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nightcolorz · 11 months ago

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here for the armand writing tips 🙏🏽

I love u sm anon ur so iconic for this bless u 🙌🙌 I love that u saw me publicly slut shaming @butchybats + extending an invite for him to hmu so that I can info dump about armand and u were like omg I can not pass up this opportunity. Ur so real and this made my day. My bad if this is unhelpful or incoherent lmaoo I am just raw dogging this educational experience. For me writing armand has always come very naturally so this is the first time I’m thinking about this in a way I could explain to other ppl. I hope u get smth out of whatever tangent I’m about to embark on and I sincerely thank u bcus I love this and I love talking about army u r indulging tf out of me in the absolute best way. Also quick disclaimer I am going off of book armand, so tho this may be helpful to show fans (esp cuz show armand doesn’t rlly have an established personality yet) it may not specifically apply. Anyways

I understand why Armand would feel like a difficult character to write bcus part of his whole deal is that he is very strange and unknowable. No one knows what Armand’s deal is, nor does he, so how r u as the writer meant to figure that shit out. He is like a void of a person basically (affectionate). He is barely capable of conscious self reflection, most characters don’t rlly know what to make of him and those that claim to r often wrong. So I get it, feels intimidating. But for me breaking down Armand to his essentials puts it into perspective a bit.

Armand doesn’t really know how to be a person, he is only a Thing when other people are there to give him something to work off of. So he’s a different character depending on who he is interacting with. Armand with Daniel is very different then Armand with Louis, Armand with Lestat is a whole different beast, etc. He is always playing a sort of role, with Daniel he is the boss slash master vampire commanding the mortal. With Louis he is an ancient with the answers Louis has been looking for. But the performance is often cracked, unveiled whether intentionally or not, especially by those Armand loves, so what is beneath that? Well. Kind of a child. Think of a kid in their dad’s shoes. Now imagine the kid is putting on a very deep voice and standing up all straight and professional. Then he trips, and suddenly he starts crying and screaming and yelling for mommy cuz he hurt his knee. That’s Armand, when u get down to it. Like a scary man in a suit who is secretly a little boy on stilts. But wait! There’s more.

Armand is not only an actor, he is also not a very good actor. He’s like those myths about faes replacing human children, very uncanny valley, not rlly a person. So in any given situation, armand is going to be just a little bit off. Just a little odd, a tad wrong. Think of a scenario (it can be sexual you awful heathen, or it could be like, guy is in the grocery store. Or smth) now think of something that would be a little off putting and strange to do in this situation. Chances r this would be in character for armand. I always think of him as something who doesn’t know what it means to be a person, yet is always trying to learn and understand and to pretend, but never really succeeds.

Armand also has conflicting facets of his identity that come into play in different ways and inform how he interacts with different characters. Amadeo is the beginnings of the person that was never able to completely form and grow. So Amadeo is like the normal bits of Armand, the human teenager who’s playful and funny and empathetic, a bit rude, kind of weird but he means well, likes technology. Gives Lestat a light punch on the shoulder when he ruffles his hair, etc. Amadeo rarely plays into sex for Armand, sex is very clinical for him—he approaches sex like an alien. But Amadeo is still there and when Armand is happy or care free some of the unsettlingly oddness goes away, and he seems sort of like a mortal teenager for a moment. The innocence and the moments of childishness are when Armand is most sincere. Though this is fleeting, and he often behaves cold and distant and inhuman. What I like to remember when I write Armand is that he is not unfeeling, tho he pretends to be. He acts unfeeling but it’s a mask, beneath the mask his unfiltered self is extremely feeling and emotional and sensitive. He’s as much of a cry baby as Lestat, he’s just better at hiding it.

Andrei is also there, but he is much subtler, and he’s more so the embodied longing in armand that never really goes away. There is a need for answers and for knowledge and for guidance in armand always, and that’s Andrei, searching for his God or his family or his home or his culture, that were taken from him and never adequately replaced. Armand clings to purposes and things and people because he never learned how to fill that void left by the loss Andrei experienced, and then again Amadeo experienced due to Marius and the cult. He is the culmination of so many years of a child’s growth being repeatedly stunted by adults with selfish purposes, a child who keeps getting beaten down or molded into smth different by ppl who want to make him into smth new, until he ends up a creature without a concept of who he is at all. So he’s fractured almost, not rlly with a consistent identity since he was never permitted to grow one. Just a culmination of a bunch of identities he took on throughout the years. Im sure this sounds complicated, but the great thing about being a writer with a character like this is he may be a void, but he is also a canvas. Armand is so multifaceted that u could do sm with him and it wouldn’t be ooc

So in simpler terms, a good rule of thumb when writing armand, is to think of him as a guy who is a ball of extreme feeling and pain and joy and emotion that is being masked by a cold demeanor, that is often slightly off, a little wrong, cuz it’s first untrue. He is always trying to find a purpose to fill the void that he is, and he never rlly does for very long.

