#it builds the brand that she owns and if she chose to create a film with those characters you’ve helped her have a pre built fan base | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

h0llymediaa2 · 2 years ago

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Critical Evaluation

For my advanced final coursework project, we chose to create a music video for one of our favourite songs. The Colour Violet lyrically presents themes of lost love, infidelity and free spirits. I started off by creating mood boards from Pinterest imagery to visually guide us, as we built our storyline/shot list and location scouted.

Our product represents teenage toxic relationships and how technological convergence has redefined what cheating is, how accessible it is. Normalizing hook-up culture and toxic tendencies. According to 2016 research by Statistic Brain, 57 percent of men and 54 percent of women admitted to committing infidelity in every relationship they have had. Applications now have features that conceal infidelity, for example the password protected my eyes only feature and disappearing messages on Snapchat. I wanted to show how growing up on Phuket Island in the international school community that’s predominantly wealthy, with little to no law enforcement creates this cultural and societal pressure to constantly go out partying, dress a certain way and do drugs.

Stereotypically, the man is the toxic person and more likely to cheat in relationships, but we wanted to showcase the opposite of that by having our main character/muse also be toxic. I wanted it to be unexpected, presenting her as almost angelic then contrasting with manipulative tendencies.

Whilst Zoe is the more prominent than her co-star Alex, rather than objectifying her in a male gaze like fashion, I wanted it to come across as Alexs's point of view. We see Zoe through his rose-coloured glasses at first, showing viewers just how blind love can make you.

The key element I have been working on as the creative/art director/editor/stylist/pr, is cohesive memorable visuals. Making sure a cohesive aesthetic is shown consistently. Our main visual is Zoe, our main female character. The camera favours her in our video, she appears on merchandise, the website and our Instagram account constantly.

One of my key artistic influences for building our brand was Andy Warhol. Being aware of the ephemeral nature of celebrity in society, Warhol worked to establish a strong public persona by developing his own "brand,” and thus cultivating his own celebrity. I have always been fascinated by pop culture and fame. With technology and social media rapidly developing now any of us can create our own brand, our own compelling public image. It's become a viable career option now to post your looks and lifestyle online multiple times a day. Andy Warhol paved the way for the self-obsession that’s very prominent today. He made himself an icon, just like we all can now with the phones in our pockets. Therefore, I decided to make Zoe (our main character) our brands image. She has a very distinct, memorable free-spirited look, and having her prominent in all areas of our work creates a cohesive sense of branding for consumers.

I have studied media trends amongst my demographic for years, and the biggest one right now seems to be the vintage aesthetic and old cameras. This aesthetic creates a sense of nostalgia and feels very personal, as it feels like Alex is holding this camera and this is how he views her. Therefore, I shot on my old Nikon Coolpix and my Olympus mjuii to get an authentic grainy look. Movies also apply to this vintage trend; I've seen a resurgence in 90s films on my social media feed. Colour grading has been key to creating this aesthetic. I tried my best to replicate the grainy, glowy, green tinted colour grading inspired by Wong Kar-wai's Fallen Angels.

Styling also contributed to this sense of brand, putting together clean, wealthy yet scandalous looks make our brand seem exclusive and classy yet still trendy and relatable.

When getting Alex’s point of view the video feels extremely personal rather than commercial. Therefore, I decided to not include a warning as it would be distracting, breaking the fourth wall reminding viewers this is a music video rather than a story. We also did not feature any hard drugs in our video, so the disclaimer felt unnecessary. Drug abuse is an important issue we wanted to address from the start, but rather with a subtle classy take. As in this community with so much pressure academically and socially, it's a part of everyone's lifestyle, normalized and expected to help us get by.

It's not common for the antagonist of the video to be the star, but our target audience is teenagers and younger adults, and one thing we know about this demographic is that they love anything edgy and rebellious. When creating art/visuals for our promotional material, the first artist that screamed rebellious and unconventional to me was Andy Warhol. I wanted the visuals to feel experimental, free just like our teenage years. Warhol emphasized the subject's fame and glamour, while also exploring the idea of mass culture and consumerism. Another important aspect of Warhol's work was his use of mass-produced images. He believed that these images reflected modern society and the consumer culture that dominated it. Commenting on the nature of popular culture and the role of the media in shaping our perceptions of reality.

Jaden Smith is a very popular artist/rapper amongst our generation, earning a name for himself in the music industry rather than just being known as Will Smith's son. He creates captivating, trippy visuals for his merchandise and website based on his experiences with psychedelics. I was inspired by these and created artwork/ collages as promotional material. Our merchandise is diverse in range so there is something for everybody, my favourite piece of merchandise I designed is the lighter. Smoking is a motif throughout our video and it's sure to be the most popular selling item amongst our target audience.

Based on research and statistics my generation is desensitised and has the attention span of a goldfish. To keep our audience interested and engaged with our product I used a lot of jump cuts that are in time with the music's percussion. I also made sure our b roll/insert shots were visually captivating, taking direct inspiration from Pinterest, one of the most popular apps amongst our target audience.

Our product challenges conventions in the sense that it's not a traditional music video. Our actors are not the musical artist, and there is no lip-syncing at all. We wanted to focus on our storyline, as this song and artist is already popular amongst our target audience.

Most R&B/hip hop music videos sexualize women and are about flexing their wealth. While these themes are subtly prevalent in our product, I did not want it to be forced into the viewers face. Rather than sexualizing our female character and demeaning her, we put her on a pedestal, as our muse. Portraying Zoe as the star, in this male dominated industry.

The Director and I worked very closely throughout this project, getting constant feedback from one another. Both of us running the Instagram page and taking charge when shooting. As a creative I had millions of different ideas, some turning out to be unrealistic or too over the top for our budget, it was helpful to have someone give me a reality check, as I did her. We lost access to our camera operators' professional camera. We problem solved, shooting with two iPhones, taking turns when wanting to execute our ideas. The iPhone 14 in cinematic mode to simulate a professional camera and get crucial shots for our plot. Secondly, an iPhone 11 to get establishing shots, B-roll and visually aesthetic close ups. With this project I felt slightly overwhelmed with the editing process, my peers did not understand how time consuming the process is. To edit and make changes as an editor, who has just learnt how to use two separate editing software's (Adobe Premiere Rush, DaVinci Resolve) via YouTube tutorials. I faced many technical/storage issues, resulting in me editing on two different laptops. Both software's were free, so there were limitations to what I could execute. I had to explain to my group members frequently, that some of their feedback just could not be achieved. I made all the initial decisions when editing. The selection of footage, order and length of clips, compositions, jump cuts timed with the music and colour grading. I used the song's lyrics as guidance for the order of clips. Then with feedback I would adjust it to everyone's liking.

Unfortunately, we ran into some external issues especially with scheduling. Zoe looks and is a very free spirit, so it was hard to reach her and get confirmation for anything. Especially because she lives in Bangkok and only visits occasionally. For all the shoots we did, I had to personally escort and pick her up to make sure we were punctual, and that she would show. Phuket was heavily impacted by floods during rainy season, roadblocks were everywhere, and traffic was insufferable. We had to risk assess every aspect, ensuring our safety. All 6 of us spent nearly 3 hours crammed in my car to go shoot. We made it to my house, but sadly the sun had already set so we worked in the darkness, using different ambient light sources in my room to problem solve.

Bibliography:

#evaluation

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heirloomeds · 4 months ago

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the most important privilege he had was the stability of a semi-normal childhood that both his parents worked hard to provide. while his peers were lost in the industry and turned into show ponies, dakota was concerned about school dances. they were thrown onto red carpets and prepped for daytime television interviews. he was lectured for his tendency to throw wild parties when his father had a particularly long filming schedule, or when his mother was due to meet designers in new york. any period where he and his siblings were left to their own devices consisted of some social gathering that got them all in trouble. of course, there were unavoidable parts of their high-profile lives that fucked with his head so bad that he’s still effected by it. but for the most part, who he is and who he could’ve been if the adults around him just threw him to the wolves are two entirely different people. the same unfortunately can't be said for his lover, whose formative years was spent in front of a camera for the world to see and pick apart.

dakota feels sad for her in a way that can't fully be described with words. so needless to say that he's still surprised that she chose to partner with him of all people. maybe knowing him for so long helped lower her guard. not only would he never want to shove her back under the harsh glare of the spotlight, but it objectively wouldn't even make sense for him to do that. their history and future are too closely tied together for him to even consider fucking anything up. a strong sense of guilt follows him whenever he's away for extended periods of time. he's fully committed to creating a lasting legacy for himself while also doing his best to build up a foundation for her. their daughter. and he's more than a bit anxious about her safety and psychological state as she goes through one of the most transformative experiences a woman could ever endure.

their playful, sexually charged commentary makes his head spin. how's it possible for him to feel even more attracted to her now with every passing second? "mmm, such a good girl, baby. you know that i need easy access to your pussy." strong declarations of overwhelming passion are common between the pair. the free use to her body while they were away planted the seeds for further obsession. a free hand lifts the back of her dress to test her statement, pleased to feel nothing but her soft skin. "perfect. all mine." dakota regularly goes out of his way to emphasize that she belongs to him for the rest of her life, whether she wants to or not. only thing that's missing is a branding tool with his name on it. he wishes to place it on her big, soft ass so anyone else who even thinks about looking at her is reminded of his omniscient presence. but of course he can't brand her like an animal – so he'll do it metaphorically. not out of insecurity. but out of strong feelings of possession and ownership. "i hope you're happy with this place, my love. it's for you. everything that i do is for you." mostly true. there's still a strong streak of selfishness and arrogance that's become his brand over time. "do you wanna sit down somewhere though? your feet have to hurt from standing for so long. there's still a lot of shit to unpack, but there's bench by the garden area."

after their month-long moment of honeymoon bliss in an island paradise most people can't even conceptualize exists, seree finds herself a little more than anxious to rejoin society. perhaps in a sign of growth and a moment of vulnerability, she'd rather confide in her spouse about her concerns instead of stewing in that anxious storm brewing within. there's not much of a point in fretting over how she thinks she should feel when her reality is a stark difference; seree knows she's swimming in an ocean of wealth and opulence. the kind with inconceivable depths to warp her thinking in unfathomable ways. yet finding a safe, peaceful place to call their own is a terror-inducing concept even with the seemingly unlimited resources at their fingertips. of course, it is when that newly attained sense of serenity is something seree only discovers in adulthood after plenty of trial and error. the fierce protectiveness over their little bubble of bliss is understandable to anyone there to witness this version of the former child star. the added layers to those complex, tumultuous feelings stem from the discovery that they'll be meeting their first baby in what will surely feel like a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. knowing her man's got a fierce sense of determination once he's got his mind set on something, plus that newfound fatherly protectiveness over a tiny person he hadn't even met yet is soothing and reassuring. all in all, very telling about his faith in their future home. the faith he has in their intertwining futures overall. it's not surprising seree is quick to fall in love with the property her husband has in mind for them. in certain aspects, dakota understands her in ways no one else can. better than she knows herself, on some days. perhaps the most surprising thing is how quickly seree stops missing the sound of the waves in their oceanic paradise. there's no question that the idyllic sounds of the birds and trees rustling in the french countryside help soothe her the same way the sand, sun, and water did. but what works the best is knowing dakota is more than happy to be by her side, regardless of where or what they're up to. seemingly entirely sure that by her side is where he belongs. ultimately, he's a huge part of the reason seree can consistently relish in her sense of safety.

her husband's strong arms wrap around her petite and shapely body, the warmth of koda's brawny chest radiating against her back with its cozy familiarity. his words draw happy laughter from his wife, rounding belly shaking underneath her soft, patterned sundress. her arms settle over his, three heartbeats playing a newfound tender, homegrown symphony. "music to my ears." he's right about the worrying being for naught, especially once his lips meet the delicate spot just above her collarbone. seree's surprised gasp serves as a prologue to his carnal promise. "oh? —then i think you'll be very interested to know i'm not wearing anything under my dress."

#ofc :) theres so much to do w these two so we dont really have to stick to a linear timeline. it can be wherever #my replies are also just so long lmao it takes time to have the energy for long threads #dakota fuimaono — prose.#putaaas

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unwrvtten · 4 years ago

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⤲ ¦ 𝑪𝑨𝑳𝑨𝑵𝑻𝑯𝑨 𝑪𝑨𝑼𝑳𝑭𝑰𝑬𝑳𝑫 𝑰𝑵𝑻𝑹𝑶𝑫𝑼𝑪𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵

margot robbie & cis female. ⇢ CALANTHA CAULFIELD, age 26, graduated Gilchrist University in 2015 as a CINEMATOGRAPHY / SCREENWRITING major. SHE was born in EDINBURGH , SCOTLAND & has been living in NEW YORK CITY , NEW YORK working as a FILM DIRECTOR / SCREENWRITER. CAL is known to be PRODIGIOUS, CHARISMATIC, PHLEGMATIC & DEFIANT and that might be because SHE is a PISCES.

hello, all ! my name is lauryn and i’m 20 years old. i currently reside in the cst timezone and you can use she / her pronouns for me ! i’m unbelievably excited to interact with everyone ! feel free to like this post and i will come to you for plotting when i get the chance ( or you can message me if that’s what you prefer ) ! . . . do note that this is fairly long , but i promise i did my absolute best to cut it down in length ! my discord is mzsesandthings#6826.

( tw parental neglect ) calantha was born in edinburgh , scotland , to a british family with scottish ancestry. her parents were authors who started their own publishing company not long after the move and achieved great success with this. cal grew up comfortably in a religious family driven by success , though she was raised by nannies due to her parents’ busy schedule. their neglect led calantha to find comfort in television and movies.

from a young age , calantha was labeled prodigious by her teachers and other authority figures ; even at top-rated schools , cal outpaced her peers. as she isolated herself from others , a superiority complex developed within her. her above average intelligence led to apathy as logical reasoning overrode her emotions. calantha was highly competitive , driven to excel academically in order to feel as though she had an advantage over others. the mary eskrine school recruited her for enrollment after cal’s iq test put her at a score of 160. cal enjoyed writing novels and converting them into screenplays , as well as doing a massive amount of research on cinematography. as she progressed in age , religion slowly drifted out and rebellion took its place.

( tw kleptomania ) calantha’s kleptomania manifested in her young adulthood , her impulses driving her to steal from varying sources. the thrill of successfully stealing something and outsmarting society elated cal ( a feeling she had not yet experienced ) and the misery brought upon her when she would ignore these impulses tormented her.

