#it started with my mega-series Project Echo | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

silverwings22 · 8 months ago

Text

Song of the Sea: Chapter 29: Teach Me How to Fight, I'll Show You How to Win

Chapter Warning: Child endangerment, giant spiders, questionable dietary habits, a possibly poor understanding of the Force on the writer's part Series Warning: explicit smut, alien anatomy (it's a monsterfucker fic, guys), major character injury, grief, canon typical violence, autistic meltdowns, and my terrible attempts at Mando'a

Previous chapter:

Next chapter:

Vanguard Axis was a droid controlled space station best known for its illegal smuggling operations. It had been setting off Shiani’s inner alarms since before the Batch had docked, though she couldn’t put her finger on why.

“This place is a smuggler’s paradise. Stay alert.” Hunter said firmly. “Echo, you stay with the girls on board while we make the drop, and guard the ship.”

Echo nodded, looking at Omega and Shiani. The siren was fidgeting, hanging upside down from the ceiling. Omega stayed by the ramp, saluting with absolutely adorable intensity at her assignment. “We got it.”

Once the others were gone, Omega looked at Echo. “This place gives me the creeps.”

He nodded. “Me too. I’m going to start the checklist so we can go as soon as they get back. I’m in no hurry to get stuck here… maybe keep your eye on Shiani. She looks as anxious as you do.”

When the corporal vanished into the cockpit, Omega went over to her favorite siren. “Shiani?”

“Yes, Baby Mega?” Shiani looked up from where her fingers were working rapidly on a small chain-code generator Tech had made. He’d left her specs to upgrade it, since selling forged chain codes had turned out to be very profitable.

“You okay? Echo said you look nervous.”

Shiani scrunched her face. “This station is uncomfortable. Like being too hot and too cold at the same time.” She flipped rightside up and rubbed the back of her neck. “Feels like it’s squishing right here, makes my eyes feel like they’re gonna pop out.”

Omega patted her hands. “Me too.”

Both of them froze when they heard a faint roaring sound. Shiani set her little project on the work table and stood upright. “What was that?��

“I dunno. Sounds like the recordings of wookiees Tech had us watch for lessons.” Omega reached for her bow.

“Wookiees were friends of the Republic. We should check.” Shiani nodded. “This station is a bad place, someone could be in trouble.”

Omega nodded, grateful Shiani was always willing to get in trouble with her instead of advising her against it like her brothers did. She loved that they wanted to keep her safe, but sometimes she needed a partner in crime. They slipped off the ramp without further ado, heading deeper into the station where the cry had come from. When they turned a corner, they found a duo of droids with electrostaffs laying into a young reddish-colored wookiee who was trying to cover his head to protect himself.

“Hey! Leave him alone!” Omega shouted, horrified.

“Do not interfere with Vanguard Axis business.” One droid said, raising its staff to hit the young one again. Omega drew her bow and shot the staff out of its hand, Shiani’s blaster rising at the same time and shooting it in the head. The distraction let the wookiee grab the staff from the second one and smash the droid to scrap. As soon as it stopped moving, he gave a quick little bow.

Shiani poked Omega gently. “Quick, hide. More droid are coming.”

The three of them tucked themselves behind a group of crates and the wookiee started digging through them hurriedly. “What are you doing?” Omega blinked.

He made a quiet roaring noise, still shuffling through the box. He was startled when another voice addressed Omega. “I could ask you two the same question.” Shiani and Omega both poked their heads around the crates.

“Echo.” Omega sighed with relief.

“We rescued a baby wookiee.” Shiani explained. “Droids were hurting him.”

The young wookiee peeked around Shiani at Echo and immediately got hostile, snarling at the older clone. Echo held his hand and scomp up. “Easy, kid. Easy. I’m with them.”

Omega nodded. “He’s my brother, you’re safe.”

Shiani looked at the wookiee thoughtfully. “You’re very afraid, baby wookiee. It’s okay, I’ll protect you too. Promise.”

His paw wrapped around her hand, nodding as more droids came around the corner and Echo got behind the crates with them. Shiani half-closed her eyes, listening to the bolt of fear that snaked around her from him, and squeezed his paw gently. While Omega watched in fascination, the siren and wookiee seemed to be having a silent conversation in glances and nods.

“The others will have heard the blaster fire.” Echo muttered. “They’ll come looking.”

Shiani nodded, pushing Omega’s head down as the droids crowded them. Her eyes locked on the belt of one of them, pointing him out to the wookiee. He nodded, growling softly as the rest of the Batch came in the opposite door.

“I suggest you take your team and leave.” The lead droid said, flat affect but with an unmistakable threat implied.

“No! They’ll hurt him, Hunter.” Omega yelled, head popping up into the sergeant’s sight line. “They were hurting him when we found him.”

“The wookiee is worth more to our buyer alive.” The droid’s head swiveled back towards the boy, who scrunched down nervously next to Shiani. Her hand moved to his back and she bared her fangs in a hiss, instantly protective.

“People aren’t cargo.” She snarled, skin populating with blue rings.

“On the contrary, anything can be smuggled for sufficient credits.”

She brought her blaster up faster than Tech remembered teaching her, slamming three shots into the droid’s chest and another in the head. The silver cylinder she’d been eying, tucked into the droid’s belt, came flying off and into the young wookiee’s paw. She pushed him forward, pushing him and Omega together. “To the ship. Go!”

Omega grabbed the other child by the paw and took off, the batch moving to flank them and run for the Marauder as the cylinder ignited into a column of green light that deflected blaster shots. The clones all did a double take but kept running, bailing into the ship and taking off before the droids of the station could close the hangar doors on them or mobilize fighters to pursue.

The young wookiee moved to a corner and curled into a furry ball, watching the clones suspiciously. Omega looked curiously as Shiani crouched beside him, holding out her hand for him to touch. “Is he okay?” She whispered to Hunter.

“He’s a Jedi, if that laser sword is anything to go by. He must have been through a lot, and he’s probably scared.” Hunter explained. The wookiee was just a kid, after all, and every day since Order 66 he had probably been hunted and running for his life. Hunter had been on the receiving end of a scared Jedi kid once, when Crosshair had been trying to kill General Billaba’s padawan on Kaller. He always felt guilty he couldn’t do more than let the kid run and lie that he was already dead… but if he’d tried to rescue the boy, Crosshair would have finished him off.

Shiani sang a few notes to the wookiee child before smiling. “Don’t be afraid. These clones don’t work for the Empire. They don’t hurt babies.” She gestured to Omega. “See?”

He nodded nervously, glancing at Omega as she brought him a tray of rations. “Are you hungry? Here.” She smiled kindly, and he decided to trust her after a moment and quickly shoved the food in his mouth.

Shiani scooted over so she was sitting beside him, and Omega climbed into her lap. “I don’t speak wookiee, you have to tell me in the Song what happened.” The siren cooed. “Why were you on that station, Gungi?”

The young one poured out his story in rapid Shyriiwook, Omega listening intently while Shiani listened beyond the roars and growls. The men listened as well, though it had been a while since any of them had spoken the language. Still, it was a sad but predictable story. Gungi had survived the massacre of the Jedi, and had hoped to try to make it back to his birth planet of Kashyyyk when he’d been captured by the smugglers and held on the station. He was terrified, alone, and distrustful of clones after seeing so many Jedi killed by their hands.

Shiani smoothed his fluffy head gently and looked at Hunter. “Can we take him home?”

Hunter smiled faintly, that glaring soft spot he had for children widening to include someone other than Omega. “I don’t see why not.”

“It’s been a while since we’ve been to Kashyyyk.” Wrecker beamed.

“The Empire could have set up outposts by now. It’s not safe.” Echo frowned.

“He’s a Jedi. Nowhere is safe.” Hunter shook his head. “But this is the best thing we can do for him. It gives him a fighting chance if he’s back with his people.”

Tech glanced over at Shiani, who had laid her head on top of Gungi’s and was humming to him as he and Omega snuggled with her. She looked peaceful among the young ones, but the irony of the situation was not lost on the man that loved her. A queen with no people of her own, escorting possibly one of the last survivors of a genocide back to his birthplace, with the help of clones who’s own brothers had carried out that very slaughter. It was a lot to take in, but he knew she’d only tell him it was the right thing to do.

Who was he to tell his queen no?

“The village is in the sector.” Hunter had his holomap up as Tech brought them into sight of Kashyyyk. Even from her seat on the floor further back, Shiani could see how beautifully green and lush the planet looked from orbit. She wondered if there would be time to explore it, even just for a little while. So often their missions were hurried, and the worlds she’d dreamed of seeing when she was stuck on Kamino passed by in a blur of necessity. She tried not to complain about it, but she wanted so badly to be able to extend her hands and touch some part of this green planet. There were things she’d never seen here, and just once she wanted to know how it felt to climb a tree or pick flowers. There was never time in the race for survival for little things like living.

“I’m picking up heavy smoke and deforestation in that area.” Echo cut into her thoughts, his brow furrowed around his implants. “Be careful of Imperial outposts.”

Tech nodded. “I will proceed with caution, I assure you.” He moved to the landing zone as Shiani got up from her impromptu cuddle puddle with the kids. She stepped up to his side, watching his descent carefully. “Everything alright, cyar’ika?”

“Just watching. I need to pay more attention about flying.” She smiled fondly. “It’s almost time for you to teach Baby Mega to fly, so I should make sure I know what I’m talking about. She always has questions.”

Tech smiled fondly. “Fair enough.”

Hunter lightly patted Gungi on the shoulder as he came to watch the landing as well. “Hide that laser sword, kid. It might draw attention.”

It was a reasonable request and the kid nodded, tucking it away and letting out a polite little roar at Shiani, who smiled fondly. “No, I don’t have one. Not a Jedi.”

Gungi looked a little confused at that, but patted her arm as the ship touched down.

When they stepped out, both Omega and Shiani were wide eyed at the massive trees and rugged beauty of the planet around them. “It’s amazing here.” Omega whispered. “I see why you wanted to come home.”

Gungi nodded, waving his paws. Shiani smiled brightly. “Just as pretty as your dreams?”

“Dreams?” Omega frowned. “What do you mean, dreams?”

Tech listened to Gungi’s explanation and nodded. “He was brought to the temple very young. He has no recollection of his life here, but he remembers through his dreams. A sort of vision, if you will.”

“Tidedreamer.” Shiani said confidently. “A better one than most, too.”

Omega slipped her hand around one of Shiani’s tentacles as they followed Tech towards the village the Batch knew. “How come you know what he’s saying when you said you don’t speak his language?”

Shiani patted her hair. “Did some research about Jedi after Skara Nal. The powers they have come from something called the Force. It’s all around the galaxy, and holds it together. Everyone is a part of it, not everyone can interact with it.” Shiani explained. “You have to be… sensitive, to feel it and make it do things. The more about Force I read, the more it sounds like what my people call the Song. Their light and dark sides are my Melody and Harmony. The difference is all sirens can feel it. We use it to sing and scream, to find love, or sense danger. I can’t understand his words, but I feel his hearts.”

“So you’re like a Jedi?” Omega peeped.

“No. Jedi think entirely differently about it than sirens do. Nothing wrong with that.” Shiani chuckled. “I feel the Song all over this planet, though. Trees are so old, so alive here… no trees underwater on Kamino, and young ones aren’t strong enough to sing like these. Sirens perception, on a flooded planet like Kamino, might be diminished.”

“How’s it different?” Omega frowned, scooting closer. Gungi did too, looking at her curiously.

“Jedi thinking is… linear.” Shiani said politely. “In everything I read, there’s a lot of talk about Light side and Dark side. Jedi and Sith. Sirens don’t have those things. All Song is Song. There is Melody and Harmony, but neither is better or worse than the other. No… morality to it. It all just is, like day and night are.” She explained. “Not saying Jedi are wrong or right. Just different. For sirens, it’s as much a part of us as our voices. Scream and song.”

Omega nodded, brow furrowed as she tried to understand. Gungi patted Shiani’s arm again, pleased with the respectful way she’d tried to approach the differences. They stopped just short of walking into Hunter’s back, the clones looking up at a series of thick webs in the trees. “Spiders?” Omega frowned.

“Too big to be spiders.” Shiani blinked. “Much too big to eat.”

“Probably kinraths.” Hunter waved Omega closer to keep an eye on her. She was small enough to be a kinrath snack, and not carrying a lightsaber.

Wrecker pulled his large knife and started cutting them a path through the webbing, everyone falling into line behind him. Shiani nudged Tech lightly as she felt something circling above them. “Kinraths watching. Six of them.”

He looked up, spotting the massive arachnids coming down on silk threads with their mandibles clicking. Shiani wrapped herself around his arm before he could draw his blaster, while Gungi held his paws up and roared for the clones to keep their weapons holstered. “He says they will not attack if we do not provoke them.” Tech translated, glancing at his wife. She was looking up at the creatures curiously, humming to herself. Five of the kinraths seemed to accept Gungi’s truce through the Force, though one scuttled over and patted at Shiani’s head with its front legs for a moment. She cooed a note at it, and it retreated after its kin without further fanfare. “What was that, cyar’ika?” He asked

“Just wanted to see. It thinks I’m funny looking.” Shiani chuckled.

Tech sighed, putting an arm around her. “The mountain ridge is this way. According to my telemetry, the village is close by.”

Echo looked uncomfortable. “You mean where all the smoke is coming from?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Tech sighed. “This does not bode well for what we will find.”

Gungi jogged ahead to where Tech had pointed, cresting the hill a moment before the clones and siren. When they got to him, he’d dropped to his knees. The village the Batch had been familiar with was razed to the ground, leaving behind only smoldering ashes and what remained of a few huts. Hunter sighed, crouching to examine the dirt. “Tanks came through here. This was deliberate.”

Shiani winced at the memory of Tipoca City, belching smoke into the Kaminoan sky before collapsing under the waves. “The Empire did this.”

Omega put a hand on Gungi’s shoulder and he turned to look at her with a hopeless expression. “The Empire destroyed our home too. We’ll help you find your people, I promise.”

The rest of the Batch nodded, unable to deny her endless kindness. They helped Gungi to his feet and walked towards the village, searching for any sign of survivors and where they might have gone. Shiani found herself face to face with a set of carved stones, fingers outstretched and brushing the engravings. There was something sacred and beautiful about the monument that reminded her of the Temple beneath the waves and how she’d always pray there for a route to the stars…

“Tanks.” Hunter hissed, and the Batch plus Gungi ducked into the undergrowth. Shiani simply turned around, facing the repurposed Separatist Incinerator tanks coming towards her. They were operated by a gang of trandoshans, dragging a cuffed wookiee prisoner.

Tech’s stomach dropped when he realized his wife wasn’t hiding, just staring at the approaching enemy with her eyes narrowed. She had armor, but she wasn’t fireproof. He couldn’t get to her fast enough, and she’d already been spotted.

“What the hell are you?” One of the trandoshans, the leader, asked as the tank stopped a few feet from Shiani’s boots.

“You go away now. Leave Kashyyyk.” She ignored his question, arms outstretched to protect the monument behind her. “Let the wookiee go and leave.”

“You’re a gutsy little thing. But I’ve got orders to destroy the carved stones, and I’ll roast you too if you don’t move. If you do, you’ll probably fetch a decent price.” He reached for a blaster, flicking it to stun and leveling it at the siren. “Whatever the hell you are will make a nice chase, at the very least.”

When Shiani jumped, so did Gungi. He went straight for the driver of one tank, Shiani running for the captive. She tore the binding around his wrists with her teeth, handed him her blaster, and slid under the nearest tank with a wrench from her gear bag in her hand faster than anyone had seen her pull it out. Gungi put his saber through one tank’s repulsarlift, and the fuel pump came flying out from under the other with Shiani right behind it.

Tech caught her by the hand and helped her up, the last of the trandoshans scattered or dead. “Are you alright?”

She nodded, putting her wrench back in her bag. “I couldn’t let them break the holy place.”

Before Tech could either complain she’d scared him half to death or praise her bravery, a pair of furry arms wrapped around her and she was dangling off the ground in a fierce wookiee hug. The freed hostage was roaring in her ear, thanking her.

She smiled and patted his arm. “Hello. Let’s put out the fire, then make friends?”