So when it comes to portraying this? Lol uhhhh. There are some many layers of armand that exist and it’s up to you to decide which ones u want to portray in ur scenario. Say for example, ur writing a fic where armand and Lestat argue. You have to evaluate Lestat’s affect on armand, his closeness with him, the context, etc, and decide what parts of armand would slip out. If I was writing a fic like this I would think ok. So Lestat is like a trigger button for armand, they hate each other but they love each other, is a lot of big emotions and passion, and Lestat also reminds armand of the most vulnerable parts of himself that he is trying to keep under wraps. So Lestat and armand arguing? Likely armand is going to be cold and distant, but not for long, bcus quickly Lestat will get under his skin and cause him to revert to unmasked emotion ball screaming crying. How about, uh, Daniel and armand go on a fluffy date devils minion era. I’d write armand as odd, strange even, curious and excited but sort of cold and distant in a confusing way. Little slips of sincere childlike joy and emotion come out but they r brief.

I hope this is making sense lmao.

It’s much easier when writing armand, esp if it’s smth ur not confident in, to write from someone else’s pov. Armand’s pov is a tough one, even for me. It’s not that his language or sentences r strange, it’s just that the way he thinks of the world and himself is so specific and unique that u gotta think a lot to replicate it.

Armand, especially pre TVA, is nearly incapable of self reflection. He is so dissociated from his own experiences he sees his memories and life in fragments rather then events leading into each other that inform a larger context and “theme”. For example, in devils minion he explains to Daniel that he couldn’t explain what a time of his life “was like” because he can’t conceptualize concepts like that, tho he could tell Daniel if it rained on a specific date, cuz that is smth concrete to him. he just couldn’t identify what smth is like bcus he doesn’t reflect on his emotions and his experiences in a way that would allow him to make a judgement like that.

He just goes through life and doesn’t look back. This is a hard pov to write from cuz these r basic capabilities a first person narrator must have for a story to make sense lmfao! Armand couldn’t say, “the day was a bad one bcus this happened and I was sad.” Especially not “this experience affected me this way and now I this this and this.” However, if u want to write from Armand’s pov u can integrate these ideas into it while retaining this part of Armand’s character.

Tho armand can not self reflect, and his way of thinking and experiencing is a very bare bones simplistic way (think of armand saying “my soul hurt” in TVA narration then not explaining lmfao, that’s the extent of his self awareness and abilities to identify his emotions) u can convey complex ideas through his simplistic approach. Through context clues, symbolism (armand loves symbolism), and word choice + description, it’s cool and possible to convey armand having a moment etc without using ur first person tools to have him self reflect. For example, if I were to write from Armand’s pov were he is having like, a traumatic flashback, instead of writing “the moment forced me to remember insert traumatic time here and my heart raced as it came back to me suddenly, and I felt like I was back there” or whatever, I’d write “flashes of red appaeared b4 my vision like many stabbing knives, and it felt as if I was engulfed in an ocean of red suddenly, unable to escape the waves, the blood, those voices of many pasts” whatever yada yada. Cuz red armand considers synopsis with pain and trauma (he tends to see it b4 his eyes when he’s in pain synesthesia king) ocean reminds him of dying of starvation in the brothel as a kid (he described it as the only thing he payed attention to as he died, the lapping sounds of the water). Past, etc. bad example I hope u get it 😭

U just gotta rlly think for armand pov lol. So if ur nervy about writing armand anyway I recommend starting or practicing with writing from someone else’s perspective about him. Daniel is a very good character to do this with, bcus his perception of armand is relatively accurate and he is a very bluntly descriptive and self reflective character who understands himself and others very well. Lestat is also very self reflective and his perception of armand is pretty easy to write imo lol. If u just write some shit like “armand was beautifully broken, like a discarded doll in an antique shop, and I wished sadly that he’d allow me to repair him.” Then you’ve got it down pretty well lmfao.

