#i would sell some of my less important body parts for a studio version of your cover of amy aka spent gladiator

[future-crab]

I can't believe Laura Jane Grace and the Devouring Mothers made an entire album of Mountain Goats covers that (from what I can tell) never got released. Laura if you're reading this... it's not too late

EDIT: I have been informed that the entire album is available on Laura’s patreon. Life is beautiful.

[shining-magically]

so I’ve wondered this since the trailer came out years and years ago and Chloe defended the movie - was the red shoes teaser written by the same team that made the movie? were they forced to market it like that, was that based on an earlier draft, etc?? not sure if you know but you seem like the leading expert!

Sorry, this is gonna be an absolute novel because you know I’m an animation fan and the history and production of Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs is SO interesting and insane. Like, Tangled levels of insane. Thanks for calling me an expert, no one else was gonna do it so I just kind of took up the helm lol.

Here’s the low-down... The timeline of the movie’s production is an absolute mess and kind of an extremely wild ride. It was in production for ten years, went through a lot of different crew members, and went through at least two other major versions of the story before landing on the final version.

Since there’s not a ton of info on the movie’s production, a lot of this is pieced together from different interviews and context clues, and also a lot of what I’ve read and what I am quoting has been translated from Korean, sometimes pretty roughly. But yeah.

Here’s the story of why the Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs teasers and poster were so, so bad and fatshame-y and the actual movie was so, so good and body-positive. (With pictures and production artwork!)

(This is a beast of a post so I’m putting it under a cut.)

All right, so. After its conception originally as a short story by the South Korean studio Locus Creative in 2009-2010-ish, Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs was being worked on and was set to come out in Summer 2017, as evidenced by this poster at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, featuring a different logo and very different character designs for most of the dwarfs.

In early-mid 2016, the first teaser (in which we see Snow White undress and then two dwarfs recoil in horror at her fatness when she takes her magic shoes off) was released, after the film had kind of been slowly chugging along for 6 or so years. (I am having such trouble pinpointing when the second teaser was released (in which one of the dwarfs basically attacks Snow while she is sleeping to steal her shoes), but I believe it was around the same time.) The teasers didn’t get that much traction because this was a small film from a small indie studio in South Korea.

None of the final actors had been cast yet. At this point in the production, the story was different, one of the many versions that the movie went through. As in the final movie, the dwarfs were actually cursed knights/princes and Snow White switched back and forth between two body types due to her magic shoes, but in this version, the dwarfs needed to steal the shoes from her in order to break their curse (rather than needing “a kiss from the most beautiful woman in the world” like in the final movie).

The weird thing is, I believe they had JUST changed the movie’s story when the teaser came out. I’m almost positive it was released more as a proof of concept than as an actual trailer for the movie. They had just recently combined two separate characters (seen above), a typical pretty, skinny princess character (Snow White) and a cute chubby girl character (’Bonnie’), into one single character that switches back and forth between the two appearances when she wears the magic shoes (also they had just dropped literally half of the movie taking place in the real world, with a magic mirror portal, it was a whole thing). 

They didn’t have the details of this aspect of the new story hammered out yet, and the first pass at presenting Snow’s magically changing body type, was, yeah, not good and super offensive. This was a really inexperienced indie studio making their first film on a low budget, so even the animation and voice acting wasn’t great. I think they just wanted to get SOMETHING out there because it had been 6 years and they wanted to have something to show for it.

But here’s the thing. Despite how the teasers make it seem, this was always supposed to be a movie about body positivity, letting go of appearance-based prejudices, and loving yourself and others for who you are and for who they are, which we see in the final film.

I like to think of our film as a kindhearted one. Our intentions are nice.

- Director Sung-ho Hong

It’s important to keep in mind that this movie was made in South Korea by a 99% Korean crew, and, as I understand it anyway, in Korean culture, ‘fatshaming’ is not really a thing that is seen as overtly offensive. Also, children’s media there seems to have more adult things in it than in the US, which probably accounts for the more risque parts of the teasers. That said, I really believe that at this point in the timeline, the movie was on-track to be bad (or at least not very good) when it was released, and it would have ended up bad IF a few key players hadn’t signed on (which I’ll get to in a moment).

Interestingly, the movie’s producer, Sujin Hwang, said in a 2017 interview:

“[Both teasers] were solely produced to induce curiosity. They’re completely irrelevant to the actual story.”

- Producer Sujin Hwang

I think what she was trying to convey was that neither one is a scene in the actual movie, because while the teasers didn’t reflect the revamped story as it existed in summer 2017 (the time of the interview), they DID reflect the earlier version of the story where the dwarfs wanted her shoes, which is what the story was at the time they were made.

Now that we’re in post-teaser 2016, HERE’S where things start to turn around. After the teasers were released, my guy Disney veteran and native Korean��Jin Kim joined the project. He and Red Shoes director Sung-ho Hong had been buddies for about eight years and Sung-ho had been trying to get Jin to come to Seoul and work with him at Locus for a long time, and he finally succeeded.

Jin and his twenty years of Disney experience as an animator and senior designer on films like Tangled, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, and Moana, had a HUGE HUGE HUGE influence on the movie. He redesigned almost all the characters, oversaw all the visual development from the moment he signed on, and heavily (HEAVILY) supervised the animation, literally going frame-by-frame through preliminary animations and drawing over them, teaching the inexperienced animators at Locus everything he knew. (Literally almost everyone except him either only had TV experience or had no professional experience because they just gotten out of school.)

From an outsider’s perspective, it really seems as though Jin joining the project (and his gargantuan effort) made the quality SKYROCKET. Not just in character design and animation, but also in things like effects animation, story, etc. After he joined, Locus really started pushing HARD to make a good, high-quality movie, and his influence and experience from being a prominent figure at Disney was absolutely key. The studio also began to really study Disney films and other well-made animated films from other studios to really try and pinpoint what the DNA of a good animated movie really is.

I don’t have any solid evidence, but I’m pretty sure that Tony Bancroft (an animator and the co-director of Mulan) then joined the project because he’s good friends with Jin Kim. He is only credited as the voice director (the movie was recorded in English and the characters were animated to the English dialogue), but I am SURE that he probably also had a pretty big influence on the movie, because like... How could he not? I really really think there was more to his role than his title would have you believe, even though there’s almost no info out there about it.

So now the movie goes through a gigantic metamorphosis. Character designs, visual development, and animation quality are all rapidly improving, the story is tightening, and the themes of the movie (which, again, were always the same and intended to be positive) are being presented in a more sincere way. The movie is becoming the sweet, self-love-encouraging and body-positive movie that was eventually released.

I’m putting a gif from the credits of the final movie here. As we move into 2017, when the giant eruption of backlash occurred, please keep in mind that the story was finalized at this point and that THIS was the movie people were so mad about:

Chloe Grace Moretz accepted the role of Snow White immediately after she read the script and she recorded her lines (I think) in early-ish 2017. Her co-star Sam Claflin also immediately accepted the role of the romantic interest, Merlin, after reading the script and recorded his lines in (I believe) July 2017.

In the summer of 2017, the story and script were more or less the same as in the final movie. Promotional images from that time show that most of dwarfs had been completely redesigned by this point and didn’t have their teaser designs anymore.

They also released a few screenshots that look exactly like the final film. The movie was advertised as coming out in ‘2018′ at this point. Here’s a promo image from 2017 that is MUCH more tactfully worded than the infamous Cannes poster:

So now we’re in summer 2017. The Cannes Film Festival. The movie’s script and story have been basically nailed down, animation is underway, and the Korean film company Finecut is beginning to market and sell the movie to worldwide audiences. They are planning on showing some footage to potential buyers at the festival, and they make a poster to advertise the film there.

Unfortunately, it’s THIS POSTER:

Now here’s where there are some unknowns. By this point, the movie is basically in its final form, which is an adorable, body-positive story about loving people for who they are, loving yourself for who YOU are, and that provides commentary on society’s standards of beauty and how they affect how people are treated/viewed. So why this poster??? All I can really tell is that someone (I think Finecut) really, REALLY messed up and either horribly mistranslated the tagline, or didn’t do enough research to know that this kind of thing is REALLY NOT OKAY in western culture.

The above picture is shared and the internet backlash begins, fueled by tweets from prominent body-positivity activists like Tess Holliday. Even Chloe Grace Moretz speaks out against it, because she of all people KNOWS that that’s not what the movie is about. The internet then finds the old teasers from before the movie was revamped and it makes things worse. Producer Sujin Hwang profusely apologizes and says that that is NOT the message of the movie. Locus pulls the advertising campaign, and takes down the two old teasers.

“Our film, a family comedy, carries a message designed to challenge social prejudices related to standards of physical beauty in society by emphasizing the importance of inner beauty.”

- Producer Sujin Hwang

Voice director Tony Bancroft also tried to explain the situation:

“The truth is the film has a body-positive message as its core theme–it’s the opposite of what reports are saying. The problem is one poorly translated movie poster that has been taken dramatically out of context.” 

- Voice Director Tony Bancroft

And then... There was nothing for a while. The movie didn’t come out in 2018 and was delayed. From what I can tell, I DON’T believe this delay was related to the Cannes backlash. I think it was mostly due to Locus’s limited budget and resources, because as we know, animation is difficult, time-consuming, expensive, and easy to do badly but hard to do well. Also, probably with Jin Kim and Tony Bancroft’s influence, they REALLY wanted to make sure to do a good job with the animation because they now had a great story and they really wanted the movie to be a quality, worldwide hit that would kind of put South Korean feature animation on the map. Just take a look at how nice the final animation was:

The movie was released in South Korea on July 25th, 2019. Unfortunately, the damage was done in the English-speaking markets and it was not released to an English-speaking audience until June 22, 2020, when it was released digitally in the UK. At the time of this post, there is no set US release date, but the distribution rights were recently bought by Lionsgate and the MPAA gave the film an official PG rating.

So who’s to blame? There’s no good answer. You could blame Locus for making those old teasers. You could blame Finecut for the competely tonedeaf Cannes poster. You could even blame cancel culture for raging against the movie based on one poster and two old teaser trailers without researching what the movie was actually about.

All I know is, it’s a damn shame.

[watchmegetobsessed]

Our song - Harry Styles

this one was inspired by the jingleball performance bc it was pure perfection and UGHH im obsessed.

dedicated to my dear friend @dontworrysunflower

disclaimer: the song Homesick by Dua Lipa is featured in this fic as an original work of Harry and the reader, but it’s obviously an existing song, I just thought that it would be the song they write

pairing: Harry x vocalist!reader

word count: 5.3k

masterlist

You’ve felt the adrenaline rush take over your body many times in your life and they were all different in some kind of way. The one you felt when you were about to write an important test in school, the one that bubbled through your veins when you got your first kiss. The one that rolled through your limbs and chest when you first performed in front of people that weren’t your parents and the one you felt when you got the news that you were chosen to tour with none other than Harry Styles as his vocalist, singing on his stage every other night in a different city and different country.

But none of those were anything like the feeling that takes over every time you stand on that stage, your microphone that’s labelled with your name right in front of you as thousands of people are screaming in the jam-packed arena. Though it’s not you they come to see and listen to, but you are part of the magic and it’s quite enough for you.

You could never be the one standing at the front with all the lights shining down on your frame, having every gaze in the place glued to you, listening to your voice. That brings the kind of anxiety you’re quite sure you wouldn’t be able to handle. You are perfectly fine standing in the back, being the support system while staying on the down-low as someone else shines at the front, in your case, it’s Harry.

You applied for the job with a reason, already having a huge appreciation for him as an artist, adoring his work so far, especially Fine Line. Upon hearing about the opportunity to be part of his tour, you didn’t hesitate to send your application in and following three auditions, you got the phone call that they wanted you on board.

He swept you right off your feet the first time you met him, but you didn’t expect less from him. Everything you heard about him being the most wonderful person to every walk the planet were proven to be nothing but the truth. You hit it off so easily and become close through the process of rehearsals. His odd little jokes, that funny laugh of his and the way he always peeks over his shoulder to meet his eyes with yours made you fall for him faster than you’d have ever thought you could.

Just as fast as your feeling for Harry developed, tour caught up on you and before you could blink twice, you were living on the road, always dressing from your suitcase, waking up in a different city every other morning.

The foreign studio feels a little odd, but still somehow familiar as you walk in with your water and notebook under your arm. Random studio sessions with Harry became a regular not long after tour kicked off. Harry’s creative juices were overflowing and he was aching to record his creations, constantly renting random studios near the hotel you lot were staying currently and one night, when some of you all were hanging out in his suit, he asked if you’d be down helping him record vocals for a song he’s been working on.

“I want to hear it with your voice instead of mine,” he told you leaning against the wall, a glass of whatever Mitch mixed him in his hands.

“Getting bored of your own voice?” you teased him, bringing his dimples out with the smile that plastered across his lips.

“Could say that. Are you up for it?”

There was no way you would have said no. So the next morning you found yourself in a studio somewhere in Sacramento, singing the vocals to a song no one else has heard other than you and Harry.

The tour has now reached Denver, you can’t wait to be on the stage tonight, but before that, you are having another quick session with Harry in the studio.

When you walk in, his head perks up from his leather notebook he always keeps on himself, filled with his scribbled lyrics. A smile stretches across his lips when his green eyes fall on your frame.

“Hey! Hope it’s not too early for you,” he softly says standing up from the chair as you put your stuff down to the small table in the corner.

“No, managed to get a good night sleep still,” you smile at him, taking a quick look around, though this recording room is just like the others you’ve been in.

“I think I figured out that part we struggled with last time. Changed up the ending a bit, would you mind giving it another go?”

You nod looking down at his notes, seeing the changes he has made in the vocals.

“Changed anything else?” you ask as you watch him get ready for the recording.

“Yeah, rewrote a few lines, think they are fitting better now.”

“Have you recorded them yet?”

“Will do now,” he tells you shaking his head.

Soon enough you find yourself standing behind the mic, headset covering your ears as you are waiting for Harry to start recording and the music to play in your ears. Once he shows up his thumb you do the same and a moment later the song you’ve heard last time you two were working starts flowing from the headset and you stare down at the notes in front of you, waiting for the moment when you have to start singing.

It takes you a few runs to nail it down, but when you finally do, you can see the satisfied grin on Harry’s face and you think to yourself that there’s nothing you wouldn’t do to make him like this anytime.

“That was fantastic,” he beams once you join him at the screens where you see your voice appear as a pattern over a straight line. Harry does his usual magic before leaving it be. “Mind assisting recording my part?” he asks turning to you with an excited smile.

Nodding you let him tell you what to do and once he is all set behind the mic, you start the recording and the song. You listen to him in awe. There hasn’t been a moment when you didn’t feel the shiver running down your spine when he started singing. You are convinced a choir of angels is hidden in his throat, because it’s hard to believe he is just as human as everyone else.

He sings the whole song three times before he joins you again, listening back to what you have so far. The song is coming along pretty well and you can tell by the time he finishes it, it’s gonna be perfect. Everything he does is just pure perfection, whether he likes to admit it or not.

“You know how it would be absolutely perfect?” he asks you on your way back to the hotel. The two of you grabbed a coffee as well, so now you’re sipping on the hot drink, enjoying the somewhat sunny weather.

“Hm?”

“I think it would be best if a female voice sang the whole thing and the male was just the vocal.”

“Who do you think would fit best for it then?” you ask, immediately thinking of singers that could be perfect for the song. It wouldn’t be the first time Harry would sell a song to someone else, so you’re not surprised he is thinking about this kind of change.

“Y/N, I found the voice already,” he chuckles and you give him a puzzled look. “You. You are singing the song, I don’t need anyone else.”

“I’m not a solo singer,” you protest.

“There’s no such thing as solo or not solo. You’re a singer and a bloody good one. I want you to sing it.”

“But it would go to waste, because I would never actually perform it.”

“How are you so sure about that?” he smirks slyly at you, immediately making you nervous.

“Harry, I don’t sing solo,” you shake your head stubbornly, but he rolls his eyes at you.

“You could just try it. Let’s just record the song next time with you in the lead and then we can talk about the rest.”

“I’m fine recording, but I will never perform it,” you tell him, but his look makes you think he has other plans.

When tour reaches Dallas, the song gets a version with you singing solo and Harry doing the vocals in it. And though you had doubts about the switch, listening back to it you can tell how much it helped. It really is better with a female voice, though you are still convinced it shouldn’t be you.

“Are you sure you don’t want to sell it to someone? I’m fine with that,” you ask him before the show in Dallas. You’re sitting on the table in his dressing room while he is painting his nails, his tongue poking out in concentration.

“I told you, I like it with your voice. Why is that so hard to believe?”

“Because I’m not a—“

“Fuck’s sake if you dare to tell me one more time that you’re not a solo singer, I’m firing you, Y/N!” he snaps, giving you a hard look, but you just laugh at his temper.

“It’s the truth.”

“Have you ever tried to go solo?”

“Not for years,” you admit and watch him screw the nail polish closed, pushing it aside, his hands lying flat on the table as he is carefully waiting for them to dry.

“So then how do you know you are no good at it?”

“Because I hated it back then, so I most likely would hate it now as well,” you state matter-of-factly, but Harry doesn’t seem amused by your answer.

“So you think you haven’t changed a bit in years? I hope you know that’s absolute bollocks.”

“Why are you so keen on making me sing solo?” you sigh, giving him a tired look. It feels like the two of you have been running the same circles since forever. It’s not his first attempt to get you sing more than just the vocals, he once wanted to do a cover and needed a partner because it was a duet and begged you for weeks to sing with him, but you didn’t give in. You just couldn’t.

“Because I think that you are a talented singer and I want you to feel the adrenaline rush performing gives you.”

“I do get that rush every time I sing behind you. That’s enough for me.”

Harry shakes his head pressing his lips tight together.

“That’s not the same as being in the lead. It’s a whole different world.”

“Yeah, one that makes me shit my pants,” you chuckle and he can’t push a smile back.

“Maybe we should just work on it. Your anxiety. I think we could actually make you feel better if we tried.”

“I still don’t know where this obsession with me being solo comes for you.”

Harry stands up, takes one last look at his nails before he steps closer smiling down at you softly and you bite into your bottom lip, realizing how close he is standing to you. His fingers tap in your cheek gently, running them down to your chin as he tilts your head up a bit.

“Just accept it, Love,” he smiles softly before stepping away and carrying on with his routine.

That evening, you stand at the back with the other two vocalists, eyes glued to Harry’s figure at the front of the stage, you watch him pour his soul out to the audience, interact with them and reach that state of mind you have never been able to get into. You know what he told you about performing is true, yet you are still terrified to do it yourself. It’s too nerve wrecking to have everyone look at and listen to you, so many chances to mess it up and make a fool out of yourself.

But when Harry’s eyes meet yours and he shoots you a warm smile, something shifts in you. The urge to have this connection with not just the audience and the song, but with him takes over your whole body and you make up your mind to at least give it a try.