He nodded and set her down, the group scrabbling for makeshift shovels to put out the lingering flames before the forest could catch. Just as they finished up, three more wookiees on brightly colored mylylas arrived. The former hostage explained what they’d done, and they were waved to follow.

“Where are they taking us?” Echo whispered.

“Their village.” Tech translated. “They want us to speak with their leader.”

The wookiee village was built into the living trees, a part of nature without harming any of the surrounding life. It was a series of treehouses, and the clones were invited to climb up by the warriors who’d escorted them. An elderly female was waiting for them, and looked delighted to see Gungi the minute he appeared. The wookiee they’d rescued ran to her, explaining and pointing at them until she waved them over.

“She says her name is Yanna, and she is their chieftain. She wants to know why we helped her people, and if we are soldiers of the Empire.” Tech explained.

Hunter shook his head and took his helmet off. “No ma’am. We were a part of the Republic, but not the Empire.”

“We helped because it was right.” Shiani peeped, bowing her head and giving her siren salute. “We brought Gungi home because it was right. We don’t know what village he’s from, but he wanted to come home.”

Yanna nodded and waved the young one to come to her, putting her hands on his shoulders to take a long look. Then she waved for the group to come inside and the other wookiees happily offered them food and drink to share while making friends. Shiani was a curiosity for the littlest ones, and let them play with her tentacles and examine her claws while she sat on the floor. She and Wrecker both were delighted to try wookiee food as well, while Echo tried to politely as possible decline the drink he was offered. Gungi and Omega seemed to have made fast friends and were sitting together and giggling as the rest of the group tried to socialize.

Shiani was surprised when Yanna waved her over, getting up from the pile of furry babies to sit at the older Wookiee’s knee. They looked at each other, Yanna speaking and Shiani singing back in little chirps and coos until they had come to an understanding. Then she got up and bowed her head before scuttling back to the Batch. “The Empire is destroying Kashyyyk. They sent the trandoshans to strip resources and enslave people. Many villagers fled into deep parts of the forest, but the Empire keeps coming.” She murmured, slipping her hand into Tech’s. “Scouts already say a convoy is coming. Wookiees need help.”

“They’ve been our allies for years.” Echo nodded. “We should give them any aid we can.”

Hunter nodded, eyes drifting over to Omega and Gungi again. “Taking out that convoy might be the only way to protect the kid.”

Shiani smiled. “The want us to come out and pray to the tree.”

“The tree?” Tech raised an eyebrow.

“Yanna says Kashyyyk belongs to the Wroshyr trees. Trees are alive, I can feel it. If Wookiee’s are our allies, the trees are theirs. Making friends with all allies is a tactical decision.” She beamed, getting up and waving them to follow her as a group of wookiees went outside. Omega joined them, next to Gungi, and put her hand on the bark beside his paw. She wasn’t sure what she was doing, but it felt right. Shiani knelt too, closing her eyes. The clones watched, Tech the most curious, as the group prayed together.

When Gungi looked up, he roared happily back at them and Shiani made a high, joyful note that echoed over the forest. “Did you talk to the tree?” Omega asked.

“Yes. Trees sing to us, and they have a plan.”

The forest was dark as the group waited, watching the Imperial convoy marching on the village. There were clones with the trandoshans, and it was a heartbreaking reality for Shiani that some of these men would die. Men with chips in their heads, who had no choice and no one to come find them when they needed help. She had to swallow that bitter truth, hanging high in a tree and waiting.

At Yanna’s signal, the Batch rolled detonators under the tanks. She watched the lead trandoshan, one she’d heard called Venomor, giving orders. His heart was beyond selfish, it was vicious, and he was telling someone that in exchange for capturing Gungi alive he’d give a hundred Wookiee pelts. A hundred lives he’d be willing to snuff out for a chance to torment a child… Shiani had never been a mother and wasn’t even sure if it was something she’d ever want, but she felt a visceral need to protect Gungi has much as she did Omega. Every child needed someone to protect them, and those two had been given one sharp-fanged siren with everything reason to aim for Venamor’s throat.

When the detonator went off, the tank listed over and he ordered his men to press on, giving chase to the Wookiees on their mylaylas. Other Wookiees, and Wrecker who’d been adopted into the warband, were pounding on trees and luring the Imperials the way they wanted. The way the trees wanted, towards the kinrath nests deeper in the woods.

When Gungi dropped onto a tank and cut the barrel of its main weapon off with his saber, Venomor spotted him. Gungi took off, luring the vicious commander into the forest. Venomor had a flamethrower, and set one of his own men ablaze in his haste to go after the Jedi child. Before Shinani could drop in and tear his throat out, both Omega and Gungi ran off together into the darkness with the monster on their heels.

Shiani swore softly and followed from the tree tops, chasing after the licking flames until she was in the middle of a kinrath nest and her little charges were getting further away. The giant arachnids clicked and chittered at her, so she held her hands out the way Gungi had, and tried to make herself understood.

The little ones are in danger. Help me help them. Help me help Kashyyyk.

The kinraths dipped and patted at her with their front legs before getting behind her, expectant sets of eight eyes waiting for her to lead the way. She nodded, taking the forward position and finding a ring of flame with Omega and Gungi trapped and Venomor circling. Shiani whistled sharply as Gungi took a leap, slicing the flamethrower’s nozzle and rendering it useless. Then he jumped back, extinguishing the blade. Shiani dropped down, wrapping her tentacles around both children, and shot back up into the trees as the kinraths descended, wrapping Venomor in silk and dragging him upwards into the foliage. She turned their faces inwards, to her chest. “Don’t look.” She said softly. “Will only upset you.”

Omega clung to her and looked at Gungi, who made a faint roaring noise to cover the crackling static sound of the kinrath legs until it stopped. When all was quiet, Shiani plopped the three of them on the ground. “The fire.” Omega tugged at her arm and pointed. The raging flames were licking up the trees, heading for the thick foliage that would go up like tallow.

“Cover your ears.” Shiani nodded and pushed the young ones behind her.

Both Gungi and Omega slammed hands over their ears as the siren screamed, turning in a circle and letting the force of the blast put the creeping flames back out. When the Batch followed the shriek and found them, they were stomping out the little bits the scream had missed.

“Shiani!” Tech called, and she turned around with a grin. “Are you all alright?”

“We're okay. Venomor, not so much.” She giggled.

“What happened to him?” Hunter frowned.

“Remember what I wanted to do with the irling? Well… kinraths don’t have Tech telling them no!” She pointed up, where the trandoshan had vanished into the silken canopy.

“Is it bad that I’m hungry now?” Wrecker asked.

“You are always hungry.” Tech sighed, but pulled Shiani’s hands into his. “You did very well, cyar’ika.”

She leaned up and put her forehead against his, beaming.

Shiani sat on the porch of the Wookiee tree house, watching the morning winds clear the smoke from burning trees away. Yanna had given her a drink and behind her she could hear Wrecker and Echo sharing drinks with the Wookiee warriors. She kicked her feet, admiring the view despite the evidence of last night’s battle.

She’d wanted to see Kashyyyk up close, and she’d gotten to.

“You seem to be in a thoughtful mood.” Tech said mildly, sitting down beside her. “How are you feeling this morning? You inhaled quite a bit of smoke.”

“Coughed some. I’m okay.” She smiled, looking at him. “It’s pretty here.”

“It is.” He nodded. “Wroshyr trees are picturesque, I believe… I had hoped to bring you to worlds like this when the war was over.”

“War never really ends, does it?” She leaned her head on his arm. “Doesn’t mean there’s no time for good things. Look at the babies down by the roots. Baby Gungi is teaching Baby Mega to meditate. He’s finally home with his people, and they protect him like we protect her.”

Tech considered her face. “I was concerned about the toll bringing Gungi back to his people would take on you. Are you sure you are alright?”

She lifted her head again and looked at him, cocked to the side. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Gungi was able to return to the people he had been estranged from. He missed them, despite having few memories of living here among them. You, however, grew up among your people. You cannot return to them… I was concerned it may be bittersweet for you.”

She nodded. “Maybe a little. Sometimes I think about home… the temples and the singing. The good parts I miss. But Kamino isn’t home anymore. It wouldn’t be home even if I had stayed and been queen. Home is where family is. My family is the Bad Batch, and my home is the Marauder. That’s all I need.”

He put an arm around her. “Even if you would be a queen and out of exile?”

She snorted. “What’s the point of being queen if your kingdom would drown the king? I’d rather be on the run forever with you than on the throne without you.”

Tech smiled. “I am relieved to hear you say that… I cannot imagine my life the way it was before you any longer.”

Shiani turned her head and kissed him softly, cuddling into his chest. “Melody and Harmony made me just for you.” She whispered.

“You were born before I was, so I believe if there was divine intervention then I would have been made for you.” He chuckled. “I would be more skeptical of such things, if I had not seen a plan concocted by trees come to fruition last night.”

She giggled, holding her hands out in front of her. “Trees of Kashyyyk will remember our names forever now. Shiani and Tech Illumai. Queen that never wanted a crown, and a king who can’t ever see the palace.”

“Those are terrible and excessively long titles…” He began, then paused. “Do I… have a surname now?”

Shiani nodded. “I earned my name back when I beat Kashae. As my mate, you get it too. Tech Illumai.”

Tech smiled faintly, listening to her sweet voice on the syllables. Names were so important to clones, after a rushed childhood of only numbers. CT-9902 would never sound as real or as personal as this name, spoken by the woman who had turned his entire life upside down in the best possible way.

“I think I like it. Tech Illumai.”

#explict #original character #clone force 99 #the bad batch #star wars #fanfic #tbb tech #song of the sea #oc shiani illumai

3 notes · View notes

lokigodofaces · 4 years ago

Text

thoughts on loki ep 2: the variant (spoilers)

under cut to not disturb your scrolling

Overall I enjoyed so that's good

Uh frick my mind blanked so sorry if things are completely out of order

I don't know, I expected the renaissance fair to be 2012 or 2021 or 2024 (Loki's time, our time, current time in the "sacred timeline"). So I was genuinely surprised when it was in 1985.

Ok, i really like the title card thing. And how the year scrolls around. It's a nice aesthetic touch there.

I wonder why the female Loki variant chooses her locations? Does she have a thing for renaissance fairs, French cathedrals, and Oklahoma?

1985 is when Back to the Future came out. And it's y'know, one of the most popular time travel movies ever. So I think they chose that year as a reference.

Again, not liking that the minutemen only have numbers, not names. It is giving me lots of Clone Wars vibes. If you don't know anything about Clone Wars, the clones are given number identifiers by the Kaminoans. Things like CT-7567. The clones would give themselves names (CT-7567, for example, names himself Rex). A really good sign throughout the series that someone is a sketchy person is if they call the clones by their numbers. The clones don't want to be known as numbers. They are people too, they deserve names, so they come up with all sorts of creative names (Rex, Fives, Cody, Tup, Hevy, Hardcase, Echo, Waxer, Boil, Wolffe, Jesse, Kix, Fox, Hunter, Wrecker, Crosshair, Omega, Tech, Matchstick, etc). The jedi respect this, and the only jedi that i can think of that called clones by their numbers is Krell, who fell to the dark side. the Kaminoans and other sketchy people all call them by their numbers and the clones don't like it. A big focus of the show is on the clone's agency (at the end, they all have brain chips that take away their agency and force them to kill jedi), and how the clones need to be respected. So for me to see in another series that people are only given numbers is bad. What's worse is that the minutemen are fine with this. They don't see it as dehumanizing or belittling. They are brainwashed into being okay with it. Which says a thing or two about the Time Keepers.

did. did the renaissance fair really have Bonnie Tyler's "Holding Out for a Hero" for their renaissance themed fight? Is this normal? Was it normal in the '80's? We saw later that the female Loki can do electronic stuff. Did she rig it to play it? For the vibes?

Also the stuff before the song was about fighting for a princess, and in the end she kidnaps C-20.

Okay, btw, I'm just gonna say Lady Loki for a while because no one has explicitly said Sylvie yet, so I'm going to refer to di Martino as Loki until she or another calls her Sylvie. Cool? Cool.

I was thinking the "Holding Out for a Hero" fight would be the roomba fight or something. It is such a good song that has huge potential for this genre. Why did they use it in a lame fight as that one?

When Lady Loki did the spell on C-20, it looked similar to what Wanda and Agatha can do. As in, it had similar visuals.

Loki reading a random magazine he finds while sitting with his feet on the desk bored out of his mind because he has to learn sh*t is a MOOD.

What is Miss Minutes? She can jump around anywhere, and pop into computers. But she can't be just a projection. She took the effort to dodge Loki swatting at her, so that may mean she was corporeal. She also could be something similar to the Kree's Supreme Intelligence?

So, did Mobius give Loki the shirt, tie, and slacks, but really didn't give him the jacket until they had to call him in? What? That makes no sense? Did the TVA not have any jackets with the variant label? Did someone have to custom design a jacket for Loki?

What is up with this show giving me things I wanted to see only in holographic form? First we saw Coulson's death, and now Loki in his Jotun form in a holograph of another variant.

Okay, Loki being someone the TVA has to constantly deal with is very on brand. Loki is a creature of chaos, of course he's going to unknowingly rebel against the sacred timeline.

Also, headcanon that the Jotun Loki we see is king of Jotunheim because that would be epic.

Also, for personal reasons I choose to believe there is a Loki variant that defeated the Avengers and immediately went queer rights.

Loki's reaction to there being many Loki variants. He's seen what his life is supposed to be. I think he is even more upset that the TVA often deals with him, that there are so many things that could have been instead if it weren't for the TVA and the "sacred timeline."

Also, I totally think Mobius was waiting for another Loki to show up to help him defeat Lady Loki. They get them so often, it makes sense.

Loki explaining the difference between illusion projection and duplication was great. And very helpful to me personally understanding lore. Also, Mobius, get your crap together. If you're a Loki expert, figure this stuff out.

Loki calling the TVA out on propaganda, we love that.

The wolf quote is actually very nice, I quite like it.

Okay, the TVA doesn't even bury or cremate or do any sort of ritual for their fallen minutemen, they just reset the timeline. Which to me seems like another way to show how little the TVA actually care for their workers.

There are statues of the Time Keepers in Ravonna's office. The camera pays extra attention to it. Keep reading for more about Time Keepers and cinematography choices.

What. What sort of relationship does Ravonna and Mobius have? What is going on there? I am really confused.

Who is this "analyst on the side?" What is going on there?

Ravonna is MEGA SUS. Along with that, the Time Keepers are mega sus.

She signs R. Slayer. Yeah. Slayer. Not at all subtle, Marvel. Letting us know that she'll do the deed if needed.

Mobius you are sending me mixed signals. What do you want?

Okay, Mobius saying Loki was a "cold, scared boy" and an "ice runt" and stuff was totally a jab at Loki being Jotun.

Mobius saying Loki is insecure because of Lady Loki is...probably true.

With the elevator, the camera stops and focuses on the Time Keepers.

The Creation of the TVA, the beginning of time, the end of time, all classified. That is sus.

Loki almost crying over Ragnarok was good. Let him cry over the destruction of his home.

Loki being the one to discover something the TVA had no idea about after a day is on brand for Loki. And it shows how the TVA really are vulnerable.

Mobius: Really? In front of my salad?

No but the object lesson was well done and actually did help me understand what Loki was talking about.

Casey! Casey drinks grape juice! Imagine how confusing this is for Casey though. Loki is captured, threatens to gut you like a fish (whatever that means), and now he's dressed like an analysist, stealing your juice box. Does Loki get Casey more juice?

Honestly, Loki looking at everything logically and scientifically is fantastic. Adds to the science = magic thing Marvel's got going on, since Loki is a sorcerer.

Loki saying volcanoes are cool is fun. I agree. Volcanoes mean the planet is geologically active, which means we won't die. Also, there is a volcano named Loki on one of Jupiter's moons. I wonder if the creators knew that and put Loki in Pompeii because he is already linked with volcanoes.

Mobius telling Loki to start off small and Loki completely disregarding that felt very personal to me.

Loki being absolutely chaotic and telling everyone they were going to die while speaking perfect Latin was iconic. I want more of that content. Let the man be buckwild.

Again, Loki finding something out after a day that the TVA never knew about is on brand.

"Be free, my horned friends, be free!" I love that way too much.