When it comes to more specific less big picture stuff, like how to write armand talking or what does armand fuck like Ryan save me from this hell, I recommend reading his scenes a Shit Ton until it’s rlly burned into ur brain like me. I don’t know if I can adequately explain how armand talks, it’s very blunt—he’s very blunt but simultaneously very flowery. Remember he is a guy who is trying to be distant, and doesn’t rlly understand how being normal works, but he also has a vibrant inner life and a shit ton of emotion waiting to boil over beneath the surface. Yah. Lmfao.

I’m sorry this was so weird and confusing, I hope it was interesting or helpful lol. I’m so tired lmfao.sorry it turned in to meta 😭 It was hard trying to come up with advice for a prompt so non specific but I had a hella great time and ily for this anon. If anyone wants to ask me more specific questions about writing armand I would be so happy. Xoxoxo love y’all sm loool

#armand #tvc #the vampire chronicles #vampire chronicles #vc #iwtv #interview with the vampire #the vampire armand #armand vc #armand iwtv #iwtv armand #Armand #armand le russe

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oetscop · 9 months ago

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it hit me some of my newer followers probably dont know about the petscop "logbook!" (i dont remember why i called it that)

since august of 2023, ive been taking detailed notes on petscop. not continuously since sometimes ill take a couple weeks off while i soak things in, but ive so far taken notes up to like 2/3 of the way thru petscop 11. its been quite the undertaking. every single time i rewatch it, i find more i didnt notice the last time, or stuff that didnt make sense without some context in another video later on down the line.

ive had to add addendums over pages and the whole thing is full of sticky notes. my friend called it my mad scientist notebook bc it rly does just look crazy lol. i started it mostly for another friend since we were originally analyzing it together, so theres a lot of spelling errors.

the sticky notes are usually from where i thought of smth when i didnt have the notebook on me, i actually have a shit ton of stuff i wrote on receipt paper bc id still be thinking abt it at work. some stuff here isnt too accurate anymore, but going back to correct things why this has been taking me so long. 🥲

im in so deep that ive had to get another notebook, ive read scientific papers for this and everything. from psychology to the spatial uncanny valley paper to PHYSICS. ROTATIONAL PHYSICS. i am physically incapable of being normal about petscop

#eyes #petscop #petscop analysis #can you tell i got sick of writing out nightmare masterclass every single time i wanted to reference his videos #didnt wanna just call him david like im on a first name basis with the guy or something 😭#these were also mostly for another friend to look at but i might just scan and post the whole thing #like edited down to the important stuff at least

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violentdevotion · 1 year ago

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wait do you have a fav boys character yet ?

i really like butcher but i feel like that's a basic answer and also the wrong answer. in another world id like frenchie but i can't get over how much i hate the actor. I love maeve theres never a moment she's on screen where im thinking get this woman outta here she's always entertaining to me. i like starlight but (and this is probably a bit nasty to say) there's smth a little uncanny valley about her sometimes where when she's talking im not listening but staring at her face trying to see what features throwing me off. I hate ashley but the actress played an insufferable character in jessica jones too and I really appreciate her ability to play The Most annoying woman you know.

centrist answer i like them all (except stormfront. hated her before i even knew she was a nazi. she was on insta live and i was waiting for her to explode and die) but my fave would have to be butcher bc i find im rooting for him the most and constantly justifying his actions. but sometimes karl urbans accent pisses me off. also black noir but he doesn't Do anything so it's hard to have him as a fave bc he's barely there.

