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soundsfaebutokay · 3 years ago

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So I've recc'd this video before, but it deserves its own post because it's one of my favorite things on youtube. It's a Tedx Talk by comics writer, editor, and journalist Jay Edidin, and I really think that it will connect with a lot of people here.

If you live and breathe stories of all kinds, you might like this.

If you care about media representation, you might like this.

If you're neurodivergent, you might like this.

If you're interested in a gender transition story that veers from the norm, you might like this.

If you love the original Leverage and especially Parker, and understand how important it is that a character like her exists, you will definitely like this.

Transcript below the cut:

You Are Here: The Cartography of Stories

by Jay Edidin

I am autistic. And what this means in practice is that there are some things that are easier for me than they are for most people, and a great many things that are somewhat harder, and these affect my life in more or less overt ways. As it goes, I'm pretty lucky. I've been able to build a career around special interests and granular obsession. My main gig at the moment is explaining superhero comics continuity and publishing history for which work I am somehow paid in actual legal currency—which is both a triumph of the frivolous in an era of the frantically pragmatic, and a job that's really singularly suited to my strengths and also to my idiosyncrasies.

I like comics. I like stories in general, because they make sense to me in ways that the rest of the world and my own mind often don't. Self-knowledge is not an intuitive thing for me. What sense of self I have, I've built gradually and laboriously and mostly through long-term pattern recognition. For decades, I didn't even really have a self-image. If you'd asked me to draw myself, I would eventually have given you a pair of glasses and maybe a very messy scribble of hair, and that would've been about it. But what I do know—backwards, forwards, and in pretty much every way that matters—are stories. I know how they work. I understand their language, their complex inner clockwork, and I can use those things to extrapolate a sort of external compass that picks up where my internal one falls short. Stories—their forms, their structure, the sense of order inherent to them—give me the means to navigate what otherwise, at least for me, would be an impassable storm of unparsable data. Or stories are a periscope, angled to access the parts of myself I can't intuitively see. Or stories are a series of mirrors by which I can assemble a composite sketch of an identity I rarely recognize whole...which is how I worked out that I was transgender, in my early thirties, by way of a television show.

This is my story. And it's about narrative cartography, and representation, and why those things matter. It's about autism and it's about gender and it's about how they intersect. And it's about the kinds of people we know how to see, and the kinds of people we don't. It's not the kind of story that gets told a lot, you might hear a lot, because the narrative around gender transition and dysphoria in our culture is really, really prescriptive. It's basically the story of the kid who has known for their whole life that they're this and not that, and that story demands the kind of intuitive self-knowledge that I can't really do, and a kind of relationship to gender that I don't really have—which is part of why it took me so long to figure my own stuff out.

So, to what extent this story, my story has a beginning, it begins early in 2014 when I published an essay titled, "I See Your Value Now: Asperger's and the Art of Allegory." And it explored, among other things, the ways that I use narrative and narrative structures to navigate real life. And it got picked up in a number of fairly prominent places that got linked, and I casually followed the ensuing discussion. And I was surprised to discover that readers were fairly consistently assuming I was a man. Now, that in itself wasn't a new experience for me, even though at the time I was writing under a very unambiguously female byline. It had happened in the letter columns of comics I'd edited. It had happened when a parody Twitter account I'd created went viral. When I was on staff at Wired, I budgeted for fancy scotch by putting a dollar in a box every time a reader responded in a way that made it clear they were assuming I was a man in response to an article where my name was clearly visible, and then I had to stop doing that because it happened so often I couldn't afford to keep it up. But in all of those cases, the context, you know, the reasons were pretty obvious. The fields I'd worked in, the beats I covered, they were places where women had had to fight disproportionally hard for visibility and recognition. We live in a culture that assumes a male default, so given a neutral voice and a character limit, most readers will assume a male author.

But this was different, because this wasn't just a book I'd edited, it wasn't a story I'd reported—it was me, it was my story. And it made me uncomfortable, got under my skin in ways that the other stuff really hadn't. And so I did what I do when that happens, and I tried to sort of reverse-engineer it to look at the conclusions and peel them back to see the narratives behind them and the stories that made them tick. And I started this, I started this by going back to the text of the essay, and you know, examining it every way I could think of: looking at craft, looking at content. And in doing so, I was surprised to realize that while I had written about a number of characters with whom I identified closely, that every single one of those characters I'd written about was male. And that surprised me even more than the responses to the essay had, because I've spent my career writing and talking and thinking about gender and representation in popular media. In 2014, I'd been the feminist gadfly of an editorial department and multiple mastheads. I'd been a founding board member of an organization that existed to advocate for more and better representation of women and girls in comics characters and creators. And most of my favorite characters, the ones I'd actively seek out and follow, were women. Just not, apparently, the characters I saw myself in.

Now I still didn't realize it was me at this point. Remember: self-knowledge, not very intuitive for me. And while I had spent a lot of time thinking about gender, I'd never really bothered to think much about my own. I knew academically that the way other people read and interpreted my gender affected and had influenced a lifetime of social and professional interactions, and that those in turn had informed the person I'd grown up into during that time. But I really believed, like I just sort of had in the back of my head, that if you peeled away all of that social conditioning, you'd basically end up with what I got when I tried to draw a self-portrait. So: a pair of glasses, messy scribble of hair, and in this case, maybe also some very strong opinions about the X-Men. I mean, I knew something was off. I'd always known something was off, that my relationship to gender was messy and uncomfortable, but gender itself struck me as messy and uncomfortable, and it had never been a large enough part of how I defined myself to really feel like something that merited further study, and I had deadlines, and...so it was always on the back burner. So, I looked, I looked at what I had, at this improbable group of exclusively male characters. And I looked and I figured that if this wasn't me, then it had to be a result of the stories I had access to, to choose from, and the entertainment landscape I was looking at. And the funny thing is, I wasn't wrong, exactly. I just wasn't right either.

See, the characters I'd written about had one other significant trait in common aside from their gender, which is that they were all more or less explicitly, more or less heavily coded as autistic. And I thought, "Ah, yes. This explains it. This is under representation in fiction echoing under representation in life and vice versa." Because the characteristics that I'd honed in on, that I particularly identified with in these guys, were things like emotional unavailability and social awkwardness and granular obsession, and all of those are characteristics that are seen as unsympathetic and therefore unmarketable in female characters. Which is also why readers were assuming that I was a man.

Because, you see, here's the thing. I'm not the only one who uses stories to navigate the world. I'm just a little more deliberate about it. For humans, stories formed the bridge between data and understanding. They're where we look when we need to contextualize something new, or to recognize something we're pretty sure we've seen before. They're how we identify ourselves; they're how we locate ourselves and each other in the larger world. There were no fictional women like me; there weren't representations of women like me in media, and so readers were primed not to recognize women like me in real life either.

Now by this point, I had started writing a follow-up essay, and this one was also about autism and narratives, but specifically focused on how they intersected with gender and representation in media. And in context of this essay, I went about looking to see if I could find even one female character who had that cluster of traits I'd been looking for, and I was asking around in autistic communities. And I got a few more or less useful one-off suggestions, and some really, really splendid arguments about semantics and standards, and um...then I got one answer over and over and over in community after community after community. "Leverage," people told me. "You have to watch Leverage."

So I watched Leverage. Leverage is five seasons of ensemble heist drama. It's about a team of very skilled con artists who take down corrupt and powerful plutocrats and the like, and it's a lot of fun, and it's very clever, and it's clever enough that it doesn't really matter that it's pretty formulaic, and I enjoyed it a lot. But what's most important, what Leverage has is Parker.

Parker is a master thief, and she is the best of the best of the best in ways that all of Leverage's characters are the best of the best. And superficially, she looks like the kind of woman you see on TV. So she's young, and she's slender, and she's blonde, and she's attractive but in a sort of approachable way. And all of that familiarity is brilliant misdirection, because the thing is, there are no other women like Parker on TV. Because Parker—even if it's never explicitly stated in the show—Parker is coded incredibly clearly as autistic. Parker is socially awkward. Her speech tends to have limited inflection; what inflection it does have is repetitive and sounds rehearsed a lot of the time. She's not emotionally literate; she struggles with it, and the social skills she develops over the series, she learns by rote, like they're just another grift. When she's not scaling skyscrapers or cartwheeling through laser grids, she wears her body like an ill-fitting suit. Parker moves like me. And Parker, Parker was a revelation—she was a revolution unto herself. In a media landscape where unempathetic women usually exist to either be punished or "loved whole," Parker got to play the crabby savant. And she wasn't emotionally intuitive but it was never ever played as the product of abuse or trauma even though she had survived both of those—it was just part of her, as much as were her hands or her eyes. And she had a genuine character arc. My god, she had a genuine romantic arc, even. And none of that required her to turn into anything other than what she was. And in Parker I recognized a thousand tics and details of my life and my personality...but. I didn't recognize myself.

Why? What difference was there in Parker, you know, between Parker and the other characters I'd written about? Those characters, they'd spanned ethnicities and backgrounds and different media and appearances and the only other characteristic they all had in common was their gender. So that was where I started to look next, and I thought, "Well, okay, maybe, maybe it's masculinity. Maybe if Parker were less feminine, she'd click with me the way those other characters had." So then I tried to imagine a Parker with short hair, who's explicitly butch, and...nothing. So okay, I extended it in what seems like the only logical direction to extend it. I said, "Well, if it's not masculinity, what if it's actual maleness? What if Parker were a man?" Ah. Yeah.

In the end, everything changed, and nothing changed, which is often the way that it goes for me. Add a landmark, no matter how slight, and the map is irrevocably altered. Add a landmark, and paths that were invisible before open wide. Add a landmark, and you may not have moved, but suddenly you know where you are and where you can go.

I wasn't going to tell this story when I started planning this talk. I was gonna tell a similar story, it was about stories, like this is, about narratives and the ways that they influence our culture and vice versa. And it centered around a group of women at NASA who had basically rewritten the narrative around space exploration, and it was a lot more fun, and I still think it was more interesting. But it's also a story you can probably work out for yourselves. In fact it's a story some of you probably have, if you follow that kind of thing, which you probably do given that you're here. And this is a story, my story is not a story that I like to tell. It's not a fun story to talk about because it's very personal and I am a very private person. And it's not universal. And it's not always relatable, and it's definitely not aspirational. And it's not the kind of story that you tend to encounter unless you're already part of it...which is why I'm telling it now. Because the thing is, I'm not the only person who uses stories to parse the world and navigate it. I'm just a little more deliberate. Because I'm tired of having to rely on composite sketches.

Open your maps. Add a landmark. Reroute accordingly.

#Jay Edidin #LGBTQ #autism #mind and body #gender norms #why humans need stories #Leverage #Parker #Abby posts Leverage #my faves #Youtube #I did my best with the transcript #sorry for any mistakes

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skaylanphear · 4 years ago

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Hi there! Do you have any advice on improving traction towards a fanwork/fic? I love writing—and it's not for notoriety by any means—but having validation and feedback also feels nice (I hope that's not conceited). What would you recommend to someone without a large audience/follower base? I do "advertise" on tumblr when my work is written/updated on AO3. How did your journey start? Thank you!

This is an interesting question and I doubt most people are going to like the answers, but here we go:

So, first and foremost, you need to be realistic about why you're creating in the first place. If you're doing work in a fandom that is older, where content has stopped coming out, or that is simply smaller, you're not going to get much engagement, period. There will, of course, be activity in these fandoms, but it will be far less and the people involved—while they may view your work—will be less likely to comment/spread it around simply because there's not much going on. So if you're creating in that sort of environment (which can be a really good environment if you're looking for something chill with no pressure), then you have to be prepared for low engagement, even if the people you do meet and who are willing to talk about your work are more regularly in your sphere. You can probably make better/closer friends in these sorts of fandoms, if you're willing to try.

But, on the other end of this, if you're coming into a huge fandom late, it's also going to be harder to wade through the massive following to get your stuff out there. For example, in both the Miraculous and Sk8 fandom, I started work pretty early on, when the shows were still gaining traction, and so my "name" as a creator gained traction parallel to that growth, as opposed to when I started writing in the Voltron fandom. With Voltron, I came in super late and so what few fics I had that did gain traction took a lot longer to get there because people already had their fav content creators in the fandom, etc. It's not impossible to get popular in this situation—far from it—but it does take longer.

You'll also benefit from having finished works early on in a fandom's lifespan, at least with writing. This is because there's less competition for views and so more people will be filtered to your work, initially. This means that you have a better chance of getting those comments and kudos. Having a finished work increases this engagement because people look for finished works before works in progress. Generally, the length of a fic doesn't matter much for popularity, so long as it's DONE. When I was writing in the ML fandom, quite a few of my earlier fics were shorter, and they compete in popularity with my longer fics, because people care more about having a finished story, not a long story. That's why when it came to Only Practice Makes Perfect in the Sk8 fandom, I worked hard to get that shit done, because it was the most popular story I had in the fandom and I decided—like an idiot—to make it a long fic. Which, yeah, means people probably love it/remember it more in the long run, but if I hadn't finished it in 2 to 3 months, I'd have lost considerable traction as far as making a name within the fandom.

This leads into one of the most important points, if not THE MOST IMPORTANT point in gaining an audience—consistency. If you do want to be a successful creator, you Have To Be Consistent. This is the most difficult hurdle for all creators, and it is oftentimes impossible to make happen. If you want to aim for professionalism, which a lot of fandom creators don't care about (which is fine), then consistency is how you get there. Nobody wants to read a fic or follow an artist who doesn't stick to creating what they start (RIP all my unfinished works and the people who left me as a result, LOL). Using my most recent works as an example, I very, very, very consistently updated Only Practice Makes Perfect multiple times a week. To the point where people got comfortable expecting it, which is the key variable here. When people become comfortable that you will regularly create content, they not only stick around, but will be more interactive with you and your work. Nobody likes the disappointment of getting involved with a work only for that work to rarely get updates. Most people don't have the attention span to care. I'll admit, if I read a fic that's not finished and the writer takes one week to update, then one week, then THREE weeks, I probably will, like, forget about it. That's just life.

The best thing you can do is schedule. And again, this is the HARDEST thing to do, because it holds the creator to a deadline. Most people who create in fandoms don't want that kind of pressure—and that's fine. I go back and forth on when I have scheduled releases and when I don't, depending on what I'm aiming to do. But if you to retain your audience, telling them that you will update a work regularly on such and such a day and such and such a time, it creates something for them to remember. If they're invested in your work, they will think, "oh, it's Friday, that means such and such is coming out with something new." But, with that in mind, you also have to commit to a schedule that people will remain invested in. Which basically means you can't put things out more than a week away from each other, unless you're really, really famous, lol. If I told people I was going to go on a two week update schedule, I would lose most of my audience. But a week is long enough for people to both still remember and anticipate. That's just how the scheduling of the world works. And if you're an artist that's working on a big project, then you have to share progress, or pieces of what you're doing on a regular basis. That's what generates "buzz" and keeps you relevant. And, yeah, that's a really hard schedule to commit to, because it's a lot of work. BUT this consistency is where you see people being successful. Popular youtubers may not have gained their popularity by being consistent, but most sure do retain it that way. And again, there are outlying exceptions, but they generally ARE exceptions.

Speaking of hard work, here's probably the second hardest thing to accomplish—you have to be prolific. Especially as a writer. You have to write A LOT if you want to gain an audience. And yeah, that means you have to work, a lot. I love my work, so I enjoy that "grind," and I also have developed a lot of strategies to work around writer's block and every other obstacle that tends to catch people up. I work in a very professional manner—I do outlines, and drafts, and plan. I do a lot of stuff that people who do this kind of thing for fun can't be bothered with (and that's fine), but that's because I find it to be what works best in creating an efficient environment. I'm also very, very NOT lazy, lol. I was raised in an environment where you have to work for everything that you want. My parents didn't buy me my first computer, or snowboard, or what have you. We were tight on money and if I wanted something, they couldn't help me—I had to get that shit on my own. And I also grew up on a farm, where hard work was a staple of how you did things. You did things the right way, even if it was the hard way. You can't cut corners and it's the same with this. If you want it, you have to actually do the work, that's it. Some people get lucky with popularity, most don't. Most famous actors didn't become well-known off their first efforts, they had to keep trying and keep working and then they have to continue to do that to stay relevant. So if that doesn't sound great to you, then you might want to not focus on your audience and just create because you enjoy it, lol. Sometimes that's what I do too, when I don't wanna deal with the pressure.

Moving on, here's another point that nobody is going to like. Simply put, you also have to be good at what you do. I think some people don't realize that I've been writing fic for over fifteen years. I currently have nearly 2 millions words worth of fics on AO3 and that doesn't include a majority of the stuff I've ever written. I practice A LOT. I write every day. And I'll tell ya, when I started out in middle school, my stuff was not good. But I worked hard, I ignored the hate, and I kept going. That is the only way you will ever get better at anything. There's no quick way to become a better writer, or artist. And a vast majority of people are only going to pay attention to your stuff if it's quality work. Getting to that point is a process, on top of then creating stuff that fits into popular molds. Not only am I good at what I do (and I don't care how arrogant that sounds—I've worked my ass off), but when it comes to fandoms, I rarely write "rare pairs" and "crack ships." Generally, if it's popular, that's where I am. That makes a big difference and I honestly don't have sympathy for people who write rare pairs and such and then complain about lack of engagement. You knew what you were getting into (it's mostly the Miraculous fandom that gave me this bitterness). If you're not writing what people WANT to read, then your audience is simply going to be smaller. And that audience doesn't owe you their attention, no matter how frustrating it is or how good your work is. I could be the best writer in the world, but if I'm writing RekixCherry fic, I have nobody to blame but myself when nobody reads it. BUT if that's your passion, and writing a certain unpopular thing makes you happy, then, again, you need to not be concerned with traction and your audience.

The last point I'll make is that it matters HOW you present yourself online. A good chunk of the well-known creators in any fandom are, simply put, older people. And those that aren't, and are able to connect with those older creators, have generally created a bubble around themselves of maturity and, like, of being nice, lol. A lot of creators are skittish these days, and if you're an asshole (anti) or fight a lot over stupid shit, you may get a bigger audience, but you will isolate yourself from other creators. And this is important because oftentimes it is your exposure to other creators that will get your work circulating. The reason I got popular in the ML fandom? I wrote a short angst fic and a really popular artist shared it/talked about it and the rest was history. But if I'd had a habit of being an asshole, probably wouldn't have happened. And, granted, I'm not saying don't voice your opinions, but if you're loud all the time, it does turn people off. Especially creators because they are oftentimes the ones being attacked. They don't want to pull more of that negative bullshit into their lives. I'll admit, when I was in the ML fandom, I was down for a fight, but then that's what people came to expect, and it probably did turn others off, and then when I didn't fight, or didn't think the way my audience thought I should, it, again, turned people off. It's really not worth it unless being that type of person IS your platform.

