mentioning a voice of many colors singing which might be inferring to humanity and hence, people of every race and every color and gender. Moreover, in this song Prince is introducing the concept of twin souls. For those who do not know, two twin souls are two souls united as one in spirit which is practically a spiritual union. This is, therefore, an exclusive relationship based on love and faithfulness.  Indeed, as we can see in the lyrics Prince is inferring to this concept in the chorus:

I am yours now and you are mine And together we'll love through all Space and time, so don't cry One day all seven will die 

Also, in the video, it is quite clear the concept of Twin souls. As a matter of fact, we can see Prince and his wife Mayte dancing together and other couples dressed like the artist and his wife. 

Another song on this album that I find particularly relevant is the Sacrifice of Victor. As we all know, Prince used music to deal with everything that was happening in his life. Also, he used music as a way to communicate with people. Through some painfully straightforward almost raw lyrics the artist gives us some insight into his childhood and his teenage years.

I was born on a blood-stained table Cord wrapped around my neck Epileptic 'til the age of 7 I was sure heaven marked the deck know joy lives 'round the corner {joy for sale down on the corner} (we sacrifice) One day I'll visit her I'm gonna {out on my block I'm just a loner} (we sacrifice) When she tell me everything {tell me} That's when the angels sing {sacrifice} That's when the victory is sho 'Nuff {sho 'Nuff down with the sacrifice} (we sacrifice) (help me) (don't say it, preacher) 

As a matter of fact, as we can see in these lines, Prince is telling about how he was born and about his epilepsy and how he saw an angel telling him that he would have no longer suffered from epilepsy. Indeed, in 2009 in an interview with Tevin Smiley Prince revealed how he suffered from this disease during his childhood. 

Mama held up her baby for protection From a man with a strap in his hand Ask the victor 'bout pain and rejection You think he don't when he do understand 

 Furthermore, as we can see from these lines, Prince is mentioning the fact that he was abused when he was a child. 

1967 in a bus marked public schools Rode me and a group of unsuspecting political tools Our parents wondered what it was like to have another color near So they put their babies together to eliminate the fear We sacrifice yes we did Fighting one another, (we sacrifice) (don't say it, preacher) All because of color The angel of hate, she taught me how to kick her If she called me anything but victor  If the only thing that tells me is father time Then sacrifice is the mother sublime, we love it 

Moreover, in this song Prince is also giving an insight into what it was like to be living as a black child in America. The image depicted is extremely striking for it is real and sad as people were still extremely racist during that time. 

Never understood my old friends laughing They got high when everything else got wrong (pass the booze up here) Dr. King was killed and the streets They started burnin' When the smoke was cleared, their high was gone Education got important, so important 2 victor A little more important than ripple and weed Bernadette's a lady, and she told me (what she say?) "Whatever you do son, a little discipline is what you need, Is what you need, you need to sacrifice" 

 These lines are quite clear and self-explanatory. As a matter of fact, Prince is mentioning his teenage years with his friends. In the last 5 lines, the artist is explaining the importance of getting an education instead of getting high on weed. This part is introducing extremely well the last 3 lines where the artist is perhaps referring to Bernadette Anderson, Andrè’s mother who allowed him to stay at her home and who advised Prince to get his high school degree before focusing only on music.  Moreover, the Sacrifice Prince is talking about in this song might perhaps also symbolize the hard work he had to do to reach his goals instead of wasting time on mundane joys, favoring metaphysical, divine happiness over earth pleasures. Another interpretation of the word Sacrifice might be Prince's own struggle from a middle-class black child from a broken family to superstardom. On a broader scale the long, hard struggle Black people had to go through in the USA to gain their civil rights, at the cost of riots, police beatings and MLK's death (MLK is indeed a  symbol of sacrifice to a cause because his activism led to his death). Furthermore, musically speaking, thinking about the lyrics and the topic this song is dealing with, I personally would have expected a different genre and a different arrangement for this song. This is where Prince with his ingenious and brilliant mind came to surprise us all. Contrary to the expectations, the artist decided to craft a brilliant funk song with two different major drum lines. The contrast between the topic of the song and the alluring arrangement is so beautiful and it entices the public to listen attentively to this masterpiece. In my opinion, if Prince had opted for a more melodic arrangement characterized by a down-tempo, perhaps the public would not have appreciated the song fully, and therefore it would not have had the same impact.

