#been thinking of each persons specific black smithing set up to make new weapons and others learning their styles | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bunchamunchafaunus · 5 years ago

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- [ Video Log; 30: Proper Weapon ] -

The video begins, a view of Roy’s face and hand close to the camera as he seems to be adjusting the scroll it belonged to. His hand covered with some black material around both wrist and palms. Yet the fingers left bare save for metal rings that encompass the middle of the section following the first knuckle of the index, middle, and ring fingers, each with a purple crystal band around their centers. The fabric over the palm reinforced compared to that seen around the base of his fingers and wrist, which can be seen continuing down below and around his forearms.

In the small gaps still available past his form, the surrounding environment appeared not to be his room, as it had been each time prior, but was instead a wide open room. To one side could be seen a catwalk along a wall high above, a few people standing watch over the Faunus.

Stepping back he stands straight with head angling down as he inspected his arms. Lifting the previously unseen one to grip by his elbow along the new article along the same arm previously filling a portion of the image. Three things being revealed as he goes about doing such. One, on the back of his forearm was a long metal plate with a slight tapper by the wrist, and a long, spent dust crystal embedded along the length of it with two purple crystal strips encompassing it. Two, the rings on his fingers have tethers connecting them, not only to the gloves and going beneath reinforced knuckles, but reaching even beneath the metal plate. Three, both his arms were clad in these glove and gauntlet combinations.

“I guess this kind of thing was a long time coming...” He speaks rather abruptly, looking up to his scroll from the arm pieces. Closing both his hands, finger-by-finger first before as a whole a few times for both. “After how much I’ve been fighting using my bare fists and using Dust, Captain Maho decided I needed an actual weapon of some sort. We’ve been set in the Sanus deserts for a while, I’ve been waiting with everyone else at this hidden base of sorts smack dab in the middle of this constant sandstorm that only ever seems to end for a day or two at most? Meanwhile Captain Maho and a couple others took a shuttle to head to Vacuo proper, and had been there for a few days. They got back just yesterday, and I was gifted these.” Lifting his arms to show off the new article proper both inner arm and back of the arm.

While showing the back, his hands curl to fists and bend inward toward himself. Bladed edges extending out from the plates to make them appear more like curved triangular shapes as they extend beyond the form of his arms. The new state looking a lot more akin to small shields with sharpened edges for a mixture of offense and defense. The extensions disappearing under the metal plating’s surface again after a few seconds, revealing his hands open and fingers spread wide once more.

“They included the crystals in them, but explained that they’re spent Dust crystals. Apparently I’m supposed to be able to channel my Aura into them and it will allow the use of my Aura to make protective barriers that can guard against things that the ‘shield’ formation themselves can not. Or to coat my hands and arms with my Aura to be able to make my punches more effective against Grimm or other people and their Aura defenses. Now, I’ve not been able to do... either of those... yet... but I have been able to electrify them with my Dust, sooo... yeah, that’s a thing I can do.”

To show off what he meant, he begins to hum at a high pitch. Two seconds later, a spark of energy shoots across both his arms. Quickly being followed by a current flowing visibly across the metal plate on the back of both his arms. Every now and then having bolts ark to the rings on his fingers, or sparks flying off corners of the plates. Though a moment later, such would end with a few lingering bolts shooting off here and there over the seconds that followed.

“I’ve been trying these out for a while today, and they feel pretty good. It’s admittedly a little odd not having my gloves with the little symbols to channel my Dust, but I’ve slowly been discovering how to manage through humming or whistling, like I just did. It’s all pretty experimental still, but I’m expecting I’ll figure more out rather quickly as time goes by and I get into some fights with these. Uh-... oh, here’s another thing...”

One of his hands disappears beneath his waist, returning into view a moment later with a short handle in hand. A slight s-like curve to the handle which extended three inches beyond his grip on both ends. Bands of purple crystals around both the very ends of this handle. Roy’s thumb shifted, seeming to press something, and out from the top half extends a curved, six inch long blade with a slight serrated underside of it’s last inch of the blade. On the opposite side of the same end, a blunt piece extends, somewhat ovular, but the bottom of it curving similar to a hook. All in all appearing to be an ice-pick of sorts, designed with both mobility and combat in mind.

“Got two of these as well. When I told them about how mobile Team Empress was minus myself without my Dust, they decided I should have some form of mobility option available for myself as well. Admittedly, it’s a little odd when just seeing the initial set up since there’s no actual tether, but the smith that made these supposedly had an idea come to mind. Though they apparently didn’t explain it much beyond just telling Captain Maho to tell me ‘think the Grimm Reaper’, which is oddly familiar, but I couldn’t pin why until Sprig spoke up since he overheard. That legendary Huntress from years, decades ago, who dual wielded scythes, one of the best Hunters in Remnant’s history.”

After speaking, he turned to look to the people on the catwalk. Retracting the blade on the handle as he nods and calls out to them. “Catch!” Rearing up, he tosses the handle across the room and up to the pair of onlookers. One extending their arm up and out, gripping it as it got close without issue. ‘Extend the blade and hand it on the railing for me, will ya?”

Nodding and waving, the person does as asked. The blade becoming visible once again before they walk a little ways away from the person beside them and balance the pick atop the railing that lined the catwalk. Roy, stepping a little ways from the scroll himself, extends the same arm outward toward the pick, fingers adjusting to pull the tethers of the rings in a specific pattern. The purple strips along the brace and around the rings on his fingers lighting up, those on the ends of the pick doing the same, and just a second later the item was flying back to his hand. Taking hold of it once more in one smooth motion as he turns to look to the camera once more. Retracting the blade and blunt end once again this time waving it a little off to the side. “Pretty damn cool honestly, and these’ll be quite useful when my fists aren’t enough.”

His hand drops to stow the item again. The same as from the beginning of the recording returning into view as he steps closer and extends a finger forward. “Things are looking up.” Tapping, the footage halts.

#Roy Gaia #story post

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snake-house · 7 years ago

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Levi X Erwin’s Brother!Reader - tease. pt 1.

Levi X Erwin's Brother!Reader part 1 warnings: bad language he/him pronouns used for reader *not really set during specific time but probs at the beginning of the whole thing? **last thing, i first wrote this b4 we knew levi's past, so erwin and levi are childhood friends!! **ALSO THIS IS IMPORTANT, this is a slight au where humans have evolved to where men can have babies b/c of the low birth rate and sky high death rates, and b/c i have a thing for mpreg, don't kink-shame me. ___