Mobius being obsessed with jet skis wasn't something I expected, but I'm down for it. Heck, even Loki admitted they were cool.

The discussion on beliefs is going to lead to saying the Time Keepers are bullcrap. Hopefully.

Grapes and nuts are "candy" on Asgard. So, when Loki was eating grapes in Ragnarok, we can interpret that as him eating M&Ms. Second, this might add to something I've seen around here. I've seen things about a book somewhere with Loki saying chocolate fountains are mythical (which is really funny to me). So, I guess Asgard really doesn't have chocolate.

Oh my gosh, so many apocalypses between 2047 and 2051...hopefully none of those happen in real life.

Roxxcart is probably part of Roxxon, something that has been around in Iron Man movies.

Lady Loki got the shovel thing from Roxxcart that she left in Oklahoma! The minutemen said it was from the early third millenia, which is where we are now! 2050 also fits that category!

I saw something about the file saying Class 8 hurricane...there are only 5 classes...which means this is a crazy storm.

Does B-15 want Loki dead? This is a legitimate question, because I think she does. Dead or pruned.

Loki looking around at the storm, I love it. This could be him loving science, or him missing Thor, since Thor creates storms. Also, at this point Loki probably things Thor dies shortly after him in the sacred timeline, so Loki would be particularly sentimental about Thor.

I love Loki drying himself off and not anyone else. And B-15 yelling about his magic. And Loki's motions are so fluid, it's so aesthetically pleasing, I love it.

Dudes, I thought B-15 was going to try to prune Loki when they were alone.

Okay, was Lady Loki bsing about the azalea sale, or does Roxxcart actually do that? I want to know.

Wunmi Mosaku did a really good job as Lady Loki, I loved it.

Loki being annoyed at Lady Loki and saying he understood how Thor felt, does that insinuate Loki can do what Lady Loki was doing?

B-15 and C-20 were both very shaken after being possessed by Lady Loki. I wonder how that felt for them? We've had different explanations of mind control/brainwashing/similar from Clint, Bucky, Daisy, Mack, Fitz, and Monica in the MCU (including AoS). I wonder what is specific to Lady Loki's possession.

C-20 kept going on about something being real. What was that about?

C-20 revealed the location of the Time Keepers to Lady Loki!

Lady Loki not wanting to be called Loki could be a sign she is Sylvie.

There's something weird where Loki's voice echoed around while the camera focused on Lady Loki. Maybe she's telepathic?

Someone needs to keep a tracker on people telling Loki this isn't his story in a show literally about him.

But, that does add to themes for his life, and how everything was always about someone else in his life. He was always a supporting character for Thor, for Odin, for Thanos. Now, even in his own story, everyone insists he doesn't matter.

I was wondering what the reset charges would be used for. I wasn't expecting a massive bombing of the sacred timeline! Wow! That was unexpected and I loved it!

Okay, this isn't from me, this is from New Rockstars. But to list all the places mentioned on chronomonitors, either bombed or not: Knowhere, Barcelona, Niflheim, Dartford, Phong Nha, Lisbon, Vormir, Thorton, Cookeville, Asgard, Rome, Sakaar, Barichara, Porvoo, Ego, Titan, New York City, Tokyo, Hala, Kingsport, Xandar, Beijing, Madrid, Portland, Jotunheim. Bolded are other planets. Those are almost all the planets visited in the MCU. So fun easter eggs there!

I like Lady Loki's aesthetic. The fingerless gloves, the cloak, I love it. And YES SHE ISN'T SEXUALIZED. So many genderbent characters are excuses to sexualize women. But Lady Loki is just as covered as the male Lokis.

Lady Loki just...left the time door open for Loki to follow...for a really long time...I'm worried he's running into a trap.

What is Loki going to do now?

Theory time y'alls: Lady Loki bombed the sacred timeline to flush the minutemen out of the TVA, leaving it defenseless. And she's gonna go after the Time Keepers themselves. We know she gets into the TVA from trailer footage, and that's what I think we're gonna see next episode. I think she (like the Loki we are following) is upset over the lack of free will, and she plans to change that. That's why she wasn't interested in helping Loki "take over" the TVA, because she doesn't want to become the leader of a new TVA, she wants it destroyed.

Alright, back to the Time Keepers stuff. They keep focusing on the middle Time Keeper. Even in the end credits they have a weird cut to focus directly on his face. I'm not 100% on this, but I like this theory. That face is similar to Jonathan Major's, the actor confirmed to be Kang the Conqueror in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Kang is a well known time travelling villain in Marvel. Maybe he is Kang, and is using variant versions of himself (that's a Kang thing in the comics) to mess with the timeline, and no one expects that from him. Also, Renslayer was his S/O for a bit in the comics, and they keep framing her in front of that one Time Keeper's face. I feel like this would be a good way to set up Quantumania and to show how sus the Time Keepers are.

Also, Loki was absolutely adorable the entire episode. And he got to sleep! Yay for him!

Again, I enjoyed, and can't wait for next week!

#loki (2021)#loki (2021) spoilers #loki (2021) review #loki laufeyson #tva loki #dimartino loki #sylvie lushton #mobius m mobius #ravonna renslayer #hunter b 15 #hunter c 20 #miss minutes #time keepers #aaaaaaaa im excited for the next episode

10 notes · View notes

viewtifu1backlog · 4 years ago

Text

2020 Backlog Progress in Retrospect

2020 was the year of finally finishing the backlog. The final game ended up being Disco Elysium back on July 1st but in the months since I’ve built up a list again. Going forward I’m hoping to keep the backlog at 10 games or less since I’ve found I do like having a wider list of games to choose from after finishing something. After finishing over 100 games in 2020 there were a ton of classics that I finished for the first time, so many so that making a top 20 list was very difficult. I’ve always made this end of year breakdowns for my own archives but I thought it would be fun to share it this year alongside the full list of what I finished!

Top 20 of 2020 First Time Finished

1 Sakura Wars (Sega Saturn) 2 Skies of Arcadia (Dreamcast) 3 Dragon Quest XI S (Switch) 4 Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune & the Dice of Fate (Switch) 5 Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (PC) 6 Red Dead Redemption 2 (PC) 7 Mega Man Legends 2 (PS1) 8 Shining Force II (Genesis) 9 Xenoblade Chronicles X (Wii U) 10 Super Mario Odyssey (Switch) 11 Sea of Thieves (PC) 12 Phantasy Star IV (Genesis) 13 Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair (Switch) 14 Shenmue (Dreamcast) 15 Last Window: The Secret of Cape West (DS) 16 killer7 (PC) 17 Moon: Remix RPG Adventure (Switch) 18 Maniac Mansion (PC) 19 ZeroRanger (PC) 20 VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action (PC)

Favorite game of 2020: Sakura Wars

When I was looking back at this year, the game that stuck the most with me was easily the original Sakura Wars for the Sega Saturn. Back in December of 2019 the english patch released online and I was so excited to finally be able to play the first entry in one of Sega’s biggest franchises for the first time. I had yet to play any games in the series beyond just fumbling around an import copy of various games on Saturn and Dreamcast and I was glad to be able to experience it with such a well-made fan patch. It’s a very simple strategy game mixed in with lite RPG and Dating mechanics but there’s such a great charm to how well everything mixes together. The way they mix in the animated cutscenes throughout each chapter make it feel like you’re playing a classic mid 90′s anime and it was just a nice cozy experience the whole way. I managed to play through it twice this year and tinkered around with later entrees in the series but I’m hopeful that the sequel will get picked up as a fan translation project soon, otherwise I’ll probably be going through those games the old fashioned way with a printed out GameFAQS guide at my side.

Date breakdown of everything new or finished in the backlog this year:

12-13-20 Started: Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the NecroDancer (Switch)

12-12-20 Beat: Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate (Switch)

12-06-20 New: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light (Switch)

12-05-20 New: Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate (Switch)

12-02-20 Beat: Super Mario Sunshine (Switch)

11-30-20 Beat: Dragon Quest Builders (Switch)

11-27-20 New: Steins;Gate (PC)

11-26-20 Beat: Shantae and the Seven Sirens (Switch)

11-25-20 Started: Shantae and the Seven Sirens (Switch) Beat: Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes (Switch)

11-21-20 New: Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the NecroDancer (Switch) New: Vitamin Connection (Switch) New: Paper Mario: The Origami King (Switch) Beat: killer7 (PC)

11-18-20 Beat: Metal Slug 6 (ARC)

11-14-20 Started: Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes (Switch)

11-13-20 Beat: ESP Ra.De. Psi (Switch)

11-12-20 New: Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes (Switch) New: ESP Ra.De. Psi (Switch)

11-11-20 Completed: No More Heroes (Switch)

11-08-20 New (Null): Cave Story 3D (3DS)

11-07-20 Completed: Gate of Thunder (TGCD)

11-06-20 New (Null): No More Heroes (Switch) Beat: No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle (Switch)

11-01-20 Beat: Danmaku Unlimited 2 (PC) Beat: Triggerheart Exelica (DC) Completed: Gradius II (NES)

10-28-20 Completed: Costume Quest (PC) New (Null): No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle (Switch)

10-25-20 Started: Murder By Numbers (Switch) Beat: Blue Wish Resurrection (PC) New: Blue Wish Resurrection (PC)

10-22-20 Beat: A Hat in Time (PC) New: A Hat in Time (PC)

10-17-20 Beat: Thunder Force AC (Switch)

10-16-20 New: Thunder Force AC (Switch)

10-14-20 New (Null): Slime Mori Mori Dragon Quest 3: Daikaizoku to Shippo Dan (3DS)

10-13-20 New: Shantae and the Seven Sirens (Switch)

10-12-20 Beat: Chex Quest (PC) Completed: Mega Man 5 (Switch)

10-07-20 Beat: Mega Man Zero 3 (Switch)

10-05-20 Beat: Cave Story+ (Switch)

10-04-20 Completed: DELTARUNE Chapter 1 (Switch) Started: DELTARUNE Chapter 1 (Switch)

10-03-20 Completed: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney − Trials and Tribulations (3DSDL)

10-01-20 Started: Dragon Quest Builders (Switch)

09-27-20 Beat: Star Ocean: First Departure R (Switch)

09-25-20 New: Murder By Numbers (Switch)

09-20-20 New: DELTARUNE Chapter 1 (Switch) New: Dragon Quest Builders (Switch) New: Romancing SaGa 3 (Switch)

09-19-20 Beat: VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action (PC) New (Null): Super Mario Galaxy (Switch) New (Null): Super Mario Sunshine (Switch) New (Null): Super Mario 64 (Switch)

09-16-20 New: Star Ocean: First Departure R (Switch)

09-14-20 Beat: Armed Police Batrider (ARC)

09-13-20 Beat: Moon: Remix RPG Adventure (Switch)

09-10-20 New: Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (PC)

09-07-20 Beat: Disgaea 5 Complete (Switch) New: VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action (PC)

09-05-20 Beat: King's Quest: Quest for the Crown (PC)

09-02-20 Completed: Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (PC)

08-27-20 Started: Moon: Remix RPG Adventure (Switch) New: Moon: Remix RPG Adventure (Switch)

08-23-20 Beat: Wario Land III (GBC)

08-19-20 Started: Wario Land III (GBC) Completed: Broken Age (PC) Beat: Bomb Monkey (3DS)

08-17-20 New: Chicken Wiggle (3DS) New: Mutant Mudds Super Challenge (3DS) New: Xeodrifter (3DS) New: Bomb Monkey (3DS) New: Mutant Mudds (3DS)

08-16-20 New: Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (PC)

08-15-20 Beat: Maniac Mansion (PC)

08-14-20 Beat: Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition (Switch)

08-10-20 New: Wario Land III (GBC)

08-09-20 New: Maniac Mansion (PC) Beat: Red Dead Redemption 2 (PC)

08-03-20 New: Disgaea 5 Complete (Switch)

08-02-20 Beat: Star Wars: Dark Forces (PC)

08-01-20 Beat: Donkey Kong Country 2 (GBA)

07-31-20 New: Star Wars: Dark Forces (PC)

07-25-20 New (Null): Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition (Switch)

07-24-20 New (Null): Cave Story (Switch)

07-20-20 New: Shin Megami Tensei (SNES) Beat: Mega Man X4 (Saturn)

07-17-20 New: Donkey Kong Country 2 (GBA)

07-16-20 Beat: The Wonderful 101: Remastered (Switch)

07-12-20 Completed: Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (NES) Completed: Rockman 8 FC (PC)

07-11-20 Completed: Mega Man 8 (Saturn)

07-09-20 New (Null): The Wonderful 101: Remastered (Switch)

07-06-20 Completed: Darkwing Duck (NES) New: Red Dead Redemption 2 (PC)

07-04-20 New (Beat): Streets of Rage 4 (Switch)

07-01-20 Beat: Disco Elysium (PC)

06-30-20 Beat: ZeroRanger (PC) New: ZeroRanger (PC)

06-25-20 New (Beat): Super Puzzle Fighter II X (Saturn) Beat: Resident Evil (Switch)

06-20-20 Beat: Xenoblade Chronicles X (WiiU)

06-17-20 Started: Resident Evil (Switch)

06-16-20 Completed: G-LOC: Air Battle (Switch) New: Resident Evil (Switch) New: G-LOC: Air Battle (Switch)

06-08-20 Started: Disco Elysium (PC)

06-06-20 Completed: Time Bokan Series: Bokan to Ippatsu! Doronboo Kanpekiban (Saturn)

06-05-20 New: Disco Elysium (PC) Completed: Mega Man X3 (SNES)

06-04-20 New (Null): Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition (Switch)

06-01-20 Completed: Super Mario Odyssey (Switch)

05-28-20 Beat: Mega Man Zero 2 (Switch)

05-25-20 Completed: Diablo (PC)

05-15-20 Completed: Aladdin (Switch)

05-13-20 Beat: Bayonetta 2 (Switch)

05-10-20 Completed: Seaman (DC) Beat: Shining Force III (Saturn)

05-02-20 Completed: Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin (GEN)

05-01-20 Beat: Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard (NDS)

04-29-20 Beat: Phantasy Star IV (GEN) New: Spider-Man (GEN) Beat: Mega Man Legends 2 (PS)

04-25-20 Started: Phantasy Star IV (GEN) Started: Seaman (DC)

04-24-20 Beat: Shenmue (DC)

04-20-20 Completed: Last Window: The Secret of Cape West (NDS)

04-19-20 Beat: Sea of Thieves (PC)

04-14-20 Started: Last Window: The Secret of Cape West (NDS)

04-13-20 Beat: Shining the Holy Ark (Saturn)

04-10-20 Completed: Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (NDS) Beat: Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (NDS)

04-02-20 Beat: Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand (GBA)

04-01-20 Started: Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (NDS) Completed: Mega Man Legends (PS)

03-29-20 Completed: Phantasy Star II (GEN)

03-27-20 Beat: Panzer Dragoon: Remake (Switch) New: Panzer Dragoon: Remake (Switch)

03-26-20 Beat: Skies of Arcadia (DC)

03-22-20 New (Null): Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch)

03-17-20 Beat: Goldeneye 007 (N64)

03-14-20 Completed: Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair (Switch)

03-09-20 Beat: Kirby and the Rainbow Curse (WiiU)

03-07-20 Completed: Popful Mail (SCD) Completed: Retro Game Challenge (NDS)

03-06-20 Beat: Mega Man Zero (Switch)

03-05-20 Beat: Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair (Switch)

03-03-20 Beat: Bangai-O Spirits (NDS)

03-02-20 Beat: Super Monkey Ball 2 (GCN)

03-01-20 Beat: Shining Force II (GEN)

02-29-20 Started: Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair (Switch)

02-26-20 Completed: Aliens Infestation (NDS) Beat: Banjo Tooie (N64)

02-21-20 Completed: Ecco: The Tides of Time (SCD) Beat: Kirby & the Amazing Mirror (GBA)

02-18-20 Completed: Shinobi Legions (Saturn) Beat: Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2 (DC)

02-16-20 Beat: Super Mario Odyssey (Switch)

02-14-20 Started: Super Mario Odyssey (Switch)

02-13-20 Beat: Blazing Chrome (Switch)

02-12-20 Beat: Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition (Switch)

02-08-20 Completed: Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle (GEN) New: Shinobi Legions (Saturn)

02-04-20 Beat: Shinobi (Switch) New: Shinobi (Switch)

01-30-20 Beat: Sakura Wars (Saturn) New: Blazing Chrome (Switch)

01-23-20 Beat: Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves (DC)

01-21-20 Beat: River City Girls (Switch)

01-20-20 Completed: Charge 'n Blast (DC) Beat: Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX (Switch)

01-17-20 New: Sakura Wars (Saturn) Beat: Iconoclasts (Switch)

01-16-20 Beat: Guilty Gear X (DC)

01-14-20 Beat: Daytona USA: Championship Circuit Edition (Saturn)

01-12-20 Beat: Power Stone 2 (DC) Completed: AI: The Somnium Files (Switch)

01-11-20 Completed: Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 (3DS) Beat: Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 (3DS)

01-09-20 Completed: Super Return of the Jedi (SNES)

01-08-20 Beat: Mega Man ZX Advent (NDS)

01-06-20 Beat: Disgaea PC (PC) Started: Mega Man ZX Advent (NDS)

#backlog #backloggery #sega #saturn #end of year

4 notes · View notes

etraytin · 5 years ago

Text

Quarantine, Day 53

Today can best be summarized by painting a mental picture for all of you. It is 8:20pm and my son and I are in the guest room. The guest room has a large closet with a double sliding door that is all mirror, providing a full reflection of the room. My son and I are scrunched up side by side, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring into the mirror. We have spent ten minutes watching a video on how aphids poop candy, and it is still ten minutes until bedtime. We stare at ourselves in the mirror. "Blah," I say.