Harry is ecstatic when you tell him later that night that you changed your mind. You see that sparkle in his eyes and it was already worth for you, just seeing him react like that.

“Though I have a few suggestions to change the lyrics.”

“You do?” he asks, seemingly surprised, but mostly amused that you had the balls to come out with it.

“Yeah. Just some tiny details.”

“Why haven’t you told me about these before?”

“Because it was your song. But if you want me to sing it, it has to be mine as well.” Harry stares back at you with a smile that’s filled with pride and joy, making your heart flutter in your aching chest as you think about performing solo.

“Our song,” he softly says nodding his head.

Arriving to Houston the two of you are quick to book a studio and work on the song. Harry lets you make any changes you desire on the lyrics, even says you did justice to it and that you should have spoken up earlier about your ideas. And then you record it.

It’s not that you have to sing the whole song and not just the vocals this time. You are completely fine with Harry hearing you sing, it’s the thought of performing it in front of anyone that’s not him, that’s what makes you turn into a wreck.

You record Harry’s vocals and once it’s all put together, you are blown by the outcome. You wouldn’t have thought Harry’s voice as the vocal would compliment you in the lead, but it’s just absolutely perfect and even you can’t find anything wrong with it.

“Love, this is what Heaven sounds like, I’m telling you,” he smirks at you from the chair beside you, playing the song for the tenth time, not able to get enough of the final product.

“You are so cheesy,” you shake your head, but feel the blush heating up your cheeks. His eyes linger on you a little longer before he turns back to the screen.

When the song is over he finally stops is so silence comes over the studio. Harry turns back to face you, his green eyes basically burning a hole into your head.

“So, when are we going to perform it?”

“I really don’t think it’s a good idea,” you sigh looking down at your hands fumbling with your shirt.

“And I do think it is. So I’m not stopping until you at least try it.”

Harry Styles gets what he wants. Always. And this time, no matter how hard you try to resist him, you just can’t deny this from him. Though it takes him time to talk you up, in Washington he finally gets you to give it a try in an empty stadium.

Most of the crew is out, since the building has been finished about half an hour before, so everything is perfectly set for tonight’s show when you walk out to the stage, following Harry in his heels. He asked the piano to be brought to the front along with a mic on it and another one on a stand next to it. The two of you quietly put on your earpieces, doing everything as if it was a usual occasion before a concert, only that this time the roles will be entirely switched.

“It’s fine, alright? No one is around,” he tells you when he sees how nervous you are to sing the song for the first time outside a studio.

“There are some backstage,” you mumble under your breath, not expecting him to do anything about it.

But he does. You watch him walk backstage, completely dumbfounded about what he is doing. He disappears from your sight and a few moments later you hear him shouting at the back.

“No one comes to the stage until I say so! Yea? Thanks!” he orders and then walks back as if he didn’t just boss around the whole crew.

“They will think you’re some kind of crazy celebrity,” you chuckle when he returns, a small smirk playing on his pink lips.

“Don’t care, Darling. Now sing you heart out for me.”

Harry sits on the piano bench, his fingers getting settled on the keys before he looks up to meet your anxious eyes.

“It’s alright. Just you and me, yea?”

Nodding you gulp hard and jump a little when he starts playing the melody the two of you have been working on for so long. You hear all the notes and you know you have to start singing, but you miss the opening. Harry stops and looks at you, as you move your eyes down to the ground, ashamed you messed up immediately.

“S-Sorry, I just—“

“How can I help?” he asks right away, not even caring about the fact that you messed up, focused on figuring out a way that would help you.

“I don’t know. I really don’t,” you sigh, feeling your nerves getting worse with each passing moment.

“Come sit next to me,” he then tells you motioning for you to join him on the bench.

“What?”

“Take your mic and sit next to me,” he repeats, scooting over to make you space. Hesitantly, you pull the mic out of the stand and walking over you sit next to him. “Now you are not in the center. Just listen to the music, watch my hands on the keys, okay?”

You nod, running your tongue over your dry lips as you hold the mic to your mouth before Harry starts playing again.

After the first few notes you close your eyes and when it’s time for you to start singing, Harry leans a little against you, giving you a kind of push to just do it. And it works.

It feels a little as if it’s not even you who starts singing, but it is. Your voice fills the empty arena along with the piano’s melody and keeping your eyes closed a little longer you let your mind settle. When the first verse ends you open them and watch his hands work on the keys, right as he starts singing the vocals, leaning a little forward so his voice reaches his mic.

It’s different. It’s electric and freeing, hear your voice through the massive speakers, to be in the lead and have Harry be just the support in the song. But it feels so right, better than anything you’ve ever felt.

Line after line, you hit all the notes and by the end of the song you are able to strip all your fears down and give yourself over to the music completely. As you sing the last few notes you feel Harry’s eyes on you and turning to face him, you are met with his warm, pride-filled smile and bright eyes, glued to you while his fingers press down the last notes.

The music dies down, the voice of the piano vibrates in the air a little longer until it completely disappears and the silence returns into the stadium.

“Love,” Harry quietly calls out for you and you turn completely towards him. “That was absolutely perfect.”

“You think so?” you ask, voice barely more than just a whisper, your eyes never leaving his gaze.

“I know so,” he huffs, smile widening. He brings an arm around your shoulders and pulls you into a hug, pressing a lingering kiss to your forehead as you let out a breath you’ve been holding in for way too long.

He doesn’t try to make you perform that evening, knowing well it was enough for one day, but he does make you sing it with him in each city in the upcoming weeks. Before every concert, he empties out the area around the stage and the two of you sit down at the piano, singing your song until you feel comfortable enough to stand next to the instrument instead of sitting next to him.

The tour reaches New York and Madison Square Garden is getting ready to host Harry Styles for two evenings. The place is massive and you find yourself sitting at the edge of the stage when Harry emerges from backstage.

“Looks wild, right?” he asks sitting next to you, his thigh brushing against yours as he gets seated.

“Yeah. Pretty amazing.”

“This place has the most magical vibe.” “Yeah?” Turning to him you watch him take the arena in, his eyes glistening at the sight in front of him. You know it’s not his first time performing here, but it’s nice to see the excitement in his eyes regardless.

That feeling returns to your chest, the one you felt when Harry told you he wanted you to sing the song. The urge to be part of this amazing something that’s so much bigger than you.

“H?”

“Yea?” he turns to you smiling.

“Can I… Do you think we could sing our song tonight?”

You watch the pure surprise and excitement wash over his face, his smile stretching across his face as he stares back at you in awe.

“You want to sing it?”

Shyly, you nod your head and in a heartbeat his arms lock around you, pulling you into the tightest hug. The two of you almost fall off the stage, laughing together at his dramatic reaction.

“Of course we can sing it, Love. Would be an honor!”

Harry is quick to let the band know about the addition for tonight’s set and though everyone seems surprised, they are all supportive about your solo. As the time goes and the concert gets closer, you can feel the nerves building up and soon enough, you start to doubt your choice to sing the song tonight.

Right before it’s time to go on stage Harry takes your hand and pulls you aside, taking your face in his hands gently, making you look into his eyes.

“I know you are doubting yourself, but just know that I’m very proud of you, even if you decide to not sing the last minute.”

“I could do that?” you whisper, your hands finding his sides and you let them rest on him, a way to ground yourself in the windwhirl of your thoughts.

“Of course. I wouldn’t want to make you do something you don’t really want. Though I know you will be amazing if you choose to sing.”

Nodding you let a weak smile appear on your lips and you notice as his eyes flicker down to them before he moves his gaze up to your eyes. He then pulls you into a proper hug before walking back to the rest of the band and vocalists.

Everything goes as usual and once again, you can’t take your eyes off Harry on the stage. Just watching him perform fills you up with life, enough to keep you from running away. About halfway into the set, as the crowd is still cheering after the previous song, Harry jogs over to you.

“You ready?” he asks over the noise and before you could think about it, you nod your head.

Two guys from the crew pushes the piano further to the front and they help to set everything up as you awkwardly stand at the side. Once your mic is in the stand you walk over there, heart hammering in your chest, hands shaking like crazy.

“I have a special song for you tonight,” Harry announces into the microphone as he makes his way over to the piano. “Please welcome the lovely Y/N here, who is gonna enchant you with a song we’ve been working on lately.”

The crowd screams and you allow yourself to look around with a weak smile. So many people, you think to yourself, everyone watching you.

“It’s called Homesick, and it means so much to us, so we hope you’ll like it Justas much as we do,” Harry adds before settling on the bench and his eyes find yours. “I’m proud of you,” you see him say, only able to read his lips since the crowd is screaming so loud. “Ready?” he asks and you nod, taking a shaky breath.

He sends you a warm comforting smile before glancing down at the keys and then he starts playing. 

Just like the first time, you close your eyes, forcing yourself to focus on the melody and nothing else. The lump in your throat is quite uncomfortable, but you open your eyes and see that Harry is looking straight at you, nodding in encouragement, as his fingers push down the keys to the notes right before you have to start.

“Here, where the sky’s falling, I’m covered in blue, I’m running and I’m crawling, fighting for you…”

Harry smiles wide when your voice flows through the speakers, filling the whole place, making everyone go quiet in a heartbeat as the song carries on. You feel your chest slowly deflating, the nerves cooling down with each sung note.

“You give me a reason, something to believe in, I know, I know, I know. You give me a meaning, something I can breathe in, I know, I know, I know…”

The chorus comes out perfect, your voice melting together with the piano and you finally feel your muscles relax as you slowly let go of every toxic thought that’s been tainting your mind. Harry leans closer to his microphone and his voice gently joins yours in the next verse.

“There’s a crack in my window, a bird in my room, angels all over that watch over you…”

Chills run down your spine hearing his voice, your eyes never leaving his gaze that’s fixated on your standing figure. You get lost in him and the song, something that came from the both of you, a piece of you and him. Standing there, singing this piece makes you feel closer to him than ever and you desperately want this feeling to last forever, hoping the song never ends though you know it’s gonna happen.

“When I’m walking on water all my dreams have come true. Still nothing means nothing without you…”

Homesick is exactly the feeling that bubbles inside you when you think of Harry. Because there’s this man you love so much, who is a home away from home to you, yet you still feel like you can’t be home entirely. Not in the way you’d want to. But standing on the stage in the spotlight, singing together with him as thousands of people are watching the two of you, yet you still manage to forget about them, for a moment, you feel like you finally arrived home. You are there, with him.

“Tell my heart to lie, but I know deep inside it’s true. That I wish I was there with you. That I wish I was there with you, oh I wish I was there with you.”

He plays the end of the song without tearing his eyes away from you, and there’s just a heartbeat of silence before the crowd starts screaming deafeningly, but that short moment… is yours and his.

Tugging your hair behind your ears with your shaky hands, your eardrums on the verge of breaking as you let out a laugh that was kind of a sob as well, relief washing over your body. Harry is quick to jump to his feet and rushing over he envelopes you in a tight hug.

“I’m so so so proud of you, Love. You were everything!” he mumbles, arms holding you so tight you almost lose your breath, but you want him this close, or even closer. You need to feel him, because it doesn’t feel real. His hold brings you a sense of existence only he can give you.

“Thank you, Harry,” you breathe out when he pulls back to look into your eyes, the screaming hasn’t died down even a tad little.

“No, thank you, Darling. You shined like the star that you are,” he grins, playing a sloppy kiss to your cheek before his arms fall off you.

You’d die to stay in this moment a little longer, but the show must go on. The crew pushes the piano back and soon enough, the next song starts. You stay in your spot for the rest, but you keep catching Harry smiling in your way, always making you blush.

The end of a concert is always a little hectic, everyone is all over the place. Still coming off the high you just experienced, you head to the dressing room you share with the other vocalists. They are going on and on about how amazing Homesick was, and you somehow still can’t believe tonight happened. Packing your stuff you barely notice that the door flies open, but you see Harry appear from the corner of your eye.

“Ladies, would you please give me a moment with Y/N?” he asks and the girls are quick to leave the two of you alone. You stand there, kind of dumbfounded, not sure why he is acting so dramatic. Once the door closes and it’s just you and him, he stares at you, chest heaving, his hair wet from his sweat, but he still looks breathtaking.

“Harry—“

“I’m gonna kiss you now,” he cuts you off, your breath gets caught in your throat as you stare back at him, completely frozen. Opposite to what he just said, he remains standing in the same spot and you’re not sure what’s happening. “Can I? Please say yes, I can’t hold myself back for any longer,” he then adds.

“Yes,” you breathe out without even thinking about it. In a heartbeat, Harry crosses the room, chest smashing against yours as he wraps his arms around you, lips crashing onto yours in a kiss that almost makes you moan into his mouth.

It’s all a hot mess, teeth clashing, hands all over each other before his palms run down to the back of your thighs, urging you to jump. When you do, you wrap your legs around his waist and let him walk over to the table nearby, so he can place you on top, standing between your thighs as he keeps kissing you hungrily, his tongue melting together with yours in this sweet chaos. It keeps going on and on, neither of you wanting to let go of the other, but you are eventually forced to stop, coming short of air. Panting wildly, lips swollen from his kisses, you look at him to meet his gaze.

“You have no idea how hard it was to stop myself from kissing you on stage.”

“What?” you breathe out.

“Y/N, I’m fucking crazy about you and seeing you come over your stage fright, sing that song… our song, fuck, that did some unbelievable things to me. Please tell me you felt the same thing!” He is begging, not just with his words, but with his eyes as well and it crushes your soul entirely.

“I did. Harry, I always do when I’m with you.”

“Fucking Hell,” he breathes out before kissing you again. “You are… everything, Love,” he mumbles against your lips and you can’t push down the smile stretching across your face, hearing him say the same words he said right after the song.

“You’ve told me that,” you tease him, his gaze meeting yours as he flashes you his famous half-smirk, heart fluttering at the sight of him.

[dokidokivisual]

Gochiusa BLOOM episode 1 impressions

Ok, now that some time has passed let’s look at the long awaited first episode of the third season of Gochuumon wa usagi desu ka? aka Is the order a rabbit? in detail. I spent a lot of time on this, so any feedback would be appreciated.

The opening scene of the season is a sendback to opening scenes of the first two seasons. The episode starts as usual with a several establishing shots of the setting, which is based on various European towns, mostly in Alsace region. This shot in particular is based on Little Venice area in Colmar which I have visited a few years ago.

Then we see Aoyama Blue Mountain going through the town and ending up by the Rabbit House sign. Previously Cocoa and Chino were shown in a similar situation. However the road seems to have been repaved between season 2 and 3 (probably because a different studio is making the backgrounds now).

After the opening sequence ends, we see the title card and... no opening? Well, this is different. Anyway, the story starts and as was expected it’s based on the first chapter of volume 5. We see the staff of Rabbit House trying various measures to resist summer heat, and eventually deciding to create new, less stuffy uniforms.

On the way to the store Rize has to carry everybody and then fight through the crowds. Understandably even she has her limits. But then, a wild Sharo appears! I thought this scene had pretty cool animation.

Then the girls go to acquire fabrics for the vests, however they can’t find Cocoa’s signature pink color. Cocoa proposes this sequin fabric, which might be the sparkliest object I’ve seen in anime. It’s quite impressive how it was animated too. Unfortunately Chino hates it.

After that Chino’s concept for the summer uniform is revealed. What I find interesting here is that in manga this drawing was black and white, and the label “pink” was actually useful, but now it’s colored and the label is redundant.

Shortly after we get introduced to a new character? Which happens to be just a random background girl playing as Phantom Thief Lapin. An interesting bit of foreshadowing, but possibly confusing for those who only follow the anime?

The scene that follows features an amazing ad-lib (perhaps?) from Cocoa

なんとかなーる (somehow it will happen) どこかにあーる (somewhere it exists)

In the manga Cocoa only says the first line, but now it rhymes and allows the characters to think about where it might be. A sudden realization comes to Cocoa and she starts rummaging through Rabbit House’s storage room.

Here the story naturally links up with volume 5 chapter 9 (the brocante/flea market chapter), as Cocoa discovers various items that junk up the place. Anyway she finds up the exactly right fabric and we get a glimse at “nice body Cocoa” 10 years in the future, as though she will still be wearing the same outfit and working in Rabbit House for 10 years. By the way, the manga will reach 10 years of continous publication in May 2021, so at least from our point of view she has been working there for almost 10 years.

After a brief intermission with Takahiro and Tippy (I actually laughed at the bake-usagi joke) we move on to the B part. At the flea market (with 100% female attendance for some reason), Cocoa, Chino and Rize set up a stall. Sharo is also there, and her obsession with ceramics is recalled, while Chiya helps her carry the purchases. This scene is expanded compared to the yonkoma version with Chiya displaying some gray (green?) morality by blaming Sharo for caring more about the cup than Chiya. The original joke in the manga was that Sharo desperately jumps for the cup despite saying how she can’t be unladylike in the presence of fine china just before that.

Next scene is a bit of a cultural reference to “tataki-uri” sale. Here’s a video of a guy selling bananas in this style with a help of harisen in Osaka. Harisen is an important prop in Manzai-style comedy, where “straight man” of a duo (tsukkomi) often slaps “funny man” (boke) with it. Seeing as Sharo is usually in tsukkomi role, her lack of “my harisen” is surprising to Chiya.

One of the most impactful scenes of the episode is when Chino meets a lost child and makes her stop crying using her old rabbit toy. This is another scene that got expanded compared to the manga, showing how Chino overcomes her shyness and how compassionate she can be. The fact that she gives away the toy for free is also original, the mother actually bought it in the manga.

Next there’s a scene about Chiya trying on a shirt she bought from Rize. This scene is interesting because the anime adaptation cuts some dialogue from the manga where it was revealed that the clothes Sharo wears are actually hand-me-downs from Chiya. As a result Cocoa tries to give hand-me-downs to Chino, and then when she asks for Chino’s clothes to wear, Chino’s reply that “it would be just an exchange” actually makes sense. Is it just me, or the same reply doesn’t make sense when all hand-me-downs dialogue is cut out?

Now we move on to the final(?) scene where Cocoa reveals that she bought the magic set herself. Cocoa even tells us the moral of the story about how things have their own history. Cut to the scene where she demonstrates her magic skills for the first time. Even those who didn’t read the manga probably expected her to fail at this point, and she does indeed fail the cane trick. But then... something magical happens.

We see Chino (still wearing Cocoa’s hand-me downs) staring enthralled as Cocoa prepares her next trick, with other girls chatting in the background. We now see Chino’s point of view. Everything but Cocoa disappears, she’s now in a magical BLOOM dimension where it’s only two of them. Flowers spring from Cocoa’s magic hat, petals flutter in the air and the camera zooms on Chino, who is absolutely amazed by it all.

And then it transitions onto the opening sequence! Wow, I did not expect that. Mostly because the flowers trick failed in the manga. But also such a strong allusion to Cocoa kind of being like a mother figure for Chino. In this moment Cocoa is Saki (=BLOOM). I mean, you can interpret it differently, I don’t know.