#avds.got.mail #kieran tag #ik men like soldier boy so ill wait to see him do some evil disgusting horrendous thing that would make most ppl go ew he sucks but make #cis men ages 18-35 go wow hes soo cool #i like kimiko too but i dont think im allowed to say shes my fave when sometimes when shes like i dont want to be a weapon anymore :( im #mad at her and thinking get over it. i like mm but hes kinda this mother hen character and i dont rly tend to favour characters who are the #rational voice of reason like can we please get some conflict here #hughies whatever. i rly like his dad though lets go simon pegg #in the 7: homelander sucks. i find a train fun but his athlete storyline wasnt compelling to me personally bc the more i thought about it #the more i thought his superpower sucks. despite it all i find the deep kinda fun. i like that hes a scientologist.#didnt like transparent. was meh about lamplighter. didnt like whats his name sonicboom?? had a personal vendetta against that hijabi supe #we saw for like 2 seconds girl what are you doing there !!!!!! why are you playing into the diversity market !!!!#like edgar but in the way everyone likes giancarlo esposito's characters #nadia is whatever she was always meh to me even as a background character but i rly love the idea of having the superpower to explode #peoples heads with your mind i cant help but think of the xmen and think about if there was a mutant with the ability to explode heads with #their mind and that was their only ability and what a hard fucking sell that would be for xavier #(ive never read the xmen comics and have only seen some of the movies so i like to imagine charles xavier as lilo in the lilo and stitch #cartoon where every episode she would find an experiment with a unique function to destroy and would have to find it a home where it could #help instead. like yeah this experiment fattens people up and eats them lets put him in a resturant or smth #but with mutants #this mutant makes ice lets send him to a fridge company. this mutant explodes heads lets.... erm.#)

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c0rvidbones · 9 months ago

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hello I love your art a whole lot!! tell me more about Wit (he's hot and evil and I require more juicy details) and Ruby (his design goes so hard) please?

oh my god hi i did not expect to come back to 20 notifs. (/pos) youve given me a much needed ego boost tonight thank you. is it bad i cant remember having ever posted ruby art?? ive only ever gotten One comm of him which is a crime, my violent martyr son should rly get more love than i give him 😔 but thank you for asking! buckle up this is gonna be a long fuckin post ♡ everything under the cut including relevant character art

WIT

behold, all art of wit i have including one i havent posted here bc i never actually finished it and the wip of him being a silly giggly boy. pls know i came up with him like MAYBE a month ago. two, tops.

SO wit is actually a what-if au of another oc of mine, his name is doodle. doodle (seen below) is a very robin-hood-esque oc, honorable thief and kindhearted, swashbuckler rogue that dual wields rapiers bc hes insane. but hes insane in like a normal way. he was a horrible child but he did grow out of it and its rare to see him w his hair down so pardon me making him look absurdly pretty in that one.

as you can see there are some (but not MANY) differences between the two. kid wit does have the starry hands/peets im just forgetful dont @ me about it djdjdj

ANYWAYS so the what-if of the au that wit is, essentially, little singular things didn't happen to people in that au world. it goes like so;

wit: never met his childhood best friend when he was a freshly injured orphan. was alone from the (elf) ages of 0-16. ended up studying magic (illusion wizard) since he didn't have someone to lean on for that sort of thing.

laika (wit's mom): never truly broke out of an archfey's madness curse. stuck with a very twisted version of the spell Tasha's Hideous Laughter burned into her mind. everything is funny and if it's scary? even funnier. she died briefly. shes back now, but still madnessed.

perseverance (wit's dad): never saved his mother from a death blow in the be-all end-all fight to save his home. was held back by someone who he thought was a friend, killed that person and then ultimately spiralled so hard that he became a lich. may or may not have accidentally killed laika.

something something one decision can change your whole life, me and my friend loved playing with that concept.

okay now that you know a lil lore/history i can dive into what wit is like.

as a kid (drawn with the short megafloofy hair) he's very mischievous and bastardly, almost always smiling or grinning but it's more to lean into the uncanny valley effect his eyes cause than out of any actual joy or anything. he doesn't Blink and he knows it unnerves people because he also has a freakishly high insight (i think its like a +9 or smth??? at level 9??). he loves to come up with fucked up spells, like. for example i saw a silly post on here the other day that was very jokingly having a wizard cast a spell of "10000 bricks until you die" but then i was immediately aware wit would (1) come up with that spell, make it functional, and have it unfortunately obliterate everyone that gets hit with it, and (2) he would call it Wit's Bricks which i think is fuckin funny. he would also come up with spells of like. cause heatstroke. boil all fluid in your body. FREEZE all fluid in your body. he's a little freak with extremely low empathy for those he isn't connected to with blood ties. that said, he's kind to his family (albeit very blunt and will call them out if theyre being stupid) and inquisitive. he DID look his dad in the eye when he met him for the first time and went "are you dead?" which. again, hilarious, but BRUTALLY blunt. he then called his dad cool because yes his dad is now a lich and therefore undead. he's a little freak but he's still a kid and that is ultimately his saving grace, what small child isn't a little freak.