"Blah," he agrees.

"Blah," I echo. He repeats me, then I repeat him, faster and faster, still deadpan, still staring into the mirror. Finally we are just watching ourselves chanting "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!" into the mirror, and that is exactly what Day 53 of quarantine is like.

That is not to say everything is bad, more that everything is weird and surreal and sometimes a little bit completely pointless. I had good luck today at the drugstore; I was able to transfer the prescription I forgot to pickup before leaving home, and as a bonus, I found twelve entire mega-rolls of my preferred brand of toilet paper. That's right, not just any toilet paper, which would've been notable enough, this is the stuff I would've bought if I had a choice. Not at CVS where it costs the moon, mind you, but I'm still counting it as a big win! I also got a more appropriate hair color than the one I decided against using yesterday on the grounds that it might bleach my hair white to punish me for hubris. The guy in front of me at the pharmacy was like 75 years old, dressed like a businessman who pretended he'd been a farmer after he retired, and was not wearing a mask. What a yutz. Also a woman with her kindergartner and baby, none of them masked and her not even paying attention to what anybody might be putting in their mouths, but other than that, everybody was being pretty safe.

I did the meals and the kitchen stuff today so I am more tired than yesterday, but we had chicken quesadillas for lunch and honest-to-god grilled burgers and brats for supper, so that was pretty great. We cannot have a grill at home because grills and stacked wooden balconies do not mix, so a backyard barbecue is a special treat. My dad taught me to grill and while I am not as good as him, we do all right. My mother in law would not stay sitting down today and she would not wear the damn brace, but at least she's eating and sleeping more, so it's something. I made her swear to me that if her real ortho doctor tomorrow says she must wear the brace, she will wear it. My husband finally got to talk to his dad on the phone today, and that was really good. Yesterday's call came while we were out of the house, so he missed it, but not today! Tomorrow we're supposed to get some kind of actual plan for the future.

I started watching Leverage last night because so many of my friends on Tumblr have been cheering about it lately. I am up to episode 4 as they were broadcast, which is not apparently the series order, but that's kind of confusing. I like it so far though; it's got some very funny lines and I enjoy a show that takes the shitty things about our world and twists them just enough that a simple happy ending is possible. Also Parker's flashbacks so far have been deeply entertaining. I can tell that Nate and Sophie are supposed to be The Big Thing, but I can't help but feel like Nate and his insurance nemesis guy have some serious hate-sex smolder going on. Am I crazy?

Got a message from the new foster that the kittens are doing great and being noisy, so that is pleasing. They will move to a different foster tomorrow though, and it's somebody I don't know. I hope they are good and remember to make lots of good notes. The kittens are close to four weeks old now, in another week they will be weanlings and can be fostered by a much wider range of people because they won't need all-night feedings. Until then, I will continue to stress about them periodically. For now, it is back to the JDFF project, which is proceeding slowly, and listening to Songs in the Key of X, a nostalgia-soaked album that was the first album I ever bought with my own money. God, I miss the days back in high school when I truly believed the X-Files had some kind of real master plan. That was so great.

#quarantine #leverage #songs in the key of x #the x-files

8 notes · View notes

knoxrobbins · 5 years ago

Text

Captain N post-launch...

Hello, this is a follow-up post on my Captain N pitch animatic I’ve attached to the YouTube comments. I’ll be responding to some of the most frequent compliments or suggestions I've been seeing on here.

- "Set up a crowd-fund for Captain N!" A crowdfunding campaign or Patreon for the pitch, to either start it as an independent fan project or even just to make a full storyboard pilot, probably won't happen. Very sorry to say that. Nintendo has had a history of taking down or had the huge risk of shutting down crowdfund campaigns. The webseries A Fox in Space was almost shut down but the creator implemented a name change to further distinguish it as a parody, while Nintendo was quietly putting out an official Star Fox web cartoon around that time. Putting Captain N up in a crowdfunding campaign risks any potential for a reboot never happening, as the companies will only see an unlicensed product that's making money on its own before it could even be released or put into development.

- "Is Kevin going to mentor the new Captain N?" The vision I have for Captain N is more or less a fresh reboot, though I am open to referencing the original series in creative ways - like Mega Man and Simon Belmont with hallway portraits among many others that have been Nintendoland champions. At most at some point I can have Samara, the new Captain N, meet a past champion who was also human but very likely won't be Kevin Keene. When I was first thinking about the idea of Captain N reboot, I thought about making Sam and Kevin related but decided to further distinguish Their World's Champion as its own series. There’s a couple other ideas I had suggested one way or another for Captain N that since I’ve shelved - Sam was almost going to be amnesiac which now won’t be the case.

- "What is your process in rebooting something like this?" Captain N hasn't had a new series premiere since 1989, the most anyone remembers it is out of ironic internet humor. With reboots you got to reintroduce the property in a way someone new can get into it and those who remembered the original can enjoy it as well. If you rely too much on referencing or echoing the original without much introduction, you alienate everyone. Or there's a situation where the original movie or series doesn't resonate today but has enough sold ideas to make something brand new. I'm basically taking the core ideas from the original series of a teenager traveling into a recognizable game world (a few commentators compared it to Iseaki anime which is really good to bring up) and doing my own wild take on them while being respectful to the game franchises.

- "What are you planning for Captain N, now that the pitch animatic is trending?" I don't really have a plan at this time. My plan was to basically make this animatic and pitch it to the world rather than going to just Nintendo or another studio. Your vocal feedback is proof enough if I'm going to at some point present Captain N to a studio again - it's four people against hundreds if not thousands of enthusiastic people who have seen this.

- "I've just subscribed to your YouTube!” Thank you so much, just don’t expect it to be the most active YouTube. I’ll be posting timelapses of artwork now and then. I’m also currently managing Cats Don’t Dance Reanimated which will be released separate from the channel. I’m currently seeking work again as a 3D animator, who does art and wild experiments like Captain N now and then on the side. Captain N took six months of time I was able to put into, and six months balancing it with life or any other artwork I was doing. I am thinking about doing more pitch animatics soon though but it depends which one I’m doing next. I got a bunch of original ideas I’ve been saving for years, I have a Marvel idea I’m also itching on doing.

From my best recollections, the Captain N pitch has been more popular than when trailers for two reboot projects I’ve animated on were first released. Thank you so much for 40k views since I uploaded it three weeks ago and to those who have been spreading it wherever they can. FIGHT FOR THE GAMER.

#update #Captain N #Captain N: Their World's Champion

26 notes · View notes

smashmusicideas · 7 years ago

Text

Smash Bros. Ideas, Vol. II

Hello. Generally, I go by Wolfman, or Wolfman Jew on the internet. Back in 2014, I started this Tumblr by discussing ideas for possible music that could be used in what was, at the time, the next Super Smash Bros. That led to a sizable project the next year where I looked at possible DLC characters in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS & Wii U, a project which then led to my joining the Nintendo themed news and criticism site Source Gaming while abandoning my blog here. I’ve felt bad about that, and the new announcement of a new Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo Switch feels like the ideal opportunity to come back.

I’ll be doing one post a day to discuss, well, anything, really. I want to get back into daily writing projects, but I’m not quite sure if any specific direction works for me. So instead, this will just be me shooting the breeze about Smash Bros. a little each day. This post will be a collection of this. I’ll link to it with each post I write, and I’ll try to keep this as a daily affair. If people would be interested in me talking about other stuff - the chances of their favorite characters, what kinds of stages would be best - I’d love to hear any suggestions.

March 9: So, How ‘Bout that first Trailer?

March 10: Smash, the Switch, and the Current Nintendo Landscape

March 11: The Value of a Newcomer’s Surprise

March 12: On New Modes Smash for Switch Might Have

March 13: The Ways We Talk About Newcomers

March 14: The Rorschach Test

March 15: an Indie Character in Smash

March 16: What About Stages?

March 17: The Prediction Dance

March 18: New Pokémon

March 19: Bringing Back Stuff from Smash for 3DS

March 20: An Ode to the Cracker Launcher

March 21: Putting the “New” in Newcomer

March 22: Introducing the “Smash Chart”

March 23: the Smash Invitational

March 24: The Smash Chart and Newcomers

March 25: Newcomers by Console

March 26: the Wii Shop Channel

March 27: Another Way to Look at Newcomers

March 28: Stages by Console

March 29: Items by Console

March 30: Let’s Get Some More Victory Jingles!

March 31: An Apology for Lateness

April 1: An Ode to the Assist Trophy

April 2: Smash’s Music and Me

April 3: The Tether Recovery, and Semi-Unique Techniques

April 4: Stages for Older Games

April 5: Looking at the DLC Costumes

April 6: An Idea for a New Mechanic

April 7: Possible New Items

April 8: The Difficulty of Keeping These Up

April 9: The Hype Cycle

April 10: Spinoffs

April 11: Where Are the Obviously Fake Rumors?

April 12: Who’s Your Favorite Possible Newcomer?

April 13: Laboman, and Toys in Smash

April 14: What Was Your First “WOW!” Moment with Smash?

April 15: The Smash (64) Box Art

April 16: The Eras of Smash

April 17: Disliking Characters

April 18: A Smash Spinoff?

April 19: On Villains

April 20: What Makes a Newcomer “Plausible”

April 21: A Deeper Dive into “Relevance”

April 22: A Deeper Dive into “Distinctiveness”

April 23: A Deeper Dive into “Personality”

April 24: My One Beef with Sakurai

April 25: the Future of “All Star” Characters

April 26: The List of Prospective “All-Stars”

April 27: Cores, Cores, Cores

April 28: Gimmick Music Tracks

April 29: “Accept the Mystery”

April 30: Organic Custom Moves

May 1: New Artistic Styles

May 2: The Smash Knockoffs

May 3: The Trickle of News

May 4: Sakurai’s Love of Star Wars

May 5: Two Guest Fighters from the Same Series

May 6: Enjoyably Useless Mechanics

May 7: My Favorite Smash 64 Character

May 8: My Favorite Melee Characters

May 9: My Favorite Brawl Characters

May 10: My Favorite Smash for 3DS / Wii U Characters

May 11: Checking In with Where We Are

May 12: The Potential of Spears

May 13: the Potential of Axes (and Hammers)

May 14: the Potential of Claws

May 15: the Return of the Fake Leaks

May 16: The Potential of Flails

May 17: The Potential of Whips

May 18: “Character-Driven Series”

May 19: In Defense of Smash’s Worst Stage

May 20: Buffing Franchises

May 21: “Deserves’ Got Nothing to Do With It”

May 22: “Deserving” Through Sales

May 23: “Deserving” Through Acclaim

May 24: Gliding

May 25: When the Games You Don’t Like Show Up in Smash

May 26: Retro Possibles

May 27: My New Favorite Ridiculous Rumor

May 28: The “Familiar” Type of Retro Character

May 29: The “Foundational” Kind of Retro Character

May 30: Eevee’s Prospective Chances

May 31: Moving into June

June 1: Decidueye and Mimikyu

June 2: Heavy Hitters?

June 3: Side Discussions Before E3

June 4: New “Kinds” of Levels

June 5: The Burnout

June 6: Why Snake Matters

June 7: Going through the Smash E3 Trailers

June 8: Why amiibo Don’t (and Do) Matter in Smash Predictions

June 9: “Sakurai the Troll”

June 10: Smash Trailers Going Forward

June 11: Tomorrow, Frustration, and the Direct

June 12: The Sakurai Special

June 13: When It’s Great to Feel Wrong, Smash Bros. Ultimate Edition

June 14: From Where New Echo Fighters Might Draw

June 15: The Expansion of Alternate Outfits

June 16: So…What Do We Do Next?

June 17: A New Way We May Approach Newcomers

June 18: Smash Website Design, and the Curse of “Slots”

June 19: One Fun Easter Egg in the Smash Presentation

June 20: Waluigi, Sakurai, and the People for Whom Smash is Made

June 21: On Ridley’s Size and Shape

June 22: The Best of Both Worlds

June 23: The (Currently) Missing Stages

June 24: When Sakurai Hides Information

June 25: How the Ultimate Trailer Works So Well

June 26: Takin’ a Break!

June 29: This was Never a Given

July 2: Sakurai and “Never”

July 3: Mario, the Center of Smash

July 4: The Importance of Air Ride

July 5: Please, Let’s Not Talk about Ultimate DLC Right Now

July 6: What I Consider “Plausible” for Ultimate by this Point

July 8: Smash Bros. and Fire Emblem

July 12: Fighter 01 - Mario

July 14: Fighter 02 - Donkey Kong

July 15: Fighter 03 - Link

July 17: Fighter 04 - Samus

July 19: Fighter 05 - Yoshi

July 22: Fighter 06 - Kirby

July 23: Fighter 07 - Fox

July 24: Fighter 08 - Pikachu

July 27: Fighter 09 - Luigi

July 29: Fighter 10 - Ness

July 31: Fighter 11 - Captain Falcon

August 1: Fighter 12 - Jigglypuff

August 3: Fighter 13 - Peach

August 5: Fighter 13ᵋ - Daisy

August 7: Fighter 14 - Bowser

August 8: Oh, That Direct

August 11: Fighter 04ᵋ - Dark Samus

August 13: A Semi-Coherent Rant About the Yellow and Purple Chairs

August 14: Fighter 15 - Ice Climbers

August 15: Fighter 16 - Sheik

August 16: Fighter 17 - Zelda

August 18: Fighter 18 - Dr. Mario

August 19: Fighter 19 - Pichu

August 22: Fighter 20 - Falco

August 25: Fighter 21 - Marth

August 26: Fighter 21ᵋ - Lucina

August 28: One Hundred Days

August 29: Fighter 22 - Young Link

August 31: Fighter 23 - Ganondorf

September 2: Fighter 24 - Mewtwo

September 3: Fighter 25 - Roy

September 4: Fighter 25ᵋ - Chrom

September 6: Fighter 26 - Mr. Game & Watch

September 7: Fighter 27 - Meta Knight

September 9: Fighter 28 - Pit

September 11: Fighter 28ᵋ - Dark Pit

September 12: Fighter 29 - Zero Suit Samus

September 13: Well, that Direct was Pretty Fun

September 14: Fighter 30 - Wario

September 16: Fighter 31 - Snake

September 18: Fighter 32 - Ike

September 19: Fighters 33 - 35 - Pokémon Trainer

September 20: Fighter 36 - Diddy Kong

September 21: Fighter 37 - Lucas

September 23: Fighter 38 - Sonic

September 25: Fighter 39 - King Dedede

September 26: Fighter 40 - Olimar

September 27: Fighter 41 - Lucario

September 28: Fighter 42 - R.O.B.