word count: 2, 184

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“All you had to fucking do Erwin was bring me a fucking horse, but what do you do? You completely forget that you had a brother and left me to walk all the freaking way.” You mumbled to yourself as you stomped your way to the scouting legion’s headquarters. “Oh-hohoho Erwin, aren’t you going to get it when I get there.” Your brother was none other than Commander Erwin Smith. Yes, you were his little brother, as well as the often looked-over one, not that you had any hard feelings over the fact. You loved him no matter what. He was supposed to meet you two miles away from the headquarters of the scouting legion because that was as far as the carriage would take you. But not only that, he was supposed to meet you there at noon. It was already one thirty. So you decided not to wait and go ahead and make the journey on foot. Sure you were vulnerable on foot, and without any weapons besides your own two fists. But you were so steaming mad so you didn’t give a crap. Instead of walking directly down the road, you stuck to the tree line to be safe, as well as out of the direct sunlight. The whole reason why you were on your way to your brother was because you were transferring from the military police to the scouting legion on Erwin’s request. Saying that he needed a few more experienced soldiers with all the new recruits coming in. And that was exactly what you were doing, but your stupid brother had to forget and leave you there to walk. After a good half hour later, you arrived at your destination. Thankfully you were wearing your military police jacket, so you wouldn’t be thrown out of the place for trespassing. But with the glare that was settled on your face, nobody wanted to get near you anyways. You put on a fake smile and walked up to the nearest person, which happened to be the famous titan shifter everyone has been talking about, not that you cared at the moment, “Excuse me, can you please point me in the direction of where Commander Smith may be?” You asked as politely as you could muster. Eren smiled nervously since he could feel your dark aura, “Sure, he’s in his office,” He pointed down the hall, “Last door on your right, but he’s in a meeting…” he said the last part quieter since you were already taking off down the hallway without so much as a thank you. The glare returned to your face as you stood outside your brother’s office. Since he was rather inconsiderate of you, seeing as he forgot you, you were going to show the same decency by not knocking before waltz straight into his office. Erwin was seated at his desk when you walked in, as well as what looked to be squad leaders around him as he spoke. Something about an expedition, that’s all you heard before everything went silent. All eyes were on you, and you could see your brother’s face drain of color, “Did you forget about something, Commander Smith?” You sneered at him with a sickeningly sweet voice. “[Name], you made it.” He said, trying to say cool for the time being. But you were his brother, you knew he was sweating beneath that nicely pressed white shirt. But that wasn’t enough. You placed your hands on the edge of his desk as your smile was replaced with a glare, “Of course I did, but you fucking forgot about me you bastard!” You snarled, “I had to walk two miles to get here, and I wasn’t allowed to bring my old 3D maneuver gear, so I was also unarmed. What do you say about that, Commander Smith?” “Who the hell is this?” A short man with black hair asked. He had the most striking pale eyes you have ever seen. Ah, you remembered him now. It was none other than Levi, your brother’s closest friend. He was a prick. “Aww Levi, I’m hurt. You don’t recognize me? Well I was only ten when we last saw each other, but that doesn’t matter, does it?” You said turning to him. Levi looked over at Erwin, then back at you. And that’s when it clicked. Your [hair color] hair is much longer than it used to be, but those [eye color] eyes could never be forgotten. Your eyes always held a certain fire that was always lit, never have been blown out or dimmed. You were the annoying pest of a younger brother Erwin had. Levi almost forgot that you joined the military police as Erwin went to the scouting legion. You gave Levi your disgustingly sweet smile and turned back to Erwin, “Well brother, where was my damn horse?!” You shouted. Just before Erwin would respond, a brunet with glasses spoke up, “You have a brother Erwin? Why didn’t you tell us!” they beamed, “He doesn’t really look like you, but when he glared at you, that’s where you see the resemblance!” they added laughing. Erwin just sighed and rubbed his temples, “Yes, this is my brother, [Name]. Now we will pick up on the meeting later.” He said and mostly everyone left, except for glasses and Levi. He turned back to you and stood up, “It’s good to see you [Name], I am sorry I forgot about bringing you back to HQ.” You scoffed, “Are you really really sorry for it? I’m sure I have a sunburn on my face because of it! Even if I did stay in the tree line.” And you were right. Along the tops of your cheeks and nose, you felt the familiar tightness and sting to your skin of a sunburn. Thought it hurt, you kept glaring. “So, you’re still the brat you were nineteen years ago huh?" Levi asked with a smug look. You placed your hands on your hips as you turned around to him, your [color] hair whipping against your face with how fast you turned your head, "I must be, if I wasn’t I wouldn't get anything done," You smirked, “Are you still sensitive about your height Levi?” You grinned. Levi’s smirk turned into a glare, “It’s not like you’ve grown much in the time I haven’t seen you.” That was true, you were still rather short yourself, but you were still shorter than your brother, but at least a few inches taller than Levi, who was five foot three. You were five foot eight. “Oh, so if you remember how tall I was when I was ten, then you must remember other things too huh? Like the time you and Erwin went swimming in the stream by our house and I stole your clothes. You had to run all the way back in your underwear. I remember how embarrassed you were because of it. Because I was only seven when I did that.” He snorted, “What is that supposed to prove exactly? If you want to bring up that, you might as well remember the time when you followed me and your brother one night after we snuck out, thinking we didn’t know. And you were so paranoid that you ended up falling into a poison oak patch and we laughed as we watched your mother babying you with the home remedies that never worked.” Your face flushed red with embarrassment and anger, “It wasn’t so funny when I ran up and hugged you and Erwin, giving you both poison oak as well was it?” By that time you were toe-to-toe in front of each other, both flustered and mad. “Now here’s some entertainment.” The brunet commented as they sat lazily on Erwin’s desk, watching the scene in front of them. “Ok, that is ENOUGH.” Erwin boomed at the both of you, “The both of you are acting like children. Hange,” You guessed that was glasses' name, “Take my brother to his room and get him a new uniform. And [Name], please be nice to everyone.” He said before Hange started dragging you out of the room. Once you left the room, Erwin turned to his subordinate, “What was that Levi?” He demanded and sat back down at his desk. “What the hell are you talking about?” Levi snapped back at him, crossing his arms casually over his chest. “It’s like things haven’t changed since we were kids,” Erwin said absently, looking over his paperwork. Levi rolled his eyes and sat in the chair in front of his desk, “Yes we have.” he merely said. Erwin didn’t acknowledge his reply, “He's grown up nicely, hasn't he?” He asked, not looking up from his desk. “Yes,” Levi said, thinking he was just saying it in his head. But thankfully Erwin didn’t say anything, even if he heard it loud and clear. But he was right, you were a sight to see. You were no longer the skin-on-bones boy Levi knew as a kid. You had grown, matured, well. Your body matured, which Levi took notice of. Your hips widened a bit, bearers hips he noticed right off the bat, giving yourself an hourglass figure any woman would envy. If they replaced your uniform with an evening gown, you would pass for a noblewoman, not the military man you really were. But despite the way men would look at you like you were a piece of meat most of the time, you stood tall, keeping your chin up. Sure you were short-tempered, but that’s what didn’t make you a pushover. If you were sweet, you would be walked over and used in the military. “He's going to be with you.” Erwin suddenly said. Levi turned to him confused, “What?” “[Name] is going to be your assistant of some sort, just until he learns the ropes of the scouting legion.” He explained and looked up at him from his desk. “Why me? Can he help Hange or even you?” Levi snapped, not that he really minded that you were going to be working with him, but he couldn't let anyone know that. “Because you’re the best.” With that simple response, the conversation was finished and Levi left Erwin to his paperwork. -- After Hange gave you your uniform and left you in your room. They also let you borrow a loose sweater to borrow until your clothes arrived tomorrow, seeing as it was dinner soon, you didn't wish to stay in your uniform all day. You tied your shoulder-length hair up and out of your face as you left your room. Having nowhere in mind to go, you just started getting familiar with your new... home? With all the anger drained from your body, you actually looked like a pleasant person. The people who knew who you were said hello and sometimes welcomed you to the scouting legion, but mainly only smiles got tossed your way. As you explored, a few of the new recruits, who didn’t know you were the commander’s little brother, tried to flirt and hit on you. You thought it was cute, and played along for the most part, but then someone called you ‘Mr. Smith’ and the game was over. You eventually made it to the dining hall and saw that there were already people eating, so you decided to get some food as well. When you looked for a place to sit, you didn’t see Erwin in the room at all, but you did spot Levi. “Hello, Levi.” You cooed as you sat down to his left, Hange was there sitting in front of him. He merely glanced at you, “[Name].” You smiled at Hange and started eating. The table was quiet for the most part, most of the chatter was coming from Hange, going on and on about their latest experiment with their captured titans. You just listened, not really talking, only saying something every once in a while. Then Levi spoke up. “Did your brother talk to you yet [Name]?” He asked. You looked at him and shook your head, “Talk to him about what?” You took the last bite of your roll and pushed your bowl into the middle of the table to put your elbows on it and lay your chin in your hands. “Erwin told me that you will be working with my squad until you learn the ropes of the scouting legion,” Levi informed you. Nodding slowly, digesting the new information, “Alright, sounds like fun.” You said without trying to hide the devious smirk that crossed your face. “So I start tomorrow?” You asked. “Yes.” He responded and stood up, which you followed suit. “Better get some sleep than right?” You gave off a childish giggle as you grabbed your bowl and put it up. And before you left the dining hall you looked at Levi just about to exit, “Oh yeah, Levi?” You called to him, which he turned to you, “Don't underestimate me.” With that, you turned swiftly and exited opposite of him. Tomorrow was going to some interesting day.

- -

[part 2 - coming soon]

#attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #levi #levi ackerman #x reader #reader insert #male reader #male reader insert #x male reader insert #x male reader #levi x reader #imagine #attack on titan imagine #levi imagine

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rupertsreality-blog · 8 years ago

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The Blacksmith

Rupert had been at the forge since the early morning hours, arranging his materials and setting out a good portion of the forge strictly for himself, as if the rest of the blacksmiths were quarantined and he needed his own isolated space. In a brief moment, he thought to himself that he truly did just need his own forge- maybe somewhere up in the hills or in the mountains. With the chromium-steel delivered and an ample supply of twine, boar leather, and pre-shaped oak wood, he began his process.

The bar of chromium-steel slowly began to glow a red hot once placed in the intense heat of the forge, glowing a brilliant orange-white hue once he pulled it out and began smacking it repeatedly against the hardened metal anvil. His smacks were hard and forceful, but few in number before heating it once again. This part of the process was entirely mindless to him- a repetitive motion of heating the metal, smacking it until cool and flat, then heating it again. His thoughts wandered to the helpless nature of it all. Eventually this blade would break, though hopefully... Hopefully it wouldn't be until the woman assigned to it died of old age.

With the raw metal blade simmered to a seductive dark red, he brought a gas-powered grinder to the metal, shaping it and curving it into a wicked and cruel looking hook. This would function as more than a simple killing utility; it would be a tool. An extension of the woman's will and fierceness in combat, capable of hooking between the plates of even the most heavily armored warrior and digging into flesh. If she used it properly, that is.