( tw substance abuse ) in reaction to a lack of stimulation and curiosity, calantha began to experiment with drugs. cal dove pretty deep into this, as drugs exercised her creativity; some of her favored works were created in a state of delirium. many in edinburgh came to know cal as someone who could take any amount of any drug and continue to function, which, of course, made her ego inflate. by the end of secondary school, calantha had already finished one screenplay.

( tw kleptomania ) after leaving school, cal got into legal trouble for shoplifting; she was punished with juvenile diversion, much to her dismay despite the alternate punishments she could’ve received. regular drug tests and therapy were implemented, and a therapist attempted to treat calantha’s kleptomania. her illness was something that she took responsibility for but did not want to receive treatment for. however, the experience as a whole was somewhat humbling for calantha, who realized that she was not invincible; calantha pushed herself further into isolation following this realization, especially after her community branded her a pariah.

long story short, cal ended up at gilchrist university and was given an exceptional offer: to join the gravediggers society. the initiation was of no difficulty to her, as her only fears seemed to be failure and dissatisfaction. the gravediggers ended up being a godsend for calantha and her career. the production of her first film was announced after her 18th birthday ( written and directed by calantha ). the group ended up being the most thrilling thing to grace the moments of her life; it offered excitement and stimulation in an environment with intelligent, like-minded individuals, things that she craved. cal often hosted small parties for the group, centered around drug use rather than networking ( though networking was still done ). cal felt as though she had comrades for the first time.

eventually, cal met a man who piqued her interest, and they soon entered a passionate relationship. their relationship had awoken something in cal, and she became aware of the fact that she really could love. at the age of 21, calantha graduated with a double major in cinematography / screenwriting and her first movie had been released with rave reviews. with some assistance from gravedigger affiliates, calantha got her foot in the door of the film world ( much to many’s dismay, as calantha was regarded as somewhat of a controversial figure due to material featured in her first film ). cal and her lover also got engaged.

nearly a year later, however, he left her. her issues had become insurmountable for him: there was the substance abuse, habitual stealing, apathy, communication issues, and pigheadedness. cal had been spiraling even further after receiving some acclaim for her first film, and it was easily noticed. she chose to no longer put effort into their relationship and fixing her own issues. her 22nd life procured the release of her next movie; however, some of her darkest moments took place in this year, as well.

( tw sexual assault in the form of a policeman’s abuse of power ) calantha ended up pickpocketing an off-duty policeman who offered to forget about it in exchange for sex, something a drunken cal eagerly agreed to in fear of public controversy and the end of her career. the incident was a wakeup call for cal, and she began behavior management therapy for her kleptomania; she was also given help processing what happened. the incident led to a fairly intense fear of police; even the sight of a cop car can send her into a full-blown panic attack. therapy also led to her recognization of her toxic behaviors, and Cal turned to God once again.

the last few years of calantha’s life were relatively uneventful. the incident had brought upon some of the best writing of her career as she dove deep into her work. she pushed out two movies with another set to release in 2021. calantha was achieving the impossible in terms of building up her oeuvre at such a speedy pace; outlets began releasing articles promising her success in the industry and by the middle of 2020, she was as famous as david fincher with a net worth of $78 million. despite the fame, calantha found herself lonely and void of anything fulfilling aside from her success. when an invitation came to return to gilchrist, calantha could not deny it. both the money and the entertainment intrigued her, and there was a small hope that her ex would accept the invitation, as well.

( calantha’s about is documented here. statistics are listed here. and potential plots can be found here. you can find out more about me here. )

#⤲ ¦ 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒐 - 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒙𝒙 #digintro

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blackfemininity · 6 years ago

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The Beauty of Black Women | Black Femininity Series Part Two

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine what you consider to be a beautiful woman.

What did she look like specifically? What image do you have in your mind when you think of the word ‘beautiful’? What do you associate beauty with? What messages about beauty do you find yourself feeding into?

Our Perception of the Standard of Beauty

Black girls become aware of the societal standard of beauty at a young age. As children, we were unconsciously exposed to multiple messages about our skin, hair, body and features. Our appearances were scrutinized. We might’ve been told to stay out of the sun because our skin will get darker. We might’ve grown up in a household where we’d often see skin lightening creams behind our mirrors. We may have memories of the burning sensation of hair relaxers. Or we may even remember the smell of Royal Crown Hair Dressing and the sound of our hair sizzling because of the intense heat of the hot comb. We may have been told our noses were too wide or our lips were too big. With these experiences, we’ve been unconsciously trained to see our natural features as inferior to the societal standard of beauty. We’ve been taught to dislike our hair, skin and features. We might unconsciously associate natural hair with being unkept and nappy. We might associate our dark skin with dirt and mud. We might associate our black features with being unattractive. What are we basing these opinions on? The Eurocentric standard of beauty.

The messages and beliefs we hold about our skin, hair and features were formulated centuries before us. For centuries, society has pushed Eurocentric features as the standard of beauty. If you search “beautiful woman” on Google, very few black women appear. That reinforces an unconscious message that Eurocentric features are the standard of beauty.

By default, as women, we‘re judged by beauty expectations. But as black women, we’re judged further with the constant monitoring of our hair, skin color and other features. (This is amplified even further for darker skinned black women because of colorism).

There were a series of experiments done in the 1940s called The Doll Tests, that studied the psychological effects that racism had on black children. The children were sat down in front of two dolls—a black doll and a white doll—and were asked “which is the pretty doll?”, “which is the ugly doll?”, “which is the nice doll?” etc. The children chose the white doll for the positive questions and the reverse for the black doll. Black kids are taught early about what’s perceived as beautiful. The narrative that black women are unattractive is because of the Eurocentric beauty standard. Many black women can relate to being called “pretty for a black girl” which is a micro-aggression, not a compliment. The phrase “pretty for a black girl” gives an unconscious message that beauty and black womanhood aren’t synonymous, and that to be a beautiful black girl is rare. This is a false message that’s been unconsciously projected onto black women.

The Beauty Industry

“According to a WWD report, African American women spent $7.5 billion per year on beauty products. To top it off, we spent 80 percent more money on cosmetics and twice as much on skincare than the mainstream female market.” -African American Women and the Cost of Beauty

Despite spending the most on the beauty industry, black women have the least representation. It wasn’t until recently that brands began including shade ranges darker than tan and magazines began including more black women on their covers. Many black women can relate to buying makeup products that weren’t made with them in mind.

However, brands like Fenty Beauty and Beauty Bakerie have created their products to be inclusive to women of varying shades. Fenty Beauty has a large range of forty foundation shades that span from the fair skin to deep skin. Their products have positively impacted the beauty community to the point where the majority of women can now find their shade without having to mix multiple shades. And Beauty Bakerie even purposefully numbered their foundation shades with the darkest shades being first as opposed to last. This is important because of its effort in representing women who, for years, have struggled to find their shade. Instead of being an afterthought, black women are now being seen and heard.

The Importance of Representation

“My mother taught me the importance not just of being seen but of seeing myself. As the mother of two girls, it’s important to me that they see themselves too — in books, films, and on runways. It’s important to me that they see themselves as CEOs, as bosses, and that they know they can write the script for their own lives — that they can speak their minds and they have no ceiling.” - Beyonce

Representation is essential for black women and especially young black girls. Collectively, we must be seen. Individually, we must see ourselves. We need to be able to see ourselves outside of the false messages we’ve internalized. Representation matters because we think visually. We imagine words as images. To associate ourselves with beauty, we must see ourselves being represented as beautiful. This means regulating what we allow into our space. What are we watching? What are we engaging in on social media? What are we making posts about? What are we thinking about? What are we talking about? What are we seeing regularly? What are we reacting to? We have to ignore anything that clouds the perception we have of ourselves. We have to surround ourselves with what nourishes us.

We write the script of our lives by being mindful of what we invest in.

Investing in Ourselves

“Black women’s values spill over into all the things they watch, buy and listen to, and while they control the lion’s share of the African-American community’s $1.2 trillion in spending power, they are doing so with an eye toward the tangible and intangible value of those dollars spent.” - African-American Women: Our Science, Her Magic

Our attention is an investment. Our dollars are an investment. Our words are an investment. Our emotions are an investment. What are we investing in? Are we investing in what hinders us or are we investing in what affirms us?

We must invest in ourselves, both collectively and individually. On a collective level, we need to assess what we are feeding into. The more attention we give something, the more weight and importance it has in our lives. We must begin to debunk and eradicate what doesn’t serve us, as opposed to reacting emotionally to them.

We also need to support one another. We need to speak love and life into one another. We need to develop friendships and sisterhoods. We need safe spaces where we can be understood, heard and seen. We need to build connections. We need to uplift one another.

On an individual level, we must begin to rewrite the beliefs we hold of ourselves in our minds. This means both cultivating self-knowledge and also planting positive seeds in our minds. We cultivate self-knowledge by getting to know ourselves better. Read books about self improvement and black womanhood. Buy a journal and begin writing in it. Watch TED talks and listen to podcasts. Spend time with yourself and learn yourself. Become aware of the patterns you think and the emotions you feel. Plant positive seeds in your mind by introducing loving concepts to yourself. Write yourself a love letter. Practice affirmations. Write five things you’re grateful for every morning. Create a vision board with women who look like you doing the things you want to do. Beautify your surroundings. Invest in skincare products that work for you and makeup products that were formulated for your specific skin tone. Invest in clothes that make you feel feminine, confident and comfortable. Invest in cute decorations for your room that reflect your style and interests.

Treat yourself like a luxury. Treat your time like a luxury. Treat your space as a luxury. Hold high standards for what you allow into your life. Fill your life with what affirms you. Release what hinders you. See yourself as the standard of beauty and curate your consumption to match that.

#black women #femininity series #black femininity #beauty #thoughts #standard of beauty #representation #representation matters #investment #fs #series

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wehavethoughts · 5 years ago

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Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope Review!

Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope

George Lucas (1977)

20th Century Fox Productions

Science Fiction, Action, Adventure, Fantasy Movie

Rating: 3.5/5 Waves

Content warnings for A New Hope: Character death, Violence, Implied torture

This review does NOT contain spoilers.

“She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, kid.” – Han Solo

Summary: A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the evil Galactic Empire has lost the plans to their planet-destroying battle station, the Death Star, to Princess Leia of Alderaan, an agent of the Rebel Alliance. Unfortunately for the princess, the Empire has sent the mysterious and powerful Darth Vader to retrieve the plans. Cue the epic space adventure starring a farm boy, a smuggler, a Wookiee, a Jedi and a pair of sassy droids. Can they save the princess, deliver the plans to the Rebels and restore hope to the galaxy?

It’s difficult, some might say impossible, to think about Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope as a stand alone movie. This movie launched one of the biggest and most lucrative brands in western media, and it is hard to think of the movie without considering the impact it has already had on our culture. I personally love every chapter of Star Wars in their own way. These are stories of adventure, friendship, and hope. Who wouldn’t love that? However, it is easy to get lost in the iconic-ness without actually thinking about the movie itself. So I am going to do my best to judge this movie for what it is (as I see it), not what it’s done.

Let’s start with the obvious: the special effects. A New Hope premiered in 1977 with state-of-the-art, groundbreaking visual effects. It won an Oscar for Visual Effects, that’s how good it was. So how does it hold up more than 40 years later? Honestly, not bad. During blaster fights and light saber battles, it’s clear that this film is very old (there is something about the lighting idk), but I personally never found it to be jarring enough to pull me out of the experience. The well developed sets and reliance on costumes and prosthetics allow the audience to be swept away by this alien universe in spite of the dated effects.

One thing that does not stand the test of time, though, is the movie’s pacing. Modern audiences are used to fast paced action adventure stories with a lot of explosions and yelling, especially when it comes to intergalactic wars. A New Hope, in contrast, finds itself meandering through deserts and space stations at a glacial pace. While it is clearly trying to build tension with its long, quiet shots, it gives the audience just enough time to check out emotionally.

There are two main points that kept me from giving this movie a higher rating: 1) the lack of diversity, and 2) the unrealistic way the characters respond to trauma.

First of all, there are only two women characters with speaking roles in this entire movie and no people of color. With all of the aliens and droids, they chose not to include a single person of color in their galaxy far, far away? It just doesn’t speak to diverse audiences in 2020.

Second, Luke and Leia have to weather insanely traumatic events in this film, yet these characters dust their shoulders off and move on with hardly a scene to process. It might be trying to speak to their resilience, but it also sends a message to suck up your emotions and get the job done, which frankly is just plain unhealthy.

That being said, I still gave this movie 3.5 out of 5 waves. So what does this movie have going for it? At the end of the day, the big draws for me are the music and the character dynamics.

Movie scores can make or break a movie: one of the reasons why I love A New Hope so much is because of its fantastic music. With each swell of the orchestra, we are transported fully into this fantastical world. The music plays as much of a role as the characters, adding comic relief and dramatic tension in equal measure.

The sound effects are equally compelling. It takes quite a bit of work to create believable sounds for things that do not exist, like lightsabers and TIE Fighters, but the sound designer, Ben Burtt, was up to the task. He created the iconic lightsaber sounds using a projector motor, an old tv, a speaker and a moving microphone. This fun blend was essential to make the lightsabers buzz, hum and zoom the way we know and love. Ben Burtt was also responsible for Chewbacca’s growls and roars (bears, walruses, lions and badgers) and R2-D2’s classic chirps and screams (a synth and Ben Burtt making weird sounds).

My absolute favorite thing about this movie has to be the dynamic between the three main heroes. They embody such youthful and relatable energy, and together they make a team that is not only effective at getting the job done, but fun to watch. It comes across as an authentic and organic friendship that I just love to see.

Tldr; Definitely worth the watch. It’s a fun movie with relatable and unique characters, but you will be disappointed if you go in expecting diversity, a typical action movie’s pace, or much emotional depth.

~ TideMod

(wave icon by Nawicon from the Noun Project)

#TideMod #Star Wars: A New Hope #Star Wars: Episode IV #Star Wars #movie review #media review #wht!#wehavethoughts!

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independentartistbuzz · 5 years ago

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7 From The Women: Leanna Primiani AKA ANASIA

7 From The Women is a segment here on Independent Artist Buzz where we ask some of the industries finest seven questions. During this time of accusations and the lack thereof, we think it’s important to give women a voice. We chose to ask seven questions to honor the seven Wiccan clans.

ANASIA AKA Leanna Primiani, a classically trained composer and conductor best known for her innovative orchestral and chamber works for the concert stage. Composing under the moniker, ANASIA, she expands her range even further by fusing orchestral, dark ambient, post-minimal and experimental electronic elements. She just released a new single, “Sounds like FEAR” from her upcoming EP “Blurred.”

