#also I think this is the first time I’ve drawn genesis

[valentimmy]

the loser (+some doodles)

[ghibli-collector]

For anyone who’s already seen Boy and the Heron i found this really interesting article where Ghibli Boss/Producer Suzuki was interviewed recently by indie wire and explains the background of the characters from the new Ghibli film, I’ve copied the full article below or you can click the link to go to the interview but once again it contains so many spoilers

‘The Boy and the Heron’ Is So Personal, Hayao Miyazaki Needed a Year to Grieve Before Pivoting in a New Direction

Miyazaki came out of retirement for his first film in a decade, about his friendships at Ghibli with the late co-founder/director Takahata and co-founder/producer Suzuki.

When Hayao Miyazaki pitched “The Boy and the Heron” (GKids, now in select L.A. and NYC theaters) to Studio Ghibli co-founder/producer Toshio Suzuki in 2016, he asked permission to make the story about himself. This took Suzuki — his friend of nearly 40 years at the time — by surprise; the legendary anime director isn’t known for getting so personal. And yet this aligned perfectly with the notion that Ghibli films are devoted to reliving memories.

“I agree that it is Miyazaki’s most personal film because he actually told me,” Suzuki told IndieWire over Zoom through an interpreter. Not only is “The Boy and the Heron” inspired by Miyazaki’s childhood (he endured the firebombing of Japan during World War II and his father was director of the family’s aircraft manufacturing factory), but also his career at Ghibli with his two closest friends: the late studio co-founder/director Isao Takahata (“Grave of the Fireflies”) and Suzuki.

“Miyazaki is Mahito [the 12-year-old protagonist voiced by Luca Padovan in the English-language version], Takahata is the great uncle [voiced by Mark Hamill], and the gray heron [voiced by Robert Pattinson] is me,” Suzuki added. “So I asked him why. He said [Takahata] discovered his talent and added him to the staff. I think Takahata san was the one who helped him develop his ability. On the other hand, the relationship between the boy and the [heron] is a relationship where they don’t give in to each other, push and pull.”

Collectively, it’s a lot to unpack: Miyazaki came out of retirement for the second time after “The Wind Rises” (2013) to make his 12th feature — the semi-autobiographical, hand-drawn fantasy for his grandchildren. It’s about destruction, loss, and rebuilding a better future through imagination, inspired by the novel he adored as a child (“How Do You Live?”).

Mahito loses his mother in the firebombing of Japan and relocates to the countryside, where his father (voiced by Christian Bale), who runs an air munitions factory, marries his sister-in-law, Natsuko (voiced by Gemma Chan). Traumatized, angry, and confused, the boy encounters a talking heron (part bird, part man), who tells him that his mother is still alive and guides him to an alternate world in a magical tower shared by the living and the dead. There he encounters his great uncle, the architect of the tower, and reunites with both his mother (voiced by Karen Fukuhara) and Natsuko.

At first, Suzuki resisted green-lighting “The Boy and the Heron” because of Miyazaki’s age (he’s 82) and the great expense (it is arguably Japan’s most expensive film but has made the equivalent of nearly $80 million at the country’s box office). Yet Miyazaki wore down his resistance with his enthusiasm and impressive storyboarding. The film took seven years to complete, and Suzuki needed to hire some of Japan’s most talented animators outside of Ghibli to handle the task (including supervising animator Takeshi Honda of “Neon Genesis Evangelion” fame). With diminished stamina and failing eyesight, Miyazaki was unable to oversee the production in the same manner as when he was at the height of his creative powers and relied on Honda to draw, redraw, and review under close advisement.

But with the death of Takahata in 20018, a grief-stricken Miyazaki was forced to scale back the role of the great uncle in the story, who had previously been more central to the boy’s life. “After Takahata passed away, he wasn’t able to continue with that story, so he changed the narrative and it became the relationship between the boy and the Heron,” Suzuki continued. “And in his mind, initially, the Heron was something that symbolizes the eeriness of the mansion and that tower, even ominous, that he goes to during war time. But he changed it to this sort of budding friendship between the boy and the Heron.”

Miyazaki first toyed with the idea of exploring the theme of friendship in “The Wind Rises” (inspired by real-life fighter design engineer Jiro Horikoshi during World War II) before abandoning it. “So this time around, when the Heron became the centerpiece of the story, and he came with the storyboards, I was careful for him to not portray me in a bad way,” Suzuki said. “Having said that, I’ve known Miyazaki for 45 years. I remember everything about him. There are things that only I know. There are things that only the two of us know. And he remembers all these small details, which I was very impressed with.”

For example, when Mahito and the Heron sit and chat at the house of Kiriko (voiced by Florence Pugh), a younger, seafaring version of one of the old maids, it is a recreation of the way Miyazaki and Suzuki would meet. “The place that we do our meetings, where we have our conversation is at his studio, his atelier,” he added. “And he has this like large table, but we don’t sit facing each other, we sit next to each other, and we never look at each other when we talk. And what we discussed was very similar.”

During production, Suzuki became impatient to see the new storyboards with the great uncle. It seemed Miyazaki was intentionally stalling while grieving about Takahata. “My question was: ‘So when is the great uncle going to appear?'” said Suzuki. “He built this great character, but he never appears in the storyboards that he would bring me. But it took him actually about a year after the passing of Takahata that he was able to draw that character into the storyboards in the second half of the story.

“And the most surprising thing for me was when I saw the storyboard where Mahito was asked by his great uncle to carry on with this work, this legacy, and he says no — he declines the offer. Miyazaki was someone who followed the path of Takahata for so many years, and I thought it was a huge thing for him [to follow a different path].”

Meanwhile, Suzuki confirmed that Miyazaki has not retired. The film has given the director renewed confidence to keep working on other stories. However, Miyazaki can’t focus on new ideas while “The Boy and the Heron” remains in theaters. “He needs to empty his mind again,” Suzuki said, “and then when he’s emptied his mind with a blank canvas, he usually comes up with new ideas. So we have to wait a little more.”

[nkjemisin]

Hi!

I’m currently struggling to go to sleep the night before a big solo performance for a school event, so I figured I’d ask one of my favorite authors a couple things I’ve been wondering about. (Does flattery still work on people?)

So, I believe I remember you saying something along the lines of “people ask me why I write about weird sex magic. It’s because I read Greek mythology, and it has a lot of weird sex magic.” And I’m paraphrasing that horribly, but I was wondering, what things *have* you drawn inspiration from? I’m in love with the way magic is portrayed in both the Dreamblood books and the Broken Earth trilogy (I’ve yet to read the inheritance series), and I was wondering what inspiration you had? They feel kind of different to me—dreamseed and it’s counterparts seem really rooted in the four humors and the way some older mythos have a big fuss around the seed of gods and all that fun stuff, but the magic in Broken Earth feels a lot more . . . introspective, I guess? It seems like you’ve written it to be much more focused on the individual’s own perception of it, and that influences what they can do/how they do things. And I don’t really think I’ve seen anything that leans into that angle, as far as mythos goes. (Though I really, really cannot claim to be knowledgeable in that.)

And for the second thing: do you have any tips to becoming a good reader? I can read *fast*, but I really feel like I don’t get more than just the surface and shallow ideas about the message/themes the author might intend. It always seems like people are able to come up with very introspective, in depth dissections of their favorite characters and books, and I can’t help but look at those sometimes, and go, “wow, what was *I* reading?” I guess that it might be a learned skill, but I don’t really know where to start. I guess I also wanted to ask about what themes and such you wanted to incorporate into the Broken Earth trilogy (that was my introduction to you, then Dreamblood, then the Great Cities), but that’s really just a secondary thing to this question.

Well, regardless of whether or not you answer, I just wanted to ask so I could stop thinking about it constantly. I can’t wait to jump into the Inheritance Trilogy next time I buy books.

Flattery doesn't work on me, but I do love to talk shop, so... 😄 Cutting for length:

To your first question, about the different ways I depict magic -- first, it's not just Greek mythology that I use. There are soooo many cosmologies and cosmogonies out there that show gods as rowdy, horny, petty, and basically human, just with weird magic powers on top of that. The Dreamblood books are specifically informed by ancient Egyptian mythology and culture. I did some research into ancient Egyptian medical texts -- in particular the Edwin Smith Papyrus -- so I drew from those to create Gujaareh's four dream humors. I wanted Gujaareh to feel like an ancient Egypt that might have developed if magic actually worked... and if its own version of Imhotep had been a manipulative megalomaniac who decided to start a magic-controlled theocracy. tl,dr; Ancient Egyptians had a thing for humors and surgery and gods that were into sex lettuce, so that's what I claimed for Gujaareh.

With the Inheritance Trilogy I ranged more widely in what I mooched from existing cosmologies, because I wanted to build a belief system that resembled real-world stuff but wasn't just our world's gods in costume. For example, I noticed that lots of systems suggested that existence or human genesis begins with gods banging or fighting (or both), so I came up with a creation myth chock full of gods banging and fighting. Familiar hanger, new clothes on it.

But the Broken Earth books aren't about gods. There's a mythic frame "explaining" the Seasons and past disasters and Father Earth and so on, but that wasn't the focus. I was more interested in the ways we apply myths to people, treating some marginalized groups as simultaneously superhuman and subhuman... but never simply human. Same for the Great Cities books. It's meaningful that other cultures have discovered the existence of city avatars and worked them into their cosmologies, but only as a bit of detail to make the world more complete. Again, the mythology isn't the focus there.

I can't help you on becoming a good reader, sadly, because I am a very bad reader these days. I have a lot of trouble shutting off my "inner editor voice," which is a thing that I've heard a lot of other pro authors (and editors, and reviewers) mention. People in my business spend years developing the ability to spot problems in writing... and the inner editor is what happens when you stop being able to shut that ability off. The typos, the clichés, the patches of language that could've been trimmed out, all of it just starts to glare. The thing is, all books have issues like this, and most of the time they're not even errors, just... pecadilloes. The little things that are part of reading work made by human beings. They mean the writer was tired and didn't proofread as closely as they should, or maybe the writer was waffling on word use and inadvertently ended up using one a little too much, or maybe they were having a fight with their copyeditor about spelling and missed a grammar flub. Just part of reading. But if you, like me, have an inflamed inner editor, then instead of taking in the whole picture of whatever the author is trying to show you, you get nitpicky. You get irrationally angry at typos. You hyperfocus on the author's tendency to use one word too much. (A writer friend told me I use too many "plinths," for example.) You spend time thinking about structural issues and not noticing the language, or vice versa.

But since I'm currently in self-imposed reading rehab, maybe this will help you: For me, it helps to move away from what's familiar. I read a lot of stuff outside the SFF genre, because it's easier to shut off my inner editor when I'm less familiar with the tropes, the styles, the concepts. I've also really gotten into audiobooks, for example, because when I can't see the text I can't critique it, or at least not as instantly. So that's all I can suggest. If you've developed the habit of gulping down books, find a way to throttle the flow, so to speak. Try playing audiobooks on half speed, to train yourself to patience. Read outside your comfort zone, which will force you to slow down and take things in because of the unfamiliarity. Maybe try ebooks with the text blown up a lot, so that you have to turn the page more often; I don't know, just spitballing now. Maybe folks will have better suggestions in the comments. Hope it helps!

[fan-ficwife]

˗ˏˋNew FanFic Creator ´ˎ˗

₊˚ପ⊹ Hello to everyone reading! My name is “fan-fic wife” and I decided to make an account to publish fan fictions of fandoms I’m in. This post will be an introduction of me, my top 3 fandoms, and extras you’ll have to read more to see ♡

★・・・・・・・・・・★

⋆ ★ About me

⋆ I’ll go into personal things about me that I think you all should know!

──── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────

✧˚ · . My online name is Cali

˚ · . I will not be disclosing my age to anyone!!

✧˚ · . My pronouns are She/They

˚ · . I also enjoy role playing as much as fan fics

✧˚ · . I watch and read lots of stuff

˚ · . Currently on mobile but plan on getting a laptop soon

✧˚ · . I also only have tumblr for this stuff but I plan on making a tiktok, twitter, and maybe instagram for this content!!

˚ · . Will not tolerate racism, homophobia, ableism, disregarding triggers, etc.

★・・・・・・・・・・★

⋆ ★ Fandoms

⋆ I’ll talk about my top 3 fandoms I’m in, there is much more I’ll make a post on later!

──── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────

✧˚ · . The first fandom I’m in is BTS! I’ve been an army since 2017 but I’ve been into K-Pop since 2016.

˚ · . My bias is Min Yoongi/Suga/Agust D. He’s been my favorite since I’ve gotten into BTS.

✧˚ · . I don’t have a favorite song from them since it’s so hard to choose, but my top 3 right now are Boy In Luv, Anpanman, and 21st Century Girl!

˚ · . My favorite song from Yoongi currently is Haeguem and my favorite collaboration is That That ft. Psy

✧˚ · . Last thing I wanted to put is I’ll miss them while they are in the military but they will be back in 2025! Let’s keep fighting army!

──────────────────────

✧˚ · . The next fandom I love is Alice In Borderland! I’m very into psychological horror and I like how they incorporated it into the manga and the show.

˚ · . My favorite character is Niragi, especially in the manga. It upset me how in the show he did some bad things though

✧˚ · . It’s my favorite non-drawn show, there’s a possibility for a season 3! I personally like the ending and think it’s fine but I also have unanswered questions so I wouldn’t mind a season 3.