So, that's all the advice I can give, I suppose. And even if you do all this stuff, that still doesn't mean you're going to be popular. At the end of the day, the thing that I stick to is this—I do what I want, I love what I do, and I work hard. If I'm in a position to worry about all that other stuff, then sure, I do, but otherwise… There's no easy way to become popular and, quite frankly, it's better to just "live" working hard and being a decent person than it is to focus on all this bullshit. I've created a working environment where I function within these "points" quite naturally, so it's not something I think about (except for schedules, lol). Sometimes I get popular in fandoms, sometimes I don't. At the end of the day, it comes down to how much work you're willing to do, because you will always be giving more than you are getting back, so you have to at least enjoy what you're doing.

Seriously, just do it because you love it. And if the pressure of everything above is something you don't love (I like a good, high pressure situation, lol), then don't do it that way—it's not worth the grief.

#skaylanphear replies #anonymous

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the-river-person · 3 years ago

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Mistral Sans is now Community Shared

To echo the words of @undertaleauoc, Mistral is "open for use" without the need to request permission from the creator (me) though I’d like to be tagged and credited still. Mistral Formerly named: Sans Age: 10 to the power of 100 years (technically a little more than that by now, but the number is so huge that it's no longer relevant.) Gender: Male Appearance: Appears much like Classic Sans, except for the silvery-white crystalline formations growing all over his body. These can get quite large if he hasn’t removed them in a while, and are often quite sharp to anyone with flesh instead of bone. He makes an effort to keep the Kenón from growing up over his head and face, or from completely encasing his body, but it's difficult to keep up with since it grows faster whenever he happens to be in the Void itself. He wears a long brown overcoat, gloves, and long black trousers, mostly in effort to hide the Kenón as much as possible or keep the sharp points from cutting people by accident. He also keeps a red bandana around his neck, something given to him by Papyrus. His eyes never went back to their original state after the Void-Sickness. Instead of dark hollows with a white iris, they seem to be a pale grey, like a well of deep nothingness. Backstory: Mistral’s Universe is based upon the question “What would happen if the Human just never stopped the Resets, but went on forever?” And the resulting Tale that followed was one of mindless repetitions for time out of mind as the Human would Reset in order to prevent the Underground from being destroyed. Eventually the human, who was no longer human, stopped when Sans suggested a different means to preserve their Universe without killing. This Underground has a deep history of worship and lore that surrounds their Angel, and Sans played the role of Judge, a historical job where someone representing the Angel’s Justice would be called upon to make an absolute Judgement upon anyone or anything. The King called upon him to bring his judgement upon the entire Underground for their part in everything. Formerly a scientist under his Uncle Gaster, he helped come up with the “Solution” which the entire Underground was inoculated with to help them remember beyond Resets. He himself was a victim of the Void poisoning like that which affected Gaster’s Followers and was only saved from being wiped to a blank slate by Gaster’s efforts. A fragment of Kenón (Void-stone) and determination was placed in his soul, causing the crystals to spread from it. In later years as the Underground thrived despite the Resets, he pushed himself to get another degree, this time in psychology, and eventually became a practicing therapist/psychologist (as well as the Underground’s willing delivery boy. He liked being able to see and talk to people all the time, and get to know things.) Upon the destruction of his Universe he was thrown into the Void with his Uncle Gaster, where they were rescued by the mysterious River Person. They met with Ink!Sans who explained the Multiverse and gave them the means to travel it. Now they travel from Universe to Universe, or sometimes wander the Void itself, or the Anti-Void. Gaster (now named Majuscule) is searching for his children, and Sans (now named Mistral) is helping while searching for the Ship his brother escaped with and whatever survivors of his people there might still be. Personality: Mistral is old. Though he was in a mindless forgetful repetitive state for much of the Resets, and has few memories of his own childhood beyond what Papyrus reminded him of, he is significantly mentally older than most of the other Monsters from his Universe. The determination in his soul (along with the Kenón) makes him very strong willed and much more powerful than he was before. It also gives him a minor energy boost. His years as a scientist specializing in studies of the Soul and Physics, as well as his later degree in psychology and practice as a therapist, make him a fairly discerning person who is easily approachable and can talk about a number of different subjects with ease. Despite his actions during the Genocide Routes, he is a much more mentally stable person (possibly one of the most stable Sanses out there from what I see) and is very much a pacifist, refusing violence altogether and choosing to let his words and mind guide him out of trouble, or his teleportation to let him escape danger. Because of his refusal to consider physical violence, even in his own defense, his skill in using fighting magic has atrophied. He can no longer summon the blasters at all, and his bone attacks are weaker. His teleportation on the other hand is much stronger and he can do it more often without tiring too much. The other effects of his refusal to fight means that he must proactively avoid confrontation whenever possible. Mistral uses his knowledge of how people think and act to guide his interactions with others, putting even Monsters from the Fell Universes at ease with well timed and thought out humorous comments, as well as just generally being willing to listen and try to see from the point of view of other people. He can tell puns, but they usually sound a bit forced, like he memorized them somewhere and was just waiting for a point to use them. Very rarely he’ll come up with the perfect one on the spot and be absolutely thrilled with himself. More often he uses dry humor, throwaway lines, or Hyperbole.

His willingness to try and defuse the tension caused by aggressive Monsters he’s dealing with can sometimes backfire on him and serves to make the Monster even angrier and more violent. Mistral will then flee, not wanting to fight them, but often marking himself as guilty or suspicious in the process when this happens with an authority figure who has confronted him for his presence.

The Kenón crystal growing all over his body tends to freak people out as well, which is why he hides it as much as he can beneath the overcoat, gloves, and bandana.

Like all skeletons of his Universe, Mistral has a great knowledge of fonts and writing systems, punctuation marks, ciphers, and typography. It is a very important subject to them as it very closely ties with how they see themselves, their identity as a person. This may be rather strange to skeletons from other Universes who do not share this background. A similar problem comes when skeletons from other Universes find out how strongly he and the Monsters of his world believe in the mythical Angel of Mount Ebbot and often pray to them or swear by them (or use “Angel” as a swear).

He’s also very interested in the concept of Identity and how it can change over time or be altered by events in your life, and how names connect to the concept of identity.

Can I use Mistral in my comic/story/animation/etc?: Sure. He’s a wandering type character, so it's likely he’ll show up in countless Universes and places all over while searching for his brother and his missing cousins. Sometimes he’ll be with Gaster and sometimes not.

One thing to note is that his story will have a continuation, so if in your story you detail events that involve him beyond just a brief meeting, chat, or background character… Just be aware that it's probably not going to be canon to the story I’m planning for him (though if we take other Multiverses into account it could be canon elsewhere).

I would like to insist that you tag and credit me on his use (Credit is good. Tagging me makes it so I can come see your wonderful creations).

Can I ship Mistral with this other character/characters?: Yeah, why not?. Canonically he’s aesexual and only very passingly interested in the idea of romantic relationships. But sure, ship him with whoever you like. Just know that it's not canon to this Multiverse.

While I would still like to be tagged in stuff that involves him. I know I can’t stop nsfw art/writing and other things of that nature from happening, much as I might like to. But be warned, If I see it or am tagged with that, or am sent asks of that... I will block you. Fontcest, Incest ships, child ships, or smut in general will all get you blocked instantly.

Canon height and weight: 4-5 feet high (same as Classic Sans). Weight was trickier. He’s a skeleton. A human skeleton is only about 15% of your body weight. So classic is probably somewhere around 16 or so pounds. But Mistral is covered by continually growing crystalline structures of Kenón. Since the crystal is heavy but spread out and somewhat kept under control, it probably only doubles his weight, making him 32 pounds.

Canon strength: Mistral isn’t a fighter. His attacks are weak because his desire to actually fight is nonexistent, even if he has to defend himself or others. But his actual physical strength, as opposed to his magical attacks, sees a significant increase to that of your normal Sans. The Kenón crystals actually increase his defense by making his bones stronger and more crack resistant, and his self healing is well equipped to deal with most breaks, though they’re still quite painful.

He also has increased endurance for longer physical or magical activities so long as combat or confrontation isn’t part of it.

Since he weighs more, he can’t jump as high as a Sans who weighs less (not that it's a huge difference. He’s only 32 pounds. Plus his strength can mostly make up for it by pushing himself off harder when jumping.)

Is it okay if I draw him with another gender, age, height, or sexuality?: Go for it. Have fun. Tag and credit me. But remember that it’s not canon to THIS Multiverse that I’m working in.

Canon Birthday?: September 16th (though he hasn’t celebrated in a LONG time. He probably doesn’t remember his last actual birthday party. Papyrus might though…)

Font?: Used to be Comic Sans. But now it's Mistral (upper and lowercase).

Original AU: Aeontale by

a_river_is_a_liminal_space

(or the-river-person. basically… me)

Can I send Asks for more details if I need or want them?: Yes. My askbox is open. I’ll answer what I can. I’ve put everything I can think of on here, but inevitably there’s always something missed in things like this. So ask away.

#mistral sans #community shared oc #undertale au #aeontale #character bio

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rigelmejo · 4 years ago

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2 more thoughts regarding the massive immersion approach:

Flashcards and Massive Immersion Method

while i’ve seen some people who do it insist that its about moving AWAY from flashcards/srs grinding, and only doing that in order to make it easier to immerse... i am not sure that’s how it ends up in practice. i’ve read comments by some people about how immersion should be where the a lot of the progress is coming from. But on the other hand, from my view, even the immersion eventually involves a lot of sentence mining (you making srs flashcards from immersion, to study). And the creator of the method, Matt, seems to think a good indication this method will work for you is if you have a decent tolerance for flashcard grinding.

Also, on a more practical level, he thinks structured study is very helpful for your learning and is part of what helps you learn faster. He thinks a combination of immersion (both reading and pure listening) starting early on and regularly, with structured study to help you learn first very useful things to you (common words, writing system, grammar patterns, eventually words/grammar in the things you specifically want to understand) helps support your immersion efforts. Structured study in his plan is srs flashcards and sentence mining - although I personally think you could also substitute ‘structured study’ for textbooks, word lists/flashcards/podcasts you pick based on your needs, basically any material where you’re actively studying and reviewing instead of immersing. Now I mainly agree with this point, as much as I don’t like structured study of any kind any more then much anyone else. It really does help make immersion more tolerable, and more effective, at least for me. Structured learning is kind of like scaffolding you put on yourself, or floaties before diving into the deep end. It gives you things you can grab onto more easily when you immerse, and help you remember more effectively the things you pick up as you immerse. It’s probably why most language learners, no matter what structured study methods they use, do more then ONLY listen/read in the language with absolutely nothing else being done (a lot of polyglots on youtube seem fond of making word lists with example sentences which sounds a lot like a more chill non srs sentence mining method, a lot of articles i’ve read of learners going for basic ability to speak/read go for using frequency lists and grammar guides early on as their base to learn from - which is what i tend to do).

Anyway... basically, as much as I’d love if massive immersion approach had less flashcards... it doesn’t appear (to me) to have any less flashcards than AJATT or 10k sentences methods. Maybe it does, but once the sentence flashcards go into the thousands it all seems like an Awful Lot to me. On the upside, I would again like to mention there is at least one example of a guy named Chris who did the massive immersion approach for japanese for 18 months and got to a good reading comprehension, listening comprehension, and speaking level, who did the kanji flashcards and 2000ish frequent words in sentences and grammar example sentences in the beginning, then mostly did not sentence mine after. Here’s his interview about it. During, and after those initial flashcards, he immersed, looked up words occasionally (and did not always make flashcards of new words). He tried to switch to a monolingual dictionary halfway through, which seemed to help him. And he didn’t really study/immerse more than 1-3 hrs a day, with the heaviest ‘dedicated’ time in the earlier months when he grinded through the Heisig kanji flashcards. He’s a good example of a ‘less flashcards in the sentence mining’ version of the approach, that seemed to work out fine for him. So burning out on flashcards, and eventually doing less of them and primarily immersion/looking occasional words up, is a possible way to do the massive immersion approach. And I think this might be the way some people are viewing the massive immersion approach who say the flashcards are really just needed to push you to get into immersion easier - perhaps they’re also people who used less flashcards once the immersion part became more comfortable for them.

---

Immersion

A second note: I really do want to reiterate again how much effort I do think this method takes. From an outsider’s perspective, to me it initially looked kind of ridiculous until I actually looked it up. Because all i saw were learners making targeted videos about Only one element of their studies (so it was helpful in a specialized way, but i wrongly thought that video’s tips would be about ALL of studying the language lol). So I kept seeing videos insisting you need to immerse immerse immerse and you’ll learn super fast! But like of course, these learners were also doing studying from sentence mining and grammar example sentences and I just did not know that.

About immersion: it really does help though. At the bare minimum, you should try it some time just because it will REALLY reaffirm your goals in the language. Or it will help you set goals, if you aren’t sure what those goals are. It is also a real fast way to actually check if you’ve 1. made any improvement, 2. are lacking in any areas you’d intended to make improvement (and therefore you need to fix your study plan to address this), 3. what you immerse in might help you realize what you really want to prioritize learning first. It also gives you a dose of reality, to see if you’re worse or better than you thought you were. It gives you chances to PRACTICE what you’ve learned, which will help you remember that info and recall it faster, and get you more comfortable so it’s easier to use that info you know the next time you immerse etc. It puts you into real material you want to eventually be able to engage with, so you can actually see how you’re doing in the language up against more realistic use of the language (versus textbooks and learner made material that is probably on some level tailored to either be easier or focus on some specialties a bit more than the real world which focuses on all kinds of things).

In French, I unintentionally ‘immersed’ in reading from the first few months, and I fully believe that boosted my ability to comprehend the language immensely. I really genuinely did not put that much effort into studying french. I took one well made beginner semester in college, most notably great because our teacher focused on pronunciation, speaking often, learning a ton of regular verbs and conjugations, and learning basic ways of saying past/present/future tense immediately (which broadened what we could talk out in a tremendous way - especially compared to any other beginner course I’ve ever taken). I studied one 300 word list, then sort of studied a 625 and 1000 word list, none of them with flashcards - just looking at and reviewing somewhat regularly. And I read... a lot... especially in the beginning when it was super hard. I read and looked up a handful of words (only ever handfuls, cause I’m lazy). Eventually, I read and rarely looked up words, because I’m lazy and context guesses were enough to me. Eventually, I speed read through a beginners grammar guide in english. Then an intermediate grammar guide in french. My listening suffered cause i rarely ever practiced that, but when i do practice it the skill builds up pretty fast since i generally know most words i run into now. If I went back to french, it’d mostly be a lot of listening/shadowing immersion (shows, and comprehensible input youtube channels), and then having lots of convos to boost my speaking/writing abilities. French... genuinely was SO hard in the beginning. But I think immersing very early got me through the “doing this for more then 5 minutes FRIES my brain its so HARD” stage within a few months.

I think whenever I put off immersion... that just delays when i’m gonna feel that frustration. And its not fun to feel that frustration, but its expected because there will always be some difficulty as you get adjusted to it. And when you’ve studied for over a year? It really sucks to feel like you’ve made progress, only to try to read simple captions on pictures or headlines and website links and understand NOTHING. That’s what happened to me in japanese - I didn’t try to read real stuff for a year, and when I finally did I was pretty crushed that outside of the most basic school/daily life discussions, I couldn’t comprehend anything. Even though in my studies I’d flown through my textbook materials. I should also note, for languages ‘more difficult to learn’ for an english speaker, yes its going to take longer or more study hours to comprehend the same as one could in a ‘less difficult’ language like french. So immersion hurt that much MORE cause I knew even less then after a year of french, even with more hours of study, and immersion was so much harder. It was super demotivating. But in retrospect, I should have just pushed through and planned my goals according to what specifics were making that initial push SO HARD so I could fix them and make my life easier. I eventually did, but I would have loved that kind of clear focus on what I needed to do with my goals BACK THEN.

Because of how my French versus Japanese studies went, when I started Chinese I just immersed right away. A great thing about studying chinese, is at the time I was super into their storytelling and works, and the chinese world has a HUGE amount of incredible works AND a ton of them are easy to access. It’s super easy to immerse in chinese! (I imagine similar is true of english). In French, I only really was invested in french history books, so I didn’t dive into reading much unless it was just those or ‘informational’ stuff like news. (Thankfully french took less effort to improve in). In Japanese, while I’m into some very specific creators and works, I’m actually not really that into anime or manga. And the stuff I am into, I need to grind though goal-focused study to actually finally be able to comprehend enough to immerse in (it took 2.5 years to even scratch the bottom of ‘maybe’ for trying to do that, since I didn’t immerse early on and build my comfort in being able to immerse). I started trying to read in Chinese early, just because I was like “well i did it in month 3 in french so WHY NOT do it with chinese too, it helped my french a ton!” And, well... it did help my chinese a ton, and still does.

It’s also been... way harder every single step of the way then french ever was. And I’m so glad I did it with french first... I built up some tolerance at engaging with materials i only 50% comprehended in french, I built up reading skills with that kind of difficult material, and I had experience seeing that comprehension level noticeably improve every few months. So in chinese, I started with like 20% comprehension and it HURT my brain. But I expected it to be harder than french, and i expected any foreign language to start off well below the comfortable suggestion of ‘98%’ for reading for pleasure. On the upside, it helped me set goals I needed FOR the goal of reading super early. It helped me practice parsing how hard chinese was going to be to comprehend, super early. And I think the difficult comprehension curve for immersing in chinese, compared to romance languages for english speakers, might be why a lot of learners on forums insist reading in chinese took them 2-4 years to even start graded readers. And why many of them say its taking them 20 minutes to read a page, or they ‘pre-study’ with flashcards for like 1 hr a day when they read, etc. While I’m sure those approaches work for them, I think in a way its also kind of a matter of When do YOU want to do those things? When do you want to face that super-intolerable low comprehensibility curve?

Because it will be a few phases: first it will be brutally intolerable, then you’ll get used to seeing a huge amount of incomprehensibility and not getting so bothered by it even though you still don’t understand much, then you start comprehending a bit more each time (possibly aided by some other study methods/reading strategies etc), you feel relieved the comprehension is getting EASIER (even though its only like 60% now that feels WAY less brutally frustrating then 20% did!), and the process continues. You basically first get used to tolerating how brutally incomprehensible it is, how much lower than 98% comprehensible it is. Then every step after feels like achievement and relief because it just keeps getting easier. And by the time you do get to a decently high comprehensibility, it feels fantastic and much easier. No matter when you start immersing, it’s going to progress like this. So if you go from ‘comfortable 98%ish percent comprehensible textbook sentences and flashcards, or podcasts, and comfortable comprehension in your own language mainly’ to ‘dropped into native material in your target language where you just definitely are not 98%, maybe 80-90% at best?’ Its still going to feel brutal.