October 1: Fighter 43 - Toon Link

October 2: Fighter 44 - Wolf

October 3: Fighter 45 - Villager

October 4: Fighter 46 - Mega Man

October 6: Fighter 47 - Wii Fit Trainer

October 7: Fighter 48 - Rosalina & Luma

October 9: Fighter 49 - Little Mac

October 10: Fighter 50 - Greninja

October 11: Fighters 51 - 53 - Mii Fighters

October 12: Fighter 54 - Palutena

October 14: Fighter 55 - Pac-Man

October 16: Fighter 56 - Robin

October 17: Fighter 57 - Shulk

October 18: Fighter 58 - Bowser Jr.

October 19: Fighter 59 - Duck Hunt

October 20: Fighter 60 - Ryu

October 23: Fighter 61 - Cloud

October 24: Fighter 62 - Corrin

October 25: Fighter 63 - Bayonetta

October 27: Fighter 64 - Inkling

October 28: Fighter 65 - Ridley

October 30: Fighter 66 - Simon

October 31: Fighter 66ᵋ - Richter

November 1: The Surprise

November 2: Fighter 60ᵋ - Ken

November 3: Fighter 67 - King K. Rool

November 6: Fighter 68 - Isabelle

November 7: Fighter 69 - Incineroar

November 8: Fighter 70 - Piranha Plant

November 9: Smashing the Wait: The Good Place

November 10: Yes, NOW Let’s Talk about Ultimate DLC (Part 1)

November 11: On Non-Gaming Characters

November 13: Smash DLC Part 2: the Goals

November 14: Smashing the Wait: Gravity Falls

November 15: On Assist Trophies as Playable Characters

November 17: That Music

November 18: Future Guest Series

November 20: Master Hand and the World of Toys

November 22: Smash Stuff for which I’m Thankful

November 24: How Has Adding Newcomers Changed?

November 28: DLC Part 3: the Upcoming Games

November 29: My Philosophy

November 30: Smashing the Wait: Rocky & Bullwinkle

December 4: So, What Comes Next for Smash?

December 5: Summing Up This Journey

December 7: The Future

December 9: DLC Part 3: What Reggie Said

Also, in the interest of Shameless Self-Promotion, here’s my profile for Source Gaming, and my current project on the best game music by year.

2017 in Gaming: the Best Scores

2016 in Gaming: the Best Scores

2015 in Gaming: the Best Scores

2014 in Gaming: the Best Scores

#Super Smash Bros #Smash Bros #Switch #nintendo #collection

12 notes · View notes

doomonfilm · 5 years ago

Text

Predictions : Academy Award Film Nominations (2020)

Here we are, the 2020 awards season, and we’re already staring down the path leading to the Academy Award ceremony, where the world famous Oscar trophy are handed out. Most movie years start out a bit on the slow side, but 2020 already has some heavy hitters out, and with 2019 dropping some mega-sized bombs right near year’s end, movie fans are in a frenzy. In what is becoming a new tradition, I will be providing my thoughts and predictions for the Academy Awards for the categories I feel fit to, and we will all return following the Sunday, February 9 televised ceremony.

NOTE - The following categories will be omitted from my predictions : ANIMATED FEATURE ANIMATED SHORT BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM ORIGINAL SONG

________________________________________

NOMINATIONS

BEST PICTURE

Ford v Ferrari (dir. James Mangold) The Irishman (dir. Martin Scorsese) Jojo Rabbit (dir. Taika Waititi) Joker (dir. Todd Phillips) Little Women (dir. Greta Gerwig) Marriage Story (dir. Noah Baumbach) 1917 (dir. Sam Mendes) Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (dir. Quentin Tarantino) Parasite (dir. Bong Joon-ho)

thoughts : Having seen six of the nine movies making up this year’s Best Picture category, I think I have a pretty fair read on the year... Ford v Ferrari, with its monster cast and iconic titular namesakes, could make a steal, as could the adaptation of the classic book Little Women, but for my money’s worth, I’m hoping that my pick is not relegated to the international award section. prediction : Parasite (dir. Bong Joon-ho)

________________________________________

LEAD ACTOR

Antonio Banderas (Pain and Glory) Leonardo DiCaprio (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) Adam Driver (Marriage Story) Joaquin Phoenix (Joker) Jonathan Pryce (The Two Popes)

thoughts : The names in this category are some of the heaviest hitters in the industry right now. After a very long career of snubs, I’d like to think that Leonardo DiCaprio is due another round of recognition, but I think everyone knows where this award is heading. prediction : Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)

________________________________________

LEAD ACTRESS

Cynthia Erivo (Harriet) Scarlett Johansson (Marriage Story) Saoirse Ronan (Little Women) Charlize Theron (Bombshell) Renee Zellweger (Judy)

thoughts : This is going to be a tough category to determine. Renee Zellweger is coming off of a strong Golden Globes win, and the power of the Johansson and Theron names are hard to deny, but this night seems due a breakout star, and I think Greta Gerwig and crew are going to have a night to remember. prediction : Saoirse Ronan (Little Women)

________________________________________

SUPPORTING ACTOR

Tom Hanks (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood) Anthony Hopkins (The Two Popes) Al Pacino (The Irishman) Joe Pesci (The Irishman) Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood)

thoughts : I find it odd that Tom Hanks is in this category, as I assumed he was the lead actor in his film... it would lead me to believe that perhaps they are trying to better his chances for an award. With a field full of legends, however, that doesn’t seem like an automatic for Hanks, and in all honesty, I think the young legend is a shoo-in for this one. prediction : Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood)

________________________________________

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Kathy Bates (Richard Jewell) Laura Dern (Marriage Story) Scarlett Johansson (Jojo Rabbit) Florence Pugh (Little Women) Margot Robbie (Bombshell)

thoughts : Another category full of the cream of the crop. This category, upon first sight, appears that it will skew towards a breakout star or a someone like Johansson, who is crystalizing her legend status, but you’ve gotta hand it to Netflix for throwing a monkey-wrench into all that. prediction : Laura Dern (Marriage Story)

________________________________________

DIRECTOR

Martin Scorsese (The Irishman) Todd Phillips (Joker) Sam Mendes (1917) Quentin Tarantino (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) Bong Joon Ho (Parasite)

thoughts : This is a complete toss-up. There is not a single weak name on this list, and each of these projects could arguably be considered the best of their respective works. This could easily be a self-celebratory, unofficial legend award, but in a perfect world, I know exactly where I want this award to go. prediction : Bong Joon Ho (Parasite)

________________________________________

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Steven Zaillian (The Irishman) Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit) Todd Phillips and Scott Silver (Joker) Greta Gerwig (Little Women) Anthony McCarten (The Two Popes)

thoughts : The range of adapted works this year was quite impressive. Even the superhero genre got a strong entry via Todd Phillips and Joker, which is arguably one of the most compelling films of the year. As mentioned earlier though, I’ve got a feeling that one of my favorite actresses turned directors is poised to formally introduce herself to the world. prediction : Greta Gerwig (Little Women)

________________________________________

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Rian Johnson (Knives Out) Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story) Sam Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns (1917) Quentin Tarantino (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) Bong Joon-ho and Jin Won Han (Parasite)

thoughts : My heart wants to send this award Quentin Tarantino’s way, as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood being a mind-blowing work from a director that I thought had shown us most every trick in his book. Rian Johnson and Noah Baumbach flexed their muscle in the best ways that they know how, and Sam Mendes is making major waves as well, but I’m going to need this award to go international this year. prediction : Bong Joon-ho and Jin Won Han (Parasite)

________________________________________

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Rodrigo Prieto (The Irishman) Lawrence Sher (Joker) Jarin Blaschke (The Lighthouse) Roger Deakins (1917) Robert Richardson (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood)

thoughts : The Lighthouse was a mind-scrambler. The Irishman showed that Scorsese could walk the walk after talking big talk. Joker echoed a bygone style and era perfectly, as did Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, although in a much more nuanced manner. For those in the know, however, one name jumps off this list, and if the pre-awards buzz is any indication, that name is basically a lock. prediction : Roger Deakins (1917)

________________________________________

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM

Jan Komasa (Corpus Christi) Tamara Kotevska and Ljubo Stefanov (Honeyland) Ladj Ly (Les Miserables) Pedro Almodovar (Pain and Glory) Bong Joon Ho (Parasite)

thoughts : To be fair, I am only familiar with one film on this list, but I think I can safely stand behind the bold statement that said film is a cut above many released, international or otherwise. prediction : Bong Joon Ho (Parasite)

________________________________________

FILM EDITING

Michael McCusker and Andrew Buckland (Ford v Ferrari) Thelma Schoonmaker (The Irishman) Tom Eagles (Jojo Rabbit) Jeff Groth (Joker) Jinmo Yang (Parasite)

thoughts : Editing is an art that I have a deep love and respect for, and for the three films on this list I’ve seen, I can vouch for their high quality editing. I hear nothing but good things about Ford v Ferrari, and Jojo Rabbit may be highest on my 2019 must-see list, but I believe I can make a safe bet on my prediction for this award. prediction : Jeff Groth (Joker)

________________________________________

SOUND EDITING

Don Sylvester (Ford v Ferrari) Alan Robert Murray (Joker) Oliver Tarney and Rachel Tate (1917) Wylie Stateman (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) Matthew Wood and David Acord (Star Wars : The Rise of Skywalker)

thoughts : If I was betting safe, I’d have to throw any sound editing award to any Star Wars entry for any given year, as that is one of the aspects the series is known for. With a strong racing film and a strong war film in the ranks, however, plus the cool of Tarantino and the deep immersion of Joker, this is another tough category, so I’ve gotta lean on the buzz once again. prediction : Oliver Tarney and Rachel Tate (1917)

________________________________________

SOUND MIXING

Ad Astra Ford v Ferrari Joker 1917 Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

thoughts : This pick is heavily dependant on my choice for Sound Editing. prediction : 1917

________________________________________

PRODUCTION DESIGN

Bob Shaw and Regina Graves (The Irishman) Ra Vincent and Nora Sopkova (Jojo Rabbit) Dennis Gassner and Lee Sandales (1917) Barbara Ling and Nancy Haigh (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) Lee Ha-Jun and Cho Won Woo, Han Ga Ram, and Cho Hee (Parasite)

thoughts : When I think about production design, I initially think about being transported to another world and time. From there, I think about the range of looks that we are provided. There are two strong war movies on the docket, plus a classic from a legend and one of the year’s most beautiful films, but this one has to go to team Tarantino, in my opinion. prediction : Barbara Ling and Nancy Haigh (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood)

________________________________________

ORIGINAL SCORE

Hildur Guðnadóttir (Joker) Alexandre Desplat (Little Women) Randy Newman (Marriage Story) Thomas Newman (1917) John Williams (Star Wars : The Rise of Skywalker) Nicholas Britell (The King)

thoughts : There are films not present on this list that surprise me, and I don’t think that Todd Phillips is going to get the recognition that some assume he will from the Academy for Joker, so I feel this may end up being a partial consolation prize. prediction : Hildur Guðnadóttir (Joker)

________________________________________

MAKEUP AND HAIR

Bombshell Joker Judy Maleficent : Mistress of Evil 1917

thoughts : With tons of period pieces in the mix, this is automatically a tough category. On top of that, one of the aspects where Bombshell stood out was in the makeup and hair department. As mentioned previously, however, there was a 2019 box office winner that may find itself the winner of a handful of consolation prizes at the Oscars. prediction : Joker

________________________________________

COSTUME DESIGN

Sandy Powell and Christopher Peterson (The Irishman) Mayes C. Rubeo (Jojo Rabbit) Mark Bridges (Joker) Jacqueline Durran (Little Women) Arianne Phillips (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood)

thoughts : A period piece is almost always a shoo-in for costume design, and the grander the stage, the higher the chances of winning. Cool style will get you so far, and war style (depending on the war) can get you a bit further, but once you cross that line into the world of tea parties and high society, any effort shown in the costuming department will nearly certainly reap a reward. prediction : Jacqueline Durran (Little Women)

________________________________________

VISUAL EFFECTS

Avengers : Endgame The Irishman 1917 The Lion King Star Wars : The Rise of Skywalker

thoughts : My head says The Lion King, the hype machine is telling me 1917, and the cinema snob in me sees The Irishman making a surprise win. That being said, there’s only one iconic franchise on this list, and said franchise is connected to the hip with special effects. prediction : Star Wars : The Rise of Skywalker

________________________________________

I’m definitely looking forward to this year’s Academy Award ceremony. I was far from perfect on my Golden Globes predictions, but I feel strong about these choices. Keep track of your predictions, let’s talk about the choices the Academy made, and we’ll meet back up here in a month to see how well we guessed.

#ChiefDoomsday #DOOMonFILM #AcademyAwards #Oscars #2020

0 notes

architectuul · 7 years ago

Text

Seoul Reflections

Final spurt for the inaugural Seoul Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism which will close on November 5th and time for an appraisal by Jason Hilgefort who participated in the event (Disclosure: as did Christian Burkhard, this website’s editor). But here is Jason:

Zaha Hadid’s DDP, the venue for the Biennale’s Cities Exhibition

To start off it must be stated that the Seoul Biennale is extremely impressive in its shear ambition. For a first time biennale its scope, goals, vision, actions upon the city, attempt to engage citizens is wildly far reaching. This is in part a credit to its currently governmental realities. The city itself has recently put in motion a series of very large gestures throughout its urban landscape and this is just its latest project on/in the city.

Playing the city (in Zaha Hadid’s DDP)

In relation to these governmental goals, the site selection itself is of note. The ‘exhibition’ was spread into three ‘sites’ throughout the city. Perhaps the most obvious and iconic space is the Cities Exhibition, which was located within the Zaha Hadid designed Dongdaemun Design Plaza [DDP] – curated by Helen Hejung Choi. With a twisting, ramping space wrapping around a central open void that was subdivided into a bazaar-like marketplace of ideas, the spatial experience was memorable to say the least. And it was an astute curatorial solution to the non-standard, challenging formal reality of the venue. The whole of the looping series of quick hit installations along the swooping ramp in many ways stood out spatially.

Exhibits on the ramp of the DDP in the Cities Exhbition

However it was the exhibition on Pyongyang, North Korea by Dongwoo Yim and Calvin Chua stole the show. The painstakingly recreated one to one installation of the reality of an apartment in the communist city alongside the series of drawings, statistics, and a ‘make your own catalogue’ elements scattered throughout were a showstopper.

Cities Exhibition on Pyongyang, North Korea

Yet quietly the goal of having often ‘non design’ teams set up exhibitions in the space, each on their own city was the true innovation. Seeing each city tell a story from not just architects or design teams gave a diversity and depth of voices to the exhibition often not seen in international biennales.

In contrast, the Donuimun Museum Village was an illustration of adapting a historic quarter in the city to host an international event. And a further differentiation, this vision for ‘The Nine Commons’ (the title of the Biennale’s Thematic Exhibition) focused much more on the technical elements of our built world – featuring the likes of Beatriz Colomina, Philippe Rahm, Tomás Saraceno, and many more dealing with matters like air, fire, and social media.

Impressions from the Thematic Exhibition at Donuimun Museum Village

Although there were many eye catching installs [Beyond Mining Urban Growth by Dirk E. Hebel, Philippe Block mushroom-tastic layered installation must be commended], the one that sticks in my mind is the ’Driverless Vision’ by Urtzi Grau, Guillermo Fernández-Abascal, Daniel Perlin, and Maximilian Lauter.

Driverless Vision exhibit at the Seoul Biennale

It stepped beyond the idea of merely self-driving cars into a hauntingly beautiful dystopian possible future with autonomous vehicles roaming a human-less city; oddly managing to humanise a technical future by removing the humans.

Broadly, much can be said for the value of taking on the hot topic of commons in the current professional discourse and expanding upon it. However, one can also suggest that the exhibition dilutes the topic to be almost everything and perhaps gets lost in the technical implications of a theme that would have been a more ideal medium for engaging the public in urban/architectural issues.

“Do We Dream Under The Same Sky”, exhibit at the Thematic Exhibition

The two main sites (DDP and Museum Village) sit to the east and west of the city centre, in respect to western and eastern historical narratives of the city; as well speak to contemporary global and historical local languages through the built forms of each site. This juggling of new and old is well executed and adds a multi-layered quality to the ideas put forward. But perhaps the most provocative of all was the ‘third site[s]’ of the Live Projects locations, in addition to the looooong and impressive list of public programs throughout the city [tours, forums, films, libraries, international architecture studious, etc]. For myself, the most relevant and more visually iconic of all spaces was the ‘Productive City’ within the Sewoon Sangga mega structure.