˚ · . I got into Alice In Borderland in 2018 and read the entire manga. When the show came out in 2020 I watched season 1 but never finished season 2 when it came out until this year, 2023

✧˚ · . Lastly this show for some reason is emotionally connected to me, it’s just a hyper fixation of mine and I love it a lot

──────────────────────

✧˚ · . The last fandom I’m in is pretty broad but I a favorite it’s just not popular, it’s anime!

˚ · . I’ve been into anime since I was a kid, my first anime was Glitter Force but the first official anime I really started to watch was Fairy Tale! (Never finished it.)

✧˚ · . Currently I’m watching Neon Genesis Evangelion but I’m not too much of a fan of it, but I’ll still finish it

˚ · . I have an anime list of all the anime’s I’ve finished completely and I will post it!

✧˚ · . My favorite anime is “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.” It’s by far amazing though it is only a movie!

˚ · . I don’t have a favorite series but I guess if I had to choose my top 5 are Hunter X Hunter, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Ouran Host Club, The Day I Became a God, and Junji Ito!!

★・・・・・・・・・・★

⋆ ★ Extras

⋆ I’ll talk about this account a bit, what I plan on posting, etc.

──── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────

✧˚ · . First, which I’ve said before, I’m only on mobile but I plan on getting a laptop soon!

˚ · . I also, again, will most likely make a TikTok and Twitter/X!! Maybe an instagram but not sure

✧˚ · . I have many fan fiction ideas in mind! I plan one writing at least one for each BTS member, but most likely there will be lots of Yoongi/Suga

˚ · . I also plan on writing at least one for each main character in Alice In Borderland, maybe some side characters I enjoy

✧˚ · . Lastly I’ll definitely be doing lots anime fan fictions, maybe one shots, etc.

˚ · . This blog will mainly be about me, memes, and updates!! I also have one of those “Question” response things where you can request things but I might make a google form for requests on TikTok and Twitter and put it in my bio, same for here on Tumblr!!

✧˚ · . Also I have CharacterAi so if y’all like the fan fiction so much I might start making bots for you all to use with my fan fiction stories !!

★・・・・・・・・・・★

˗ˏˋYou Read It! ´ˎ˗

₊˚ପ⊹ If you read all of this and are interested in anyway thank you so much! You probably saw it on here or from my TikTok that will be posted in the future lolz. I hope you all have nice days/nights and again thank you!

[spammreviews]

A BRIEF DEVILMAN CRYBABY RANT

What on Earth is Devilman Crybaby?

I watched Devilman Crybaby, the 2018 anime, because I heard that it was like a mix between Neon Genesis Evangelion and Berserk.

That’s true, in terms of imagery, symbolism, structure. Even the soundtrack of Devilman is similar to NGE

 Devilman Crybaby is also similar to Dune in that both series ask the question “What makes us human?” Answer that question very quickly, and then proceed to spend the rest of the series adding additional footnotes to this thesis.

With Dune, the answer is extraordinarily complicated. According to Devilman Crybaby, it our ability to cry.

Devilman’s themes are not really subtle or  complex. In fact, unlike the other three stories I mentioned, it’s kind of stupid, and that’s what makes it wonderful.

Beginning the first episode, the opening theme song and first scene made me think I was in a for a surreal, poetic experience. It’s a fantastic first scene, introducing us to the characters of Akira and Ryo and setting up the theme of kindness all the while having a wonderful atmosphere.

Then, we suddenly cut to a high-school track practice, and the next few scenes are a blur of horniness, weird jokes, and some of the most inhuman dialogue I’ve ever seen.

A lot of the scenes are also so nonsensically paced, either being way to slow or way to quick, ending either abruptly or a bit after they should have ended. There’s also so many scenes where the actions of character’s straight up make no sense, like that entire scene at the peir.

However, the end of the episode…it sure was something. It sees some pretty awesome body horror and an absolutely brutal fight.

A complaint I do have is the animation. It’s…not good. The character designs themselves are often enjoyable, but the drawing style is just kind of ugly. Ryo’s a good example of this. His design as this thin, regal looking, blonde, pale person who always dresses in white does a great job at telling you what he is as a character, even if it’s basically just the design of Griffith from Berserk. However, he’s drawn with these weirdly shaped eyebrows, and his haircut just looks bizarre. This seems really nitpicky, but it’s important.

A lot of the monsters also seem like they could be a lot cooler if the animation was a bit more detailed.

Not only that, but you can tell that this show was very low budget with all these instances of re-used animation and many obvious cost-cutting measures. There are multiple scenes where we barely see the characters talk and instead just see looping shots of the environment around them.

Oh, also this first episode is super horny. It’s close to being porn sometimes, and I’m not joking or exaggerating. I’m fine with art being horny, but there’s a certain point where it just becomes indulgent. It doesn’t help that, 90% of the time, it’s women being sexualized. 

I’m not even going to get into the way the character of Miki is treated.

The episodes after the first one…fine, I guess.

The problem is that this story jumps the gun on its weirdness and darkness, ending the first episode with something very weird and dark. As such, the next few episodes, which are remarkably less insane, just saw me waiting for things to go crazy again. 

Another problem is that the series is ridiculously quickly paced. I really liked the main characters of Ryo and Akira, and I liked their dynamic, but they barely had any time together. It doesn’t help that a lot of time is being spent with subplots.

This quick pace continues to hound the series until the very end.

People in this series keep talking about rising crime rates and how the world is going to heck, but this is never elaborated upon.

Characters like the beatboxing gang, Miki’s family, Miko, Psycho Jenny, Akira’s parents, the gay guy, Silene and her friend, and many others, go underdeveloped.

Stuff like government conspiracies, the tattoo gang, the demons having a secret plan, christianity, sexuality, and the meta aspect of the in-universe Tv show, are all underdeveloped.

Only a few plot elements feel completely finished, like running. The use of the relay race at the end is pretty creative, with Ryo not taking the baton, serving as a metaphor for his apathy.

Relay running is used similarly in many other placed. It symbolizes how the gay guy and Miko are being individualists, and Akira being the anchor shows how others depend on him. It ads a bite to Miki’s death. Blah blah blah. 

The PE coach was also a brilliant use of set up and pay off carried out over the episodes.

The idea of hands grabbing others is an image used repeatedly throughout.

Miki is also a really nice character, and while I was annoyed at how little agency she had for most of the show, I appreciate how she did help save Akira in that one scene. Unfortunately, that was it, and I feel like we barely knew her as a character.

The tv series has a racism metaphor that I would rank 4/10. It shows how racism against devilmen is bad, but it also claims that demons are ontologically evil and it’s okay to kill them all. There are suggestions that they do have hearts, but this is never elaborated upon.

We see a running pattern here, the show not having enough time. As a result, its themes are half-baked and overly simplistic. It talks about how we should get along, and how humanity are the real monsters, and how individualism is bad, and empathy is nice, and how imperialism is bad, and all that jazz, but it never tied these ideas together.

Compare this to Eva, where it feels like End of Evangelion managed to touch on every idea the show had set up. That’s probably because Eva was twice as long. 

It also doesn’t help that this show is almost laughably unsubtle. Miki’s “social media” post that saves people is so on-the-nose.

There’s also scenes that are just weird, like that one scene with Bonito flakes. Also, what was the deal with the kid looking up porn. Also, Donald Trump canonically exists in it. Also, who were the people shooting at the rainforest people? 

I’m sure there’s an explanation, but that’s not important. It’s fine if a show is ambiguous, but this doesn’t feel purposeful so much as it feels sloppy. 

It feels like the show doesn’t know what it wants to be about, with their being two or three episodes were are titular crybaby barely appears. That’s not great. 

I don’t hate all of these subplots, it’s just that none of them go anywhere. For instance, we watch this romance bloom between Miko and Frizzy Haired Guy for two episodes, and I will admit, I like Frizzy Haired Guy. I was rooting for him. Then, he gets killed off and is barely mentioned again. All that buildup was for nothing.

I suppose the story is trying to purposefully be unsatisfying, something both Eva and Berserk do, but when you do that, you need to have a reason. They could have made the scene where Frizzy Haired Guy die really tragic, but they instead make it all flashy and confusing so they can have us wonder if he’s maybe still alive for a bit.

Also, we had this whole episode introducing us to gay dude, and then he randomly goes evil and gets killed off in the last episode. So long, character development!

Comparing this show to Eva again, the ending is almost amazing. The imagery sounds awesome on paper, but the animation and character designs are so minimal. It also feels like Akira stopped growing as a character after the first six episodes. He feels almost removed from the destruction, as it’s all happening because of someone else.

I could also nitpick that entire last episode to hell for the thousand different moments that are written weirdly, like that one scene where Ryo doesn’t notice that Akira’s bottom half has been removed. Also, that ending shot was way to one the nose in looking like End of Evangelion. I know the Devilman manga came before Eva, but I don’t care. Why is the sea even red?

Despite all my complaining, I still like this show. The characters are fun, even if they really aren’t that complex (especially all the characters that aren’t Ryo and Akira). The world-building is imaginative and awe-inspiring, many of the action scenes are pretty cool, and there are moments when the minimal animation does work. 

Also, sometimes it’s nice to have a story that’s willing to be as bleak as this one, and as weird as this one.

To be honest, I feel like it could be weirder. I generally understood what was going on most of the time. In fact, the most confusing scenes were from the ordinary slice-of-life segments, like when that family had that giant The Last Supper painting.

I also think an idea which is carried out to its fullest is the idea of apathy. It’s the source of most of the conflict between Ryo and Akira. The ending sees Ryo destroying everything, including the one person he cares about, in his pursuits. It’s a tragic irony, I guess.

I feel like it would hit more if we had more time with these characters. What was Ryo’s reaction to learning that he was Satan and that everything he knew was a lie? What was the nature of his relationship with Psycho Jenny? What were Ryo’s actual motivations beyond “destroying humanity”.

If Ryo’s goals were more fleshed out, than the irony of him accomplishing his goals at the cost of the one thing that truly mattered to him would hit much harder.

This is definitely a story which you’re supposed to feel, not understand, but I don’t think I felt everything the show wanted me to feel. 

Another victim of the quick pacing is a lack of atmosphere. Now, the show does have a few sequences with some fantastic, otherworldly atmosphere, like the beginning. However, there are many times when it would be nice if the story could slow down a bit and let us enjoy the imagery.

The lack of atmosphere in the final episode is also a result of how needlessly complex the show can be sometimes. A lot of lore is thrown into our face in that episode, as well as a lot of character backstory and insight. A lot also happens in that 25 minutes. It would be nice if we got time to digest what was happening. 

I feel like I need to stop, because it seems like I dislike this show, but, there were times when I was on its wavelength. 

There is some beautiful and horrific imagery in here. I love Satan’s design, and I feel like it actually works with the minimalist artsyle. 

A lot of the scenes showing nuclear war in the last episode were pretty breathtaking, as the show is pretty great at showing scale and grandiosity. The use of filters really helps to sell the effect. The flashbacks to Ryo and Akira’s childhood also had an awesome juxtaposition, with these brightly colored childhood memories that use these long shots clashing with the dark and frantically edited present.

There are also many scenes of brutality earlier in the series that are legitimately pretty shocking, mainly the massacre at the track meet.

This is a series that has a lot going for it, but it ultimately stumbles at the finish line, ending up seeming more like an ant by the feet of the stories that the manga inspired.

However, they say the book is always better, so I’ll be sure to check it out.

[adventuresinclientservice]

What's wrong with advertising?

Roberta and I really enjoyed our time last Fall visiting Bucharest so I could speak at the International Advertising Association’s annual conference.  After we returned home, in a moment that combined hubris with wishful thinking, I decided that the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity should be my next stop.

I figured I’d be one of the few Account weenies speaking at a Creative conference, perhaps arming me with novelty as an advantage (how many Creative Directors can one listen to?).  Plus, I was drawn to my topic, “Genius Needs Collaborators” – an idea that had its genesis as a blog post -- where I claim collaboration is:

“the jet fuel that sparks moments of true genius.  We witness it in songwriting, watch it on the athletic pitch, see it in the science lab, observe it in the writer’s room.” 

I thought it sufficiently provocative to warrant attention, so in a “Why not?” moment, I applied.

When the Cannes evaluators kept me waiting, there was cause for hope.  Even so, I prepared for the likely “No;” in that, the evaluators did not disappoint.  So much for hubris.

There’s no shame in trying and perhaps next year I’ll try again, although I imagine an anonymous Account person with little agency doesn’t have much of a chance of acceptance against the John Legends, John Hegartys, and David Drogas of the world.

I wasn’t at the conference, but read about it; what got my attention was an ADWEEK story headline, “Where Are All the Women?  Men Overwhelmingly Took the Cannes Stage to Accept Awards.” 

Where indeed.

I wrote about this very matter more than eight years ago, in a post celebrating my pioneering Creative Director step-mother-in-law, Francine Wilvers, along with those who preceded her, not to speak of the women with whom I partnered during my agency years.  My intent was to counter a photo of Advertising Age’s “A-List” that included exactly one (token) woman in it. 

As my former colleagues Sandy Sabean and Kristi Faulkner point out, “85 percent of buying decisions are made by women, yet 85 percent of creative departments are populated by men, most of whom don’t have a clue how women think, feel, decide, and buy.”

Perhaps those numbers are different now – maybe there are more women creative directors -- but the Cannes photo suggests otherwise.  