In a big way I do think it’s partially just a matter of when you want to face the brutal beginning of the comprehensibility curve. Do you want to tackle it early on in the learning stages, in the first couple years? The upsides are, you will only feel like its easier over time, so once you’ve studied more, your immersion also is getting easier. So study progress lines up better with how comprehension progress ‘feels.’ The downside is, of course, you face a brutal challenge that feels insurmountable early on. That could cause you to give up. And because its actual native content in the language - realistically you are NOT going to be able to comprehend as much as you can in your own native language in a year. It’s going to start a low comprehension level, and you aren’t going to be able to just quickly bring it up to comfortable 98%ish comprehension level. It’s still going to take years of study for that. So part of the process genuinely is getting more okay with accepting lower comprehensibility in your target language, and learning to not let that frustrate or demotivate you, learning to not get upset, learning to let go of trying to absolutely always understand everything perfectly, and instead learning to notice milestones in your own personal progress. Learning to appreciate an improvement from 20% comprehended, to 50% comprehended, to 70% comprehended. Instead of super angry you’ve studied for months, only to still be struggling to comprehend - because it will definitely still technically be a struggle at least until you do hit those 90%s in comprehension. So it could be demotivating to think ‘oh yeah, I’m gonna be fluent in a year!’ then you immerse early on, and realize that you may not actually to able to comprehend this target language as easily as your native language in a year. But it definitely grounds to back to reality. On the upside, even if you waited to immerse, you’re probably going to hit this difficult comprehension experience for at least a few months - so you’ll eventually get the reality check. It’s just when do you want to experience it. Early on - so you can use the experiences to both practice and focus your goals on what YOU specifically need?

Or after studying for years - finally getting practice, and now needing to possibly readjust a lot of your long-used study methods because they left some noticeable blank spots that are now impeding your ability to comprehend what you want to comprehend? There are of course benefits to waiting to do immersion until later - you’re less likely to quit studying the language, if you’ve already been studying it for years and are dedicated. Depending on how good your study plan was, you might be starting out at 70-90% comprehension of materials, instead of 20-50%. Which means your difficulty curve might take less time to power through, and be more tolerable depending on if you can handle moderate incomprehensibility more than significant amount incomprehensibility. I don’t know... I tried to do immersion later on with Japanese, and while I definitely won’t give up, it was also such a huge difficulty curve that I had to replan my study methods to fill in all the blanks before I was ready to try immersion properly. I think with chinese, where i started some immersion early on, i would have been SUPER ready to give up and quit, if I didn’t have my french experience telling me ‘just stick with it, it always starts hard and gets easier over time, chinese will just probably take longer to make progress with than french did.’

I only pushed through with immersing in chinese early on, because I KNEW the same study methods worked for me in french so I was going to use them again. And I adamantly tried to just tell myself it wasn’t that hard. I had a chinese teacher in high school, he was great, and one of the things he did was never treat anything as hard. He didn’t act like tones were hard, he just gave us an example and had us repeat him. He didn’t act like hanzi were hard, he just wrote vocab, gave us the pinyin, then told us to write it in our notes - and write only hanzi in tests and homework and classwork. Bam, that’s it. No insistence that we had to use mnemonics to ever learn them (although mnemonics would’ve helped speed it up probably in retrospect). No insistence anything was hard, it was just how the words sounded and were spelled, so we learned. He had a class of 40 kids who were rambunctious and many of whom didn’t pick chinese and just got put into the class, and he still managed to teach well enough that most people passed just fine. That class was fun, and not any harder then any other class. I think one part of the reason was how he treated nothing as overtly difficult or challenging, just another thing to learn. In comparison, I’ve had a japanese class where things WERE taught as very difficult to learn, and i think that intimidated me and demotivated me (along with the myriad of language study tip sites that really hammer home how ‘hard’ japanese is). Realistically, they aren’t necessarily hard, some languages just take more study time then others to cover the same ‘ground’. So anyway, whenever I study chinese, I just remind myself its not any harder then french to learn - it just takes me some extra study time. And I really think this mindset has made tackling both immersion and even just studying vocab much easier to me. I don’t see new words made of characters and freak out, I just think ok ‘this sounds like X, looks like this Y, do I need to do anything extra to remember this?’ Then come up with some mnemonics or examples of it being used etc if it will help me remember it, then move on. With chinese I really... mostly tackled studying the same way I studied French (but BETTER, because I practice speaking, writing, and listening MUCH more in chinese then i ever did in french). But like... I did not study the hanzi with Heisig or anything - and I do think in retrospect, I should, since I think it’ll make new words a bit easier to remember. (I remember new words way easier when I already know each individual character from other words - I don’t need mnemonics for the meaning or the pronunciation when I already know the characters that spell a new word so I can speed up learning it). The only extra thing I did with chinese was listen to tones in the beginning, some tone explanations, and listen to the audio of new words (so i can better remember the tones, so i can have better listening/speaking skills then i did in french). Overall, my progress was not too bad for just diving into chinese with the same overall study method. I managed to learn 1000 words and all the characters in them without heisig etc. (Although, genuinely, shout out to the Tuttle Learn Chinese Characters - 800 characters book, because the mnemonics include pronunciation, help a ton, and I learned probably 500 characters from that book starting out that served as a helpful foundation in studying chinese).

I did not ever try to go the route of ‘study with only pinyin first.’ I know some people think learn to speak first, read/write later, and it is easier. But like? Reading’s always my main goal baby. Everything else is a secondary goal, so there was no point to me putting off characters and real reading. Plus? In chinese??? Knowing how to read helps with shows SO MUCH cause nearly every show has mandarin subtitles!!! If you can read some basic mandarin, picking up words and some phrases from shows gets so much easier! Also, like my chinese teacher did not treat them as overly hard, I don’t want to treat characters as overly hard either. Pinyin is very good to know for typing, and for learning tones/seeing how to pronounce words. But I didn’t want to use it as the only thing i could rely on, any longer then the minimal necessary amount of time I needed to. Also, my lacking listening skills in french really hammered home how important it is to listen to pronunciations ALL THE TIME and especially when learning new words, so I try to make sure a majority of my chinese study and immersion materials have audio I can listen to. I try to learn most new words with audio, since pinyin is not the same as me hearing how to actually say it and recognize it.

#rant #mia #mass immersion approach

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toilalo · 5 years ago

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RULES . answer the questions in a new post & tag 20 blogs you would like to get to know better. ( repost don’t reblog ! )

TAGGED BY: No one. ( stole from my boo @ahundredwars !! ) TAGGING: anyone who wants to do it!

NICKNAME: Ray!! STAR SIGN: Taurus !!! Idk anything about this Sun / Moon alignment otl CURRENT TIME: 5:15 pm PRONOUNS: He / Him SINGLE OR TAKEN: Single SEXUALITY: Gay FAV MUSIC ARTIST: Uuuuuhhh Cavetown ?? I don’t listen to a lot of specific artists... SONG STUCK IN YOUR HEAD: Royalty - Conor Maynard LAST MOVIE WATCHED: The Conjuring LAST SHOW WATCHED: The Magicians RP EXPERIENCE HOW LONG (MONTHS / YEARS?): About 10 years in terms of writing, add 4 on top of that if you count LARPing. PLATFORMS YOU’VE USED: Neopets, Webkins, Deviantart, Facebook, Skype, Twitter, Tumblr, Discord! BEST EXPERIENCE: So far probably my time here and on deviantart. I’ve met some super amazing people through both that will!!! Most likely be long term friends!!! FEMALE OR MALE MUSE: I’ve done all forms but I’m most comfortable with male aligned muses!! Female muses kinda fuck me up a little anymore LOL MULTI OR SINGLE: I’ve done both, it really just depends. I can keep track of and am more active on multis because having to watch over multiple blogs ( even if they are sideblogs ) I get overwhelmed / tend to not use most of the other characters. FLUFF, ANGST, OR SMUT: Fluff most often, angst would come next. I do smut on rare occasions if I’m really feeling up to it ans a muse is into it. PLOTS OR MEMES: Both, but I get scared to ask to plot so most often its memes ;u ; LONG OR SHORT REPLIES: I tend to accidentally end up with long, I’ve been trying to keep things short though sldjfhglsjdkfglsd BEST TIME TO WRITE: I’m a night owl, so nighttime!!! That’s also when its quiet and I can think properly. ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S): I share a lot with Ignis and Nyx, and Silver was originally me SO like....... yeah I’m pretty similar to half of my muses. WHEN DID YOU CREATE YOUR BLOG: I’ve blog hopped a tiny bit, my origin was December 2017 on a chocobo blog, then to Unmeiochita / Fujubun, and now here! WHAT KIND OF STUFF DO YOU POST: Lets just leave it at “I’m not quality.” OTHER BLOGS: I have more blogs than I would like to admit, I think I’m at 20+ now? WHY DID YOU CHOOSE YOUR URL: Honestly I don’t remember, I made this blog specifically for Silver a LONG time ago and I KNOW the url has a specific meaning but I don’t remember what it was... HOGWARTS HOUSE: Gryffindor POKEMON TEAM: I haven’t played pokemon in so long but I CAN say.......... wooloos. FAVORITE COLOR: Pastel Green! AVG HOURS SLEEP: Probably four? LUCKY NUMBER: H........how do you know the answer to this?? I have no idea what it is.... HOW MANY BLANKETS DO YOU SLEEP WITH: Two big ole plaid ones bc I’m gay DREAM JOB: Author / Webcomic Creator / Animator / Ect

#⟣⇢ OoC Posts #I'm a thief hewwo

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annstage · 7 years ago

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Interview s Devin K. Grayson

Stává se vám, že při čtení komiksu byste se rádi autora na něco zeptali? Šance jsou, že si sednete a najdete společnou řeč. Jak jinak, když jsme nakonec všichni fanoušci. Dostaly jsme možnost vyzpovídat Devin K. Grayson, autorku mnohá komiksů, které určitě znáte a máte rádi. V krátkém rozhovoru, který nám ochotně poskytla se dozvíte více o tom, jak si zachovává přehled v časových linkách během psaní nebo, co si myslí o zobrazování skupinových menšin v pop kultuře. Rozhovor jsme nechaly v původním anglickém jazyce.

CZ: Devin se ke komiksům dostala po zhlédnutí animovaného Batmana, který na začátku 90. let běžel v televizi. Následně se v komiksovém obchodě začala více zajímat o svého jmenovce Dicka Graysona, známého též jako Nightwinga. Práci pro DC dostala po ustavičném volání a zasílání svých děl. Potom už následoval zájem o psaní o členech Batman rodiny, o Nightwingovi a je autorkou dalších již světově známých titulů. Devin je otevřeně bisexuálkou.

Mezi její nejznámější tituly patří Nightwing, Gotham Knights, Vampirella, Nightwing - Huntress, JLA/Titans, User, The Titans a další

EN: Devin got to comics after watching Batman: The Animated Series in early 90s. Following that event she went to explore to her local comics store to find more about Dick Grayson who she shares the last name with. After bombarding DC company and calling them to see her works, she finally got the position of a writer for this huge publisher. She enjoys writing about the Batman family, Nightwing and many other notable characters in comics. Devin is also openly bisexual.

Her notable works include: Nightwing, Gotham Knights, Vampirella, Nightwing - Huntress, JLA/Titans, User, The Titans and more

Timelines. What was your way of dealing with confusing comics continuity? And especially within the Bat-verse? I hope this isn’t disappointing, but to honest I no longer follow DC continuity at all. In the past I’ve compared leaving a comic series to breaking up with a lover; you hope they’re doing well, but you don’t really feel the need to check up on the details of their continued existence without you. ;-p When I was actively working in Gotham, though, I relied on a combination of extensive background reading, informal updates from friends (about what they were reading) and colleagues (about what they were writing), and sheer force of will. By sheer force of will I mean that to write in the Batman universe -or in any established fictional realm, really -you need to have a clear vision of the world and the characters moving through it. And that means that if you have to, you ignore anything that doesn’t fit into your vision. My preferred method of working on franchise characters is to do what I like to call a deep dive. Before I start writing, I read everything about them I can get my hands on, including academic analysis and summaries. Inevitably, I’ll find something that grabs me - with Batman it was his relationship with the first Robin, the idea that he was as driven and dark and scary as he was, but was also raising a kid. For the Doctor Strange novel I wrote, I started completely cold (I’d never read a Doctor Strange comic when I first got the assignment) but the first thing that grabbed me was the death of his sister. The few times I’ve worked with Superman I spent a lot of time thinking about how he was raised as a farmer. Whatever it is, I let it carry me further into the character’s world and/or psyche and I try to explore facets of it as I write about them. At that point, I’m pulling on previous continuity, but I’m also creating my own, new continuity. Comic readers tend to favor really tight continuity, but you have to remember that you get that at a cost. Every creator comes to the table with their own ideas about the characters and their own references and their own stories, and the more you make them toe the line, the less you’re making use of their uniqueness. When I started working for the Bat-office, there were several different Bat-books, each with a slightly different take. Batman was for superhero stories, Detective was more mystery/noir , Legends featured contained stories that could fall anywhere in the history of Gotham, Chronicles was more of an anthology and testing ground for newer talent, and when I started Gotham Knights, my explicit intent was to have it highlight the relationships in the primary Bat-family. To some extent, those books all existed in unique fictional universes, until we deliberately brought them together for crossover events. I mention this because I worry that superhero comics have a tendency to become overly homogenized when everyone has to adhere to a strict continuity. No matter how great any given writer is, do we really want ALL the comics coming out of any given publisher to feature his language, ideas and storylines? The stories you hear about Batman - all of them - are legends. Some may be spot on, some may be less than true, but the great thing about fiction is that, unlike reality, it isn’t actually necessary or useful for all of us to agree on what happened. Alternate takes are welcome, which is one of the reasons I’ve always championed fanfic. tl;dr: I learn it. And then I ignore it. ;-p

Can you remember writing some scene or part of a story and being beyond excited of how it is turning out to be? Do you usually anticipate reader’s reactions for something particular that you wrote? Okay, two separate questions here. First: yes, absolutely. A secret about writers is that behind closed doors, most of us suspect we’re talentless frauds and that at any minute someone is going to notice that we’re literally just making stuff up. But at the same time, most of us have a few moments every week, or a few lines in every project, where we stop, grin, and think, “damn, I’m good.” I am probably not supposed to share that secret, and I apologize to my colleagues for doing so, but the thing is…writing is magic. You can study all the craft of it, learn all the structure and all the tools (as you should) and still, there’s a point where you feel like you’re just listening and writing down a story that is coming to you from somewhere else. And when it’s good, it’s such an amazing feeling. It leaves you a little bit in awe. Specifically, the two things I remember are 1) having to stop and catch my breath the first time I wrote the word “Batmobile” in a script I was getting paid for and 2) the first time I saw the art come in for USER, and characters that had previously existed only in my head had suddenly been brought to life by John Bolton and Sean Phillips. Those were both very exciting moments. As for anticipating the reaction of readers; no, I don’t do that. I don’t even really think about the readers when I’m writing beyond, perhaps, the artist (who I want to keep engaged) or editor (who I want to keep happy). I think it would be a little paralyzing - not to mention futile - to try to guess how people will react. You don’t even really know who’s reading it, honestly, which is one of the reasons why it’s really nice to meet readers at conventions. But I’ve always suspected that the best writing comes from writing to and for one specific person - usually a colleague or loved one.

What would you tell to those saying comics are not a real or serious literature and shame it readers for needing to “have pictures to understand the plot”? Unfortunately it is still a case of misunderstanding. Well, first of all, I try to make a distinction between superhero comics, the publishing subgenre, and comics, the medium. Superhero comics are not, if we’re being honest, always serious literature. But comics as a medium is an amazingly complex and diverse form of story-telling that supports everything from newspaper comic strips to literary fiction graphic novels. It’s particularly remarkable for being the most collaborative form of story creation and story consumption available, relying on multiple creators for its inception and relying on readers to actively simulate time, motion and sometimes even events out of the spaces between panels. The best book I’ve ever read on the topic - and one that could make even a hardcore cynic reevaluate their understanding of what “comics” is - is Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. There are also so many amazing graphic novels out there, from Spiegelman’s Maus to Chabouté’s Alone. Unless it’s not comics they have an issue with so much as superheroes, in which case you can talk to them about contemporary mythology and the power of allegorical story-telling. You’re right, though, that it’s a very misunderstood corner of publishing. I don’t often have people try to tell me it’s not literature, but I can’t count the number of people who have learned what I do for a living and assumed I have a lot of material I can share with their child. The idea that comics are for kids is a throwback to 1950s American marketing. As I’m sure you and your followers know, comics haven’t really been for kids in over five decades. I still haven’t shown my ten-year-old my Batman or Nightwing work and don’t plan to for some time. The last thing I’ll say on the subject is that sometimes people have to be taught how to read the art in a comic. I think people unfamiliar with comics assume that the pictures in the panels are just literal representations of the words, which is rarely the case. Comic fans are actually quite accomplished readers who know how to invest in long stories, detect subtle tensions between artistic and linguistic storytelling, actively participate in moving narratives forward and, of course, engage with huge, complex fictional universes.

Do you feel like there is not enough representation of bisexual heroes/superheroes in comics and pop-culture? We know Diana Prince is bisexual and she never got a canonical girlfriend. Yes, I agree. The LGBTQA population, as a whole, is grossly underrepresented, along with non-heteronormative relationships and non-gender binary individuals. Just this morning, actually, I was told I couldn’t go forward with a storyline exploring a canonically confirmed asexual character joining an asexual support group, because the publisher wanted to play “that angle” down. As someone who is openly bisexual, this distresses me, but not half so much as the appalling underrepresentation of people of color and women, especially considering that both groups each make up more than half the population. As the recent phenomenal success of both the Wonder Woman and Black Panther movies demonstrate, the world is more than ready to embrace corrections to these imbalances, but the people (oh, who am I kidding? Read: white men) who run the engines of pop culture - not to mention literary culture, history, and advertising - are incredibly averse to change. It’s so, so important to see yourself reflected in your own culture, but the presence and participation of women and people of color, not to mention bisexuals, is so deeply biased it’s difficult to fully comprehend the multiple levels of exclusion. It’s hard for me to even talk about this these days because I don’t know where to start. The relentless use of female characters to stimulate growth in male characters? The complete absence of female internal lives in so much of literature? How about just pure invisibility? I remember watching TV one evening and noticing - all at once and with a shock that I’d never seen it before - what I call the gender ratio. The world, according to movies and television shows, consists of one female for every three males. There are exceptions to this, but watch how often it’s true. And of course, it’s even worse for people of color, who tend to appear at about a one to nine white people ratio. Now walk outside. Is that what you see? Of course not, not even close! But we’re so used to the culture we’ve been fed that we hardly notice anything’s amiss when we look at entire fictional landscapes almost wholly devoid of women and POC. What do you think that does to our psyches? To our sense of fitting in in the world? To our sense of, and compassion for, one another? The dearth of bisexual superheroes strikes me as a wasted opportunity to explore organic and complex ranges in human sexuality - great story-fodder, that! - and I hope it changes. But not all superhero stories have to deal with the sex lives of the characters. Every single one of them, though, has to confront both the gender and race of the characters portrayed, and holy f--- do we have a long way to go there.