The site of Sewoon Sangga with a view to the mountains in the north

This part of the exhibition was an engagement with the existing aging building sitting amidst a on-the-verge-of-changing mixed use industrial area. It was more of an architectural programmatic operation used as a tool for framing a discussion in society. It represents a local action in the city itself and not merely an exhibition of internationally provocative ideas.

Mixed use small scale industrial area next to Sewoon Sangga

Its efficacy will only be able to be judged in the long run, but it relates to similar curatorial goals in the perhaps other most internationally well-known architecture/urbanism biennale in Asia – the Shenzhen/Hong Kong Biennale [of note: the author was a sub-curator]. Because these cities are moving so rapidly, or maybe because they have learned from the ‘showcase’ nature of Venice and other events – they seek to use these exhibitions as a method to work upon and open up the doors for a discourse about the city and the challenges it is facing. Each looks distantly abroad, yet simultaneously zooms in to enable local action.

In closing, I must share an off-the-cuff comment from a friend that still rings in my ear. For all of its far reaching agendas - from international to local, from technical to metropolitan – there exists a gap in the ‘middle’. This biennale of architecture and urbanism doesn’t have much ‘architecture’. In many ways the buildings chosen to exhibit within were the strongest architectural elements [Zaha, old village, modernist mega structure], but were merely the backdrop or frames to the issues explored. It is tough to draw conclusions about what this says about the biennale, Seoul, or the state of our cities. But this void does seem to echo a common passivity toward the discussion of buildings themselves within the profession of architecture. The complexity and possibilities of technology and our cities are alluring and exciting, but perhaps in the pursuit of the ‘interesting’ we miss the tangibility of ‘just a building’ and how it speaks to layered issues of the world today.

- Jason Hilgefort

Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017 “Imminent Commons” Directors: Hyungmin Pai, Alejandro Zaera-Polo

2 September - 5 November 2017

Cities Exhibition: “Commoning Cities” at Dongdaemun Design Plaza Thematic Exhibition: “Nine Commons” at Donuimun Museum Village Live Projects (several venues)

seoulbiennale.org

Some projects featured on the ramp of the DDP at the Cities exhibition:

Barcelona: Mixed Use, Mixed Time, Mixed People. Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) & Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC)

Cities in China: Ghost Cities. Sarah Williams, Civic Data Design Lab, MIT

Berlin: Die Laube. Quest (Christian Burkhard, Florian Köhl)

Macao: Shaped By Use. Nuno Soares, Filipa Simões

Shenzhen: Shenzhen to PRD (Pearl River Delta) Method. Future+ Aformal Academy (Jason Hilgefort, Merve Bedir)

#architecture #exhibition

1 note · View note

uomo-accattivante · 7 years ago

Photo

SCREENPLAY REVIEW - ANNIHILATION

This is a very old review (from 2015) of Alex Garland’s Version 10 screenplay I came across on the site below. (SPOILERS BELOW)

*** Extracted from website link below:

Screenplay Review – Annihilation

Genre: Sci-fi Thriller

Premise: A young biologist is recruited on a mission into a mysterious energy field that threatens to destroy the planet.

About: Writer Alex Garland has blessed us with some of the best sci-fi of the last 10 years. He wrote Ex Machina, 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Dredd, and even adapted mega-project, Halo, before the 67 lawyers and producers representing the 13 companies involved in the film blew the thing up. In short, if you have a sci-fi project, Alex Garland is one of the first guys you call. This time, just like he did on Ex Machina, he’s writing AND directing. Annihilation was adapted from the novel of the same name. It is being referred to as the first book in the “Southern Reach” trilogy, which means nothing to me at the moment, but will hopefully make sense at the end of the review. It will star Natalie Portman.

Writer: Alex Garland – Jeff VanderMeer

Details: 126 pages (version “10” according to the title page, whatever that means)

Longtime screenwriter Alex Garland stormed onto the directing scene early this year, writing and directing one of the best indie films of 2015, Ex Machina. How did he parlay his writing into such a deftly directed first film? By, um, not giving a shit about directing apparently! Garland’s gone on record as saying he doesn’t like directing nor does he care about it. To him, it’s all about the writing. Spoken like a true screenwriter.

With that said, you have to wonder why someone who isn’t into directing has agreed to direct another movie so quickly, and a big one at that. My guess is that the salary bump from writer to director is enough to make even the most reluctant writer reevaluate. And hey, spending three months in close-quarters with five beautiful woman doesn’t sound like such a bad gig.

Biologist Lena Kerans, who specializes in cancer research, is struggling through the most difficult time of her life. Her soldier husband went missing in battle over a year ago, and Lena hasn’t been able to move on.

Then, one day, inexplicably, her husband (Kane) returns home. Kane has no memory of how he got here and no memory of where he’s been. When Lena rushes him to the hospital, a government motorcade intercepts them, and the next thing Lena knows, she’s waking up in a military base.

Eventually, she meets Dr. Ventress, who informs Lena that they’re off the coast of Florida where a large growing anomaly is taking over the area. Within a few years, it will extend down into Mexico. Within a decade, it will usurp the entire planet. Great, Lena says. Now where the fuck is my husband?

Ventress explains that her husband is being kept on life support, and with the anomaly approaching, they’ll have to desert the base soon. If that happens, they will have to leave Kane, as he’s in too fragile a state to be transferred.

It just so happens that Ventress is going on one last mission with a group of three woman into the anomaly to see if they can figure it out. We gradually learn that Kane was on one of the former missions inside the anomaly and that he’s one of only two men who made it out alive.

Naturally, since her husband’s life is on the line, Lena demands to be a part of the mission. And she makes a good case for herself. She’s a biologist, and this growing anomaly is basically a cancer. Maybe she can help.

Ventress agrees, and the team of five women head inside. Once in, they notice that everything is both the same yet different. The animals (gators!) are twice as big. The plants are twice as exotic. And time doesn’t seem to exist wherever they’re at. But when they come across video of Kane’s old team, they begin to realize just how dangerous this anomaly is, and that just like everyone else who’s ventured into this bubble, they’re probably not making it out alive.

“Annihilation” asks a pretty interesting question. What if the earth got cancer? What if a mutation started to spread and expand to the point where the earth itself died? That’s a great sci-fi question. But it also teeters on the edge of “3 A.M.” idea territory. You can almost smell the pot wafting through the outline’s pores.

Indeed, I can hear the echoes of someone nicknamed “Lugnuts” ingesting an epic bong hit and wondering aloud, “And what if, like, all the animals were, like, TWICE AS BIG,” to which he receives a smattering of delayed approvals, peppered with the occasional pot-cough-slash-laugh. Surely, a pizza will be ordered soon, charged to whichever member of the group is getting his entire tuition paid for by daddy.

Okay, that may be a cheap shot. But Annihilation does suffer from a case of the over-idea. It’s the price you pay when you go from something contained and clear, like Ex Machina, to something sprawling and ambitious, like this. You gain scope and complexity. But you’re forced to juggle more balls. Which means a better chance of those balls falling.

But I’m not here to judge (okay, maybe a little). I’m here to observe. And one of the first things I observed was the concept of “mystery replacement.” When you write a script like Annihilation, where the first act is centered around a mystery (a growing field that people go into and never come out of), you’ve set yourself up for a front-loaded movie. That is, once you show the audience what’s inside the bubble, they’ve got nothing left to look forward to besides the next bong hit.

Because the entire first act is predicated on the mystery of this unexplainable phenomenon, Annihilation is a prime candidate for front-loaded status. Luckily, there’s a solution to this. Every time you answer a giant mystery in your script, you replace it with either another giant mystery, or a series of smaller mysteries. VanderMeer and Garland do a good job with this. Once we’re inside the phenomenon, new questions start arriving. Giant animals. Grotesquely altered humans. What happened to Lena’s husband’s team?

I also want to commend Garland on the structure, which is one of the first things beginner screenwriters must learn before they can make the move to the more complex aspects of storytelling, like character development and theme. So instead of sending our characters into this big anomaly blob and “seeing what happens,” (a common mistake I see a lot), Garland immediately establishes a goal. Get to the lighthouse. The lighthouse is where the anomaly began, so by that logic, that’s where the answers will be.

This may sound like a minor thing, but it’s actually really important. Having a physical destination gives us form and focus. We know where the story needs to go, so we can give in to all the craziness that happens along the way. Had we shown up here and the characters said, “Uh, okay, let’s look around,” we the reader are going to get frustrated quickly. “What’s the point?” we’re going to ask. “Where is this going??”

An overarching goal is a great start. But sub-goals are what really give a script structure. In Annihilation, the characters know they can’t get to the lighthouse in one day, so they create a series of checkpoints they’ll try to make it to each day. Again, this may seem insignificant to the casual screenwriter. But what this is doing is dividing the screenplay into easy-to-follow bite-sized chunks. We know we’re trying to get to A. Let’s see if we can get there without getting killed. Next morning, we have to get to B. Okay, let’s see if we can do that. Then C, and finally D. And, of course, if you’re doing your job, each leg will be more challenging.

Think of these mini-goals as pillars. If you were to place a pillar under the left side, or beginning, of the screenplay, and then place a pillar under the right side, or ending, of the screenplay. What’s going to happen to the middle? It’s going to sag right? So you have to place a series of pillars along the middle section of the script. That’ll keep it from drooping, or worse, falling down completely.

And if structure were all this script were being judged on, I’d give it a good grade. But I also have to judge it on its ideas, which are interesting in some places but muddled in others. The “What if earth got cancer” question is fun. But I’m not sure I understood why plants and humans and animals were meshing into single forms. And why sometimes that meant weird hybrid entities, and while other times it meant dolphins as big as whales. There was an inconsistency there that became frustrating after awhile.

And something smelled fishy about this team being all-female. The explanation we get is that men could potentially be more violent inside the vortex and therefore less likely to survive. The problem with that explanation is that over 500 people have gone into this thing, and only two have gotten out. They were both men. This tells me the all-female team is more a result of that being the hot new thing in books than it is a logical decision. And hey, if you want to go all-female or all-male or even all-horse, that’s fine. But it’s your job as a writer to come up with a legtimate reason for why that’s happening. If you don’t, the suspension of disbelief is broken (note: Suspension of disbelief is broken every time an audience veers out of the movie to ask a logic question: “Wait a minute? Why are they all women? That doesn’t make sense.”)

It’s the same issue I have with the Ghostbusters thing. What’s the reason to go all-female other than that’s the trend? There isn’t a story reason behind it. And if you’re deliberately excluding men from the story, isn’t that just as bad as deliberately excluding women from a story?

But I’m getting off-track here. Must have been that five minutes I spent watching Trump debate earlier. The main point is that Annihilation starts out with an interesting idea, and keeps its story moving swiftly, but once the answers start coming, they do so in unsatisfying muddled ways. With that said, I’m curious what Garland’s first large-scale directing effort will look like. The cinematography as well as the robot concept in Ex Machina were gorgeous, which is reason to stay optimistic.

*** @losethehours @coolfayebunny @charliexowrite

#oscar isaac #kane #annihilation #alex garland #spoilers #southern reach trilogy #natalie portman #lena kerans #gina rodriguez #tessa thompson #jennifer jason leigh

31 notes · View notes

mastcomm · 5 years ago

Text

Artist-Run Galleries Defy the Mega-Dealer Trend in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES — The gallery M+B sold out its show of surreal, cloud-dappled landscapes by Leo Mock over the summer. The work was enigmatic, with images of long, birdlike legs stepping through the paintings. The official “artist bio” was also mysterious, saying only that Mr. Mock had graduated from ArtCenter College of Design and “lives and works in Los Angeles.”

But those in the know soon discovered that Leo Mock was actually the alias of one Steve Hanson, a local art dealer pursuing his sideline career. Leo was his uncle’s name; Mock, his mother’s maiden name — but it works as a jab at the art market, too: “People don’t like artists having two careers,” said Mr. Hanson, a founder of the pioneering Chinatown gallery China Art Objects. “I’m an old punk rocker and all of those musicians take pseudonyms,” he explained by phone.

How to exhibit your own work is just one of the challenges facing artists who open up shop as dealers, a deep-rooted tradition that is thriving these days across this art-obsessed city. Another is juggling the demands of making art while running a gallery, two careers not known for reliable revenue streams. But a surprising number of artists in Los Angeles have been opening commercial spaces anyway, giving the city’s gallery scene a scrappy energy all its own and providing a strong counternarrative to the idea that visual culture here is defined by the recent influx of New York and international galleries.

These spaces run the gamut from funky weekend-only apartment venues to larger spaces with regular hours, but they tend as a whole to have a more adventurous spirit. As Mr. Hanson puts it, “The Home Depot-fication of galleries is one reason why artist-run spaces are so important.”

Last year alone saw the opening of Real Pain Fine Arts by the artist Peter Harkawik near the Underground Museum; Murmurs, a welcoming gallery-cafe complex downtown founded by Morgan Elder and Allison Littrell; and La Loma Projects, which Kirk Nelson runs out of his living room and garage in Pasadena — not far from the artist Dani Tull’s two-year-old gallery Odd Ark. More established examples include Smart Objects, Five Car Garage, Bel Ami, Big Pictures L.A., Moskowitz Bayse, Night Gallery, Commonwealth and Council and the Pit. (The last three will have booths at Frieze Los Angeles, the art fair running Feb. 14-16, in a special section devoted to local galleries.)

Most of these galleries follow a traditional 50-50 sales split with artists, but none are as high-overhead and profit-driven as the blue-chip galleries now in town.

“L.A. has a long history of artist-run galleries — it’s where so much experimentation and innovation take place,” said Bettina Korek, the director of Frieze Los Angeles. She called the model an alternative to the usual white cube and “a great reminder that art can happen anywhere.”

Amy Bessone is a Los Angeles painter and sculptor with a high-profile New York gallery (Salon 94) but she still supports artist-run galleries at home: She had a solo show at the Pit last year and has work in a group show at La Loma Projects now. She credits these spaces with generating a “sense of solidarity and community,” as well as “bringing a lot of artists out to see their shows.” Their openings are also inclusive, she said, complete with “children, dogs, friends of friends, and sometimes tacos,” minus the fancy after-opening dinners.

Chadwick Gibson, founder of Smart Objects, contends that “making art makes you more attuned to what’s going on” in the culture. “A lot of galleries will say they show new or emerging artists,” he added, “but if you go back you’ll find that they showed at three artist-run spaces first.”

He started his gallery in Echo Park at the end of 2012 specifically to hold an exhibition of his own work — screen shots of gallery and museum interiors he printed from Google Art Project, where the operator’s camera is caught in the image, a way of turning the Google eye on itself. He has just leased more space next to the gallery with plans to turn it into an arcade.

Devon Oder and Adam Miller, the wife-and-husband founders of the Pit,

met while getting their M.F.A.s at ArtCenter. Both worked for the artist Sterling Ruby, and in 2014 they opened the gallery next to their studios in Glendale, in a former mechanic’s garage. (The mechanics’ pit is a still-visible feature of the space.) She shows her photography with the Portland gallery Fourteen30 Contemporary, while he exhibits his obsessively patterned paintings at various local spaces.

“In our branding, we like to say we’re an artist-run space,” said Mr. Miller, calling their business “collaborative” in the spirit of musician-run record labels like Dischord Records or Lookout Records. They produce zines for many of their shows (doing designs, printing and binding in-house) and are known for their flexibility in scheduling.

He remembers a big fair two years ago when four out of five artists could not make their deadline for delivering artworks to be photographed. He supplied older artwork instead and rescheduled the shoot. “When those things happen, instead of hammering artists about deadlines, we are more likely to pivot and accommodate the creative process,” he said.

As a figurative painter, Emma Gray of Five Car Garage said she realizes “how long it can take for an artist’s vision to come in — I hold the torch for them.” Her old-fashioned training in portraiture at the Heatherley School of Fine Art in London (“no electric lighting was allowed”) also helps her “talk to painters about painting.”

She founded the gallery in 2013 after moving to a home in Santa Monica that had a large custom-built garage for a car collector. Now, the garage is the gallery, with a meditation studio on the property that she uses for community sound baths, breath work, and performances involving her artists, such as Alison Blickle (a practicing witch) and Lazaro (or “L,” an alchemist). In her own studio next door, Ms. Gray is currently working on a series of “fire” paintings based on her experience fire-walking in Santa Fe.

