#its just. its like a longform art piece to me

[thescarlettdetective]

I think my favorite thing about the muppet joker blog is that even outside of the larger concept/bit the individual posts still hit phenomenally out of context

[writingwithcolor]

Author with cultural disconnect: How do I write without making it seem as if I hate my own heritage?

Anonymous asked:

I’m a white-passing Asian author, and I’ve never felt all that connected with my heritage. My current story centers on a fairy (re: fantasy-world POC) child and ends with her realizing that her parents are toxic af and her human best friend’s family takes her in. This is the perfect opportunity to sort through my own issues with my heritage and finally convince my monkey-brain that it’s okay to not know how to cook Vietnamese food or celebrate tet or speak Vietnamese… But I also realize that if I’m not careful, this could easily slip into “Hey, I hate my heritage and so should you!” So how can I stop that from happening?

Writing for yourself first, not an audience

I ask you a simple question: why put pressure on yourself to have any sort of non-offensive messaging for a story that hasn’t been drafted yet and is to convince your monkey brain it’s okay to exist as yourself?

That seems like the fastest way to stop the story from being actually cathartic and instead a performance art piece when you already feel hung up on performing as “properly” part of your culture.

As I said in Working Through Identity Issues and Other Pitfalls of Representation, not all stories you write need to be for public consumption. Especially stories you’re using for your own self-processing and therapy, because you’re trying to get a cathartic moment that is rewriting your own story.

At what point does the public need to be involved in that?

I do understand the compulsion to want to post—I have definitely posted some Questionable™ material in my drive to get validation for feeling the way I do, wanting people to witness me and say “same.” It’s a powerful urge. Sometimes it’s worked, but most of the time it’s just made me feel horrifically exposed.

But you really do not have to post in public to get any sort of validation. Set up a groupchat with friends if you want the cheerleading and witnessing—people who will know your story and give you good-faith interpretations and won’t accuse you of anything. Honestly I’d suggest setting up this groupchat anyway; as someone who just got one again after quite a few years without it, my productivity has skyrocketed from being around supportive people.

Let the monkey brain have its monkey brain moment and shut off the concept the story is for the public. Shut off the concept of performing for an unknown audience. It’s for you. Be authentic, no matter how bad it would look to outsiders. They’re not reading it. Part of getting catharsis, sometimes, is being the worst version of yourself, somewhere nobody else can see it.

Deciding to publish the work

If, after you do write it, you find that you actually do want to polish it up and put it somewhere… edit it. Rewrite it entirely if that’s what it takes. Take the story through the same drafting process every story needs to go through, ripping out the unfortunate implications as you go.

Editing can be its own form of healing, as you try to figure out what this character would need to not be hateful. As you realize, once this longform journal entry is out of your head, what was bothering you now that you can see it pinned down on a page. But you absolutely do not need to write with the intention of editing in that healing. When I’ve tried, it’s fallen flat.

The healing will come from being yourself, no public involved, and writing about your feelings in their rawest form. Anything else is extra.

There’s no point in trying to put guard rails on the drafting process, not for a deeply personal piece. And by the time that drafting process is done, you’ll likely have specific scenarios and contexts that you can ask about, and you might even have ideas on how to fix it yourself once the story has a shape to it.

This is 100% a situation where there’s no real sense in idea workshopping something in the plotting stage. You’re doing something for you. Decide if it’s for public consumption later (while acknowledging “no” is a perfectly valid answer), and only figure out how to make the story not overtly harmful if you decide to put it out into the public.

~ Leigh

[goron-king-darunia]

Eggtober 19th, 2023

"Vampire Season" Pavlova with Strawberry Jam.

(Clip Studio Paint, Gouache Brush. 7 colors. 45 minutes)

Back on my bullshit with all shiny and no cast shadows and no scene. I just like SOFT egg and item in void. It speaks to me. I will learn to draw full scenes eventually. I'm getting a biiiit better at rendering complex forms but because it's all organic shapes there's a lot of wiggle room. I will learn harder stuff, eventually. But Eggtober is for fun and after drawing the Cipriani cake yesterday I was like "I liked drawing the meringue but trying to toast the edges is hard and trying to render a full scene is a challenge. I wanna do that again, but just the fun parts. At the point again where I'm having to learn and it's awkward because I just wanna goof off. When I finish more personal projects after Eggtober I might come back for Drawcember and finish some OLD AS BALLS pieces I started as a teen and use them for longform learning and subject studies. But the perk is... if I can draw a pavlova like this, it means I can draw roses too. Which means you're gonna see me painting them on random shit eventually. XD Hopefully @lady-quen's breadbugs don't get too sticky with the syrupy jam!

Big thanks to @quezify for organizing eggtober. Is it obvious that my favorite part of the egg is the yolk and that my favorite part of an egg dish is any shiny stuff I can put on it?