His process continued just like this, a series of steps from heating the metal, cooling it, beating it out, shaping it, all to create the perfect structure. The perfect weapon. Scassira spotted the smith, her chocolate hues trained on him as she canted her head to the side to study his work. The way his arms flexed and the concentration on his face proved that this was a normal, everyday task for him. She narrowed her eyes as she leaned along a post, taking in each movement as she considered the art that was blacksmithing. She never thought of getting in to such a craft, she was able to keep up with her blade fairly well and decided that was really all she needed. Her own leather crafting was a chore within itself, but she was damn good at it, the armor she wore that day clear for anyone to see. With the black-tanned leather stitched perfectly for her body, the woman looked like the assassin that she was. The only bit of flesh peeking out was that of her scarred hands and her pristine, moonlight complexion of her face. She stood there for some time, losing track of time and simply studying and watching with intrigue. Rupert was used to eyes watching him, studying his every move. His time spent as a Royal Protector to some Lady of some House several months back had ingrained that sensation into his mind. Now, however, eyes were watching him with a different sort of curiosity. He did his best to ignore such a feeling, focusing his mind instead on the heat of the forge and the noise of blunt metal colliding with more blunt metal. The dagger had taken its shape, but now it needed work. He set the raw blade in a trough of lukewarm water where it was left to sizzle and steam within. Now onto the handle. Taking a chunk of the pre-shaped wood, he sat himself against his anvil, back to the metal, and pulled out a fletching knife- a small blade about the same length as a butter knife, sharpened and shaped specifically for shaping wood. He worked carefully yet tirelessly to match the design of the handle to its metal counterpart. No reference, it was clear he was going entirely off-the-cuff, perhaps to flaunt to the eyes watching him that he was as good as he said he was. The handle became short and stubby, just big enough to be held tightly by one hand, not big enough to be griped by another or easily deflected. A handle of pure function and class. With a simple bore drill, he cut out two small holes in the wood, just big enough to fit a pair of metal pegs to hold the other half of the handle together with the blade itself. Standard practice. With the pegs in place, Rupert pressed the rough handle into the equally rough metal, securing one part of the handle to the blade. He repeated the same motion for the other half of the handle. By all means purely functional, the dagger only needed sharpening at this point. It was clear that the Blacksmith was far from finished. Scassira felt her lips quirk upward as she watched the male, her head canting further to the side with that scrutinizing gaze. Every so often she’d flick her chocolates hues from the man’s work to his face, to his arms, to the forge, and back again. The fact of the matter was she certainly had an admiration for smiths. The tedious work of slamming metal against metal and the sweat and blood their poured into each of their master pieces always called for one to be appreciative. Watching this new employee work was something else. She had the idea that he knew she was there, assessing each movement and taking them in as she tried to focus on the crafting of her new blade. He held precision with his rigidity, his fluid motions like a peculiar dance of which she’s done a dozen times.A slow smile spread along her face as she considered handing over Danirel’s axe. The snicker he emitted when her blade was shattered cause her to want to offer him the same sort of pain in the chest. But the satisfaction of holding new, well made blades trumped any sort of idea to come to fruition. All that remained now was the finer details. The etchings of design upon the blades, a beautiful symphony all of its own that spoke not just of the craftsmanship of the smith, but of the deadly precision evoked with revealed. Setting the blade aside now, he took a smaller bar of steel and worked it just as he had the blade proper an hour or so before. This small bar, held so carefully by the smith, was destined to be a handguard. A metal cover surrounding part of the hilt to prevent disarmament, and to tighten the grip of the wielder. He beat the bar carefully and precisely, sweat dripping from his forehead and down onto the metal itself, now literally pouring himself into his work. The bar would come to take on a gentle curve, once beaten to nearly a third of an inch of thickness. With another metal peg he placed the handguard onto the hilt and connected it to the base of the handle. A small smile formed as he held the blade in his hand. He tested the grip, swung at the air a couple of times, and nodded. Finally, over the dull roar of the forge and of other blacksmith's working, he spoke. "Beautiful." His only word, the only thing he'd said at all so far today. That one word. He sat himself against his forge once again, now with an even smaller blade, tipped with sharpened diamond. He began cutting slowly along the length of the blade, etching out a pattern of curves and minute patterns. Only the most detail-oriented of wielders would notice such a design, and even fewer would know how to make it. At his single word, Scassira tilted her head back slightly, letting her eyes take in the shape of her new blade greedily. To think, she’d have two of them soon. Pale lips were formed into something of a permanent, pleased smile as she pushed off the post she leaned along and made her way toward him. Her hands had slipped into her pockets as she made her way over, her chocolate hues steady on his visage. “They are coming along quite nicely. I will admit, I am pleased to see you are honorable in your word. I will be even more pleased to see the finished product and boast about you if what you said was true.” Her eyes twinkled toward him in jest as she inclined her head, a soft smile cresting her face as she chuckled dryly. “Good afternoon to you, Rupert.” Rupert paused briefly at her sudden words, as if he'd forgotten that other people were around entirely. Truth is, he didn't forget people were around, but the sudden introduction had startled him. He instinctively pulled the diamond-tipped knife away, rather than risk making any erroneous cuts. His expression remained focused as he slowly lowered the knife back onto the blade, cutting very delicately along its length in gentle but firm motions. "Hello, Scassira. Are you well?" His tone was calm and content, sounding utterly at peace in his work. Another drip of sweat fell from his forehead onto the blade, which Rupert seemed to simply use as lubricant to keep the small etching knife from going dry. Crazily enough, perhaps by the man simply being too confident in his ability, he held the unfinished blade by the hilt, firm in one hand, while the other worked against the grain of the metal to etch patterns into it. One slip, one jolted movement, and he'd risk not only cutting his hand, but - if at the wrong angle - slicing farther downwards and cutting into his own manhood. What a fool. A brow was lofted as she eyed his work, seeing it up close and personal, she was pleased at what she saw. Her eyes darted about the blade and voraciously took in the sight. Her eyes were wide and excited, her lips quirked upward in pleasure at the crafted piece. “As well as one can be expected, I presume. What of you?” She lifted her gaze to settle on his, her head canted to the side some as she calculated him for his reaction. Stoic and emotionally unresponsive, Rupert remained quiet for a second or so as he carefully worked out a circular etching. Only when the etching was complete did he speak, "I'm happy." He confessed to her, a simple statement that was clearly rarely said by the man. His own chocolate orbs never left the blade, mindful that indeed it would only take one slip of his wrist to not only risk ruining the weapon, but himself as well. Scassira felt her self lean forward to eye his work even further, likely getting into his bubble some without really noticing. She was enthralled with his work and the metal that was becoming her new weapon. She flicked her gaze upward at his reply, a small nod ensuing as she eyed his visage. Standing up straighter, she inhaled the scent of the forges before reaching around to a water skin and held it out for him. "I am glad to heard that." Rupert remained silent as she stared both at him and at the blade in wonder. He didn't mind her being so near, though it was hard to tell his expression at all. He didn't smile, didn't frown, had a starkly calm and flat expression even when she came so close to him. As she held out a water skin for him, he reached up to take it and poured a small amount onto the blade, and an equally small amount onto his head, drenching his thick brown locks in water. He held the water skin back up to her, "Thank you. What brings you to the forge?" He stared up at her for only a brief moment as he waited for her to take the skin, and once taken, his gaze returned back to the blade where he made small and repeated diagonal lines down the back of the blade, giving it a rough backing, similar to that of a nail filer. She let a light laugh escape her as she took the water skin back and clasped it once more to her side. Her arms came up to cross under her bust, the leathers creaking with the movements. The woman slowly walked a few steps to the side, offering him a bit more room to work as she assessed the tool and other items scattered about. She knew nothing of smithing, totally ignorant, as a matter of fact. "Well one, making sure you did not take my money and run. And two, the intrigue of seeing my blades in process of being crafted." She lofted a brow toward him as she leaned her hip along the table he worked on. "I am a man of my word, Scassira." He stared over at her for a brief moment once more, making sure she knew precisely what he meant by that. Whether his words were good or bad, he always followed through with his words. Rupert looked back to the now etched blade and set the diamond-tipped knife back into its capsulated sheath, and the sheath back in line with his array of tools. The tools, as a whole, were aligned and displayed in a formal, provocative, and professional manner. Sorted by function and then by size, he had a wide array of small etching knives, some odd-shaped metal tubes, and hammers varying from tiny chisels to a hulking sledgehammer. There were even a few small canisters of paint and small paintbrushes. He was definitely a man of his word. The Blacksmith now took the sheet of boar leather and wrapped it carefully and tightly around the wooden handle, adding a protective layer for the wielder so that they wouldn't have to worry about splinters or damaging the wood. He wrapped the leather tight, then cut it cleanly down to give it a nice, finished look. Once pressed and aligned, Rupert took a small gas-powered blowtorch and shrunk the leather to fit the shape and curve of the wood, molding it took as though it were all one unified piece. He still didn't look finished, and now looked to the paint cans to determine how he should color it. He spoke again as he scrutinized each color. "I am creating for you the weapon of an assassin. There will be two of these once I'm finally finished, and with it you will use it with true perfection. A perfection unknown to the world- until the world is too late to do anything about it." His eyes flicked over to meet hers, locked onto her with a sudden moment of intensity. "The tools don't make the woman. The woman makes the tools." She would nod slowly, eyeing him over then his work again. "I can see that now. You have my apology for my doubt at first. You and I are alike in that sense. It is an amiable trait to have." Her eyes went back to lingering along the arranged tools, ever so often finding her gaze pull back to the paint and brushes. Those intrigued her as to why they were there, though she remained silent on the subject. Her gaze flicked upward to study him once more, watching each muscle tick in his face as he worked. But when he spoke, she blinked slowly, her gaze flitting down once more to the weapon within his palm. Feeling his gaze locked to hers, she would meet it just as earnestly, clearly intrigued by his words. She felt a thrill shoot through her at the idea of what he said, her eyes closing briefly as she inclined her head in a respectful gesture. "I am glad we can agree on that." He stared back to the paints and grabbed a small canister of gold. With a gentle swirl of the can, then met by a small paintbrush, Rupert began making slow hill-like designs on the handle of her new dagger. "Did you get a moment to think on what I'd said last night?" For once, his tone held some curiosity to it. He wanted to know her thoughts. His movements with the brush were slow and practical, a delicate move of the hand along heated leather. The paint dried mere seconds after it touched the warm leather; it's clear Rupert was moving quicker to combat the dried paint, but he didn't look at all panicked or flustered. He still knew what he was doing. Scassira seemed transfixed by the movements of the brush and the golden color, "Mm, Not entirely. I left shortly after to head home with Danirel. We had some things to take care of before we found rest, but even that seemed short lived." She canted her head to the side as she once more leaned forward to get a closer look at his work. She shook her head and squeezed her eyes closed. "That little girl distracted me some as well. My attention was sort of all over the place. I would... I would like to delve deeper into that conversation with you." The woman huffed a breath as she leaned back again, her hand coming up to move a wayward lock of raven hair from her brow. "Eira is her name. Sweet thing.. she's taken a bit of an attachment to me." She shook her head as she placed her hands back in her pockets. "I am really not the best sort for her." He moved then from the golden color to a dark red burgundy, the color barely visible against the leather. He used it to highlight the genuine wrinkles in the leather, highlighting its natural imperfections. Magically it did nothing but enhance the handle's beauty. With the pits and divets of the leather highlighted by a dark burgundy, they became just slightly more visible and contrasted with beautiful grace to the gold color. Rupert didn't speak further on her statement, instead focusing on the handle painting. When she spoke of Eira and of her desire to delve further with him, he spoke very briefly but his tone was still calm and even. "Be careful, Scassira. Delving too deep with a man you've only recently met is a very dangerous prospect." His tone wasn't scolding, in fact it sounded to be an almost friendly warning. "Still, if that doesn't dissuade you - and I doubt it does - then you are welcome to do so." He finally sat upright to stare at the blade as a whole. His hands went flat on either side of it, signifying its completion. Beauty couldn't begin to describe the blade he had made, nor could great effort describe the work he put into it.

#rp #world of warcraft #blacksmith #beautiful

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newstechreviews · 5 years ago

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A child opens a box. He starts jumping and screaming with joy—not an unusual sound in the halls of Mattel’s headquarters where researchers test new toys. But this particular toy is a doll, and it’s rare for parents to bring boys into these research groups to play with dolls. It’s rarer still for a boy to immediately attach himself to one the way Shi’a just did.

An 8-year-old who considers himself gender fluid and whose favorite color is black one week, pink the next, Shi’a sometimes plays with his younger sister’s dolls at home, but they’re “girly, princess stuff,” he says dismissively. This doll, with its prepubescent body and childish features, looks more like him, right down to the wave of bleached blond bangs. “The hair is just like mine,” Shi’a says, swinging his head in tandem with the doll’s. Then he turns to the playmate in the toy-testing room, a 7-year-old girl named Jhase, and asks, “Should I put on the girl hair?” Shi’a fits a long, blond wig on the doll’s head, and suddenly it is no longer an avatar for him, but for his sister.

The doll can be a boy, a girl, neither or both, and Mattel, which calls this the world’s first gender-neutral doll, is hoping its launch on Sept. 25 redefines who gets to play with a toy traditionally deemed taboo for half the world’s kids. Carefully manicured features betray no obvious gender: the lips are not too full, the eyelashes not too long and fluttery, the jaw not too wide. There are no Barbie-like breasts or broad, Ken-like shoulders. Each doll in the Creatable World series looks like a slender 7-year-old with short hair, but each comes with a wig of long, lustrous locks and a wardrobe befitting any fashion-conscious kid: hoodies, sneakers, graphic T-shirts in soothing greens and yellows, along with tutus and camo pants.