as an adult (long ponytail) i get a feel of him being aro and using romance as a way to manipulate people. he's definitely still not a good person and far more stoic than he was as a child. also he most definitely maintains a constant illusion to make it seem like his eyes are always closed, which lends an air of mystery to the strange elf that seems to always be standing right behind every throne in every kingdom of faerun. i say this because i like to think he would become what's called a King's Wit, which is like a combo of royal advisor, court mage, and "guy the regent has insult other nobility since insults are beneath the reigning royal". he uses all of that to his advantage, gaining the ear and trust of every single person of noble blood that is part of any royal or ruling court, and he will bend and twist their choices so subtly that they won't realise he led them to ruin until it's already too late. which is his ultimate plan. he's STILL somewhat a robin hood style of character, but he takes it a bit further and with far less kindness to the nobility. he guts their coffers completely and every hoarded coin down to the last copper inevitably will land its way conveniently into the lap of the common folk. he does take a healthy chunk for himself - did you know being a wizard was EXPENSIVE in dnd btw? i didnt until i made wit - but most of it is for the local citizens. he does this everywhere he goes if he sees that it needs to happen. fucker topples kingdoms For Fun, because he never gets caught or credited with the ruin he leaves behind himself. he's awful. he probably still comes up with fucked up spells and he manipulates his way into wherever he wants to be. i love him.

---

RUBY

behold! @polterpumpkin drew my (not very) little guy for me! this is part of a greater set but this is the fully coloured one and arguably my fave bc it captures the absolute batshit energy ruby brings to the table.

ruby is a tiefling that was born in a lab. voluntarily, his parents participated in a sort of study that wanted to eval why it is tieflings could be born to non-tiefling parents. (both his parents are half-orcs, interestingly!) he participated in it up to a certain point, before he got sick of being poked and prodded and Watched. that's when he demanded to be released and, when he wasn't, both his parents helped him escape, unfortunately leaving his other two tiefling-born siblings behind in the process. both parents Died helping him escape, and he was embittered as is by the whole study bs, and then to have his parents die Saving him? it left him with this sort of hole he didn't know how to feel.

so he fills that hole with every vice he finds agreeable. he drinks, he fights, and he drinks again. he's a drunken monk, and one full of unbridled rage and a death wish. he isn't my happiest oc but he isn't my worst off (that would be talisman bloodhunter). he's constantly seeking a grand and worthy cause to die for, literally. he's a wannabe martyr, because he doesn't think he has anything to live for. no lovers, no friends, no allies, MAYBE a coworker or two on the occasion he's needed (he is so not needed most of the time, because it isn't often any job needs an angry monk tief to glare around the place). he has just those two sides to himself - party animal and underground drunk brawler - because he doesn't want to think about the pain underneath them both. he's tragic in a very human way, hilariously enough, but he's not a bad person. even if he's being dragged by the tail to do a job, he's ultimately going to be helpful and he ALWAYS keeps his team alive. he'll grumble about it but he'll do it, and if you thank him he brushes it off, muttering something or other about how it's just his job, don't Thank him for that. i think having a friend would Fix him but fuck if i know what would get past his thick skin 😔

i dont get to play or write ruby really, not for any specific reason other than the dnd games im in have been going for So long, and that i havent really been super inspired to write him. but i love him! literally my car is named after him! i have so many feelings for him and i hope one day i get to play/write him so he can be more fleshed out.

#c0rvidspeaks #ask me about my ocs #and-a-pidgey-in-a-wepear-tree #ruby #wit dalca #oc #i was almost done w this like an hour ago but the fucking APP CRASHED and ate my whole reply #also the tags is where i realise i never gave ruby a last name oh noo

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meimeikyu · 4 months ago

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smth that i adore in horror but also is what gets me the most is like. distorted people. theres horror where the horror is clearly a person in some form (slashers, anything with serial killers really, ghosts that r clearly people) n then theres horror where the creatures are very very nonhuman (cant think of anything off the top of my head but like demon stuff often or just anything where thats clearly NOT a person)

but what always gets me most is the uncanny valley of they look almost like a person. maybe not even almost. but enough like a person that you can see they are wrong. stuff like mandela catalog, really any horror inspired from that, the stranger in tma (also the distortion),, the smile horror movie my new one ive found the unknown killer from dbd,,,, where they are almost people but not. freaks me out the most and its my fav

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prodigaldaughteralice · 5 months ago

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hot take I cannot fucking watch vtubers they just fall right in the uncanny valley for me

a couple times now someone's linked a Let's Play or smth that sounded like great fun but there's this spooky-ass 3D model in the corner not-quite-syncing to the voice and it just makes my skin crawl

just let me hear your voice and look at what you're playing I don't need to see your face if you don't wanna show it that's fine just why put this freaky ass computer puppet there!!!