Speedpaint Time!

Not a 1 to 1 render. I try not to copy 100% because part of art is learning to draw what you see. But when I do that 1 to 1, I call that a study. When I make art that isn't a study, my goal is to capture but iterate. And I thought that one big drip up front looked much more dramatic by its lonesome than with the other drip. Also extra shiny. But I did take a lot of direct inspiration from this one. I like that big floppy petal-looking stripe of meringue on top and those creases at the bottom where the edges overlap and make little channels... so hopefully I rendered all the most dramatic pieces well for you all!

[damoselcastel]

Writer Interview game

Considering myself tagged by @queenlua

When did you start writing?

Jr. High is when I started sitting down and really going at it. I'd done visual art things since I was 4 years-old, but storytelling is something I'd always enjoyed. Now I consider myself faster at writing than as an artist, oof.

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

Slice-of-lifes that dive deep into IRL topics, I have a lot of fun consuming. Modern set stuff I can enjoy, but usually don't want to write about (mostly cause I'll get neurotic about getting every little thing right)

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

Not by name, though I've been told my prose is 'lyrical', 'poetic', or just compared to older period books. Frankly, there was one creative workshop wherein a classmate was like "Oh, you talk like this too" when referring to my writing, and I just sat there all "?????" Personally, I remember loving Stephen Crane going ham with metaphors, but my childhood was most shaped by old fairytale collections.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

A desk dominating a corner of my bedroom houses my desktop. I'll bring my laptop to bed, or the living room couch (I should try bringing it outside the house more often)

What’s your most effective way to muster up a muse?

When I'm interacting with a piece of media with a similar idea or, uh... isn't up to snuff with what they've done with a premise. "I can do it better" has fueled some of my longer projects. But mostly, chasing intriguing ideas.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you?

Culture clash - the nature of harmony - different people making an effort to interact. Those I've found crop up in my romances A LOT (one day I'll get my monster husband ideas down in longform prose). Not too surprising coming from a bi-racial, multicultural home.

What is your reason for writing?

Currently, for fun. An expressive outlet. Half a decade ago there was a lot of interaction it brought, in a mostly good way. Now that my expenses are bigger than ever, I'm kicking the can of "can this make money?" down the road.

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

Mood setting, description, worldbuilding, and dialogue. If someone likes purpler prose, that's where I indulge. I've honestly been doing various experiments to try and get quicker about finishing fics... alas, I'm simply wordy and slow.

How do you feel about your own writing?

I honestly like it all, even old stuff. That stuff is a snapshot in time that present me can't recreate, so it's fun in its own way even with mistakes (like trying to stuff TOO MUCH in one go). Although I do want to take it to the next step...need to get a manuscript DONE.

tagging @mrmissmrsrandom @dithorba @mannatea @arthoure

and anyone else that wants to participate

[fandomsoda]

Ok so let me start off by saying that this post is probably gonna be very clunky simply due to the fact that I’m addressing a two day old situation and I’m doing so without it being directly prompted,, please bear with me.

So, late Tuesday night an anon expressed concerns over the ways that I’ve brushed over the topic of aromanticism in the past, expressing that I only ever seemed to mention partnering aros and that it came off as if I was saying all of that only in service of shipping. These things of course are not things I intended, but are not unfounded claims nonetheless.

My initial response to that ask was definitely not great, I came off as very customer service-y and expressed that I felt as if it was exaggerated (simply due to the way it was phrased as “constantly”). It didn’t help that it was like 11 pm and for some reason my dumb ass didn’t actually go back and look through stuff, purely going off my notoriously bad memory.

Needless to say, this wound up coming off as dismissive and insufficient, and thus I’m making this post now as I have processed everything and want to give the proper actual respose (and in a sense, apology) that this situation is deserving of.

After going back through past posts, while definitely far from constant, I have been able to observe that whenever aromanticism was brought up I definitely had a really bad tendancy of only mentioning partnering aros and it definitely came off as scummy now that I look back at it. This was never something I consiously did, but it was shitty and potentially harmful nonetheless and should have been something I was being more aware about. I’ve already been trying to boost aromantic voices lately since the Valentine season’s been around, but doing that and centering non-partnering aros especially is going to be top priority from here on out.

Now let me real quick circle back around and address the shipping bit, as that’s like its whole own thing-

Now I definitely stand by the fact that I was never only talking about stuff in service of a ship, at least not consiously, but the topic often came up in reference to or alongside shipping and thus I acknowledge that that extrapolation is not at all a difficult one to make. And the fact that I even acted in a way that resembled that is not good.