What have you been working to promote lately?

Today I released a single, Sounds Like FEAR, just in time for Halloween! The music is a reimagining of the score for the highly-controversial arthouse horror short, Sulphur for Leviathan, by director James Quinn (Flesh of the Void). The film documents a nun’s descent from devotional to demonic, with a visual quality is both sinister and surreal. This track takes a “variations on a theme” approach to the music by using the movie’s musical motifs as creative fodder. The film has been visually sculpted to achieve a sensory disorienting experience to heighten the film’s deliciously depraved narrative arc. I attempted to mirror this effect through my treatment of sound.

In keeping with the film’s compositional techniques, I juxtapose organic and synthetic sounds into a dense and disorienting aural patchwork, consisting of bite-sized chunks of recorded organic instrumentation; found sound from the natural environment a la “Musique Concrète”; synthesizer-based musical passages; and swatches of music heavily treated by digital-signal processing.

Within this detailed sonic thicket, select sounds for the building blocks of her interpretive work were modified in a variety of ways. Passages are played backward; jarringly cut short or dramatically elongated; subjected to echo-chamber effects; and varied in pitch and intensity. This coming together of varied auditory experiences cohesively gels into an invigorating and disquieting auditory experience.

Please tell us about your favorite song written, recorded or produced by another woman and why it’s meaningful to you.

As for living composers, my admiration runs deep for film composers Pinar Toprak and Hildur Gudnadottirr and their ability to break the glass ceiling in Hollywood. In addition, Pulitzer Prize winning composers Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (1983), Shulamit Ran (1991); Melinda Wagner (1999), Jennifer Higdon (2010), Caroline Shaw (2013), Julia Wolfe (2015), Du Yun (2017) and Ellen Reid (2019). These composers all have their own unique voice. Their music is remarkable, and they give me inspiration every day. I aspire to their success!

I have so much music and so many women composers I admire that it’s hard to choose. Ruth Crawford Seiger’s string quartet is one of my favorite works. Ruth is a giant among female classical composers. She developed her composition genius in the shadow of her composer husband. She created an impressive body of work, but never saw much success in her lifetime. Her music is having it’s renaissance now and I am thankful for it!

What does it mean to you to be a woman making music / in the music business today and do you feel a responsibility to other women to create messages and themes in your music?

I have written music with a message in many of my concert works, (Glass Ceiling for example), but I feel that #metoo has given permission to really explore the female experience. My latest work for orchestra, 1001, tells the story of Scheherazade, but through her eyes. With references to Rimsky-Korsakov original, I try to musically imagine what Scheherazade’s life was like—her existence dependent on the quality of her narratives. Finishing one story only to start the next in a seamless flow to prolong her life. Scheherazade lived in fear of the man she shares a bed with. It’s a story especially resonant in today’s climate, and one of the reasons I felt compelled to write it.

What is the most personal thing you have shared in your music or in your artist brand as it relates to being female?

For me, the most difficult thing to share about myself in the music is the idea of being an artist and being a wife and mother. I feel on a subconscious level this duality comes through in my music, both the joy and the struggle. It’s a difficult balance, and I know I’m not the only women out there who experiences it.

What female artists have inspired you and influenced you?

There are so many! Annie Lennox and Lizzo for starters. They both are conservatory trained, like me… and they both play the flute, also like me!

Do you consider yourself a feminist? If so why and if not why?

Yes I do! But why is it a dirty word? To want equal pay for equal work, to be recognized for one’s accomplishments, to not be held to a higher standard than men, to get a seat at the table, to not have to ‘lean in’… why is this bad? I will never understand why people, both men and women, are so threatened by the idea of ‘feminism’? It’s beyond me.

What was the most challenging thing you have had to face as a female artist?

I can think of many challenging situations I’ve had that I’m uncomfortable talking about here, but probably the most frustrating of all is the day-to-day sexism that is still prevalent in the music industry. The journey seems to be similar for most women: the judgement, being passed over, being ignored… it’s really ‘variations on a theme’ for all women, musicians and nonmusicians alike.

I recently read that if a man has a picture of his family in his office he is viewed as a family man, trustworthy and reliable. If a woman has a picture of her family in her office, she is regarded as not serious about her job, not devoted to the company and untrustworthy. WTF?! We have to put up with that AND make 82¢ on the dollar? It’s frustrating.

I have been told throughout my career, both as a film composer and a concert composer, to ‘downplay my femininity’, to change my name to make it sound ‘less female’, to not talk about my kids, etc. It can be debilitating. I think #metoo has helped with that pressure a bit, as people seem to be more accepting of the multiple roles women play.

Connect with ANASIA online via:

https://www.facebook.com/anasialeannamusic/

http://leannaprimiani.com/

https://www.instagram.com/leannacomposer/

http://bit.ly/ANASIASoundsLikeFEARYT

https://soundcloud.com/anasiaakaleannaprimiani

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1QmVUKlWEnJvbah8EemBWl

https://twitter.com/leannacomposer

https://www.linkedin.com/in/leanna-primiani-7b41601a/

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emeraldspiral · 6 years ago

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Real talk, the only reason Anakin had to go to Jedi school to git gud is because he needed to be a kid when he left his mom and an adult when he began his romance with Padme. If the plot had called for it, he would’ve been a Master Jedi in a week because the needs of the story outweigh the need for “realism”.

Just look at Luke. His training lasted maybe a couple of days or weeks at most because it just wouldn’t make sense for Luke to stay out of the fight for years and years. He could only train for as long as it took Han and Leia to get captured by Vader, but he also needed to not instantly lose to Vader when they fought. Therefore, the amount of time it took for Han and Leia’s storyline to play out was the exact amount of time Luke needed to get good enough to face Vader.

Afterward, in RotJ, supposedly there’s a timeskip of a year, but you’d be forgiven if you thought, as I did, that only a few days or weeks passed, since there’s 0 mention of a timeskip in the film and no reason to think it would take that long to get to Tatooine or plan Han’s rescue. In fact, it seems out of character for a dedicated Rebel like Leia to take that much time off for one person, no matter how she felt about him. But I digress. Regardless of whether it was really a year or only a few days, the fact remains that Luke didn’t have any additional training during that timeskip. He only returned to Dagobah after rescuing Han, and upon arrival Yoda was on his deathbed telling Luke he was already ready, no additional Force training or lightsaber combat instruction required.

In any event, however much training he received, it was definitely significantly under ten years and, from what we saw, didn’t even cover lightsaber fencing, at least not nearly as much as lifting rocks and reading minds and other Force skills. Yet, he still managed to overpower Vader, the strongest Jedi/Sith to ever live. Because the story required him to be that powerful at that point so that he could complete his arc by rejecting the opportunity to slay Vader.

Now, let’s consider Rey’s skills, abilities, and accomplishments, starting with the dumbest of the dumbshit things people complain about when trying to use the “she’s too good at too many things/gets too good too fast” argument for why she’s a Mary-Sue.

First of all:

Why does Rey speak droid and Wookie (as if that’s a particularly uncommon skill)? Because she needs to befriend BB-8, so BB-8 can bring her together with Finn and because someone’s got to be able to understand Chewie once Han’s gone and that someone should probably be the one who’s going to be spending a lot of time alone with him co-piloting the Falcon when they go to find Luke. The better question to ask is why anyone cares about shit like that? Like, is that on some Mary-Sue litmus test somewhere? “Is bilingual in a world where most people are?” If you’re going to complain about something that stupid I have to assume you think character writing should work like Pokemon where you have to drop traits in order to stay under a certain limit, even if half the stuff filling up the quota is stuff like “can ride a bicycle” or “doesn’t burn the house down when they cook”.

Second:

Why is she an ace pilot (as if half the characters in Star Wars, both Force sensitive and non-Force sensitive aren’t also Ace Pilots, and also as if Rey has more than ONE SINGLE flying scene or had any trouble handing over the spotlight to any of the other THREE ACE PILOTS JUST IN THE SEQUEL TRILOGY)? Because she has to be a pilot because Finn can’t be, because he had to need Poe so that he could get his jacket, in order to catch BB-8′s attention, so that BB-8 could bring him and Rey together. Also, because it emphasizes Rey’s major character flaw; that she is the architect of her own misery. She has the means to leave Jakku but doesn’t, something directly acknowledged immediately after her one and only flying scene.

Third:

Why does she show Han up on knowledge of his own ship? Well, for one thing, she fucking doesn’t. She only knows about one thing installed in the ship after it left his custody. But even if you wanted to make the claim that this was supposed to demonstrate that she was some kind of Superstar Mechanic (as if mechanics are something rare and special in Star Wars) and that the reason for her being a Superstar Mechanic is just to get Han to like her, even that has a story-related justification that isn’t just about wish-fulfillment or using a cool character to shill for her. Having Han take a liking to her creates another opportunity for her to demonstrate her character flaw when she rejects his job offer in favor of returning to Jakku to wait forever for parents that don’t love her when there’s a man she already thinks of as the father she never had right in front of her. Also, having her bond with him makes his death at Kylo’s hands more personal for her, thereby creating a greater hurdle for her to overcome in order to come to have compassion for Kylo, making it more satisfying when she does.

Fourth:

Why does she have the Force when she’s already a pilot, mechanic, and proficient stick-fighter (as if any of those things are unique or special. Or more importantly, ever used at the expense of letting other characters shine)? Couldn’t she have been a Badass Normal? If this were just about beating bad guys and winning the war maybe. But it’s clearly not. This is about the old heroes passing the torch to the next generation. The main character was always going to be Force sensitive, always going to become a Jedi, and always going to replace Luke no matter what gender they were, who they were related to, whether they were a scavenger or a stormtrooper or secret royalty or Born of the Force or who, if anyone, they were going to be romantically partnered with. Rey needs to be Force sensitive because, as the main character, her ultimate purpose is to define what it means to be a Jedi for a new generation.

Fifth:

Why can she do things with the Force without training? Well, the only reason Luke needed a training montage was because the Force was a brand new concept for him and he was limited by his own ideas about his capabilities, and because the audience was going in blind as well and needed to hear the Force 101 lectures just as much as he did. Rey meanwhile, has no reason to think lifting rocks or picking up a lightsaber hilt is hard when she’s grown up hearing stories about Luke doing much crazier things. Between that, having Kylo demonstrate all those abilities to her beforehand, and also being able to access his training through the Force Bond there is 0 reason for her to need a training montage in-universe. But more importantly, because the audience has already gotten a crash course on standard Force abilities from the previous movies, a training montage would be redundant. We don’t need the same exposition given to us again anymore than we need to see Rey repeat the same character journey as Luke. The Force Bond and Rey’s preexisting fighting capabilities may be a convenient workaround to explain why Rey doesn’t need a training montage, but they exist because a training montage would be dead weight that adds nothing to the story. And that’s just the Force Bond’s ancillary purpose. Its much more important function is getting Rey and Kylo to stop fighting and start talking.

Sixth:

Why couldn’t Rey and Kylo at least fight to a draw or better yet, have her forced to retreat in their first battle? Why did she have to beat him at the very beginning of her journey? Doesn’t that make her too powerful with no room for advancement and him too weak, leaving no tension for future confrontations?

Because Kylo’s defeat isn’t about Rey at all. It’s not about making her look good. Kylo’s supposed to be at his lowest point going into TLJ. He’s supposed to look weak, not because the screenwriters think it’ll make Rey look stronger in comparison. They know damn well that the way to write a villain is to present them as an impossible obstacle to overcome. To hide any semblance of vulnerability in order to keep you in suspense as to how the hero could ever prevail against them. But that’s not Rey and Kylo’s dynamic. That’s Kylo and Snoke’s dynamic. Kylo isn’t the villain, he’s the “other half of the protagonist”. He doesn’t exist for Rey to be afraid of him. She’s meant to sympathize with him, which means he needs to appear vulnerable and human in front of her. They couldn’t build the romantic (or even platonic) connection the film clearly intended for them if Kylo actually did come across as threatening as people wanted him to be. The appearance of physical or emotional invincibility would be antithetical to the entire story they’re trying to tell.

Also, Rey isn’t even that good with a lightsaber. Kylo had been shot with a bowcaster, injured further and tired out by Finn, and handicapped himself by not aiming to kill or maim since he wanted to recruit Rey to his side and Rey still spent 98% of that fight running and only won because Kylo chose not to kill her when he had the chance.

Believe it or not, some dumbasses have actually heard all this and still tried to argue that Rey shouldn’t be in any fighting shape after hitting a tree hard enough to lose consciousness and that should nullify all the advantages she was given. If you make this argument, you’re being an anal contrarian fuck and you know it. Getting hit in the head is NEVER portrayed realistically in fiction. It is completely standard and in no way exceptional for a fictional character to awake from unconsciousness with no impairments. It has fuck all to do with trying to make characters look cool. It never has been and never will be a Mary-Sue trope.

In conclusion:

None of Rey’s abilities or feats are just there to make her look good. They’re either there to move the story along, or to add to her characterization and character journey, or to add to Kylo’s. Furthermore, they’re nothing special in the context of Star Wars, the stuff she learns quickly has in-universe justifications and it’s not even unprecedented for characters to git gud enough to match someone more experienced in a very short amount of time with no in-universe justification.

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dontgobreakingmyart · 6 years ago

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Fanfiction: Why Is It So Popular?

As someone on tumblr, you probably know what fanfiction is and know why it is popular. My AP Literature teacher, however, wasn’t so informed.

My senior year, we were required to write a research paper about a trend. Some people did the rate of divorce, others did the increase of body modification and someone even did the death of Pokemon Go.

Our teacher recommended that we chose a topic that we were familiar with, and my first 2 thoughts were fanfiction and anime. I had already had a friend that had done anime the year the before, so I thought “why not?”

And thus, my senior paper was born:

March , 2018

Fanfiction: Why Is It So Popular?