#pd alice personal #I really like IRL dolls and puppets too lmao idk why 3D animated ones spook me so bad #trying to remind myself I can post personal taste opinions about things without having to feel ashamed of disliking anything #but bc I just felt sick to my stomach when seeing an online friend call something I love 'overrated' literally like 10 minutes ago #I feel the need to add a disclaimer:#this is my personal opinion and my personal reaction there is no judgment attached to it you do you

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catgirl-kaiju · 6 months ago

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hey this is like a wild request. but could you uh. tag the chocolate guy as like. "the chocolate guy" or smth. hes very talented but he gives me uncanny valley squicky feelings big time for some reason ?? no big deal if not, its not anything other than unsettling, just figured id ask lol

i can try! i often forget to tag things, tho, so feel free to remind me if u see any chocolate man videos on my blog untagged in the future!

but it's not so weird that you feel that way, i get it. he grins really big in his videos and doesn't seem to blink much. he also makes a fair amount of unblinking eye contact and tends to move at a more sped up pace. i know most of this is in service of keeping the videos short and snappy for tiktok, but i can also see how these elements would unnerve folks

#ask #anon

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norfkid · 10 months ago

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was tagged by @patronsaintofdesire to answer these questions and tag nine people you want to get to know better! thank you, malina :]

last song: as of writing this, marie doucer, marie colère by manon hollander from the john wick 4 soundtrack. it's essentially a french version of paint it black by the rolling stones & it's a banger

favourite colour: i always say yellow (like a gold yellow, #ffc000), but by that i usually mean the combination of black & yellow. i'm also pretty fond of the greyish-blue i use on my blog (#7b9e9a)

last film/tv show: the last thing i watched in full was point break (ty andrew @busaikuknee for initially convincing me to watch it, "keanu reeves has to learn how to surf to solve robberies" is a truly baffling concept & no one will ever do it again). i say "in full" bc also been revisiting a lot of clips from ip man 1-4 so in my head it feels like i've rewatched those too

sweet/spicy/savoury: savoury. i don't have sweet things very often, and while i can tolerate fairly spicy food i just don't enjoy it that much (i'm a massive disappointment to my family)

relationship status: philosophically speaking, aren’t we all single?

last thing i googled: cozmo and vector robots! i saw a video somewhere of these guys and got so excited. they're these rly cute little WALL-E -esque robot friends made by an american robotics/ai startup called Anki, who specialised in robotics technology for children. i looked online to see if they were still around, but they've been discontinued since the company went bankrupt in April 2019 <\3

also related, there's this article from 2019 i read called Discovery of the Uncanny Valley that briefly mentions the Vector robots, but also discusses other examples of technology made in the past that have these human-like attributes given to them. it's a light read & there are some links to other similar articles at the end if you're into that stuff :]

current obsession: well, wrestling is always a given. i've fallen out with njpw for months now, but i've been watching more pro wrestling noah instead & i'm loving it tbh

apart from that, i've been watching a lot of Donnie Yen films bc i'm a little bit a lot in love with the old man (60 y/o btw & looks like that, fucking wild man). and by proxy i've been learning a bit about chinese martial arts (wing chun, in particular (a southern chinese style that influenced guys like ip man, bruce lee, jackie chan, sammo hung, donnie yen, etc etc)) through his interviews and stuff.

it's funny that i'm always so interested in "sports" i can't ever physically do & they always have some element of storytelling/performance and coordination... the martial arts to stunt performance to choreography to dance pipeline is all just so fucking fascinating.