Mattel’s first promotional spot for the $29.99 product features a series of kids who go by various pronouns—him, her, them, xem—and the slogan “A doll line designed to keep labels out and invite everyone in.” With this overt nod to trans and nonbinary identities, the company is betting on where it thinks the country is going, even if it means alienating a substantial portion of the population. A Pew Research survey conducted in 2017 showed that while 76% of the public supports parents’ steering girls to toys and activities traditionally associated with boys, only 64% endorse steering boys toward toys and activities associated with girls.

For years, millennial parents have pushed back against “pink aisles” and “blue aisles” in toy stores in favor of gender-neutral sections, often in the name of exposing girls to the building blocks and chemistry kits that foster interest in science and math but are usually categorized as boys’ toys. Major toy sellers have listened, thanks to the millennial generation’s unrivaled size, trend-setting ability and buying power. Target eliminated gender-specific sections in 2015. The same year, Disney banished “boys” and “girls” labels from its children’s costumes, inviting girls to dress as Captain America and boys as Belle. Last year, Mattel did away with “boys” and “girls” toy divisions in favor of nongendered sections: dolls or cars, for instance.

But the Creatable World doll is something else entirely. Unlike model airplanes or volcano kits, dolls have faces like ours, upon which we can project our own self-image and anxieties. Mattel tested the doll with 250 families across seven states, including 15 children who identify as trans, gender-nonbinary or gender-fluid and rarely see themselves reflected in the media, let alone their playthings. “There were a couple of gender-creative kids who told us that they dreaded Christmas Day because they knew whatever they got under the Christmas tree, it wasn’t made for them,” says Monica Dreger, head of consumer insights at Mattel. “This is the first doll that you can find under the tree and see is for them because it can be for anyone.”

The population of young people who identify as gender-nonbinary is growing. Though no large surveys have been done of kids younger than 10, a recent study by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that 27% of California teens identify as gender-nonconforming. And a 2018 Pew study found 35% of Gen Z-ers (born 1995 to 2015) say they personally know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns like they and them, compared with just 16% of Gen X-ers (born 1965 to 1980). The patterns are projected to continue with Generation Alpha, who were born in 2010 and later. Those kids, along with boys who want to play with dolls and girls who identify as “tomboys” and don’t gravitate toward fashion doll play, are an untapped demographic. Mattel currently has 19% market share in the $8 billion doll industry; gaining just one more point could translate to $80 million in revenue for the company.

Mattel sees an even broader potential for Creatable World beyond gender-creative kids. In testing, the company found that Generation Alpha children chafed at labels and mandates no matter their gender identity: They didn’t want to be told whom a toy was designed for or how to play with it. They were delighted with a doll that had no name and could transform and adapt according to their whims.

Photograph by Angie Smith for TIME. Shi’a, left, and Jhase play with Mattel’s gender-neutral doll

But it’s parents who are making the purchasing decisions, and no adult is going to have a neutral reaction to this doll. In testing groups, several parents felt the “gender-neutral” branding of the toy pushed a political agenda, and some adults objected to the notion of their sons ever playing with dolls. Mattel’s President Richard Dickson insists the doll isn’t intended as a statement. “We’re not in the business of politics,” he says, “and we respect the decision any parent makes around how they raise their kids. Our job is to stimulate imaginations. Our toys are ultimately canvases for cultural conversation, but it’s your conversation, not ours; your opinion, not ours.”

Yet even offering customers that blank canvas will be seen as political in a country where gender-neutral bathrooms still stir protests. Mattel joins a cohort of other companies that have chosen a side in a divisive political climate. Just in the past two years, Nike launched a campaign starring Colin Kaepernick after the NFL dropped him from the league for kneeling during the national anthem to protest racism. Airbnb offered free housing to people displaced in the face of President Trump’s travel ban. Dick’s Sporting Goods stopped selling assault-style weapons after the Parkland shooting. All these companies have reported eventual sales bumps after staking their claim in the culture wars.

When pressed with these examples, Dickson admits that staying neutral is not an option if you want to be perceived as an innovator. “I think being a company today, you have to have a combination of social justice along with commerce, and that balance can be tricky,” Dickson says. “Not everyone will appreciate you or agree with you.”

In fact, dissent among boomers, Gen X-ers and even millennials may be a positive sign, according to Mattel’s own researchers. “If all the parents who saw the dolls said, ‘This is what we’ve been waiting for,’ we wouldn’t be doing our jobs,” says Dreger. “That would mean this should have already been in the market. So we’re maybe a little behind where kids are, ahead of where parents are, and that’s exactly where we need to be.”

***

Walking into Mattel’s headquarters, it’s difficult to imagine a gender-neutral world of play. A huge mural depicts some of the company’s most recognizable toys. A classic bouffanted version of Barbie in a black-and-white bathing suit and heels squints down at visitors. In another picture close by, a little boy puffs out his chest and rips open his shirt, Superman style, to reveal a red Mattel logo that reads “Strength and Excellence.” Even a toddler would be able to discern the messaging on how a woman and a man are expected to look from these images.

But the evolution within Mattel is obvious once visitors make their way past the entryway and into the designers’ cubicles. Inspiration boards are covered with pictures of boys in skirts and girls in athletic gear. The most striking images are mashups of popular teen stars: the features of Camila Mendes and Cole Sprouse, who play Veronica and Jughead on Riverdale, combine to create one androgynous face, and Millie Bobby Brown and Finn Wolfhard, who play the main characters on Stranger Things, blend into a single floppy-haired, genderless person with sharp cheekbones.

In the past decade, toy companies have begun to tear down gender barriers. Smaller businesses like GoldieBlox, which launched in 2012 and builds engineering toys targeting girls, and large companies like Lego, which created the female-focused Lego Friends line the same year, have made STEM toys for girls more mainstream. Small independent toymakers have pushed things further with dollhouses painted green and yellow instead of purple and pink, or cooking kits that are entirely white instead of decorated with flowers or butterflies.

Perhaps it’s surprising, then, that nobody has beaten Mattel to creating a gender-neutral doll. A deep Google search for such a toy turns up baby dolls or strange-looking plush creatures that don’t resemble any human who ever walked this earth. Nothing comes close to the Creatable World doll that Mattel has conjured up over the past two years.

Scientists have debunked the idea that boys are simply born wanting to play with trucks and girls wanting to nurture dolls. A study by psychologists Lisa Dinella and Erica Weisgram, co-editors of Gender Typing of Children’s Toys: How Early Play Experiences Impact Development, found that when wheeled toys were painted white — and thus deprived of all color signaling whether they were “boys’ toys” or “girls’ toys” — girls and boys chose to play with the wheeled toys equally as often. Dinella points out that removing gendered cues from toys facilitates play between boys and girls, crucial practice for when men and women must interact in the workplace and home as adults. She adds that millennials (born 1981 to 1996) have pushed to share child-care responsibilities, and that battle ought to begin in the playroom. “If boys, like girls, are encouraged to learn parental skills with doll play at a young age, you wind up with more nurturing and empathetic fathers,” she says.

And yet creating a doll to appeal to all kids, regardless of gender, remains risky. “There are children who are willing to cross those gender boundaries that society places on toys, but there’s often a cost that comes with crossing those boundaries,” Dinella says. “That cost seems to be bigger for boys than it is for girls.” Some of those social repercussions no doubt can be traced to parental attitudes. In Los Angeles, the majority of the seven parents in an early testing group for Creatable World complained the doll “feels political,” as one mom put it.

“I don’t think my son should be playing with dolls,” she continued. “There’s a difference between a girl with a truck and a boy with a Barbie, and a boy with a Barbie is a no-no.”

The only dad in the group shrugged: “I don’t know. My daughter is friends with a boy who wears dresses. I used to be against that type of thing, but now I’m O.K. with it.”

In videos of those testing groups, many parents fumbled with the language to describe the dolls, confusing gender (how a person identifies) with sexuality (whom a person is attracted to), mixing up gender-neutral (without gender) and trans (a person who has transitioned from one gender to another) and fretting about the mere idea of a boy playing with a doll. A second mom in Los Angeles asked before seeing the doll, “Is it transgender? How am I supposed to have a conversation with my kid about that?” After examining the toy and discussing gender-fluidity with the other parents, she declared, “It’s just too much. Can’t we go back to 1970?”

After the session, Dreger analyzed the parental response. “Adults get so tied up in the descriptions and definitions,” she said. “They jump to this idea of sexuality. They make themselves more anxious about it. For kids it’s much more intuitive.”

Why, exactly, a new generation is rejecting categorizations that society has been using for millennia is up for debate. Eighty-one percent of Gen Z-ers believe that a person shouldn’t be defined by gender, according to a poll by the J. Walter Thompson marketing group. But it’s not just about gender — it’s about authenticity, whether real or perceived. Macho male actors and glam, ultra-feminine actresses have less cultural cache than they used to. Gen Z, with its well-honed radar for anything overly polished or fake-seeming, prefers YouTube confessionals about battling everything from zits to depression. When the New York Times recently asked Generation Z to pick a name for itself, the most-liked response was “Don’t call us anything.”

Perhaps their ideas of gender have expanded under the influence of parents who are beginning to reject practices like gender-reveal parties that box kids in even before they are born. Jenna Karvunidis, who popularized the gender-reveal party, recently revealed on Facebook that her now 10-year-old child is gender-nonconforming and that she regrets holding the party. “She’s telling me ‘Mom, there are many genders. Mom, there’s many different sexualities and all different types,’ and I take her lead on that,” Karvunidis said in an interview with NPR.

Perhaps it’s that a generation of kids raised on video games where they could create their own avatars, with whatever styling and gender they please has helped open up the way kids think about identity. Perhaps the simple fact that more celebrities like Amandla Stenberg and Sam Smith are coming out as gender-nonbinary has made it easier for other young people to do the same. Generation Alpha, the most diverse generation in America in all senses of the term, is likely to grow up with even more liberal views on gender.

“This is a rallying cry of this generation,” says Jess Weiner, a cultural consultant for large companies looking to tap into modern-day markets and navigate issues of gender. “Companies in this day and age have to evolve or else they die, they go away … And part of that evolving is trying to understand things they didn’t prior.”

Photograph by JUCO for TIMEMattel, which calls this the world’s first gender-neutral doll, is hoping its launch redefines who gets to play with a toy traditionally deemed taboo for half the world’s kids.