We were delighted to see the #VisibleWoman going around Twitter earlier this year. Did it prove itself to be useful? What you do you think about this way of using social media to make a statement and make it work? This plays directly into what I was just talking about. It’s so weird to think about, but we are so often literally invisible - in fiction especially, but in the real world, too. As a writer, I spend a lot of time summoning and then editing the default story ideas that come from my subconscious, and once I began to be aware of the issues we’ve been discussing, I was dismayed by how deeply all of that background misogyny had lodged itself - it’s an issue I’m still exploring and excavating today. I grew up hearing people say that women were important and should be treated fairly, but I saw so few of them. They were absent or scarce in most movies and TV shows, whittled down to a small subgroup in literary fiction writing, hard to find in the music world, almost never part of political news or history lessons…I can’t even imagine how different my internal world would be if I’d been exposed to a more balanced cultural tally. So, yes - I do think the hashtag was useful, both as a marketing tool (my single tagged tweet garnered me over three hundred new followers and is now pinned to the top of my account) and as a huge, warm searchlight picking accomplished females out of the crowd. Just being reminded that there are women working in comics and games and STEM and business and politics is enormously helpful. Having a platform available to connect with and support them is that much more powerful. I do have concerns about social media, some quite grave. But #VisibleWoman stands as an example of best possible usage.

And finally, do you keep in touch with your high school or college teachers who taught you English or Writing? Do you think they know you have became a successful author and would they be proud of you? Great question! My answer is multi-tiered because those people - mentors - change and evolve over time. So the short answer is no, I’m not still in touch with any of my high school or college teachers and I doubt they’ve kept track of me. I went to three different high schools and so didn’t form strong attachments to many teachers - the one exception was a Social Living teacher at Berkeley High, Nancy Rubin, who I did stay in touch with for many years after I graduated. She didn’t teach me to write - though she did encourage us all to keep daily journals, which can be a gateway drug to compulsive writing - but she was that special teacher who saw all her students as individuals and honestly cared about our opinions and our struggles and our lives. I was actually still in touch with her when she published her first book - Ask Me if I Care, Voices from an American High School - and I was very proud of her! I’m sure she’d enjoy hearing about my crazy career, but she was proud of all of us, even then, just for being. I didn’t make a strong connection with my college writing teacher, the novelist Mona Simpson, but was crazy about my post-collegiate writing instructor, the novelist Brian Bouldrey, who was still part of my life when I first broke into comics and was enormously tickled by it. Now that you’ve got me thinking about him again, I think I’ll try to track him down again and send him a copy of my Doctor Strange novel. xD In comics, I have three main mentors and I’m still in touch with all of them and know that they’re proud of and happy for me. Overall, the professional comics community is very supportive and full of hard-working people who care about the medium, the characters, the readers, and each other. Thank you for these great questions and for you interest in my work!

Thank you, Devin! It was a pleasure and we are grateful for your amazing and detailed answers, and of course for your time :)

Rozhovor původně publikovaný na blogu Comics Holky

#interview #comics creators #devin grayson #nightwing #batfamily #batman #batman family #women in comics

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comicsholky-blog · 7 years ago

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Interview s Devin K. Grayson

Mezi její nejznámější tituly patří Nightwing, Gotham Knights, Vampirella, Nightwing - Huntress, JLA/Titans, User, The Titans a další

Her notable works include: Nightwing, Gotham Knights, Vampirella, Nightwing - Huntress, JLA/Titans, User, The Titans and more

Thank you, Devin! It was a pleasure and we are grateful for your amazing and detailed answers, and of course for your time :)

A i my velice děkujeme a doufáme, že jste si interview užili stejně jako my!

- Kara

#comics holky #interview #women in comics #comics ladies #devin k grayson #devin grayson #nightwing #batman #batfamily #comics #dc comics #dc #gotham

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scripturientoctopus · 4 years ago

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Alone

I can no longer remember when the humans left us. I suppose it’s wrong to say the humans left, a brave few souls remained behind to set us to our task. I simply do not count them. It would only be a week longer before they boarded their sleek shuttle and abandoned us to the waste just as the others did. I know that it is not my place to criticise the ones responsible for my life.

If only I could forget the truth.

The best I can do is try and dull my inner machinations with my daily drudgery. I gather my pack after drinking down my morning NutriSack. The viscous liquid is tasteless as always. Daisy meets me at the Nest’s thick steel door, smiling as though we were heading out on an adventure, rather than scrapping. At the very least, her brightness drags my mind from darker thoughts.

We head through the door with a group of hunters. This time tonight they'll return here with arms and bags full of whatever life they managed to find and snuff out. The trophies would be decontaminated and broken down to be put in NutriSacks, or to knit together another of my siblings. It is good to know that despite our sterility, we are still a renewable resource.

The familiar hiss of the decontamination chamber ruffles my hair before we get in the elevator up to the surface. The doors groan open to a blinding white sun. The world takes form beyond the glaring light, a pitted waste of scrub grass and sand. Daisy and I set out to the west, following the sun.

It isn’t what I was built for. I was meant to maintain the Nest’s systems, not scrap old machines. A week ago that changed, when the main computer system went down without warning. Suddenly those few humans left were cut off from their friends orbiting in their ship, the Arc. They did not say they were afraid but the fear was there like blood in the water as the sharks closed in.

Thus, it was left to me to go scrap old machines for the parts needed to repair the system.

I have to rest not long after setting out. Unlike Daisy, made of muscle and a head taller than myself, I was not made for physical exertion. As we sit, Daisy points to the clouds and chatters about what they look like to her. I smile and study the lines of her face. Absentmindedly, I rub the tattoo on my wrist. E-1925. The E designates me as an engineer model, designed to run the Nest’s computers and machines once we are left to our own devices. Now in my mind it meant Electra. Watching Daisy, I remember the day we rested in the shade of a rare tree and named one another.

“Why'd you suppose we don’t have names?”

“Too complicated”

She rolls on her side and grins at me through the grass.

“We should pick names, I want to be able to call you something besides E”

I sigh but roll to face her regardless.

“Let’s hear it then, what do you think I should be called?”

She squints at me, thinking hard before her face brightens and she grins her radiant grin.

“Electra! Because, like, you work with computers and stuff which are electric and umm… it's pretty! And you’re pretty!”

I flop back on my back and laugh.

“Alright, alright, that's a good one. Let’s see… what’s your name?”

I study her face as she waits in anticipation. D-1582. Defense model, built to be sturdy and strong, to look out for the fragile models like myself. Brown hair, brown eyes. Just like every other D model. Tiny freckles, the smallest flaw in her genetic coding. I remember the day we found a perfect white flower. After all the wars and fallout and the floods it was a miracle to find such softness. She had touched its petals so gently, a tear running down her cheek. I wanted so badly to reach out and connect the points of her freckles, a miraculous constellation.

“Daisy. You’re Daisy”

“Whatcha thinking about so hard over there?”

“Oh, just thinking about what I need to bring back today”

In truth, the team of humans at the Nest should be able to repair the system with what they have. Still, they want more parts “just in case”. They are so very afraid. I almost feel sorry for them. If only I knew less. Curiosity killed the cat.

As we begin our walk again, I wonder again if I should tell her. Warn her. But what good would it do? Why should I disturb her peace?

I shouldn’t have done it. I was not made to be curious.

I was just supposed to update the main computer. It was a simple task, almost insultingly so. So, my mind began to wander and so did my eyes.

I found a picture of our creator and his team. The man who designed me in khaki pants and a checked shirt, a small stain on his tie. He squints through round glasses. He is off in orbit now, safely on the Arc with all those rich enough or famous enough or lucky enough to be chosen for salvation. I feel... Something.

I found the listing of every Synthetic in operation. Twenty of each model. Perfectly split male and female. Though that is a farce. We were only given gender to comfort our human companions.

Then I went deeper. The plans for re-entry. Lifetimes from now. A throwaway line.

“Terminate all Synthetics 5 days prior to arrival”

The same injectors in our sleep pods that jolt us awake in the morning, full of such a softly killing chemical.

I think I am angry.

I can’t tell her. Maybe one day. Maybe. We have all the time in the world.

I collect only a few parts, pulling apart old computers in burned out ruins of houses. Daisy scans the horizon for any threats but as usual, we are alone here. As we walk back to the Nest, the sun dipping low behind us, I quietly begin to hate our creators. How dare they stitch us together just to leave us on a deserted planet? To clean up the mess they left behind? Then to throw us away because we have never been more than tools.

But there is nothing to be done. In a week’s time we will be left here, to scramble in the poisoned soil and try to build something from the scraps. Something not meant for us.

I will return home, eat my tasteless food and sleep in the pod that one day will be my tomb. That is all.

I want to take Daisy’s hand and tell her so many things but I cannot.

We return home to silence. It is not unexpected. Not every Synth is active today and most will still be out until dark. There is something in the air though that I cannot place. We are both instantly on edge.

Daisy walks slightly in front of me as we check the area. Nothing seems out of place, the pods still full of sleeping Synths, Machinery still humming in the background. So we make our way to the human’s quarters and command center.

We find the command center empty, the computer on and functional once again. I look through the open files on the screen.

There is a series of communications from the Arc. They begin with updates on supply levels and some instructions. Then it all goes wrong. Engine one is down. The water pod has a leak. The heat is gone. It’s so very cold.

God Help Us.

Somewhere in reading the messages I have begun to shake.

“What is it? What happened?” Daisy asks, distraught.

“They’re… they’re gone. The Arc is gone.” I stumble back from the monitor, trying to process. Daisy stares in shock before realization lights her face.

“The humans! Where are they?”

We scramble to their quarters, Daisy forcing the door open.

It’s too late.

You could almost mistake it for sleeping if they were not so very, terribly still. Daisy leans her head against the door frame, choking out a sob. I pick my way inside and find the syringes of the same chemical they planned to use on us. All empty. I spend a moment crouched in the middle of the room, breath heaving, shivering.

I walk back to the doorway slowly. We really are alone now.

I take Daisy’s hand as the tears start to run down my face.

#writting #short story #sci fi #horror #dystopia #lgbtq

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gweyson · 7 years ago

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how much would u hate me if i asked u to do every single uncommon question for an oc of ur choice?

the absolute madman he actually did it

im gonna put this under the cut sdjkfhsdjfsjkl also im answering for pascal because. Thats My Boy

1. What’s the maximum amount of time your character can sit still with nothing to do?

he’s gotten really good at it since he had to start hiding from murder robots... but even before then he was never a super fidgety person so he could sit very still !

2. How easy is it for your character to laugh?

he’s good at pretending everything’s fine when it’s all actually Rather Shit so. yeah pretty easy

3. How do they put themselves to bed at night (reading, singing, thinking?)

thinking mostly.... sometimes he’ll talk to someone and drift off from there but it depends on who’s on lookout or how quiet the group has to stay

4. How easy is it to earn their trust?

he tries to remain suspicious of people he meets but at heart he’s too trusting for his own good tbh.... he does try to hold off on trusting stangers these days but hes still a little soft

5. How easy is it to earn their mistrust?

yeah pretty easy. like it’s easy enough to get him to trust you in the first place but once you do something to fuck that up then good luck getting it back lmao

6. Do they consider laws flexible, or immovable?

laws arent really. a thing anymore djkfhdljk but when they were he’d like... say laws are immovable and very needed and then do stuff that completely contradicted that view

7. What triggers nostalgia for them, most often? Do they enjoy that feeling?

cooking !! it reminds him of when he used to help his mum out with houseowrk/cooking. he. doesnt really like the feeling because it reminds him that he has no idea if his family is actually still alive or not :(

8. What were they told to stop/start doing most often as a child

“stop playing in the dirt”

9. Do they swear? Do they remember their first swear word?

he doesnt swear heaps but he does enough that it’s not super shocking whenever he does. he sweras more the angrier/more agitated he gets

10. What lie do they most frequently remember telling? Does it haunt them?

he’d regularly lie to his mum just so he could get out of the house and go to parties lol. he’s not super haunted by it or anything (& he was a pretty good kid otherwise so he figures he was allowed at least this one not great thing)

11. How do they cope with confusion (seek clarification, pretend they understand, etc)?

he’ll try to play along until he can figure stuff out but if he cant he’ll just go “what tf is happening”

12. How do they deal with an itch found in a place they can’t quite reach?

either gets someone to scratch it or uses like. a ruler or smth

13. What color do they think they look best in? Do they actually look best in that color?

he thinks he looks best in green but it’s... not his best colour

14. What animal do they fear most?

big dogs... scarey :(

15. How do they speak? Is what they say usually thought of on the spot, or do they rehearse it in their mind first?

he usually just says whatever comes to his mind tbh. idk how to properly descrive it but like... the way he talks makes him sound smart but not arrogant about it yknow. like you hear him talk and youre like “yeah this is a guy who knows what hes doing”

16. What makes their stomach turn?

not much tbh?? like before everything turned Awful he was studying forensic entomology so like. hes got a bit of an iron stomach lmao. the smell of rotting meat maybe

17. Are they easily embarrassed?

not really? if he does get embarrassed he’s pretty decent at hiding it

18. What embarrasses them?

when he’s the centre of attention in a big group and he can feel everyone staring at him and his face goes all red and aaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAA

19. What is their favorite number?

7 !!

20. If they were asked to explain the difference between romantic and platonic or familial love, how would they do so?

he’d go on a really long tangent about it and possibly not even answer the question at hand tbh

21. Why do they get up in the morning?

to not die, mostly

22. How does jealousy manifest itself in them (they become possessive, they become aloof, etc)?

he’ll become pretty aloof and just. not wanna talk. he’ll avoid the target of jealousy a bit as well oops

23. How does envy manifest itself in them (they take what they want, they become resentful, etc)?

he’ll do everything in his power to one-up whatever’s making him envious. it rarely works

24. Is sex something that they’re comfortable speaking about? To whom?

he is comfortable talking about it !! really the only thing that ever stops him talking about it is if someone else is uncomfortable with it

25. What are their thoughts on marriage?

he likes the idea ! if he does get married though he wants to do it wayyyyy in the future he’s not ready to settle down

26. What is their preferred mode of transportation?

before everything went shit he preferred driving, now he walks everywhere

27. What causes them to feel dread?

robots. or when astrid is pissed

28. Would they prefer a lie over an unpleasant truth?

he says he’d prefer an unpleasant truth but when it actually comes time to deal with it he doesnt go too great lol

29. Do they usually live up to their own ideals?

he tries... whether he succeeds is another question

30. Who do they most regret meeting?

[redacted for spoilers]

31. Who are they the most glad to have met?

astrid !! as much as he loves everyine else in the group she’s the only one who could realistically protect him if something were to go wrong. shes just more secure

32. Do they have a go-to story in conversation? Or a joke?

not really ??

33. Could they be considered lazy?

nah not really !! he’s always been a hard worker

34. How hard is it for them to shake a sense of guilt?

it follows him around for a loooooong time. whether it goes away or just fades into background noise really depends on the situation but it’s not easy for him

35. How do they treat the things their friends come to them excited about? Are they supportive?

he always tries to be supportive !! unless it’s something like. morally disgusting then No but he tries to support his friends even if he thinks whateber theyre talking about is kinda dumb

36. Do they actively seek romance, or do they wait for it to fall into their lap?

he just kinda waits it out !! when the world was Not Shit his friends would be regularly trying to set him up with people so he never had to work super hard for it :’)

37. Do they have a system for remembering names, long lists of numbers, things that need to go in a certain order (like anagrams, putting things to melodies, etc)?

i cant remember the name for it but he does the thing where like. he’ll associate thing a with thing b by finding something that connects them togehter? like a syllable in thing a sounds like thing b so. yeah. im good at explaining

38. What memory do they revisit the most often?

either when astrid helped him bust out of the factory he was trapped working in or just miscellaneous memories of his mum & siblings

39. How easy is it for them to ignore flaws in other people?

he tends to ignore people’s flaws which can lead to issues

40. How sensitive are they to their own flaws?

he tries to be self critical but he’s not really self critical enough for it to make a solid difference. usually he has to be told what he’s doing before he consciously realises it

41. How do they feel about children?

he likes them !! he was the oldest of a lot of siblings so he knows how to handle them & he’s pretty good with them

42. How badly do they want to reach their end goal?

his end goal is to stop robots killing everything & for everything to go back to normal so id say he wants that pretty fuckin bad

43. If someone asked them to explain their sexuality, how would they do so?

“hey pascal are you into--” “yes”

QUESTIONS FOR CREATORS (I wasnt sure if you wanted me to do these ones too so. shrug emoji)

A) Why are you excited about this character?

i made him for my comic which. i will start one day fdklgjdlkjgd..... also hes just fun to develop ! i gave him a bunch of traits i rlly like and also i made him like bugs a lot so. i am biased

B) What inspired you to create them?

uh. needed characters for the comic hehe.....i cant remember the exact process i went thru when making him?? i wanted someone who was close to astrid/who she could trust, plus i had the idea for a backstory (i think. like i said i cant remember my exact process)

C) Did you have trouble figuring out where they fit in their own story?

not really, i came up with the concept before i actually made his character

D) Have they always had the same physical appearance, or have you had to edit how they look?

he’s always had the same appearance !! even though i should probably change it a little because he looks different every time i try drawing him but shhhhh

E) Are they someone you would get along with? Would they get along with you?

hes someone i would think is super cool but then. would never actually talk to jkdsfhsdjkhfsdjk. he’d be nice to my face but i’m....not sure what he’d genuinely think of me oops

F) What do you feel when you think of your OC (pride, excitement, frustration, etc)?

THATS MY FACKING BOY BABEYEYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! also excited bc i have angst planned ^____^

G) What trait of theirs bothers you the most?

he’s too gullible and willing to trust strangers. he should know better but he’s too much of an optimist for his own good !!

H) What trait do you admire most?

he’s always able to put on a happy face when he’s feeling awful because he doesnt want anyone to worry & he doesnt wanna bring anyone down !! he’s always thinking ahout everyone else before himself

I) Do you prefer to keep them in their canon universe?

i dont know what this means..... yes??