INTRODUCTION:

Generally, the word “fanfiction” conjures an image of lonely hermits, obsessive fans, or even dangerous flirtation with copyrights, but lately, fanfiction has been given a new face―a face of validity, expression, and even publication. Since January 2012, the amount of fanfiction for just one fandom (a collection of fans supporting a certain medium) has increased an astonishing 1,154% (Pellegrini). Objectively, fanfiction is a fan-made story that contains strong elements of the original work, generally using the same characters, themes, and other various components. For example, there are numerous works based off Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, continuing on the story of Mr. and Mrs. Darcy; in fact, there has been a recent increase of published novels based on Pride and Prejudice of 32% since 2015 (“List of Literary Adaptations of Pride and Prejudice”). Why? Because fans were not satisfied with the original content; they wanted to see more of Elizabeth and Darcy’s relationship or they wondered what the characters would do in a zombie apocalypse or any other variation of “what if?” Fanfiction allows “amateur writers” to express their love for a book, tv show, game, etc., and whether it’s because of the lack of LGBT themes in most published works or the increasing ease of sharing their fiction, fanfiction writers are not likely to stop any time soon (Knorr).

BACKGROUND / HISTORY:

Although it might seem very unbelievable, fanfiction did not just start recently, or a couple decades ago, or in the 70s with that one Star Trek fanfiction. In fact, a good amount of older literature is fanfiction. If fanfiction is being defined as “any work of fiction that borrows major elements of another work of fiction,” then works such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet could technically count as fanfiction; Hamlet was originally an “ancient Scandinavian folk tale . . .[known as] ‘Vita Amlethi’ (‘The Life of Amleth’)” that Shakespeare not only re-wrote as a play, but inserted his own, personal experiences (Clark). The Iliad, The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex were all orally-told, Greek myths that someone decided needed to be written down. The only reason theses works are not recognized as “fanfiction” was because copyright was not as strict in that time and practically did not exist; after all, no one knows for sure who the real Shakespeare was because he did not officially claim his work.

Fanfiction didn’t really become a label until Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes in the 1880s and with the birth of the internet, the famous Star Trek fanfiction. Officially, “the actual term ‘fanfiction’ was coined in 1939” and was used as an insult towards crudely written sci-fi fiction (Reich). In the late 90s and early 00s, rather than the “all-purpose” fanfiction cites today, “fans carved out their own little homes on the burgeoning internet. Star Trek fans here, X-Files fans there, Frasier fans somewhere else” (Hill). Most of those sites, however, have since died and have been replaced with the “all-purpose” ones like fanfiction.net. One of the most infamous modern fanfictions is E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey. Although it is technically a published novel, James has admitted that her novel was simply a Twilight fanfiction that she had written and aftered so that she wouldn’t break the copyright (Morrison). The largest development to the world of fanfiction, however, was the birth of Archiveofourown.org in 2007, a fanfiction website that “promised stronger resistance to legal challenges” to fanfiction writers unlike other, previous websites such as fanfiction.net (Burt). With the creation of this site, older ones have begun to die out just like the fandom-centric ones of the past.

#1 REASON:

Over the years, fanfiction has morphed from a shameful pass time to a socially acceptable medium of expression. Published authors have been, in fact, recommending fanfiction as a positive way to start writing. The author of the Princess Diaries Meg Cabot came out about her fanfiction writing, saying, “I myself used to write Star Wars fan fiction when I was tween. I think writing fanfiction is a good way for new writers to learn to tell a story” (Romano). And many other famous authors have made a contribution to the fanfiction community: Cassandra Clare, author of Mortal Instrument Series; Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game; S. E. Hinton, author of The Outsiders; Neil Gaiman, author of The Sandman Series, and so many others (O’Brien, Kovach).

While visiting a Writing Workshop, the published author hosting it, Pamela Thibodeaux, encouraged me to begin writing and posting fanfiction in order to start a healthy fanbase, so that when I go to get a book published, the transition is much smoother. Writing fanfiction is just as stimulating as writing an original novel. In a CNN article about fanfiction, they explicitly stated that “even if the subject matter is a little blue [writing fanfiction] is a positive form of self-expression,” compelling parents to “encourage writing” (Knorr). In fact, the main difference between the two is that writing fanfiction “takes the pressure of world-building off” which allows the writer to explore their writing style without getting tangled up in creating something from scratch (McQuien). In a way, fanfiction is the box of cake mix in the literature world―it helps amateurs to take the first step of baking without getting too overwhelmed, but in the end, it can taste just as good.

#2 REASON:

As the overall acceptance and validity of fanfiction has increased, fanfiction has found its way into the publishing world, being branded as actual literature. Time-honored novels such as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice have several published, fan-made additions and recreations of the original tale like Pride and Prejudice II: The Sequel by Victoria Park and Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which was turned into a filmed phenomena in 2016 (“List of Literary Adaptations of Pride and Prejudice”). Although there have been many literary adaptations of this novel spanning as far back as 1932, there has been a 32% increase of published fanfictions just for this fandom (“List of Literary Adaptations of Pride and Prejudice”).

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has also witnessed this movement with his iconic Sherlock Holmes series, especially with the popular television series Sherlock, a “modernization” (or modern au [alternate universe] in fanfiction jargon) of the classic cases between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson (“8 unconventional Sherlock Holmes adaptations”). These published fanfictions have been able to keep the trademarked names of their beloved characters, but many novels had to undergo extensive editing to cross the line of “fanfiction” into “literature.”

One of the most famous, or rather infamous, examples of this is how E. L. James’ 50 Shades of Grey was originally a Twilight fanfiction (Morrison). Another, perhaps not as well known, is L. Stoddard Hancock’s Cruel and Beautiful World, which was heavily based off of J. K. Rowling’s beloved Harry Potter; in fact, her novel indulges the ship [romantic pairing] of Hermione and Draco, fondly known as “Dramione” in the Harry Potter fandom (Sarner). While some fanfictions have to undergo a facelift in order to be published, their true identity still remains intact: they are still devoted extensions to the esteemed works of another author.

#3 REASON:

Fanfiction has evolved greatly throughout history, and how to post fanfictions and share them with the world is just getting easier and easier. As mentioned prior, the creation of Archive of Our Own revolutionized the world of fanfiction with its promise of legal support, but how? In 2002, there was a great purging of fanfictions on the original fanfiction posting website, fanfiction.net, shaking the fanfiction community and dissuading writers from posting their fanfics (Silver). It was this sort of mass-banning on works that encouraged the creation of Archive of Our Own and its legal branch the “Organization of Transformative works” where they “clarify the legality of fanfiction, champion fan-created works whenever they were legally challenged, and provide fans with legal resources in case they were targeted by copyright claims” (Silver). In short, Archive of Our Own gave fanfic writers a safe place to share their fanfictions.

Because of this difference with websites, despite the age difference and advantage Fanfiction.net may have with it, the increase of Harry Potter fanfictions on Archive of Our Own, for example, have increased 795% more than those on Fanfiction.net since 2010 (Pellegrini). Not only that, but Archive of Our Own has many other unique features that makes both writing fanfictions and reading fanfictions much more convenient such as tagging (Romano). Speaking from personal experience as a user of both Fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own, although the first is not a bad place to read fanfiction, it is not nearly as user-friendly. For example, if I wanted to read a Harry Potter fanfiction, I could easily do so on both sites, but if I wanted to read a Harry Potter fanfiction that had the ship “Dramione” or had “zombies” or where Fred didn’t die, I can only specify those tags on Archive of Our Own to find that perfect fanfiction. And fanfiction sites are still continuing to expand, to shape, to mold themselves in order to fit the preferences of the ever-evolving writers that post on them.

#4 REASON:

The world of literature is a diverse melting pot of ideas and people, but even with this diversity, there are many minorities that are pushed to the side such as the LGBT community―in the world of fanfiction, however, they are the majority. Seeing LGBT often connotes inaccurate concepts, especially in literature, where one thinks “gay” when they see LGBT and then “the label of ‘gay’ often overshadows the important elements of the story/author, often tarnish[ing] the book before it can be read” (Guy). The LGBT community is so much more than just “gay,” and those different branches are very rarely explored in published literature, but in fanfiction, they florrish.

Although majority of fanfiction does involve romance and a good amount of it involves couples of the same sex, that is not the only layer as is with most “gay” literature. In fanfiction, everyone is represented―if you want to read a fanfiction where the main character is asexual, where the main character is genderfluid, where there’s a polyromantic relationship, where someone is aromantic, bisexual; no matter what it is you want, I can almost guarantee it’s out there somewhere. The fanfiction website Archive of Our Own found that only 38% of their users were heterosexual, meaning that at least 62% belong to the LGBT community and more people identified as genderqueer than as male (Hu). Everyone wants to be represented in media, to have someone to relate to.

The little gay literature that is there, is only just now being reprinted, falling out of print since the 80’s, and a good amount of it is being banned (Healey). For example, Amazon refused to sell a gay Victorian novel, claiming it was “pornagraphic,” yet they have an entire section for “erotic” fiction such as 50 Shades of Grey (Healey). With fanfiction, writers don’t have to worry about labels, whether a couple is straight or homosexual or genderqueer or whatever. Writers care about the stories, the chemistry between the characters that make them a dynamic duo, and with fanfiction, writers can share that.

CONCLUSION:

Fanfiction has existed for centuries with Sophocles's Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek and it shows no sign of stopping now. In fact, the amount of fanfiction hasn’t just increased because of its acceptance or its publication or the ease of posting, but because of new and continuous material.

Before the release of BBC’s show Sherlock, there were fanfictions based on the original book, and the addition of the show allowed Sherlock Holmes and John Watson to become more familiar, and thus, more fanfictions to be added to the overall fandom. The same occured with the Harry Potter fandom. When Jack Thorne’s play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (a published fanfiction continuing J.K. Rowling’s original series Harry Potter), fanfiction writers exploded with new material, new ideas, and new fanfictions; a total of 1,682 fanfictions concerning Harry Potter and the Cursed Child have been posted on Archive of Our Own since the play’s release date in 2016 (Search Results for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child). Due to the recent release of Voltron: Legendary Defender in 2016, there has been a staggering 5,054% increase of fanfiction for the show originally from the 80’s (Search Results for Voltron).

With every reinstatement of a show, a new generation of potential fanfiction writers are exposed to it, adding on to the classic mediums other fanfiction writers wrote about before them such as Star Trek or Sex in the City, where there are still significant increases of 8,600% since 2005 and the show ended in 2004 (Kneale). Fanfiction increases because more and more people are being exposed to that world. Just as there will always be incoming literature and TV shows and movies, new fanfictions will be trailing in afterwards like a relentless shadow.

Works Cited

“Archive of Our Own Beta.” Archive of Our Own, www.archiveofourown.org/works/search?utf8=✓&work_search[query]=Harry potter and the cursed child.

“Archive of Our Own Beta.” Archive of Our Own, www.archiveofourown.org/works/search?utf8=✓&work_search[query]=Voltron.

Burt, Stephanie. “The Promise and Potential of Fan Fiction.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 23 Aug. 2017, www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-promise-and-potential-of-fan-fiction.

Clark, Cassandra. “‘Hamlet�� Origins: The Legend of Amleth.” Shake It Up, 28 June 2017, sfshakes.wordpress.com/2017/06/28/hamlet-origins-the-legend-of-amleth/.

“Eight Unconventional Sherlock Holmes Adaptations.” The Week - All You Need to Know about Everything That Matters, 29 Feb. 2012, theweek.com/articles/477729/8-unconventional-sherlock-holmes-adaptations.

Guy, Lauren. “What's the Point of LGBT Literature?” The University Times, 16 Oct. 2016, www.universitytimes.ie/2016/10/whats-the-point-of-lgbt-literature/.

Healey, Trebor. “Early Gay Literature Rediscovered.” Huffington Post, www.huffingtonpost.com/trebor-healey/early-gay-literature-redi_b_5373869.html .

Hill, Mark. “The Forgotten Early History of Fanfiction.” Motherboard, 3 July 2016, motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/4xa4wq/the-forgotten-early-history-of-fanfiction.

Hu, Jane. “The Revolutionary Power Of Fanfiction For Queer Youth.” The Establishment, The Establishment, 16 May 2016, theestablishment.co/the-importance-of-fanfiction-for-queer-youth-4ec3e85d7519.

Kneale, Heidi. “Final Staff.” The Appeal of Fanfiction, July 2005, www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10165.

Knorr, Caroline. “Inside the Racy, Nerdy World of Fanfiction.” CNN, Cable News Network, 5 July 2017, www.cnn.com/2017/07/05/health/kids-teens-fanfiction-partner/index.html.

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Morrison, Ewan. “In the Beginning, There Was Fan Fiction: from the Four Gospels to Fifty Shades.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 13 Aug. 2012, www.theguardian.com/books/2012/aug/13/fan-fiction-fifty-shades-grey.

OBrien, David. “Famous Authors Who Began in Fan Fiction.” AUTHORS.me, 27 Oct. 2016, www.authors.me/famous-authors-began-fan-fiction/.

Pellegrini, Nicole. “FanFiction.Net vs. Archive of Our Own.” HobbyLark, HobbyLark, 15 Feb. 2017, letterpile.com/writing/fanfictionnet-vs-archive-of-our-own.

Romano, Aja. “10 Famous Authors Who Write Fanfiction.” The Daily Dot, 9 Mar. 2017, www.dailydot.com/parsec/10-famous-authors-fanfiction/.

Romano, Aja. “Is It Possible to Quantify Fandom? Here's One Statistician Who's Crunching the Numbers |.” The Daily Dot, 24 Feb. 2017, www.dailydot.com/parsec/toastystats-ao3-fandom-statistics/.

Sarner, Lauren. “This 'Harry Potter' Fan Fiction Author Adapated Dramione Into A Novel.” Inverse, 18 July 2016, www.inverse.com/article/15572-dramione-fandom-harry-potter-fan-fiction-romance-l-stoddard-hancock-broken-wings.

Silver, Farasha. “How Archive of Our Own Revolutionized Fandom.” FAN/FIC Magazine, 26 Mar. 2017, fanslashfic.com/2015/11/01/how-archive-of-our-own-revolutionized-fandom/.

Times, J.E. Reich Tech. “Fanspeak: The Brief Origins Of Fanfiction.” Tech Times, MENU$(".Topsearchbutton").Click(Function(){ $(".Srcframe").Toggle(); }); $('Input[Type="Search"]').Keypress(Function() { $("#Srcform").Submit(); });TechScienceHealthCultureReviewsFeatures, 25 July 2015, www.techtimes.com/articles/70108/20150723/fan-fiction-star-trek-harry-potter-history-of-fan-fiction-shakespeare-roman-mythology-greek-mythology-sherlock-holmes.htm.

#senior paper #fanfiction essay #yes i wrote an essay about fanfiction #educational #informative paper #pls dont judge me

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theory-talestelltalesss · 6 years ago

Text

∙ Parallel Hearts 1 ∙

Idea:

AU where Taehyung is a former street artist who sells Van Gogh imitations in Paris that gets him in trouble.