Mattel isn’t the first company to notice the trend among young shoppers moving away from gender-specific products. Rob Smith—the founder of the Phluid Project, a gender-free clothing store that caters to the LGBTQ+ community in New York City—says several large corporations, including Mattel, have approached him for advice on how to market to the young masses. “I work with a lot of companies who are figuring out that the separation between male and female is less important to young consumers who don’t want to be boxed into anything,” he says. “There’s men’s shampoo and women’s shampoo, but it’s just all shampoo. Companies are starting to investigate that in-between space in order to win over Gen Z.”

Still, Mattel enters a politically charged debate at a precarious moment for corporations in America, where companies that want to gain customer loyalty are being pushed to one aisle or the other. A study from the PR agency Weber Shandwick found 47% of millennials think CEOs should take stances on social issues. Some 51% of millennials surveyed said they are more likely to buy products from companies run by activist CEOs. Now, if you walk into a Patagonia store, you’ll see a sign that reads, “The President stole your land. Take action now.”

Such activism is often born of self-interest: companies want to appeal to liberal customers and retain young employees and their allies. They face little risk by speaking up, but major consequences by sitting on the sidelines. In August, customers boycotted Equinox and SoulCycle—two companies that have aggressively courted the LGBTQ+ community—when reports emerged that their key investor was holding a fundraiser for Trump with ticket prices as high as $250,000. According to data analyses by Second Measure, a month later, SoulCycle attendance is down almost 13%.

Weiner says SoulCycle’s experience should serve as a cautionary tale. “I think businesses of any size now recognize that their consumer base values transparency over any other attribute. They want to know that your board is reflective of your choices, and that’s caught a lot of businesses off guard,” Weiner says. “You can’t talk about gender equity in your commercial and then have no women on your board. They have to be savvy.”

Now, a toy company has chosen to make a product specifically to appeal to the progressive part of the country. Lisa McKnight, the senior vice president of the global doll portfolio at Mattel, says major retailers have been enthusiastic about Creatable World. “They’re excited about the message of inclusivity,” she says. “The world is becoming a more diverse and inclusive place, and some people want to do more to support that.” When pressed on the risks, she lays out the alternative. “Candidly, we ask ourselves if another company were to launch a product line like this, how would we feel? And after that gut check, we are proceeding.”

Photograph by Angie Smith for TIMEThe dolls faces betray no obvious gender: the lips are not too full, the eyelashes not too long and fluttery, the jaw not too wide. Here, the dolls faces are painted at Mattel’s headquarters on September 5.

Mattel will launch Creatable World exclusively online first, in part to better control the message. That includes giving sneak previews to select influencers and leaders in the LGBTQ+ community. Selling the doll in retail stores will be more complicated. For one thing, there’s the question of where to place it in stores to attract the attention of shoppers who might not venture into a doll section. Store clerks will have to be trained in what pronouns to use when talking about the doll and how to handle anxious parents’ questions about it. And then there are practical concerns. Dickson admits the company is ready for the possibility that protests against Creatable World dolls could hurt other Mattel brands, namely Barbie.

Mattel has taken risks before. Most recently, in 2016, it added three new body types to the Barbie doll: tall, petite and, most radically, curvy. It was the first time the company had made a major change to one of the most recognizable brands—and bodies—in the world in the doll’s almost-60-year history. The change helped propel Barbie from a retrograde doll lambasted by feminists for her impossible shape to a modern toy. She is now on the rise. Her sales have been up for the last eight quarters, and she saw a 14% sales bump in the last year alone, according to Mattel.

But Mattel felt late to the game when it changed Barbie’s body: For years the Mindy Kalings and Ashley Grahams of the world had been championing fuller body types. Parents had been demanding change with boycotts and letter campaigns. By contrast, Creatable World feels like uncharted territory. Consider children’s media: Disney hasn’t introduced a major gay character in any of its movies, let alone a gender-nonconforming one. There are no trans superheroes. Even characters whose creators say they are queer—like Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series—haven’t actually come out on the page or the screen. In that pop-culture space, a gender-neutral doll seems radical.

Even though there is no scientific evidence to prove that this is the case, there will be customers who say that even exposing their children to a gender-nonbinary doll through commercials or in a play group would threaten to change their child’s identity. This debate will spin out into sociopolitical questions about whether the types of toys children play with affect their sense of identity and gender.

That conversation, if it comes, is worth it, according to Dickson. “I think if we could have a hand in creating the idea that a boy can play with a perceived girl toy and a girl can play with a perceived boy toy, we would have contributed to a better, more sensitive place of perception in the world today,” he says. “And even more so for the kids that find themselves in that challenging place, if we can make that moment in their life a bit more comfortable, and knowing we created something that makes them feel recognized, that’s a beautiful thing.”

#Blogger

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itsfinancethings · 5 years ago

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September 25, 2019 at 12:01AM

Photograph by Angie Smith for TIME. Shi’a, left, and Jhase play with Mattel’s gender-neutral doll

***

“I don’t think my son should be playing with dolls,” she continued. “There’s a difference between a girl with a truck and a boy with a Barbie, and a boy with a Barbie is a no-no.”

The only dad in the group shrugged: “I don’t know. My daughter is friends with a boy who wears dresses. I used to be against that type of thing, but now I’m O.K. with it.”

#IFTTT #Blogger

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d2kvirus · 6 years ago

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Dickheads of the Month: February 2019

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of February 2019 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

Golf claps all round for Jussie Smollett not just for staging an attack and thinking that he would get away with it, something that was always going to be difficult considering the high-profile nature of the assault that he staged, but also guaranteeing that until the end of time every single time there’s a racially-aggravated assault by members of the far right we will hear the mantra of “It’s fake because Jussie Smollett faked his attack” by members of the alt-right who are relieved that, for once, they don’t have to delete dozens of tweets calling something that reflects badly upon them as a false flag attack, as evidenced by their rabid demands for a pound of flesh because this one time they cried wolf there just so happened to be a wolf nearby - with Dinesh D’Souza going so far as to try and cast doubt on attacks that took place in the 1950s and 60s

It would take a real piece of work to outright lie about policy that you’re screwing up on a daily basis, so to the surprise of nobody Theresa May did exactly that when she claimed that the Britait process was being slowed down by those who don’t agree with her deal - even though she was the one who cancelled the vote when it was initially scheduled before Christmas in an obvious attempt to slow down the process and scare everyone into voting for her deal because she’d run down the clock by several weeks

How brave of Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Chris Leslie, Angela Smith, Mike Gapes, Gavin Shuker and Ann Coffey to all resign from the Labour party to form their own party - with blackjack, and hookers! - and to announce as their first order of business that they would not be calling by-elections for the seats they won under a labour manifesto, which certainly doesn't make them look like a bunch of cowards looking to line their pockets at their constituents’ expense while not allowing said constituents the opportunity to say which party they want representing them...but then again The Independent Group aren’t a political party, they’re a limited company (which just so happens to get around Electoral Commission rules on announcing their funding) whose website is based in that well-known tax bolthole that is Panama

And then Angela Smith further discredited The Independent Group PLC when, during a televised debate about racism, she described BAME people as being “black or a funny tinge” - and in doing so she exposed that The Independent Group Ltd not only don’t have any disciplinary procedure of any kind, but there is also no way for anyone to register a complaint

And then we have Joan Ryan jumping ship, somehow neglecting to mention losing a No Confidence vote last year (which saw her throw one hell of a temper tantrum on her Twitter feed when the result came in) or the time she was caught on camera manufacturing accusations of antisemitic abuse, and soon after she joined she attempted to deny there is a video of her discussing a £1m bribe from Shai Masoud - this video, in fact - soon followed by being reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office for attempting to access the data of Labour after she had resigned, which she gave plentiful evidence of her involvement by sending a mass e-mail to Enfield North members after she had resigned

This was soon followed by Anna Soubry demonstrating her devotion to The Independent Group Ltd’s new politics by calling nine years of Tory austerity “marvelous” before complaining that she was no longer allowed to campaign on behalf of Tory council candidates, while Heidi Allen spoke in favour of Universal Credit and stated she would support Theresa May if she faced another No Confidence vote in parliament, because apparently supporting not just the policies but the leader of the party you just left is “new politics” now

According to Candace Owens there was absolutely nothing wrong with Hitler until he began to interfere in other countries as (and these are direct quotes) "it’s important to retain your country’s identity”, that he “just wanted to make Germany great” and “The problem is that he wanted, he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalise” - which I am sure would have come to some degree of comfort to the countless Jews residing within Germany who found themselves the target for persecution and extermination long before Hitler considered invading Poland

After loudly pondering to anyone with press credentials about how to combat the knife crime problem it finally occurred to Sajid Javid what needs to be done - he needed to cut funding for knife crime programmes, soon followed by not even bothering to show up in Commons when questions about knife crime were on the agenda, choosing to send a lackey to dodge any and all questions in his stead

In yet another case of Arron Banks needing to lie because his bullshit had been exposed by real life intervening, when his comment that Britait wouldn’t affect Toyota investing in Sunderland was undermined by Toyota moving manufacture of the new X-Trail out of Sunderland and relocating it to Japan, the best he could come up with was the market for diesel cars in Britain isn't that great - which I’m sure will come of great comfort to the people of Sunderland who will be out of work because of this move

It appears that Liam Neeson doesn't have a particular set of skills when it comes to promoting his films as nobody’s talking about his latest film and instead talking about how he said that he wanted to murder a black man after somebody close to him was raped by a black man - not the black man responsible, mind you, but any black man he could find while roaming the streets. Even his attempt at recovering fell a little bit flat when he suggested that people need to talk about feelings of rage-fuelled vengeance, but the issue is nobody was talking about this because Neeson himself talked about it in the worst way possible to begin with

Somehow the message didn't reach Chris Williamson as, in an effort to criticise the weaponisation of antisemitism to manufacture a weapon to bludgeon Labour with, he did so in such a way that the main takeaway was he said Labour were “too apologetic” when faced with accusations of antisemitism and guaranteed that, as a result, that blunt weapon would be brought out to bludgeon Labour with yet again

It really does say something that Jacob Rees-Mogg, Andrea Leadsom, David Davis, Arlene Foster, Sajid Javid, Kate Hoey, Peter Bone et al were all up in arms at Donald Tusk’s comments about there being a special place in hell for those backing the Leave campaign without ever formulating a plan, each of them finding their own way to whine about how insulted they were (as if we hadn’t had years of various Leave backers comparing the EU to either the Soviet Union or Third Reich) yet not a single one of them seemed to think it worth suggesting that they had a plan let alone suggest what that plan was