If you’re wondering about that speech I wasn’t able to give at Cannes -- “Who are ultimate collaborators?” -- I have an answer for you: 

Women.

Are there men who are as effective as women?  Of course; I’ve worked with several. 

But it’s the women who are the true performers here.  For me it began with my first boss in advertising, the patient and wise Kristen Wainwright; continued with my near-genius colleagues Cami Edlund and Jane Gardner; included my idea-a-minute and mesmerizing presenter Creative partner Christine Bastoni.  

I haven’t even mentioned Shelley Lanman and Carole Weitz, the co-Creative directors who not only rescued my creative department from near-irrelevance, but also elevated it to where its prowess was worthy of Ammirati & Puris’ well-deserved reputation.

All of the women with whom I’ve had the privilege of working rank among the best innovators, idea creators, problem solvers, and, from what I’ve witnessed, leaders.  What I’ve experienced is not the exception; it’s the rule.

Will advertising ever recognize this?  Will it change?  Will women, at long last, get their due?

I used to be an optimist, telling you, “Yes, it will change and here are the steps to make it happen.”  If, however, I choose to be truthful, a realist, I know it won’t, and they won’t. 

And that, sadly, is what’s so terribly wrong with advertising.

[dailyaudiobiblechronological]

4/16/2023 DAB Chronological Transcription

Psalm 56, 120, 140-142

Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible Chronological, I'm China. Today is the 16th day of April. Welcome. It is so great to be back here with you this week. It feels like it has been a long time since we have been together. Maybe it's just me, but I have missed being here, missed being in the word of the Lord with you and reading it to you. Am so excited about today's reading because years ago, I think maybe when I first started reading chronological, I was just so shocked about the reading plan. It's just very different than sermons that you'll well, I mean, I don't know that I've ever seen a church that's like, okay, January 1, we're going through Genesis one. At the end we'll enter Revelation. Maybe those exist. That was super cool. But it's fine that they don't do that in Sunday school or kids church or adults regular church. There isn't like too much chronological reading. And so when you read it yourself through a plan, through the year, it's just a little different. And so today we are just reading Psalms. I think you guys have been in the Psalms for a second. And I love this because I created this phrase a couple of years ago. And just we're going to bounce around in the Psalms because we're dipping from one to another to another. So I'm excited. I love this. I love this time of April. I know that this is where we bounce from the Psalms a lot, so I'm excited. So today we are in Psalm 56, Psalm 120, in Psalm 140 through 142. Since it's a new week, we are switching up to the translation and we're going to be in the New International version for this week.

Commentary:

There's so much wisdom and just goodness in what David is saying. And I love that in the little subtitles right now, he is the director of music, the Psalmist David. And one of the things I really, really love is that he asks the Lord to stand guard over his mouth. And I love that. That's something that I have taken on myself to pray for, really just in a lot of situations, but especially the ones where if you're going to have a potentially hard conversation with someone and you're like, okay, there was miscommunication. We're here to figure out where the miscommunication was and to understand each other and to be on the same path. And, yeah, I just love what he said. Set a guard over my mouth board. Keep watch over the door of my lips. And then he further goes in to say, do not let my heart be drawn to what is evil so that I take part in wicked deeds along with those who are evil doers. Do not let me eat their delicacies. I think this is a great thing to pray. Really. Anytime like this would have been great to pray in the morning. Lord, would you just stand guard over my mouth today? Lord, I've been wrestling with fighting with my parents or with my spouse or with my kids. Lord, would you just stand guard over my mouth? Would you tell me, hey, don't say that. Hey, wait, let's pause before you say that. Let's go to bed before we say that. And then if you still want to say in the morning, let's readjust what you're going to say. These things are things that the Holy Spirit has said to me and just things that I feel like are wisdom. And so I think that really all of these there's so much these Psalms are beautiful and they're also lamenting and they're also, Lord, help, please come now. And I think we can all relate to that in some part of our life, whether right now or previously or sometime soon, we can all relate to we need God, and we need God right now. Maybe there's another part of the scripture that really stood out to you today, but that just is a great reminder for me just to always kind of be in that headspace, that mindset of maybe I am going into a difficult conversation or maybe I'm just with friends or family, or maybe I'm just with myself. Maybe I need to ask Holy Spirit to stand guard over my mouth because I'm not speaking well of myself. And it just continues to go down. And I think when we start with ourselves and then keep reevaluating and realizing, oh, I've not been speaking well to my spouse because I've not been speaking well to me, I've not been speaking well to the Lord and just kind of this ripple effect. And anyways, I'm really honing in on one part of the Scripture, but it honestly has shaped and shifted so much of my life and I encourage so many others to do that as well whenever they're having those potentially difficult conversations.

Prayer:

But anyways, Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you for David, who the cry of his heart was, Lord, that you would give him the words to speak and that he wouldn't have evil in his heart, that he wouldn't partake in evil or in malice. And God, I pray that that would also be our hearts. Whether it is difficult conversations or whether we're in our homes just passing by the people in our house, or maybe it's our coworkers or just the people that are surrounding us in our circles, our communities, I pray that we would be aware of what we say. We know that Your word says that the power of life and death is in the tongue. And so Holy Spirit, we ask that you stand guard over our mouth each and every single day with everything that we say. Let us be aware of the power and the magnitude that we are bringing. And I pray this in your name. Amen.

Announcements:

Dailyaudiobible.com is our website. That is the place of connection where you can see what is happening here in the community. So be sure to check that out if you have prayer requests or things that we as a community can come alongside of you, encourage you, lift you up, just call in and say, hey, haven't heard from you in a while, how's it going? If that's something that you are wanting and needing, great. We have a place for you. You can call in 800-583-2164 or you can record your prayer request to the app and those get sent in and play at the end of everyday's podcast. That is all for today. I'm China, I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer Line:

Hey, my beautiful DABC fam, this kingdom Seeker Daniel. First of all, shout out to young Ezekiel Hardin. Man, you did it today, man. April 12. Oh, man, you did an incredible job. Recapping that story, Zeke, what an amazing job you did, man. Recapping that story of the two sons and the prodigal son and then praying at the end that we would think about others more than ourselves. Man. You doing it, Zeke. Keep it up, young man. God bless you, man. We're so proud of you. And then to another precious young man, Brayden. Oh, my goodness. Young man, I want to pray for you. I thank you for your heart. Thank you for having a heart like Jesus. Thank you for having a heart for your buddy Eli to come to know Jesus, that you would be able to point him to Jesus. Let's pray. Family, father, we lift up young Eli on behalf of Brayden, who doesn't appear to know you, doesn't appear that his parents are leading him in the right direction. And God, it just seems like his life is not moving in the right direction. Brayden wants to be able to point Eli to you. God, would you fill Brayden with the power and the strength and the boldness, to be able to declare life to and over Eli? In the name of Jesus, I thank you for Brayden's heart and I pray that he will be able to see the fruit of his prayers return to him as you save his friend Eli in Jesus name, amen.

Him this is Braden from Texas. I forgot to mention that this is my second call in and if anyone prayed for my friend the Eli, well, I really do thank you because he went to church with us, with me and his entire family came to church with us on Sunday, which is Easter. And I really thank everyone if you did pray. I really do thank you and everyone here on this podcast. I really thank everyone for listening to this podcast. It's a very good podcast. Well, see ya.

Hey, DAB, this is Shannon from Texas, and I think I'm going to go by Expecting with Hope. Hopefully that hasn't been taken. But today is April 11. And last night I was laying in bed just thinking about how me and my husband are kind of in this place where neither of us are willing to cave. Neither of us are willing to be the first one to initiate communication and not necessarily say we're sorry, but just be the one to make the first move in a direction towards just closeness and togetherness. And it just got me thinking about how ugly that pride is, just how I just was laying there asking the Lord to show me the beauty in breaking, show me the beauty in being the one who is just willing to turn the one will turn towards the other. And it's not necessarily just in relationships, but you always feel that you're the one reaching out or you're always the one that's doing making the first step. And I just was asking the Lord to show me show me the beauty and being the one. And of course his son came to mind and how he we're not the first we're not the first to make that first turn, that first step, that first jump. And Jill, just your words today just install and his pride and how it was the links that we'll go to. So join me, please.

Hi, my name is Jake, and I have a friend, we'll call him C. And he is actually coming to live with me for a little while because just some rough circumstances, he's going to move here and get a job. And I have lived alone and done my own thing for almost five years now, and so it's going to be an adjustment for me. But the biggest thing that I would love prayer for is C is not a Christian. And one reason why I just feel like maybe I'm supposed to, that God wants him to come here just so that he can be in a different atmosphere and environment and that hopefully that the Spirit will draw him in while he's here. And it puts a lot of pressure on me because I've been realizing, like, oh, my, I have something more directly for purpose right now. I need to be disciplined, I need to not be perfect, but I have to be intentional and make sure that I'm living out my own faith. So I'm just praying that he'll see Jesus while he's here and just pray for his salvation and pray that we just adjust well and that God would be glorified. Thank you. Bye.

[yenpet-yenaet]

Gen. 1 to 3

The Naming of Jesus, hd.

Before I start this year-long endeavor, let me just explain what and why. This blog is dedicated to my interest in Christianity and all that that entails. Although I’ve already read through the 66 books once before (which you can find over at @potorgaret--inactive), recently I’ve felt even more drawn to this faith than normal, and I thought this is a good time to read the books again. Hopefully this time I’ll have better comments and insights on the text. I will try posting daily, barring exams and other priorities. This time there’ll also be a few changes from last time: namely, I am using a different plan so I don’t have to read all the psalms back-to-back. I will also not summarize the Book of Proverbs. I already did that once and, dear god, was that horrible. And also, I’ll be keeping date with the B.A.S. Kalendar, because why not. I will be reading from The New Oxford Annotated Bible (5th ed.) and also other sources depending on the exact book. For the books of the Hebrew Bible I will also be reading from Robert Alter's translation. One more note: as much as I would love to, I will not be including any apocryphal, extra-biblical, or Qur'anic narratives. That would be fun but also incredibly time consuming and I am but one person.

The Book of Genesis, first in every arrangement of the canon and revered in all the major Abrahamic religions, sensibly opens with an account of creation. In the beginning, the earth was ‘waste and welter,’ a chaotic non-existence. Then the spirit of God– interpret that how you want– moved upon the waters. Then God speaks into being all of creation in a series of separations. On the first day, he separates the Light from the Darkness. On the second, he separates ‘the waters below’ from the ‘waters above’ with a big vault. Basically, dividing the earthly and heavenly realms. On the third, he separates water from dry land.

The next three days parallel the first three. On the fourth day, the Sun, Moon, and all the Stars are created in the firmament. One light to rule over the day and the other for the night. Sidenote: I do find it just a little funny that the creation of all the stars is treated like an add-on and not significant in and of itself. On the fifth day, he makes animals in the sea and air, and tells them to be fruitful and multiply. On the sixth day, the land animals (including humans) are made and are again told to be fruitful and multiply. God also gives the plants as food to the beasts.

The seventh day spills over into chapter 2, with God taking a day off. Then in verse 4, there’s something strange: we get a second, different creation story. In this version, plants don’t exist yet and there is no one to till the ground. So God makes someone, the man, to do just that. He fashions the man out of clay and breathes life into him. And then He makes the plants of the earth. Immediately after this bit, we get a few verses describing the rivers flowing out of the garden in Eden. Although many have tried to pinpoint the exact location of the garden based on this information, it ultimately doesn’t matter. Geographical literalism is never the point.

God tells the man that he can eat any fruit except from the tree in the middle of the garden, lest he die. God also thinks it fit that the man should have a companion, so he makes all the animals of the world and lets the man name them. But none of them are a suitable companion, so God puts the man under, takes out his rib, sews up the wound, and constructs Woman out of the bone. 

Chapter 3 has a few things going on, with several key moments that are important to Jewish and Christian theology. To start, we meet the snake, more crafty than anyone else. It should be noted that the snake here is just a regular snake and not Satan as Revelation or Milton would retroactively make it. The snake asks the woman, “did God say anything about not eating from a tree…?” The woman responds by stating she was told not to eat of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, or even touch it; otherwise she would die. And the snake told her she wouldn’t. Furthermore, if they eat it, they will gain knowledge of good and evil and become as gods. So the woman touches the fruit, and not dying, she eats it and shares it with the man. Thus their eyes were opened and they made themselves some clothes out of leaves. 

God comes in and asks the first question He’s ever asked, “where are you?” The man and woman tell him; they talk about the snake tricking the woman, the woman sharing, and then the man blames the woman (and by extension, God himself). On hearing this, God doles out three curses: to the snake, he will be cursed to crawl on his belly and there will be enmity between him and the woman’s children; to the woman, she will have pain in birth and there will be enmity between her and the man; and to the man, he will have pain in his toil and there will be enmity between him and the land. The last line of these curses is the iconic “you are dust; and to dust you shall return.”

Lastly, God makes for them, fashions even, clothes out of skins and sends them off into the world to live out their days. Also, the woman is named Eve, as she is the mother of life. And to protect the other tree that was also in the garden, the tree of life, he places a cherub with a flaming sword to guard it. Ironically, by eating the fruit they weren’t supposed to, they got exiled out of paradise and thus lost their one chance at immortality: the fruit of the tree of life; so, they partook of the fruit and ensured their mortality.