Eve Fowler, a co-founder of seminomadic Artist Curated Projects, says that giving artists agency was the goal of her program, started in 2008 out of her own apartment with a colleague, Lucas Michael. “We had so many friends who were good artists and didn’t have shows. We also felt like artists don’t have any power,” she added — so early on, they invited artists to share the decision-making and organize the shows.

Her last show featured optically “tricky” paintings by a graduate student in fine arts, Kate Mosher Hall. But now that Ms. Fowler’s own queer-forward, text-based art is gaining traction — a recent film is heading to the New Museum in New York for a screening — she is not sure she will continue the gallery.

On the flip side, some artists who found their calling as gallerists have decided to postpone their own art careers, perhaps permanently. Davida Nemeroff of the downtown destination Night Gallery, says she stopped making work in 2016 when her gallery partner left and she had to take over all operations. “I realized from my own artists how much time and energy you need to put into your practice, and I just didn’t have that,” she said.

Young Chung, a founder of Commonwealth & Council in Koreatown, said he “went back in the closet as an artist” and stopped making work in 2012, two years after opening the space in his apartment. At that time, he said, “a Getty curator came to see one of our artist’s works but then the conversation gravitated to my own work — in that moment, I realized I had a conflict of interest.”

Every artist-dealer contacted for this story acknowledged the potential conflicts when juggling the two roles: whose work are you really promoting? Most have included their own work in an occasional group show but said they would not give themselves a solo show, with Ms. Gray saying she feels like it’s “largely unethical to cross the line.” Ms. Fowler said: “I just didn’t think it would look good. I thought other opportunities would come up, which they did.”

But Mr. Gibson, who opened his space to have a venue for his Google project, conceded, “I understand why people might think it’s tacky, ” adding, “it’s O.K. if the artists you show are good with it.”

Some gallerists sidestep the conflicts by refusing to promote their own art. Robert Gunderman rarely showed his own work while running the influential gallery ACME with Randy Sommer for 22 years. But after the gallery closed in 2017, Mr. Gunderman reinvented himself as an artist, with two strong shows of his lushly textured abstract paintings organized by the curator Lauri Firstenberg.

It turned out that Mr. Gunderman had been painting fairly consistently, and discreetly, all along. “Only a few people knew I had a studio,” he said. “And I would tell them I had six cats there ” to keep them away. (Visitors to Frieze can see his work in a pop-up space called The Street & The Shop on the backlot of Paramount Studios.)

As for Leo Mock, better known as Steve Hanson, he is now busy painting in Mérida, Mexico, where he recently moved with his wife, Tuesday Yates. But he has not given up his idea of running a gallery. To that end, the couple is currently rehabbing part of an old bus depot in Mérida. Still confounding the art world, they plan to call it China Art Objects.

The Pit, 918 Ruberta Avenue, Glendale, Tuesday-Saturday

Smart Objects, 1828 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, Thursday-Saturday

Five Car Garage, open Saturdays and by appointment, [email protected].

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/artist-run-galleries-defy-the-mega-dealer-trend-in-los-angeles/

#Business

0 notes

hermanwatts · 5 years ago

Text

Swords & Dark Magic

Swords & Dark Magic (Eos/Harper Collins, 2010). Edited by Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders.

This was a book that I read over eight years ago and came across a review while looking for an old file. This was a sword-and-sorcery fiction anthology of original fiction from a mainstream publisher. I really enjoyed Andrew Offutt’s Swords Against Darkness and Page & Reinhardt’s Heroic Fantasy back in the day and was hoping this would be the start of a new era.

The first warning sign was the cover. The cover painting for the trade paperback edition is just horrible. I have seen small press books that looked way better. The second warning was “The New Sword and Sorcery” phrase under the title. Whenever something is called “new,” watch out.

The introduction is entitled “Check Your Dark Lord at the Door,” which will infuriate some Tolkien fans. The editors think that sword-and-sorcery is smaller scale than high fantasy. I could argue against that citing Hour of the Dragon as an example. There is a very fast mini-history of the sub-genre where Karl Edward Wagner is not mentioned while Andre Norton and Marion Zimmer Bradley are.

“Steven Erikson” has written humongous doorstop fantasy novels that I have not read. I don’t like never ending series and I generally don’t like novels that go over the 100,000 word mark. This is the first Erickson that I have read. “Goats of Glory” has a small group of soldiers wandering into a village off the beaten track. Glenn Cook’s “Black Company” series has had its influence and impact. I would describe Cook and also this Erikson story as “military fantasy” more than “sword and sorcery.” Just like if you read enough science fiction, you can subtly differentiate between space opera and military science fiction, military fantasy has split off and become a separate animal from sword and sorcery. I would present that we now have a new sub-genre that could be called “military fantasy” that is unique and different enough from sword and sorcery to warrant its own designation. Some of Erikson’s soldiers are women. I have a problem with this. Destroy our modern world and women are going to be back to what they did before the industrial revolution. “Erikson” is supposedly has a background in archaeology and anthropology, but he presents very up to date correct gender attitudes. Characters have names such as Snotty, Dullbreath, and Swillman. Here is some typical Erikson prose: “The place stank of pig shit and the flies buzzed thick as black smoke.”

The soldiers are lured to spend the night in an abandoned fortress. Turns out, the fortress is infested with demons. A great idea but–less would have been more. The characters wipe out hundreds of demons in the fighting. The horror effect is markedly diminished. I think a more suspenseful story could have been written.

Glen Cook has been a very influential writer for about the past 25 years. It all started with the story “Raker” in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (August 1982), where he introduced the Black Company. Cook expanded “Raker” into The Black Company, the story of a motley group of mercenaries amidst a huge sorcerous war in a fantasy world. It is no coincidence that Cook served in a Marine Recon unit. Perhaps we should call this “jarhead fantasy.” Cook’s prose for this series is very stripped down with little in the way of adjectives being used. He reminds me of the way that “Paul Cain” attempted to take the hard-boiled crime story to sparse extreme in the mid-1930s. The Black Company books are rather dialogue driven for my tastes.

“Tides Elba” is an episode wherein the Black Company has to track down a descendent of the Dominator who about to mate with another of his descendents. The resulting child would have been a vessel into which the Dominator could project his soul. The story is disturbing with the revelation at the end while getting there is a chore.

Cook is in many ways the godfather for many of the authors for this anthology.

The inclusion of Gene Wolfe does raise the level of attention for this book. Wolfe is considered a writer’s writer. Wolfe never jumped to my A list. I read his Book of the New Sun years back and my response was I had read this before by Clark Ashton Smith and Jack Vance. I did like Wolfe’s story in Cross Plains Universe though. “Bloodsport” is in the first person. The story starts out relating the participation in something called The Game, which is sort of like real-life chess with people. After one game, the town is attacked by “Hunas” who are described just like the historical Huns. Valorius, the narrating knight, and a female pawn escape, and organize a band of fugitives into a small resistance force. That section ends abruptly, Valorius and Lurn the pawn travel to the mountains where the Game originated. An enchanted mountain meadow is found where Lurn is armed and crowned as a queen. Valorius then kills her in a fight and that is how the story ends.

James Enge is a relative newcomer. He got his start with a series in Black Gate magazine about Morlock Ambrosius the Maker. Enge has said Roger Zelazny and Jack Vance were big influences I also see Michael Moorcock in the mix. There is a spear with a demon trapped within it. Enge’s prose on one hand attempts the urbanity of Fritz Leiber or Jack Vance but juxtaposed is anachronistic sounding dialogue such as “You killed my bartender!” The character shows a Jack Vance influence, the plot coupons are from Michael Moorcock. There is a certain vibe of older sword and sorcery to give a sense of déjà vu all over again.

C. J. Cherryh’s “A Wizard in Wiscezan” uses the same world that she used for “A Thief in Korianth” way back in 1981 for Flashing Swords #5. Cherryh is an old pro going back 35 years with D.A.W. Books. She has produced a competent if not overly engrossing tale of infiltration into the keep and assassination of a usurper and his wizard by means of an illusionist.

“A Rich Full Week” by K. J. Parker is written in first person and is a good case of what I think is so wrong with fantasy of the past 20 years. The story is dialogue driven. With a few minor changes, the story could be set in suburbia. The dialogue is mostly inane, takes up space, and does little to propel the story. Read some Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler if you are going to write a first person story with mostly dialogue.

Garth Nix is an Australian writer of young adult novels whom I am unfamiliar with. “A Suitable Present For a Sorcerous Puppet” is a story that has an interesting idea if not high octane in execution. It is clever with a recuperating knight accidentally coming across an ancient curse.

To put things in context, a book containing a Michael Moorcock story in 2010 would be like having a new C. L. Moore Jirel story in 1982. Moorcock’s “Red Pearls” is the keystone story or rather novella for this book. Moorcock brings nothing particularly new in this Elric story but then again, there has been little really new about Elric since the original ten stories in Science Fantasy 1961-1964. There is more multi-dimensional hokum but I have to say this is one of the better Elric stories of the past 20+ years.

I can remember about six years ago, John Pelan of Midnight House Press telling me of some horror writers who wanted to write sword and sorcery. I remember Tim Lebbon’s name from that conversation. Lebbon has been writing some novels with a fantasy setting. “The Deification of Dal Bamore” is in the same world as Echo City Falls (2010). To set the tone, here is some Lebbon prose:

“Bamore is hanging upside down from the ceiling. He is streaked with blood and feces. Beneath him, there is a large bowl collecting all fluids that leak from him.”

There is torture and then a prolonged street fight while on the way for a crucifixion. Something I have noted, Echo City is not described at all. I have no idea what it looks like as there was no description given.

Robert Silverberg has written some of my favorite space opera and adventure science fiction. He is on the fictionmags yahoo group and I like the guy. He has a story “Dark Times At the Midnight Market” set on his planet of Majipoor. It is a “cute” story that elicits a chuckle. The story is nothing major, but competently done and in contrast in tone to most of the other stories in this book.

Sooner or later, a serial killer sword and sorcery story was bound to happen. Greg Keyes’ “The Undefiled” has Fool Wolf possessed by a spirit or godlet who makes him do very bad things. The same idea in Robert Bloch’s classic “Enoch.” Keyes’ has a habit of not explaining things very well in portions of the story. He also jumps a scene before it is finished using innuendo for the reader to fill in. The problem is the innuendo is rather nebulous.

I have been reading Michael Shea since Nifft the Lean came out in the early 80s. He is one of those writers that you must concentrate in order to get everything. You will miss something if you don’t. “Hew the Tintmaster” is starts out in the world of Nifft. Bront the Inexorable teams up with Hew the Tintmaster (i.e. house painter) on a quest for a wizard who is paying handsomely. They are sent to Jack Vance’s Dying Earth and then meet Cugel the Clever. Remember that Shea got his start with A Quest for Simbalis featuring Cugel. In some ways, Bront and Hew are the most conventional sword and sorcery characters up to now in this book. They are also the most heroic in their own way.

I was waiting for a Harry Potter sword and sorcery story to happen and Scott Lynch’s “In the Stacks” is that story. If you like Harry Potter, you will like this story. Set in a library with a wizard pupil who decides to go mega maniacal.

Tanith Lee has been in Swords Against Darkness, Heroic Fantasy, and the paperback Weird Tales. A friend of mine thinks of her as closest thing to a modern Clark Ashton Smith. “Two Lions, A Witch, And the War-Robe” is typical Tanith Lee. The story is very fantastic as is often typical with Lee. This story would not be out of place in one of her old collections such as The Gorgon.

Caitlin R. Kiernan is another horror writer now moving into sword and sorcery. “The Sea Troll’s Daughter” is probably the worst story in this anthology. The story begins after the action is over. The dialogue is top-notch:

“Why, you ungrateful, two-faced gaggle of sheep-fuckers.”

A sword woman amazon kills a sea-troll terrorizing the town. The story starts with her after the fight. The narrative is about drinking and lesbian seduction of a bar-maid.

Bill Willingham’s “Thieves of Daring” reads as sort of homage to Fritz Leiber. It is an entertaining enough vignette. He keeps up the suspense and the reader interested. I hope Willingham keeps it up and writes longer works of fiction.

Joe Abercrombie has been getting a fair amount of press. I have known people who like him, know others who don’t like his fiction at all. This is my first introduction. “The Fool Jobs” has a sort of Dirty Dozen meets Deliverance with swords plot. The characters are all unlikable, which is probably the point. The writing is matter of fact with a little description to paint a depressing landscape. Get Abercrombie a thesaurus as “fucking” seems to be every tenth word he uses.

“Cause it’s my fucking job to fucking tell you to the fucking thing is why, Yon fucking Cumber,” or “Use your cock as a spoon.”

Somebody has a potty mouth. I will say that Abercrombie can write an action scene. I just can’t say reading him is the most pleasurable experience.

So there you have it, the first sword and sorcery anthology in a while. The last anthology I can think of is Swords Against the Millennium from the turn of the century.

First impression– disappointment. My own name for the book is Swords and Excrement. If this is the new sword and sorcery, I want no part of it. I can remember reading Page & Reinhardt’s Heroic Fantasy and the enjoyment and entertainment I got during a rather bad time in my life. I actually dreaded reading this book each night before too long. I couldn’t wait to be done.

The editors have no background in sword and sorcery that I know of. Lou Anders seems to have the most background in Star Trek and Star Wars books and magazines. Jonathan Strahan has edited (new) space opera anthologies. They might have ideas brought in from other sub-genres.

You can divide the book into three categories– the D.A.W. Fantasy Reader (Shea, Cherryh, Lee, and Moorcock), uninteresting writing (Nix) and the scatological.

If you are going to write sword and sorcery, you must engage in landscaping. Landscaping is a term used in conjunction to Zane Gray’s description of the West. The author must do some background painting with words. Sword and sorcery is not a modern day thriller with swords. One of my gripes with Glenn Cook’s Black Company series is the utter lack of any detail. There are too many stories where you have no idea of regarding the architecture, clothing or costumes, weapons etc. Describe the kind of swords used for example. You don’t have to do an info dump, but some detail goes a long way. My own opinion is dialogue driven stories don’t work in sword and sorcery. This isn’t a T.V. show.

The better sword and sorcery writers who came out of the 1970s got their start in the small press. They started out writing short stories, then novelettes. A few then made the jump to mass market paperbacks that were generally 80,000 words long. Now it is backwards, the writers of the past ten to twenty years start out writing 700 page novels for seemingly never ending series. They have no concept of economy. You can stretch out a novel with lots of dialogue. In a 15,000 word story, you have to move it along and talking is not the way to do it.

Readers in the past have been attracted to the glitter, pageantry, and Technicolor of sword and sorcery. Replacing it with mud, feces, and urine is not a good business plan for growing the genre. I was telling John C. Hocking (Conan and the Emerald Lotus) about this anthology. He thinks that maybe our lives are so easy now that getting covered in excrement is about as horrible as some writers can imagine. As one friend of mine said, just because someone takes a dump does not mean it has to be shown. There was not one conventional heroic story in this book.

If you are going to write about a barbarian serial killer, have the gonadal fortitude to channel a little Brett Easton Ellis and show a serial killer in action.

Horror writers– sword and sorcery is not horror. Changing the scene from cars to horses and from guns to swords does not make for automatically a good sword and sorcery story. The gothic element is key in classic sword and sorcery over horror. There is a difference.

When I wrote this review in 2012, there was unease out there with by friends of mine. The increasing scatological obsession was one issue. Nihilism and lack of heroism is another. Literary moral relativism and realism creeping in from the mainstream as a source of contamination. At the time, I was not sure if these were separate issues or all facets of the same thing. I now see it as all part of a cultural change that has accelerated the past ten or so years. I bought Swords & Dark Magic at the local Barnes & Noble store and then felt burned when a few months later it was offered at Edward R. Hamilton online for about 1/6 of the original price. Now I wait.