This wasn’t the only time Kate Hoey mouthed off and looked an idiot because of it either, as she also tooks to Twitter to dust off that old chestnut of how nobody voted for any member of the EU, specifically targeting Guy Verhofstadt - only for Verhofstadt to point out that hundreds of thousands did, and it says a lot that those so adamant about leaving the EU don’t know a bloody thing about it

Another month and another example of the BBC using Question Time as a platform not for informed debate but an echo chamber for the far right, with them bussing in and spouter of all manner of bigoted and sectarian bile Billy Mitchell once again tucked away in the audience masquerading as a member of the public, which is at least the fourth time this has been noticed, and they went so far as to allow Mitchell to chat with at least one member of the panel before the taping began which is in direct contravention of the BBC’s own rules - and even edited out the SNP panelist’s response. Of course Mitchell isn’t the only case of this, as the Bolton chapter of the English Defence League were invited en masse to one taping while last year Jonathan Jennings was given similar treatment to Mitchell in spite the minor inconvenience of him being given a prison sentence for posting antisemitic and Islamophobic comments online and threatening to kill Jeremy Corbyn - which means it's worth mentioning that the Question Time audience being picked by Alison Fuller Pedley who, prior to deleting her Facebook account, shared material from Britain First among many other far right groups

Barking mad idiot Nadine Dorries managed to top her usual level of batshittery by tweeting a video of journalist Ash Sarkar while stating it was Labour candidate Faiza Shaheen - and when this mistake was pointed out to her she didn’t apologise but say she got confused because the two had similar accents, which doesn’t at all sound like she thinks all Asian women look alike - which is clearly the case, given she has not apologised to Sarkar or Shaheen, but did apologise to the BBC

Beating the deadest of dead horses was Chris Quinn as he became the latest person determined to die on the hill where Jack Thompson and Leland Yee died on when he decided that the one thing guaranteed to stop school shootings was for Pennsylvania to introduce a 10% Sin Tax on violent video games - yet at no point in his proposal did he ever suggest that maybe these things called guns might have something to do with America’s school shooting problem

Because saying his Chinese wife was Japanese wasn’t enough proof that Jeremy ...Hunt is a hapless failure as Foreign Secretary, on a visit to Slovenia he described the country as a “Soviet vassal state” - in other words he publicly stated he can’t tell which country was part of the Soviet Union and which country was part of Yugoslavia while in a country that was part of Yugoslavia

Another month another humiliation for Chris Grayling - but this time he really excelled himself by being banned from the port of Calais by French port authorities who’d had enough of his impotent posturing and were happy to slap him with what was, in effect, a diplomatic ASBO

Convicted rapist Bill Cosby is clearly still coming to terms with that guilty verdict he was slapped judging by the statement he released where Cosby howls about how he’s a political prisoner, going so far as to compare himself to Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, talking conspiratorial gibberish about the judge who passed sentence and the DA who brought charges, and finishing up by saying he has no remorse, because saying you have no remorse for what you were locked up for is always a good look...

Sneering fuckwit Toby Young had one takeaway from the schoolchildren going on strike to protest against climate change, and that takeaway was that if they were going to strike they should do it at the weekend - which makes it sound an awful lot like sneering fuckwit Toby Young doesn’t understand the concept of a strike - although the sneering fuckwit was hardly alone, not when Theresa May dismissed them as “disruptive” and (irony of ironies) “Wasting time” while Daily Mail hatchet-wielder and person who has seen Michael Gove naked Sarah Vine sneered they were taking “an excellent opportunity to avoid doing any work”, soon followed by Andrea Leadsom harrumphing about “truancy” while James Cleverley, Dan Hodges and Christopher Hope all made remarkably similar comments about “bunking off”

Not only is Tom Bower such a joke that his expose of Jeremy Corbyn reveals the shocking revelation of him eating baked beans *dramatic chord* but he then went on Good Morning Britain and referred to Michael Segalov as “a self-hating Jew” which, the last time I checked, sounds uncannily like he discriminated against a Jewish person on the basis of their religion while being broadcast live on national television...which none of the GMB hosts did anything about and I don’t see any of The Independent Group Ltd making so much as a peep about it either

Filibustering enthusiast Christopher Chope once again demonstrated his levels of respect and tolerance for women by deciding to block a vote on laws protecting at risk children from female genital mutilation, a move which drew condemnation from both side of the House of Commons, which as per usual he attempted to deflect by saying he won’t let any Private Members Bill pass without debate - apart from the dozens he let through without debate

At first it appeared that Mark Lewis was continuing his sleazy approach to lawyerly matters of randomly tweeting people to say he was representing them and demanding they post their personal information online - only for it to soon transpire that, no, Lewis was actually acting on behalf of Rachel Riley and Tracy Ann Oberman as they decided that encouraging their Twitter followers to dogpile onto anyone who dares disagree with them is no longer enough, now it's time to make an example of them by dragging them to court while crying to their friends in the press about how they are the ones being bullied and harassed online

According to Jacob Rees Mogg it was...let me double check my notes...right, according to Jacob Rees Mogg there was nothing wrong with the concentration camps used by the British during the Boer War because the number of people who died in them was consistent with the mortality rate in Glasgow at the time. He overlooks the part about the numbers of women and children dying in those camps being much higher than the numbers of women and children in Glasgow, but why quibble about that when his main argument was justifying the use of concentration camps?

In a fit of desperation Brandon Lewis decided to harrumph loudly about Sally Keeble liking a dick pic on Twitter - which only led to people noticing that he didn't have problems when it was Tory MP Andrew Griffiths sent dick pics in their hundreds to his constituents, and that him being restored to the party in order to have Theresa May narrowly win a vote of No Confidence from her own party could only have been signed off by...Brandon Lewis

It appears that a very different version of history was taught at the school Daniel Kawczynski attended compared to that of everyone else educated at the time, judging by his tweet suggesting that Britain did not receive a penny after WWII as there was no Marshall Plan for us...other than the $4bn that the UK received from the Marshall Plan, but that’s not important right now

In a remarkable lack of self-awareness Suzanne Evans bitterly complained about the roaming charges on her phone contract increasing, seemingly unaware that the reason those roaming charges used to be much lower was because of EU legislation - yes, since you asked, that would be the exact same EU that Suzanne Evans was a prominent advocate of leaving because apparently they offer no benefit to the British whatsoever...

Proving that the apple doesn't fall far from the orange-hued tree was Donald Trump Jnr tweeting a photo as he tried to suggest every single woman in Congress (including Nancy Pelosi) was a traitor for not wearing a US flag pin - only to have it pointed out to him that neither was he...

Somebody at THQ Nordic thought it was a brilliant idea to announce an AMA not on Reddit nor Twitter but on 8chan, because the one place any company should be hosting an AMA is on 4chan’s even nastier little brother than has been delisted from Google due to being used to share images of child pornography

Showing they hadn’t read Downsize This! at any point in the last 23 years those fine folks at Activision announced record profits while also laying off 8% of their staff, a reported 800 people, because their record profits somehow didn’t translate into record bonuses so somebody had to pay for it

As it's been a while since Youtube did something harebrained that made things far more complicated for content creators with their latest genius idea is to demonetise channels because of comments that other people made on the video, with them going so far as to demonetise videos of creators who were moderating their comments section on the presumption that dodgy comments might be coming sometime soon

It seems that Ja Rule is having difficulty accepting that the Fyre Festival was a blatant scam arranged by an obvious scammer, because even after two documentaries picked apart just how non-legitimate the entire endeavour was he’s saying he hasn’t given up on the idea, which maybe isn’t the smartest position to take when there’s numerous lawsuits and criminal investigations that happen to have his name on them

Because it appears Bethesda can’t go a month without Fallout 76 being the decrepit goose that keeps shitting on their shoes, they decided to make sure they were responsible for needing yet another change of loafers by banning a player who had amassed over 900 hours in the game for having too much ammunition. Because when your playerbase has nosedived since launch, the one thing you really want to do is ban one of the players whose put a lot of time into the game for reasons that make no sense because anyone playing the game for 900 hours would pick up a hell of a lot of ammo

Don’t worry, folks, it appears that Julia Hartley Brewer has solved all the post-Britait issues in one tweet when she said it took just twenty seconds for her to get across the border between France and Switzerland so everything will be alright. In other words, Julia Hartley Brewer either forgot about or merely omitted that Switzerland is part of the Schengen agreement, she was travelling between France and Switzerland rather than the UK and any EU country, and that the UK currently being part of the EU is the reason her border check took so little time and that wouldn’t be the case if she was traveling on, say, a Latvian passport

Hentai enthusiast thewisemankey, otherwise known as tedious shitposter Gregory Prytyka Jr. (and no doubt several other Disqus pseudonyms) was so gracious enough to boost my analytics in an effort to prove how he was definitely not thin-skinned and incapable of taking responsibility when his shitposting backfires...which demonstrated he’s thin-skinned and unable to take responsibility when his shitposting backfires, and considering said shitposting was last December the fact he’s still bawling about it in February really isn’t normal behaviour, is it?

And, of course, getting remarkably triggered by Spike Lee suggesting people vote with love not hate in the 2020 election is Donald Trump and his charming habit of being more concerned for the wellbeing of one of his supporters than the journalist his supporter happened to be assaulting at the time, who also believes he can steal a march on China by demanding American businesses adopt non-existent 6G technology now

#dickheads of the month

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hoood-princess · 7 years ago

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Zadie Smith’s Dance Lessons for Writers – Brain Pickings

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Zadie Smith’s Dance Lessons for Writers

“Between propriety and joy choose joy.”

By Maria Popova

Zadie Smith (Photograph by Dominique Nabokov)

The connection between writing and dancing has been much on my mind recently: it’s a channel I want to keep open. It feels a little neglected — compared to, say, the relationship between music and prose — maybe because there is something counter-intuitive about it. But for me the two forms are close to each other: I feel dance has something to tell me about what I do.

Citing Martha Graham’s famous advice on creative work, intended for dancers but replete with wisdom for writers, Smith considers the common ground beneath the surface dissimilitudes between these two art forms:

What can an art of words take from the art that needs none? Yet I often think I’ve learned as much from watching dancers as I have from reading. Dance lessons for writers: lessons of position, attitude, rhythm and style, some of them obvious, some indirect.

Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire

She proceeds to explore these dimensions through a set of contrasts between famous performers, beginning with Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire:

“Fred Astaire represents the aristocracy when he dances,” claimed Gene Kelly, in old age, “and I represent the proletariat.” The distinction is immediately satisfying, though it’s a little harder to say why. Tall, thin and elegant, versus muscular and athletic — is that it? There’s the obvious matter of top hat and tails versus T-shirt and slacks. But Fred sometimes wore T-shirts and slacks, and was not actually that tall, he only stood as if he were, and when moving always appeared elevated, to be skimming across whichever surface: the floor, the ceiling, an ice-rink, a bandstand. Gene’s center of gravity was far lower: he bends his knees, he hunkers down. Kelly is grounded, firmly planted, where Astaire is untethered, free-floating. Likewise, the aristocrat and the proletariat have different relations to the ground beneath their feet, the first moving fluidly across the surface of the world, the second specifically tethered to a certain spot: a city block, a village, a factory, a stretch of fields.

When I write I feel there’s usually a choice to be made between the grounded and the floating. The ground I am thinking of in this case is language as we meet it in its “commonsense” mode. The language of the television, of the supermarket, of the advert, the newspaper, the government, the daily “public” conversation. Some writers like to walk this ground, re-create it, break bits of it off and use it to their advantage, whereas others barely recognize its existence. Nabokov — a literal aristocrat as well as an aesthetic one — barely ever put a toe upon it. His language is “literary,” far from what we think of as our shared linguistic home. One argument in defense of such literary language might be the way it admits its own artificiality. Commonsense language meanwhile claims to be plain and natural, “conversational,” but is often as constructed as asphalt, dreamed up in ad agencies or in the heart of government — sometimes both at the same time. Simultaneously sentimental and coercive (“the People’s Princess,” “the Big Society,” “Make America Great Again”), commonsense language claims to take its lead from the way people naturally speak, but any writer who truly attends to the way people speak will soon find himself categorized as a distinctive stylist or satirist or experimentalist. Beckett was like this, and the American writer George Saunders is a good contemporary example.

Kelly quoted the commonplace when he danced, and he reminds us in turn of the grace we do sometimes possess ourselves… [Astaire] is “poetry in motion.” His movements are so removed from ours that he sets a limit on our own ambitions. Nobody hopes or expects to dance like Astaire, just as nobody really expects to write like Nabokov.

Next, she examines the writer’s sometimes parallel, sometimes perpendicular responsibilities to representation and joy by contrasting the brothers Harold and Fayard Nicholas:

Writing, like dancing, is one of the arts available to people who have nothing. “For ten and sixpence,” advises Virginia Woolf, “one can buy paper enough to write all the plays of Shakespeare.” The only absolutely necessary equipment in dance is your own body. Some of the greatest dancers have come from the lowliest backgrounds. With many black dancers this has come with the complication of “representing your race.” You are on a stage, in front of your people and other people. What face will you show them? Will you be your self? Your “best self”? A representation? A symbol? The Nicholas Brothers were not street kids — they were the children of college-educated musicians — but they were never formally trained in dance. They learned by watching their parents and their parents’ colleagues performing on the “Chitlin” circuit, as black vaudeville was then called. Later, when they entered the movies, their performances were usually filmed in such a way as to be non-essential to the story, so that when these films played in the south their spectacular sequences could be snipped out without doing any harm to the integrity of the plot. Genius contained, genius ring-fenced. But also genius undeniable. “My talent was the weapon,” argued Sammy Davis Jr., “the power, the way for me to fight. It was the one way I might hope to affect a man’s thinking.” Davis was another Chitlin hoofer, originally, and from straitened circumstances. His logic here is very familiar: it is something of an article of faith within the kind of families who have few other assets. A mother tells her children to be “twice as good,” she tells them to be “undeniable.” My mother used to say something like it to me. And when I watch the Nicholas Brothers I think of that stressful instruction: be twice as good. The Nicholas Brothers were many, many magnitudes better than anybody else. They were better than anyone has a right or need to be. Fred Astaire called their routine in Stormy Weather the greatest example of cinematic dance he ever saw. They are progressing down a giant staircase doing the splits as if the splits is the commonsense way to get somewhere. They are impeccably dressed. They are more than representing — they are excelling. But I always think I spot a little difference between Harold and Fayard, and it interests me, I take it as a kind of lesson. Fayard seems to me more concerned with this responsibility of representation when he dances: he looks the part, he is the part, his propriety unassailable. He is formal, contained, technically undeniable: a credit to the race. But Harold gives himself over to joy. His hair is his tell: as he dances it loosens itself from the slather of Brylcreem he always put on it, the irrepressible Afro curl springs out, he doesn’t even try to brush it back. Between propriety and joy choose joy.

Among the contrasting dancing styles through which Smith examine the various stylistic, aesthetic, rhetorical, and conceptual choices a writer must make — Prince vs. Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson vs. Madonna vs. Beyoncé, Rudolf Nureyev vs. Mikhail Baryshnikov — are those of David Byrne and David Bowie, singular in the choice they illustrate by way of negative space. Smith writes:

The art of not dancing — a vital lesson. Sometimes it is very important to be awkward, inelegant, jerking, to be neither poetic nor prosaic, to be positively bad. To express other possibilities for bodies, alternative values, to stop making sense. It’s interesting to me that both these artists did their “worst” dancing to their blackest cuts. “Take me to the river,” sings Byrne, in square trousers twenty times too large, looking down at his jerking hips as if they belong to someone else. This music is not mine, his trousers say, and his movements go further: Maybe this body isn’t mine, either. At the end of this seam of logic lies a liberating thought: maybe nobody truly owns anything.

People can be too precious about their “heritage,” about their “tradition” — writers especially. Preservation and protection have their place but they shouldn’t block either freedom or theft. All possible aesthetic expressions are available to all peoples — under the sign of love. Bowie and Byrne’s evident love for what was “not theirs” brings out new angles in familiar sounds. It hadn’t occurred to me before seeing these men dance that a person might choose, for example, to meet the curve of a drum beat with anything but the matching curving movement of their body, that is, with harmony and heat. But it turns out you can also resist: throw up a curious angle and suddenly spasm, like Bowie, or wonder if that’s truly your own arm, like Byrne.

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— Published March 8, 2018 — https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/03/08/zadie-smith-dance-lessons-for-writers/ —

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aion-rsa · 8 years ago

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X-POSITION: Greg Pak Digs Deep Into Weapon X’s Deadly Mythology

ResurrXion is right around the corner, and with it comes a whole new line of X-Men comics. In addition to the flagship “X-Men Blue” and “X-Men Gold” series, the line will also feature a decidedly darker team in the book “Weapon X.” The series, which comes from writer Greg Pak and artist Greg Land, will see Old Man Logan and Sabretooth put in charge of a cutthroat team comprised of Lady Deathstrike, Domino and Warpath. Their mission: keep a new Weapon X program from destroying mutantkind.

RELATED: INTERVIEW: Greg Pak’s Weapon X Threatens Mutantkind With Extinction

This week in X-POSITION, “Weapon X” writer Greg Pak returns and answers all of your questions about Warpath’s whereabouts, Old Man Logan’s future and Weapon X’s motivation.

CBR News: Welcome back to X-POSITION, Greg! It’s been a long time and we’re glad to have you back. First up, we’ll start with a question about the series’ name from Factor.

Was the name “X-Force” ever considered for this group? I wonder what Cable would have to say about this new covert ops team…

Greg Pak: Ha! No, this was always described as a new “Weapon X” book to me. There’s obviously a big link to the “X-Force” books here, but I love that it’s a “Weapon X” book. That classic Barry Windsor-Smith “Weapon X” story is one of my favorite Marvel stories of all time, and it’s been a blast digging deep into that Weapon X mythos.

EXCLUSIVE: “Weapon X” #3 cover by Greg Land

“Weapon X” looks to be the latest in a popular line of action-packed, edgy X-books. YeahX3 has a question about how yours fits in with that history.

We’ve seen a lot of tough X-Men teams before, from Wolverine’s black ops X-Force to Magneto’s current team in “Uncanny X-Men.” I wonder if any of those runs are inspiring you for “Weapon X,” or if there’s a particular spin on the deadly X-Team that you have in mind.

All fun stories, and if you enjoy that stuff you’ll find a lot to love here. But I think the Weapon X angle brings a special nuance to this team and drives all of the motivations, relationships, and conflicts in different and interesting ways.

Next up, we have a pair of character-focused questions. The first, from James, is about X-23 and another, from Osvaldoeaf, is about Sage.

James: Will Laura [Kinney] be making an appearance in this book? On that note, is the roster set in stone, or is it a bit more fluid?

Osvaldoeaf: Back in “X-Treme X-Men,” you made so many fans happy by being the one who finally brought Sage back from editorial limbo. Can we hope to see her again in “Weapon X”?

Tackling both these questions at once… anything’s possible in the fullness of time! Each of the team members has a very specific reason for being in the book for our opening epic storyline. So folks like Laura and Sage don’t quite fit in just yet. But it’s possible the team could develop further as the series progresses. Not gonna make any promises about any specific characters at this point, but a team book like this provides a lot of possibilities.

Next up, Nix Uotan wants to now more about the book’s set-up.

What can you say about the current state of the Weapon X Program? And will we learn more about its history?

All I can say is that the Weapon X technology has been taken over and vastly improved by a classic X-Men villain. And yes, its current mission is to exterminate all mutants. You’ll learn more about exactly what its plan is in each issue. It’s all building to some pretty huge and scary revelations — dontcha dare miss it!

Considering your history writing “Alpha Flight,” Anduinel wants to to know if we’ll see the series address Weapon X’s connection to Canada.

Are we going to see Dept. H or any of the old Alpha Flight crew entangled in this incarnation of Weapon X?

Maaaaaybe?

We hope so! Moving on, Callin has a Q about the book’s art.

What’s it like teaming up with Greg Land again, so many years after working on “X-Men: Phoenix – Endsong”?

I love it! Greg and I have talked a number of times over the years about working together again, and I’m thrilled it’s finally happening. He’s doing a tremendous job. When we started, he made a special request for big, fun splashes, which I’m trying to deliver for him, and which he’s killing on every time. But I’m also so in love with the little things he’s doing. I’m trying to work in a lot of subtle moments, small, character moments that build to big things, and Greg’s just nailing them.