Genesis is a… dense book. It’s the product of several hands, composed of several stories and traditions over hundreds of years. It’s full of contradictions and doublets, but that doesn’t really affect the unity of the final product. Its stories are important to every Abrahamic religion, sometimes for disparate reasons. It’s not meant to be read as historical or literal fact, or as a self-help book (in fact, most of the characters are horrible people). Rather, “its rich store of narratives offer nonscientific, narrative, and poetic perspectives on values and the meaning of the cosmos” (Oxf.)

Adding to an earlier point, it’s quite well known that the Pentateuch (first five books) are the work of many different sources. Early scholars identified 4/5 based on stylistic ground: J had an anthropomorphic god (like when he made clothes for the man and woman) and uses the ineffable name of God (Lord); E is quite similar but the stories sometimes contradict, and he uses El or Elohim as the name of God (God); P is quite concerned with order and has a very regal God; J is more concerned with Moses, the law, and the marginalized; and R is the redactor who put all the sources together. Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible? explains the theory much better than I ever could. However, this theory has seen some competition recently, especially from the supplementary hypothesis. I like «Matt Baker's video» on the topic.

Let’s just focus on the names for a bit. El is also the name of a Canaanite god (actually the head god) and etymology, it just means deity. It’s also cognate to Arabic allah. The name El also turns up more frequently than the other one in theophory. The other one being, of course, YHWH whose etymology is frustratingly obscure. There’s even «a theory» that YHWH was originally a separate deity from Midian who got syncretized with the major Canaanite gods back in the early 2nd millennium BC.

Genesis is actually full of wordplay and puns which are quite hard, or impossible, to translate fully. Here’s a few highlights. Names have a lot of wordplay, like how Adam is related to the word for ground (coincidentally, the words ‘human’ and ‘humus’ have similar origins from Latin). The snake’s cunning nature is in contrast to the humans’ innocence. Of all the days, only the sixth day has the definite article in Hebrew. Eve’s name might not actually mean what it’s said to mean (Alter, Gen 3, footnote 20). The specific wording of the days (“And it was evening and it was morning”) is the reason why the Jewish calendar’s reckoning of days starts at sunset instead of midnight. Also, the times where God refers to an “us” or where God is referred to in the plural could be a holdover from ancient Israel’s pre-monotheistic days, or it could be another reference to the Divine Council of Job 1 and Psalm 82. Then again, the divine council could itself be a polytheistic holdover so who’s to say?

As for meaning, themes, archetypes, etc., this book has got you covered. God verbally ordering creation in P’s version cuts a regal figure, almost like a king issuing a decree and it being done. This is to be distinguished from other verbs for making things used in Genesis. This chapter also features God separating things. This is crucial to the message of the chapter: it’s God creating the world by giving order to chaos. The numerology also plays into this, with 7 being special all across the Mediterranean world. At the end of Ch. 1, God makes humanity in His image. There are many, many interpretations as to what that could mean and I am not qualified to pick one, however, it does confer a certain specialness to humanity not granted to the rest of the animals. I especially like «@tomato-bird’s comic» pondering the meaning of the Imago Dei, with relation to the Incarnation and subsequent death. The concept has also been used for humanitarian ends, like Gregory of Nyssa’s «anti-slavery sermon.» Another quite good implication is that, since humanity is made in the image of God, how could it possibly be confined to the two sexes? The full spectrum of human sex, gender, sexuality, and expression (and beyond) are contained within God. Another important verse right at the end of the first chapter is when God sees everything He’s made and it is very good. I quite like this sentiment, that creation is ultimately good.

In Chapter 2, God creates the man to till the earth. I prefer this lens of looking at what the ‘dominion’ of Ch. 1 refers to. Instead of complete unchecked power over the earth, a very human conception of dominion, the man’s purpose here is to tend to it, take care of it, make something out of it; be partners in creation with God. The earth is not ours (Lev. 25:23) afterall. The physical creation of man out of clay is actually quite common cross-culturally, like in the Enuma Elish or in the myth of Pandora. This moment is also important to Jewish pneumatology. In Judaism, the body and the spirit aren’t two separate things and life begins at first breath; those facts trace their roots back to 2:7. One more thing I’d like to mention in Ch. 2 is my favorite interpretation of Adam’s rib in the creation of the woman. The idea states that ‘rib’ is a euphemism for penis bone, a bone that many animals have but humans conspicuously lack. Basically, God took away the man’s penis bone and then sewed it up (explains the perineal raphe.)

And now onto Chapter 3. This story, despite its common Christian interpretation, says nothing about sin but is instead a metaphor for the loss of childlike innocence and also exile, a concept unfortunately common in Judaism. It’s interesting to note that Eve’s report includes a condition that wasn’t in God’s original warning (touching it) and perhaps, when she touched it and didn’t die, she thought it was also safe to eat. That said, this chapter can say a lot about sin. My personal headcanon, influenced by Virgil’s monologue in Purgatorio 17, is that when humanity received the knowledge of good and evil, that severed the connection between ‘divine love’ and ‘rational love’ and basically, one man’s evil could be the same as another man’s good. For example, by that view, capitalism is sinful because it is the material accumulation of wealth for one person, for whom it is very good, built off the exploitation of hundreds, thousands, even more, of laborers, for whom it is very bad indeed. Another interpretation I quite like is «Tobiah’s» which focuses more on the three curses later in the chapter. In that interpretation, the fruit of sin is disconnection, alienation, and unnatural relations. Unnatural relations between humanity and animals, between men and women, and between humanity and the land itself. The two hiding from God was the disintegration of the earlier bond between each other and God. The snake tricks Eve and is cursed for it, and so a long-lasting rivalry is created between the snake and the woman’s offspring. As for the woman’s curse, “the man’s rule over the woman here is a tragic reflection of the disintegration of the original connectedness between them” (Oxf.) 

There are two more things I’d like to highlight. The first is verse 9: for the first time ever, God asks humanity a question. “Where are you [in relation to me]?” he asks. A few months ago, I was listening to a Magnificast episode where the guest brought up the significance of this question but alas I forgot which episode. The bad part about listening to content on your commute is that you can’t take notes. The second one is that the descriptions of the garden in Eden is full of Temple imagery, from the plants to the cherubim.

Next up: Gen. 4 to 7.

[nevermindirah]

Yitzhak!

is a character! who Gregadiah What-Is-Math Rucka gave us almost no information about!

I've gone through Tales Through Time #6: The Bear and #1: My Mother's Axe with several magnifying glasses and done a lot of googling and taken my copy of the Tanakh off my shelf for the first time since (well, since the last time I needed to read Torah for TOG reasons, which I think was Booker Passover headcanons) and here's the best I can come up with.

In The Bear we meet someone who goes by the name Isaac Blue:

Read on for a lot of comic panel analysis and historical research and Jewish flailing!

So what do we know about this Isaac Blue person?

He's Lorge, he's got curly hair, he's basically a taller version of Joe as drawn by Leandro Fernández (ie an antisemitic stereotype why the fuck did they approve this character design?? and then why did they double down and copy-paste it to Yitzhak??):

He's got a mezuzah on the doorpost of his house in Alaska!

I screamed about the mezuzah way back in January in this post where I (very reasonably) assumed this character was Joe and spun myself a tale about how Booker is still Joe's brother so the mezuzah stays up even though Booker isn't welcome in that house for a century. Bottom line: the mezuzah is a tradition with origins in the commandment from Deuteronomy 6:9 to "write the words of G-d on the gates and doorposts of your house" and evolved over the course of the Rabbinic period into the modern mezuzah we see here.

I did unnecessary levels of google image search to glean absolutely no useful information about Yitzhak’s origins from this panel:

I've decided the variant cover of TTT 6 is Yitzhak because of a panel in My Mother’s Axe, shown here, and what's likely an unnecessarily deep reading of Exodus, discussed further down:

The person at the right of the bottom panel is wearing the same clothes as in the TTT 6 variant cover and has the same shoulder-length curly hair and hairy forearms.

Left to right, the people in this panel are Lykon (I'll never get used to him being white in the comics), Andy, Noriko (I think? why doesn't Andy mention her by name here?), and Yitzhak. Andy's robe has a stereotypically Greek design on the sleeve cuff, and I had to stop myself 10 minutes into a Wikipedia rabbit hole because Gregorforth doesn't think that deep about this shit. The solid clues as to timeline that we get in this panel are:

Andy's iron axe

the presence of Lykon, who Andy first met in 331 BCE

So all we know is that Yitzhak is an immortal, he was a contemporary of Lykon, and he's Jewish.

Isaac is the most common Anglicization of Yitzhak (which in turn is the most common Anglophone transliteration of יִצְחָק‎), and Greg always uses the (transliterated) Hebrew when he refers to this character. Yitzhak is the long-awaited child of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis, the child who G-d commanded Abraham to sacrifice but spared at the last minute. I see what you did there, Gregory.

Why Isaac Blue? This is where I pulled out my Tanakh. According to the New JPS translation, blue is the first of three colors of yarn listed in Exodus 35:6 among the gifts requested of the Israelites to construct the priestly garments for the Tabernacle and later the Temple. Then in Numbers 15:38 the Israelites are commanded to "make themselves fringes on the corners of their garments throughout the ages; let them attach a cord of blue to the fringe at each corner."

And now for sandbox timelines party! Gregadiah gave us ALMOST NOTHING to go on, so I'm gonna make my own fun.

I, like many modern Jews, think the stories in the Tanakh are foundational mythology that are valuable because of how they've shaped our people but that contain some fucked-up shit and either way aren't meant to be a record of historical facts. Modern scholarship generally agrees that the community we now call Jews emerged as a distinct group of Canaanites sometime in the late Bronze Age (cw this video's host says the Name of G-d aloud despite being a religious studies scholar who knows that is not a name anyone but the Temple priests are allowed to say). The first non-Biblical written record of the people Israel is from an Egyptian source c. 1200 BCE, and the Biblical kingdom of David and Solomon was probably an exaggeration of whatever really happened during the Bronze Age Collapse. We start getting into historical-fact territory a few centuries into the Iron Age:

588 BCE Solomon's Temple destroyed, Babylonian exile begins

538 BCE Cyrus of Persia allows Jews to return to Jerusalem

515 BCE Second Temple construction complete

332 BCE Alexander the Great At Something I Guess conquered Judea, beginning the Hellenistic period of Jewish history — 331 BCE Andy & Lykon find each other

167 BCE another jerkface Greek king desecrated the Temple and basically outlawed Judaism

164 BCE recapture of Jerusalem and Temple rededication during the Maccabean Revolt

70 CE destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, beginning of the Rabbinic period of Jewish history that we're still in now

What if... and hear me out... what if immortals come in pairs, and the pairs are:

Andy & Quynh

Joe & Nicky

Booker & Nile

LYKON & YITZHAK

What if Yitzhak was a priest of the Second Temple? What if he and Lykon killed each other just like Joe and Nicky would in the same city around 1300 years later, but instead of enemies-to-lovers speedrun with an absurdly long happily-ever-after, when Lykon died permanently Yitzhak decided to separate from Andy and Noriko and become the hermit we later see in Alaska?

We don't know how old Yitzhak is compared to the others, only that he was a contemporary of Lykon at a time when Andy was using an Iron Age version of her mother's axe. Other plausible origins for him:

a Jew of the early Rabbinic period, maybe a child or grandchild of people who were still alive before the Second Temple was destroyed

a Judean of the Second Temple era under the Romans or Greeks or Persians, maybe a priest, maybe not

an exilee in Babylon, maybe of the generation who got to return, maybe of the generation who was exiled (he doesn't look like he was 50 at his first death but who knows, he could've been mortal for both)

an Israelite of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, maybe a priest of Solomon's Temple or again maybe not

an Israelite wandering in the desert with Moses

THEE Yitzhak, ben Avraham v'Sarah, our patriarch who was brought up for sacrifice and then spared, and then spared again, and then spared again, and again, and again...

or! he could also be a Canaanite or other Levantine who predates the people Israel, who at some point in his very long life chose to join our mixed multitude, who like Andromache before him (and like Avram and Sarai would in this case do after him) took a new name to reflect the magnitude of influence this people has had on him

Why do I keep saying Yitzhak might have been a priest? It's thanks to the one detail in the artwork I could plausibly connect to solid research without getting a PhD real quick. Take a look at the gorgeous detail on the opening of his robe in the TTT 6 cover. He's dressed in rags, holes and dirt everywhere, rough stitches probably from hasty repair work — except for the neck opening. Compare that to this description from Exodus 39:23 of the construction of the priestly garments for the Tabernacle: "The opening of the robe, in the middle of it, was like the opening of a coat of mail, with a binding around the opening, so that it would not tear."

The next verses describe the intricate designs for the hem of the priestly garment. Yitzhak's ragged garment looks like the hem was torn off entirely.

Am I overthinking this? Yes I am! You're welcome!

My friend and historical research hero @lady-writes​ is in a Discord server with Gregadiah and asked the man himself some questions about all this. He clearly thinks he's being sneaky?? No shit Yitzhak is Jewish, dude, I want DETAILS!