Description:

Her is a docile perfectionist art student who is unsatisfied with the course of her life. She meets Taehyung, a beautiful and free-spirited boy who sells Van Gogh imitations to pay his tuition for art school. They have something that the other lack. Her needs Taehyung’s creativity and Taehyung needs Her’s painting skills in order for them to produce great paintings. Her is the better painter but Taehyung is the better artist. One day, they wake up and the other is nowhere to be found. Both of their pursuit is to use their paintings as clues to find where the other is. Along the way, they learn more about each other and uncover a dark past.

You can read more details of the fic HERE if this is your first time. Or you can just read it and be surprised! Enjoy!

- TT 🌹

Chapters: | 1 | 2 | - (Fanfic in progress)

CHAPTER 1: THE MEETING

(6.9K words)

Her lived in the same town as Van Gogh when he was alive and where he was most inspired. It was a quaint little town in Arles, France. She grew up passing by the same places that he saw and painted. Although Her idolized him, it bothers her that she can never be as close to a painter as he was, no matter how hard she tries.

“Doesn’t this look weird? The color scheme? The textures? I don’t know what it is but it doesn’t look right!” Her complains every time she tries to create her own style inspired by Van Gogh.

Whilst Her is tremendously knowledgable about Van Gogh’s techniques, she can never break her style of being realistic whenever she paints. She never had the opportunity, no, the capability to fully release herself in her works. She always had the tendency to draw things as they are and never let her imagination run wild. The more she tried to be imaginative, the more realistic her paintings got. She can never steer away from it, and being a perfectionist never helped her either. In fact, it only made it worse.

It was not even just the paintings that bothered her that she couldn’t follow. She also couldn’t follow the life he lived. Of course she doesn’t want to starve and be a vagabond with a mental illness, but Van Gogh’s life was full of events, both good and bad, that she rationalizes eventually manifested in his beautiful paintings.

“I would rather die of passion than of boredom - Vincent Van Gogh,” Her reads in her book as she swipes the letters with endearment.

Although her parents see her talent as a gift from grace and supports her to hone it, they have different plans on what she should do with it. Her’s family owns a furniture store called by their last name– ‘Le Lune.’ Beds, lamps, cribs, tables, dressers, decorations– they sell everything. The dream was to expand and build more stores in other cities. However, most of the designs of the furnitures lost its appeal as the trend changed over time. Eventually, the business started declining.

When Her moved to Paris 7 hours away from home to go to college, the plan was that she would design the furniture after graduation. She knew what her future looked like. She has to redesign almost everything and help out with the family business. Perhaps even hand-paint or hand-craft some parts of the furniture to create a niche for the family brand name. A personal consultation for corporation interiors was also another idea if the business ever gets successful enough.

This plan frustrated Her because her passion is not in Interior Design – it was in Fine Arts, just like Van Gogh. As she is docile, timid, and filial, and who has deep respect for her parents and the family business, Her yields to their wishes for the betterment of the family. Plus, a job after graduation never hurt anybody.

What am I going to do with a Fine Arts degree if I can’t feed myself?

Café Terrace at Night in Arles, France by Vincent Van Gogh (1888).

The grass smells freshly cut with drops of water clinging onto its edges. The sculptures of flirtatious cherubs run across the field. The different colored flowers dance along the periphery of the bushes, neatly assembled at the curbs of the pathways, welcoming spring delightfully.

Although the atmosphere of the outside world is full of life, Her’s inner mind is in a grim state. She goes to a place outside of school whenever she feels exasperated or disheartened about her life and that place is the Panthéon. The Panthéon is a museum, or even precisely, a mausoleum for people who were the most notable citizens of France. Some of the people buried there were people of the arts she also adores.

It was the closest place from school where she can get inspired. Whenever she sees Victor Hugo’s name on the wall, she smiles, remembering his lovely works of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, or of Les Miserables, which are now made into films and musicals. Whenever she sees Saint-Exupéry‘s name, she wonders how his simple ninety-page work of The Little Prince resonated within so many hearts around the world.

In every corner of the Panthéon, there is something to lift her spirits. Every corner except one. As of the moment, Her is not in the mood to be cheered up, but she’s in one of those moods to make some kind of catharsis – and staring at the Foucault pendulum does just that.

With a heavy heart, she walks over to the giant pendulum that hangs within the massive arches, centered in one of the intrados of the Panthéon. An awe-inspiring mural of the celestial sky and of the divine surround the wire that holds it afloat in the ceiling. A ray of the gloomy twilight falls down at it meters below to softly give it a subliminal spotlight, and convey it as one of the staple objects in the museum.

“…the Foucault pendulum is a simple device named after French physicist Léon Foucault and conceived as an experiment to demonstrate the Earth’s rotation. The pendulum was introduced in 1851. Today…” the tour guide says to a small crowd of foreigners.

Ever since she knew what this pendulum was for, she cringes. Not because of its function, but because it’s a sad reminder of herself.

Like the pendulum’s sway and its momentum in the air, Her’s life is already meticulously calculated as it swings along the numbers of the dial. With each dip at the bottom is her journey towards a goal until it reaches the peak of its momentum, and then it starts again. Her life has become routine and mundane from day to day since the start of college. She knows exactly where she will end up, she know exactly when, and fleeting from plans are just interpreted as irresponsible.

“My perfect parents would be disappointed in their “perfect” daughter,” she whispers to herself. “Why does it have to be like this? Why can’t I just go off and lead lives like…like Victor Hugo, where I can go to Belgium in a whim, or…or Saint-Exupéry, and fly off to some island, or Van Gogh and go to 20 cities if I want?”

After some time internalizing but despising this sad fact about the course of her life, she opposes the thoughts intoxicating her mind and stop moving her eyes with the pendulum, closing them for a moment to give herself a relief of thought. She lets go of the circular railing she didn’t even realize she was gripping until her palms turned ivory.

As she opens her eyes again, the pendulum peeks at the periphery of her field of view but her eyes chose to focus on something else…or someone else.

Her sight lands on a boy on the other side who is inside the railings of the pendulum, kneeling on one knee as he watches the pendulum with a curious concern. If her eyes are not enough resisting her will to steer them away, her ears decide to do it as well when they somewhat malfunction in transducing signals of the crowd of tourists leaving the area.

She thought for a moment that he was part of the marble statues of the historic rulers behind him. But as she stares longer…no, he is breathing and human.

The low glow of the light from above teases a hint of the hills of his handsome features. His light jade eyes that follow the pendulum obediently are striking and almost menacing. His dark ashy blonde hair is rugged and out of place under a newsboy hat with unruly bangs trying to stretch down his forehead and neck. The ends land comfortably past his commanding eyebrows and flirts at his nape, almost past its crook. A turtleneck coats his neck layered with a button-up that flows down his body, presenting him with a disheveled look.

Her finds herself captivated that she forgets to be curious as to why he’s inside the railings guarding the pendulum, or why he looks worried, or why he holds the railing with a hand that looks like it’s streaked with paint and the other props him on the floor as he kneels down.

H-He’s so beautiful.

Her finds herself captivated, for he didn’t have the beauty that celebrities on TV or models in magazines possessed. He has the kind of beauty that reminisces of an old soul. The kind of beauty that stands the test of time…timeless– like an old painting people would want to preserve for years, decades, centuries, or even forever. Not a carve of the statues or stroke of paint in the museum, even made with impeccable skill and control, do not have the force to distract her from his coincidental beauty.

She then realizes that looking at him for too long beyond abuses normal courtesy and she should look away before he notices. However, she can’t seem to take his eyes off him. As she continues to stare, he seems to feel her eyes on him, and shifts his eyes to meet hers. Her blood rushes to her head, defying gravity, resisting to flow anywhere else in her body.

She tries to follow the pendulum again with her eyes, but they resist her. As if acknowledging her constant desire to look at him, he smiles at her, erasing the worried expression he had for a moment. As if playing peek-a-boo, the pendulum covers him for half a second, and reveals him again, only becoming more beautiful with each sway. She feels a fleeting wave of euphoria before–

SNAP! BOOM! “Mon dieu!”

The ball of the pendulum hits the ground with an echoing boom, disturbing the serenity, rolling off of the marbled floor, and trailing the wire that held it. Her abruptly wakes up from the spell and covers her mouth in disbelief that the Foucault pendulum, which has been swaying for years, just snapped from above. As an advocate for the arts and museums, she knows the gravity of the situation.

She looks back at where the boy was but he was nowhere to be found. A guard picks the ball up and checks it for any indentations or damages. Since it’s almost closing time, the museum is left with only a few visitors, and only a few more who are near the pendulum’s vicinity. The guard directs them away and commands them to give the area some space. Forced, the visitors, including Her, start drifting to other corners of the museum.

She walks without direction, only following the direction of a couple of people scattering from the area. Out of nowhere, she feels a tug on her long-sleeve, hurling her to face someone’s body.

“Whoa-”

She looks up and see the beautiful boy so close that she can almost see the branches of his light jade orbs. She notices more up close that his clothes and patches of his skin were tainted with random splotches and streaks of paint. He turns his head to the side and observes another piece of art she didn’t even notice was right in front of them.

“What a weird incident right?” he says in the direction of the mural. His voice is surprisingly baritone low and velvety that she feels it resonate her vessels.

She manages to voice out, “yeah…must have been an accident.”

“Some guy is proooobably in big trouble,” he chuckles.

“I mean…that pendulum has been swinging since it’s been here,”

“Not really, just since 1902. It’s been going back and forth between here and an art museum near here. You won’t even know which one is the copy anymore,”

“H-How do you know that?”

He looks at Her with a cheeky half-smile.

“I just read the sign that was behind you…when you were staring at me too much,” he shifts his head back to the mural, “Yeah, I’m aware I’m good looking,” he gives her a glint of his lip curved at one side.

So this is his personality.

For some reason, she feels anxious that this boy will soon get her first impression and she tries to find what to say to try to distract him from her impolite behavior. She also doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of hearing a compliment after that statement.

“I-IIII notice you have paint on your hands. Do you paint?”

“Yeah, I painted this piece right in front of us,” he gestures complacently with a smile from ear to ear.

“What?” she looks at it again confused, “But this is Puvis de Chavannes’.” Being here at the Panthéon many times, Her’s come to know each and every piece.

“Ah, so you’re a lover of the arts too,” he says with a smirk as if she doesn’t look it. She feels this boy trying to toy with her and in her own safe haven nonetheless. She can’t help but feel a little violated by this new character in her domain, all of a sudden collecting pieces of her as if he’s a scientist gathering data.

He continues, “So what’s your favorite type of art?”

“I like…Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, why?”

“Ah…so you’re one of those…I’m guessing you like Van Gogh and all those other lunatics,”

“Excus–”

“Shh!”��

He holds his finger over her lips and looks at the guards. Her figures the boy doesn’t have any concept of personal space demonstrated by his sudden behavior. He seems pleased with himself earning an aggravated reaction from her, as if trying to tug her from the confines of her usual docile and timid personality. His expression impish as he nods his head up and whispers,

“Be quiet and follow me.”

He takes her hand and dashes across the humongous platform, flying by histories of sculptures of French leaders, skidding on the intricate designs of the ivory marble floors, and passing by grand murals of glorious heroes and angels. She almost can’t keep up with the strides of his infinitely long legs with her shorter ones.

They go from pillar to pillar under the dome architecture of the museum, eventually reaching a dark opening framed with geometric details that uncovers a dark spiral staircase below. He lets go of her hand and goes down the stairs with ease as she pauses to think about going down.

“Come on, slow poke!” his voice vibrates the cold marble walls and she sees him smile like a child while looking above at her through the clefts of the stairs.

“Where are you taking me?” she tries to ask but is only replied with more of his steps. She tries to process her situation before she goes down.

Why should I follow this boy?

Even though she’s acknowledged he’s a little outlandish, there’s something interesting about him that draws her in and her curiosity grows with each ticking second. She goes down with prudent steps and catches up to him.

“Come on, haha,” he gestures to a small crevice.

How does this boy know where these are?

The boy moves with too much familiarity as if this is his home. Her realizes her ignorance claiming this museum to be her sanctuary, when in fact, there’s someone else far more acquainted to it than she is.

Eventually, they end up in the crypt, which is filtered with gloomy yellow lights, giving it an eerie vibe appropriate for its type of place. In the crypt lies some of the most notable French people who’ve contributed to the world such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Marie and Pierre Curie, and many more. Tourists are now nowhere to be found.

Coming to a halt in front of a dull door, he rustles his pocket around and pulls out some old-looking keys. Her’s eyes widen in shock.

“You work here?”

“Shh!” reminding her of what she should be doing. “You know, those powerful dead people are just over there. You don’t want to disturb their rest do you?” he jokes.

Her can’t help but notice that he seems to detect her unfaltering reverence for the place. Again, he gives her that smirk while he turns the key in its hole and her heart flutters in response. One more smirk, she thinks, and it might be ingrained into her memory forever.

He opens the door and inside are slews of paintings of Van Gogh. She becomes filled with joy when she sees them but it was only fleeting. As a lover of his works, she sees that they’re not authentic as soon as she scrutinizes the strokes. She also notices some are just patches of paint waiting to be filled with The Starry Night, or The Sunflowers, or The Night Café which made her nostalgic about the time she used to pass by the cafe in the painting every time she walked home from school back at in Arles.

The Night Café by Vincent Van Gogh (Year 1888).

She looks around and there are a couple of carts that lay askew in random spaces in the room that’s filled with different-sized brushes, half-empty tubes of oil paint, too-many-to-count paper towels, and various-shaped painting knives. The boy looks like this room just gave birth to him, all covered in paint like his mother.

“You can tell, huh?“ he scratches the back of his head and gives me a wink. Her’s body is churning with adrenaline at the moment, with her heart trying to calm down from running, and that unexpected wink pushes her heart above its threshold, forcing it to somersault. She nervously ignores it and tries to speak confidently.

“I can tell they’re not real. Figured since this is not their home. But why do you have fake Van Gogh’s everywhere?”

“Well, I made these,” he crosses his arms as he bites his bottom lip and looks around the room. “I sell them to people as imitations…some people are more gullible than others though,” he chuckles to himself and sighs, looking like he’s recalling a mischievous memory.

So, he’s a witty con artist.

“That’s a little sly, don’t you think?” she squints, trying to understand why a sly playful boy would be trusted with keeping a museum that require gentle care. It bothers her also since all Her’s life, she’s been an upstanding person, always following the rules.