But this is not all. After the opening there’s a C part, which is really a continuation of the A part. Such “sandwich” composition has been employed before in season 2 episodes 1 and 12 for example. Cocoa shows off her summer uniform which is pretty similar to the original uniform to the point where I’ve seen people saying stuff like “hope they’ll show the summer uniforms in the next episode”. This is it, this is the summer uniform:

This is also a callback to when Cocoa wears the uniform for the first time in season 1 episode 1, with Rize and Chino’s responses being the same. This is lampshaded in the episode itself though.

Since the opening theme serves as the ending theme for this episode, the actual ending theme (Nakayoshi! Maru! Nakayoshi! by Chimame-tai)  will likely be shown in the next episode. Not to break from the tradition, the next episode “preview” is a scene with Takahiro and Tippy, who deploy some amusing meta-commentary this time around. The next episode seems like it might have Phantom Thief Lapin in it, based on the title, so I better get my Lapin figure ready.

So that was the event-packed first episode of Gochiusa BLOOM. I think it might be one of the best episodes in the series so far, and the key drawings by the new studio are so beautiful, I couldn’t stop screenshotting it on my first watch. What did you think of the episode? It’s kinda hard to find any decent Gochiusa discussion out there... Please look forward to the next episode and my review of it!

[ryanmeft]

Movie Review: Dolittle

Dolittle, the latest resurrection of a rusting brand, has exciting stunts, gags that mostly land, a wonderfully designed Victorian-adventure world, and an angry pirate played by Antonio Banderas. One should never underestimate the value of an angry pirate. Robert Downey Jr. returns to playing a seat-of-his-pants adventurer after several years being absorbed in an increasingly-too-serious superhero role. It’s a splash of cinematic color and verve for the gray winter months.

The plot is fodder for an adventure. John Dolittle was famous and beloved for being able to talk to animals, and his wife Lily (Kasia Smutniak) was equally admired for her adventurous prowess (we are dealing, clearly, with an alternate Victorian period in which women would be cheered for riding on hippos). His wife left on an quest, died at sea, and he has now retreated to a sprawling estate granted them by the queen (Jessie Buckley). He sees no humans, and lives out his days in squalor and dissoluteness with his animal companions, whose languages he speaks. That’s until his most trusted friend, a parrot named Polynesia (Emma Thompson) leads a sensitive boy named Stubbins (Harry Collett) to Dolittle with a squirrel he accidentally shot. They are soon followed by Lady Rose (Carmel Laniado), a princess who seeks the doctor’s help for the sick queen. This leads him, Stubbins in tow as his self-appointed apprentice and his menagerie along for the ride, on an adventure to find a miraculous fruit which can cure Her Majesty. He’s got to contend along the way with a crooked and ambitious old schoolmate named Blair (Michael Sheen), who is working for a high-placed politician (Jim Broadbent) who would rather the queen did not recover.

The Dolittle series of books---written by Hugh Lofting from 1920 to 1947---concern an older protagonist, one who, in the illustrations, is a distinguished older gentleman with plain looks. This has of course been changed for the movie, primarily based on the second book, though few will be aware of it, as the series has rather fallen off of children’s required reading lists. Downey, who at 54 is very much at an age where he could play a refined country doctor, has his years de-emphasized by makeup and costuming to, I would guess, about his thirties. His version of the character is more than a little inspired by his steampunk take on Sherlock Holmes: he dresses in a shabby coat that is never buttoned, does almost everything with a decided flourish, and regains a little of the wink-and-nod facial and body language he had in his early turns as Iron Man before that became a Very Serious Character. Unlike Holmes and Tony Stark, he is not at all confident in success, being quite shaken by his loss. Dolittle is very pointedly a person children can admire, able to own mistakes and comfort others, the typical Downey persona made palatable for any age. Blair, his opponent, is well-matched. He’s an arrogant, pompous man who envies Dolittle’s success and offbeat charms, and wants to destroy him because he cannot be him. All this, of course, is done with a light touch that, to slide in at a PG rating, avoids the trickier potential aspects of the characters, but they do not feel cloying, so it passes that test. My favorite small role goes to Banderas, whose antagonistic pirate rules an Ottoman-like city of thieves, the adventures at which locale are the film’s highlight.

The movie’s big selling point, of course, and the thing that needs to work, are the animals. Frankly, some sort of award should be on offer for the person responsible for training them, as they do things I’ve never seen animals do in movies, such as talk and take therapy lessons. In addition to Emma Thompson as Dolittle’s right-hand bird, other important animals include a cowardly lion, er, ape (Rami Malek), the squirrel Dolittle saves (Craig Robinson) who believes Stubbins wants to finish the job, a duck (Octavia Spencer) who can’t tell a piece of celery from a pair of forceps, an ostrich (Kumail Nanjiani) who serves as Dolittle’s cranky steed, a polar bear (John Cena), a giraffe (Selena Gomez), a criminally-minded fox (Marion Cotillard) and a detective dog who wears glasses (Tom Holland). It’s fair to question whether the movie needed to balloon the budget with so many high-profile voice actors, but that’s a question for the accountants. What matters is that I found the antics of these animals thoroughly enjoyable, from a godfather impression done by ants to Cotillard the fox’s jail break. Like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, a big part of the success in having so many animated characters on screen with actors who must interact with a green screen is that Downey, in particular, never once behaves as though they are anything but very real. Visually, they occupy the same space that the humans do, and if one of them must carry a human or crash into them or land on their arms, it is fully believable. The best animal “actor” by far is a neuroses-laden killer tiger voiced by Ralph Fiennes, who Dolittle must outwit.

Less impressive are the two teen characters, who are in the film so that small children may relate to it but who get little of great interest to do. Stubbins has no real plot arc, and with respect to the 16-year-old Collett, it is simply impossible to gauge by this where his talents as an actor will lie. Where the screenplay gives a lot of heart and purpose to Dolittle and the animals and some wonderful scene-chewing to Sheen, it seems completely unable to find anything to do with Rose or Stubbins. Notably, Laniado is somewhat more engaging, but the story leaves her behind to care for the ailing queen, and since Lily is only seen in the occasional flashback, this leaves the movie both without a heroine and without an engaging child character to balance Dolittle out. The screenplay was written by director Stephen Gaghan (Syriana), and initially Dan Gregor and Doug Man from a story by Thomas Shepherd before having the comedy elements tweaked by Chris MacKay during re-shoots. This sounds like a few too many onions in the soup, yet the only time I felt the weight of it was with these two characters. Yes, the plot is also rather throwaway, but I didn’t feel it hurt the film---if we’re going to start talking about plots in swashbuckling adventure movies, we may as well just quit while we’re ahead.

I should own something while I’m here: like westerns, I’m prone to giving fanciful adventure movies the benefit of the doubt. Whales pulling 19th century sailing ships and intimate surgeries that must be performed on fire-breathing dragons voiced by Frances De La Tour are just the kinds of things I long to see in an age where just letting go and letting imagination take over is anathema to increasingly risk-averse studios. A lesser plot keeps Dolittle from standing alongside Holes or the Paddington films in the pantheon of live-action family adventures, but there’s enough fun to be found here for those adults who fancy that animals speak to us.

Verdict: Recommended

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

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 All images are property of the people what own the movie.

[weaselle]

I got asked in my DMs to elaborate on my master project, so, just know if you click the read more, it’s gonna be like, a LONG ass read

(in b4: when I say things like “the poor” rest assured I am also “the poor” and not trying to feed into classist designations - I just need to be able to talk about different economic demographics. Also, I’ve pulled together several pieces of writing that cover this very involved endeavor for this ask, so there may occasionally be a slight overlap of information, tho I have tried to clean it up)

@victorylilygreen (lol, you asked)  @ekinsellaauthor (idk I thought you might be interested)

______________________________________________________________________

I have a plan to provide solutions to the socio-economic crisis facing this country. As I put this together over a couple of decades, it was important for me to not be telling people how they have to live, but rather provide them the tools they need to decide for themselves how to live. This plan then, is more like a mutable format, the first iteration of which provides the example and proof of concept. Then, when people see a successful solution available, they will be sure to copy it -- because this piece of social engineering is meant to be self replicating this way, I often refer to it as a socio-economic worm First, a breakdown of how I arrived at my plan:

The fundamental questions at the base of my attempts at large scale socio-economic fixes are:

1- Since every current system in our society is dysfunctional or corrupt, how can a single simple solution address the entire tangled web of institutions that effect every part of our human lives -- from agriculture, to rent, to wages, to government, to education, to the textile and clothing industry -- it's all problematic and needs to change.

2 - Since we can assume the wealthy will never help change the status quo, how can we get the middle class to pay the poor to create alternatives to current corrupt systems? in other words, how can we free time and money in the economy such that doctors and lawyers and computer techs can pay cashiers and gardeners and cooks to create banks and homes and grocery stores so we can bankrupt Wells Fargo and Century Real Estate and Whole Foods?

And the first answer is, we can create a simple solution that addresses all of it by bringing all that under one roof, for one small group of people, and addressing that microcosm in a way that is replicable by other small groups, as well as able to be scaled up such that it is applicable to the larger society.

To answer the second question, we have to create a situation where the poor are making more money than they currently do. And they need to do this by providing more of what the middle class need (for less money than the middle class currently spends on it) This will provide some immediate relief for the poor while freeing up money in the middle class to fund the larger solutions.

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Since we can't create money from nothing, one way to accomplish that is: instead of the poor making more money, the base concept of socio-economic organization of individuals has to change such that it lowers the cost of living for the poor. Lowering the cost of living accomplishes many of the same things as increasing wages. And we have to do that while engaging in providing more of what the middle class needs for less money that they currently pay.

Therefore, we need to identify what the middle class needs. A fundamental problem facing the middle class is that raising a family and running a household and earning enough money to pay for it all is a full time job for three to five adults, and they are trying to do it with two. Which is a major problem for the poor also. What the middle class is trying to do about it is what the poor cannot: buy themselves more time, literally. They pay someone to clean their house, they pay someone to watch their kids, they pay someone to maintain their garden, they pay for food that requires less and less time to prepare or they order to go food. They pay a dry cleaner or laundry service to wash their clothes. If they can afford enough of these things, they wind up with as much left to do as 2 people have time for.

The important thing to realize here is that these chores are the genesis of the necessary institutions that have become corrupt or dysfunctional. Everything a household or family needs is a microcosm of the larger industries and institutions. For example, paying someone to take care of your children is the seed of a school. Paying someone to prepare your meal is the seed of food industry - if you pay them enough to prepare you enough food, it becomes more cost effective to start producing the ingredients or getting them directly from the source. Paying an accountant to do your taxes or getting help with budgeting etc, grows into a bank. Paying someone to wash your clothes is the seed of the clothing industry - soon they can offer repairs, replacing buttons, fixing burst seams, from there alterations and tailoring follow... This is how the poor will be paid to grow new institutions to replace current problematic systems.

SO. Low-income workers need to organize into cooperative communities that leverage group dynamics to lower costs. If four families live together, they don't need to buy four toolbox sets, they can buy one and share. 10 families worth of food bought in bulk costs much less than 10 individual families buying food at the grocery store. Heating a single large building and splitting the bill is much more cost-effective than paying to heat individual housing units. And when one such group is shown to provide solutions and success, other groups will inevitably come together and copy it on their own, unprompted.

AND once they are organized this way, they should offer those services the middle class are trying to use as stop gaps - the chores the middle class are buying themselves out of. The best way to do this is buy creating the solutions to the chore/time crunch for their own community, and then selling those solutions to the middle class. In other words, someone needs to do the house cleaning, the laundry, the cooking, the gardening etc for the building they all live in, and then they can go on to sell that service to middle class households.

They need to do this for less money than the sum of those things currently costs, which can be accomplished via two techniques. The first is simply by bringing all those services under one roof. When the gardener and the housecleaner are arriving in the same company vehicle, the consumer is getting passed less in gas and vehicle maintenance costs, and so on.

The second way is to identify the one or two most needed, most expensive services, and find a way to lower costs for just those services significantly. Maybe something like babysitters that function as small, suburban neighborhood daycares during peak daycare hours, and the babysitters would fill the rest of their work week elsewhere in the company.

Now! We have the poor with a lower cost of living, providing relief services to the middle class in a way designed to grow into the new food production, the new clothing industry, new banks, new schools, new hospitals... and when you have all these things, you can make whole cities that are largely autonomous. Again the concept is to bring under one roof smaller versions of all the needed things in life that have become the large problematic systems that currently exist, giving citizens the real power to either force those institutions to change, or replace them. When you have new cities, they can demand or create much larger change in government, in power production, in raw material sourcing for things like lumber and fuel. And hey can be built on purpose, instead of the chaotic haphazard growth typical of current cities. If citizens want to live sustainable, socially progressive lifestyles, it behooves them to live in municipalities explicitly designed to facilitate that.

This is my solution.

It starts with a single building. A single community. I have planed the building and community, budgeted it, designed it to be able to grow into these larger solutions. I have started the procedure to create it, taken the first small steps.

step One A: Creative Suite (already working with a small team on this)

My plan is to run several big fundraisers over the next year and partner with an SF Bay Area municipality (probably Oakland) to open a public arts production center by converting a warehouse.

The purpose would be to have a creative recreation suite with communal equipment and spaces, such that, if you wanted, for example, to make a music demo, or do a pod cast, or make cooking videos for youtube, you could easily accomplish that using the space and equipment available in the arts production center. To include:

dance floor / props and body work space

music center / DJ booth and instruments

recording studio - both audio and visual, with lighting, green screen, mics, cameras sound proofing

singing booths - individual sized sound proof recording studios, wired with a mic and output

industrial kitchen - large fridge space, rangetop and large oven, utensils / tools, big counter top

painting studio - surfaces (not always canvas) paints, brushes, frames

Crafting studio - buy bulk discount from creative center for reuse in berkeley?

wood and metal shop - partner with a tool library? is it possible to get a recyclable high-density ceramic 3-D printer to print tools with?

electronic repair (and robotics?) center

stage / small theater space / workshop with attached makeup studio

sewing and costuming – sewing machines and cloth bolts etc

gaming center - table top rpgs, card games, board games etc outdoor component, pool table, anything we can get a good deal on

computer bank - about 5 computers for general use / e games

leave one/take one library, scattered 1-2 person writers nooks

garden center

Amazingly my estimates from initial research indicates I can put a cheap, functional version of this together for about twenty thousand dollars. In terms of installing this stuff in like, an otherwise un-refurbished warehouse. Even if I spend $35k, that’s like, a new car. Plus I want the first month or so of funding to run the place up front. That’s gonna be water, garbage (it’s a lot for the dumpster a place like this needs) a shitload of electricity, and 3 people’s worth of monthly salaries to start.

Then there’s the rent or lease, which runs about $2 per square foot in the SF Bay, and I’ll need at least 5 grand a month’s worth of space. Plus monthly supplies, for whatever deals on paint and stuff we can scrounge. That means the monthly operating costs are like $25k a month. Hence large fundraisers for the initial build out and first month’s operating. Plus you draw your initial arts center membership from the fundraiser attendees.

Which, I’ve thrown warehouse parties before, so I think I can hit a target of a couple hundred people at each party spending $35 apiece. There’s a trick to it – you keep the cover charge low or non-existent, and then provide a lot of opportunities to spend money inside, like games and food and stuff. Low or no charge to attend drives attendance up, and then you have more people spending money. 

One key element is, you fill out the paperwork to be a catering company. Not only do you use this to sell food at the event, but ALSO it allows you to file for a single-use liquor license so you can have a bar. Usually there are a finite number of liquor licenses in a municipality, and they can go for millions of dollars. But with a catering company’s single event liquor license you can legally sell alcohol at the party. NOW we’re talking money.

anyway, I’m HOPING I can find state, federal, or municipal grants and assistance programs for the arts (and also, maybe some kind of, entrepreneurial support programs, but for like, small personal internet ventures?) Maybe even get some city to cut the rent in half by forgiving the property taxes on the warehouse or something. If I can’t, I may have to adjust the fundraising vs start date timing. Membership will be a monthly fee like a gym. I’d love for it to be free, and will certainly stay open to anything that allows that, but by the numbers it’ll have to be about $50 a month. Still, that’s like a 24 our fitness membership. One refill of gasoline. About one person’s share of an electricity bill. A phone payment. It’s a doable monthly bill for a lot of people. Monthly budget to be supplemented using the space, for example dance classes, ticketed theater performances, live band music shows, etc. So it’s possible we could drive membership prices way down. and maybe certain days or times could be free to the public or something. I want it to be accessible. Of the 3 monthly salaries mentioned above (each at $20 an hour) one is for me and that’s all I need, enough money to live on and access to this facility. There’s no way I can figure out how to afford this kind of creative suite for just me, but I might be able to figure out how to make one a whole bunch of us can afford This is just the first step of a very involved something I’ve been putting together since forever. But even if I only ever accomplish this first nesting-doll of a scheme, I’ll be very pleased.

The Creative Suite is like, an egg. And it should hatch into a little baby iteration of a socio-economic worm I’ve conceived.

If I can grow it to the full beast, it should become a self replicating, bottom-up revolutionary process that could improve the lives of many millions of people and put more power over our personal day to day lives back into the hands of the common public.

I have thousands of words in hundreds of research drafts and notes and exploratory essays, etc, but… Roughly speaking that looks like

flip the Creative Suite into MN Building One, a scheme designed to allow minimum wage workers to access more free time, lower their cost of living, and build equity by acquiring and owning their own property. Mortgage is paid off in ten years. Meanwhile

Building One starts up a business called Full Service Living that leverages group economics to allow for ethically sourcing goods while addressing the issue that middle class nuclear families with two adults face 4 full time adults’ worth of labor to maintain the household and raise the children.

Full Service Living becomes FSL Pro, in which the first group offers the next group of minimum wage workers their old building (cutting out the banks from the process) while acquiring a second building, gives the new people in Building One entry level jobs in FSL that pay better than minimum wage, while adding second tier careers to the mix living in Building Two – lawyers, accountants, mechanics, teachers, etc. These two groups continue to propagate more communities in their paired type one and type two buildings. Each of these community pairs contains the seeds for various institutions designed into them, and are meant to cooperatively grow  into:

Community Support Centers. These offer a variety of support services to surrounding communities. Such as: day care and after school programs, tax and bill/budgeting assistance, legal advice/support. The sum of the total efforts by all parties is designed to blossom into:

A school A construction and landscaping company A public owned Credit Union/Bank A public service law office An ethical clothing line An alternative low footprint locally sourced supermarket I call Alt-mart (Alt-mart works hand in hand with a food production construct I have in mind. It’s a little involved for this breakdown)

All that with room for other endeavors people see a need for. The initial concept brings most issues of modern life under a single multi-family roof such that communities are afforded the opportunity and resources to create alternatives to the flawed or corrupt institutions with which we are currently participating.