And discussions with my friends have brought to my attention that I have not been making a number of things nearly clear enough and that whole mess is entirely on me so let’s get some things straight-

First of all, due to the more fluid attitude I’ve seen a lot of people have towards it, I never realized just how strictly romantic most people view shipping. Maybe I’m just a little bit dense but for the longest time, the term “ship” being used in a more platonic sense seemed more common than it actually is. And for the longest time, I’ve viewed shipping simply as “I think these characters have a nice dynamic and that they should be affectionate with one another”. But it has been a violent wakeup call recently that that is far from the most common thought process.

And in this I’ve come to realize that I’ve not been clarifying or establishing the fact that most if not all my ships are queerplatonic in some fashion because romance is a concept I’ve never fully grasped (not gonna go too deep into that here though, my weird perception of relationships is a topic for another day-). And things involving aro characters have especially always been queerplatonic in my mind.

I have not been nearly as clear enough about that as I should be and have failed to mention or establish that as much as I should. So from here on out, im going to be much more clear about that to avoid future misunderstanding or sending the wrong message.

It should also probably be noted that it’s very hard to convey these things given the type of art I do. I don’t properly write nor do longform comics, so it’s much harder to convey the internal complexities of things in the simple individual pieces my art often is.

Characters are also often left unpaired and single in my mind, but once again these types of things are hard to convey visually and the bonds between characters usually inspire art more often.

So most of this has just been a matter of “it’s all been up in my head but my ability to convey it or actually make content of it has been extremely lacking”. And again, in a sense, that’s on me.

Overall I know my handling of this situation has been incredibly scuffed from an outside view, for a lot of this I’ve been just very confused and all over the place so the few things I have said have been poorly summarized and basically just me completely tripping over myself. I’ve been processing things and getting things in order privately though, as you can probably tell. And in that I have come to the conclusion that I must take accountability for my actions as it is truly the only correct course of action here. I’m sorry to those this whole mess has upset, I hope this post is enough to explain everything.

I’m not super certain how to end this off but that’s about it, please let me know of any futher concerns. I’m genuinely sorry for all this mess.

[kikicandoit]

Hi! I'm Kiki!

Hello and welcome to my little corner of the Internet! ^-^

My name is Kiki, pronouns she/her, and I’m a writer and illustrator currently based in the Canada. I usually write longform original fiction, though I’ve also dabbled in gaming journalism—you may have heard some of the scripts I’ve written for YouTube channels like Did You Know Gaming and TripleJump! I also write and illustrate comics in addition to character illustrations and commissioned works (commission info can be found here!).

As for media, I love movies, video games, and books! I usually prefer things within the “genre fiction” label: fantasy, sci-fi, horror, et cetera. I’m not usually great at keeping up with current things, but I always love discovering a new favorite among older titles.  I like monster movies (especially black and white ones!) and curling up under a blanket with a good mystery novel. When it comes to games, I typically like RPGs, fighting games, and adventure games the most.

Before I go any further, here’s some ground rules for my blog:

Transphobia of any kind will not be tolerated.

I don’t post NSFW content on this blog.

Potentially triggering content will be tagged “tw [label].” If I post something without an appropriate warning, please reach out and let me know.

As you’ll soon find out, I’m someone who likes having my fingers in a lot of pies (even when I really shouldn’t @_@) so I’m often dabbling in little projects on the side, or experimenting with new creative mediums to tell stories in, or bingeing a new series.

Here's a breakdown of some things I commonly post about!

My WIPs:

#Corpse Worm: My first original webcomic, a horror-comedy action adventure about monsters engaging in shonen-style battles with unique powers; think Courage the Cowardly Dog meets One Piece. Current status: permanent hiatus, though I’m working on writing a synopsis of the unfinished story to give some closure. You can read it all here.

#The Witching Hours Are 9 to 5: My current webcomic, an urban fantasy buddy comedy about a brother-sister duo of paranormal investigators that combines action with chaotic sibling energy. I started it as a warm-up project, just making something for the sake of making it without stressing about the quality too much, so the art is a bit slapdash but I’m proud of it all the same. Current status: active, updated whenever I feel like it. You can read it on its own website here or on Webtoon here.

#Scarlet Canticle: My primary long-form writing project, a (planned) series of dark fantasy novellas with a gritty, pulpy style to them. I wanted to write something in the vein of Conan the Barbarian but with less…baggage. And more buff women. Current status: actively being worked on!

#Swole Hearts: A visual novel dating sim I'm currently developing in Ren'Py. It's a silly and lighthearted game where you can meet and date buff women. You can play the demo here.

#Ginormous: Another comic project that I’ve done some early work on but not yet committed to full-time. It’s a battle series about people who summon kaiju doing battle with other kaiju. It’s a project where I channel a lot of my love for monster movies. Current status: inactive, but you can read an “episode zero” on Webtoon here.

#Mascara: A comic project I hope to do someday. It’s an action drama about female pro wrestlers (in a setting where wrestling is a legitimate contest). Current status: not even started, I just love drawing the characters I have in mind for it.