J) Did you have to manipulate or exclude canon factors to allow them to create their character?

uhh technically not ?? in his original concept he was gonna be in a poly relationship with 2 others but i cut the other members of the relationship. not because of pascal it’s because i thought the group would get too big and like. they value stealth and sneakiness. plus it’s harder for big groups to travel undetected

#im too lazy tp check for typos fdgjdlkjDFLGJDLFJGDK #THANK YOU FOR THE ASK. I AM DEAD #ask #ocs #daudside-r #one day ill start this comic. i was gonna aim for this month but. hm #anyway i lvoe my boy #and also all my kids #ok bye its 2.30am

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huahsu · 7 years ago

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YEAR OF WHAT HAPPENS ON EARTH STAYS ON EARTH

[longer version of what I contributed to the new yorker’s year-end package. you can read that here, and listen to the accompanying megamix the video team made! links to previous year’s lists at bottom.] I did not grow up going to church, and I am not a particularly religious person. A few days after the inauguration, I wandered into a nearby church and took a seat in the back pews. I’d gone there right after the election. There was some time for anyone with anything on their mind to stand up and speak. If you need others to pray for you, just let us know. A middle-aged black man in a leather jacket got up and began telling us about an argument he was having with a friend on Facebook. It was about the election, but it was actually about the intractability of racism. He was getting frustrated while describing it to us, in part because he seemed to value being the cool and level-headed one. Plus he was describing the kind of argument millions of people were having on the Internet. “I just hope he finds peace,” the guy said. He paused, then put his hands on his chest. “On a lighter note, today would have been Jimi Hendrix’s seventy-fourth birthday.” He opened up his leather jacket to show everyone his Hendrix t-shirt. “I just wanted to say that, because he was just awesome.” So I returned here, the day after marching through Manhattan with a poster that said “HOLD ON, BE STRONG.” I needed to be in a room that was powered by something other than hate--to be reminded of vision and purpose, even if they weren’t mine to claim. To listen to wisdom gleaned from a book I’ve never read, and pick and choose what I wanted. To hear others pour themselves into songs I never, ever sing along to. I wanted to steal their vibes. Instead of a hymn, they passed out small pieces of paper with the lyrics of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” This is not the type of church people come to for the music. The pianist started playing, and I remember thinking about how it felt like magic when I learned how to play those chords as a kid. I couldn’t believe we were doing this. We sang, tentatively at first, as though we could not believe these words in this space. Picture it: singing of “no heaven” and “no religion, too,” with humility and hope, inside a house of worship. It was like an admission that faith was inadequate. All we had was one another. “Imagine” is a song I’ve heard millions of times, the type of song that is so ubiquitous that we rarely bother scrutinizing its words, its vantage point, the possibility that someone wrote these words because he actually believed them. I sang along with a room of strangers, and we looked at one another, and, for the first time in months, I began to cry. TWO LYRICS THAT REMINDED ME OF POLITICS EVEN IF THEY HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS "Wrote this shit January 21″ “Take me back to November / Take me back to November” “I’M AN ANGRY TEENAGER” Novelist, “Street Politician” ONCE THEY START, I HAVE TO LISTEN TO THE END Jim O’Rourke’s recently unearthed cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” Kanye’s sitcom-length remix of “Bed” THURSDAY NIGHTS ON NBC Ross from Friends’ very Madchester guitar-y Boiler Room set DJ Seinfeld, Time Spent Away from U Nino Man, Jadakiss and Styles P, “Friends”

IN ANOTHER YEAR FULL OF NIRVANA/KURT COBAIN REFERENCES (DID YOU SEE JAY:Z’S JACKET?) MY FAVORITE SONG, PROBABLY: this Trippie Redd snippet

SOME VERSIONS OF THE NINETIES THAT WILL NEVER COME BACK THE WAY GRUNGE ENNUI HAS, BUT WERE SO POSSIBILITY-RICH TO ME BACK THEN Kicking Giant, This Being the Ballad of Kicking Giant, Halo: NYC/Olympia 1989-1993 Helium, The Dirt of Luck/The Magic City LIKE MANY WHO LOVED “A STORM IN HEAVEN,” I OVERLOOKED THEM AT THE TIME Acetone, 1992-2001 A REALLY GOOD BOOK ABOUT ACETONE, LOS ANGELES, DREAMS OF GREATNESS Sam Sweet, Hadley Lee Lightcap WOULD HAVE LOVED THIS IN 1994, 2002 OR 2017 Big Thief, Capacity CREDIBLE AND DOPE EARLY NINETIES R&B HOMAGE, SAX AND ALL Joyce Wrice, “Good Morning” SPEAKING OF THE NINETIES, LEECH MADE A MIXTAPE OF JUST THE FLOATY/DREAMY PARTS TAKEN FROM CLASSIC GOOD LOOKING/MOVING SHADOW SINGLES Leech, “Just the Liquid” FOR THE COMEDOWN, DARK-ASS STUFF ASSEMBLED EXCLUSIVELY FROM SLIPKNOT SAMPLES Croww, Prosthetics NOSTALGIA, ULTRA (UK GARAGE/BASSLINE EDITION) tqd, ukg SUMMERTIME ‘SECOND SUMMER OF LOVE’ VIBE Opus III, “It’s a Fine Day (Burt Fox remix)” UNEXPECTED BURIAL SUMMERTIME VIBES Monic, “Deep Summer (Burial remix)” NO REISSUE OR tk ANNIVERSARY TIE-IN, JUST SOME OLD SONGS I RE/DISCOVERED THIS YEAR Active Minds, “Hobson’s Choice” El-B, “El-Brand” Kamal Abdul Alim, “Brotherhood” Spiritualized in Reykjavik U2, “Numb (Soul Assassins remix)” U2, “Mysterious Ways (Massive Attack remix)”

SAME, BUT TAIWANESE INDIE ROCK EDITION Chocolate Tiger, “Piecing Together” REISSUES, OR: PEOPLE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN WEIRD AND SPACY#, OBSESSED WITH NATURAL BEAUTY## # Planetary Peace, Synthesis # Pauline Anna Strom, Trans-Millennia Music ## Pep Llopis, Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonaut REISSUES, OR: WHEN I WAS A CHILD THERE WERE NO BETTER SONGS THAN THE ONES THAT PLAYED THROUGH TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE AND FOR SOME REASON THIS JOYOUS EP REMIND ME OF THAT SHEEN, THOSE HOOKS, THE PERFECT, THEATER-SIZED ECHO Om Alec Khaoli, Say You Love Me BEST ALBUM-LENGTH METAPHOR FOR THE CITY, ITS LIMITATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES Wiki, No Mountains In Manhattan SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE IT WAS DESCRIBED, JAMAICA VIA OUTER SPACE Equiknoxx, Colon Man I NEED TO GO OUT MORE Jex Opolis, “Mt. Belzoni” KH, “Question”

I LISTENED TO THIS ABOUT TEN TIMES, MY SENSE OF ENCHANTMENT GROWING AND GROWING EACH TIME, BEFORE REALIZING THERE WERE BARELY ANY DRUMS ON IT Mr. Mitch, Devout SERIOUSLY THE MR. MITCH ALBUM WAS REALLY MOVING AND FANTASTIC Mr. Mitch f/ Denai Moore, “Fate” CRAZY WISDOM MASTER Vince Staples, Big Fish Theory C’MON AND RAISE UP Rapsody f/ Kendrick, Lance Skiiwalker, “Power” SO ICEY Zomby, Mercury’s Rainbow ECHO PARTY Demen, Nektyr Evy Jane, “Give Me Love” THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST Vic Mensa, The Autobiography DUNGEON FAMILY, EVEN IN DARKNESS Earthgang f/ J.I.D., “Meditate” FUNNY HOW TIME SLIPS AWAY Lee Gamble, Mnestic Pressure Pessimist, s/t NOT SURE HOW THIS BECAME THE DIWALI OF 2017 BUT OKAY French Montana f/ Mariah, Rae Sremmurd, PNB Rock, Belly, Elephant Man, Vybz Kartel, J Balvin, NORE, Wizkid, “Unforgettable” HOW ARE THIS MANY PEOPLE ON A FOUR MINUTE SONG? GOOD VIDEO THOUGH A$AP Mob f/ A$AP Rocky, Playboi Carti, Quavo, Lil Uzi Vert and Frank Ocean, “RAF” I LIKE IT WHEN FERG’S VOICE GETS ALL NAGGY Ferg, “Plain Jane” METRO BOOMIN MADE A BEAT THAT REMINDED ME OF RADIOHEAD Post Malone f/ Quavo, “Congratulations” THE MARIACHI VERSION IS PRETTY SWEET Brian Imanuel, “How I surprised Post Malone with a mariachi band” ”IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR LYRICS, IF YOU’RE LOOKING TO CRY, IF YOU’RE LOOKING TO THINK ABOUT LIFE...” JonWayne, Rap Album Two CORNBALL PIANOS AND THEN THAT SYNTH DRAGS, AND THEN THE DRUMS KICK Tee Grizzley, “First Day Out” “BUT WILD/WITH MY MONOTONE STYLE” 21 Savage, “Bankroll” Kodak Black, “Candy Paint” Rich Chigga, “Glow Like Dat” ANNUAL SPOT RESERVED FOR LA MUSICA DE HARRY FRAUD French Montana f/ Pharrell, “Bring Dem Things” WHEN LAETITIA SAYS HER OWN NAME ON “EMBERS” Vagabon, Infinite Worlds WHEN JESSIE LEANS INTO THE WORD “FUCK” Jessie Reyez, “Figures” THAT LIGHT MISTING, THAT CASUAL SPRITZ OF SYNTHS Lanark Artefax, “Touch Absence” A GOOD ANTI-DJT THING THAT CAME OUT EARLY THIS YEAR, WHICH FEELS LIKE EONS AGO Lushlife + friends, My Idols are Dead + My Enemies are in Power THE BABY, THE FLUTES, PIERRE’S OBNOXIOUSLY LONG TAG, THE JESSE LINGARD DANCE Playboi Carti, “Magnolia” ILLEST SHIT I SAW THIS YEAR, BABY-RELATED A child at a restaurant watching an iPad and an iPhone at the same damn time “[FREE] PLAYBOI CARTI TYPE BEAT” YBN Nahmir, “Rubbin off the Paint” GUNS N ROSES, BEFORE ONE OF THE WEIRDEST BEEFS OF THE YEAR Trippie Redd f/ 6IX9INE, “POLES1469″ SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO BELIEVE YOU CAN SING, AND DO IT WITH CONVICTION, AND I WILL LISTEN Trippie Redd, “Rack City/Love Scars 2″ ALL THE BACKGROUND NOISE/ECHOED-OUT ADLIBS MAKE THIS BlocBoy JB, “No Chorus Pt 10″ SMERZ HAS FUN DESPITE THE AWKWARD OF IT ALL Smerz on NTS IT SEEMS REALLY EASY TO MAKE A GOOD-SOUNDING SONG THESE DAYS Global Dan, “Off White” OF ALL THE DOPE SHIT THAT FUTURE APPEARED ON THIS YEAR, THE MOMENT I WILL REMEMBER IS That tiny pause before he sings “I need fresh air,” when he seems happy and content IS THAT A GEORGE MICHAEL SAMPLE? Mozzy, “Prayed for This” THE FIX C Struggs, “Go to Jesus” "IT’S COOL, BUT IT’S NOT...END ZONE” Lil Uzi Vert, “XO TOUR Llif3″ AN ALBUM BOOKENDED BY TOTALLY DIFFERENT KINDS OF COLIN KAEPERNICK/TAKE A KNEE REFERENCES Miguel, War and Leisure IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR Brockhampton, Saturation I-III SZA, Ctrl SPEAKING OF SZA: WHAT A GREAT TITLE, BESIDES IT BEING ONE OF MY FAVORITE ALBUMS OF THE YEAR Kingdom, Tears in the Club THE KELELA ALBUM WAS LOVELY, AS ARE THESE Kelela x Bok Bok, Dub Me Apart A RANDOM YOUTUBE COVER THAT I ALSO LIKED, BECAUSE IT CAPTURED HOW MELODIC THE ORIGINAL ACTUALLY IS Kathleen Nguyen covering Kendrick and Zacari’s “Love.” DAMN. WAS GOOD Almost as good as “The Heart Part 4″ LIKE A DE LA SOUL ALBUM, SOMETHING THAT I KNOW I WILL CONTINUE ENJOYING/UNDERSTANDING ANEW FOR YEARS TO COME Tyler, the Creator, Flower Boy ”BLONDED RADIO” MADE ME JOIN APPLE MUSIC Frank Ocean, “Chanel” Frank Ocean, “Biking (solo)” Tyler and Frank, “Where This Flower Blooms” MACH HOMMY MAKES GOOD MUSIC THAT’S HARD TO ACCESS “x Earl Sweatshirt” EP ty Soundcloud IT’S A WEIRD TIME B/W THIS BEAT IS SO DEMENTED Tay-K, “The Race” PROBABLY MY FAVORITE PHARRELL BEAT Kap G f/ Pharrell, “Icha Gicha” MAYBE THE GREATEST MUSIC EVER MADE, REISSUED Pharoah Sanders

REMINDED ME OF PHAROAH, WHEN IT WASN’T REMINDING ME OF BON IVER Joseph Shabason, Aytche AND I ENJOYED AYTCHE FOR SIMILAR REASONS I LIKED ZONING OUT TO Tom Rogerson and Brian Eno, Finding Shore ANNUAL SLOT RESERVED FOR MUSIC I LOVED THAT FEATURED HARP Alice Coltrane, World Spirituality Classics Vol 1

SAME, BUT FOR HARP STUFF THAT ALSO SHOUTS OUT WAWA Mary Lattimore, Collected Pieces ANNUAL SLOT RESERVED FOR TASTEFUL VIBRAPHONE Jenifa Mayanja, “Warrior Strutt” YOU TRYING TO GET THE PIPE, TO PLAY IT, OF COURSE, AS PART OF AN EXPERIMENTAL COMPOSITION? Mary Jane Leach, Pipe Dreams THERE’S A MOMENT DURING THAT BAD BOY DOCUMENTARY CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP WHERE IT BECOMES CLEAR THAT EVERYONE WHO WORKS CLOSELY WITH DIDDY EVENTUALLY TURNS TO GOD, AND IT WAS LIKE THE STRANGE OBVERSE OF Jay Z et al, 4:44 footnotes 2016, BUT I SAT IN THE MET BREUER AND WATCHED THIS OVER AND OVER FOR ABOUT AN HOUR Arthur Jafa, “Love is the Message, The Message is Death” I WANT TO WATCH THE FULL FOUR HOURS OF THIS Dev Hynes talking to Philip Glass TRICKSTERY BUT KINDA MESMERIZING! Klein, Tommy Lolina, Lolita EP Hype Williams, Rainbow Edition “NOT ANOTHER GOT MORE SEOUL, UNLESS YOU KOREAN” (CHILLWAVE REMIX) Mogwaa, Deja Vu “THE TING GOES SKRRRAHH, PAP, PAP, KA-KA-KA/SKIDIKI-PAP-PAP, AND A PU-PU-PUDRRRR-BOOM/SKYA, DU-DU-KU-KU-DUN-DUN/POOM, POOM, YOU DON’ KNOW” Big Shaq, “Mans Not Hot” IBID., BUT “PERKY” Drake, More Life I WANTED TO LIKE THE WIZKID ALBUM MORE, BUT THIS WAS AWESOME Tiwa Savage f/ Wizkid and Spellz, “Ma Lo” LISTENED TO THIS QUITE A FEW TIMES SIMPLY BECAUSE ”BREAKING NEWS: WILD GOAT ON THE LOOSE” IS A WEIRD LINE Lancey Foux f/ AJ Tracey, Kojey Radical and Jevon, “Wild Goat” UNITED TIL I DIE BUT AJ TRACEY’S TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR KIT LAUNCH FREESTYLE HAD ME BUZZZZZZIN AJ Tracey, “False 9″ DIFFERENT TIME OF DAY, KINDA LEFT ME SPEECHLESS Grouper, “Children” Colleen, A Flame my love, a frequency Kara Lis Coverdale, Grafts Ryuichi Sakamoto, async LEFT RYUICHI SAKAMOTO ENVIOUS Metaphors: Selected Soundworks from the Cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul FROM OMNI TRIO TO THIS, A PRETTY VISIONARY CAREER Robert Haigh, Creatures of the Deep A SONG THAT FEATURED TWO PEOPLE WHO SHOULD BE PRETTY BIG IN THE NEXT COUPLE OF YEARS DJDS f/ Amber Mark and Marco McKinnis, “Trees on Fire” LIKE, THIS IS GREAT Amber Mark, “Lose My Cool” AWESOME YEAR FOR POTIONS Social Lovers, “Drop Me a Line” Boss, “Song for Gods” WHISKED ME BACK TO MEMORIES OF the enormous room Joakim, “Samurai” Calvin Harris f/ Frank Ocean and Migos, “Slide” Amp Fiddler, “I’m Feeling You” Chaos in the CBD, Accidental Meetings LIKE FALLING ASLEEP ON THE SUBWAY, OR A TRUCK HITTING A POTHOLE AND SPITTING OUT A RECORD COLLECTION, OR HEARING A NANOSECOND OF BRAND NUBIAN THROUGH SOMEONE’S HEADPHONES AS YOU PASS THEM ON THE STREET, IT’S A VIBE Standing on the Corner, Red Burns MIKE’S A SAVIOR Mike 1. I SPENT A LOT OF TIME THIS YEAR THINKING ABOUT THE STRENGTH, ELASTICITY, FRAGILITY, GRAIN OF THE HUMAN VOICE AND SOME OF THIS WAS TOTALLY NECESSARY AND SUBLIME Deep Throat Choir, Be Ok Diamanda Galas, All the Way Moses Sumney, Aromanticism 2. SO ACHINGLY GOOD AND INTIMATE, ESPECIALLY THAT FAINT CROAK IN THE FIRST CHORUS Rostam f/ Kelly Zutrau, “Half-Light” 3. OF COURSE THESE WORLD-MAKERS TOO Bjork, Utopia Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, The Kid Valerie June, “Astral Plane” 3a. A STRANGE PROPOSITION THAT I ENDED UP ADORING KAS covering Sade’s "By Your Side" THE BAY AREA IS JUST DIFFERENT Droop-E, Trillionaire Thoughts Lil B, Black Ken THE “BUILD YOU UP” VIDEO WAS FUN AND ALL BUT I’M REALLY GLAD THIS WASN’T THAT Kamiayah, Before I Wake THE BAY TO L.A. AND BACK AGAIN Mozzy f/ G Perico, “Blammatory” G Perico f/ Mozzy, “What’s Real” GYEAH MC Eiht, Which Way Iz West OUTRUN THE BEAT SOB x RBE, “Lane Changing 2″ BANDS THAT ALWAYS SOUND LIKE THEMSELVES, IN WAYS THAT I FIND COMFORTING the xx, I See You King Krule, The Ooz SAME AS ABOVE, MIDDLE-AGED DIVISION The Feelies, In Between Slowdive, “Star Roving” SOMEONE WHO SOUNDS LIKE NO ONE ELSE Jlin, Black Origami THE NEW NATIONAL ANTHEM Dreezy f/ 6LACK and Kodak Black, “Spar” I LOOKED UP EACH TIME THIS CAME ON THE SHUFFLE Shanti Celeste, “Loop One/Selector”

PROBABLY MY FAVORITE SONG GoldLink f/ Brent Faiyaz and Shy Glizzy, “Crew” OR MAYBE Jorja Smith x Preditah, “On My Mind” THIS WAS SICK TOO GoldLink & Co. covering Outkast’s “Roses” MAYBE THE BEST SONG J Hus, “Did You See”

ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER YEAR WHERE MY FAVORITE RELEASE WAS PROBABLY FROM YAEJI, THE “GLASSES FOGGING UP” LINE WAS VERY RELATABLE Yaeji, EP2 THE SONG OF THE SPRING, SUMMER, WINTER I MEAN, IT’S WAYNE’S WORLD, WE JUST LIVE IN IT ### SIKH DEVOTIONAL MUSIC :: 2016 SPOOKY BLACK :: 2015

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blschaos3000-blog · 5 years ago

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Its 12:25 pm cloudy/humid/16

Welcome to 8 Questions with…..