When that all coalesces into networks of these communities and institutions, we’ll have all the necessary pieces to the puzzle and I hope a city will be built. I’ve designed many elements of it. Engineering as well as socio-political and economic design. But who knows if I’ll ever get there.

More detailed breakdown of the plan follows:

Project Overview and Concept Exploration:

Begins with providing affordable housing, property ownership, and upward mobility to minimum wage workers. Becomes a network of live/work facilities with a focus on sustainable entrepreneurialism, accessible autonomy, and community outreach.

These facilities function as socio-economic labs - they are on paper corporations, to access any advantages, protections, and loop-holes available to the corrupt institutions currently running the economy. They target the large corporations, ultimately seeking to end them. They produce businesses such as restaurants that grow all their own food, and doctors that are paid for by the apartment complex to provide medical care to residents.

Additionally, theses facilities provide a new way of life, in a format that allows for autonomy, but also allows for successful participation in the current economy... where all the money is.They also attempt to alleviate the time crunch problem for the middle class, wherein managing a household and raising a family is actually three or four full time jobs.

As such, the facilities are designed to grow into these large businesses/institutions:

SCHOOL

A preschool through junior college school on 3 cooperative campuses, wherein the school functions as a microcosm of the economy as a whole for the purpose of study: school gardens provide cafeteria food; school wood shops produce school furniture; economy classes figure out how the school budget can afford the water, fertilizer, metal, and wood.

3rd graders have classes in the garden learning the biome and doing the weeding; 8th graders are each growing 3ftX3ft gardens and helping in the large garden; 11th graders are cross-pollenating and designing green housing and aquaponic systems; bachelor students are splicing plant genes in the lab.

But by then some of the students have stopped being involved in the garden, and are making replacement hinges for all the school doors as metal shop homework or squeezing enough money out of the school budget for a big homecoming event.

By the third campus, students are living on site, so there is housing to manage. Student store and cafeteria provide economic interactions; the whole of our socio-economic society done small for study and practice, under a single administration instead of our current system of a scholastic career being broken up into mismatched administrations, which is a disservice to our students.

ALT-MART

A facility meant to compete with Target and Walmart and Whole Foods etc. It grows from the live/work facility kitchen and meal-plan set up. Alt-mart features a permanent farmer’s market, supplemented with an onsite garden/nursery. There is an onsite industrial kitchen and restaurant that uses overstock from the farmer’s market and ingredients from the garden, possibly purchasing all unsold produce from the farmer’s market at a discount.

The restaurant offers prepared foods for sale to the public, kitchen processes overstock into consumer goods like ketchup, frozen microwaveable breakfast burritos, and canned corn. Bakery also, of course. Facility also features a tool-library with a 3-d printer that can print any tools not on the shelves.

Additionally features local tailoring and a second hand clothing store. The local tailors get access to all the second-hand pieces for use in making their own clothes to sell onsite, as well as some facility-bought cloth and onsite machinery (sewing machines to textile machines like tuffters, gins, and looms).

Toy aisle is franken-toy land, where in-house creative DIYers take second hand toys and make whole new toys out of them. Electronics section is mostly repair, and offers lessons in repair. Book-nook and greeting card section features local/community writers. And so on. The goal is to offer an alternative to the big one-stop-shop stores, with a focus on local/community sourcing.

CONSTRUCTION COMPANY

This business grows out of building maintenance and groundskeeping into a landscaping company, then into a construction company. It should be the company used by the network of facilities for any renovations and repairs, so it should grow quite large.

COMMUNITY-OWNED CREDIT UNION (and LAW OFFICE)

Basically a non-profit bank, that offers community outreach for people who need help with budgeting, would like to learn about mortgages and homeownership, etc. Grows out of a Community Support Center that also offers community office space and legal advice.

FIRST STOP HOSPITAL

Not a full hospital, at least not at first, this should just be a few medical professionals that can answer common questions, provide emergency medical response, and assess medical conditions. Not for treatment so much as to find out what kind of treatment you need and who to get it from. Where first-time parents bring their babies when they’re not sure if they need o bring their baby to an emergency room. Honestly, medical care is the hardest part of this whole thing and I'm not sure if it's going to be possible or what to do about it.

CATERING AND EVENTS COMPANY

This is what get’s the ball rolling, the catering folds into the care-taking positions within the facilities, and the events company later become basically the arts entertainment and media/information division. There's a traveling circus element. It's fun.

These projects can possibly culminate in a whole large, sustainable city built from the ground up, that I have outlined. It involves building a large hill and two small lakes. I am happy to talk a lot more about that, but it clearly necessitates all the above pieces and more.

OKAY, so much for the overview. Let’s start at the beginning. The loan is for 2 million dollars, for a property of 1 million and another million in remodel costs.

Note: I ran the following numbers for California. Obviously property values and minimum wages are different other places, but the concept should still be applicable. Additionally, these are preliminary estimates only. Additional research and budgeting is required.

____________________________________________________________________

First I have to tell you about a type of loan called “Micro debt”

Basically, if you loan 10 people a total of 100k, they are each responsible for 10k of debt. If one of them defaults, the other nine split their debt, so now each of them has about 11k of debt, which is payable as it is not a significant increase in debt per person. However, this also encourages them to all help make sure nobody defaults on the debt -- for example, if one person is in danger of defaulting because their car was totaled and they can’t get to work, there are nine other people with a vested interest in making sure that person gets access to a vehicle or ride share. If a person starts to default on payments because they are drinking all the time, there are nine other people who are going to drag the to AA meetings.

A couple of banks in Bangladesh and Germany have had success with this, citing a 98% repay rate which is a few percent better than the average home loan repay rate here in the United States. Additionally, there are at least a couple million people who have this structure of loan here in the states, so it's not unheard of nor untested, even specifically in our own economy.

_______________________________________________________________________

SO. 28 people get what is essentially a home loan for 2 million dollars. We'll call them group A. They each have about a $71,000 mortgage, their share of the loan. (note, an average mortgage in California is like, nearly half a million, so, less than a hundred thousand is a GOOD mortgage)

Group A buys property (ideally unused/abandoned industrial sites or dilapidated property in low income areas) for about a million, maybe a little under, and builds a facility on it for about a million, maybe a little over. (I looked at apartment building costs per square foot and reviewed properties currently for sale in California to get these numbers).

Some of the money is earmarked for partnering with the city on local infrastructure - so, say the streets in that neighborhood need repaving, we might buy all the materials for the city to do that, saving them money, incentivizing the city to work with us on rezoning and permits, while at the same time those kinds of improvements are an investment in the value of the property. This is because many of those buildings are not zoned as live-work the way this project requires, and rezoning without incentivizing the city to cooperate is a nightmare.

The facility is 60 bedrooms, with an industrial kitchen, plenty of diverse common space, and shared facilities (like at a gym: banks of private shower stalls, even a hot tub and a sauna, because if you’re going to ask people to give up single use showers in their own apartments, you want to add value).

Group A moves in and rents remaining rooms to an additional 28 people, we'll call them Group B.

Now, out of 60 rooms we have 56 people living in the facility. 10 of them are caretakers. Instead of paying money, they pay their way in labor, and they additionally receive a monthly stipend of 500 dollars a month to start. The caretakers do all the building maintenance and groundskeeping, they do the housekeeping and laundry, they make sure the bills are all paid, and they provide (cook) a meal plan. Utilities are all included in rent.

This means that anyone renting there has a single, affordable monthly bill for their cost of living, never has to cook, never has to do laundry or wash a dish. I call this Full Service Living. And the budget is for 60 but only 56 are planned in, with 4 slots available for social outreach, so this community can offer semi-temporary room and board for free to women fleeing abusive relationships, disabled veterans, homeless people with children, rehabilitated felons, whoever they want to help.

All this for a single payment of $1,000 per month, per paying resident.

Rent, food, utilities, housekeeping, everything. In an area where rent alone is more than that. This guarantees that a person making local minimum wage can afford to live, and pretty decently, with more free time and less headache.

When the building is paid off, if they want, Group A will each have a room to live in, plus a room to receive rent from, as income.

Let's break down the budget for this so far

(60 people, minus 10 caretakers and 4 outreach residents, equals 46 paying residents)

Per Month Costs to Paying Residents:

Meal plan for 60 people = $5,000.00

60 person phone plan = $1,800.00

Internet sufficient for a business: $400.00

Water bill for 60 people = $1,800.00

Electricity for 60 people = $3,600.00

Garbage bill for 60 people = $2,000.00

Caretaker stipend = $5,000.00

(subtotal: $19,600.00)

Building/Community fund = $1,853.002

million dollar mortgage = $21,213.00

Property tax = $3,334.00

Total: $46,000.00= $1,000 per paying resident per month, roughly $600 “room” and $400 “board” with as many costs of living as possible paid as one low bill.

 Sharing a room adds a "board" payment to the room, so if you move a romantic partner in with you and split it evenly, you each pay $700. I also have discount rate breakdowns for people with children in various scenarios, but it starts to get complicated for what is supposed to be a simple overview. Basically it comes down to an inherent flexibility in the meal plan; the fact that a food budget for 60 people easily accommodates an extra mouth to feed could allow a group to offer a single parent a separate room for their child with no board payment, so they could live in two rooms for $1,500; stuff like that.

At those payments, the building is paid off in ten years. TEN. Our low income earners don't have to wait 30 years to be actual property owners, and they only have to give the bank an added $500k instead of the 1.4 million a 30 year mortgage would net.

Here is one place people replicating the format and participating in their own group can do whatever they want. The 28 building shareholders have the option of leaving everything the same but owning the place outright, which means they are no longer paying the ~$500 mortgage portion of their bills, instead each receiving about $500 in rent from the other residents, which is a net gain of $1k per month each in disposable income. Or they could all just sell the building and split the money 28 ways. Or they could all move out and use the entire building to generate residual income. Anything is good, we've made almost 30 people property owners and built them equity for only minimum wage while they provided relief services to the surrounding community, so anything they think is best, we've already done it good.

Ideally they move into a second building and sell the first building to group B, which is what the very first group will have to do to complete the seeding of the entire project. 

SO. The two buildings I mention represent two stages of the greater project. Full Service Living, and Full Service Living Professional (hereafter FSL, and FSL Pro)

In the first stage, you have 10 caretakers providing full service living to 46 paying individuals, most of whom make minimum wage, and 4 social outreach recipients. FSL is basically getting as much of your life as possible handled with a single low bill, something similar to living in a good hotel.

To expand, The caretakers additionally seek to offer this service to middle class households - these homes already hire a house cleaner, a gardener, use a dry-cleaner, order delivery food, so they are prime clients. As middle class households become clients, the caretakers need more people to handle the work load, and the other people living in the facility quit their minimum wage jobs and work for the FSL company. This will earn the group profits as a whole while paying the individuals close to $25 an hour. THIS allows the second building to be much nicer.

With a second, much nicer building, the 28 people move in, and they find 28 new renters from higher up the economic food chain. These folks need to earn at least 35k a year and include people from a specific list of professions. This new group of 28 shall be referred to hereafter as the tenants.

The rent agreement is unique: The 28 tenants pay about 2k per month each for the same package, the FSL company from the first building provides all the housekeeping, meal plan, etc. The tenants also agree to pay one third of any increase in their wages, up to a cap, with the money going toward renovations, improvements, and additional services and amenities. This means as your income increases, you pay more actual dollars, but a smaller percentage of your over all income

So if you are making 35k you earn 3k a month, which means you pay 2/3 of your income to the facility (many people spend this much on rent plus food). If you double your income, you now earn 6k per month. Your rent package would go up by 1/3 of your additional income, or one thousand dollars, and you would still have an extra two thousand dollars per month of personal discretionary income. You would have started out paying 2/3 of your income, but now you’d be paying only 1/2 your income. Your building improves, your life improves, but you’ll always be able to afford it, and every raise you get does give you more spending money. Additionally, the staff is motivated to really give you all the support they can, as a well supported individual is more likely to have monetary success.

And one more important thing. Tenants either pay an additional 500 bucks a month in money, OR they offer $500 of their professional services to residents of the facility. Unclaimed time must be made available to the surrounding public for free.

So, say a paralegal values her time at $50 dollars an hour for qualified legal advice (such as, do I need a lawyer for this? what kind of lawyer do I need? What is this legal process going to look like?). The 50 residents only use an hour this month, so something like 9 appointments should be made available to the surrounding community for free - the facility staff will handle outreach (letting the community know of the offer via flyers etc). They will handle making the appointments according to her availability, and will provide the facility’s communal office space to hold them in.

These programs allow businesses to grow in a very low risk environment. Let’s look at a day care worker. She’s a classroom assistant at a day care, going to school part time to finish her teaching degree. She offers residents hours of baby sitting as her $500 service. As she earns more money, the facility also earns more money, and can renovate a space that sometimes functions as a play room for kids. No longer going to school, she is earning more money, the facility hires a permanent babysitter or two, and she manages them. Free to residents, they accept neighborhood kids for a reasonable fee. Low cost good quality day care becomes available to the neighborhood. She’s a class lead at a good school now, making more money, so the facility can afford to hire classroom assistants and the baby-sitting / daycare starts offering after-school programs to older children, well on its way to being a small private school, with our tenant running it.

Similarly, restaurants and construction companies grow out of offering facility residents goods and services.

To recap the ideal situation here: 28 people live in a nice 60 bedroom facility. They own a business in a neighboring facility, which houses workers who are paid fairly, but who also pay the first group monthly on a ten year lease (instead of paying a bank) -- after which that second group owns the building they live in and no longer has to pay. Everyone’s cooking, cleaning, laundry, are all done for them. By now their meals are largely made from the facility’s garden and aquaponics greenhouse, which includes a fish-farming pool, a few goats, a cow or two, and some chickens and ducks. Living with them in the facility is their lawyer, their nurse, their electronics expert, etc. They’re all part owners in their own non-profit bank/credit union, and there is an onsite day care, gym, and communal workshop. The group offers outreach programs to the surrounding community: low cost high quality day care, legal advice. They provide semi-temporary room and board to those in need, such as women fleeing abusive relationships, disabled veterans, and the homeless (especially those with children). They are an active part of an ongoing socio-economic program designed to give low-income housing, property ownership, retirement options, and upward mobility to minimum wage workers, as well as alternatives to broken institutions to all.

By the time they pay off the second building’s mortgage, the first building has been paid for over again, and THAT group can move into a ANOTHER FSL Pro building, offering their new building to a new round of pro tenants while offering that first building to a THIRD round of low income workers.

The first 28 people achieve all of this, building ownership, business proprietorship, community support, within the same thirty years it takes to pay off a standard home loan, starting with nothing more than entry level jobs and this master plan. 

From there, growth continues. More buildings are offered to more low income earners. More facilities means more services, amenities, cooperative power, a stronger micro-economy. Political influence also increases with membership...

Eventually, you can take all these businesses and facility/communities, and go build a whole city, which looks a little like this

See the problem with cities is they grew organically. No one ever sat down and said “we know we want a hundred thousand people to live here -- what is the best design for that?” Instead is was just, some people, and then some more people, and then some more...

So.

You go out in the middle of wherever. You dig two GIANT holes. You take the dirt from the holes and you build a nice big hill. You fill the holes with water and you have two lakes. Now you have a nice place people want to live, nestled between the lakes, under the hill. It gives you enough water and topography to create a resource feedback loop and control things like wind and sun exposure.

You regulate everything for sustainability, design it from the ground up. 

Current municipalities have to provide everything for the public from a budget that largely comes from property tax, which is 2% of the property value. That’s why when there’s something like a homelessness problem, there is no money to address it properly. 

This city holds all the property in a trust administered by the elected city officials. Instead of rent paid to private landlords, the public leases their homes and businesses directly from the city, which keeps rents low and controlled and gives the city an incredibly large budget compared to current municipalities, which allows them to provide outstanding public services -- transportation, healthcare, parks -- as well as giving them enough budget to address any issues like homelessness. Regulation and organization for sustainability as a whole city addresses the fact that existence is always interlocked issues. For example:

Grey water. In this city, only approved cleansers are allowed for sale or use (and the city provides one. Because the city provides it, it has to be cheap and easy, which means that there is always room for improvement, or, a business selling better cleansers for more money. But no one will ever go without one available, even if they are broke). SO, no bleach down the drain. So you can take the grey water of the city, and dump it on the top of the hill into a manmade creek/river, which starts full of rocks, then pebbles, then sand (a natural filtration process) flows down the hill and ends up in the first lake, which is recreational. The second lake sits a little lower, and the water flows into it from the first lake. In the second lake there are fish farming and bi-valve farming, which additionally filters the water (especially bi-valves like fresh water muscles, which feed by straining the water through organic filters and not-for-food populations should be in the first lake as well). The city pulls its water from the second lake through its combination water purification facility / power plant. The power plant uses a steam turbine already so we simply run that steam through a charcoal filter, and re-condense it into molecularly clean water for municipal use; this uses our existing power generator, instead of requiring massive amounts of additional power.

That’s just one example. The city has it’s own sustainable agriculture program, and grows it’s own food. There are public meal plans, and a lot of organization of the city economy that I just don’t have the energy to get into here.

These designs allow a large group of people to live with very little environmental impact. It would be healthier for the citizens. And it would encourage a certain amount of political unity, while removing a lot of stress from modern life. 

The city is modular in growth. So when the city population doubles, roughly half of them build a city nearby and live there.

_______________________________________________________________________

Aside from the first two facilities (and then probably the first of the cities, if that happens) I don't need or want to be involved. As it replicates into more and more facilities, the baseline should remain: "here is a format by which minimum wage workers can own property and grow wealth in a way that allows them more control over their lives and denies profits to existing corrupt industries and corporations -- copy it if you want and suit it to your own group of residents”

I don't want to tell people how to live or what to do, I want to give them tools and templates to improve their own lives, whatever that looks like to them.

Anyway, believe it or not, this is only about a tenth of the detail I’ve put into this. I can never get the whole picture of any of this out in one go, but I've spent a lot of time on all the details which, as you can tell, are innumerable. The ways in which the FSL buildings act as entrepreneurial incubators by cutting start-up overhead to nearly zero while providing an initial customer base of 60 regulars, the various permutations that could address specific scenarios, the details of how to add gardens and fish and food production supplemented by ethical food sourcing.. I could just. keep. going. forever.

It addresses the whole tangled set of problems. You have to help high population areas, but also go out to the middle of the country. You have to help low income earners and people in poverty, but also our middle class is struggling. You have to do things that effect education, infrastructure, ocean management, industrialized food production, population density/overcrowding  issues, helps prevent homelessness, creates better jobs for workers of big box stores while providing affordable more sustainable alternatives to their customers...

I think this plan does all that and more.