I will not be giving up my Jewish Booker headcanon, I've put too much thought into it by now, the internalized shame of antisemitism explains Booker's depression too well for me, and it just adds so much richness to Booker/Nile both being children of forced diasporas. Fortunately (for him, not me, bc I'd do it anyway!) Gregothy supports fan headcanons even when they're not in line with his own:

One last thing before I close like 100 research tabs and go back to writing historical fantasy and/or porn! I love that, despite that atrocious caricature of a face design, our canon Jew and our fanon Jew are both Lorge and Soft and Kind, flying the face of the antisemitic stereotype of Ashkenazi Jewish men as small and weak, but also not falling into the New Jew / Muscle Jew stereotype that Zionism created. (I am trying SO HARD not to talk about Israel/Palestine for once ughhhhhhhhhh) Anyway here's a (US-centric but very good) primer on both these stereotypes of Jewish masculinity. Is this why I'm forever projecting my transmasc diasporist feels onto Jewish Booker the service sub? 🤷🏻‍♂️

I’ll reblog a second version of this with full image descriptions so that there’s a version accessible for folks who need IDs as well as a version accessible for folks who get overwhelmed by walls of text.

[sneep29]

Hello, Sneep. I've been a fan of your work for a long time and it's a huge inspiration for a beginner like me. If you don't mind, can I ask you 2 questions? 1-What books/videos/content do you recommend for someone who wants to start to animate sprites like you do? 2-How do you make anti-aliasing? I know a bit of color theory, but I struggle a lot to make my lines look smooth. Thank you!

Hey, Anon. Appreciate you feel that way about my work. Means a lot, man.

Your first question is a little difficult for me to answer. I've never looked at books, or videos for animating sprites. I just started doing it back in the day because video games and animation were pretty cool to me, and emulation was a big thing for me in the early 2000′s.

I used to (and still do from time to time) check out a lot of sprite art of classic games on Spriters Resource. I’d look at stuff from the SNES, Arcade, Sega Genesis, PS1, etc. Some of my influences were simplistic and fun stuff, like The Simpsons Arcade and Super Mario World, or other styles like games from Capcom, such as Magical Quest and Marvel Vs. Capcom, and some of Treasure's Sega Genesis game art is really appealing and prolific as well.

I didn't grow up with a GBA, and not well versed with it's library, but it seems like there's a lot of decent stuff on that system as well.

Here’s a link I do remember from back in the day by pixel legend, Cure. Definitely a good place to start. I wasn’t heavy into tutorials, because I’m stubborn and find it hard to buckle down and read, but started reading it seriously a few years ago, and it’s a pretty well written piece:

https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299

Been looking over this guy’s video, Mort Mort. Goes over stuff I don’t wanna clog in here, but he’s got some pretty good information in this, so I recommend to check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWKhytYUGTg

Would also suggest to check this site out, Lospec. It has tutorials, communities you can find, software for pixel art. Seems like you can find some really good stuff hopefully.

https://lospec.com/

Check out youtube videos if you wanna study the motion of sprite art in games. Youtube lets you use the < and > keys to go back and forward with frames. Use 60 fps quality if you can. NintendoComplete is an excellent source for game footage in 60fps and 720p or above from what I’ve seen. Principal’s of animation are important. This has been in my watch later list for what’s felt like 2 or 3 years, so checked to see if it’s a decent source, and it’s actually pretty helpful. Pixel artist use these rules as well, so study stuff like this. I’ve never been well versed in technical stuff. I just liked animating, and learned over trial and error, which is actually bad and wouldn’t recommend being that stubborn.

https://youtu.be/uDqjIdI4bF4

I’d say keep it simple if you’re a beginner, and I’d like to say the same for the subject matter you study. I’m pretty sure you’ll have an easier time starting with pixel art from stuff like NES, Gameboy, or other simple contemporary consoles.

I also feel that you should try looking at simpler stuff like Super Mario Bros. than say starting with something more complex like Shatter Hand. I think Japanese companies like Nintendo, Capcom, Konami, Sunsoft (Japanese only), and definitely some others out there, are the best influence in my opinion when it comes to just good overall design.

Second question, I really didn’t want to answer this question, because AA isn’t the easiest thing to explain, I’ve never really written a tutorial, or talk to people about art. I just do it because I’m just drawn to it I guess.

Really didn’t wanna do this because it takes up some time to explain everything, I do not feel like a tutorial guy or have any experience writing them, and I really need to jump onto other things.

Spent some time putting this together, but I don’t know. I can’t really recommend taking this seriously. If you want to learn about anti-aliasing, I will say go check out the link from above on Cure’s Pixel Art Tutorial. It’s more helpful.

Hopefully, at the very least, the links I sent you can be of better help. Keep an open mind, not all old pixel art is perfect, question why you put down blocks the way you do, and don’t count down the days you been at it and focus on having fun doing and or learning it. Good luck with whatever you do.

[bellmo15-blog]

From one si fi body suit I have a massive kink for to another, my sona in a Zero Suit which I've made no secret is kind of the thing that got me into this kink in the first place. This is also another one of my fav comms I've got.

Original description: Well people, I’ve finally done it. I’ve gotten a Zero Suit… Well, a pic of my sona in a Zero Suit and it’s drawn by ChaosCroc but it still kinda counts. Right?

Putting that aside some of you reading this may already know about me and my love for Zero Suits, others might not. Well, you are in luck if your one of the latter because let me tell you a story! We all have our genesis as to why we are into the fetishes we are today. For many with a snake coil and hypnosis fetish that comes from Kaa from The Jungle Book, myself included. The Disney animated Jungle Book specifically. No really, there’s actually multiple versions of The Jungle Book and Kaa’s not the same across all of them. Someone who’s into Belly Dancing may of gotten it from Shantae which surprisingly she alone ISN’T actually the reason I got it but rather her and Olivia from Fire Emblem Awakening due to me playing that before any Shantae game. And then you got of course, tight body suits. This one differs from person to person but for me I got mine as a result of Zero Suit Samus. Specifically, it was her appearance in Super Smash Brothers Brawl when I was 13 years old. I actually had played a Metroid game before but it was when I was really little and wasn’t any farther than the opening. It was Super Metroid if anyone was curious. So the knowledge of Zero Suit Samus was a mystery to me until I played my first Smash game in 2009. Back then however I wasn’t actually that into it at first. But as time went on and I got older and A LOT more wiser (I was a really dumb kid back then) I actually started to be a lot more into it. And soon I started to see other characters dressed in this sexy bit of space wear and well the rest is history.

Really though how could I not be as into this suit as I am? It’s got a great si-fi design, it fits well onto any character even if it’s not the normal blue coloured suit and similar to the Plugsuits of Evangelion it manages to look both sexy and cool. Now some of you who may know about Zero Suit Samus in Smash may already know about this but there’s actually two different version, the Prime 2 model which is used in Brawl whereas Smash for Wii U/3DS and Ultimate uses the Other M model of the Zero Suit. And who knows, with Metroid Dread we might even get a new design. Personally I do love the Other M suit a lot more just purely because of how it looks though the Prime 2 suit I do still have a fair bit of nostalgia for. Plus the Other M version is the more popular version anyway which is kinda ironic because Metroid: Other M is the one game in the Metroid franchise most diehard fans love to rag on the most. Who knows though, maybe I will get a pic of myself in the Prime 2 version one day. Maybe not by the same artist but still, it is a possibility. Or maybe I will for the sake of consistency. Who knows.

Oh and for those wondering, yes this pic does *kinda* tie into The Greater Universe storyline since I like to imagen the way my Self Insert got this suit is that some time after the fourth Super Smash Bros tournament and he was growing that love of this kind of suit he actually asked Samus Aran if it was an outfit anyone could wear regardless of gender and if she had a spare one he could keep. After all, if you wanna wear a suit like this it might as well be an authentic one! And reluctantly she said yes but only on the condition that they faced of in a fair brawl. He only just bailey won. Samus is a trained bounty hunter after all. And then the Zero Suit was his. “But what about that pic of Rottytops in a Zero Suit?” That I didn’t really think two much about. I didn’t really have this big cross over universe planned back then. “What about other characters you will get in this suit?” Umm… a fashion designer somehow got there hands on the material used to recreate it and sell it? Yeah, let’s go with that.

Artist is ChaosCroc: https://www.deviantart.com/chaoscroc Also I’m only just realising I commissioned this a few days after Metroid Dread was announced.

[jyou-no-sonoko19]

A comment I had on AfM got me thinking that it might be helpful to talk about how I square Lilith’s age/timeline in my writing, with the fact that I also use our modern understanding of science and time keeping (something I’ve had to do largely due to CAoS suggesting what could easily be conflicting information). 

To wit: The Garden of Eden is a real place, out of which Lilith was thrown or fled under threat. 

But also, it can be observed that, canonically, mortals and witches live in a world that resembles our own, and also mentions ancient cultures, particularly in terms of ancient magical texts. 

So here’s how I logic things, in terms of what we’ve been given and my own drawn conclusions:

- Lilith is the First Woman, meaning that no woman can be older than that. In texts which acknowledge Lilith, it’s generally accepted that she and Adam were created side by side, from the same earth, while Eve was created later, to be subservient to Adam via the whole rib thing. QED, there is no man older than Lilith either.

- It's not clear how long she really lived in Eden before things went pear-shaped. While, following Genesis, 'God created the Earth in 7 days', even modern theologians agree that that's poetic language (unless you follow extreme Creationism and believe that dinosaur bones were planted to fool people). Humans were a late-stage experiment on God's part, after he presumably played around with other stuff for a very long time, some cosmic Etch-A-Sketching aside.

- When Adam and Lilith were created, there was no human civilisation and therefore no calendars. (The best a person could do would be to count solar days, but that only gives you a measurement of days and would rely on having some kind of large, day-recording rock face, etc, which a wanderer couldn’t easily have.)

- It was a long time before she met Lucifer. Long enough for her to become a survivalist, eventually a witch -- the very First Witch, meaning she would have needed the time to learn to harness forces all on her own --  and to acquire a familiar in the demon Stolas (it’s not specified in caos that he’s a demon rather than the regular shape-shifting goblin that witches keep as familiars, but multiple real world texts depict him thus).

-  As an unaging immortal (since she did not have her immortality stripped from her, having left before the Tree of Knowledge incident), Lilith’s experience of time is variable, so it could have been years or tens of years or even more than a century.

- After Lilith met Lucifer, they spent more unclear time together in the Wastes, during which he was also busy creating the framework of Hell, which she was eventually used to help populate. This obviously differs across texts, but since CAoS names her the Mother of Demons, without specifying a Samael or any other specific partner, I have chosen to depict that creation in terms of a blend of her physically channelling elemental and demonic sources to make new creatures, using her spiritual essence and arcane methods to ‘birth’ in any number of perverse methods, and perhaps coupling with already-established demons to create hybrids.

- Lilith spent a span of time isolated in Hell, but due to a number of factors the true time cannot be clarified. CAoS canonically, time works differently in Hell, and can be virtually frozen compared to the mortal world, in some regions of that dimension. There is no talk of demonic calendar keeping, but if they did so, it would likely be on a very different scale, and would have to be specific to the region whose time they’re measuring.

- At a certain point, Lilith was free enough to be able to return to the mortal world with some frequency (whether for her own reasons or possibly at Lucifer’s behest), able to observe the development of humanity from a distance. Her interference in that culture became human lore in the relevant regions (I have placed her as mostly spending her time in the Middle East for reasons that are hopefully obvious), the evolution of which can be traced on ancient human calendars.

- Because of this, Lilith uses the Hebrew calendar when she wants to give her age, or personally track her own years, which puts her just short of 6000 years old (dependant on whether you place CAoS in 1969 like the pilot does, or later).

- She of course does not have a traceable birthday, and likely has no interest in having one (for one thing, because that would somewhat be tied to her unwanted parentage, and a time in her life best ignored). If forced by certain people to name a date, she will allow the first day of the year, in whichever calendar that person follows.

So yeah! That’s what underlines what I do in terms of eras, histories and Lilith’s age!

[lokiondisneyplus]

Variants. Time Keepers. Apocalypses. Alligators. Jet Skis. Over the course of Season 1 of Marvel Studios’ Loki, the God of Mischief has seen and done it all across the Sacred Timeline. But now at the end of time — literally, Loki has arrived at the Citadel at the End of Time, accompanied by Sylvie — only one question remains: Has this journey changed Loki? It’s even a question He Who Remains poses, reminding the duo that they can’t reach the end until they’ve seen a change: “It needs to happen, to get us all in the right mindset to finish the quest.”

For a trickster who has always been so focused on his wants and needs, it’s safe to say that Loki’s time working for the Time Variance Authority (and then trying to take down the TVA) has certainly shaped him in ways we haven’t seen before. Gone is the Asgardian who commanded people to kneel before him; now, for the first time, we’re seeing a softer side to Loki as he realizes that his choices have consequences and he’s in charge of his own destiny — no one else. Going all the way back to the very beginning of Episode 1, as Loki stands before Judge Renslayer at the TVA, he yells that no one else will dictate how his story ends, and he’s finally doing just that.

“Loki, as a show, has introduced so many complex ideas, and themes, and conversations,” Tom Hiddleston tells Marvel.com. “One of the things I've been so pleased and thrilled to see with the show is how deeply the audience is engaged with the big ideas, the ideas of fate versus free will, agency versus determinism. Do we have the capacity to genuinely choose our path through our lives? And in those choices, where do we derive meaning? To what extent are any of us free? To what extent are these characters free to choose their route through the universe and self-realize and determine the course of their lives?”

Loki didn’t change completely on his own, though, as everyone he encounters throughout all six episodes influences him in ways he never could have predicted, from his surprising friendship with Mobius to Classic Loki reclaiming his “glorious purpose.”