One of the best things I like doing this series is just how randomly these interviews come together. Some interviews come after weeks or months of just casually talking with the person I am hoping to chat with and some interviews,like the one with our guest Cedric Gegel,happen after swapping 10 tweets. Of course when that tweet is about someone beating cancer’s ass,you just know I am all about talking with anyone who does that and that is how I met Cedric. We exchanged about 10 tweets and I just knew I wanted to know interview Cedric about his career as an actor and director. I’m so happy that Cedric agreed to chat because he has a lot to share and I really think you’re going to really enjoy his story and since there is a lot that Cedric has to share….let me get out of the way and let Cedric answer his 8 Questions………

Please introduce yourself and tell us about your most current project.

Hi! My name is Cedric Gegel, and I am an actor, screenwriter, and director, currently based in Philadelphia, PA and working wherever the films take me. I’ve got a couple of films on the docket as an actor that are coming up, but as a director and writer, I’m kind of involved in a few projects. The most exciting one is a drama coming up titled To A God Unknown (or The Color I Feel), which is an in-depth character study on mental health, the impact religion can have on it, and how relationships can play into how we heal. It’s a very personal project that is really invigorating for me, but it’s definitely heavy. I’m also currently working through about seven other concepts for films at varying stages of completion – for some, scripts have been started, for others, the only thing I have is a logline. It’s kind of an exciting time right now in that regard.

How have you been handling the pandemic? How have you kept yourself busy?

It’s been a struggle. Before the pandemic, I could always go to a park to get my thinking done or plan out my stories or reevaluate characters. The mind is where all films begin, and it is where all films are formed, so it needs to be engaged at all levels of the creative process. One of my peers said recently that directors need to be self-reflective, and I think that’s really true. So, unfortunately, with a lot of public spaces closed or not really functioning as a viable creative space, that’s been a bit of a struggle. I did learn to take and enjoy walks, which began as twenty minute exercises and eventually became an hour or longer as I re-learned how to engage my mental self. Obviously, I can’t really go to coffee shops at the moment, which is unfortunate because I like being able to go to a coffee shop and force myself to write. That said, it’s a lot cheaper to not go to coffee shops! Plus, I’ve tried to wean myself off of coffee during the pandemic. I was drinking three to four cups a day before this, and now I’m down to one or two a week. To really answer your question, it’s been hard to focus. I think that the world has been a bit exhausting as of late, and it’s important that we focus on that, but from a purely creative perspective, it’s been difficult to zero in and focus. I think there’s a mild responsibility on creators to make things that are life-giving and uplifting, at least to an extent and insofar as it serves the story. It has to be honest. Maybe I’m speaking more about myself there – I feel like the films I feel compelled to make during this time are films that lead to hope more than anything, but without being fake about it, and that’s difficult right now. That said, I did start a podcast where I interview fellow actors and writers and directors and composers and who knows what else, so that’s been really fun, and I have learned a lot from it. I’ve spent some time re-learning acting technique and getting back to basics, read some screenwriting textbooks, directed a virtual production of Edward III, recorded some scenes with other actors over Zoom, and other stuff, so I’ve been trying to stay engaged and active with my creative self. I think that’s really important.

You just received news that you are a cancer survivor! Can you share with us a little about your ordeal? How do you feel when you don’t see people mask up for Covid-19?

Oh gosh. Yeah. What a journey. I was diagnosed in 2015, just a few weeks after officially “starting” my acting career and literal days after the end of my sophomore year of college. I had epithelioid hemangioendothelioma, more simply described as being blood vessel cancer. It’s pretty rare, and mine happened to be in my left elbow. We discussed a variety of options, including surgeries, chemo, radiation, amputation, and just doing nothing. In the end, given how much damage was already occurring, we decided on a combination of surgeries and radiation therapy, which was going to (hopefully) allow me to keep my arm. To be blunt, it was quite a painful and miserable process, and I underwent an enormous amount of personal change that summer. I became much more quiet and introverted. I lived by myself and had to work several jobs to be able to pay for everything. It was a bit brutal at times. I also really engaged my faith at that time. I’m a devout Christian, but an experience like that really starts to challenge your perspective and beliefs. My relationship with God changed enormously. I think my faith became a much deeper, more rooted, and more confused thing. The more I learned, the less that made sense, and the more fluid and wondrous God became. Then I started engaging more with the books of James and Ecclesiastes in the Bible, and learned that this process is a really healthy thing. That’s what really kept me going. As of last Monday, I found out that I no longer need to be followed by a doctor. No more cancer check-ups! After four surgeries (initial biopsy, elbow scope, installation of a plate and six screws, and removal of a screw that was bending inside the elbow, which is incredibly painful and I do not recommend), dozens of days of radiation therapy, and years of careful work to learn the “new normal” of my body, they do not think the cancer will come back. I still have to do physical therapy and deal with daily chronic pain, but, as I recently realized, as much as the pain in my elbow hurts, I should be thankful that I have an arm to begin with. I get really frustrated when I see people not wearing masks. My cancer makes me a bit more susceptible, but it’s really my blood disorder (I’m a walking bag of medical fun) that makes me angry. I’m on blood thinners because my blood clots really fast – I’ve had two or three deep vein blood clots in my life so far, and I’m only 25, along with several superficial clots – and I don’t understand why people can’t just put on a mask. Just wear it around other people. Not everything is about you. Care about other people, grow up, and do your part. Your selfishness is killing people and it’s awful to watch. Not to mention, a lot of the people that think masks are “oppression” – and we don’t have time to unpack all of that ridiculousness – are the same people claiming that the economy needs to reopen. Well, folks, I don’t want to have to go back to basics here, but is it not obvious? If the economy reopens and you don’t wear a mask, more people are going to die, and we will likely get a second wave. It’s called cause-and-effect. It’s not all that difficult. I want things to reopen too. I had several films get cancelled because of this, and many have lost their funding. I haven’t been on set in forever, and voice acting is great, but there’s just not enough happening at this moment in time. What I am not willing to do is see people die because I wanted to go play professional dress-up in front of a camera. We need to be careful here. Wear masks, encourage social distancing. It’s not hard. It’s really not.

How did you get your start in the acting world?

I was very blessed to have parents and siblings with an appreciation for the art. From a very young age, I can remember my father telling me about certain things actors and singers were doing and why. I remember my mother reading stories to us and using character voices, and encouraging us as we got older to read fantasy books and use our imaginations. We didn’t have many TV channels growing up, so the vast majority of my childhood was spent with my nose in a book or playing outside with my siblings, Salon, Tori, and Austin. They’re all very different and very intelligent and very creative, and I think we all benefited from that combination of reading and adventuring in the small woods behind our house or playing in the backyard. My father is also a very funny character actor, and my mother has this genuine warmth about her, and I think both of them impacted me in that way. My parents put us in dance classes when we were very young, and I got to study jazz and lyrical (among other things, but those were my main focus). I always found that I was interested in the “why” of the dance instead of the “how,” which I think shows that I was leaning more into acting from that point. My older sister, Tori, was a really lovely ballerina, which I wish I had studied, but watching her and her peers perform taught me a lot about nonverbal characters. My twin sister, Salon, ended up getting a degree in dance from Bowling Green State University, and her approach to choreography and performance is really character-driven. My younger brother, Austin, is brilliant with accents and comedic timing. There must’ve been something in the food Mom and Dad used to feed us. Anyway, acting. My freshman year of high school, our choir director announced that they were doing Fiddler on the Roof. My parents decided to show us this movie. I wasn’t put off by it being older, since we had grown up on DVDs of The Andy Griffith Show and Gomer Pyle USMC and I Love Lucy, and I had loved movies like The Sound of Music. I watched the movie and knew I wanted to be a part of the show. I was cast as Nachum the Beggar and a Russian Soldier, and I had the time of my life. At the same time, I started in show choir at the high school, which is a choir that sings and dances and competes around the area. Throughout high school, I did all the musicals (Joseph Buquet in Phantom of the Opera, my first lead role as Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music, and Prince Dauntless in Once Upon a Mattress) and did show choir, competing in competitions across Ohio and Indiana, and I think we went to West Virginia – maybe Kentucky too? Lots of places. I loved acting, but knew it wasn’t a “sure thing” as a career, so I decided to go to college for business. After a few weeks, I changed to education, and then, after much urging from both the theatre faculty and the education faculty, I changed my major to Theatre Studies and decided to do the thing. I was lucky that Capital University allowed non-theatre majors to do plays, so I had the opportunity to be on stage early in my first year there and discover that my passion for acting could actually be a lifelong endeavor.

You attended Capitol University in Ohio…..what was your experience there like? In your opinion,is a formal acting education better than a practical one? What do you think you got from college that you wouldn’t have gotten without attending school?

I loved Capital University. I still love it. It’s a place where I was challenged and inspired. I think the very fact that my education professors were willing to push me and tell me that, even though they thought I would make a good teacher, I needed to be an actor. They were right, but I needed to hear it from people I trusted. I needed to know that it was okay to take that risk. I absolutely, in no way, unequivocally feel that a practical education is, in every way, superior to a formal one. That does not mean that a formal education is bad, and I would advocate for combining the two, but let’s be honest: if I’m boarding a plane flying from NYC to Berlin, do I want a pilot that has gone through four years of school and knows everything but has never flown, or do I want the self-taught pilot that’s been flying from NYC to Berlin every day for four years without incident? Again, I don’t mean to say that a formal education is bad. It’s not. Mine was enormously influential. I would not have a career if it were not for Dr. Bill Kennedy, Dr. Dan Heaton, Dr. Sharon Croft, Jeff Gress, and the late Mark Baker at Capital. The thing that was so wonderful about Capital was that I was taught theory – I learned aspects of Stanislavski and Strasberg and Chekhov, but I also got to learn the Kennedy method from Dr. Kennedy. I learned what I would call the Heaton method from Dr. Heaton. I developed what one might call the Gegel method, if one was bored enough to do so, which is a combination of the things that work for me. Not every strategy and theory works for everyone. At Capital, there was no strict dogma that was forced down my throat. I was given the opportunity to study and learn and steal what I felt would work for me. Then, it was up to me to implement it. If I hadn’t engaged with Shakespeare on an academic level, if I hadn’t learned directing and scenic design and lighting and magic from those professors, I wouldn’t be where I am. None of that is to say that I couldn’t have picked up on those things from a practical career. I think it comes down to the individual. To someone that is considering a formal education, I would just encourage them to look at schools and find a place that works for you as a human. Capital isn’t strictly an acting school. Most of the Theatre Studies majors weren’t necessarily there to be actors. As a result, I had this weird and eclectic group of well-spoken theatre nerds that thought differently than me and that made me a better actor. If you can’t afford school or don’t want to take those years to focus on academics, then be prepared to hustle every day. Capital was essential to my development of a network that I could work in. I guess, to summarize: Acting is a physical, practical career. You can only truly learn acting by acting. Because of that, the practical education will always be superior. But I do not regret my formal education, and I do not believe I would have a career without it. For me, the educational foundation allowed me to explore the practicality of it. It’s up to the individual. Oh, and if you are considering a formal education… check out Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. It’s a great place.

From an actor’s point of view,why are short films so important? What was your experience like on your first film,”Fracture”?

That’s a great question. Short films can almost feel like internships for an actor. They’re a chance to explore physicality and choices on a smaller scale, and to create a character arc in a short amount of time. They’re a great training ground, and a really great chance to meet and connect with other actors and with filmmakers. They can also be amazing professional experiences, and they give you a great deal of footage for an acting reel that can help you land a feature film or an agent or anything like that. My first film, Fracture, was definitely an interesting experience. I think we filmed it during my second year of college. The cinematographer, Dan Stemen, was in a play with me, and asked me if I wanted to be in this short film they were shooting on campus. I knew the director, Alex Caperton, and was game to try it. I had never even studied film acting before, and it was a brutal crash course in consistency between takes and being more subtle for the camera and all of the stuff that any basic technique book would tell you. Let that detail how important short films are, though. That cinematographer, Dan? He was the cinematographer of my feature film, Cadia: The World Within. He’s one of my best friends to this day. He’s since placed at several festivals and even won a regional EMMY Award for his lighting and camerawork. I’m blessed to know him and have had the chance to work with him so early in my career. This industry is all about the connections you make. Dan’s one of the best.

What three things do you like most about films? What three things do you like about live theater? If given a choice,would you rather star in a revival of a known hit play or tackle a new original play and why?

Wow. Okay. Tough one there.

Three things I like most about films:

1. It’s a deeply intricate process to watch unfold, and to see everyone doing their jobs as part of the system is really beautiful in a fragile sort of way. You have to trust each person to do their jobs and do them well.

2. It’s so wildly specific. The coffee mug has to be moved by a centimeter so that the light hits it right. Your eye has to look in the eye of your scene partner that is closest to the camera so that your face is more fully framed. You have exactly forty-five minutes to shoot a whole scene before sunset and the light is gone. It’s so intense and I love it.

3. It’s a bit more immersive than theatre tends to be. Scene is in a forest? You’re likely filming in a forest. Scene in a school? You’re filming in a school. It’s very in-the-moment and it’s cool to actually be in that space.

Theatre:

1. The danger. If you forget a line in front of a live audience, no one is calling cut. There’s no resetting the lights and going again. You have to figure it out. You’d better hit your mark for the spotlight and remember your lyrics for the big end-of-act-one closer, or the entire audience will make fun of you at intermission.

2. Theatre tends to have a very family feel to it. In film, you often meet a co-star on the day you film a scene with them. In theatre, there are weeks of rehearsals and time and laughter. You get to know everyone and have these little inside jokes and find the right moments on stage. It’s a very tight-knit group, which makes it really sad when the run ends and the show is over.

3. It feels like you are a part of history. Film is amazing and has a rich history, but theatre has been around for thousands of years. Hamlet has been moving audiences to tears for hundreds of years. Antigone has been frustrating audiences for thousands. Hamilton has been stunning audiences for, like, five years – but to be fair, it feels like centuries. Storytelling is the oldest form of communication among humans, and carrying on that tradition in front of a live audience is a really special experience. As for the last question, that’s easy: I’d rather play Jean Valjean in a revival of Les Mis. It’s my favorite musical and my dream role. Other than that, I’d be happy to do either, but if given the chance, that’s the answer.

How do you like directing and what has surprised you most in sliding behind the camera? How do you approach a directing job versus an acting role?

Another great question. I love directing. I love the unified vision and watching that which is in my mind became a real, tangible thing. I think the thing that surprised me is that I don’t have to know everything. That’s what the team is for. I learned that lesson pretty hard on my first film, Cadia. I put too much pressure on myself. The job is to direct, not dictate. You have to give freedom to your team to create and craft in their own ways, and trust the artists you’ve hired. I’ve directed a bit for theatre, and I’ve enjoyed it, but directing for film is a whole different beast. You’ve got to fight with the weather, the locations, and, most of all, the budget. It’s a really draining thing, and you really have to love it. The worst and best moments come when things fall apart, and everyone looks to you for an answer. You either give one or you make one up. There is no one else to look to. That’s a very scary and powerful moment, but if you’ve built a good team, it’s a moment that can change your film for the better. Approaching a directing job is entirely different. With acting, it’s a very narrow focus. I make my choices, and once they put me in costume and I get on set, the magic happens and it’s lovely. In directing, there are so many minute details to keep track of. It takes a great deal of work ahead of time to plan the shots and lighting and everything you need. I learned a lot on my first film that I can’t wait to implement on this next project. Mistakes made are lessons learned, and I’m very proud of the film we made. I’m just very excited to get better.

Tell us about your biggest project to date,”Cadia: The World Within”. How did this project come together? How much influence did C.S. Lewis have in your screenplay? How did Corbin Bernsen get involved with your film?

Yeah! Cadia: The World Within is a really crazy story, and I’m honestly still shocked that it ever happened. I wrote it for three triplets, Keegan, Carly, and Tanner Sells, who I met during a production of The Addams Family Musical. I was young and naive and thought making the movie would be simple – we’d just do a goofy little thing and learn something and move on. Eventually, I realized the story could be something special, and with the help of a great deal of people more clever and capable than I, we built the project. CS Lewis definitely had an enormous impact. I’m a huge Narnia fan (Netflix, if you read this, I’m available for your adaptation). I think Lewis and JK Rowling and JRR Tolkein and Chris Paolini (Chris, if you’re reading this, let’s talk about Eragon, because you deserve a good adaptation) wielded significant impact over this story. Not just their fantasy work, either – their ability to weave spirituality and morality and create interesting characters was something I learned a lot from. A friend I met during a production of Hamlet, Zach Throne, offered his help in mounting the project, and we formed our company, Just a Skosh Productions LLC, which was the official version of the production company Dan Stemen (the aforementioned DP) and I had been operating under during the previous years as we honed our work on short films. Zach and I began to raise money through investors and donations, using our personal and film networks. It was a grind and it was really, really trying, but we did it. Eventually, the conversation turned to casting. I loved Psych and so loved Corbin Bernsen, but we certainly didn’t think that was realistic. That said, you’re a fool if you don’t try, so try we did. We made an offer and sent the screenplay, Corbin’s manager said he’s get back to us, and the next day, we learned that Corbin was in. I was floored. He’s such a gifted actor and a really genuinely kind person, and I’m really grateful to know him. He’s got some really exciting stuff in the works and I can’t wait to see what he comes out with. We were blessed to have him on this production, and he was really, really amazing in his work with the triplets and with the awesome Dillon Perry, who was another one of our leads. Corbin’s such a professional, but he’s also so down-to-earth. We were, obviously, also quite blessed to bring in James Phelps, who played Fred Weasley in the Harry Potter films. He’s incredibly gifted as an actor, and he’s a really chill, funny person. He brings so much charisma and charm to his role, and I’m really glad to have gotten to know him, too. He’s one of the good guys in this industry, and I’m so grateful to have gotten to work with him and get to know him. We also managed to bring in some other great actors. John Wells, whom I had done a TV pilot with, signed on as Elza, and he was perfect for the part. Nicky Buggs, who appeared in Secret Life of Bees, does a wonderful job as Alice. Rick Montgomery Jr gives a really honest, understated, lovely performance as Shiloh. We were really lucky with the whole cast. I don’t think there’s a single one of them that can’t go stride-for-stride on any film set.

Do you feel Hollywood exploits the faith based movie genre?