I’m exhausted and can’t find all my work on this right now, it’s buried in email chains and computer back ups, but I think I more or less encapsulated it. Good night

[moonlightmadnessreviews]

Child’s Play (2019): Chucky Come Lately, The New Kid in Town

We’re coming up on a month since the release of Orion Pictures’ Child’s Play remake. In the lead up to the polarizing release, there were two very different teams drawn up: you were either Team Good Guy, or Team Buddi. If you were the former, it was thought you were an elitist, unable to see past your love for the original and too closed minded to admit you were even a little curious as to how the new movie would turn out. If you wore the latter team’s jersey, you were part of what is wrong with horror today, ready to gobble up corporate studio schlock even if it means trampling all over the original. At a time when a remake is announced every other week, I want to discuss why it’s okay to root for the home town hero, while also being curious about what the rookie has to offer.

Child’s Play was originally released in 1988, having been written and directed by Tom Holland from a story by Don Mancini, produced by David Kirschner and distributed by MGM. The film was a hit, drawing enough at the box office to spawn six sequels, and the cult following was immediately under the spell of the pint sized, Voodoo practicing antagonist, Charles Lee Ray. I recently turned 30, and it wasn’t until I was in my early teens that I realized the original trilogy was called Child’s Play and not Chucky, as I’d always referred to the movies. Brad Dourif plays Chicago serial killer Charles Lee Ray, The Lakeshore Strangler. After he’s chased into a toy store and fatally wounded by Detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon), Chucky transfers his soul into the body of a Good Guy Doll. The rest of the movie follows Chucky and the first person he reveals his identity to, a six year old boy named Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent), as Chucky murders his way through babysitters, old accomplices and Voodoo mentors! All the while, Chucky preys on Andy’s innocence, telling him they’re “Friends til the end!” simply to make it easier for him to transfer his soul into Andy’s body.

This set up was, and still is, perfect! For much of the movie, Chucky is a stoic rubber doll, resembling one of the Cabbage Patch Dolls that were so popular in the 1980s. It’s clear to see how excited Andy is when he gets the doll as a birthday present, and you feel genuine fear for the kid knowing there’s the soul of a serial killer trapped inside his new best friend! I would give anything to travel back in time to sit in the theater on opening night and experience the moment Chucky finally reveals his true nature to Andy’s Mom! What may seem silly to us now must have made for an awesome group experience in that theater, especially considering the amazing animatronics and Dourif’s fantastic voice over work, his animalistic aggression striking fear into children for years after.

For all the praise we can give Chucky and the lore his movies built up, they did become somewhat formulaic, but Chucky and pals had solidified themselves in the minds and memories of millions. It’s easy to see why fans were hesitant, and confused, when the remake was announced. Some went as far as to write off the movie completely before even hearing what the changes would be. Well, as it turns out, the changes were pretty drastic, in part due to the legal issues of having a remake separate from the Mancini Chucky universe, soon to make a place for itself as a spin off TV show on the SyFy channel.

Child’s Play 2019 has brought Chucky and Andy into the era of asking someone for their WiFi password as soon as you walk through their door. The film is directed by Lars Klevberg (Polaroid) from a screenplay by Tyler Burton Smith (Kung Fury 2) and produced by David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith (IT, Chapter 1 and 2). In our post-Stranger Things world, Andy, played here by Gabriel Bateman (Lights Out), is no longer a six year old child but rather a young teen having trouble fitting in and making friends in his new neighborhood. His mom, Karen Barclay (Aubrey Plaza), is still a single mother working in retail, but the doll she brings home for Andy’s birthday is incredibly different due to the exclusion of one incredibly important character: Charles Lee Ray. Gone is the Voodoo. Gone is the Lakeshore Strangler. Gone is the voice! The new direction is daring to say the least.

In this version, Chucky is a WiFi capable, Cloud connected Buddi doll. As part of their use as an educational tool for children, Buddi dolls learn from their Best Buddies, picking up on their sense of humor, social cues and behaviors. Eventually Buddi could help you keep track of your calendar and even control climate setting in your home. Seems pretty cool, right? Well it would be, except Andy’s Buddi doll was hacked by a disgruntled factory worker who does away with Chucky’s limiters for language, violence, and seemingly even his free will.

What I feel works especially well in the new take is Chucky’s innocence at the start of the movie. A Buddi doll’s only mission is to imprint on their new owner and be the best friend this child could ever ask for. We get scenes of Andy and Chucky playing chess, hanging out, and even looking through scrap books of Andy’s art. Chucky takes a genuine interest in Andy and simply wants to be his Best Buddy, so when Andy is scratched by his mother’s cat, we get the first glimpses into Chucky’s unlocked potential for violence. He wants to punish anyone, or anything, that wishes Andy harm. Chucky hasn’t just imprinted, he is frighteningly obsessed.

One of my favorite scenes plays out as Andy, and his friends Falyn and Pugg (Beatrice Kitsos and Ty Consiglio, respectively) are watching a particularly brutal horror movie. I was genuinely giddy in the theater when the clips started to flash on screen, so I won’t spoil it here. This is where we see Chucky’s gears start to turn. Much like a child who may pick up on violent behavior they’re exposed to, Chucky sees Andy and his friends laughing at the outlandish violence on screen and decides to “entertain” them with a butcher knife.

Through out the course of the 90 minute run time, we see Andy struggling with how to control Chucky, now having gotten the wrong impression of violence and feeling rejected by his Best Buddy. The stakes are raised as Chucky becomes increasingly violent, seeking to please Andy at every turn only to make things worse, like a genie who twists their master’s words, making them sorry for not being more careful with their wishes. Come the third act, we can start to see hints of Chucky’s own fully formed personality, now having been twisted and deranged by the movies events.

This movie was more fun than I anticipated, and it even got my wife’s stamp of approval after I dragged her to the theater with me on opening night! Rather than try to be some incredibly bleak, super realistic take on the story, Child’s Play knew exactly what it was and went all out with the ridiculous concept. The movie’s R rating was also used to its full potential, and though most of the scares are pretty telegraphed, they shower you with so much blood and gore that you can’t help but laugh. Andy’s group of friends, though not nearly as charismatic or fun to watch as the cast of Stranger Things or 2017’s IT, really helped to give the movie some much needed warmth and heart. Brian Tyree Henry (Atlanta), who played this movie’s Detective Norris, also gave a great performance, balancing comedy and that detective bravado just right.

The standouts though were Gabriel Bateman and this movie’s Chucky, none other than Mark Hamill (Star Wars and The Joker in Batman The Animated Series, I mean DUH!). Bateman gave a great performance as Andy, carrying a lot of the movie’s emotion, and Hamill helped give this Chucky his own voice. The third act culmination of Chucky’s deranged personality would not have been nearly as effective if not for Hamill’s amazing voice over work. This is not to say though that the movie was perfect. Aubrey Plaza was bland as Karen Barclay, giving every line that classic, so-edgy-it-hurts, Plaza sarcasm. It works on Parks and Rec and even the movie Safety Not Guaranteed, but it feels so out of place here. Thankfully, Bateman was there to sell most of their scenes together, or I would not have been able to buy into their relationship as mother and son, much less care about their survival. In addition to Plaza, there were a lot of jokes in the first and second act that simply didn’t land. The lines fell flat and hardly got more than a chuckle from most of the audience I was with. I’m sure they were after the wit and timing of the young ensemble cast of IT, but that came from time and intensive work building off screen relationships within that cast. Some jerky editing also made the movie feel like it would have benefited from an extra 15 or 20 minutes, leading to certain scenes that were meant to be emotional being brushed over and rushed.

Lastly, let’s address the elephant in the room: Chucky’s redesign. The very first reaction I heard as Chucky’s face flashed on screen was “Ew, what the fu-“. I want to give the effects team credit for sticking to mostly animatronic work once again, but Chucky’s face was simply horrendous. I’d like to think this was intentional, perhaps they wanted to play up the Uncanny Valley effect as much as possible, but I can’t see myself or any other fans saying the design won us over, no matter how fun the movie was.

Did Child’s Play 2019 have to be a Child’s Play movie? No, not at all. In fact, they could have called it “Alexa Gone Wild.” and it would have held much of the same effect. With that being said though, I think I enjoyed it as much as I did because of their new take. It impressed me just enough to leave me thinking “Wow, that was really fun!” I love the original Child’s Play, and Brad Dourif is quite honestly irreplaceable, but the film makers saw the challenge they had with this new version, knew the audience they had to try and win over and they swung for the fences. I may not be able to convince everyone to give this movie a shot, and I’m fine with that, but I think the most important thing to remember is this: If you’re going to update one of my favorite toys, my “Friend til The End”, then make sure the new version keeps me entertained til the end, friend.

Rating: 3.5 Full Moons out of 5 🌕🌕🌕🌗

[coe-lilium]

Hey Lilium! I love your Servant redesigns! I'm starting to learn to draw digitally so that I can design Servants myself, like Kriemhild. Would you have any advice you could give me on this?

Hi! Thank you so much for your words!

I’m a bit unsure if you’re asking for tips on digital art itself or on chara design?  

In doubt, I’m going to go with “digital art” in this post, if you meant chara des hit me up with an ask and I’ll happily provide for that :) 

*necessary intro*: please consider that my art education ended 10 years ago and never prepared me for more stylized/cartoon styles, so I’m self taught for almost all intents (100% regarding digital art).

Long wall of text under the cut:

First suggestion is to get a good, reliable art program. 

Plenty of artists use Paint Tool SAI and Clip Studio Paint (currently using CSP myself and don’t plan to ever abandon it). Neither of them is free but both are less pricey than Adobe bundles and both were created more for illustrating than “photoshopping” purposes. There’s plenty more but those are two I used and can recommend. Many art programs usually offer a 30 days trial so my suggestion would be to try them out and see which is more to your liking and offers the best quality/price wise.  

By personal experience, it’s much better to pay and have support than to find a free unofficial version and then get fucked and lose all your works when you update your operating system and discover the bootleg program doesn’t work anymore. Learn from me, don’t risk it.     

Next suggestion, get a drawing tablet or a tablet. Nothing too pricey as a beginner, when paired with a good program any decent tablet will do its job. What you really need is pen pressure, everything else is optional. People draw on their iPads with great results but never having tried I can’t give suggestions here, if not to look for artist who do and see how they work (YT surely has tutorials ‘bout it).   

With hardware and software out of the way, let’s get down to proper drawing business:  

First of all, forget that “but you’re not a real artist if you use references/copy poses” noise: use references, use all the references you want. 

If you want to paint a starry sky and don’t know how to rend the effect, maybe the glowing of a nebula? Look up Youtube and Deviantart tutorials, tumblr tutorials, look up on how all the artist you like paint and their tips, all the IRL photos in google. 

Something I personally find very helpful are tutorials comparing realistic and stylized styles and showing how to go from one to another, how to simplify shapes etc.    

Renaissance artist invented the darkroom/camera oscura to help them drawing perspective and then traced over that shit. If Caravaggio traced to save time, then so can we. 

And there’s so many different ways to reach a similar result that maybe your first attempts will look like copycats of that tutorial you saw or that really inspiring artist. It’s fine. But the more attempts and the more you play with your program of choice, brushes you like/find more comfortable, the more you look up different sources and integrate bits of them all in a singular piece, the more your work will be distinct.

Now, onto one of the big elephants in the room: do you know how to correctly sketch a human body from scratch? If yes, amazing! (all my respect). 

If not, there’s plenty of solutions without having to learn how to (which is the way I currently work bc drawing is a 100% hobby and I’d rather spend my time elsewhere than in re-learning human anatomy) and working digitally makes these solutions way easier. 

After you find a “how to draw anatomy” book or blog or tutorials and safely store it somewhere safe to go back and reference, then you can 

1. find stock photos, either from google (be careful not to use copyrighted stuff) or in bundles specifically created for artists to use as bases or references. On Deviantart for example there’s SenshiStock, incredible project with hundreds of photos free to use. The anatomy book/blog here will be useful if you want a certain body shape and your reference doesn’t match with your idea. 

2. chose a program like CSP or similar that comes with 3D stock poses which you can then alter as much as you like in size, weight, rotation, light direction, position of every body part down to each finger (in CSP’s case, you can also download plenty more free to use poses, brushes, 3d objects, patterns etc created by the userbase and shared in the library bundled with the program).  

3. if your main art program doesn’t come with human poses? no problem at all, get one just for this specific purpose, like Design Doll (both free/pay ver, imo free ver is more than enough), Posemaniacs (free, online, uses flash), MagicPoser (free with option of in-app purchases, it’s an app, good reviews, just tried it a little and seems quite good). 

4. less conventional but imo still useful, especially if you want to draw in “anime” style and proportions for Servants designs: go to My figure collections and use figmas. 

They’re highly posable plastic figures from the most different jp (and not) characters, each one with a photo gallery and as long as you modify the final piece and -important!- don’t sell it if you base it on a specific user photo? I’d say go for it. Or mix body parts of different figmas, or use the “archetype” products, naked bodies made precisely for drawing bases, there’s options with both more “anime” and more realistic proportion. 

I collect them for both owning Fate/other characters without spending a fortune and for drawing references and I find them quite well suited for this purpose. Why on earth despair if I’d ever want to draw Arturia in armor when I can just grab my figma of her, pose it, take a photo and then draw on it? :P

Now, hardware and software check, way to find poses check, what else? 

Layers are your best friends. For example, Bradamante? A good 50+ layers, some of them stored in folders so I could just select and deselect them to remove or put on mantle, lance, shield, sword etc. Just... remember to name them to save yourself a lot of time.  

And changing a layer’s opacity too, especially to draw the definitive lineart over the first rough sketch or for shading or highlights.    

The more I write the more I find things to write about so I’ll call it for now, this post is already a WoT as it is. Hopefully I was of use, but if you need more, ask right away and I’ll do my best! :)               

[written-in-light-blog1]

“LET US SPEAK OF THE TERRIBLE BEAUTY OF BECOMING OURSELVES”

Illustrating Destiny’s Books of Sorrow with community artist Francine Bridge

One of the most impressive Destiny fan-projects we’ve seen to date has been Francine Bridge’s incredible illustrated rendering of Destiny’s Books of Sorrow. Francine, otherwise known as Witnesstheabsurd, agreed to take some time to answer a few of our questions about her work, its impetus, and what the project means to her.

Written by Seth Dickinson, the Books of Sorrow tell the story of the Hive - and by extension Oryx and his siblings - and give deep, rich background to one of the game’s largest and most important conflicts. Lyric and evocative, the books offer insight into both the Hive themselves and the universe they inhabit, and remain Destiny’s most impressive and most in-depth piece of lore-building. For those who may have joined the community in Destiny 2, or never had the chance to read the original books, they can be read in their entirety here. Francine’s project shows the same impressive attention to detail, and most importantly, the same level of empathy as the works that inspired it. We’re ecstatic to be able to share this conversation with the Destiny community, and we hope you’ll take the time to admire the full project.

You can find Francine on Artstation, as well as on Twitter and Tumblr.

Written in Light: To get things started, tell us a bit about yourself. What you're studying, what field you work in, what you like to do for fun - give us a brief summary of who you are and what's important to you!

Francine Bridge: HI! I'm Francine, although I'm better known online as Witnesstheabsurd. I work as a freelance illustrator and concept artist in the UK - you might have seen some of my work in the game Hiveswap or at labels like Killstar. I do album covers, shirt designs, character/monster etc design work for games, comics, private clients. I'm currently in my 4th and final (I took an extra sandwich year to do a supplemental diploma in professional studies) year of my Illustration and Visual Media BA degree in London, after which I'm probably going to look for more permanent studio/contract work rather than the one-off freelance stuff I've been pursuing while I've been in school.

A couple of years ago, prior to starting the degree, I came out as a trans woman, which is probably an important detail, and it's informed a lot of my  work. However, my driving impulse has always been monsters - my preoccupation with Destiny started entirely because a friend of mine showed me screencaps of Oryx after the The Taken King release and I was smitten. Pretty much all of the media I consume, the games I play, the art I create is in pursuit of ever greater or more unique creature and monster design, and they're very dear to my heart.

As far as what I do for fun  - my day is 90% working at the tablet, but I find time to play some games and build "gunpla" model kits as well as paw through my artbook collection. Almost everything I do is informed by my profession, so I use my hobbies as a means to access and process more referential or inspirational visual material or  techniques. I only recently started sincerely learning how to actually "paint," rather than just do some basic rendering under lineart, so that's been a major part of my work lately.

WiL: Was there anything in particular about Oryx that really drew you to him? Did Oryx come across as particularly great and/or unique to you, or is there something else that struck you with his character or design?

FB: Well, as I said, I'm transgender. In the ‘pitch’ my friend made to me about Oryx as a character,  the most interesting aspect to me was that he's a transgender man (although I'm a trans woman, the experience has some shared parallels obviously).

In media, it's incredibly difficult to find trans characters not wholly defined by that aspect of their identity, or who aren't constantly wallowing in the Misery and Tragedy of being trans. I want trans characters who occupy all roles - villain, hero, supporting and main - and it's rare to find anyone who's more than a token or like, tragedy porn. Oryx super resonated with me because he was this figure who acquired power and immediately transitioned, asserting his identity in a way that couldn't be defied - Oryx's story is very much one about self-definition and the value of existence under your own terms, which are very important concepts to me.

When I decided to start work on illustrating the Books I actually reached out to Seth Dickinson, the author Bungie contracted to write them (and the Cabal Booklet/odd flavour text, by the way) to get some specific questions answered and he was kind enough to respond and was very cooperative and supportive. Among the things I asked about I wanted to know  if Oryx was consciously written as transgender character or if it was just a coincidental "weird alien race" flourish. I was very happy to learn Seth had purposefully written Oryx that way, and that he was happy people took strength from it.

It's very novel to have, like, a "trans power fantasy"... a character who acquires absolute power over the self and instantly rewrites the contract between themselves and their body that so many of us spend our entire lives making adjustments to and renegotiating for some measure of peace. It was satisfying, refreshing.

Oryx is super cool to me on multiple visual levels obviously as well, being a mineral-encrusted deep space insect mummy warlord, but that element specifically sets him apart for me, and always will. It's cool to know that a trans character in Destiny can also be a hideous monster from beyond the stars.

WiL: Nice! I've wondered if Oryx was intentionally written to reflect a transgender person. I'm glad to hear a positive answer to that question, and I'm glad you found strength in it!

My next question is, why did you decide to take on this project? I mean, it's very clear that you love Oryx, so that factor is a given, but you mentioned in your original post that this was something you did for your degree. Care to elaborate on that?

FB: So, the structure of my illustration degree is such that while we’re given specific "briefs," such as topics or techniques, the final year gives us significantly more free rein. We're obligated to  complete three "projects" and author a thesis over the course of the final year, but the subject matter, material, everything about those projects is our call. The outcomes are judged based solely on technical and professional development rather than adherence to a specific brief.