This was the second part of a series of articles dedicated to Prince to celebrate his life and most importantly his art. Stay tuned for more. If you have missed the first part feel free to check it out✨ In the meantime stay home, stay safe and healthy. Peace and Love 4 one another. G💜 thank you for your attention 💜

[landeg]

31 Days of Apex: A Retrospection

I participated in the incredible #31DaysOfApex challenge hosted on Twitter, where fans created new content for every day of July based on a one-word prompt. I’ve signed up for/started lots of similar challenges in the past but always ended up having to drop out or trail off before the end... but this time, I managed to complete something for every day of the challenge!

My only goal was to make something by each day’s deadline, and it was a really interesting exercise both in technical skill and also in my management of not only my time, but my expectations and energy. Below, I go into more detail behind each piece.

To preface; the beginning of this challenge coincided with the beginning of a new personal time-management exercise where, for 5/7 days a week, I would only go on the computer at night. Combined with the deadline, this had an interesting effect on my time management and the quality of certain pieces.

Day 1 - Memory

From the start, I wanted to use the challenge as an opportunity to do more studies and to push myself wherever possible. This was the first piece I did and I had more time to work on it, so I used it as a digital painting study. I still think it’s a strong piece and it’s probably my favourite of the month. Symbolically, this character’s backstory doesn’t match up with her own memories, so the idea is she’s missing information she can’t quite place or remember, and this both scares and comforts her.

Day 2 - Blood

Another digital painting and lighting study that didn’t work out as well as the first, mostly due to time constraints meaning I couldn’t scrap it and start again. While I don’t like how it turned out, I did learn a lot. The character on the right is a field medic, and my intent was to show the calm after a successful rescue.

Day 3 - Mercy

Some days I relied more on the humour of a piece’s concept than the skill of its execution, though I also liked how this piece turned out artistically. After two days of intense studies, though, this was very quick and easy for me to turn out as it relied on existing skills.

Day 4 - Prize

This one thankfully came together very quickly, which I credit to the two previous painting studies making it much easier to achieve what I wanted. The character is searching for the disembodied head of the man who killed her parents, who is now acting as a robot, hence the vaguely half-machine-half-human silhouette in her hand.

Day 5 - Family

Another quick, simple illustration under a time crunch. The character framed by the nameless foreground figures has no memory of herself or her family.

Day 6 - Noise

For some pieces where I was under a time crunch, I experimented in an opposite direction; instead of studies, I played loosely with different techniques/brushes/etc to see what came out. This was a lineless style I ended up employing a lot when short on time. The piece pictured here was just one of four alternate colourways, presented in a pop-art style. The character is almost always depicted with thick coverings over her ears, so I thought she might be sensitive to auditory overload. This particular piece was retweeted by the character’s voice actress!

Day 7 - Mask

More relying on humour for lack of time/a better idea. A fun experiment in colour, though.

Day 8 - Healing

Another technically “easy” piece but with a stronger concept. It was actually pretty hard to get the reflection & condensation elements balanced right. The character pictured has a narrative thread relating to an old ex he has trouble moving on from.

Day 9 - Weapon

While obviously another joke, and made to be finished quickly, it was surprisingly difficult to get the duct tape and knife to read clearly without over-cluttering the lineless image. This little ‘bot is a drone used by one of the playable characters to hack areas of the map; it’s not NORMALLY an offensive weapon. This image was promo’d in a video stream by the character’s voice actor!