#Lonesome Stars: A sci-fi writing project I dabble in on the side about a ragtag group of voyagers in a universe without planets. No real end goal in sight for this one, it’s just for funsies at the moment. Current status: worked on intermittently.

#Cloud Sea: A fantasy setting I created, originally for a book I wanted to write but now it bounces around from project to project—sometimes it’s a novel, sometimes it’s an RPG Maker game, sometimes it’s a homebrew tabletop system. It’s focused on swashbuckling fantasy in an early-industrial world of sky islands and dwindling magic. Current status: worked on when I feel like it.

#Heinous Highness: My first attempt at making a video game, a turn-based RPG where you play as an evil sorceress tired of having her plans for world domination thwarted. Current status: inactive, but I like the characters.

Fandom Tags:

Fandoms that I frequently like to post/reblog about include, but are not limited to:

#Godzilla: My favorite movie series of all time!!! This tag is mostly about Godzilla and related topics specifically, but I also use to include posts about other kaiju as well.

#Ace Attorney: Guilty as charged! I’m a big fan of the Phoenix Wright games!

#Wrestling: Yup, I’m also a filthy mark who loves to watch the graps. It’s still real to me, dammit!

#Jojo: I’m not a huge anime fan normally, but I do love Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.

#Darkstalkers: I love fighting games of all kinds, but Darkstalkers holds a special place in my heart. It’ll get a new installment…someday… ;-;

#Tales of Stuff: In addition to fighting games, I also love RPGs, and the Tales series is one of my favorite franchises! I talk about the entire series, but Tales of the Abyss is by far my favorite.

#Castlevania: Another one of my favorite video game series. I’m a fan of the whole kit and kaboodle, though I’ll generally talk about the games more than the animated series.

#Discworld: My favorite series of fantasy novels, and one that continues to inspire me as a writer. GNU Sir Terry.

Miscellaneous Tags:

#Kiki Can Do Art: The tag I put on all of my own original art.

#Kiki Can Do Writing: The tag I use when posting or discussing something I wrote.

#Kiki Can Do Comics: Likewise, I use this tag when posting about my own comics.

#Kiki Can Do Commissions: Usually seen in conjunction with “Kiki Can Do Art,” this tag goes on anything I was commissioned to make for a client.

#Kiki Can Do Journaling: For general bloggery and posting about my life.

#Friend Art: A tag used when reblogging art made by people who are close friends of mine. <3

#Friend Tags: A tag I use for posts that I was tagged in by a friend. It is always morally correct to tag me in things you think I’ll like.

#Fav: A tag I slap on any reblog of something that I find particularly funny or interesting.

Thanks for taking the time to check out my blog! I hope you like what you see!

Find me elsewhere on the web: My Website | Twitter | Instagram | Bluesky | Ko-fi | Patreon

[burlveneer-music]

Lonnie Holley - Oh Me Oh My - part secular gospel, part spoken-word memoir, with musical backing that sounds like a collaboration between Daniel Lanois and Bill Laswell (but is actually produced by Jacknife Lee)

Some years ago, there was a magazine piece wherein the writer meditated on the concept of the “Cosmic Southerner”: the late Pharoah Sanders, André 3000 and Col. Bruce Hampton (on whom the piece was ultimately focused) were all mentioned. Somehow, Alabama-born, Atlanta-based self-taught artist Lonnie Holley was left out of the piece. But Holley, 72, has improvised — nay, conjured! — ecstatic, baffling and heavy moments that can often only be described as “cosmic.” In a mere two lines of a song, Holley can zoom in on the pores of one’s skin and pull back to encompass the whole of the Milky Way. All that said, Holley’s music and visual art (for which he has shown at The Met, The Smithsonian and is represented by the illustrious Blum & Poe) is much more about our place in the cosmos than the cosmos itself. It’s about how we overcome adversity and tremendous pain; about how we develop and maintain an affection for our fellow travelers; about how we stop wishing for some “beyond” and start caring for the one rock we have. Holley has never delivered this message as clear, as concise and as exhilaratingly as he does on his new album ‘Oh Me Oh My.’ ‘Oh Me Oh My’ is both elegant and ferocious, sharpening the work contained on his 2018 Jagjaguwar debut ‘MITH’. It is stirring in one moment and a balm the next. It details histories both global and personal. Holley’s harrowing youth and young manhood in the Jim Crow South are well-told at this point — his sale into a different home as a child for just a bottle of whiskey; his abuse at the infamous Mount Meigs correctional facility for boys; the destruction of his art environment by the Birmingham airport expansion. But, as mentioned, Holley’s music is less a performance of pain endured and more a display of perseverance, of relentless hope, of Thumbs Up For Mother Universe. Intricately and lovingly produced by LA’s Jacknife Lee (The Cure, REM, Modest Mouse), ‘Oh Me Oh My’ features both kinetic, shortwave funk that calls to mind Brian Eno’s ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts’ and the deep space satellite sounds of Eno’s ambient works. There are also elements of Laurie Anderson’s meditations, elements of Gil Scott-Heron’s profound longform soul, elements of John Lurie’s grabbag jazz, and yes, elements of Sun Ra’s bold afrofuturism. But ‘Oh Me Oh My’ is a triumphant sonic achievement of its own. Acclaimed collaborators like Michael Stipe (“Oh Me, Oh My”), Sharon Van Etten (“None of Us Will Have But a Little While”), Moor Mother (“I Am Part of the Wonder,” “Earth Will Be There”), Justin Vernon of Bon Iver (“Kindness Will Follow Your Tears”) and Rokia Koné (“If We Get Lost They Will Find Us”) serve as choirs of angels and co-pilots, giving Lonnie’s message flight, and reaffirming him as a galvanizing, iconoclastic force across the music community. Holley reflects, “My art and my music are always closely tied to what is happening around me, and the last few years have given me a lot to thoughtsmith about. When I listen back to these songs I can feel the times we were living through. I’m deeply appreciative of the collaborators, especially Jacknife, who helped the songs take shape and really inspired me to dig deeper within myself.” ‘Oh Me Oh My’ is also an achievement in the refinement of Holley’s impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics. During each session, Holley and Lee would discuss the essence of the songs and distill Holley’s words to their most immediate center. On the title track, which deals with mutual human understanding, Holley is as profound as ever in far fewer phrases: “The deeper we go, the more chances there are, for us to understand the oh-me’s and understand the oh-my’s.”  Produced and mixed by Jacknife Lee