This left the field wide open for me to kill two birds with one stone and bring in a project I had intended to do anyhow, but hadn't had the time or space for; something that I was sincerely passionate about rather than an edict handed down by a tutor. Illustrating the Books of Sorrow was something i'd wanted to do ever since I first read them back in The Taken King, and I jumped at  the chance. In addition, while i've produced and formatted artbooks before (My first published work, The Occult Supergiant Primer, can be found here ), I've been able to recoup the time invested away from client work in sales and funding. The Books are obviously material belonging to Bungie and I can't justify selling copies, digital or otherwise, of my illustrated version, so I had to find some other reason to make this investment of time and unpaid work worthwhile as well as enjoyable.

Being able to use the work produced to further my degree was the perfect "excuse.” That said, I've received so much attention from the Destiny community at large, including commissioned work from several new clients, that it would have easily been worth it regardless.

WiL: Your work definitely deserves the attention, you clearly have a strong sense of design! Would you be willing to tell us a little bit about the process you went through to make the Books of Sorrow? Do you have any early versions or storyboards that you'd like to share? Or did any of the illustrations go through any major changes from start to finish, and would you be willing/able to show us that process and talk a bit about why you made the changes you made?

FB: The greater part of the Books came together incredibly smoothly and naturally, with very little iteration required on specific pieces. The images had been stewing in my mind ever since I read the original verses a few years ago and they were more than ready to be rendered. What did require a lot of research, development and false starts were the designs for the sisters, Savathûn and Xivu Arath. Both of them have yet to appear ingame in any major capacity (although it's looking likely Savathûn is going to be a Year 2 DLC), so it was up to me to create designs for them that:

Satisfied the descriptions appended to them in the verses, as light as they were, and also matched the info Seth gave me

Satisfied my own personal expectations and interpretation

Conformed to the lore and the existing known morphology of the Hive in a way that would make them recognizable to a player with no prior familiarity with the Books

Balancing these principles lead to a lot of internal back and forth - Savathûn was easier because we had already seen her brood in D2 on Titan, so I knew to emphasize ornate crests, bonelike texture and a slightly less mineral, more biological look by comparison to Oryx's brood, the hive we exclusively encountered in D1. She was tough at first but ultimately fell into line with something satisfying for me, which actually drew a lot from the Xenomorph Queen in Aliens.

Xivu Arath was a little trickier because she had to be distinct from Oryx, who kind of already occupies the "big mineral/bone-encrusted bruiser" archetype visually, so I had to take her even further. I spent a lot of time wondering whether she would have any ornamentation like some of  the bigger Knights (Alak-Hul comes to mind), given that she represents the "ultimate" Knight morph, but I eventually eschewed all decoration in favour of something reflecting her nature in the narrative: blunt, implacable, spartan. She dispenses with the ritual and hierarchical trappings the other siblings indulge in - notably she decides that all battlefields are her Court, rather than entertaining a court herself, and she tends to default to just brutally bludgeoning whatever stands in her way rather than making an appeal to the Deep or engaging in trickery. I was very satisfied with how she turned out, and the piece featuring her is easily one of my favourites.

WiL: I was going to ask which piece is your favorite! Do you have a Top 3 that you're most proud of?

Is there anything about the Books that you wish were different, or is there something you wish you had the opportunity to draw for this project but couldn't justify including it?

FB: I have a strong tendency to favour whichever the last piece I completed was, because by default I'm always proudest of my most recent work and very rapidly lose favour with pieces even like, a week old. That said, I think overall the strongest piece for me personally would be Oryx slaying Akka, alongside the final Wormfood painting and the Savathun piece, although honorable mentions go to Xivu Arath and Quria, Blade Transform.

I can't say there's anything about the Books specifically I wish was different. The part of me that's purely consuming it as a narrative wishes that they had found Taox, that there had been some confrontation there. I feel like there's a very strong "childhood vengeance" element to the Taox subplot, like when you're put down by an adult for drawing in class and you fantasize about coming back to the school years later as a wildly successful artist and making them admit they were wrong to have stopped you. A key part of that fantasy is recognizing it as a remnant of childhood, this impulse born out of a narrower perspective and inflated self-worth, and realizing you can move past that shit (Although if/when I do become a wildly successful artist there might be a few teachers I'll look up).

Ultimately, I think the arc of the books and what the story is trying to say about distortion of intent and self makes Taox disappearing a much more emotionally resonant and interesting turn. It would be neat if Taox turned up somewhere in-game, and became the focal point of a new Hive offensive.  An entire species/culture with such a specific individual grudge is a fascinating concept.

With about a month and a half of time allotted for the project and 50 verses, there was a lot of stuff I had to cut despite how much it hurt - in a complete version I would have wanted a painting for every verse, but specifically I would have liked to draw Akka in full, the Dakaua War Angels, the Harmony/Gift Mast,  the Qugu; basically I would have given form to the many species and cultures Seth conjures up with a few phrases and a loose description but still manages to make incredibly evocative.

WiL: Do you think you'll ever return to the project and draw those images, either as standalone pieces or as an update to the PDF you've already made?

FB: An update to the .pdf itself is unlikely. I tend to consider projects released to be complete, and usually by the time I revisit a subject I'm not obligated to work on it will have been a few years at the very least. I tend to have developed my technique and approach enough that new pieces inserted retroactively would look somewhat disjointed in terms of quality and style. The chance of releasing standalone paintings - especially of points of specific interest for me like say, Akka in his entirety, the Dakaua war angels, the Qugu, etc. -  is significantly higher. Whether that happens sooner or later depends entirely on what my current workload looks like, and aside from the incredibly generous and supportive response to the project from the larger community the Books are very much a passion project and have to be weighed against, say, contract or school work going forwards.

WiL: That makes sense. What other projects do you have going on right now, if any?

FB: Just this morning I decided on the subject of my final degree project, which I'm also planning to run as my second artbook with an accompanying Kickstarter and print run - something I can actually sell as well as being material that excites me! It's entirely too early to disclose any specific details about it though.

Other than that, I continue to produce odd pieces of fanart in between a regular flow of client work both from private individuals and studios. I guess I can safely say I'll be doing more work on the second Homestuck game after contributing to the first, as well as doing some designs for a music video I was contracted for, and also finishing my thesis for the aforementioned degree.

The key thing, I think, is to keep moving - I get very anxious when I'm spinning my wheels between projects, and the temptation to linger on the threshold a while longer is incredibly strong, especially when there's always the fear your new work will fail to surpass what's come before. Reaching a personal peak like some of the paintings I did for the Books of Sorrow is a double-edged sword, and it can signify both a great accomplishment and a raising of the bar that can be daunting to follow. I'm confident that whatever you see from me next will manage it, though!

WiL: Believe me, after talking with you for a while, I'm confident your next project will meet your expectations. You are a very talented and very ambitious artist, and we can’t wait to see where your career takes you! It’s been a pleasure to talk to you, and we’re looking forward to your next Destiny passion project.

//

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

All images courtesy Francine Bridge

[i-am-very-very-tired]

With the impending release of his fifth studio album — the first since the four-time platinum, Grammy-nominated 2016 Views — Drake has many questions surrounding him. Can he again move a million units in a week? Can he prove all the doubters wrong after two years of ghostwriting allegations? Can he top “Hotline Bling” or “One Dance”? Can More Life overtake Take Care as Drake’s undoubted classic album?

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But also, can he, like so many artists in 2016 — Beyoncé (Lemonade), Solange (A Seat at the Table), Rihanna (Anti), Kanye West (The Life of Pablo), Young Thug (Jeffery) — take risks on his new album, exposing a deeper version of himself? Drake and his legion of fans — and his seemingly equal number of detractors — are waiting with bated breath for March 18 to see what the 6 God has been cooking up. But before we can call the new project “classic” or “trash,” before we spend the next few weeks debating the best and worst tracks, here’s the most important question that Drake has to answer: Can he stop attempting to control women?

Over the past eight years, Drake’s built up a reputation as being the compassionate and less threatening (read: soft) rapper who appears on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, cuddles up with professional athletes, and gets tattoos of Aaliyah. He’s played the role of Nice Guy by constantly smiling, and apparently wearing his heart on his sleeve. This appeals to the sensitivities of the women in his fan base. But, as is often the case with these so-called nice guys, Drake plays the charmer — he’ll call you beautiful, open doors for you and send you smiley-face emojis — but the minute he has sex with you, or you move on to someone else, he turns into Michael Ealy in The Perfect Guy.

Drake’s corniness, outward kindness and lack of sexual aggression has been misinterpreted as an overarching respect for women. He’s even been referred to as a feminist. But Drake is as much a feminist as Rachel Dolezal is a black woman. His entire catalog is steeped in respectability politics, accepting women so far as their body count goes.

Those songs pale in comparison to “Shot For Me,” “Marvin’s Room” and “Practice.” They are Drake at his worst.

While he’s constantly praised Nicki Minaj over the years, Drake belittled the Grammy-nominated artist during his beef with her former boyfriend, Meek Mill — Is that a world tour or your girl’s tour? — implying that it’s emasculating for a man to receive second billing to his significant other.

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As with stars of rock and country music, almost every successful rapper today, from Jay Z to Future to Chance the Rapper, has at some point performed lyrics that objectify or exploit women. J.Cole’s music has taken on more social justice elements over the years (Drake has spoken out for black causes as well). But Cole, in a 2013 song, called women “b—–s” —I got smart, I got rich, and I got b—–s still/And they all look like my eyebrows: thick as hell — and patriarchally dismisses female sexuality on 2014’s “No Role Modelz”:

My only regret was too young for Lisa Bonet, my only regret was too young for Nia Long/Now all I’m left with is hoes from reality shows, hand her a script the b—h probably couldn’t read along

Even so-called progressive rappers fall into this trap, namely the androgynous Young Thug and the genderfluid Young M.A.

Sometime between Drake’s early rise and his third mixtape being converted into 2009’s So Far Gone, the rapper known for singing about his romantic feelings and the pressure of newfound fame — with a flow that made every 16 bars sound like the hottest verse ever — became his own worst enemy. Drake, known for hits like 2009’s “Best I Ever Had” and 2010’s “Find Your Love,” became synonymous with quote-heavy memes on social media, and fake Twitter accounts such as @drakkardnoir pumped out fake deep quote after fake deep quote.

But the rapper’s verses about loving and being proud of college-educated, independent women — Sound so smart like you graduated college/Like you went to Yale but you probably went to Howard — paved the way for hypermasculine diatribes against the sexual agency of seemingly any woman he’s ever encountered. Through an examination of Drake’s four studio albums, plus mixtapes, collaborative projects and guest features, it is clear that the man who made music for folks who couldn’t get over their exes was himself struggling with the basic concept of “moving on.”

While So Far Gone doesn’t count as a studio album — it was his final mixtape before signing with Universal Republic — it gave listeners a sneak peek into the troublesome lyrics Drake would release in subsequent years. On the soothing track “Houstatlantavegas,” he raps about “saving” an exotic dancer from a strip club:

You go get f—– up and we just show up at your rescue/Carry you inside, get you some water and undress you.

I give you my all and the next morning you’ll forget who or why, or how, or when/Tonight is prolly ’bout to happen all over again.

Thank Me Later, Drake’s 2010 debut studio album, features the rapper slut-shaming women for having previous sexual partners. From “Karaoke” (I hope that you don’t get known for nothing crazy/Cause no man ever wants to hear those stories ’bout his lady) to “Miss Me” (Work somethin’, twerk something, basis/She just tryna make it so she’s right here getting naked. I don’t judge her, I don’t judge her/But I could never love her) to “Thank Me Now” (Alohas to women with no ties to men/That I know well, that way there are no lies), Drake positions women with previous sexual experience as undesirable. On the Rihanna-assisted “Take Care,” he seems to open up to the idea of women having sexual agency, relenting I’ve asked about you and they told me things/But my mind didn’t change and I still feel the same.

Thank Me Later was also at times a celebration of independent women – appreciating women’s “book smarts and street smarts” on “Shut it Down” and “Fancy” — but set the foundation for 2011’s Take Care, which was, at that point, the peak of Drake’s overt misogyny and objectification of women. On Take Care, which won Drake a Grammy for best rap album — he continues his focus on sex workers with “Lord Knows”:

To all these women that think like men with the same intentions

Talking strippers and models that try to gain attention.

Even a couple porn stars that I’m ashamed to mention.

“Under Ground Kings” (Sometimes I need that romance, sometimes I need that pole dance/Sometimes I need that stripper that’s gon’ tell me that she don’t dance) even creates a binary of acceptable and unacceptable behavior. While Drake has an infatuation with exotic dancers, he also makes it clear that admiration only goes as far as sex. “Trust Issues,” which Drake said he made for “fun” and thus didn’t include on the album, has Drake playing into the thoroughly debunked myth that women can’t want sex as much as men, rapping And it’s probably why I’m scared to put the time in/Women want to f— like they’re me and I’m them.

Those songs, though, pale in comparison to “Shot For Me,” “Marvin’s Room” and “Practice.” They are Drake at his worst, going beyond the behaviors of the paternalistic and disapproving ex. He goes from telling a woman she’s drinking away the pain she feels due to leaving him on “Shot For Me” — Yeah, I’m the reason why you always getting faded — to cursing out another for finding happiness with a new lover on “Marvin’s Room” (F— that n—-a that you love so bad).

Despite admitting that he’s a flawed individual in the latter song, in the former he tells the woman that he “made” her and calls her a “b—-.” This then leads to Drake’s most confusing and disturbing song to date, “Practice.” While acknowledging that women can have sex — the song is about a woman having multiple partners — Drake then spins it to his advantage: All those other men were practice, they were practice/Yeah, for me, for me, for me, for me. He senses “pain and regret” in the woman from her past, and then reluctantly accepts the fact that she has casual sex. He tops the song off with an uncomfortable, familial request: You can even call me daddy, give you someone to look up to.

But, Drake can still change. His lyrics paint the picture of a man who is constantly questioning himself.

It’s 2016’s “Hotline Bling” that ignited the re-examination of Drake’s entire catalog. The song is the rapper’s second-best-selling single of all time (behind fellow Views track “One Dance”), and won him two Grammys at last month’s award show. Not to mention, the visuals for the song will go down in music history as one of the most memorable music videos of all time.

But while the chorus is equal parts infectious and mesmerizing, Drake sneaks in two verses and a bridge full of “reductive stereotypes” and body-policing lyrics about an old fling. Whether about said woman “wearing less and goin’ out more” or “going places where you don’t belong,” Drake makes it apparent that he’s offended that she has the audacity to move on with her life. By the end of the song, Drake’s become so desperate that he’s even concerned that the woman is “bendin’ over backwards for someone else.” Textbook narcissism.

His guest appearances have been a mixed bag as well. On rapper The Game’s 2011 track “Good Girls Go Bad,” Drake raps Who’s still getting tested?/Where’s all the women that still remember who they slept with? and a year later added to 2 Chainz’s “No Lie”:

She could have a Grammy, I still treat her a– like a nominee

Just need to know what that p—- like

So one time is fine with me.

Over the past couple of years, Drake has put out two mixtapes, a solo effort If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, and What A Time To Be Alive with Future. His male chauvinism can be found on tracks “Legend,” “Energy” and “Madonna” and repeatedly calls a woman “ungrateful” for living her life without him on “Diamonds Dancing.” As writer Tahirah Hairston pointed out, Drake has also had questionable lyrics on “Wu-Tang Forever,” “Own It,” “Furthest Thing,” “I’m The Plug” and even notable feminist Beyoncé’s “Mine.”

Back in October, Drake released three tracks from his upcoming More Life album — “Fake Love,” “Sneakin’,” and “Two Birds, One Stone.” Looking solely at those tracks, it appears Drake has let up a little on his control, instead rapping about success, fake friends and his long list of haters. Even his appearance on labelmate Nicki Minaj’s diss to Remy Ma, “No Frauds,” he steers clear of trying to preserve women’s sanctity.

For nearly a decade now, Drake has wrapped up his alarming lyrics inside catchy, Instagram-caption-worthy choruses and tunes. The “light-skinned Keith Sweat” gets away with this because he carefully crafted a “nice guy” persona that deflects the criticism that, say, a 21 Savage, Kodak Black or the Migos would receive.

For many men, Drake’s attitudes reflect their own attitudes and desires, which in turn reflect a patriarchal society that views women as sexual objects meant to be gazed at. For women, they’ve had to deal with sexism in the arts since the beginning of time, so choosing to not enjoy an artist because of his views on sexuality would mean giving up on music all together. And at the end of the day, Drake is just that good at his job, unquestionably the most influential and popular musician in the business right now.

But Drake can still change. His lyrics paint the picture of a man who is constantly questioning himself, consistently trying to become a better person, whatever that entails. From So Far Gone to More Life — age 22 to 30 — he’s learned all the lessons life can teach, from whom to trust to what forms of happiness money and fame can buy. But it seems he’s yet to learn that women aren’t sexual objects. They’re human beings. If the only women of the world were all exactly like the women he seems to respect — his mother or Rihanna or Aaliyah or Serena Williams — we’d call him Aubrey the Riveter. But, they aren’t the only women who deserve his respect.

He knows that. But it begs the question: Does he care?

Martenzie is a writer for The Undefeated. His favorite cinematic moment is when Django said "Y'all want to see somethin?"

[japansojournsummer2018]

A Sojourner’s Guide to Japan

So, you’re planning on staying in Japan for a while? If you need help figuring out what to expect and how to behave, look no further.

Where?

Japan is a small island nation located to the East of China and the Koreas, at the far Eastern edge of Asia. It is a traditional and ceremonial culture, and it celebrates its roots that go back for thousands of years. While it is not correct to loop it in with all other Asian cultures, it does share several similarities with its neighbors China and South Korea. For starters, the kanji system used in Japanese writing borrows thousands of Chinese characters that use the original Chinese pronunciation and the Japanese version. Both Koreans and Japanese people bow to each other as a sign of respect. All three have mixture of Buddhism, Christianity, and Shintoism, though Shintoism remains mostly in Japan. Japanese people often practice parts of both Shintoism and Buddhism. Most other religions cover a much smaller portion of the population.

How is it run?

Information taken from (https://www.eubusinessinjapan.eu/why-japan/regions-prefectures). Japan is divided into 9 regions and further into 47 prefectures. The regions are Hokkaido, Tohoku, Kanto, Chubu, Kansai, Chugoku, Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Japan’s capital is Tokyo City, located in the Kanto region. Other major cities include Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Kobe, Kyoto, Fukuoka, Kawasaki, and Saitama. Japan is a constitutional monarchy, where it has an emperor with limited power. It has an executive, legislative, and judicial branch, much like the US. The Prime Minister acts as the official head of government. The emperor acts as a ceremonial leader, which is the only real area in which Japan’s government involves religion. Japan’s government is very modern compared to the ancient feudal times when much was decided by war and conquest.