“I’m a student at the art university here. I work here as a keeper and paint when I got time. The Panthéon can get exceptionally boring you know, so I found a way to make some extra bucks from dead time! Gotta pay that overpriced tuition, am I right?”

“…you don’t mean PCA, do you?” I raise an eyebrow at him.

“Of course PCA! Where else?” he chuckles. “Because…I study at PCA,” he looks at me with wide eyes. PCA, short for Paris College of Art – my art school. “Didn’t know we go to the same college.”

“All the more to trust you!! Now, since you’re an expert in these, why don’t you tell me what’s wrong with these paintings, eh?”

“No, I’m not gonna help you do your evil deeds. Plus…” She looks at her watch, “I need to go home by 7:30 and catch the next bus to campus,”

“What about I show you a shortcut out, huh?” he takes out his keys and jiggles it in the air. “I know a way that will lead right to the bus stop! And you don’t have to see it that way. I’m interested to know some of Van Gogh’s techniques too! Take it like you’re lecturing me huh?…for educational purposes,” he raises both his eyebrows and looks at her with a comically coy face.

He has a way with words, I’ll give him that.

She looks around and points out his obvious flaws that she automatically sees. She eventually settles on a painting she sees the most mistakes in, The Red Vineyard. She remembers how she used to visit her first crush by the river when she was nine, Jungkook. He taught her how to skip rocks on the water and she taught him how to catch grasshoppers. Jungkook now works at a winery in another part of Paris that's being supplied by the vineyard back in their hometown.

The Red Vineyard by Vincent Van Gogh (Year 1888).

“You know, I lived here.”

“Lived where?”

“Arles. Where this painting was made. I used to play around by this river here,” she traces the curved shape of the river on the right side, painted with stubby but glistening yellow and blue shades. “Well my family, to be exact. Of course I live in the dorms now, but I go home on the holidays.”

“Interesting! It’s like you see the world in his eyes!”

“Hah-I guess,” Her timidly says as she’s reminded that even though they’ve lived in the same city, she will never be as half of a good a painter as him. Her then starts to converse about how to make the painting better.

“Well for these,” she takes the paint brush in her hand, “you have to take burnt umber with some carmine yellow, and mix them slightly on the actual canvas and not on your palette,”

She feels him get close to her face as they stare at an area of the painting together. As she continues to speak and demonstrate, she senses a small whiff of his saccharine scent and his shoulder softly touches hers while he eagerly observes her hand move in close proximity. She’s reminded of his nonexistent concept of personal space once more.

Her and the boy talk for a time about the process of how Van Gogh creates his pieces and she advise him of his techniques. She’s not sure where the conversation turned but he actually started teaching her some things.

“Well, can’t you wash first before you paint over it so it’s not noticeable? It would save a lot of time. Plus, you don’t even have to use oil paint, just use acrylic so it dries faster until it hardens so you get a good texture…”

She’s taken aback by his innovative ideas on using materials non-traditionally. In her time attending art school so far, even art class in high school back home, she has never heard of the peculiar techniques the boy talks about. Her curiosity piques how he’s acquired his knowledge. In addition to talking about paintings, the boy doesn’t think twice dismissing what he thinks are relatively preposterous ideas of their mutual professors that they forcibly instill on their students. Her finds it amusing and it makes her laugh the way he describes them.

Ever since Her was a little girl, she’s had the habit of inspecting things in great detail, preserving it in her memories as best as she can to draw it at a later time. She observes how the saturation of colors change on a surface of a bubble, or how the ears of people lose its opacity and become pinker when the sun hits it from behind. At this moment though, what she want to draw the most is the scene that is presented right in front of her— him. She even thinks that maybe one day, her paintings of people will be as good as how Renoir famously paints his if she uses his features as inspiration.

Luncheon Of The Boating Party by Renoir (Year 1880-1881).

“Professor Jacques? Pfffttt- More like Professor Color-Within-The-Lines!” he laughs.

She responds to the boy, giving him her ears at times, but she more or less lets him talk as she looks at him to try and memorize his face.

His eyes glisten as he speaks– so much engagement in them. However, the life in his eyes are almost… overshadowed by their tiger-like personality. So focused and striking in between his long lashes. His eyebrows are sharp and fierce. His nose is straight and tall. And its placement between his eyes? Really proportionate. His lips are…what’s this oil paint color?…like Permanent Rose? mixed with a little Cobalt Violet to make it almost cherry-like. They’re shaped peculiarly though…that it really lets him easily have this scowled look. Maybe it’s because the top is more plump than the bottom…His complexion is flawless- luminescent, you’d probably need a hint of Pale Cadmium Yellow- and…what? N-No trace of blemish..hold on, there is a scar by his right lip, but it really only adds character to his looks. Still….actresses must be endlessly envious of his skin. His- Wait…how long has it been?

“Oh my I’m going to miss the bus!” she exclaims as she catches a glimpse of her watch.

Out of nowhere, she hears a man with a croaky voice coming closer to the room.

“Taehyuuuung? Taehyuuung? Where are you boy?”

The foot steps come closer and the boy jolts up from his seat, taking Her’s elbow in his hand quickly.

“Shit, Monsieur Cosmo…” he curses under his breath. “Shhhhh! Come on!” he whispers sharply.

“What’s happening?”

“That’s my boss sweet pea! We have to get out of here! C'mon, you turtle! Run!” he sharply whispers back.

He takes Her’s hand to exit, closes the door, and turns off the lights as quietly as he could. Then they run quietly through the darkly lit halls, past multiple epitaphs and tombs of the buried. Her has no choice but to rely on him on where to turn through the mazes of the museum and he becomes her sight. He looks behind her and flashes a big peculiar boxy smile that Her never spotted when she was observing his face. Her mood at the moment is a hard contrast to when she was looking at the pendulum. Her lips curve up slightly and she quickens her pace as she tries to match his.

He’s definitely an exciting one.

All of a sudden, the boy stops in his tracks and looks around the perimeter, “YYYYoouu might have to catch the next bus,” his voice drags out.

“What?!”

Her’s perfectionist side overrides and she tries to explain the bus system, her responsibilities, her homework, and her schedule the next day that would all have to be rewritten if she misses this bus. However, he does not put his finger on her lips this time but he covers her whole mouth instead, trying to keep her silent.

“Ok, ok, here’s what it is, babe. There are guards everywhere and I can’t be seen, ok? And I know you don’t know how to get to the shortcut to the outside so you’re going to have to stick with me if you want to get there. Hidden. Got it?” Annoyed by the situation, Her yields inevitably.

Her and the boy run and hide from the guards, tiptoeing as best as they can until the guards lock the doors behind them. They wait in the dark a few times until the coast is clear and moving becomes safe again. There were a few times Her made a mistake, catching the attention of some guards, but the boy protects their every movement; tugging her away if a guard comes too close, or slightly pushing her into crevices behind some pillars or statues.

At times, they try to fit themselves in small spaces and he tries to hold her as close as he could to prevent their shadows from being seen. She tries not to think about the skin contact since she doesn’t know what it would do to her judgment that she most certainly needs intact right now.

Shoot, 7:30. I missed it.

“Well! I missed the bus. Thank you but there’s no point in sticking with you now. The guards don’t know who I am, so…I’ll just walk out the front door. Nice to meet you though,” she stands up from kneeling down and pivots her heels to walk away, but the boy catches her wrist.

“Can you be quiet?? And yeah you still need me, honey. Can’t you see? We’re locked in,” he reaches into his pocket and shows off his keys, “I’d give them to you but you don’t work here, do you?” he smirks.

With slight irritation from missing the bus and from Her’s clouded mind of thinking about rewriting her schedule in her mind, she completely forgets this fact.

“Now, stick to me,” he grabs her and embraces her behind the statue of Marianne and the soldiers, then again behind the miniature architecture plan of the Pantheon.

“I said stick to me…now,” the boy must have felt that she was trying to preserve some space in between their bodies. They become startled as a guard walks only a feet away from them and she can’t help but follow his orders.

In half a second, she places her feet in between his stance and presses her body against his. Her arms fold against his chest and her head burrows in it to flil the space. His arm encircles her waist and his hand clasps the back of her head as she feels a slight force to encourage her to press closer. After a second of monitoring the guard, he moves their bodies ever so slightly away from the guard’s movements and squinting gazes. She feels him hold his breath and she mimicked his movements. In the silence, she feels and hears his heart race like a horse from the suspense.

Geez, it must be around 120 beats per minute.

While stupefied in place, she realizes he’s strangely stealthy that it makes her curious to the point of concern how he’s very good at it. The lights then turn off and they hold their position for a few more seconds.

“This is terribly intimate for a first meeting, you know, especially in the dark,” she whispers with a tone as they wait until the rustling of movements stop.

“What? Do you want a kiss too?” he says sarcastically.

“I don’t kiss people I don’t know,”

“I do,”

“Stop joking around,”

“What? We’re in France. Ever heard of a French kiss?”

She ignores his comment as she checks her watch, wishing the hands would turn counter-clockwise.

Eventually, they reach a door and the boy opens them with his keys. Without a knowledge of what might be on the other side, he exposes the night with the lovely moon and the bustling faint sounds of the city outside. A hush of the spring-born wind brushes her skin as if to say hello, wanting her to acknowledge its presence. She turns and sees the bus stop just around the corner.

“The next bus will come in 30 minutes, don’t worry,” the boy assures.

He pants to calm his heart, lays down on the cold grass, closes his eyes, and concentrates on trying to catch his breath. His newsboy hat topples from his head and his long hair falls delicately on his forehead and around his face. Her can’t help but admire how the moonlight touches his features as she slowly sits down next to his body, also concentrating on slowing down her respirations. He peeks through his closed lid and closes them again.

“You know, you’re doing it again,” he says between breaths. “Oh sorry…”

“It’s not polite to stare you know. Even more so that I don’t know your name,” “Oh…my name is Her, Her Lune, you?”

“Well, if you haven’t figured from my boss shouting it out, my name is Taehyung. Taehyung Soleil,” he smiles with eyes closed.

After a moment of huffing, he sits beside her and picks on the helpless grass.

“I guess this is my way of timing out of work,” he naughtily chuckles under his breath, “I bet that old fart was going to make me take care of that pendulum that just fell. It was actually my fault it fell but…I can’t be bothered right now. It’s almost the end of work anyways,” he rationalizes.

“You did that?! That’s why you were running from the guards?!”

“I-IIIIII didn’t mean to ok? Heh…I’m supposed to check the clicker that lets the pendulum go back and forth without losing its energy but…one thing led to another and it snapped from the hinge. I’ll understand if he yells at me the next time I go to work,” he rubs his neck. Her's skepticism and first impression just became validated.

As they wait for the next bus, he then looks at the moon with endearing eyes. Her doesn’t realize it but she looks at him again, taking advantage of his ethereal beauty under a different kind of light. To her, his side profile looks as if all the Old Masters like Leonardo and Boticelli, who tried to capture beauty in Mona Lisa and Venus, had the wrong notion of beauty– that what she’s looking at right now, is true beauty.

Mona Lisa, who?

The Birth of Venus by Sandro Boticelli (Year 1484–1486).

“Her.” his deep voice stern and low. “One more stare and I might have to do something about it,” he bites his lower lip and furrows his eyebrows. She nervously tries to land her eyes somewhere acceptable but she only finds it to follow his gaze at the moon.

“So why do you like that whacko Van Gogh? I only paint his paintings because they sell,” he scoffs while he leans back, propping his posture with his arms. Her is unsure how to feel about his sentence. He’s dissing her idol painter but at the same, she’s glad he acknowledges that other people like his works. Plus, she’s amused by his rhyming nickname.

“Well, mostly because I can’t paint like him,” she discloses. “I know how he painted his works, I’ve studied it many times and if I have to do an imitation like you, I think I’ll do well. I just- but I can’t seem to make my own paintings like his. He uses such saturated colors and his strokes are unplanned but he somehow is able to take his decisions and pull it off in the end like it was planned in the first place. When I try to do it, it doesn't look as good or as professional as his,”

“So he’s a good bullshitter is what you’re saying,” he taunts and laughs. She gives him a generous glare. He annoys her but she can’t put a finger what it is about him that makes her not be put off. She guesses it’s his brutal honesty. It’s refreshing.

She continues, “Being in art school…yeah it’s great they give you a lot of techniques to capture perspective and blah blah blah…but what they can never teach you is how to be creative. And I can’t help but take those techniques too seriously…” she sighs heavily, “My paintings always come out unremarkable- bleak- but oh, professor gives me A’s!” she said with sarcasm as she lays in defeat and stares at the moon.

Her finds herself disclosing personal things about herself to this boy she just met that she wonders if she really is that unsatisfied with her life. With her timidity, she only tells her closes friends things as insecure as these.

“IIII don’t know Van Gogh as much as you…but I learned a thing or two about him in the time I’ve been imitating his works. He said ‘I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process,’” he looks into her eyes after his words reaches her ears as his hair catches the breeze of the night.

Her becomes stunned at his words. He’s never met anyone who knows something about Van Gogh’s life other than the usual trivia. How he’s able to recite a quote by him leaves her astounded and curious.

“T-That’s right,”

“Well, of course, hahaha…I love that quote ‘cuz it’s sooo funny. You know he really did lose his mind and him saying that just makes me think wow, he’s got some sense of humor,” he chuckles slightly in ironic admiration, “But you know, that’s not the point…the point is maybe you think too much and it restricts you from really giving yourself to your works. You’re supposed to project your feelings into your art, not your mind like what others think. We’re artists, Her. Our job is to convey emotions.”

“Wh-Ye-I guess,” Her’s never heard someone talk about philosophy about art before. She’s talked about life as an art student, but never about life as an artist.

“We’re supposed to give the audience what we want them to feel, not what we want them to think. Take the most famous painting in the world for example. The Mona Lisa. There’s so many things Leonardo did right in that one, but why is it so famous? It’s not because it’s painted perfectly. It’s because of that smile. It gives people an eerie feeling. It connects with you because it’s so…eughk damn eerie,” he shrugs. “Never really liked looking at that one.”

Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci (Year 1503–06).

“That’s really a new way of looking at things I suppose...”.

“Well have you ever just done something out of a whim? Like…you just do it ‘cuz it felt right at the moment?”