[glassesblu]

For the artist asks: 16, 17, and 23! Your work is an inspiration to my own art, so im interested in these 3 answers especially! (It's @emmettings btw!)

Hi @emmettings ! Good to see you around, and thank you for the ask! Hope to see your art in the tags as well :)

Artist Asks

16. What’s the most daunting part of your process? Ex, planning, sketching, lineart, rendering etc

Hm I'm pretty fond of most of the process, but lets say we talk about lineless work, just starting out the color blocks is such a tedious thing. I need to get the shapes right, I need to get the colors properly contrasted, my coloring process takes a long time - its just a bit exhausting because the finish line is seemingly beyond the horizon. And to note - that its partially a "trust the process" sort of deal. I see it during its ugly phase and despair. And when I'm done it's really nice amd I have a really big ego about it. Otherwise, here's my process for Lineless - traditional thumbnail - taking the sketch to digital,and resketching it with proper proportions and the like - fixing up the sketch so that all the shapes are better defined - palettes study - lineless execution - color editing - effects

17. What inspires you?

I reblog a lot of art, and I like to study how they were executed. I enjoy a lot of other art forms as well like paintings, sculpture, packaging design and the like. I also enjoy composition of art, and a nicely composed piece looks so fantastic to me. I also find stories and characters very inspiring to me. I love exploring how a character interacts with others and the world. I like audiobooks, story podcasts (tho its been a while), cartoons, shows, and games. The stories and art of such media really get me going (brain excited) I'm kind of a bad media consumer cause either I'm tired or I'm drawing.

23. Do you listen to music or watch shows while you work? If so, what’s your favourite?

I do like audio noise. I like music, I make playlists for ships, Or just playlists for vibes. I also like to listen to long video essays and audiobooks. (The Murderbot Diaries is a fantastic series that I listened as an Audiobook). I prefer longform videos, like video games analysis. I need noise for my brain while I go on automatic mode when I draw. When I think though I need to hear myself think, and turn off sounds.

[llycaons]

palm tree + sage !!

hi dolly!

palm tree ⇢ do you have a fictional villain you shouldn’t like but love regardless?

let's see *checks my database of media real quick* eh the only character I can think of is xue yang, just because he's so unhinged. whx is a real treat to watch, and his scenes were just fantastic. he manages to be fun and amusing despite the truly horrific things he did. and if his performances wasn't enough, the sheer power of wearing cheetah-print robes in a wuxia setting sealed the deal. 10/10 presentation but I AM glad he's dead

sage ⇢ what ‘medium’ of art (poetry, music, fiction, paintings, statues etc.) is the most touching to you? why do you think that is?

oh, I love this question! when I was an edgy high schooler I used to joke that I hated art 😭 this was foolish and short-sighted obviously, I just meant that I don't really care for the types of paintings I would see in museums. obviously I appreciate visual arts like illustration and painting now for its aesthetic and the talent that goes into it, but I can't say it really touches me emotionally. same for most songs, poetry, music....I like sculptures more than most things, but still only in a way where I think it's cool and exciting and not in a way hat I feel like, the deeper meaning of what the artist is trying to say.