Major Historical Events

Japan has experienced several significant events in its history, concerning both itself and the rest of the world. Information taken from (http://miner8.com/en/13587) The US dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th, 1945, taking tens of thousands of lives and forcing Japan’s surrender in WWII. Japan’s constitution was put into effect on May 3rd, 1947, under the United States’ supervision. Japan gained its independence from US control on January 1st, 1952. It joined the UN in 1956. It was the host of its first summer Olympic games in 1964. Some historic battles include the Battle of Sekigahara and the Battle of Tsushima. (https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/features/2017/jul/ten-moments-that-shaped-japan/) The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 killed 100,000 people and leveled Tokyo and Yokohama. The attack on Pearl Harbor was orchestrated on December 7th, 1941, triggering the US’s entrance into WWII. Matthew Perry was responsible for the end of Japan’s isolationism, when he signed a treaty with Japan to allow the US to sell goods in Japanese ports.

Society

HeirarchyStructure.com (https://www.hierarchystructure.com/japan-social-hierarchy/) describes Japan’s class system as a 3-class system. The upper class, comprised of royals and business owners, the middle class, full of small business owners and servicemen, and the lower class, comprised of laborers. This follows a similar structure to the US, bar the royal family. One could ascend or descends the classes based on their income, and the system is not a strict one. Gender roles in Japan typically follow the same blueprint. Men are expected to work and bring home the paycheck, and women are expected to stay home as a housewife. As with many cultures, this has been challenged in recent years, with the roles being reversed or completely ignored in some cases. Despite this social progress, the work-oriented mindset still dominates the culture regardless of sex and has led to a lower birthrate in the country. To continue to work and contribute to the company takes place over family matters in most all situations.

Japanese people are taught to save face in public situations, which means that they will avoid confrontation at all costs. They will avoid discussing hot button issues as arguing in public would be disruptive. You can expect a Japanese person to agree with you or appear to even if they do not, as saving face takes priority over honesty if it means causing discomfort. In this sense, Japanese culture is very high-context, as you will have to rely on one’s body language and behavior more than what they are saying to truly understand what they mean. Their communication is very neutral, and this can often lead to misunderstandings with foreigners who are used to being very expressive. Choosing to yell or openly voice your opinion will make you come across as a brash and loud person, so trying to be quiet and not stand out is usually the best route to take. It is also a good idea to study Japanese as much as you are able, as it is the only language outside schools that is officially used. School teachers are required to have a good amount of proficiency in English, so you will hopefully have less trouble there if you are traveling as a student.

The culture is also a very polite one, where greetings change based on who you are addressing. You might say “yo” to a friend you see on the street, but if you were introducing yourself to a stranger, you might open with 初めまして、���は_____ です (hajimemashite, watashi wa ____ desu), which translates to It is nice to meet you, I am ____. Clothing and posture are also very important in the workplace. You are expected to bow at different angles when thanking someone, which also depend on who you are thanking. Depending on the company, you will likely be expected to be dressed professionally at all times. Japan is a very monochronic culture, where punctuality is an absolute must. There is even a saying, “if you arrive on time, you are fifteen minutes late.” This simply means that you should always strive to be early as it is simply expected of you. You should also be respectful of others space, as touching is very rare in public among most people. In other situations, like drinking or on a subway, it may be different. Just don’t run up to hug your Japanese friend despite what you might be used to back home. (http://guide.culturecrossing.net/basics_business_student_details.php?Id=9&CID=104)

The fun stuff

Let’s start with the cuisine. Japanese people typically eat three times a day- breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There are no cultural norms regarding who you must eat with and where, so go out and eat to your hearts content. I would advise carrying cash on you at all times, as not every store will accept credit cards. The Japanese currency in the yen (pronounced “en”), and it comes in numerous coins and paper notes. (https://www.oanda.com/currency/iso-currency-codes/JPY) It was made official in 1871 and has been the national currency ever since. As for where to exchange USD for Yen, you can find exchanges at airports, and most banks and post offices will have an exchange available as well. 100 yen is worth a bit less than a US dollar, so you can kind of estimate what something costs in dollars if you can round down a little. Food does not necessarily cost more over in Japan, but portion sizes are sometimes smaller and may have you buying more servings depending on your eating style. Much of Japan’s food is based around fish, as they are an island nation with fishable waters on all sides. Also expect to see lots of lobster, octopus, shellfish, and other aquatic foods you might not normally see. Beef will be more expensive, as Japan has limited access to supplies of it. Japan has thousands of ramen shops, and you won’t have trouble finding a quality sushi restaurant either. Sushi, curry, and ramen share a spot as the most popular foods in Japan. Most meals will have a bowl of rice and miso soup, with an assortment of other dishes. Pickled vegetables and some sort of meat will usually accompany them. Table manners are a whole different animal. I have shared a video earlier on my blog that you can use to get a decent idea of how to behave at the dinner table.

If you’re looking for entertainment, you likely won’t need to travel far (unless you’re out in the inaka, or countryside). You can sing karaoke with friends, go out to a bar (if you’re old enough), join a community group, go fishing, go skiing/snowboarding, sightsee, the list goes on and on. If you’d rather stay home and watch TV or listen to the radio, they have that too. NHK is a massive company funded by viewers that serves as a neutral reporting station. They are a good source for national news if you can get the information translated. There will also be local stations depending on where you are located, so check with the locals to see who is best to tune in to. Japan also has one of the largest film industries in the world. The movie Tokyo Story won Best Film produced in Asia in a Sight & Sound listing, and Japan has also won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film four times. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Japan) Check out a studio Ghibli film for a classic anime masterpiece, or head down to the theater to see if you can find a movie with English subtitles.

Regardless of your reason for going to Japan, I hope that this paper helped you out, and maybe even saved you some embarrassment in an otherwise unfortunate situation. Be sure to check out Mount Fuji during your stay and visit an onsen (hot spring) before you go. Good luck!

[peeringthroughthe4thwall]

Universal Monsters: the search for a new Cinematic Universe

Whatever you think of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there is absolutely no doubt that it's impact has been tremendous.

Firstly, and most obviously, the box office has been huge. According to Boxofficemojo.com the fourteen films Marvel has so far released as part of the MCU have generated over $4.2 Billion at the US box-office in less than 10 years (that's an average of over £300 million each!).

Marvel's approach of taking well established characters, giving them individual origin stories and then bringing them together into one universe, has been such a successful business model, that it was inevitable that other production companies would try to emulate it. And you can't blame them. It had often been said that the difference between the movie business and any other business is that each time a new film is released it is, effectively, a brand new product. In addition, although the life span of these products covers a number of different formats (cinema, DVD/Blu-Ray, VOD and finally Television), the success of a film mostly relies on the income generated over a very short period of time.

Imagine Coca Cola having to release an entirely new drink every month, to raise awareness for this new drink, to market and distribute it and to move as many units as possible before the release of the next drink! It would be a crazy yet this is the environment that filmmakers find themselves every day. It can also explain the need for so many remakes which was recently covered by Skye Wingfield in his excellent recent article spurred on by the news that The Fly and The Matrix were being remade.

Marvel comic book rivals DC have attempted a similar approach recently with their Justice League films which include the Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman films and, although they have not met with the same type of critical acclaim as Marvel, they have still been extremely successful (Batman Vs Superman generated over $870million at the international box-office despite it's critical drubbing!)

Legendary, is also trying this formula: after having success with Godzilla and, more recently, Kong: Skull Island, they are now developing King Kong Vs Godzilla for release in 2020 and if that hits there will undoubtedly be many more involving various MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms). As a lover of monster movies this, for me, is certainly something to look forward to.

As anyone who knows me will attest, I love the Star Wars Universe and Disney and Lucas film are taking a similar approach. The main Star Wars saga has been well established so, instead of making the origins films first we have the situation where many of the beloved characters of this galaxy far, far away will be subject to retrospective origins. The, as yet untitled, Han Solo film will be first (currently 25th May 2018) followed by possible Yoda, Obi Wan Kenobi and Boba Fett films coming in later years. Alongside these, the new saga will continue to introduce new characters whilst slowly fading out older ones. In addition, we can perhaps expect more films expanding on major events of the Star Wars Expanded Universe as we did with last year's excellent Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

All these attempts at creating a cinematic universe are very understandable, however I must admit a certain trepidation with regards to the upcoming reboot of the Universal Horror movies.

Lets go back a little. When I was a child the BBC used to broadcast double-bills of horror on Saturday nights from 1975 to 1983 and I was often allowed to stay up and watch them. Many of my earliest memories of watching movies comes from this time and I was introduced to such classics as Frankenstein, The Bride Of Frankenstein, The Black Cat, Them! etc. A quick glance at the double bill schedules that can be found on Wikipedia takes me back to the 9th of July 1983 when myself and my brother bossed our babysitter into watching Dracula with Bela Lugosi (10pm), followed by Karloff in Frankenstein at 11.15! We couldn't watch Frankenstein in its entirety unfortunately as my parents came home and spoiled it for us.

These films are very dear to me and I watched them at a very important stage in my life, when I was first discovering the full potential of filmmaking that was out there. Watching such films before I was even a teenager also, I believe, cured me of the common prejudice many people have of old and Black & White movies (see my recent article on King Kong (1933)). They are films I have returned to many times over the years and I revel in their history. How many people can say they actively searched out the Spanish language version of Dracula solely because it was made at the same time as Lugosi was filming his version (the English Language version was made in the day-time and the Spanish version at night on the same sets).

These stories have been remade many times using many different approaches but for me, the universal films of the 30s through to the 50s were the best. They weren't necessarily the first or the most successful but there is something about the production approaches and values of Universal, initially under the direction of the great Carl Laemmle Jr, which really speaks to me.

Universal has rebooted their films numerous times over the last few years, most successfully with Brendon Fraser in 1999 and 2001 (the combined box-office for The Mummy and The Mummy Returns was almost $850 Million!) and, given the success of the MCU, it may have been inevitable that a Universal Monsters Universe was soon mooted (in 2014). The first of these – the Tom Cruise starrer The Mummy – is due to be released in July 2017.

Anyone seeing the trailer for this new Mummy will immediately see that there is a very different approach taken from the original classics. Gone is the gothic horror to be replaced with massive special effects and none stop action. The trailer makes it look spectacular with one scene involving zero gravity during a plane crash apparently needing an astonishing 64 takes to get perfect. Universal is trying to sell it in a similar way to World War Z or, perhaps I Am Legend, as an action horror which have been very successful in the past.

My issue is, however, whereas each other cinematic universe are modern retellings in the similar vein as their previous incarnations, this new Universal approach are not. Think about it, is there anything really new about how Marvel have made each of their superhero films? A part from ramping up the budgets and focusing on quality (something that was definitely missing in 20th century Marvel productions, for example the 1978 Spiderman Strikes Back!), I would say no. They are very true to their comic book roots.

The same with Godzilla and King Kong who have previously done battle in 1962. The Star Wars Universe, again is slightly different as it is emulating the success and the production values of the first trilogy. But Universal is taking a whole new approach, essentially taking the characters from those 30s classics but not the style and atmosphere that makes those classics so good.

You could well argue that times have changed and there is no longer a call for these types of Horror but I would counter that is not necessarily the case. As long as it is good and socially relevant Horror still has an important place in Hollywood. Some of my favourite films of the last few years have been Horrors and have shown us that Horror is so much more that just a vehicle for the odd scare. 2014s The Babadook and last year's Under The Shadow are perfect examples of this and the current release Get Out has grossed a whopping $168 million (as of the 06/04/17) having only cost $4.5 Million.

So why are Universal taking such a different approach? Well, as with everything in Hollywood, it comes down to money. Blockbusters, whilst risky, can generate masses of income and The Mummy is trying to tap into a gap in a summer market dominated by action adventure. If it succeeds the rewards could make many an accountant weep with joy!

Now, please, don't get me wrong. I am not a hater willing this approach to fail. I love movies too much to wish failure on anyone. I would love to go to the cinema and watch The Mummy and have the time of my life. I want it to be great. I approach each film I see hoping that it is going to be one of the greatest films that has ever been made and I will want the same for The Mummy. I don't want to spend my money on crap, I want to be entertained, to be moved, to me thrilled, to be engaged emotionally, and it may fulfil all of these wishes.

But at the same time I want the original classics to be remembered. If remaking them is the best way to do that in this modern world, then so be it. If a youngster discovers these greats because of a remake then I will be certainly pleased. I am just worried that by approaching these stories in just different ways, this may not be the case.

So my message to Universal would be this – I wish you the very best in creating a new Cinematic Universe, I sincerely hope that these new films are great, but please, please, please, please, don't forget those originals. Remember Universal studios was built on the shoulders of giants, of vampires and of the undead. Don't take this for granted. Reference them in your new films, have a morgue attendant watch them as Tom Cruise is waking up in a body bag next door, have two characters talk about how good they are and, hopefully, some youngster out there will be curious enough to look back and discover the true origin stories.

[geekysweetie]

Makura no Danshi - Pillow Boys - Anime Review

OK…. I just watched one of the weirdest anime of my life… Well two of the weirdest anime of my life…. And I didn’t really hate it?..

The first anime I came across is a relatively new anime called OneRoom. In OneRoom, everything is supposed to be in first person… except… only… it’s not??? Because why then can I keep seeing almost up the backs of the girls’ skirts?! Do I have hidden cameras in my apartment? Do I have super powers? Am I having an out of body experience? The answer is NO, they just wanted to cram as much fan service as humanly possible into each 4 minute episode…

Not only that…. But it is the first anime I’ve ever watched which puts YOU in the anime…. or tries to… but fails miserably at this… They make it so you never see, hear, or know anything about the main character… sort of… only except… you do know/assume what he is saying based on the things the girls are saying to you… And unless you’re a total pervert, chances are whatever the anime thinks the main character is feeling/thinking/saying doesn’t line up with what you’re actually feeling/thinking/saying while watching it… so it’s still almost impossible to immerse yourself into this supposed “blank slate”.

While watching it, I felt like I was playing Love+ (a dating sim game), except I wasn’t playing anything at all. It was like a waifu simulator, with all the gamification and simulation parts taken out.

Still… because the artwork was cute… and the music was catchy… and most of all because the episodes were only 4 minutes long, I kept watching….

While reading reviews after watching, just to laugh at peoples “WTF” comments…. I discovered there’s a version of this “anime experiment” designed for women as well….

Enter Makura no Danshi! Pillow Boys! An anime by the same studio as OneRoom, Makura no Danshi, or Pillow Boys, features a different Pillow Boy each week.

What the heck is a Pillow Boy? In Japan, for both guys and girls, there are anime pillow cases that fit large body sized pillows. WARNING NSFW: https://www.aliexpress.com/promotion/promotion_anime-male-body-pillow-promotion.html

This anime was blatantly created for one sole purpose… to sell such pillow cases…. and this anime is effective at doing that… Before watching this anime, I knew about the Pillow Boyfriend / Pillow Girlfriend trend in Japan…. and I’d looked at such pillow cases before… I didn’t have a large pillow at the time though; About 3 weeks ago I got a really big expensive memory foam body pillow…. It’s currently dressed in a not very feminine or kawaii dark color…. Watching Pillow Boys reminded me that I could get something more Kawaii that would fit my image, my room, my decor, my life. I already cuddle my pillow every night so why not cuddle it and look at cute anime boys too lol. So I will probably buy one of these pillow slips, as soon as I decide which one I want… there are literally hundreds of styles, some from popular games and anime, and others completely original characters.

So now that you know what a Pillow Boy is… let’s move on to the actual review…

Title: Makura no Danshi! Pillow Boys!

Episodes: 12

Episode Length: 4 minutes

Studio: Feel

Publisher: Imagineer

Release Date: 2015

Genre: Slice of Life, Shoujo, Romance, “Pillow Boy Simulator?” lol.

Where to Watch: Crunchyroll

Overall: 35/55 64% D “Average Anime for Girls”

Geeky: 1/5? lol… Not sure… I mean it does have pretty art, and actually I really like the opening theme song, and it IS geeky, because I mean, who else buys these pillows except for geeks. But I can’t in good faith give it a higher score here, because aside from the opening theme, there’s almost no other music, each episode is 4 minutes long, and there’s literally no plot, and it’s just weird as heck lol.

Sweetie: 5/5 – at the opposite end of the rating spectrum, this is an incredibly cute, kinda awkward, and at times highly inappropriate, funny, fun, anime…

Concept: 6/10 — Fanservice for Women. Blatant money-grab anime whose sole purpose is to sell merchandise… but yet… oddly… interesting… and entertaining… Each week a new Pillow Boy is introduced… and they’re all pretty cute and likeable….

I want to make a comment here… but it may be a spoiler… not that the story is important or even coherent in this series… but just in case, using my spoiler tags… you can click to read… it’s about the ending of the final episode…

Spoiler

Perhaps the weirdest thing about this anime is, I believe that the characters actually ARE pillows throughout the anime, not just cute guys who the main character (You) spend your time with… My reasons for believing this include, in the final episode the Pillow Boy says “Hey!! Don’t Fluff me! That’s so mean!” Now why on earth or even how on earth would you fluff a person? You could fluff their HAIR maybe, but that’s not what the character says… Also there’s the fact that You are always tired and/or sleeping in every episode… And… the fact that all of these guys know where you live, sleep in your bed, and seem overly familiar with you, and that’s odd especially for Japanese cultures even more so than American culture, and it STILL seemed weird to me too as an American. My first thought was WHY do I have so many different boyfriends, and how do they know where I live, and why are we sleeping together all the time? — All of these things led me to the conclusion that not only are they ACTUALLY PILLOWS; but that YOU as the viewer are well aware of this fact, and that YOU as the viewer and main character, are actually talking to and fantasizing about your pillows… making you perhaps one of the saddest, most desperate, lonely main characters that I have ever seen… On the other hand, you could just be dreaming in each episode, which would be less creepy, and also less funny, than someone talking to their pillows and pretending to be in a relationship with them lol.

And when you realize THAT, it kinda completely changes the entire tone of the anime lol.

Story: 3/10 – Each week a new Pillow Boy is introduced, each episode is self contained and stand-alone. Each episode consists of the Pillow Boy talking to you about his day, and asking you questions, which you’re encouraged as an audience member to talk back to the TV (k we go from talking to pillows to talking to the TV now lol). They don’t give you much time for response, and ultimately, it suffers the same problem as OneRoom, in that it’s still difficult to immerse, because you can still get a vague idea of the “conversation” that is supposedly going on.