“I-I…not really…no…” she sighs, “I like to…plan things out. It’s how I grew up to be,”

“I guess now you know where the problem is…” he says as he looks back at the moon. “Your paintings are really just an extension of yourself. In a way, they’re you. If you say your paintings are unremarkable and bleak, then that’s probably how you are…unless there’s something in you that wants to change,”

Her is taken too aback by his response to the point that she’s at lost for words. No one’s ever really said it out loud before, not even her. His words are like a dagger to her heart but she can’t seem to reply or defend herself because deep inside her, she knows they’re utterly true. All she is able to reply back is a mixture of a frustrated groan and a sigh as she puts her arm on her forehead.

“Heh, now I see why you kept coming here just to stare at that boring pendulum all the time, looking all frustrated” he looks at the moon intently and she looks at him with wide eyes. “You’re like one of those people who cry and stare at the mirror when they do,” he chuckles.

“You know I come here often?”

“Yeah, I work here, Her. Of course I’ll remember my frequent flyers, especially the cute ones,” again he smirks at her. Well, now she thinks it’s ingrained in her mind forever. But then again, she notices he has a way of making her have mixed feelings about his words.

He just made fun of her self-pitying tendencies, but reveals I’ve caught his eye? Who is this guy?! It’s as if he wants be nice but his innate mischievous nature gets in the way.

“Don’t worry, we all have hard times,” he looks at the moon as if he’s time traveling decades through his eyes, perhaps recalling a serious time in his life. Feeling slightly comforted, Her reflects on his words for a time while she leave him in his memory.

Yeah, I guess my self-pitying tendencies are a little funny, ha.

Eventually, she finds herself looking at the underside of Taehyung’s jaw and even his nostrils from her position below as he loses his presence reminiscing. She observes the moonlight hit his face at an angle from below. She follows the trace of light with her eyes, trying to consolidate it in her memory. However, it was too late to retract her eyes before Taehyung looks back at her and rolls his eyes annoyed.

“Thaat’s it- You’re staring again. That’s more than three strikes I believe,” he slaps his hand on the grass by her head and hovers over her.

He replaces her view of the moon with his face, which is now only inches from hers. If the grass was someone’s skin, their skin would be indented with a big red mark from how much Her’s pressing against it to distance herself from the tip of his nose. His long hair falls down in her direction, framing the outline of her head. However, what is very astonishing and a little frightening is the big change in his expression. He looked like an angel from the moment she saw him, but now, he looks like the devil himself.

“Here. Take a good look!” he says sternly and angrily. His striking eyes pierce at her with eyebrows furrowed, only becoming scarier as she sees his pupils dilate and his nose flare. His jaw clenches and cuts the moonlight’s trace she was just tracing a while ago. She’d like to take him on his offer but his emanating vibe is unnecessarily terrifying. She understands why he could be annoyed by her by now but it seems as though she struck a very sensitive nerve by his radical reaction.

“I know I’m handsome, cute, hot, good looking, whatever you wanna call it. But seriously, curse. this. face! Lots of girls and teachers, even guys at the college have made me their model since day one, like I’m just some object to them but you know what? I’m not some disposable model. I’m a painter, just like them! This damn face overshadows everything else. I’d like to think I have a brain and some skills you know,” Taehyung looks at her with his piercing eyes until he rolls it back and closes them in frustration. He brushes his hair with his hand as he gulps down his next words, trying not to snap again.

“…I-I don’t think you’re just that…I think you’re a-actually smart” she stutters. She can’t help but feel there’s more to his story. How can anyone not like their good looks?

“Well…good.” she slowly sees the child-like angel in him resurface again.

Assuming the confrontation was over, she tries to get out from under him like a worm but he follows her down, trapping her between his arms again.

“Nuh-uh, sweet pea. You have to make it up to me. Come to the third wing studio tomorrow and I’ll think about forgiving you.”

A flash of the headlights of the long-awaited bus illuminates the side of his face.

Ch. 1 fin.

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musicmixtapes · 6 years ago

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September 26, 2018 Mix

This week as I was curating the playlist, I got to thinking a lot about the way that our mood at a particular moment affects the music we choose to listen to. Some people say that they pick music the opposite of their mood to counteract a bad day, some choose to delve into that feeling and get in touch with it. I, being the latter, am having a memory ridden, reflective sort of week, so I chose songs that talk about the past a little bit and how they can influence the present/future. I hope you enjoy and find something that suits your mood.

Spotify Playlist 1. Planet Hunter by Wolf Alice - This song is all about trying to recreate memories of something or with someone that happened awhile back, events which were really positive, but they cannot be rehabilitated. The artist reminds me of if Taylor Swift had not become a pop music sellout and instead taken a dark moody indie music route, and well, the results are stunning because she creates a depth of feeling to the music that most pop cannot do, in my opinion. The part I relate to the most that struck me was the repeated phrase of "I left my mind behind in 2015" which reaches a point where we, as listeners, realize that there are peaks in our lives that we wish to return to, especially at some of our valleys. I love this because it is an upbeat song about feeling out of place in the present, which is really fascinating. 2. St. Paul by Ritchy Mitch & The Coal Miners - Honestly, the piano that tinkles into a wonderful melody/rift in the beginning has to be the most alluring part of this song, which eventually becomes a much bigger feeling as it continues on. There aren't many striking piano-driven songs these days, so I was impressed with that along with the fact that this song clearly disses a saint, yet doesn't seem offensive in the slightest because it is so personal and not an attack on anything but oneself's feelings. The instrumentals and their uncertainty directly correlate with the restlessness of the lyrics and the crunchy sound of the singer's vocals; we love to see a parallel of the sound of the music to the actual meaning behind the song. All the literary techniques used to write a song is the reason why our ears are so attuned to it. 3. Window by Nana Grizol - Going along with the recurring theme of memories and the past, this song is literally a metaphor for a window looking into the past of what something once was. The defining line of this song comes when the singer refers to the window of the past and saying that "we can lift them/and focus on the moments that we lift in" which is a beautiful shift in tone from a reminiscent tune to one that look towards changing for the better and leaving the memories (whether good, bad or ugly) behind for someone else to revolve around. The artist, Nana Grizol, often covers really broad topics, such as negative feelings, the passing of time, moving on in a really succinct way that reaches an audience who needs to hear mantras in a refreshing way. I like to think of this song as a meditative yoga for the ears, please practice daily. 4. Solitary Daughter by Bedouine - I found this song in the most interesting way, so here it is: I was in the Mcnally Jackson bookstore on Prince Street in the city, rifling through the poetry section (as one does) and stumbled upon a book that transcribed songs into poems and included commentary from other writers and from the artists themselves, in a lot of cases. Reading these lyrics as a poem in a book was so thrilling because I often talk a lot about how some songs are really just poetry set to music, and in this case, other people must have thought so too. This piece is incredible in its way of speaking about a woman not needing someone to rely on or anything to sustain her, except for her own self, her home is herself, which is so liberating to both hear and read. I highly recommend reading the lyrics alongside listening. 5. Chemicals by Gregory Alan Isokov - Off of his brand new EP "Dark, Dark, Dark" which was released not but six days ago, is this peaceful and meaningful acoustic folky ballad by a personal favorite of mine. This piece is especially interesting because it plays off of the notion of the different ways in which chemicals can affect a person's body, kind of like the way a person who is really important in one's life can do the same. An image that I love to see showing up in art is the trope of hands trying to reach one another, whether it be in the "Creation of Adam" or an old film. This song plays with this lost hands imagery, in the line "how my hands can't seem to find your hands in the dark", which if I wasn't already in love with the song, sealed the deal for me 100%. Definitely check out the other two tracks off of the EP, they are wonderful as well. 6. Slipped by The National - This week's mix all began with this one sad ballad by my current favorite group and it just built off of this. I cannot express with words, on paper or in person, how much I am tethered to the lyrics of this song. Something about the raw and honest way that this was strung together speaks to a person who is done with being vulnerable to someone who has no intention in showing hidden parts of themselves back. In this narrative song, the speaker is talking to a girl who left the city to go to a more rural area in the South, thus separating the two, and telling how tragic it is to break away from something when he could not be what she wanted him to be. This is a solemn and intense vow to oneself that they will not break down and fall apart because of a love ending, this is another mantra. 7. We're So Lost by Voom - Upon first instinct, I would like to classify this song under tracks I would listen to whilst laying under the stars and thinking about our existence in such a big place or while slow dancing with someone and contemplating what is going on. But now, even in a good mood this song makes sense because no matter how you feel in terms of being in this world, everyone can agree that we have no idea what we're doing most of the times and are mere beings that are floating through time and space, trying to determine why we were placed here in the first place. In some ways, this can be thought of as a slow rock philosophical crisis song, or you can just love it because of the waltz like beauty of it. Your choice. 8. Fuck Love by Lalić - I definitely expected a cynical, bitter, anger driven song when looking at the title, but if I can say any cliché here, it's don't judge a song (book) based on its title (cover). If anything, it's more of a love song, explaining that the speaker has no real reason to be saying things like "fuck love". I think this is interesting because oftentimes, people don't like to be honest with themselves about their emotions, so instead they put up their walls immediately and turn to sarcastic, defensive comments like "i hate everyone" "love suck" or.... "fuck love". Being one of these people, this song opens up that term and exposes us hate poseurs who are very sensitive and truly love to love. The low fi rock sounds with a strong guitar line is nice to hear as well. 9. Blood Bank by Bon Iver - He is so detailed in his description of bags of blood, I have to believe that he actually had a conversation with someone he loved at a blood bank, discussing the differences between people's blood... which is... interesting. It is also vital to this song to understand that the two separate memories he tells about are very closely related because he is explaining the variability of relationships and how to decide whether it is prudent to enter into an affair or to be your own person and indulge in lonely behavior. Of course, it never hurts to be told really emotional things like this with Bon Iver's delicate crooning and layered harmonies that build throughout with such simple complexity, unmatched by other singers in his genre. 10. How It Gets In by Frightened Rabbit ft. Julien Baker - Your first question after listening may very well be "how what gets in?" as my first question was this exact thing. Maybe what gets in is this undeniably wonderful call and response song along with angelic harmonies. But maybe, what gets in, at least in terms of this song, is the literal healing of an open wound and how to properly dress it and make sure it doesn't get infected, or at least that was what was accounted by the singers in question. I interpreted the song to be a recounting and lesson on how love can come into one's life in unexpected places, and how just because there was hurt and pain in the heart for a long time, does not mean it has to stay that way forever. 11. NFWMB by Hozier - This acronym is probably the smartest thing I have experienced in a song's title in a long time: NFWMB is really Nothing Fucks With My Baby, expressed in a classy way, courtesy of the forest prince and love of my life, Andrew Hozier-Byrne. As always, there are several biblical references and apocalyptic death metaphors, which always leaves me feeling very confused and inspired at the same time. The very jazz and blues influenced low key rock song is so different from other love songs that it kind of creates its own category in that sense. It is described by others as "the love song for the end of the world" therefore going back to my feelings of apocalypse, decay and biblical tellings. 12. One In A Million by Hudson Taylor - "You gotta be cruel if you wanna be kind" ok this just hit me way too hard and true. The only way I even discovered this artist is actually because they are opening up for the Hozier concert I am attending tonight and now I am super excited to see them perform as the opening act as well. They remind me of a toned down version of The Kooks in a lot of shared vocals and chord progressions and upbeat instrumentals, except they are a duo hailing from Ireland and they classify themselves a folk band, though the punk/alternative rock influences found in this song are undeniably present. Also present is the message of knowing someone doesn't care about you the way you care about them and needing to be released from that sort of madness... cool. 13. Into The Mystic by Van Morrison - I'm probably not introducing anybody to this song for the first time right now and certainly not the last, but something about the changing of the seasons and the shift of weather from summer to autumn calls out to the mystical and slow dance vibe that this classic and iconic folky rock song inspires. There is absolutely nothing better than the buildup from quiet lull to the horn heavy chorus and interlude that just makes you want to stop and dance wherever you are in your day. Another musical aspect that is highly appreciated by yours truly is the intricate acoustic guitar rift that is taken and shifted into a lot of newer acoustic based songs that we hear all the time these days. The past influences the present and the present is heard in the past all the time, especially in music. 14. Size Of The Moon by Pinegrove - Shifting into a more heavy punk, angst themed style of music is this memory driven song which tells us about a time where the speaker is thinking on the communication issues that occurred in a relationship and how they could have easily been remedied, but there was no effort on the other half's side. From an interpretation of the song, one person smartly said, "It’s really easy to indulge in nostalgia when you’re at a rocky part of a relationship. Suddenly everything appears better than the present, no matter how imperfect those times were." I have to concur with this notion because our perception of the past changes over time and when we miss someone, at times, we look at bad memories and they even start to seem better than being alone... but they are not. 15. Kathleen by Catfish and the Bottlemen - Another song geared towards a relationship not working out the way it's supposed to is from a band that is one of my all time favorites. Their comical British style of lyrics is so appealing to my American way of thinking of things and the heartfelt honesty heard in their songs play along quite nicely with the super power rock style in which they are written. This tune in specifics, is not about the past, but the present and trying to reflect on what is going on in the "now" which is a really complicated thing to try and do, when you are infatuated with someone. The instability is heard not just in the lyrics, but also in the interchanging chords of the electric guitar and the fast paced anxiety ridden drumbeat, which is awesome.. 16. Holland, 1945 by Neutral Milk Hotel - This band is one of the weirdest, coolest ones that only the people who love grating vocals and intense lyrics can truly appreciate to the desired capacity. The whole album, from the 90s, "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" depicts the story of Anne Frank and the tragedies behind what happened to such an innocent person, along with her youthful romance and how it all devolved in such a short time. A lot of fans of this album have also speculated that there is a second layer of meaning between the World War II references, being that is expresses the kind of tension and tragedy that occurs when you lose some so important in your life, and how the mourning of this loss can only be remedied through appreciating this person afterwards. 17. I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You by Black Kids - Okay, so I'm pretty sure that we can all understand the meaning of the song strictly through the title of this song, negating my opinion before on how you should not judge a song based on its title... well in this case, you can absolutely do that. Not only does it have the best dance tune in the world, but it is also so adorable that the singer's only common connection with the girl he is speaking about is their affinity and adeptness with dancing. Although I definitely have "two left feet" as the singer describes the boyfriend having in this song, I relate to this in terms of music. If there is a person who I really care about, the connection I automatically have is usually in a musical sense, and I am greedy about this relation. We all have something we won't teach someone else's boyfriend/girlfriend if we care about them. 18. 123 by Girlpool - I love this so much. It depicts a relationship where the speaker is asking the partner/SO to tell them everything that is wrong with them in a really sarcastic and aggressive way. It's comical and honest and vulnerable all at once which I have to give a hand for because mixing comedy with painful relationships is something that I always attempt in my writing. The song deals with an interpersonal relationship that is simultaneously “toxic and loving" as described from a contributor on Genius Lyrics, which is a website I often refer to on advice and other commentaries on music I really enjoy. The girl rock power that is disseminated with this track is so strong and empowering, for any gender, so please don't hesitate to sing this when you're feeling angsty about someone. 19. Million Years Ago by Adele - I don't think I ever really talk about my deep appreciation for Adele on here, because I try to branch out from popular artists and focus on more under-appreciated and undiscovered types; but I'm making an exception because although she is one of the most iconic voices of the modern generation, this specific song is so underrated in terms of her best songs. It sounds so french/spanish acoustic ballad inspired and makes me feel like I am transported to a black and white film from the 50s with the sadness and depth that it gives me in such a simple way. It ALSO follows along with my theme of the week, which is looking back in order to look forward, because she sings about the troubles of missing things from the past and dealing with the issues of transforming into a different person. 20. Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex - Finally, one of the best mixes of every song I have spoken about previously, is this moody sad love tune by the moodiest, saddest, love bands of the modern generation. There is an unspoken cheesiness of Cigs After Sex songs that for some reason, I am completely enamoured with because I feel like the notion of expressing things in a hyperbolic way has been tossed by the wayside. This group brings back the feeling of needing to tell someone how much they care and not caring about what anyone else thinks, which is important in a world that so often ridicules the ridiculous emotions that love brings about. In particular this song speaks to the feelings of needing to get someone out of a feeling they are trapped in, so to be with them fully, and telling the person they will be there in their lowest and darkest times.