That’s a complex question. I don’t, no – but I do feel like the faith-based movie genre can sometimes exploit themselves. As someone who is a devout Christian, it really bothers me to watch Christian filmmakers and fans victimize themselves when people don’t like their movies. It often has less to do with their religious beliefs, and more to do with the simple concept that some of these movies just aren’t good. These same critics are lambasting secular films for the same reason. Poor writing, bad acting, unrealistic dialogue – people don’t like those in movies, no matter the beliefs or genre. I don’t think it’s exploitation to make money off of films. The Erwin brothers and the Kendricks brothers are making their films for their audiences, and for the films they are trying to make, they’re making them well. They’re making them with good intentions and with sound camera work and lighting and people enjoy them. In my opinion, they are, for the most part, making sermons, mostly for Christian audiences, and that is okay. You can’t tell me that Spotlight, which is a brilliant film, wasn’t, in some ways, a sermon of its own. It was a sermon – maybe even a dissertation? – about the corruption of the Church and the moral and legal decay that occurred. That’s an important story to tell, but it was still a specific story with a specific goal. There are more mainstream films that are still deeply Christian in nature. The Book of Eli. The Chronicles of Narnia. Blade Runner. The list goes on. There are different ways to approach that aspect of spirituality, and Christian films can tend to run the spectrum of being more of a sermon to being more of a general film with spiritual influence. I’ve seen other projects – most recently, I watched Unorthodox on Netflix, as well as Greenleaf (my wife was watching them, and I tangentially absorbed them) that deal with spiritual and religious realities in a different way. I don’t inherently see any as more or less valid. It seems like a deeply personal preference. I do think that some of the criticism of Christian films is pretty off-base – the critics aren’t exactly understanding what they films are trying to do. You don’t go see My Little Pony and write a bad review when it isn’t The Shawshank Redemption. The Hunger Games isn’t about to be Little Women.They’re different films. Different genres. Some of these films are more about the message than the film, and that is okay. I wasn’t trying to win an Oscar with Cadia, I was trying to make a message of hope and love. It’s not the best screenplay in the world. It wasn’t supposed to be. Some of these films are labelled as “emotionally manipulative” and “trying to push religion,” and I’m, like, yeah. Of course they are. All films are trying to push something. I do think some critics get upset about the religion specifically, and I do think that is unfair. You have to evaluate the goal of the art and see it for what it is. Maybe, after you do that, the movie is still bad, and that’s entirely acceptable. I think it’s tough. It’s unfair to give a bad review to a movie just because you disagree with it’s messaging. You have to evaluate the art on the merit of the argument they make and how well they make it. I think it’s silly when I read reviews that say things like, “[Insert filmmaker here] was clearly trying to push their own belief system.” Yeah. Duh. Of course they were. Films are personal. Joker probably reflects some element of Todd Phillips’ truth. 1917 and Parasite both touched on the truths and beliefs of Sam Mendes and Bong Joon Ho. Queen of Katwe contains some part of Mira Nair’s understanding of the world around her. I don’t see why we can’t give religion the same reign. I absolutely understand condemning a film due to bigotry and hatred, but you’ll really rarely see a major religious film from a significant studio that is encroaching on that. Making a claim that Jesus Christ is the savior isn’t bigotry. As a Christian, I don’t mind watching films where they claim Jesus is only human, or that Islam is the truth, or that God is just a big imaginary friend in the sky. It’s just a different belief system. It’s art. Accept it and move on. It’s really very nuanced. Yes, Hollywood is willing to make films that play on the fears and anxieties of certain people, and that’s morally problematic; on the other hand, some filmmakers I know are unwilling or unable to acknowledge that their films have deep flaws. Both are problematic. I just don’t see Hollywood as being the big, bad agent of Satan that many of my peers seem to. I see Hollywood as being the business part of show business. Christian films make money, so they make Christian films. People drink coffee, so Keurig makes coffee makers. The world continues to go around the sun. That’s the way our society is structured.

You are at an audition and a fellow actor who is also trying for the same role as you asks for your help. Are you helping them or not and why?

Of course. No debate. I’ll help them in a heartbeat, and I’d hope they do the same. Casting isn’t up to me to begin with. We should all be supporting each other to begin with. I remember auditioning for The Little Mermaid. I did all my work as best as I could, and I sang the song as well as I could, and I think I did a good job. I did the best job I could. Then Jordan Young started singing and he blew me out of the water. I knew I had lost the part. I found him after the audition and congratulated him. We became friends, and we still support one another. I’ve even sent auditions to friends and they’ve beaten me for the part. It’s not a competition. Casting is going to cast the actor that they want, and the only thing we can control is our own performance. Anyone who answers otherwise to this question is a sad excuse for an actor and should get out of the industry now. That’s a toxic attitude and it’s problematic.

How did you meet your wife and how do the two of you balance your personal life and professional one?

We met in college in a Public Relations class at Capital. Became friends and started dating. We started dating my junior year and got engaged at the end of my senior year. We got married the summer after, a few weeks after she graduated. Since then, we’ve moved to Philadelphia, where she’s begun her studies at seminary to become a pastor in the ELCA. A lot of balancing our lives is understanding the weirdness of what we do – she is going to be shepherding churches and be with people during their dying moments and counsel people through the hardest moments of their lives, and I leave for days/weeks/months on a job and pretend to be someone else and sometimes work fifteen hour days in the sun and all the other things. Which also describes being a spy. That would be cool too, I guess.

It takes balance. I told her when we first started dating that my career is weird and that it would just have to be accepted, and we’ve since had the same discussion about hers. It’s an adventure. Our personal lives are pretty simple. We like to cook. We like to watch shows and movies together. We just finished Avatar: The Last Airbender. We play a lot of Call of Duty. We play a lot of board games. It’s a simple life, to quote Rogue One.

The cheetah and I are flying over to watch you shoot your latest film but we are a day early and now you are stuck playing tour guide,what are we doing?

Ooh. I’m going to answer this for two cities: my Philly/NYC work, and my directing work back in Columbus, which I where I prefer to shoot my films.

Philly/NYC: We’re definitely hitting up the Liberty Bell and Constitution Center, because they’re just plain neat. Then we’ll stroll through Love Park and probably head to the Rocky Steps. If we’ve got time, we’ll do a quick hike at the Wissahickon and enjoy the forest there, maybe even spot some river otters. Then we’ll grab a cheese steak (I haven’t had one since I moved here, so I’ll be a tourist with you) and maybe try to catch a play at the Arden or the Walnut Street Theatre.

If I’m filming in NYC, we’ll keep it simple. Walk through Central Park, grab some bubble tea, then people watch for as long as we can before we grab tacos at Oaxaca Taqueria in Hell’s Kitchen. Chill day.

If we’re in Columbus, we’re going to run the obstacle course at the Scioto Audubon, grab a light snack at Stauf’s Coffee, and explore the thirty-two room labyrinthian bookstore known as the legendary Book Loft. Then we’ll maybe catch an afternoon game with the Columbus Clippers before grabbing a coffee at the Roosevelt Coffeehouse, dinner at Schmidt’s Sausage Haus or The Thurman Cafe, and then see the Actors’ Theatre of Columbus do some Shakespeare in the park. That’ll be a fun day.

I like to thank Cedric for taking the time in giving us a top level interview. I enjoyed getting to know Cedric through his words and have nothing but respect for him and his vision. We’re looking forward to seeing Cedric’s work both in front and behind the camera. Of course we’re also praying for Cedric and his bionic arm to stay healthy as well!!

You can follow Cedric’s career via his Social Media.

SOCIAL MEDIA:

Cedric’s IMDb page

Cedric’s Podcast: You can find it here and on Spotify

Cedric’s Twitter

Cedric’s Instagram page

Cedric’s Facebook page

Cedric’s YouTube Channel

Cedric’s personal website

Feel free to drop a comment below!! 8 Questions with……….actor/director Cedric Gegel Its 12:25 pm cloudy/humid/16 Welcome to 8 Questions with..... One of the best things I like doing this series is just how randomly these interviews come together.

#8 Questions With #Capitol University #Cedric Gegel #Columbus Ohio #Film director #indie film makers #interviews #relationships #Rising star

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punkiio · 7 years ago

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I for the ask thing, just an over all unless you want a specific character.

Like... All of them?? Hell yeah I’ll do Peter because I loVE Peter

This is going to be hella long so.... Get ready

1: What’s the maximum amount of time your character can sit still with nothing to do?Probably a very short amount of time.... He has like, a lot of energy

2 How easy is it for your character to laugh? Its hella easy to make him laugh!! He is almost always laughing and smiling... He is a very positive fella

3: How do they put themselves to bed at night (reading, singing, thinking?) Either thinking or playing his flute or pipes!!

4: How easy is it to earn their trust? Its pretty easy, especially since he is oblivious to a lot of things, including bad ones

5: How easy is it to earn their mistrust? Not sure???? Probably a little harder, but not really hard.

6: Do they consider laws flexible, or immovable? he definitely considers them flexible.

7: What triggers nostalgia for them, most often? Do they enjoy that feeling? Probably things like jungles, treehouses, other kind of nature things... and yeah!! He likes the feeling!!

8: What were they told to stop/start doing most often as a childA LOT of things... He was a big trouble maker. Mostly was told not to do things like, something dangerous, doing/saying something too quickly, getting into fights, that sort of thing. and the thing he was told to start doing most???? Grow up

9: Do they swear? Do they remember their first swear word?Yeah he swears as much as the next guy tbh, but probably doesnt remember his friend swear because he has been living for so long

10: What lie do they most frequently remember telling? Does it haunt them? He’s actually a pretty honest guy!!! He even tells the mundies that he’s Peter Pan, but he’s actually like.... Pretending, to pretend he’s Peter Pan??? So when someone is being 100% serious when asking if he actually is, he lies and says that he isn’t. But I think the lies that actually haunt him, maybe not now, but definitely when he was still married to his wife, was that he actually still liked her and continued to stay with her

11: How do they cope with confusion (seek clarification, pretend they understand, etc)? He would try really really hard to understand, but if he cant, then he’ll pretend to understand

12: How do they deal with an itch found in a place they can’t quite reach? He would ask people to get it for him, and probably make the other person feel hella awkward wile he’s just like “Thank u pal”

13: What color do they think they look best in? Do they actually look best in that color? Green!! He thinks and does look best in green!!!

14: What animal do they fear most? He doesn’t fear animals that much actually??? I think the only time he would be afraid of an animal is if they’re acting aggressive towards him tbh

15: How do they speak? Is what they say usually thought of on the spot, or do they rehearse it in their mind first? Its always. on the spot. He almost never thinks it out. The only time he thinks of it out is if he has time and if its something he’s nervous about, but even then, he usually doesn't come out the way he wanted

16: What makes their stomach turn? When people believe the rumors/lies told about his childhood, things that make him super nervous, thinking about things he has to admit sooner or later, those kind of things

17: Are they easily embarrassed? No, not really :0

18: What embarrasses them? When people talk about embarrassing things he did, especially if its in front of someone like Boy Blue. He gets awkward embarrassed

19: What is their favorite number? 18 maybe :0

20:If they were asked to explain the difference between romantic and platonic or familial love, how would they do so?“Alrighty, so romantic love is like... When you love someone, and you like, want to date them and get married and kiss them and fuck them and whatnot. Platonic love is where you’re like, ‘DAMN! I LOVE MY FRIEND!!’ but not in the romantic way. You just like them as a friend. Familial love is, y’know, you love your parents??? Your kids???? Your siblings?????? Its close to platonic but also... not....”

21:Why do they get up in the morning? His job. Boy Blue.

22:How does jealousy manifest itself in them (they become possessive, they become aloof, etc)? Depends... If he was jealous abt someone interacting with Blue, then yeah, he might be a little possessive or/and aloof, but he’ll probably just show off in front of the other person, make them feel like a third wheel

23:How does envy manifest itself in them (they take what they want, they become resentful, etc)? He usually just... Tries to let it pass.... But might... just might..... become resentful..... But it would be rare

24: Is sex something that they’re comfortable speaking about? To whom? Yeah he’s totally fine with it. I think the only time he would be uncomfortable about talking about it is with straight people. Especially straight girls. Unless its about him doing it, then its fine

25: What are their thoughts on marriage? He’s fine w it!!! He gets married himself! :0

26: What is their preferred mode of transportation? He just... takes a car..... But in places like the farm (and if/when he goes to the homelands), he likes to fly!!!

27: What causes them to feel dread? His friends being hurt.... He gets so scared when his friends are hurt

28: Would they prefer a lie over an unpleasant truth? Nah, he’s used to the unpleasant truth, so he would want that instead of a lie

29: Do they usually live up to their own ideals? Sure!!! He’s got a boyfriend and a good job, he doesn’t really have any ideals past that???? He is also pretty powerful, so thats a plus

30: Who do they most regret meeting? ProbablyMargaret

31: Who are they the most glad to have met?:All of his friends!!!

32: Do they have a go-to story in conversation? Or a joke? Probably a joke most of the time, but also sometimes has childhood stories that he had just remembered

33: Could they be considered lazy? No!!! He is always busy doing his job!!! He is usually always doing something

34: How hard is it for them to shake a sense of guilt? Not hard probably fndjsbkds he’ll probably just end up forgetting about it......

35: How do they treat the things their friends come to them excited about? Are they supportive? He gets excited with them!!! He’s so happy they’re happy!!!!!!

36:Do they actively seek romance, or do they wait for it to fall into their lap? He usually waits, but if he sees a cute guy he’ll be like *eye emoji* and go flirt with him or something

37:Do they have a system for remembering names, long lists of numbers, things that need to go in a certain order (like anagrams, putting things to melodies, etc)? Nah.... He actually has a kind of bad memory and easily forgets names

38:What memory do they revisit the most often? His childhood adventures!!!

39:How easy is it for them to ignore flaws in other people? Pretty easy tbh

40:How sensitive are they to their own flaws?He isn’t sensitive abt them that often, pretty much the only time he is is if someone pointed them out. Other than that, he’s oblivious

41:How do they feel about children? He loves them!!!! Pretty much the only reason he pretends, to pretend to be Peter Pan, is so when he’s cutting a kid’s hair, he can get them all happy and excited n stuff....

42:How badly do they want to reach their end goal? I dont think??? He really has one??? Its hard for fables to have an “end goal” because they live for so long

43: If someone asked them to explain their sexuality, how would they do so? He just... Tells them he only likes men..... He’s gay..... (I wont explain his backstory on it rn because.... spoilers....)

Questions for the creator!!

A) Why are you excited about this character?He just... Makes me and others(????) happy!! Some of my friends can relate to him n stuff and that gets me excited

B) What inspired you to create them?I had always wanted to make a Fables oc that was Peter Pan, so I did!! Peter Pan is like..... one of my favorite fables......

C) Did you have trouble figuring out where they fit in their own story?Nah, not really :00

D) Have they always had the same physical appearance, or have you had to edit how they look?He has changed a little, but not much!!! Though his first concept art is.... Ugly.....

E) Are they someone you would get along with? Would they get along with you?Yeah I think I would get along w him..... We got a lot in common in a way

F) What do you feel when you think of your OC (pride, excitement, frustration, etc)?I am.... So happy.............. When thinking about him........

G) What trait of theirs bothers you the most?Idk if this is what this means but uhh.... He was born a human, yeah???? But when/after he was raised by fairies, he’s half fairy???? Im thinking that the fairies like.... Changed him...... idk

H) What trait do you admire most?Is it safe to say??? All?????? I cant think of one........

I) Do you prefer to keep them in their canon universe?Hell yeah I do

J) Did you have to manipulate or exclude canon factors to allow them to create their character?Dude we are.... Changing so much of canon Fables for our comic..... Not for him, just in general

#This took so long.....#I tried to avoid spoilers as much as possible hhhhh #Fables #Fables oc #Peter Pan #octobaaby

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greatfay · 7 years ago

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(I'm the one who asked about Blackwall): what do you hope to see return in da4 from dai and what do you hope is changed or cut out?

Ok just to make sure I got this right, what I liked in DA:I and would like to see more of and what I didn’t like in DA:I and would prefer they cut or altered? Cuz I have a lot tbh. More under the cut.

More Please:

Crafting system. I really liked it, love how you can change your companions’ armor (unlike in DA2 or ME:A) but it still has their “look.”

Banter. Memorable characters are a staple of the Bioware games, but unlike in Dragon Age II, I rarely triggered dialogue between companions in DA:I. Hopefully that changes in DA4.

Soundtrack. Trevor Morris was amazing… too bad most players don’t know this since the devs thought the game would be “more realistic” if the music barely plays. Even combat wouldn’t trigger music for me, all you’d hear is grunting and swords clashing. Ambience just made me feel empty in this game (which doesn’t help the large empty regions).

Pretty places. This game is really bright and colorful compared to the first two. I hope that if DA4 is indeed taking place in Tevinter, we get to see variety in landscape and regions the way we did with Ferelden and Orlais. Just fill it with some damn cities/villages! I hate empty worlds.

Clear cut story. I’ve heard criticisms that Inquisition’s story is oversimplified and pretty cut and dry compared to DA2 and some hail this as a drop in narrative quality in the franchise (psh, they should aim that criticism at the damn fetch quests). However, the game has a straightforward, classic hero’s journey plot that is overall very grand and enjoyable, and that makes it actually similar to Origins. I like that the story can be summed up in 4/5 big moments, with smaller plot points and subplots in between.

Face creator. Honestly there’s a whole subreddit dedicated to the hot OCs you can make in this game and I’m here for it, I have now saved Thedas with an Angela Bassett look-alike (if she were an elf), a Rami Malek look-alike, and a much more idealized version of myself.

Could Be Better:

Specializations. First two games let you get two specializations, DA:I only gives you one. And I’m cool with that tbh, just wish they were a little more expansive and interesting. Also, companions used to get their own unique specializations and/or abilities, and in DA:I, this led to some questionable creative choices. Giving the big healing ability to Knight-Enchanter instead of Necromancer for example, then giving the time power to Necromancer instead of Knight-Enchanter (when the rest of the abilities support the other).

Also jumping into DA:I right after finishing DA2, I was disappointed to find that this new special Rift Mage tree just recycled the abilities of the Force Mage + firestorm.

Armor/Weapons. I actually liked most of the gear in this game (except the helmets, which looked ridiculous in design for the most part). Wish there were more! I feel like it should be possible to get every armor part and weapon that you can see in-game; it used to be a staple of the genre that when you defeat a boss, you get their stuff, but not every boss in this game drops their gear; some who do don’t even drop the same thing *cough, Alexius*. I remember searching for the Venatori Mage helmet for hours before finding out it’s not in the game (though you can get the regular infantry helm for some reason, and it’s ugly soooo).

Supporting characters. In DA:O and DA2, you’d see recurring characters pop up in other quests and you could get attached to some of them. In DA:I, most of the people you get quests from are forgettable and one-offs.

Enemy encounters. In DA:O and DA2, enemies come in hordes, making crowd control pivotal to survival. In DA:I, you get small parties of enemies (3 - 6) with high health and defense, making overall DPS more important. I think they did this to be more realistic, but this is Dragon Age. Zombies dig up the corpses of dragons out of the ground to raise their gods and elves are part-spirit and a trickster god stole a piece of the sky and horned gray-skinned humanoids go to sex doctors to pop their corks under an oppressive religious order. There’s no room for heavy realism in Dragon Age, let’s be real.

Narrative-based quests. I miss when quests would start with a character actually talking to me! With actual cutscenes and dialogue! In Inquisition, quests either start with a brief chat with an unremarkable NPC, or by reading a fucking note someone left on a table. This is so lazy and boring. Maybe Bioware didn’t have the funds to do proper quests, but I’d prefer a handful of real ones than the dozens of “Oh look, I found a letter on this door that says this person left treasure somewhere” quest.

Party AI. I’d love to have more control like in past games; I want to set it like the gambit system in FFXII, where you can say “If ally uses this ability, character A will use this ability on targeted by ally.”

No Thank You:

Fetch quests! “Collect x amount of these and return for XP” is so boring. What happened to more narrative-heavy side quests?

Inventory limits. I’m so over this, lemme hoard like the junk rat I am, gdi.