my most beloved, most meaningful, and most emotional connections to art has always primarily been through storytelling, whether through animation, comics, movies, tv shows...especially longform works where I can follow a character's trajectory and watch their development. I've seen some very condescending posts about people who treat fictional characters like real people who we like personally and who we believe deserve things, and maybe that means that I'm engaging with stories on a more juvenile level than the other people Consuming Art on here, but that's what fun about it, for me. so I don't really mind? yeah it's cool to step back and see something deeper and keep that distance and objectivity but a lot of the times I like rooting for my little guys and sharing their losses and their joys.

the creation of fictional lives and people gives me that emotional connection to really feel a piece of art. I've certainly never cried at any painting or piece of classical music no matter how beautiful it may be...I just find stories about people to be the richest, most rewarding, most endlessly fascinating type of art to be invested in. from the moment my librarian introduced me to fiction to get me to read something besides animal care booklets, to my current fascination with all the worst fanfic the internet has to offer, I just have the most to say about storytelling, and my engagement in it feels the most rewarding.

as for why....idk. I'm well aware this is the majority of how people interact with fiction on here, so my reasons are probably similar to lots of other people's. I've always struggled to communicate with others, so through fiction I feel like I'm getting that sense of connection, whether I'm discovering how other people perceive the world, or seeing myself in someone else's writing. there's also the escapist appeal, but I don't think I've watched this stuff for escapism in a long time. I just like to feel connected to other people, I guess, and I find that writing and tv and other forms of linear storytelling can deliver the types of character development and engaging plot that I find very rewarding. and sometimes I just want to watch or read something that makes me stand up and walk around like

and storytelling (manga in particular - I love you yu yu hakusho) has been the only form of art to give me that

what a fun question. thank you!

[legionofpotatoes]

10 17 and 22 for the art asks :)! also re one of your answers to this: if you enjoy writing, you should do it. i absolutely encourage it. doesn't matter if its not "grandiose" or "important" - the thing thats important is YOU getting to have fun Doing Stuff. :3

Hey you! Thanks for these ☺️

10. Favorite piece of clothing to draw

It's the one I draw most often I guess. The 2012 N7 armor variant 🙃 otherwise I like capes. Or drapes. In that sexy art nouveau way.

17. Do you eat-drink while drawing? if so, what

Not while I'm drawing, no. I take breaks for lunch, but I can't be chewing on something in the process. That would mess up the focus! I do keep a water bottle around (a redundant statement. my home is dotted with half-empty water bottles, always at hand). There is an enormous chasm between the mess my productivity was back when I spent entire days focused on nothing but drawing, to now when I keep my meat suit hydrated. It's night and day. Water is the real deal, folks. Cannot stress this enough, drink up.

22. What physical exercises do you do before drawing, if any

Nothing before; lots of stretching and wrist-rolling during. I know this is something I need to get better at, especially as I keep pulling longer hours in my thirties. It's on the agenda, he said, and probably lied.

I also like to hold my pen in a way that dents the side of my middle finger... trying to work my way around it to no avail so far. I have big-time problems here, gang. My fingie has ouchies when I draw for more than three straight hours.

Regarding the whole writing thing - I didn't mean it like I hate to express myself in writing or even in longform rambles every now and then because of some stuck-up ethical reasons - I honestly don't care about that and you will have to pay me ungodly amounts of money to get me to shut up, just in general. I am extremely lax on what "meaningful" means, and a 24/7 fun train outta these stupid brains absolutely counts.

What I did mean by my answer was storytelling, and specifically storytelling done through writing. You know - that thing that is all about articulating parables through narratives and worldbuilding and meaning-making, which is something I admire but will probably never seriously dabble in. I am keenly aware of the type of creator that I am; I'm still a consumer first. I genuinely revere storytelling, and my "creativity" or whatever is fully transformative and usually stems from my need to prop that other thing up even higher for others to see. Probably why fan art is most of what I do.

And I can (and do) write a lot in that meta sense of how storytelling sometimes does and does not work - anyone following me here knows that is my main weapon to wield against your tired eyeballs. I love understanding both the humanity at the core and the delivery mechanisms around storytelling mediums and how we're all just trying to say the same things over and over again through convoluted yet effective and novel packages and it's all intimate and grand and gorgeous and terrifying and flawed and fun and meaningful and transient and heartbreaking and silly and different yet always somehow the same. And I am extremely aware of the type of gas one needs to have in the tank to actually tap into that semiotic dance and squeeze out a piece of writing that engages and tells a story that is both an escape and a mirror.