“People latched onto the relationship between Loki and Mobius, and understood that there was a mirror in the two of them,” Hiddleston says. “Both Mobius and Loki had a lot to teach each other. Mobius opens up Loki’s sense of his own identity and that this might be something that's malleable. And then Sylvie opens up something in Loki about the nature of identity. And that Loki is able to then reflect back to Mobius.”

“In Episode 5, suddenly, the conversations the three of them have had [cause] an effect on the variant Lokis — on Classic Loki, on Kid Loki, on Boastful Loki. I like to think on Alligator Loki, too. Maybe he starts to think about free will.”

This all comes to a head when Loki and Sylvie have the most important conversation of all, with He Who Remains. Standing before this man behind the curtain, He Who Remains lays out his entire philosophy, the reason behind the TVA and all the smoke and mirrors. It’s to protect the Sacred Timeline from his own variants.

“This conversation between the three of them about the nature of reality, about the nature of time, about the nature of the multiverse, and the question about whether the TVA organization has any moral authority to determine reality as we see it,” Hiddleston continues. “There's an enormous amount to unpack, an enormous amount to think about, and it provokes as many questions as it provides answers.”

Loki, having gained a new perspective, wants to stop and think about what he’s just learned since it’s heavy. Sylvie, on the other hand, believes “he’s stalling for time and that it’s another manipulation. She feels is on the precipice of some catharsis,” adds Hiddleston. The two come to a disagreement where they both believe they’re the one in the right. Loki wants to weigh the options of He Who Remains’ proposal, and Sylvie just wants this puppet-master dead.

“It’s incredibly distressing for both of them that they disagree in this moment,” Hiddleston says. “It was quite an intense scene for us. We knew we had to be quite precise about the way the scene unfolded.”

Not only are they verbally arguing, but soon both have their weapons at the ready and are trading blows back and forth. (Something He Who Remains giddily watches from the sidelines.)

This finale was the last thing shot for the season, with Jonathan Majors joining the cast, as He Who Remains, for the last week they were in production. From there, it was time to dive into the trio’s conversation and how it caps off all the themes leading up to this point — identity, free will, and accepting yourself, to name a few.

“Right up to the time of the few days in which we filmed it, we were refining the dialogue between Loki and Sylvie because we needed to make sure that there was a balance,” Hiddleston recalls. “Both their positions [needed to be] articulated, and the audience could see the struggle. We worked all weekend to make sure we integrated the scene with the choreography so that it was completely seamless. The disagreement was at the center of all of it, and every word and every move.”

Unfortunately, the two just can’t see eye to eye on the situation — as He Who Remains points out, Sylvie can’t trust and Loki can’t be trusted. Hiddleston even notes, “At the center of Loki’s identity, certainly for as long as I’ve played him, is untrustworthiness. He’s unpredictable and spontaneous.”

But now, with a tearful confession to Sylvie, Loki’s newly changed outlook shines through as he takes everything he’s learned over the course of the series and tries to reason with her. But, “it’s heartbreaking pain because she’s not on the same page.”

“The confession in Episode 6 reveals how much he’s evolved. Sylvie believes Loki’s position comes from the same old motivation to sit on a throne. But it doesn’t. It comes from genuine care for another being outside of himself. It speaks to a theme that was very close to all of our hearts as filmmakers, which was about self-confrontation, and self-awareness, and self-forgiveness, and self-acceptance in some way. That the only way of moving forward is to acknowledge who you are. And then change can begin.”

Making matters worse, Sylvie isn’t the only familiar face Loki loses in the end. Though he ends up back within the halls of the TVA, this isn’t the TVA he left. The choices Loki and Sylvie made at the Citadel at the End of Time are already breeding consequences, one of which is that “his friend Mobius doesn’t recognize him and doesn’t know who he is. His destabilization in that moment is profound.”

Loki and Mobius’ friendship has been a touchstone for the series, and according to Hiddleston, as the show was being developed, their relationship was “one of the things I was drawn to.”

“I’m very moved by the idea of their friendship,” he continues. “I don’t think Loki has allowed himself to have many friends. Because to have friends, you have to be vulnerable, and you have to trust. Loki’s so defensive, vulnerability and trust, those two things don’t come easily to him. Mobius is perhaps the first figure in Loki’s life to sit across from him and reflect him back to himself without judgment, but somehow with compassion.”

“Mobius is able to contain Loki and say, ‘This is who you are. And I understand.’ That feeling of compassion or lack of judgment is new for Loki, and allows him to open up in a way that facilitates the genesis of this unique friendship. Mobius also is surprised by his affection for Loki. And then it’s Loki who teaches Mobius about life outside the TVA, life before the TVA. Maybe he had a life. Maybe he had a family. Maybe he had a jet ski. They mean a lot to each other, and they’ve done a lot for each other.”

With a new Mobius now in the mix, this means that the pair’s parting goodbye in Episode 5 was their final farewell, when “Mobius offers his hand; Loki chooses to hug him and he says, ‘Thank you, my friend.’ That’s very sincere and very meaningful.”

What’s a trickster to do when he finds himself in an unfamiliar place surrounded by people he used to know? That remains to be seen, as the season ends before those questions are answered, laying the complex groundwork for Season 2 and the lingering unanswered TVA questions.

“What’s been fascinating for me making it, and continues to be one of the most interesting questions of our story, is the moral complexity of the TVA,” Hiddleston concludes. “The idea that an organization that claims to govern the order of time with benevolence and precision is actually something much more ambiguous. And there's a question: On what authority does the TVA, or anyone who has set it up or runs it, decide who gets to live and who doesn't, who gets to participate in reality as we know it?”

[mirrorgrets]

Teyvat, the twins, and the Archons: a theory

Hello today I will be explaining my genshin impact theory which is most likely right because I say so and I have an inflated ego

Note: I will be referring to the MC as traveler and the Leader of the Abyss Order as such or as the missing twin for neutrality’s sake. And also because I chose Lumine and I can’t bear to say Lumine is “evil”

Note after writing all of that: Actually, I’m wrong. Reading it made me realize how batshit off the rails it all sounds. But here it is anyways because it’s a funny theory.

Contains multiple spoilers for the entirety of the game (1.3 edition)

Part 1. Gnosticism, Archons, and Humanity

I think by now, most of us have heard of the Gnosticism theory. If you haven't heard of it, Gnosticism is the belief that humanity could be more than what we are at present because of the world we're in.

Gnosticism has many versions but the basic concept of it is that humans are stuck in a fake world where our full potential is locked away because of our belief in false gods. The true God is the creator of the true world and between us and him, are beings called Aeons. One Aeon who is called Sophia (meaning Wisdom) created a being who thought of himself as the One True God and created the physical world in his flawed image. Oh, and he gave seven beings rule over the world he created, who are called the Archons.

Under Gnosticism, humans are thought to be part physical, but also have a spiritual component in us that grants us divinity. But because the false god and archons actively work to make sure we never realize that there is divinity within us, we never reach our full potential.

Connecting this with genshin impact, the humans in Teyvat have access to visions that give them power, as well as a chance to attain godhood. However, they believe that it is a gift from Celestia instead of a thing any of them can attain themselves. In fact, they don't even know that if one "receives" a vision, they can become gods because it's a secret that only Archons are privy to. Venti says this himself at the end of the prologue section of the main storyline when we ask him about visions.

It seems like Celestia doesn’t want humans to ascend to godhood. If we pair this  with what we know from the Main Storyline trailer that Dainsleif narrates, it becomes clearer. He says that Celestia goads humans with their seven treasures, rewards for the worthy, the doorway to divinity. However, it seems like there is a warning for those who dare to try and ascend, as if they say that the throne in the sky is not for us even if we have the means to.

Doesn’t that seem to contradict the purpose of the vision? Yes, it is a means to help humans live in Teyvat, but why give out visions when the Archons know fully well that it could help them gain access to Celestia? Doesn't it then seem like visions are not gifts from the Archons but instead innate power that all humans possess?

Part 2. What are the twins + What is Dainsleif + What are they doing in Teyvat + the Genesis Pearl = A Loop

Most signs point to the idea that the twins are actually older than they look. It seems like Lumine and Aether landed in Teyvat at least 500 years ago during the cataclysmic event that wiped out Khaenri’ah.

Going back to the idea of Gnosticism, the true God sends out Messengers of Light to the false world to guide the humans to their full potential. And we see traveler helping their companions ascend further, reaching their fullest potentials when they “max out.”

Furthermore, it doesn’t seem like they’re human. During the 1.2 Dragonspine event, Albedo does tests on us, and though he doesn’t tell us his complete findings, he alludes that we are like him, created from a substance that is yet to be defined. This goes off from the theory that he’s a homunculus, created from chalk, purified soil, the building block of the world. Aside from that, after our fight with Childe, one of the dialogue options after he mentions the fact that traveler can use both anemo and geo, is that they’re slowly gaining back their true power.

And of course, when the twins first enter the world, they have actual wings which were stripped by the Unknown God. Doesn’t seem very human to me.

So, if the travelers are Messengers of Light, then why is that not their main goal? Based on the We Will Be Reunited trailer, when the Abyss Mage mentions the traveler to the missing twin, their face looks shocked, like they just remembered that they have a twin. There’s desperation in their steps when they rush to the cliff to see their twin again, like it’s been so long since they’ve seen their sibling who they literally forgot. I think that aside from stripping them of their power, the Unknown God also took away some of their memories.

So the missing twin might remember the actual purpose as to why they’re in Teyvat, but didn’t remember their sibling until recently, and traveler remembers their sibling but doesn’t remember the reason why they were in Teyvat in the first place (or they do but that isn’t their main concern since they’re putting their sibling first).

So how does Dainsleif relates to this particular segment? Well, in another version of Gnosticism, Aeons come in pairs. Sophia’s partner was Jesus. Now, in the Main Storyline trailer, Dainsleif alludes to a woman when at the very end of the video where he says “My memory has all but faded completely, but I will always remember, how she too loved these flowers.” The flowers are the flowers Lumine especially likes, the ones she adorns in her hair. A flimsy connection it may be, but a connection nonetheless.

Now, I’ve seen theories about Dainsleif being an older version of Aether, but that theory doesn’t hold water if you choose Lumine as your traveler or if you consider the fact that Dainsleif and Aether don’t share the same eye color. Yet, it’s not completely off. There are thirty Aeons in total, although this number can differ in other versions of Gnosticism.

Now, in Dainsleif’s quest, we immediately question this stranger as he is somehow omniscient, if we haven’t already questioned him with all his narration in the Collected Miscellany videos where he hints that he knows more than we do. I will say it now: I think that Dainsleif takes upon the role of Jesus.

I could be wrong. But I think I’m right. For now.

In another version of Gnosticism, Jesus goes to the false world and saves Sophia, as she forgets who she is, she forgets her divinity and is stuck there. If we follow the theory that Dainsleif is actually the second heir from the Gnostic Chorus teaser, and that he is searching for the Genesis Pearl. The Genesis Pearl symbolizes the beginning and purity that is incorruptible. This could be the essence of Sophia, the lost Aeon who incidentally created the false god.

Back to the Main Storyline trailer, Dainsleif says that the war has already begun, and that is just a continuation of past battles. We could take this in a sense that the conflict has reached its boiling point and that it was only because all these problems were left alone for too long. However, we could also consider the possibility that Dainsleif has lived through whatever the twins are going through right now because he is the first Messenger of Light to step foot in Teyvat.

We can also look into Dainsleif’s name, which is a Nordic name, actually written as Dáinsleif. This means Dain’s Legacy which is the sword of King Högni, which aided him in a never ending battle that went on until Ragnarok.

It seems like the twins are repeating a cycle that has already happened to Dainsleif and whoever the unknown woman who also likes the flowers the missing twin likes. All four of them are Aeons or Messengers of Light.

So who is that woman? I have no idea. It could the unknown god but that feels like a stretch. The unknown god might actually be the demiurge, the false god that created Teyvat and the seven Archons, and not Sophia herself. It could also be Paimon who might have some kind of relation to the unknown god, whether it be that she is the unknown god, or she is a being from Celestia. Either way, both feel like shaky theories.

But of course, Mihoyo is only taking inspiration from Gnosticism and several other sources which could lead them to take creative liberties when applying it to the game.

Part 3. The Abyss Order and Khaenri'ah: war crimes against humanity

Going back to my point about the twins’ original goal to why they went to Teyvat in the first place, let’s question why the missing twin joined forces with the Abyss Order and began to lead them to burn the throne of Celestia.

While we don't hear the missing twin mention Celestia in the We Will Be Reunited trailer, the only other time a throne is mentioned is in the Main Storyline trailer when Dainsleif mentions that Celestia does not want humans to ascend to take up a throne in the sky.

Back to the safety of the game's actual lore, we understand that Kaenri'ah is a godless nation that might have underwent a calamity that might have killed off most of its people since they were closer to understanding the truth, and were technologically advanced, compared to the other nations of Teyvat. An alchemist named Gold ultimately led to this cataclysm due to their greed for seeking erudition.

It is safe to assume that Celestia wiped out Khaenri'ah and all the technology they created. We could also assume that the people were all killed, yes, but it would be better to assume they were cursed instead. Into what though?

The hilichurls.

In the archive section of the game, under the books, there's quite a lot written about the hilichurls, thanks to Jacob Musk. The author describes the hilichurls to be drawn to old relics of the past, with even attempts to recreate it. Their way of lifestyle is even described, and it looks like they worship the element itself and not the Archons who represent it.