War Table operations. If you don’t follow guides on the wiki, you’ll have no idea what the results of these operations will be. There’s no riddle or clue left in the descriptions that suggest that choosing a particular advisor will result in the mass genocide of your Inquisitor’s clan (yeah, fuck that, do NOT choose Josephine for the Protect Clan Lavellan operation).

Miscommunication. The devs and the writers don’t seem to be on the same page. In cutscenes and dialogue, Cassandra will say “We should give mages a chance to prove they don’t need chaperones” and then you’ll give mages some freedom and she’s like “CASSANDRA GREATLY DISAPPROVES.” Happens with a lot of other characters, too.

Requisitions. They’re a waste of resources and I never do them as they have zero effect on my gameplay experience. Don’t even need them in the beginning, just finish 4 quests to get the power needed in the Hinterlands.

Some Ideas:

Integrate side quests into the main story. They’re already sort of mandatory; getting XP in this game is impossible without doing the side quests and you end up under-leveled for the main quests, so might as well write them to be more story-related and use them as opportunities to introduce recurring minor characters. The DLC for DA:I was great tbh, all tightly made stories that didn’t pussyfoot around. I finished Prey recently and that game did a great job with side missions; all of them felt personal, and having voiced characters in your ear as you finish objectives makes them feel more active.

The character classes you can pick in the multiplayer should actually be in the game. I think some of them are mentioned by name, but you don’t otherwise see them.

Loyalty missions. Mass Effect 2 did this best and there’s something like this in Inquisition, but not all of them are equal tbh, they don’t involve scripted events and cutscenes and plot lines that reveal more about your companions. Pretty much Dorian, Solas, Sera, and Iron Bull are the only ones that get it. ME2 gave us: returning to the facility where Jack was tortured as a child so she can blow it up, Garrus hunting down the former protege who betrayed his squad, Jacob locating his presumedly dead father crash-landed on a planet whose flora fucks with everyone’s mind, Miranda relocating her little sister (and her adopted family) to keep her creepy-ass father away from her, Samara hunting down her wayward serial killer daughter (the whole investigation + seduction scenes were dope), Thane trying to rebuild his relationship with his son who is trying to follow in his father’s bloody footprints—I could go on. Those weren’t just “Pop in here and beat an enemy and then leave” kind of quests, they were involved and offered the player choices and were super emotional.

#Anonymous #dragon age 4 #da4

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wildgrave · 8 years ago

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what do u love about ur friends

idk which one of ya sneaky bastards sent this but i’m not gonna complain b/c i will take any possible opportunity to gush about my friends.

update: this got entirely out of hand and i just wrote about like... everyone i talk to. if u talk just ctrl + f ur name (but don’t feel bad if you’re not in here b/c i’m doing this off the top of my head and can’t remember everyone!! also a lot of these are hs friends who don’t have tumblrs but u asked anon so)

i honestly love them all for different reasons tho!! i’m not going to tag everyone but: thanh is great for a straightforward answer & we have the same awful sense of humor which is basically 8 years of memes to reference (also she says no romo a lot which i find rly funny for some reason??). hannah is super loving and supportive and always looking out for me. jessie is wry and clever and honestly has every reason to get annoyed at me 24/7 but somehow doesn’t. whitten i talk to every day and is super rational about my problems which is helpful when i need solutions (also dank memes). gaby is great b/c we both have a lot of the same interests (feminism, art, fashion, shit-talking ppl, etc) and gets riled up about my problems which is great when i need someone to get angry with. colette also gets angry, usually angrier than me, about my problems and is the best person to offer to beat boys up (b/c i know if she gets drunk enough she will fight anyone). kathleen is great b/c we always end up doing something ridiculous and it’s fun and makes a good story. brooke is the fucking funniest person i have ever met and thinks she’s punk rock but is secretly boujee as fuck. amber also thinks she’s punk rock, but has the softest, purest heart of gold of anyone i’ve ever met (also she comes up with the most ridiculously hilarious ways to proposition me). claire and i can talk about absolutely anything and send each other close ups of pimples but also take nudes of eachother and honestly if thats not true friendship then what is?? sofie is honestly brilliant and always has clever comments to make and i’m lowkey in love with her to this day and i mean, if you’re not a little in love with your friends wyd?? mila is so sweet and i can have fun with her doing anything, like we don’t even need to go anywhere we can just have philosophical talks on my bed and it’s chill. sammy and i have only chilled irl once but she’s really quiet and nice but occasionally makes rly snarky comments about straight ppl which are hilarious. lucy is never on skype but when she is we have a fuckin field day and she’s so petty but like... in a funny way? i’ve only hung out with andie once (which i’m trying to change before she goes back to vegas) but she’s so into musical theatre and i love reading her tweets about it b/c i love how passionate she is! dylan makes awful decisions on the daily like... blowjob competition? rly dyn? and it’s so funny to hear about and he gives ridiculous but funny advice and is super australian and always says “bruv” which is super funny to me. jenna i’m p sure is going to be running the world in two years (also holy shit she’s graduating college?? my bb girl is growing up :’)). adja is so funny b/c i thought she was super by the rules in hs but now she’s a wild child. aidan (as in the senior in hs, not the one my age) sends me #relatable memes and even tho we don’t talk often it gets deep as shit when we do (but i lowkey don’t trust him b/c of his opinions of iron fist smh). allie is in my race & ethnicity class and is just nice all around and we DM eachother on twitter sometimes like ‘what was that awful presentation in class’). nick from polisci is so knowledgeable about politics but makes the issues funny w/o being offensive and shannon (also from polisci) dresses rly cute and we have fun conversations & the three of us have a funny group chat for our presentation. quinn is such a wannabe edgelord but is honestly so pure and a good friend. asmaa is the sweetest possible person and we always tease quinn together. ricky continously gives me a hard time about everything but in a funny way and patiently explains WoW lore to me. JT is also fun to play WoW with and makes me feel like a baby b/c he’s and old man. rebecca’s steadfast belief in drarry makes me smile and i love her writing. harri is one of my many wives and her snapchats are amazing (as are her boobs). kinzie i rarely talk to but i can still hit up sometimes like whats up bitch today i had sex while listening to wtnv. cassie, becca, and eleanor are all rly cool and super pretty and nice to chill with and i love their art and photography and general personalities. georgie gave me the sweetest poem and letter last summer when i was feeling down and we have similar aspirations and i’d love to work with her in my career sometime! marko and henry are married istg but anyway marko is such a genuine, honest person and henry is an amazing writer and i loved english with him and it’d make me happy if we were closer. lena is my protege and i am an awful mentor b/c i never see her since i graduated but she is my child. layla is the baddest bitch i have ever met, her nails are always amazing and we can be catty together and blast nicki minaj. sarah is so funny b/c everyone thinks she’s reserved and studious and stuff (and she kinda is) but once you get to know her she is the sassiest person you will ever meet. my sister and i fight sometimes over me stealing her clothes constantly but we bond over how our parents drive us up the wall and also she cooks a lot which means i can steal food. the entire volstovic cycle fandom (dani, scarlett, anna, crystal, etc) are all amazing creators of things and honestly an inspiration. rimsha is the hardest working person i have ever met and i love hearing about her succeed. brady is my fellow gay (tho tbh 90% of the ppl on this list are gay b/c we flock together) and i love him for his snarkiness. all the boys i sat at lunch with in high school (garrison, rex, arun, etc) are such memes but i didn’t realize how cool they were until we graduated and now i’m like, damn i should’ve paid them more attention even tho i saw them every day. my boyfriend is my friend and he’s the most politically active person i have ever met, and he’s such a dweeb, and he makes me smile whenever we’re together (even when i’m trying to be angry at him). feihong acts like a fuckboy but is pretty dang cool if i’m being honest; he’s rly dedicated to what he does. carly and i don’t talk but i appreciate her paintings and selfies and funny tweets from afar. morgan and i were at a fidlar concert once together and we both couldn’t survive the mosh pit (also her instagram captions are fuckin hilarious am i right or am i right?). kelly is a goddamn klepto but we always have fun together drinking coffee and talking about pens and i love and support her art and she does the same for mine. charlotte is chill and i miss just hanging out in her basement b/c she’s such a gemini but in a good way. the ppl i sit with on campus (sumaiya, alex, zuri, etc) are always having interesting convos and share food and it’s a good time. my cousin and her husband (nat and ron) are the most punk ppl in their 30s and they introduced me to the punk scene and i miss them b/c they moved back to kansas. shakey’s photography on insta makes me feel pensive and i want to go to philly just to meet her. miki i’m not super tight with but her writing is a+ and makes me cry and i love rping with her. rina is such a cool mutual and her art is dope. lea is also a cool chic and i love her hair and want her to bake my wedding cake. mousse is so nice to everyone. ellie and i only talk like twice a year at family parties but we can always dive back in and pick up where we left off. the ppl i party w (other aidan, jakob, justin, etc) are dumbasses (i use that term endearingly) but i’m 98% sure they’ve all carried me to the toilet when i’ve been puking my guts out at a party. marley was that friend that ended up going to yale and no one was surprised so i admire her success but also she was always kind to me and always asked how i was doing with my mental illnesses. renee and maria and i bonded over ib art and sga and generally being over-worked by our sponsor. alanna was another one of my proteges who i need to keep up with better b/c she’s badass and funny and has the best eyebrows ever. i don’t talk to sidney anymore but we went thru so much together and supported eachother a lot a few years ago and i still love em for that. eddie is such a dweeb, everytime i see him (which is a surprising amount considering he lives in miami) we act like nothing has changed and go at eachothers throats. rachel m & galen have both grown so so much since i met them and i’m proud of them. rachel s is so fun to talk about hoe things with and laugh at eachother. marco has the best finsta of anyone ever. danny and i talk over snapchat every so often (like every month or so) and we have the weirdest convos like?? let’s name your imaginary lizard. zamzam (from my creative writing class last semester) was super fun to hang out with when she came over and actually everyone in that class (xander, leah, olivia, will, etc) were excellent writers and hilarious and we all bonded. victor is such a bro honestly he’s funny and is very attentive (actually listens) and is fun sober or not. sandra i’ve known since i was a baby and never really talked to until recently but she’s so nice to talk to about small things. alyssa i stalk obsessively on goodreads b/c who else can read that much, istg girl you’re a cyborg (but like a pretty one). rp buds that i haven’t mentioned so far (mario, mackenzie, etc) i value a lot for their companionship and writing. there are tons of ppl from hs that i wish i had gotten to know better when i was there (julia, drea, tina, both erins, bridget, etc).

and yeah there are more ppl but those are mostly ppl i talk to at parties or dm occasionally or wish i was friends with but admire from afar. anyway. this got long. I JUST LOVE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!

#Anonymous

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lenaglittleus · 7 years ago

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What I Wish Everyone Knew About Sponsored Posts

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while now. Years, in fact. There’s so much mystery that surrounds sponsored content from the reader’s side, and confusion around how to behave from the blogger and brand side. It can sometimes be an incredibly complicated process and I think it’s due time we add a little transparency to it.

First things first, I am not an expert on this topic. I probably know marginally more than the average person because I do, in fact, produce sponsored content. However, when it comes to the legal side of stuff, I depend on the professionals. I, like most other creators, do my best to abide by the legal rules surrounding sponsored content, but this post is not about that.

This post is about what really goes on behind-the-scenes of sponsored posts. Not that there’s a heavy cloud of mystery surrounding it, but it’s not like bloggers and other content creators are casually talking about this stuff on their public profiles. So I’m going to because, well, that’s what I do.

Types of sponsored content

Let’s first chat about the types of sponsored content out there. For clarity’s sake, I’m not including ads (see those annoying things in the sidebar?) or affiliate sales. I’m talking about straight-up brand-blogger sponsorship where the content creator is expected to produce something incorporating the brand’s product or service to display on their Blog/Instagram/YouTube/Podcast/Facebook etc…

If you’ve been around THM for a while, you’re no stranger to sponsored content. The majority of what you see around here is sponsored blog posts, though I do occasionally do sponsored videos or social media posts. Here are a few examples:

Blog: How To Make a London Fog YouTube: What Bodhi Eats in a Day Instagram: Quaker Overnight Oats Facebook: Stone Fruit Ricotta Toast

Who contacts who?

I get this question a lot and while I can speak to my personal experience, it definitely looks different on everyone. In my case, most of my sponsored work is inbound, meaning they contact me. I have done some pitching, but I’m incredibly fortunate to be in a position where I have work coming in.

Other content creators might have a different experience. If you’re just getting started or are part of a very niche community, you may be pitching more often than work is coming in. It’s totally circumstantial.

BTS: What goes down

Let’s walk through what typically happens behind-the-scenes of sponsored posts.

As I mentioned above, some people receive more inbound requests than outbound. In my case, I get about 10 a day (nope I’m not kidding!). At least half of them are spammy, from some foreign company looking for paid backlinks or want to share their infographic on my site (ummmm no). Of the other half, 80% of them probably don’t make any sense. Because while I’d just love to promote your new thigh-gap producing hula hoop, I don’t think that will ever fly on THM…

That leaves us with about one potential client and around 50% of the time it will actually come to fruition. But here’s how we figure it out:

When I receive an interesting inbound email, I respond inquiring about more info and cc’ my operations manager, Tanya. Tanya then follows up with my sponsorship guide (which includes my reach, rates, demographics and past work) and we begin the negotiation process from here. This usually weeds out the clients who are looking to get me to work for free pomegranate juice from those that actually are taking this as seriously as I am.

Once we both agree on a partnership, which can range from a single post to a yearly scope, contract negotiations begin.

Yes, I sign a contract with every brand I work with. Whether it be theirs or the one I personally send out, I have been burned enough times to know that a contract needs to be in place. Then it’s time to get to work!

We usually decide on a post theme and date and from there I let my creative juices flow. Once the work is complete, most brands require that I send them a draft. It’s an annoying process, but the better the relationship you have with the brand, the easier it is. Most of the time they’re just looking to make sure you didn’t say anything offensive or is FDA or FTC non-compliant. On the rare occasion, I have worked with brands that have tried to alter my voice and that is where I put my foot down. It is both built into my contract and also a non-negotiable for me. If the content doesn’t sound like me or reflect my true voice and opinions, I’m out. Losing my relationship with you guys is not worth the money.

But let’s just say everything works out, the content goes live and it’s time to start promoting it across social media (if it’s a blog post + social media). You will always know it’s sponsored whether it be with the FTC disclaimer, the paid tools in Facebook or Instagram or the always glorious hashtag AD. This is for two reasons: 1) because we legally have to and 2) because it would be completely immoral to promote something without you guys knowing we were paid to talk about it. Do I feel this detracts from the authenticity of the content? Sometimes. But I get into more of that below.

Beyond that, there’s usually a follow-up interaction with the brand about how things performed and then we begin it all over again if it’s a long-term contract.

So yeah…it’s a lot more complicated than people realize!

What I Wish Everyone Knew About Sponsored Posts

I think the biggest piece that I wish everyone knew was why we do sponsored posts. I think it’s easy to assume we’re in it for the money, and to a degree, we are. However, it’s also important to remember that very few of us started out thinking we could make money from this crazy blogging world.

We started out because we had a passion that we wanted to share with a like-minded community. Over time, this community grew and asked for more from us, which of course we gladly provided. However, at some point you have to make the decision about how you’re going to deliver more, and until cloning becomes a reality, it usually means dedicating yourself fully to this passion…and figuring out how to make money from it!

Do I wish I never had to do sponsored content and remove all those annoying ads from the blog? Yes, I do. However, until my landlord takes payment in Instagram likes, that simply isn’t an option. Everything that I share on THM is 100% free to all of you, and as a result I made the conscious decision to find a way to get paid, that wasn’t asking for a cent from you.

“I work for my readers and get paid by my brands”

That means that whatever sponsored work I do has to be relevant to you. I take this into account with every brand I work with. Is this valuable to my readers? Is this a product I think you’d actually use? Is it a product I would actually use? If it’s the right fit, it’s a win-win for everyone. If it’s not the right fit, you will likely let me know it, which is why I only work with brands that I align with The Healthy Maven.

That being said, there will always be the person or people who get lured in by the money. We all know them. They’re the ones where you have to do a double-take because the partnership is so off-brand you can’t help but gasp an outward WTF?! But this is not the norm, and I’d say 90% of content creators have YOUR best interest at heart.

What makes it even better is that a lot of the sponsored work I do is content I’d probably talk about anyway. I get to develop recipes using products I already use, take trips I’m already taking or share wisdom I already wanted to share. That is if the brand understands how to work with content creators.

And most of them do! I feel incredibly fortunate to work with some incredible brands who value you as much as I do. Simply Organic, Lorissa’s Kitchen, Stella and Chewy’s, Banff Tourism just to name a few. They get that no one has a better understanding of my audience’s needs and wants than I do and they allow me to run with that. While they’re certainly active in the content production, they trust my instincts and that’s why our partnerships are successful.

So not only do I want you guys to understand this perspective of sponsored work, but this is also my PSA to brands to not try to micromanage their content creators. Trust their instincts and knowledge of their readers and allow them to stay authentic and tell your story in a way that works for them. It’s far more genuine that way.

I truly believe that authenticity can exist with sponsored work. It just requires content creators to say “no” A LOT and ultimately work with the clients that actually make sense for their brand. It also requires the sponsors to accept that they have to give up a degree of control when they hire influencers. We aren’t walking ads and it’s a lose-lose for everyone if your goal is for us to be a megaphone for your product messaging.

What I Wish Brands Knew About Sponsored Posts

Maybe it’s because I’m coming hot off of Expo East and had to explain what I do to brands about 200 times, but I thought I’d add this little piece in here if you happen to work for a brand or run a brand and are looking to work with bloggers/influencers.

Generally, if you say or email us with something along the lines of “we can offer you this and you are so lucky!”, we will run the other way. I’m all about trying out new brands and products and sharing them with my readers, when they’re great. But if you think you’re doing us a favor by sending us a box of your protein bars/collagen/turmeric hemp pepita superfood sprinkle (you get the idea), think again. We get inundated with these types of emails daily. I have an entire cupboard full of products I get sent and try to pawn off on friends. While I’m entirely grateful for this, I unfortunately cannot pay my rent in free products and you’re not doing me a favor by giving me products to review or content to talk about on my blog. I’d say that 90% of bloggers will agree.

Does this mean I get paid for everything I do? No. There are companies I love, whose products I buy with my own money and talk about all the time, but almost always I was not pitched by the brand to talk about them – I just discovered them on my own. To support being able to provide FREE and valuable content with my readers, I expect to get paid. I’m sure everyone has an opinion on this, but until you’re in a position where you have to earn your own living it’s hard to understand. I just wanted to keep things real and also selfishly hope that any brand out there reading this can rethink their influencer strategy if they want it to be effective and empowering for all parties involved.

I think that covers everything for now! As always let me know if you have any questions. I’m all about transparency and would be happy to answer them.

*All photos courtesy of Bettina Bogar

How do you feel about sponsored content? Did anything about this post surprise you?

The post What I Wish Everyone Knew About Sponsored Posts appeared first on The Healthy Maven.

from News About Health https://www.thehealthymaven.com/2017/09/what-i-wish-everyone-knew-about-sponsored-posts.html

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