Hope you enjoyed listening with me, see you next week!

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newsplususa · 3 years ago

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Cindy Crawford is an inspiration to many models who want to become entrepreneurs

The majority of American models spend their time in New York to build up their professional careers, and Cindy Crawford finds the rhythm to move forward with it. She was one of the supermodels and actresses who were some of the most prominent faces of the 1980s and 1990s. Crawford was a constant presence on runways, magazine covers, and fashion campaigns. Her career soon branched out into acting and business ventures. What makes her unique is that she is a multi-talented woman with a diverse background and impressive achievements.

Despite being a successful model, Cindy Crawford has never had a dull moment. Her success has come primarily from her talent and physical attributes. Although she became an overnight sensation with her sexy looks, Cindy began to distinguish herself first through her academic qualities. She graduated with honors from the University of Pennsylvania and went on to attend Northwestern University. After graduating, she chose to enter the modeling industry.

She won an academic scholarship to Northwestern University but dropped out after only one quarter. She was a student, but she was not very interested in studying, so she turned to model full-time. She later worked as a model for photographer Victor Skrebneski for a fashion project. In 1985, she moved to New York City and signed with Elite Model Management.

Cindy Crawford is known as a fashion icon and beauty expert. She is widely regarded as the first model to branch out into business. She also has her own production company. The beauty queen, Crawford, has also created a line of skin care products for Guthy-Renker and it is one of the top-selling global brands. In addition, she has had a significant amount of cosmetic surgery. Her most recent cosmetic procedure was breast augmentation. Several million people are still captivated by her looks.

Aside from modeling, Cindy Crawford has also appeared in TV shows and films. She was a host of MTV’s House of Style from 1989 to 1995. She has also starred in Pepsi commercials and worked with various brands. She also co-starred in a film called Fair Game. In 2001, she co-starred in The Simian Line.

Cindy Crawford is an international humanitarian. She has become one of the most successful fashion models of all time. Despite her age, she is still a stunning model and a well-known influencer. She also supports a number of charities. In fact, she has donated a few million to organizations around the world. Moreover, she is a very generous person.

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sjwoutd2511 · 3 years ago

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2. Surviving and Thriving Against All Odds

Agafia Lykov is a Russian Old Believer whose family escaped from persecution to the Siberian Taiga in 1936. The Lykov family lived in the wilderness in isolation where Agafia was born in 1944. Their family was undisturbed until 1978 when a group of geologists spotted their cabin from a helicopter. While the family of 6 chose to live in a remote and isolated cabin, it was not without struggles with short growing seasons and high levels of predator animals. Agafia's mother died from starvation so her four children could eat. After the family was discovered in 1978, Agafia’s three older siblings died from what is suspected to be pneumonia, brought to them by the geologists. Despite these struggles, Agafia has continued to live off the land, just as she had since birth, even now being the only surviving member of her family after her father's passing. She cherishes her land and way of life, as seen throughout the film to be smiling and excited to teach and have extra hands to assist in the daily tasks on the farm. Her only neighbour is Yerofei Sedov, a retired geologist who moved into his own cabin down the hill from her. Agafia has only left her home 5 times total, and each becoming severely sick, so she now welcomes researchers and students to visit her rather than travelling to cities.

This case study was conducted by Vice (USA) and was sponsored by The North Face. It is considered a microsocial study as it was framed almost exclusively through Agafia and her family’s level of reality. The individuals involved with creating the cabins and farm are the focus of the film and the research was qualitative in nature. It follows Agafia's daily life and was open towards what she would want to show and teach. As the filmmakers are from the USA and have their film sponsored by North Face (which is seen in their new and branded gear throughout), the invisible backpack they carry is one of privilege and a modern Western society. The crew sees what the Lykov family did as interesting and “freeing” in a way, when they were fleeing for their safety. Ethically it is questionable as the researchers do not seem to fully appreciate her lifestyle and everything her family risked maintaining it. lso Agafia may not know the risks the film poses as it is unknown how much Agafia understands about how her information is released to the public as she maintains an off-the-grid lifestyle and does not use the modern technology that this study was released on. There is also a large language barrier as the filmmakers do not speak Russian and have a translator to communicate through and Agafia does not speak English either.

If I were to be given the opportunity to research and communicate Agafia's story, I would approach it with a much longer timeframe. Firstly, I would ensure that Agafia would benefit in every way possible and that she understood what it means to release information in today's world and consented to it. As well to build a relationship with her over a longer period of time rather than a few days in her hardest time of year. By immersing into her lifestyle and culture, there is a greater respect and understanding built for all parties involved. Another topic that was not focused on much in the film that I would focus on more is her religion. She is one of the few remaining Old believers and the Lykov’s faith is the main reason why they adopted this way of life. To ensure that everything is representing her I would communicate and ask for consent throughout the whole process and not push for answers as she is not required to share.

Agafia is a caring and giving person whose heart is open for anyone who needs it, this is clear even through this short film.

References

Vice. (2013). Surviving in the Siberian Wilderness for 70 Years (Full Length) [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2AYafET68

#OUTD2511

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site-specific-vada-baldwin · 4 years ago

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Presentation Prep

I wrote a script and pre recorded my presentation which was useful since I had a lot of video and digital work to show. this also helped me be able to say what I wanted to in the presentation.

So I wanted to do write design because I didn’t really know what it was and I wanted to try a different style of designing, in order to widen my understanding of the design process and designer/director/writer collaboration. I also liked the idea of working with an existing site and developing a performance that is unique to that space. Taking theatre out of its traditional space was also an exciting prospect because it makes theatre accessible to a wider range of people. I also wanted to improve my model making skills and really get to grips with working digitally. In my manifesto that I wrote at the begging they key point for me was to get the right balance between the site itself and the design I produce, making sure not to over power the site I was working with.

Why bca

I chose the bare chested adventurer for a few reasons. when we visited the site with Bridget, the way she described the text was really clear to me and it felt exciting to focus in on this small section of life that one existed in this house. I loved the idea of the houses physical state being reflective of the emotional deterioration of the characters inhabiting it ad the idea that the house itself was a character. I really wanted to find an interesting way of giving the house a voice and a presence. As you can see from the pictures of the site, it has so much to offer allready and I felt o could really get stuck into making the piece specific to the site.

Process

So the process has been different to other design projects, with agog research and developmennt of ideas. I liked going back to my research throughout the process. I began with ideas of puppetry and making the house a character and it having this almost malevolent hold on the people that live there. initially I was researching the themes of drug use and how that impacted the characters emotional statee, I then got too caught up in this, taking a completely different route, looking at video mapping and the function of the brain, but when I took a step back, I revisited my original ideas which helped me gain focus again. Niro board was really useful for me because I had all my ideas on one page and I could easily see them together. This helped me decide which design elements worked together.so I ran with the main focus of bringing the ouse to life. I found a poem by Robert cording which reads “ I have come to love slowly how old houses hold themselves” this sparked ideas of the house being a person or even multiple people and I asked myself lots of questions about how they would interact with the charactersannd if they should speak, but after discussions with Bridget we decided it would be more effective for the house to be alive in a more subtle way. this ultimately worked better wit my other ideas for the actual visual design.

So my initial inspiration for this was

this image. It got me thinking of having the scenes around the house like a museum of this familys history. This idea let itself well to the scenes and movie the audience around the space, making the most of the site.

Image 2. This image of scaffolding inside a building was the second key image for me. having the inside and outside come together since the house is already over grown with nature stood out to me. Because Scaffolding is ususlly seen on the outside of buildings, having it on the inside really empasises the feeling of unease I was looking to create in the performance and it also helps demonstrate that this family is broken and needs to be supported.

I then went on to researching magical realism. I watched pans labryth and realised that the design of it and the themes (particularly the feeling of hopelessness and a battle with a negative force ) was something I wanted for my performance. I then went onto watch the shining as the design is intended to be off putting which helped me discover ways of making my audience feel as unsettled as Laura does in this house.

Combining the framed scenes with a more magical element of puppetry and movement would really emphasise the power the house has on the characters which is why Seth finds it hard to leave so I began to find ways of realising this.

The way I imagine bringing the house to life would be using practical elements that are of the house which would create a kinetic space. I would do this in the performance buy having ivy reaching out towards Seth as if the house it trying to keep him there, having dust falling when Gillian gets angry, having water run down walls when a tap is turned on, leaves falling over the characters, rubbish rustling in a corner, and wallpaper peeling off the wall. Id also use sounds that again are like echos of the people who once lived here, maybe a phone ringing unanswered ,footsteps or a doorbell Lucy suggested I show my ideas of puppetry and movement and the house being alive in this way through a film, but I realised it was quite difficult to get this across so the film gives more an impression of the family history in the piece with some of those practical elements.

Play film.

The idea with costume was that each character looked as if they were consumed by the house in varying degrees.

So first we have Gillian, the grandma, she has simple clothes with Layers of fabric that represent all the history built up around her.She is weighed down by her life ad she is now blending Ito the walls with the graffiti, she has lost most of her identity but her sparkly shawl and She wears a cat broach which was inspired by the cat she kills in the original story show that the woman she one was was a little glamorous. and an awful 70s fur rug sits at her feet hi lighting how sort of grim she has become.

Next is Keith, yes he is still very much of the house but he has more of himself present, he has rock climbing equippment suggestive of his adventurous days. The yellow tie around his head suggests he is a bit of a joke to other people, his mad busies ideas ever work. His shorts blend into the graffiti and dirt of the house, he has spray pain on his arms and legs he doesn’t bother to remove when he paints. He wears a surfing brand t-shirt from the 70s when he bought it as a younger adventurer he wears it with his watch to time the waves but he no longer surfs.

He also has a dressing gown that is almost like a beech towel that he would remove during the performance.

Next is Seth, he sits looking sad and worn down, his clothes are stained and imprinted with some graffiti but he is less consumed by the house than Keith, he watns to leave , the grey and blue of his clothes are quite dull and come from the house . The stripes on his shirt are the. Colours of Lauras clothes so that he mirrors her a little, showing he wants to leave and be with her but he can’t

And last we have Laura, she doesn’t blend into the house at al, she is quite normal, she has dirty white trainers from the site to show she dosnt belong there.

Its summer so she has shorts but its Wales so a huge jumper, her clothes. Odd socks because o one is perfect.

Render 1

Here is how I imagine the main room of the house would look. The audience has been lead to this point by Laura, listing to words of the text and sounds of the house and they enter the house, this is where we meet. Seth sitting on the scaffolding that is suggestive of a bedroom, ivy reaches out to him, It has probably collected there as he spends a lot of time here and the house is constantly reaching out to him through this use of ivy. the scaffolding is old, over grown and was probably one of keiths failed attempts to fix the house many years ago. Seth would sit not playing his cello probably looking out of his window at the sea

Model

The next moment I chose to focus on is the kitchen scene between Seth and his dad Keith. They talk and make fritters. I wanted the scene to be in this room of the house because it is a bridge between Keith and Seths spaces, a place they can meet in the middle and the audience can observe this from the end of the kitchen.

I wanted to use the site as it is and build onto of it in order to give an impression of what the house would have been like Almost like the past and present merging together to create a feeling of the characters being ghosts in their own house

My aim with the design was to further the feeling of ueasemin subtle ways much like I the shining. There is a 4 seater table but only 2 chairs in the kitchen, the other chairs are placed randomly else where in the site, to suggest that Andrea the mother left years ago. Because of this the design of the kitchen would be outdated for the time. This late 90s early 200-s house has a dated 80s carpet in the kitchen which isn’t practical and to an audience today this would be more rare, the ugly marble pink tiles which were taken from a tile I found at the site would also look. Very 80s. They almost grow. Out from the corner suggesting there would have been a full room of them. I chose the outdated AGA cooker that would be common in a farmhouse is rusty.

Graffiti on the walls and furniture that Keith has done himself read smoke and worlds best fritters.. rubbish piles in the corner, pizza boxes, beer bottle and banana peels and a rusty sink hangs off the wall.

The carpet is also becoming a part of the earth and the vines are taking over the walls. This is actually less over grown than the site itself.

I also wanted to mention that I made one of my walls with mount board and no foam board to see how I could use it to make designing more sustainable and it was really useful to do, I think ill use it again.

Image 3. This image was the inspiration for my next and final moment. When I saw this image it was exactly how I pictured the end of the performance. Keith and Seth sitting among their rubbish and old belongings which Seth removed from the house having one last Sesh leaving the audience wondering if they will actually change their ways or if they will carry on as before. The house looks inviting, drawing Seth back in, Keith is a part of the house, also tempting him to to go. This image for me was one that was clear from the beginning and really helped guide the rest of my design.

Reflect

So at the beginning I said I wanted to improve my model making and digital skills which I think I have, im really happy with my costumes. I also thing I got the balance of site and design right. My film didn’t really communicate what I wanted it to but it was helpful for me to realise the difficulty in communicating movement in a design and actually that id need to consider how this movement would be realised in the show.

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