This isn't me bootlicking some esoteric auteur culture either, I have my own reservations with the word "talent." I've studied enough of storytelling to know that its raw craft is a crucial delivery system for its core ethos, and it can be built up and improved by anyone, given time and discipline. But it's that ethos I'm talking about, the payload itself. There is something else you need to have present in your soul for that. Something circumstantial, painful maybe, a wound that yearns both to heal and to share itself with others, adding to the tapestry of the zeitgeist in a way that enriches that moment in time instead of tearing it down with ignorance. And I know I make this all sound grandiose and mythic, but meaningful storytelling to me is literally some self-insert fanfic that lulled you into a bittersweet calm after a teenage breakup, or the romcom that made you laugh on a shitty day, or even a fucking poem scribbled on a wall that you completely took out of authorial context yet found some corny meaning in for no more than five seconds. It's the essence of those things, and I have trouble explaining exactly what I mean by that, but I know deep in my bones that it's something core to them that I don't have. I don't have that need to share my lived experience in that way, for reasons internal and external, and I think that is okay! More than anything else in the world I want to cheer on the people who do. I believe in them, and in storytelling, more than in most things in life, exactly because of how privy I am to its healing effects. So I'll do it in my own incessantly annoying ways, don't you worry about that.

I mean look at all this writing I did just now. That's something I like to do. And again; you will have to pay me to stop. Big money. I'm talking six figures or above straight from James Tumbler

[tumblebagel]

Hey look! It Me!

Uh, hi!... This is my blog. I started this up because my friends got tired of hearing me rant for hours about my hyperfixations, so now I can get them out of my system here. Score.

My grand plan is to eventually make longform content on YouTube, Ala HBomberguy video essays with a little more love-letter sprinkled in. That by no means invalidates this blog, though, because this place is where I'm going to post WAY more shit. Random thoughts, practice sketches, rants that don't make sense as videos, et cetera.

I'm not sure anybody will actually CARE about that kinda content. Fuck, I'm not even sure anyone will care about the stuff I wanna post to YT. But this is just as much for me as it is for any potential viewers. Sometimes you have thoughts that you just gotta get out of your head and into the open, you know? And maybe for the early days that "into the open" might mean "into the void" but I'm alright with that.

I don't need people to care, I just need to have said my piece. 'Try your best and accept the outcome', you know?

Alright, maybe that's a little too philosophical for one post. I think it's about time I introduced myself.

Howdy! My name is TumbleBagel. You can find me on Youtube as Everything Bagel Animations. And you can find me on Among Us as Space Bagel. Really Bagels are just my whole thing. TBH, I don't actually know how that started, but I've taken it in stride to represent "variety content".

Everything Bagel == Everything Blog

I am trans. My pronouns are She/They. I've been on HRT for... just under 3 months now. I surround myself with grays and blues but secretly my favorite color is Red. I know American Sign Language. I'm not completely *fluent* since I only took up to ASL II in college for my foreign language credit, but I know enough to hold a conversation.

(Side note: Even if you have no need for ASL in your life, LEARN THE ASL ALPHABET. It's so fucking useful. If you need to communicate silently, or across a loud and busy room, or have your mouth full. It's just generally such a good utility. If you're feeling especially adventurous, you can also learn to count to 10 on one hand, which is also quite useful!)

My two favorite games are Undertale, and The Outer Wilds, but for completely different reasons. I can't choose either to be my favorite game because they're simply not comparable.

I'm a deep-fandom, long time Undertale fan, and you can easily recognize me by the heart locket that I always wear from the Collector's Edition of the game.

I also wear a rather recognizable dark-grey hoodie everywhere I go. It's glued to my body. This has proven especially uncomfortable given that I live in Florida, where the sun is so close that tourists are sometimes picked up and eaten by its gravitational pull.

I prefer coffee over tea, but my opinions on tea have softened over time.

I like to swear. My favorite is "Son of a Motherfuck" because it makes no sense :3

I like retro lofi stuff, but also magic and catgirls. I have a bad habit of including coffee shops in my medival D&D campaigns. I may also reference mature themes in my content, so view at your own discretion.

I'm currently going to school to become a Librarian, at which point I will fuck off to a small town in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific Northwest, working the tiny local library by day, and drawing for my blog & channel in my free time. I had originally gone to school for art, but came to the conclusion that I want to draw art for MYSELF, not by anyone else is standards, and not under the pressure of making a living.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand I think that's everything.

I'm excited. Whole new world of opportunities. Now if I could just find my motherfuCKING TABLET PEN-!