i think chinese martials arts has gripped me bc all these 70s/80s/90s films made in china rely so much on pulling off wild stunts and fights without the budget for cgi and equipment. not to discredit the guys that do their own stunts in hollywood, but it's rare and always cause for celebration... in chinese filmmaking it's so normal. and as a result their performances are just so real and visceral. like, i watch wrestling ffs, ofc i'm drawn to films where storytelling and physicality intertwine. you construct intricate rituals etc etc

on that note, i'm really excited by the new wave of stunt performers turned film directors we've been getting. guys like Yuen Woo-Ping (Matrix Reloaded, Drunken Master) are already established in coordinating incredible scenes and stunts, but more recently: Chad Stalenski (the John Wick films), David Leitch (Bullet Train, Atomic Blonde), Sam Hargrave (Extraction), etc. there's a sort of magic lost in all these mainstream big budget marvel superhero and hollywood action films where fight scenes are so easily ruined by a thousand jumpcuts and wiring and fantasy, but these guys are bringing back that special smth, that authenticity and grittiness (not only in their choreography, but in the filmmaking and cinematography of those fight scenes too). it's so refreshing & i’m fucking nerd sorry

not so much an obsession, but i've also developed a new, old appreciation for woodwork (carving, whittling, joinery, etc) & in another life i think i would have loved to be a carpenter...

last book: admittedly, i don't read. tho i got a joblot of old hellblazer comics from ebay recently and have been meaning to revisit them

looking forward to: not much really... i find it hard to think about the distant future & i don't get that sense of anticipation and motivation from long-term plans. maybe getting this third and last year of uni over and bloody done with? which is incidentally something i'm absolutely dreading (“you need to get a job, you need to get a job, you need to get—”)

#sorry i haven't tagged anyone i've been sitting on this in my drafts for too long sdkjd #tag games

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diaxmachina · 1 month ago

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october - albums of the week (1)

fine - rocky top ballads

ramona lisa - arcadia

so klarity - volume 1

clarissa connelly - world of work

molina - when you wake up

hypnotic, haunting, hallowed...

these women sound like echoes, they tap into the bits of my bones that pulse, the marrow. they lure me in with their voices-- whisper secret things. there is something ancient about their music, the experience of a particular feeling as eternal as a kate bush ballad. they make songs about memory, history, old tales.

from fine (pronounced FEEN-UH) comes "coasting", a mysterious blend of trip-hop and dream pop. it sounds like the languid gaze of concealed emotion. fine is nebulous with desire; she delivers a tremulous kind of anticipation for love. "coasting" is the follow-up to lead single "days incomplete", my personal addiction off the album, and a hushed song of uncertainty and longing. go on a relaxing stroll with this album. look at some ducks in a pond, or cross a hill in a park. walk around your city and see your loved one behind every corner and on every bar stool.

from molina and avant-pop luminary ml buch, "organs," arrives like a resounding hearbeat. the melody of the song is elastic, it rebounds like a pulse. moody, springy synth pads and hybrid organic-electronic drums fuel a tune that investigates the function of organs and the inexplicably obscure. i felt like this song spoke to my insides, called to the beat my body sets for itself. the synthetic strings made for an unfamiliar but comforting listen every time--give it a listen on the morning commute, or better yet, on a night time bike ride. set your pace, and hear "organs" match it. (molina's debut album is set to arrive in three days !!)

ramona lisa has been around for a long time. she's been my autumn girl for the last two years, but arcadia's been walking me to the tram for the last week. "izzit true what they tell me?" is a song about uncertainty, doubt, the idea of trust. though it unfolds like plainsong question? no answer, it devolves into a wintry electronic soundscape: some pretty sickly a.g cook vibes. in the end, she is lost to her question, ambient cicadas rise to answer her plea. the album is dreamy and ethereal to be sure, but it is punctuated by textured melodies for caroline to float on. experience this album if you're into the experimental and mythological, the uncanny valley of cinematic sound. listen to this with headphones, maybe surrounded by candlelight and some sort of handcraft. let her transport you

so klarity's trance-like goth gaze spins melodies of forlorn devotion. her sounds are totally stoner-grunge-panoptic-sensuality-corrupted-beauty-chic. i love listening to this album in the darkened fall, but more specifically in a partially emptied bathtub. whisper your secrets into the water, watch them disappear. don't forget to play volume 1 softy from your old ipod touch.

world of work is (first of all, don't read my review of this, go on pitchfork or smth) musically, it's wondrous-- a tumbling rush of beautiful and terrifying chords, medieval melodic lines, modern production playfulness, 70s folk, and a good number of genuinely jawdropping sonic flourishes, many of which involve a recording of bells from a church she appears to enjoy hanging out in for reasons that extend beyond mere gothicism. i don't think i could describe the sound of guitar and classical piano fusing anyway. listen to it on the floor or your room. do not move. listen.

#Spotify

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