Day 10 - Truth

I only had less than an hour to finish this one by the deadline, but I still tried to experiment with silhouette and colour. It was surprisingly hard to get the interior silhouette to be legible. The outer silhouette is a playable character (not easily readible unless you’re familiar with his design) and the inner silhouette is his sister, whose disappearance he is trying to investigate.

Day 11 - Shield

A fun, self-indulgent one. Had a blast simplifying the game’s characters down into little caricatures. The character in the centre has abilities related to shields and protection, so many other people were drawing him for the prompt; I wanted to try and flip it, so I picked other characters he would be friendly with, and picked a non-lethal, lighthearted setting.

Day 12 - Ruins

Short on time so did a quick lighting study. A recent game plot has changed one of the areas of the map, submerging it in water and leaving it to “ruin”.

Day 13 - Hero

Another painting study. Really didn’t like how this one turned out, but had to turn in something, and I did learn a lot in the process. If I’d had more time I probably would’ve scrapped it and started again. This characters had recently been revealed to have been manipulated by another character who used gas-based offenses, whom she admired.

Day 14 - Rest

I was going to be away from mt computer until after the deadline, so I decided to make a traditional piece. I ended up enjoying it so much I tried to take the time to do a few more traditional pieces later. This piece was sort of a comedy of errors; I had to do it while I was out, and the pen I had brought with me to ink my sketch ran out, so I had to make do with a blue ballpoint pen, and I was missing several colours of coloured pencil. I think the finished piece reflects how rushed it was, and it did’t meet my concept, but I do still like it.

Day 15 - Skull

Another quick one but I wanted to experiment with a different line style. Wanted a sort of “graffiti” effect. One of this character’s skins includes a skull-shaped mask.

Day 16 - Growth

Extremely quick play on words because I didn’t have the time to work on anything meaningful and couldn’t think of anything better!

Day 17 - Home

Another traditional piece, this time by choice and with more time. Markers. It looks extremely like some janky art school homework on 2 point perspective because it extremely is. Perspective and backgrounds are very difficult for me - they just don’t “click” - but I had a lot of fun with this one. I kept my mistakes intact because I didn’t want to edit it too much. A lot about the technical perspective is wrong, but I think I achieved the “mood” I wanted. This location is a bar owned by one of the player characters where many of the other characters are shown to meet.

Day 18 - Sky

Very happy with how this one turned out, even though there are still lots of problems. Markers again. There’s a lot I would fix next time, and I think technically it’s lacking, but there are some specific areas I feel happy to have achieved, such as the almost brushed texture of the curved metal above his shoulder and the values of the shadow/reflections on the underside of the head piece. I’m also happy with how I was able to draw from my shoulder rather than my wrist when inking the curved lines, something I struggle with.

Day 19 - Target

An experiment in pushing the lineless style I’d already been playing with for a stronger likeness. The pose and expression in this could both be pushed more but I like the result. This character had just learned that one of the other players, whom she had trusted, was actually sharing her secrets with her enemy, and she didn’t know which one it was.

Day 20 - Friendship

I had this one concepted from when I first looked over the prompts. It was a fun challenge trying to simplify all the elements into the lineless, blocky style while being legible. This character has a strained relationship with one of his friends, and finally pushed her too far with his selfishness, and she now no longer responds to him.

Day 21 - Scar

Quick joke. This character was introduced briefly as a red herring for another character before being killed off. He was stabbed through the chest by another character’s hand, hence the scar pattern.

Day 22 - Dream

I wasn’t sure about this one while I was making it but I ended up liking how it turned out. I wanted to capture the character’s robotic legs bent at an unnaturally straight 90 degrees, like a Barbie doll. The flat background and lighting make it feel like an indoor stage. The little “electric sheep” are inspired by iDogs.

Day 23 - Meal

After a few days of not having time to really spend on any piece, it was fun to get to spend time on concepting and composing this. I always admired these kinds of watercolour-like food illustrations and this is the first time I’ve had any success in creating one myself. I concepted and sketched out the individual items traditionally before working out the composition within the box digitally. Each food item/utensil is inspired by the different characters’ design elements. Only two of the now-current characters are excluded due to plot reasons. In particular, I like how one of the character’s dome-shaped shields acts as the base and cover of the box.