Swords & Dark Magic published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

0 notes

joseluisbenavides · 7 years ago

Photo

This exhibition of new works on view Nov. 1-Dec. 4, 2017 served as a culmination of a two month artist residency at The Overlook Place, Chicago in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Logan Square. Raised in Logan Square myself, this show offered many emotional and psychic loops, using gifs, experimental video, photography and installation to honor the dead, as well as the sense of loss or mourning paralleled onto the gentrification and erasure of those signs and signifiers of the neighborhood’s Latinx history and population. To ask meaningful questions of our world and my shifting sense of home, I poetically respond to our ancestors calling from the grave, sharing in a mournful investigation into our immigrant family histories.

The above installation reflects a phrase found above a cemetery entrance in Mexico photographed by Amanda Cervantes (exhibition and residency collaborator) as she searched her great-grandmother’s missing grave site. The odd phrase, translated to English as “Welcome, you and I” begged us to ask who is the “I” speaking. Do the dead speak to us? And how? Also reflected in the glass of this installation as invitation, one can also sees the entrance of the Caribe Funeral Home across the street from the gallery/residency.

luigi · R.I.P.J.G.B. {{{M1X4TH3D34D}}}

In keeping with the theme of temporal and spatial loops, the DIY album cover art for the CD-Mixtapes “R.I.P.J.G.B M1X4TH3D3AD” I also designed, features an image of the threshold of the Caribe Funeral Home where my grandfather’s wake was held in 2011. From 2010-2013 I was managing editor of the music section of Gozamos.com, a local blog dedicated to Latinx art and culture. This mixtape logs by own mourning for my grandfather as well as an archive of my own music, early attempts at mixing and dj-ing, as well as some of the music I was reviewing then. Stacked next to the the entrance of the storefront gallery, these CD jewel cases, not only encapsulate nostalgia for long lost technologies, but also reflect an ancient Mexican pyramidal triangulations found duplicated in the “papel picado” or cut paper window, “Bienvenidos Tú y Yo” installation along the storefront windows. These invitations to the outside viewer, also serve as invocations from and to our ancestors.

The exhibition also features an altarpiece installation as an offering to my grandfather. The offering features a gif, “goodbye forever goodbye” mourning the demolition of Logan Square’s iconic Mega Mall, a hub of Latino business and commerce demolished from the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood I was raised in during from 1980s-2000s. The alter also has snippets of photography I captured over the years following my grandfather’s wake. Central to these images is a photograph I took the day of his wake, in the alley of Caribe Funeral Home.

This image set of a series of odd photographs I would take, without knowing exactly their purpose, an archival and photography practice, I would later unpack. These images depict findings around my home and daily paths, speaking to life, death and spiritual imagery found in Santeria which is also concerned with ancestor worship, through subtle associations with vivid colors, flowers, mirrors, and scrap metal strewn about the neighborhood and city. Those familiar with the coded meanings and symbols in Santeria might catch these signs, as my uncle, one of my grandfather’s nephews in Mexico City, who practices santeria, might indicate. Or my high school friends from Humboldt Park indicated to me as a youth. These signifiers are secret, powerful, and codes.

These fragments and specks of light speak to the fragmentation of memory, the fragmentation of our community due to gentrification and my own, personal homage to my grandfather, an immigrant laborer and factory worker who lost several fingers in a pinball factory in Chicago before bringing his family to the US. An assortment of found objects collected on the altarpiece, including a pile of pinballs, several sections of discarded pinball machines, and a vintage “Pinball Safety Manual” produced by the same Gotlieb Factory where my grandfather lost his fingers. These fragmented mechanical parts echo those severed digits and the cyclical relationship of pinball playing to digitality, movement and and nonlinear relations embodied in non-western relations to time.

The following text was read/performed at the opening night of the exhibition.

AMANDA & LUIS PRESENT: BIENVENIDOS TÚ Y YO

http://www.dimevents.com/amandaluis-

Interview and images by: Maria Efting

Bienvenidos Tú y Yo is a new exhibit from Chicago artists Amanda Cervantes and Jose Luis Benavides featured at The Overlook Place in Logan Square. Through the use of experimental photography, both artists take a look into their Mexican family histories.

How did the collaboration between the two of you begin?

LB: Well we started working together about a year and a half ago for my thesis work at UIC. I brought Amanda in to sort of reenact and embody a character in some video work that I was doing, and since then this [collaboration] came about because we saw the residency open call [at The Overlook Place]. And we applied.

Can you tell me about the themes and ideas behind the show?

AC: We approached this project kind of by accident. We applied initially with a different proposal but then we came into this space, and we realized that it was just across the street from where Luis’ grandfather’s service was. And so it went from there. I went to Mexico right after the initial meeting, and went to my father’s hometown, and there were just these themes of returning and cycles and looking back on the dead. Those were the themes we were wrestling with when we were thinking about this project.

I know this exhibit features a lot of experimental work, like installations and gifs – is that how you normally work or is this new for you? How did that choice come about?

LB: For the gifs specifically, I have made some before. I generally work in video but not gifs particularly. And installation is new for both of us. Actually photography is kind of new for me too.

AC: The main idea surrounding using my works were text and image, and primarily image based using film scans, and that’s something I’ve been working with before, so that’s something that’s very familiar to me.We have this entire space to sort of work with the curatorial process, which was new for us.

LB: I don’t generally work with too many found objects, and neither of us had worked with the design process of the window [installation at The Overlook]. But it was just like ‘we have this space, and it has scale, so let’s push ourselves.’

I know that The Overlook is adamant about featuring queer artists, women artists, and artists of color. What does it mean to you to be featured here opposed to somewhere else?

LB: Safety for sure.

AC: Yeah. I think that there’s a little bit of pressure when you're leaving school to kind of just like jump in right away and get residencies or get in these galleries in Chicago…but sometimes you feel like they have a certain brand, and we felt like we didn't really ascribe to that brand. Like this space in particular was very open to emerging artists. Artists that have graduated from school and basically just needed a space to work and to get started. This is a place that was basically like ‘we trust you and we want to hear what you have to say’ and that was something that was very important to us.

What do you hope people take away from this exhibit after they see it?

LB. Well you can take away the CD that I made! [laughs].

AC: I want people to take away how multifaceted the Latinx community is, and how our experience shapes us. I think that everybody has a different perspective and this is the perspective we are offering. There is no right or wrong way to be Latinx.

What’s next for both of you?

AC: I’m actually planning on continuing this project. I’m going to Mexico again hopefully in the near future. Part of this work is that I’m trying to find my great grandmother and I still haven't found her yet.

LB: I’m part of a group called the Illinois Deaths in Custody Project. We kind of do a lot of work with deaths in Illinois, in prisons, in institutions. We just got a small grant to continue our research. So I’m just going to dive into that. It’s important work to me and to all of us. I think I’ll also go back to my thesis work because a lot of things were left unfinished there which is great I think. Because even thinking about the theme of this show, and always returning back to the work that you've started…you should not be scared and think ‘oh it has to be done, I had this show and it's over,’….it’s not over.

#latinx #home #migration #memory #language #identity #latinidad #mexican ancestry #immigration

0 notes

gaiabros · 7 years ago

Text

Short on time? Head on over to our ELECTROWEEN Mixes page where we have created an archive for all of our ELECTROWEEN productions. There you will find our latest 2017 mixes to stream and download. We will be adding additional mixes from other projects in the future, so please subscribe to GAIA BROS to receive forthcoming news and announcements.

Prologue: Alone In A Basement (An Origins Story)

In October 1994, somewhere in a small suburb of Detroit, I was playing by myself in my Ghostbusters tent in the drafty unfinished basement of my parents’ house. All of the lights were off, with the exception being the ceiling light near the stairs heading up to the main floor. It was almost Halloween, and my curiosity was unquenchable.

I had inside the tent with me a single battery powered cassette player and a tape that I had smuggled from my parents without raising suspicion. Being young and foolish, my inquiring mind drove me to ask but one innocent little question:

“What else is there?”

With the help of the internet, I tracked down the memory of a tent that had almost been consumed by time. What is shown below closely depicts the visual atmosphere of this personal memoire I wish to share. This I remember vividly.

Encounter With The Tape

I had managed to load my cassette player with the blood red Halloween tape my Mom used for luring brave trick or treaters to our doorsteps. This particular tape included all sorts of haunted sounds, noises and things within the realm of the supernatural. Ghosts shrieking. People screaming. Chains dragging on cement. Zombies moaning. It was truly horrifying for a seven year old boy; my brain at that age often blurred the lines between fantasy and reality. I dared myself to listen as long as my bravery lasted, which was no longer than five minutes. Spooked by my imagination recreating all of the surreal scenes around me, I ran upstairs as fast as possible, never stopping to look behind me at what was following and chasing me…

Leaving that tape to continue to play on, into the empty darkness of bare, cold concrete and musty air…

A Tale From A Dark Place, Carried

Undoubtably, this was one of the scariest experiences of my entire life. I distinctly remember the feeling of being chased by the void and my heart racing at insane speeds. The influence of that vivid moment in my early childhood left a permanent scar on my subconscious mind. Looking back, I can say that it planted an endless curiosity of the unknown — and an eagerness to come to terms with it.

“No End Darkness” — my latest mix released for ELECTROWEEN 2017 — is the most recent and honest attempt I’ve made at revisiting that frigid, dreadful basement and remembering what it was like…

Sensing the coldness of the air…

Grasping the presence of absence….

Witnessing the canvas of the void…..

Feeling hopelessly vulnerable and alone.

Twenty three years later, that tape still plays its haunted cacophony into the atmoshere within the depths of my soul.

Reconciliation

This is my personal encounter that I’ve chosen to share with the world, and by doing so, have come to confront my fears and the wholeness of life once again.

Knowing the darkness is a personal experience we must all wrestle with in some aspect of our mortal existence. However, it is through the honesty of our shared vulnerability that we discover the most promising truth of human existence:

That each of us is not alone.

“No End Darkness” Mix Liner Notes

From Scott: These are the sounds of a past golden age, paired with the technology of the present. Some of these tracks have echoed in my mind for the past 20 years and never left me. They are the video games and stories I grew up with, forever entwined in the fibers of the visionary synthwave works and gaming titles of today. This is the present in full reconciliation with the past. Everything is relevant, and nothing is forgotten.

These artists and their counterparts communicate the importance of narrative, of colossal struggle and the great lengths protagonists go to fulfill their missions. They tell of creative diligence, uninhibited imagination, and a reconnection to the core essence of humanity; that is, the capacity to endure life’s most difficult trials in dark times.

Key influences for this mix include Castlevania (The new Netflix Original series released in July, created by American film producer Adi Shankar), Stranger Things Season 1 (in anticipation of Season 2 releasing October 27th!), Game of Thrones (HBO’s masterpiece, particularly season 7 here), and all of the timeless 80s/90s NES masterpieces (in particular: Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania, The Legend of Zelda, and Mega Man series). While I know these creations are not for everyone, I could not hold them in higher regards nor offer more significant recommendations for those adventurous in spirit, mind, and heart.

I should note that No End Darkness is just as much of a political statement as it is a memoir. Perhaps some of the included pieces speak to your own experiences this year; maybe none of them will. It is crucial for me to note that my objective is not to seek agreement nor acceptance from its creation. This project came out of a need to express myself and challenge the forces dictating this very moment. Now that it has been released into the wild, it may very well speak for others too, but not intentionally.

This work is dedicated to my loving parents and brother; for introducing me to the darkness at an early age, and giving me the strength to learn from it and fight it, no matter the cost. Thanks for all of your support along the way. I love you guys.

“The Nightmare Begins” Mix Liner Notes

The Nightmare Begins came into being after one of the best gaming experiences I have had. Early this year The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild released with the Nintendo Switch. Then the idea was fully formed with my viewing of American Horror Story: My Roanoke Nightmare. From those inspirations came a steadier mix filled with atmosphere instead of the bombastic electro that came in years prior.

Zelda BoTW is a video game all about exploration. Within the land of Hyrule, there are no waypoints or map markers telling the player where to go. Every destination you must set on your own by climbing up a high area to see interesting points in the distance. Complete directionlessness is given to you, but the developers trusted they built an interesting enough world that you’d want to explore anyways. In addition, I decided to play with the pro-HUD on, which takes away the minimap and forces you to remember your surroundings and paths. Just getting lost in the world was one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve ever had in a video game. Combined with themes of loss and Zelda’s timeless charm this is a perfect combination for ELECTROWEEN.

Getting LOST was what I took away from this game. The point was to go for a jaunt in the woods and get sidetracked. Find something that sparked your interest? That something could turn out to be a cute Korok (a type of woodland spirit) or a dangerous Guardian that could down you in one hit. Whatever the consequences it was always compelling and fun. Link, the character you play as, wakes up at the beginning of the game to find his own nightmare come to fruition. As Link, you must go through this waking nightmare. I wanted to reflect this in my mix, but with a much darker and slower tone than previous years.

I first came across American Horror Story with my girlfriend, Jessica. She asked me to watch it with her, as it is one of her favorite shows, I was reluctant. Historically, I’ve not been a fan of extremely scary tv or cinema. For those not familiar, American Horror Story changes every season in what story is told and the way in which it is told. We started by watch season 5: Hotel. Other than the performance by Lady Gaga, I didn’t enjoy the show. It was watching this year, season 6: My Roanoke Nightmare that got me hooked. The first half of the season is done in the style of true stories, that is, the “real” people are recounting their horrible time at the Roanoke Manner while actors act out the scenes. The second half of the season is played out like a reality show. The entire season is thrilling, tense, and extremely graphic. The many times I wanted to cover my eyes in horror, I also wanted to dive back into the show night after night.

Yes, a theme of My Roanoke Nightmare was getting lost in the woods. Unlike Zelda, this usually played out poorly for the heroes. Both Zelda and American Horror Story were my two and only influences for this mix. Usually, I have several others, but these two pieces of media were masters of their respective areas, it only felt right to draw from them.

Inside The Nightmare Begins: Different From Years Past

The Nightmare Begins is much slower than previous ELECTROWEEN mixes. It was very difficult for me to find songs that fit into what I wanted at the beginning. I started with a list of about twenty songs I thought could work, knowing that many had to be manipulated in ways I wasn’t quite comfortable with yet. I ended up throwing about half of my original track list out and completely replacing those selections.

The first song I knew I wanted in the mix was Hot Lights by Lany. This song set the tone for what I wanted the mix to be. A plodding medley focused on the somber mood, yet something you could dance to. My usual sources of Bandcamp and Beatport were quite useless at the beginning of my search. Fortunately this year I was exposed to quite a bit of Lana Del Rey, thanks to Jessica. Three of Lana’s songs are in The Nightmare Begins since she captures such a dreamy darkness with her voice. It was a perfect match!

Most, if not all, of the song selections were slowed down between 10 to 40 bpm — even Lana Del Rey’s songs were slowed down. Two songs, Somebody Else and Starboy were fast upbeat club remixes. Both of the song tempos were reduced heavily to give the exact feeling I wanted. Personally, I thought the slowed down versions sounded amazing. Check out the originals below:

I discovered it was difficult to pick out songs because I had to listen to the songs as if they were already slowed down. I had to see if the music would sound good together in a much slower tempo. Fortunately, it worked out for the best and now you can enjoy The Nightmare Begins.

Art and Music: The Voices of The Times

One takeaway we hope our work conveys is the reminder that no art form exists within a vacuum. Every personal creation is subject to the circumstances of the time and age from which it is crafted. In this way, these mixes give voice to an era ravaged by the evil-doing of cowardly men and women, the few seeking to fulfill personal agendas at the expense of the many. Every day has felt darker since their arrival, and the nights longer…

Right now, this Halloween season, we ask Karma to return the light to these lands again soon and conquer the darkness in which we find ourselves living. The great balance will be restored. In the meantime, we suffer through the long night together. Not just as a people, or a nation, but more so as a species that has survived hundreds of thousands of years of pain, grievances and tragedies alike.

As we continue to endure the darkness and nightmares before us and within ourselves, let us never forget the pendulum swings both ways.

Yours,

SW (VII) and MK (Loveless)

ELECTROWEEN 2017's No End Darkness and The Nightmare Begins are musical journeys into the depths of Hell itself. Short on time? Head on over to our ELECTROWEEN Mixes page where we have created an archive for all of our ELECTROWEEN productions.

#2017 #80s #Darkness #Electro Pop #ELECTROWEEN #Gaming #Halloween #Mixes #Nightmares #Rock #Synthwave #VG OST

0 notes