Doesn't it seem like the hilichurls have a connection with the ancient civilization of the past? Not to mention their strange connection to the elements in which shaman hilichurls (samachurls) can harness the elements without the use of a vision? If I am correct with my theory, then hilichurls were once citizens of the bygone Khaenri'ah who discovered they could harness the elements without an Archon's blessing that came in the form of a vision.

It doesn't feel too surprising considering that for monsters, hilichurls are quite smart. They even display human-like characteristics. In the game, we see them dancing, sleeping, just minding their own business in general. They have their own architecture and their own language. In the Hilichurl Cultural Customs book, we even discover that hilichurls are not as barbaric as they are made out to be as they have leaders who decide their policies and course of action. It's as if they have their own culture.

Ultimately, the hilichurls are part of the Abyss Order. The organization's main goal is to get undermine Celestia's rule, and at this point of this mess I call a theory, doesn't that make them stand in a position where nothing is painted as black and white as it seems. Yes, they do heinous things like steal, possibly murder, and set off a dragon on Mondstadt, but it looks like they're operating through a "the end justifies the means" kind of morality.

And the missing twin shares this sentiment. As they had seen what Celestia had done to Khaenriah 500 years ago before the beginning of the prologue, their desperation grows. Their war with destiny will not stop until Celestia falls because it is their ultimate mission. Traveler has taken up the safer side of this war, wherein they help the humans but the missing twin has taken up the side of fallen humans. This is why they're not evil per se; just going through questionable steps to achieve a righteous goal.

Part 4. Teyvat and its Archons

Based on all that, it seems like I’m painting the Archons to be the bad guys. I am. They wiped out an entire civilization on the basis that they might learn the truth of the world, and their uncanny closeness to Celestia.

But we like Venti and Zhongli, right? Of course we do! However, they were still complicit in the downfall of Khaenri'ah and the limitation of humanity in Teyvat.

To start, Venti had his gnosis was forcibly taken from him. He doesn't seem to mourn over that (although he could be hiding it) and it looks like he can still present himself in a godly manner as we see in Venti's quest when he revealed himself as Barbatos to Stanley. When we spend time with him under the tree of Vennessa, while he divulges the secrets of Celestia to us, he still seems to comply with them. This could be chalked up to the fact that ultimately, he is Mondstadt's Archon and also the weakest of the seven. We could also consider the fact that at the time of Khaneri’ah’s downfall, he was in Dragonspine with Dvalin, dealing with Durin.

With Zhongli, it becomes a bit more interesting. He gave away his gnosis under the agreement of a contract we do not know the details of. But why he did? Why not because of his regret as the geo Archon and of love? Zhongli once ruled over Guili Plains with another god named Guizhong, the god of dust. Guizhong loved their people but perished during the Archon War. He then moved their people to Liyue Harbor and in her place, began to love them. Although he is stilted with the way he deals with his people, we see that he cares. Over the years, he has grown soft and shed the persona of Morax, a god who dealt with war. He says this himself and it feels like his ability to care extends beyond that of Liyue. It's possible he gave up his gnosis because he understands what the Tsaritsa is doing and what she's fighting for.

The Tsaritsa is the cryo Archon and the god of love. However, according to Tartaglia, she had to harden herself to go through with her plan. But what is her plan but an act of love for humanity? Wiping out Khaenri'ah could've opened her eyes to the inherent cruelty of Celestia. The timeline makes sense because Venti said that 500 yers ago, he knew her well but now, not so much. It’s at that point she loses whatever loyalty she had for Celestia. She had to steel herself and begin her plans to overthrow Celestia, which involves taking the gnoses of the six other Archons to fight the false god and alleviate humans from the hell they are in. That is her way of showing her love to humanity.

Teyvat is only a false world. We have seen many instances of this being hinted at like when Katheryne of the Adventurer’s Guild says “rebooting” or “error” as if she is only a program, or when Scaramouche says that the sky and the stars are all fake. Even in the game, if you take a closer look at the stars, it feels fake, as if it is a dome that traps the humans in Teyvat. Even more unsettling, when going deeper within the Spiral Abyss, the more stars you see which could mean Teyvat is actually upside down and that go deeper within the Spiral Abyss, we are ascending closer to the true world.

What greater act of love could the Tsaritsa commit other than giving humanity the truth?

Part 5. In conclusion: none of this makes sense

To summarize my main points:

Genshin Impact takes a lot from the mythos of Gnosticism

Visions are not gifts from the Archons but an inherent power from humans that come from their own "divinity"

The twins and Dainsleif are related in some manner

The twins are repeating a cycle that Dainsleif has already been through

The twins are suffering some kind of memory loss

The twins are in Teyvat to help humans realize their power

Celestia is not heaven but more like hell

Teyvat is a false world

The Tsarita is actually good

The Abyss Order is a morally grey organization

Archons are bad

This could all be wrong as this is only a theory. But the connections I pointed out make a bit of sense. There’s still more lore to uncover as we’ve only unlocked two regions and the Pale Princess and the Six Pygmies only have one volume out so far (this book is important because an Abyss Mage says that there is a lie within it) so this could all be debunked when new regions are unlocked.

Still, it’s a pretty fun theory to believe in at the moment. Thank you for reading this mess I call a theory!

[boredout305]

Kid Congo Powers Interview

Kid Congo Powers was a founding member of the Gun Club. He also played with The Cramps and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Powers currently fronts Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds and recently completed a memoir, Some New Kind of Kick.

           The following interview focuses on Some New Kind of Kick. In the book Powers recounts growing up in La Puente—a working-class, largely Latino city in Los Angeles County—in the 1960s, as well as his familial, professional and personal relationships. He describes the LA glam-rock scene (Powers was a frequenter of Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco), the interim period between glam and punk embodied by the Capitol Records swap meet, as well as LA’s first-wave, late-1970s punk scene.

           Well written, edited and awash with amazing photos, Some New Kind of Kick will appeal to fans of underground music as well as those interested in 1960-1980s Los Angeles (think Claude Bessy and Mike Davis). The book will be available from In the Red Records, their first venture into book publishing, soon.

Interview by Ryan Leach   

Kid Congo with the Pink Monkey Birds.

Ryan: Some New Kind of Kick reminded me of the New York Night Train oral histories you had compiled about 15 years ago. Was that the genesis of your book?

Kid: That was the genesis. You pinpointed it. Those pieces were done with Jonathan Toubin. It was a very early podcast. Jonathan wanted to do an audio version of my story for his website, New York Night Train. We did that back in the early 2000s. After we had completed those I left New York and moved to Washington D.C. I thought, “I have the outline for a book here.” Jonathan had created a discography and a timeline. I figured, “It’ll be great and really easy. We’ll just fill in some of the blanks and it’ll be done.” Here we are 15 years later.

Ryan: It was well worth it. It reads well. And I love the photographs. The photo of you as a kid with Frankenstein is amazing.

Kid: I’m glad you liked it. You’re the first person not involved in it that I’ve spoken with.  

Ryan: As someone from Los Angeles I enjoyed reading about your father’s life and work as a union welder in the 1960s. My grandfather was a union truck driver and my father is a cabinetmaker. My dad’s cousins worked at the General Motors Van Nuys Assembly plant. In a way you captured an old industrial blue-collar working class that’s nowhere near as robust as it once was in Los Angeles. It reminded of Mike Davis’ writings on the subject.

Kid: I haven’t lived in LA for so long that I didn’t realize it doesn’t exist anymore. I felt the times. It was a reflection on my experiences and my family’s experiences. It was very working class. My dad was proud to be a union member. It served him very well. He and my mother were set up for the rest of their lives. I grew up with a sense that he earned an honest living. My parents always told me not to be embarrassed by what you did for work. People would ask me, “What’s your book about? What’s the thrust of it?” As I was writing it, I was like, “I don’t know. I’ll find out when it’s done.” What you mentioned was an aspect of that.

           When I started the book and all throughout the writing I had gone to different writers’ workshops. We’d review each other’s work. It was a bunch of people who didn’t know me, didn’t know about music—at least the music I make. I just wanted to see if there was a story there. People were relating to what I was writing, which gave me the confidence to keep going.

Ryan: Some New Kind of Kick is different from Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s autobiography, Go Tell the Mountain. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but think of Pierce’s work as I read yours. Was Go Tell the Mountain on your mind as you were writing?

Kid: When I was writing about Jeffrey—it was my version of the story. It was about my relationship with him. I wasn’t thinking about his autobiography much at all. His autobiography is very different than mine. Nevertheless, there are some similarities. But his book flew off into flights of prose and fantasy. I tried to stay away from the stories that were already out there. The thing that’s interesting about Jeffrey is that everyone has a completely different story to tell about him. Everyone’s relationship with him was different.

Ryan: It’s a spectrum that’s completely filled in.

Kid: Exactly. One of the most significant relationships I’ve had in my life was with Jeffrey. Meeting him changed my life. It was an enduring relationship. It was important for me to tell my story of Jeffrey.

Ryan: The early part of your book covers growing up in La Puente and having older sisters who caught the El Monte Legion Stadium scene—groups like Thee Midniters. You told me years ago that you and Jeffrey were thinking about those days during the writing and recording of Mother Juno (1987).

Kid: That’s definitely true. Growing up in that area is another thing Jeffrey and I bonded over. We were music hounds at a young age. We talked a lot about La Puente, El Monte and San Gabriel Valley’s culture. We were able to pinpoint sounds we heard growing up there—music playing out of cars and oldies mixed in with Jimi Hendrix and Santana. That was the sound of San Gabriel Valley. It wasn’t all lowrider music. We were drawn to that mix of things. I remember “Yellow Eyes” off Mother Juno was our tribute to the San Gabriel Valley sound.

Ryan: You describe the Capitol Records Swap Meet in Some New Kind of Kick. In the pre-punk/Back Door Man days that was an important meet-up spot whose significance remains underappreciated.

Kid: The Capitol Records Swap Meet was a once-a-month event and hangout. It was a congregation of record collectors and music fans. You’d see the same people there over and over again. It was a community. Somehow everyone who was a diehard music fan knew about it. You could find bootlegs there. It went from glam to more of a Back Door Man-influenced vibe which was the harder-edged Detroit stuff—The Stooges and the MC5. You went there looking for oddities and rare records. I was barely a record collector back then. It’s where I discovered a lot of music. You had to be a pretty dedicated music fan to get up at 6 AM to go there, especially if you were a teenager.

Ryan: I enjoyed reading about your experiences as a young gay man in the 1970s. You’d frequent Rodney’s English Disco; I didn’t know you were so close to The Screamers. While not downplaying the prejudices gay men faced in the 1970s, it seemed fortuitous that these places and people existed for you in that post-Stonewall period.

Kid: Yeah. I was obviously drawn to The Screamers for a variety of reasons. It was a funny time. People didn’t really discuss being gay. People knew we were gay. I knew you were gay; you knew I was gay. But the fact that we never openly discussed it was very strange. Part of that was protection. It also had to do with the punk ethos of labels being taboo. I don’t think that The Screamers were very politicized back then and neither was I. We were just going wild. I was super young and still discovering things. I had that glam-rock door to go through. It was much more of a fantasy world than anything based in reality. But it allowed queerness. It struck a chord with me and it was a tribe. However, I did discover later on that glam rock was more of a pose than a sexual revolution.

           With some people in the punk scene like The Screamers and Gorilla Rose—they came from a background in drag and cabaret. I didn’t even know that when I met them. I found it out later on. They were already very experienced. They had an amazing camp aesthetic. I learned a lot about films and music through them. They were so advanced. It was all very serendipitous. I think my whole life has been serendipitous, floating from one thing to another.  

Ryan: You were in West Berlin when the Berlin Wall was breached in November 1989. “Here’s another historical event. I’m sure Kid Congo is on the scene.”

Kid: I know! The FBI must have a dossier on me. I was in New York on 9/11 too.

Ryan: A person who appears frequently in your book is your cousin Theresa who was tragically murdered. I take it her death remains a cold case.

Kid: Cold case. Her death changed my entire life. It was all very innocent before she died. That stopped everything. It was a real source of trauma. All progress up until that point went on hold until I got jolted out of it. I eventually decided to experience everything I could because life is short. That trauma fueled a lot of bad things, a lot of self-destructive impulses. It was my main demon that chased me throughout my early adult life. It was good to write about it. It’s still there and that’s probably because her murder remains unsolved. I have no resolution with it. I was hoping the book would give me some closure. We’ll see if it does.

Ryan: Theresa was an important person in your life that you wanted people to know about. You champion her.

Kid: I wanted to pay tribute to her. She changed my life. I had her confidence. I was at a crossroads at that point in my life, dealing with my sexuality. I wanted people to know about Theresa beyond my family. My editor Chris Campion really pulled that one out of me. It was a story that I told, but he said, “There’s so much more to this.” I replied, “No! Don’t make me do it.” I had a lot of stories, but it was great having Chris there to pull them together to create one big story. My original concept for the book was a coming-of-age story. Although it still is, I was originally going to stop before I even joined the Gun Club (in 1979). It was probably because I didn’t want to look at some of the things that happened afterwards. It was very good for my music. Every time I got uncomfortable, I’d go, “Oh, I’ve got to make a record and go on tour for a year and not think about this.” A lot of it was too scary to even think about. But the more I did it, the less scary it became and the more a story emerged. I had a very different book in mind than the one I completed. I’m glad I was pushed in that direction and that I was willing to be pushed. I wanted to tell these stories, but it was difficult.