Day 24 - Hobby

Wasn’t a fan of how this one turned out. I think the likeness is a bit off, and his facial anatomy is skewed. But I also like how the general composition, tone, and bee turned out. This character’s concept art originally imagined them as a beekeeper who would use smoke to fight.

Day 25 - Fear

An incredibly rushed piece that I intended to go back in and add more detail to, similar to day 4, but I actually took a step back and decided I liked the blocky, flat-colour version. This character is the youngest of four, all of whom are MIA or worse, along with his father, and his mother is losing her memory. He’s talking to her through a handheld holographic device. This piece gained more traction, most likely thanks to the subject matter since this is a popular character.

Day 26 - Holiday

I didn’t want to do a religious holiday like Christmas or Easter. A lot of other people also interpreted the prompt as a vacation, but I had already done a sort of “beach vacation” piece for day 11, so I instead went for a “public holiday” and chose NYE/NYD. This was fairly quick but the lighting was an interesting experiment. I knew this one wouldn’t be as popular because it wasn’t as “flattering” but I personally really like it. The girl on the left is kind of goofy and completely un-self-conscious and I think it’s captured here.

Day 27 - Music

Really didn’t like how this one turned out. I don’t think the likeness is good at all, the lighting is poor, and the gold detailing feels lazy. But I liked other elements, such as the pose and the clothing.

Day 28 - Treasure

This is my least favourite of the entire month, but I also had the least time available to work on it before the deadline so I had no opportunity to scrap it and start over, which I sorely wanted to do. The likeness is terrible, but more than that the base anatomy is off, the pose is stiff, and the lighting/colours are cheap. I wish I could’ve done better by this character; but, I am glad I had something finished at all.

Day 29 - Skin

This was probably my third attempt at this picture and I’m still not happy with it, but again, I had to finish something. I almost considered scrapping the concept entirely and choosing something easier but ended up seeing it through. The concept itself is actually recycled from an older piece of mine for an entirely different fandom, because I didn’t think I did it justice then, either. Would still like to revisit this concept with this character and take more time.

Day 30 - Trust

After a few days of feeling really dissatisfied and uncomfortable with the art I’d been making, I finally more time to dedicate to a piece, and I’m overall happy with how this one turned out. I decided to go for a different medium entirely with pixel art, which also gave me the opportunity to try and animate it. I started off confident and then started to get worried towards the end, but all the elements came together when I added the portal colour effects. This is an alternate reality version of one of the player characters, who appears through a portal and allows that character to escape the facility she’s being kept in, encouraging them to trust the “voices” she hears which are actually versions of herself trying to help her. This piece was retweeted by the official Apex Legends Twitter account!

Day 31 - Freestyle

I had this planned out early in the challenge and I’m really, really happy with how it turned out. It’s probably tied with my favourite along with the very first piece (how fitting). I was worried about how I was going to capture the movement without over-complicating the lineart, having so many people in one image, etc. before I realised the focus was entirely on gesture, and then everything clicked. I went for a thicker brush, which forced me to conserve my lines, and tried to simplify each character down to the bare minimum needed to recognise them. They’re also all wearing new non-canonical outfits so I used their familiar colour schemes for the same purpose. It’s not perfect, but I love it, and it’s everything I’d hoped I’d be able to end the challenge on.

I really, really enjoyed the entire month and the way it tied in with my new time management schedule. It gave me some achievable short-term goals which added up to this long-term achievement I can now look back on; I learned a lot both about balancing my energy and about technical skills, I found ways to stay motivated, and most importantly I learned to not get caught up on the individual slip-ups and pieces I didn’t like as much and to instead focus on the bigger picture. Thank you to everyone involved in organising and supporting this event! I found so many other incredible fanartists, writers, and content creators through this challenge and I can’t wait to see the bonus content released over August!