Your team will include a few seldom-seen mutants, including one that hasn’t played a major role in the X-Books for a while.

Warpath has been missing for a while now, (since before “AvX,” I believe). What do you think he’s been up to in his time away?

He’s been spending time in Arizona, thinking about his life and his community and trying to figure out what his next steps should be. You’ll see more in issue #2.

On a personal note, Warpath is one of my favorite X-Characters and I’m stoked to see him back. The same goes for Domino, who Kamose1234 wants to know more about.

Is there any chance you’ll revisit the romantic relationship Domino had with Logan?

Makes sense that that would come up at some point, huh? Maybe keep an eye out for issue #3.

EXCLUSIVE: “Weapon X” #3 variant cover by Dan Mora

Running through the book’s cast, here’s a question about Sabretooth from Spartan626.

Cullen Bunn has been doing a lot of great character work with Sabretooth over in “Uncanny X-Men.” His struggle with being good and his budding relationship with M don’t seem like they could be properly wrapped up in the last couple issues of that series. Will any of that be carried over? Really looking forward to this book!

It’s always a blast working with characters who have the potential to shift from hero to villain and vice versa. So yes, that’s something we’re definitely going to continue explore with Sabretooth — and with Lady Deathstrike, for that matter.

Of course, this wouldn’t be a “Weapon X” Q&A without a Logan question. Here’s Jackraow21:

Loving the cast you’ve selected, and loving the premise of this book. Can you address the rumors that the younger Logan might be coming back this year, or at least whether Old Man Logan will be headlining this book for the long haul or not? I’m pretty invested in the character at this point and he’s a big part of my interest in “Weapon X.”

Thanks for the kind words! I can’t ever address rumors, sorry. But Old Man Logan is the heart and soul of the book. If you’re an Old Man Logan fan, I think we’ve got something special for you — hope you dig it!

We’ll close out this week with an overview question from Malarque.

Are there any members of the “Weapon X” cast that you think readers should keep an eye on? Is there someone in particular that you think is going to take a star turn in this series?

Wow, that’s an interesting question! Honestly, we creators don’t always know what’s going to pop in our work and capture readers’ imaginations. Sometimes the stuff we love the most barely seems to make a mark; sometimes surprising things pop like crazy. So I can’t really predict anything — I’ll just say I’m having a huge amount of fun writing Lady Deathstrike right now — you’ll see her in the “X-Men Prime” issue in April. And I’ve really got an eye on James Proudstar, a.k.a. Warpath. He’s due for some attention, isn’t he? Excited for the chance to go a little deeper with him.

Special thanks to Greg Pak for taking on this week’s questions!

“Weapon X” #1 will arrive in stores this April. Keep checking CBR for information on the next installment of X-POSITION!

The post X-POSITION: Greg Pak Digs Deep Into Weapon X’s Deadly Mythology appeared first on CBR.com.

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euro3plast-fr · 8 years ago

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2017: the year for brands to deliver meaning as well as happiness?

Will 2017 see a revolution in the way we think of branding and brand strategy?

For many, the sound and sights of fireworks exploding on New Year’s Eve already seem a lifetime away.

Slowly but surely, marketers are getting back into the swing of the pendulum of routine marking out yet another year of deadlines and performance assessments. In the spirit of making a resolution to change, during January, some will send the odd surreptitious online application to a recruitment agency’s ‘black hole’ of resumes on sites like LinkedIn. In time-honoured tradition, many will invest in Apps which measure strides on runs, or calories at burger bars. For most January is about picking up where projects were last left.

Conventionally, campaign messages supported by features feeding into benefits… an approach that has been tried and A/B split tested for eons… centre on rewards of happiness ‘hits’ in exchange for buying a product/service.

In 2017, as political driven fears of a yet another downturn in the economy loom, big data-driven algorithms are continuing to turn ‘Creatives’ into ‘Data Scientists’ set on pounding consumers into either submission, distraction or despair. Each social message, pop-up, paid influencer video or blog … reassures and reminds that brands via PR fabricated social circles can be trusted - either directly or indirectly. Just as with Boomers, before them, Millennials are growing older and so more commercially attuned; the approach is becoming less effective. However, as the new ‘Generation Zs’ starts to flex their credit card powered wings, all is not lost.

In post-truth 2017, consumers (b2b and b2c) seek something more enduring than promised temporary ‘hits’ of happiness. They demand – and deserve sustained meaning. Whilst happiness can be measured in terms of continuous ‘hits’ of pleasure. A meaningful life is far more profound.

24/7 online instant highs could soon reach new apexes. [Reportedly Amazon is assembling a fleet of warehouse-size airships (Airborne Fulfilment Centres) that aim to drastically shorten online delivery times ).

“It is a characteristic of American culture that, again, and again, one is ordered to ‘be happy’.

But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to ‘be happy’.”

Victor Frankl (originator of Logotherapy).

Emily Esfahani Smith, author of ‘The Power of Meaning’ (published January 2017) appraised hundreds of research papers on meaningfulness, as well as classic philosophers. She notes that features of a truly meaningful life include bonding to and contributing towards something beyond the self; for example, a cause, religion, family, charity … and “yes” �� purposeful work. Importantly, meaning can’t be physically be held; it’s a state of mind. As such, meaning and happiness can go hand-in-glove.

Three states of meaning

The pull a person feels by valued goals.

The ability to understand and make sense of life experiences, incorporating them into a coherent bigger picture.

The belief that existence is substantial and appreciated.

“The meaning of life is death.”

-Sigmund Freud

Thinking about consumerism in 2017, Freud’s original grim statement (above) takes on a twist.

Whilst consumers yearn to be recognised as individuals, on the other hand, people pledge their identity towards ‘branded’ groups.

2017 consumers are trapped on a rollercoaster of branded online and offline assurances to recognise, then liberate consumers –meanwhile brands also suggest that independence, choice, value, respect, and control are best achieved through those same consumers swearing kinship to a brand’s ideals.

Insecurity over social, welfare and work balances, along with increased disillusionment in the truthfulness of leadership (commercial, social, political, cultural) has encouraged peeved consumers to make personal pilgrimages to seek a Holy Grail of meaning that delivers substantial purpose.

“I'm starting with the Man in the mirror. I'm asking him to change his ways.”

(Michael Jackson. Lyrics: Garrett and Ballard)

Following the approach of “if I am not for me – who will be – and if not now, when?” (Hillel) rather than being fashioned from pure gold, 2017’s silver electroplated chalice of legitimacy has become the unquenchable Self. Take Selfies: far more complex than ‘point, pout and press’ as part of the journey to the idealised Self, what happens after the photo is snapped is more important than the moment the picture is captured. Carefully post-pondering over every detail, people cautiously select the shots which best tell stories of authenticity and meaning - not just to peers on social media … but more importantly themselves. In fact, generally, online empowers consumers to play out and create personal brands in their own perceived self-image.

I want it ALL. I want it NOW

Beyond generational considerations, echoing the phrase ‘poverty of attention’ (coined by the Nobel prize winning psychologist Dr, Herbert Simon) a broadening congealed glut of rich information creates a scarcity of what such information consumes: attention of its recipients. (There are only so many times that groups can believe purely buying something or other for the sake of it, will ultimately lead to nirvana).

Thanks to the intensification of attention deficit and influence of NOW, there’s never been a better time for marketers to pare the process of traditional drip-by-drip long-term campaign techniques. For example, last year, on the launch of the iPhone7, a Vodafone store manager in London told me that customers no longer bothered about technical specifics of the most expensive new iPhones. Simply knowing and showing they had the latest version NOW was enough. Paying it off on credit cards dealt with potential financial worries. – Thanks to credit – like death – tomorrow never had to come.

Ripping off the brands

Back in 2015, Goldman Sachs spotted the first twitches of a trend that suggested millennials preferred clothing without labels or commercial logos. The argument went that such emblems only distracted from the wearer’s personal brand. After all, in developing a personal brand, the last thing someone wanted was to advertise some ‘Fat-Cat’ conglomerate’s ‘manufactured’ logo on their clothing and accessories. (The broad exception being global consumers convinced that the ‘cultural’ grass is always ‘greener’ or more legitimate in the ‘West’ or ‘East’ - depending on the allure of videos, images and so on… propagated by each side of the fence).

youtube

Exploiting the exploited

Recognising a market-gap created by an age of austerity where some consumers consider logos callow and bourgeoisie, during 2017 cunning discount retailers will continue their campaigns to convince consumers not simply to reject old-world brands, but embrace a new-world order of brand impersonators whose audacious look-alike packaging and promised approximation to a brand original is designed to vest the ‘savvy’ consumer ‘to give the finger’ to the original legitimate brand. (Apart from brands those whose heritage is deeply embedded in the psyche through behaviourism, for example Heinz).

Hearts, swooshes and crests on sleeves

Whilst working and middle-class behaviours are being normalised into buying discounted goods, to distinguish themselves from the hapless masses, the uber-rich are spending faster and digging deeper into their pockets to wear badges that feature traditional luxury brands. Badges of identity are just part of the opening chapter story of 2017 and consumerism. The other part returns to Freud and his morbid philosophy of life and death.

Happiness is a cigar….

All lives are the sum of moments. In the wrong hands, the constant veiled reminder that such instances are finite become weapons of influence.

Like selecting the perfect Selfie, usually the journey towards a moment of purpose is at least as important as reaching its destination. For consumers over exposed to superficial messages concentrating on happiness alone, whilst short-term ‘highs’ will continue to prolong a sense of being alive and ‘connected’, the more ‘hits’ the less the enduring the delight.

Perhaps it was Freud himself who best epitomised the use of psychological ploys to avoid death. What he spent a lifetime turning over and over in his mind turned out to be on the tip of his tongue. Freud was famed for smoking fine cigars. Mouth cancer eventually killed him.

from Blog – Smart Insights http://www.smartinsights.com/online-brand-strategy/2017-year-brands-deliver-meaning-well-happiness/

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itsfinancethings · 5 years ago

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Photograph by Angie Smith for TIME. Shi’a, left, and Jhase play with Mattel’s gender-neutral doll

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“I don’t think my son should be playing with dolls,” she continued. “There’s a difference between a girl with a truck and a boy with a Barbie, and a boy with a Barbie is a no-no.”

The only dad in the group shrugged: “I don’t know. My daughter is friends with a boy who wears dresses. I used to be against that type of thing, but now I’m O.K. with it.”

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