Characters: 9/10 – Ok so the characters themselves though are actually strangely cute, and charming. I honestly liked just about all of them. My favorite was probably the cuddly one or the shy astronomy geek, or maybe the naughty twins lol. “Let’s play find the flower” lol. But even the little boy was cute, in a strictly platonic way. But that didn’t stop the anime from making highly inappropriate sexual innuendos and jokes even in that episode such as the title of that episode: “Innocent Danshi, a highly energetic, hot, 5 year old” WHAT THE F??? That is the creepiest weirdest title for an episode I’ve ever seen. PS, the episode is COMPLETELY G rated – thank god. It’s NOT some weird creepy perverted pedophile anime lol. — You know most anime with a “young looking” “Loli” or “Shota” character, they merely LOOK young but are actually of age of consent, and not an ACTUAL 5 year old… but in this anime, he really is a 5 year old, and you’re baby sitting him… I won’t give too much away, but you’re playing power rangers and he tells you to be the pink ranger, and he wants to be the super “rare” black ranger, whose super power is “Fatty Beef Bomber” — Really? lol… Innuendo much there? Given the character’s age, that is just messed up…. But then… when you take into account what I mentioned in the spoiler tag above, about the ending of the final episode, then you can look past this part. Each character is unique and has a charm of their own.

Artwork: 3/5 – The character designs are super cute, but the animation itself is very low quality and cheap. One scene, with your coworker, in particular, keeps one still image on for 1-2 minutes… in a 4 minute episode… that’s…. pretty cheap lol. The character designs are also not consistent — the final episode brings back the pillow boy from Episode 1… and he looks like a junior high school or even elementary school student now (which to be honest, fits his personality better) Except then, near the end, he goes back to looking about college student aged again (as he appeared in the first episode) for a few seconds. I don’t think this was done for any reason other than they were lazy. It wasn’t like he was done in a “chibi” style to be more cute, It was more like, they forgot what they went with, or couldn’t decide on and stick to one style, or they were outsourcing or using different artists – which would be pretty sad given its a 4 minute per episode kind of show, which shouldn’t be overly complex or have that much detail etc.

Music: 3/5 – The opening theme honestly, would be like a 5/5 — I really like it. It’s catchy as heck. But the rest of the anime has almost no music at all… Even an episode where the Pillow Boy is a violinist, which was the weirdest episode to watch without music.

Voice Acting: 5/5 — I thought the voices were cute, as well as the artwork, those two factors played a big role in my liking of the characters and overall enjoyment of the anime.

Overall: 35/55 64% D “Average Anime for Girls”

Makura no Danshi – Pillow Boys – Anime Review was originally published on GeekySweetie.com - Geeky & Kawaii Anime, Tech, Toys, & Game Reviews & News

[nofomoartworld]

Talking broiler chicken, germ maps and maggots with Andreas Greiner

Andreas Greiner, Monument for the 308 (detail), 2016. Exhibition view of Andreas Greiner. Agentur des Exponenten. GASAG Kunstpreis 2016, Berlinische Galerie, 2016. Photo: Harry Schnitger

Andreas Greiner has built a monument to the humble broiler. A 7 meter high 3D printed version of a real chicken that had lived and died in a battery farm in Brandenburg, Germany. The artist then installed the giant sculpture inside the main hall of the Berlinische Galerie. I haven’t seen it yet but it looks poignant. It has the imposing presence of a dinosaur skeleton, the photogenic appeal of an instagram star but the mistrustful contours of a chicken that has never seen trees, grass or the light of a sunny day.

Not that i’ve ever seen any broiler chicken alive. I’m just assuming, extrapolating and letting my mind wander. Because Greiner’s work excels at triggering your imagination: he quietly lays in front of your eyes some visually stunning concepts and ideas, he never suffocates them with explanations but lets you ponder upon them and draw your own conclusions about what they say about our society, economy and culture.

Andreas Greiner, Monument for the 308, 2016. Exhibition view of Andreas Greiner GASAG Kunstpreis 2016, Berlinische Galerie, 2016, Photo. Theo Bitzer

Monument for 308 shows that Greiner is comfortable working on the macro scale but he is also quietly building an impressive career engaging with the small (maggots, flies, algae, tiny crustaceans), and the very very small (microbes of all sorts.) Greiner works with living organisms (including himself when he decided to spend a week inside a gallery in the sole company of a few insects and plants), enrolling them as both subjects of careful reflection and as collaborators. His previous projects involved buying 40 litres of maggots and bringing them to the exhibition space until they turn into flies, composing music based on
 the luminous skin of a squid, convincing the Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin to consider a fly as a living artwork and provide for its well-being, photographing portraits of algae, carefully orchestrating explosions around Berlin, etc.

The young artist recently received the GASAG Art Prize, a recognition awarded to Berlin-based artists whose work dialogues with technology and science. I caught up with him to discuss chicken, bacterial maps and the perils of working with maggots:

Heinrich, Totus Corpus – full Body Portrait of a broiler, 2015, Photo: Theo Bitzer & Andreas Greiner

Hi Andreas! I find your chicken projects very moving. But then i’ve always had a soft spot for animals. Which kind of response and reflection do you hope to elicit with works like Monument for the 308 and Heinrich (poor poor little battery chickens)?

I’m not necessarily looking to provoke pity for Heinrich, the broiler chicken. How a person reacts to my works is of course not in my control, however I would like the viewer to reflect upon the issue. We create these animals for the sole purpose of our eating habits, this is a species, which would not exist like this were it not for humans intervention into their breeding behaviour and anatomy. Heinrich is a metaphor, he represents our contemporary age in which humans are the driving creative and destructive force on planet earth. If dinosaurs are a relic from the Mesozoic Era, broiler chicken would be a “monument” of now.

Andreas Greiner, fattened chicken Éléonore before CT scan in Berlin, 2015

Heinrich at the petting zoo in Berlin Tempelhof, 2015

Andreas Greiner, Ulrike (Euastrum oblongum) Electron scanning micrograph 2016 measurement: Andreas Greiner and Martina Heider, Bayerisches Polymerinstitut, University Bayreuth

After Heinrich died, his body underwent an autopsy. What did you learn from it?

Heinrich died a few months after I handed him over to a petting zoo. The autopsy found that he most likely died from a heart attack, probably because his body was just too heavy.

I found the description of the works on your website to be fairly neutral and factual but i couldn’t help wonder whether these works were trying to make a point about animal welfare, man-made forms of nature, the food industry or maybe even veganism?

They are pointing to all of those and more. Certainly they also reflect my personal view. There is a general disregard for certain animals, which we view as an objective mass – matter to be exploited to fit our needs. My works show this, but I chose to only have short, factual descriptions like for example the documentations on my website. The reception should stay open for individual interpretation. By dealing with issues such as factory farming, genetic manipulation or the identity of animals, of course, the viewer makes their own conclusions in the end.

Andreas Greiner, Every Fly is a Piece of Art, University of the Arts, Berlin, 2012

Andreas Greiner, Every Fly is a Piece of Art, University of the Arts, Berlin, 2012

Andreas Greiner, Every Fly is a Piece of Art, University of the Arts, Berlin, 2012

Andreas Greiner, Every Fly is a Piece of Art, University of the Arts, Berlin, 2012

Andreas Greiner, Every Fly is a Piece of Art, University of the Arts, Berlin, 2012

I was feeling less sorry for the maggots then flies in the work Every Fly is a Piece of Art. I’m wondering how the whole adventure unfolded though. Did you really manage to buy all available fly maggots in Berlin and did you manage to control the flies and channel them through the exit as you had hoped? It sounds to me like a wild project where so many elements can take a direction that wasn’t expected…

Yes, it was slightly chaotic. I conceived this work for the final exhibition of my masters at the University of the Arts in Berlin. Back in 2012 with a students budget it was impossible to buy all the flies in Berlin. I visited every fisherman shop that sells maggots though and bought a huge amount of their maggots in stock. Most of the salesmen were afraid to loose their clients if they sold all of their maggots to me in order to really buy all oft them I would have had to bribe the salesmen.

In the exhibition they started hatching and flying about. All the painting students of the other studios were mad at me because the flies landed on their freshly painted surfaces. They reacted by constructing fly traps, which turned my intentions around completely. I actually had to end the project earlier than the official end of the master class exhibition – at least half of the flies (about 100 000) hatched outside in nature. After this experience, I decided to only work with a few flies or one fly at a time because this is more foreseeable.

Your practice seems to be an interesting mix of collaboration with scientists and other experts along with processes that make control over the final artworks a bit difficult.  How important is it for you to be in control (or rather maybe not be in control) of the art piece you are developing?

I am interested in the processual aspects of sculpture and have integrated living organisms into many of my works. I call this co-authorship, as they co-create and transform the art work by the process of living. Uncontrollable biological processes are an integral part of the outcome of an art work.

By working with experts and scientists I am able to broaden and deepen my work by researching very specific topics and techniques. I am interested in an exchange between artistic and scientific knowledge.

Andreas Greiner, Spring Forward Fall Back, Lichthaus, Kunstverein Arnsberg, 2014. Photo: Vlado Velkov

Andreas Greiner, Spring Forward Fall Back, Lichthaus, Kunstverein Arnsberg, 2014. Photo: Vlado Velkov

Andreas Greiner, Spring Forward Fall Back, Lichthaus, Kunstverein Arnsberg, 2014. Photo: Vlado Velkov

Andreas Greiner, Spring Forward Fall Back, Lichthaus, Kunstverein Arnsberg, 2014. Photo: Vlado Velkov

I’m very curious about Spring Forward Fall Back and what you experienced during this cohabitation with an ecosystem you had created for you and for nature. What did you learn and observe during that week? How did the insects, plants and other living entities inhabit and modify the space over time?

I was invited by the Kunstverein Arnsberg for a show at the Lichthaus and decided to live in there for a week. It was an interesting experience. First of all I learnt, that spring in Arnsberg (in the Sauerland, Western Germany) starts later then in the rest of Germany. . In the beginning there were few insects, for example a single bumblebee got lost, it moved very slowly because of the cold. I brought a female moth with me from Berlin and later she actually attracted a local male moth. Insect match-making. By the end of the exhibit an ant colony had settled and the population of my animal co-inhabitants and plants had multiplied 5 times.

Andreas Greiner &, Julian Charrière, Dominions, 2011, collecting microbes at Schwarze Pumpe, Brandenburg

Andreas Greiner &, Julian Charrière, Dominions, 2011, example of an expressed growth pattern by microbes

Andreas Greiner &, Julian Charrière, Dominions, 2011, collecting microbes at Elsdorf, Brandenburg, Nordrhein-Westfalen

Andreas Greiner &, Julian Charrière, Dominions, 2011, exhibition view

In Dominions you created bacterial maps of Germany and Switzerland. From the photos and videos on the project page, it seems that you collected the microbes from very specific and interesting looking locations. Could you tell us about these places and what guided your selection of them as well as of the selection of the microbes? And what links the humble microbes with the title of the work, Dominions?

The project was a collaboration with Julian Charrière when we were still students at Olafur Eliasson‘s Institute for Spatial Experiments. We selected places in Germany and Switzerland. Some were biographically relevant (our birthplaces in Germany and Switzerland) and others were geographically important places, such as the highest mountain in Germany, the three border triangle between Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, the eastern most point of Germany, etc. We brought sterile boxes filled with a plane layer of white culture medium for microgerms (comparable to an unexposed film or white canvas) and exposed them to the surroundings for 30min each. The collected bacteria and spores expressed different patterns and colours back in Berlin under vitrine glass.

By selecting germs from all these chosen places we reconstructed a map of Germany and Switzerland, which is not based on socio-political conventions, but defined by the microorganisms populating these areas. It’s a reference to landscape painting or photography – a snapshot of the non-perceiveable micro-landscape in the air. We humans assume to have over our landscapes with roads, cities and railways criss-crossing though the country. But it’s microorganisms, like algae and bacteria, which cover the earth and have dominion over it.

Speaking of humble lives, what is it that attracts you to the underdogs like microbes, algae, maggots, broiler chickens, etc?

One of the challenges of art is to visualize things: show things from a different perspective, or things that are generally not seen. There is a staggering mass of life that we humans never visually appreciate: industrial broiler chicken, deep-sea squids, algae which are too small to be visible, or insects, because we find them repulsive. I consider the way we interact with our surroundings very telling of our species and our times.

From Strings to Dinosaurs shown at the exhibition cycle “MULTITUDES”, curated by Anna Henckel and Nadim Samman, at Import Projects and Cycle Music and Art Festival, 2015

EExhibition view of “Andreas Greiner. Agentur des Exponenten. GASAG Kunstpreis 2016”, Berlinische Galerie, 2016. Photo: Harry Schnitger

Any upcoming project, field of research or event you could share with us?

This month, I have two exhibitions in Berlin: Golden Gate together with Armin Keplinger at Kwadrat and DAS NUMEN MEATUS at Dittrich and Schlechtriem. The finissage of my exhibition in the Berlinische Gallerie is on the 6th of February, where Tyler Friedman and I will show the work From Strings to Dinosaurs. The algae in the reactor will be placed on top of the self-playing piano and illuminate during the musical composition.

Artist Andreas Greiner in his Berlin workshop. Photo: Mike Wolff in Der Tagesspiegel

Thanks Andreas!

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[joementa]

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year fellow music lover!  I hope everyone enjoyed the last few weeks of December and finished the year on a musical high note.  I’ve been with family since December 23, so my turntable has been resting for nearly two weeks.  I’ve also been getting a lot of rest, reading a lot, and haven’t been listening to as much music as I normally do.  My playlist has consisted mostly of Christmas music, Bruce’s Tunnel Of Love, Prince’s Around The World In A Day (“Tamborine” and “Temptation” are very relevant for me right now), and Bruce’s live release of the New Year’s Eve 1980 show (more on that later).    

I think we all can agree that, from a music-lover’s perspective, 2016 was a fantastic year. I’m working on my list of ten favorite albums from 2016, and I don’t think there will be many surprises in there. 2016 was just that good.  As we look ahead to 2017, there is a lot of news that I think you should be excited about.  On the first official release day of the year (January 6), Dropkick Murphys release 11 Short Stories Of Pain & Glory.  I will definitely be checking out that album.  

2017 is shaping up to be a great year for Ryan Adams.  He’s releasing his 16th studio album, Prisoner, on February 17th.  His record label, Pax-Am, has a bunch of pre-order options available, including a mystery boxset exclusive to Pax-Am.  Info for Pax-Am’s pre-order can be found right here.  Barnes & Noble is selling Prisoner with an exclusive cover, and it can be ordered here.  I have no doubts that Prisoner will be a solid album.  I expect nothing less from Ryan Adams.

Recent posts on social media suggest we will also be getting a big tour from Ryan Adams in 2017.  That would be great, like most Ryan Adams songs. The influence and help that Ryan Adams’ music has had on me through the years is tremendous.  As someone who often suffers from deep sadness, I’ve received great sustenance from the emotion and rawness of Ryan Adams’ music. It is very therapeutic.  During the few moments where I’ve actually been able to listen to his music as a non-emotionally-therapeutic event, I’ve often sat there wondering “How the heck does he do this?”  This amazing four-part interview, part of The Great Songwriters series, does a good job of beginning to explain this.  I would recommend watching all four parts, and if you really want to have your mind blown, pay extra attention to part three.  He actually shows an example of the technique that he uses to write songs. It’s incredible.  I was brought to tears watching this.  I hope you enjoy it.  You can watch it by clicking right here. 

Here’s some more good news ahead of us: The United Record Pressing plant is said to be expanding. That’s really exciting.  It means an increase in the amount of vinyl record production.  And that means a decrease in the amount of time we listeners have to wait to buy our new vinyl.  

Bruce just announced the next release in his series of archival live shows.  Next up is from November 22, 2009, at the HSBC Arena in Buffalo, NY. This was the last show of the Working On A Dream Tour, and unknown to everyone at the time, it was also the Big Man’s last show with the E-Street Band.  So this is a really special show.  The setlist is really great too.  I haven’t heard this show before, but I can’t imagine under any circumstance that hearing a song like “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher” is not fun.  CDs start shipping on January 23.  All of the info can be found right here.

Another Bruce show worth mentioning (again) is the 1980 New Year’s Eve show from Uniondale, NY.  The run up to the ball dropping is an incredible amount of energy that transfers very well when listening to the show. You can feel it.  It went like this:  “You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)”, “Held Up Without A Gun”, “In the Midnight Hour”, then the ball drops, then they play a few minutes of “Auld Lang Syne”, with multiple band members taking the lead to play the main riff.  Then…..BOOM! “Rosalita”.  And that’s all before the over 50-minute long encore!  You can (and should) order this show, right here.

Hootie & The Blowfish’s Cracked Rear View is one of my favorite albums from the 90s, and is finally get a much-deserved vinyl reissue, out on January 10.  It was pressed on vinyl once before, back in 1995, but that version is very rare and very expensive.  And don’t forget that another great album from the 90s, New Miserable Experience by the Gin Blossoms, is being pressed on vinyl (for the first time), and will be released on January 31.  As far as I know, this album can only be bought from Shop Radio Cast.  The pre-order info is right here.  I don’t think this pre-order has sold out just yet, so be sure to place your order if you haven’t already.  

I’ve always found book lovers to be very similar to us music lovers, and I’m always fascinated when I learn about authors.  Similar to what I do with my favorite musicians and their listening habits, I love learning what my favorite authors like to read.  I love to hear their thoughts on how novels can save lives.  I recently read an article in the New York Times Book Review, called “To a Writer, a Body of Work Is a Taunt” (you can read it right here).  Essentially, this article describes how authors will often hope that they have created a worthwhile body of work by the end of their career (whenever that may be).  I like to hope that my favorite musicians have the same view.  It’s one of the many reasons I love Bruce so much.  He’s talked about the importance of each of his albums in his overall story. He knows that he’s having a conversation, through the years, with his audience.  And while some albums may be more preferable than others, all are essential to his overall story.  And, as is mentioned in this article, a body of work is measured by quality, not quantity. Case in point: Jimi Hendrix.  He released three studio albums while he was alive.  Yet I think that most would say he has a legendary body of work.

We all know what’s coming ahead of us in January, and I personally am doing my best to get myself prepared as much as possible.  I will also be putting together a playlist to help us.  In the meantime, here’s something that I think will also help: the great album by John Legend and the Roots, Wake Up! The musicians on this album (John Legend; the Roots) are great.  The songs are classics – all in the socially-conscious realm.  This album was released in 2010, and was created because of current events.  These events are still all-too-relevant right now.  This album has got heart and soul.  I’ve listened to this album many, many times since it was first released. But I’ve never heard it on vinyl before. That all changes soon, as Wake Up! will finally be officially reissued on vinyl! You can read all about the album and the reissue right here – it’s shipping now from Okayplayer.com, and will be available in record shops starting January 13.  That’s perfect timing, if you ask me.  The reissue is limited to 2500 copies, so if you’re interested in this album (which you very much should be), I would not recommend waiting until January 13.  I would go and order your copy RIGHT NOW.  That’s what I did.  You won’t regret it.  

I hope everyone had a safe, happy, and fun holiday season, and that 2017 is off to a great start for you. I hope you got (and GAVE!) a bunch of great albums as gifts.  I am pretty bullish on music in the year that’s ahead of us.  As for everything else outside of music, remember that it is important to remain educated and aware, and to take the time to seek out the truth. Music is a great way to do that!