Ryan: Of course, there are lighter parts in your book. There are wonderful, infamous characters like Bradly Field who make appearances.

Kid: Bradly Field was also a queer punker. He was the partner of Kristian Hoffman of The Mumps. I met Kristian in Los Angeles. We all knew Lance Loud of The Mumps because he had starred in An American Life (1973) which was the first reality TV show. It aired on PBS. I was a fan of The Mumps. Bradly came out to LA with Kristian for an elongated stay during a Mumps recording session. Of course, Bradly and I hit it off when we met. Bradly was a drummer—he played a single drum and a cracked symbol—in Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Bradly was a real character. He was kind of a Peter Lorre, misanthropic miscreant. Bradly was charming while abrasively horrible at the same time. We were friends and I always remained on Bradly’s good side so there was never a problem.

           Bradly had invited me and some punkers to New York. He said that if we ever made it out there that we could stay with him. He probably had no idea we’d show up a month later. Bradly Field was an important person for me to know—an unashamedly gay, crazy person. He was a madman. I had very little interest in living a typical life. That includes a typical gay life. Bradly was just a great gay artist I met in New York when I was super young. He was also the tour manager of The Cramps at one point. You can imagine what that was like. Out of Lux and Ivy’s perverse nature they unleashed him on people.

Ryan: He was the right guy to have in your corner if the club didn’t pay you.  

Kid: Exactly. Who was going to say “no” to Bradly?

Ryan: You mention an early Gun Club track called “Body and Soul” that I’m unfamiliar with. I know you have a rehearsal tape of the original Creeping Ritual/Gun Club lineup (Kid Congo Powers, Don Snowden, Brad Dunning and Jeffrey Lee Pierce). Are any of these unreleased tracks on that tape?

Kid: No. Although I do have tapes, there’s no Creeping Ritual material on them. I spoke with Brad (Dunning) and he has tapes too. We both agreed that they’re unlistenable. They’re so terrible. Nevertheless, I’m going to have them digitized and I’ll take another listen to them. “Body and Soul” is an early Creeping Ritual song. At the time we thought, “Oh, this sounds like a Mink DeVille song.” At least in our minds it did. To the best of my ability I did record an approximation of “Body and Soul” on the Congo Norvell record Abnormals Anonymous (1997). I sort of reimagined it. That song was the beginning of things for me with Jeffrey. It wasn’t a clear path when we started The Gun Club. We didn’t say, “Oh, we’re going to be a blues-mixed-with-punk band.” It was a lot of toying around. It had to do with finding a style. Jeffrey had a lot of ideas. We also had musical limitations to consider. We were trying to turn it into something cohesive. There was a lot of reggae influence at the beginning. Jeffrey was a visionary who wanted to make the Gun Club work. Of course, to us he was a really advanced musician. We thought (bassist) Don Snowden was the greatest too. What’s funny is that I saw Don in Valencia, Spain, where he lives now. He came to one of our (Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds) shows a few years ago. He said, “Oh, I didn’t know how to play!”

Ryan: “I knew scales.”

Kid: Exactly. It was all perception. But we were ambitious and tenacious. We were certain we could make something really good out of what we had. That was it. We knew we had good taste in music. That was enough for us to continue on.

Ryan: I knew about The Cramps’ struggles with IRS Records and Miles Copeland. However, it took on a new meaning reading your book. Joining The Cramps started with a real high for you, recording Psychedelic Jungle (1981), and then stagnation occurred due to contractual conflicts.

Kid: There was excitement, success and activity for about a year or two. And then absolutely nothing. As I discuss in my book—and you can ask anyone who was in The Cramps—communication was not a big priority for Lux and Ivy. I was left to my own devices for a while. We were building, building, building and then it stopped. I wasn’t privy to what was going on. I knew they were depressed about it. The mood shifted. It was great recording Psychedelic Jungle and touring the world. The crowds were great everywhere we went. It was at that point that I started getting heavy into drugs. The time off left me with a lot of time to get into trouble. It was my first taste of any kind of success or notoriety. I’m not embarrassed to say that I fell into that trip: “Oh, you know who I am and I have all these musician friends now.” It was the gilded ‘80s. Things were quite decadent then. There was a lot of hard drug use. It wasn’t highly frowned upon to abuse those types of drugs in our circle. What was the reputation of The Gun Club? The drunkest, drug-addled band around. So there was a lot of support to go in that direction. Who knew it was going to go so downhill? We weren’t paying attention to consequences. Consequences be damned. So the drugs sapped a lot of energy out of it too.

           I recorded the one studio album (Psychedelic Jungle) with The Cramps and a live album (Smell of Female). The live record was good and fun, but it was a means to an end. It was recorded to get out of a contract. The Cramps were always going to do it their way. Lux and Ivy weren’t going to follow anyone’s rules. I don’t know why people expected them to. To this day, I wonder why people want more. I mean, they gave you everything. People ask me, “When is Ivy going to play again?” I tell them, “She’s done enough. She paid her dues. The music was great.”

Ryan: I think after 30-something years of touring, she’s earned her union card.

Kid: Exactly. She’s done her union work.

Ryan: In your book you discuss West Berlin in the late 1980s. That was a strange period of extreme highs and lows. During that time you were playing with the Bad Seeds, working with people like Wim Wenders (in Wings of Desire) and witnessed the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the GDR. Nevertheless, it was a very dark period marred by substance abuse. Luckily, you came out of it unscathed. As you recount, some people didn’t.

Kid: It was a period of extremes. In my mind, for years, I rewrote that scene. I would say, “Berlin was great”—and it was, that part was true—and then I’d read interviews with Nick Cave and Mick Harvey and they’d say, “Oh, the Tender Prey (1988) period was just the worst. It’s hard to even talk about it.” And I was like, “It was great! What are you talking about?” Then when I started writing about it, I was like, “Oh, fuck! It really wasn’t the best time.” I had been so focused on the good things and not the bad things. Prior to writing my book, I really hadn’t thought about how incredibly dark it was. That was a good thing for me to work out. Some very bad things happened to people around me. But while that was happening, it was a real peak for me as a musician. Some of the greatest work I was involved with was being done then. And yet I still chose to self-destruct. It was a case of right place, right time. But it was not necessarily what I thought it was.  

Ryan: Digressing back a bit, when we would chat years back I would ask you where you were at with this project. You seemed to be warming up to it as time went on. And I finally found a copy of the group’s album in Sydney, Australia, a year ago. I’m talking about Fur Bible (1985).

Kid: Oh, you got it?

Ryan: I did.

Kid: In Australia?

Ryan: Yes. It was part of my carry-on luggage.

Kid: I’m sure I can pinpoint the person who sold it to you.

Ryan: Are you coming around to that material now? I like the record.

Kid: Oh, yeah. I hated it for so long. People would say to me, “Oh, the Fur Bible record is great.” I’d respond, “No. It can’t possibly be great. I’m not going to listen to it again, so don’t even try me.” Eventually, I did listen to it and I thought, “Oh, this is pretty good.” I came around to it. I like it.

Ryan: You’ve made the transition!

Kid: I feel warmly about it. I like all of the people involved with it. That was kind of a bad time too. It was that post-Gun Club period. I felt like I had tried something unsuccessful with Fur Bible. I had a little bit of shame about that. Everything else I had been involved with had been successful, in my eyes. People liked everything else and people didn’t really like Fur Bible. It was a sleeper.

Ryan: It is.  

Kid: There’s nothing wrong with it. It was the first time I had put my voice on a record and it just irritated the hell out of me. It was a first step for me.

Ryan: You close your book with a heartfelt tribute to Jeffrey Lee Pierce. You wonder how your life would’ve turned out had you not met Jeffrey outside of that Pere Ubu show in 1979. Excluding family, I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who’s had that sort of impact on my life.

Kid: As I was getting near the end of the book I was trying to figure out what it was about. A lot of it was about Jeffrey. Everything that moved me into becoming a musician and the life I lived after that was because of him. It was all because he said, “Here’s a guitar. You’re going to learn how to play it.” He had that confidence that I could do it. It was a mentorship. He would say, “You’re going to do this and you’re going to be great at it.” I was like, “Okay.” Jeffrey was the closest thing I had to a brother. We could have our arguments and disagreements, but in the end it didn’t matter. What mattered was our bond. Writing it down made it all clearer to me. His death sent me into a tailspin. I was entering the unknown. Jeffrey was like a cord that I had been hanging onto for so long and it was gone. I was more interested in writing about my relationship with him than about the music of the Gun Club. A lot of people loved Jeffrey. But there were others who said they loved him with disclaimers. I wanted to write something about Jeffrey without the disclaimers. That seemed like an important task—to honor him in a truthful manner.

Ryan: I’m glad that you did that. Jeffrey has his detractors, but they all seem to say something along the lines of “the guy still had the most indefatigable spirit and drive of any person I’ve ever known.”

Kid: That’s what drove everyone crazy!

Ryan: This book took you 15 years to finish. Completing it has to feel cathartic.  

Kid: I don’t know. Maybe it will when I see the printed book. When I was living in New York there was no time for reflection. I started it after I left New York, but it was at such a slow pace. It was done piecemeal. I wanted to give up at times. I had a lot of self-doubt. And like I said, I’d just go on tour for a year and take a long break. The pandemic made me finally put it to bed. I couldn’t jump up and go away on tour anymore. It feels great to have it done. When I read it through after the final edit I was actually shocked. I was moved by it. It was a feeling of accomplishment. It’s a different feeling than what you get with music. Looking at it as one story has been an eye-opener for me. I thought to myself, “How did I do all of that?”

           I see the book as the story of a music fan. I think most musicians start out as fans. Why would you do it otherwise? I never stopped being a fan. All of the opportunities that came my way were because I was a fan.

[final-fantasy-imagines]

Hello! I really-really like your writing 😃 It always makes my mood better! I don't know if you like this idea, but I’ve been thinking about it for quite some time. Could you write headcanons for Rufus Shinra x Reader and Genesis Rhapsodos x Reader, where reader is their soulmate, but they can't get it at first (and their reaction when they do)? Soulmates can have marks or generally every sign you prefer. I hope this idea is not very big to describe. Thank you for reading my request anyway!

Hey there! Thank you so much for your kind words! :) I love soulmate!AUs, so I really enjoyed working on your request. This was my first time writing for Genesis btw, hopefully it’s not too bad or ooc. 

not recognizing their soulmate at first and their reaction when they do

Rufus Shinra

To be fair, he doesn’t spend a whole lot of time with other people outside of work. He’s way too busy to be bothered with convivial gatherings, so it’s not unlikely that he doesn’t recognize his soulmate right away. He can also be a bit oblivious when it comes to stuff like that, especially since he doesn’t really care about meeting his soulmate at first.

However, once he realizes that you were right in front of him the whole time he starts to feel like an idiot. He always thought that he would recognize his soulmate right away, even though he never really payed attention to other peoples’ soulmate marks. The marks on your wrists actually resemble each other perfectly but since he rarely focused on that, he never realized it.

Since he always acted like he didn’t care about you or meeting his soulmate in general, Rufus is surprisingly insecure about the whole situation. He doesn’t know how to approach you since he doesn’t want you to notice that he didn’t recognize you but on the other hand, he desperately wants to get to know you, not only because you’re his soulmate but also because he thinks that you’re a really interesting person.

That being said, it takes him quite a while to gather all his courage to talk to you, even though he’s usually not the type of guy who’s hesitant or nervous about meeting new people. However, when it comes to you things are a bit different – he doesn’t really know how to act around you and therefore probably keeps quiet about the whole soulmate thing for quite a while.

Later on, it actually becomes one of your favorite memories because it’s so strange that you used to work with each other for so long before Rufus finally realized that his soulmate was staring him right in the face for all this time. You often tease him about being so oblivious that he even wouldn’t have noticed your matching marks if you constantly waved your wrist around in front of him, and while he hates when someone is making fun of him he can’t help but laugh when you mention it once again.

Genesis Rhapsodos

Genesis has a hard time with opening up to people, due to his past and his familial situation, and therefore prefers to keep to himself, especially since he often feels like no one is really able to understand him and the things he experienced. That’s one of the main reasons why he never bothered himself with looking for his soulmate.

He’s also convinced that someone like him doesn’t deserve a soulmate which is another reason why he doesn’t even recognize you when you first meet. Of course he notices the resemblance of your soulmate marks but he still doesn’t think that you’re actually meant for him, so he probably chooses to dismiss it as a coincidence.

Once he realizes that you actually are his soulmate he really struggles with accepting your presence. He feels like it would be best to stay away from you because he thinks that you’re way too good for him but on the other hand, he finds himself being drawn to you, no matter how hard he tries to convince himself that he doesn’t need you.

Genesis is usually quite self-confident and almost arrogant, so he definitely feels a bit stupid about the fact that he didn’t recognize you as his soulmate earlier. As I mentioned, this is mostly because he didn’t want to recognize you but he still thinks that it makes him look like an absolute idiot. That’s why he really dislikes being teased about the weird beginning of your relationship.

You definitely need to be patient with him and give him some space if he needs it. He’s not the one to dive head first into a relationship, even when it’s about his soulmate, so you probably don’t end up together right away. Your relationship develops pretty slowly but as the time goes by, Genesis gets more and more comfortable around you and actually starts to believe that the two of you are really meant to be.