[misqnon]

nhello monti! it is March Again :v i feel like it's super obvious who i am so thank u for humoring me and using the name i gave u LOL.

my bad, ive never really celebrated april fools so i forgot it.. was... that day. im also glad u checked ur inbox. also theres no pressure to reply in a certain time frame!! i see ur posts that u have seen my asks and thats enough to put me at ease. so . take ur time!

fellow zoro fan!!!! i have a hard time choosing a favorite straw hat tbh.. they r all so special to me. i do probably like brook and franky just slightly more though. old men my beloved (tbh franky isnt that old but hes old compared to the younger members so). wano is the arc of buff men!! as a man liker... it pleases me.

the edit u sent Is So Good. thank u for sharing. i keep seeing sanji tiktoks and wanting to send them to u but i dont wanna spam ur inbox </3 my messages r already So Long..

ive listened to a bit of the dub (through clips) and tbh i do like it!! i like brook's voice acting a lot (hes who ive heard the most of. also he nails the laugh, which is very important to me) but luffys voice is so jarring to me i just cannot.. get past it. i think im just too used to the sub luffy after . a decade . of hearing him sound like that. plus i usually have to use subtitles anyways cuz i have an audio processing disorder so. sub is just what i default to. but yeah definitely valid to watch dub instead!! they do a great job from what ive seen :)

i have seen a bit of extra content involving the live action cast and tbh usopps actor.. is my favorite. he nails usopp. hes real life usopp. and i love usopp a lot so,,. tbh i might just pirate it (ahaha.... pirate.... pirate.... pirate the pirate show .......) because i really want to watch it!!

YEAH u have plenty of time!! plus i imagine there will be a part of the story where they go back and visit places they said they would return to (like u mentioned laboon). so 2 more islands plus however long it takes to revisit everything! no need to stress

stay strong 🫡 egghead will be so much better going in blind!

catholic guilt about liking sanji is ... i get it. thats funny /lh. i also feel intense guilt for the weirdest and simplest of things LMAO. im glad i didnt make u feel bad about it!!

YEAHH FELLOW DOFFY LOVER!! ive seen a few videos by melonteee and theyre super good. i would watch more but.. ironically (considering i got 800 episodes through one piece..) i cant watch a lot of longform content because i space out so bad. it takes a lot of effort for me to give my full attention and it gets pretty exhausting so i dont do it often. ur art of him is lovely!!! tongue piercings..... 😳.

i got to like .. stardust crusaders. in jjba. and i imagine i just havent seen enough of dio to feel attached to him like i do doffy, but i have seen a few people say they feel the same!!! ive kinda been wanting to go back to it but i just hate old man joseph joestar with such a passion.... i get too angry when hes on screen LOL. its way worse than how i feel abt sanji bc i dont simmer with intense RAGE every time sanji's on screen and i have a lot more positive feelings towards him. that was a bit of a tangent, whoops.

thabk u for validating my sanji hatred. actually i have come to enjoy a lot of sanji content recently though, and i dont think i hate him as much?? as i did?? i will credit this to u. idk if me just talking about it with another human being helped or if its because i see how much u love him but. i think this is good for me!! less rage .. is always good for me. watch me go back to hating him with a passion again now that ive said im fond of him. because im That Inconsistent 😭😭 (i hope this doesnt happen)

it was only super recently where i realized its not inherently a bad thing to like problematic media. to be fair tho there are definitely a lot more problematic fans when u enjoy problematic media, and i see it with one piece a lot. there is a WEIRD amount of transphobes in this community and i cant help but feel like part of that is because of oda's writing spreading some common transphobic ideas. i think hes redeemed himself a lot with the most recent trans characters, and i adore them, but the damage.. is done. but yeah im sure another big part of why theres so much negativity is just because one piece is insanely popular. the bigger the fandom, the bigger the shitty part of it is.

THEY *HAVE* EARNED THE RIGHT TO BE REAL PEOPLE.. UR SO RIGHT. i love that u can see their morals so clearly in like. every action . or inaction. they take. ughh. people talk about luffy falling asleep during people's backstory and say hes rude for it. and its like!! thats a core part of his character!!! he doesn't care about what happened in the past!! he just cares about how you are NOW. tbh though i WOULD be offended if he fell asleep while i was traumadumping LOL. like as a character decision its genius, but as a person .. i am too sensitive for that. BUT IT SHOWS HIS CHARACTER SO WELL!!

IM SO GLAD U NOTICED AUJFH. that moment is so special. u ARE my favorite sanji lover!! my favorite character?? honestly its law... hes so stupid (/pos)... but like.. its hidden behind a very serious mask. i just love people who are extremely silly. and someone who hides their silliness with all their might (and fails) makes them more silly. some of my favorite law moments are in wano and i Really .. ugh. i wish i could tell u but i refuse to spoil even the most minor of things!! so i will wait till u get there. also his backstory just Kills me. it . it hurts. i love tragic characters. looks at choso from jjk. i have a type .

law may be my ultra favorite but i have .. at least 30 different Favorites. including the straw hats. and tbh everyones at about the same level.. in terms of how much i love them. i think its safe to say i adore one piece characters. its because everyone is silly!!! i can list all the ones im aware of (since there r so many op characters.. i have. a list . but i keep adding to it.) if ur curious LOL. if not, no worries :)

YEAHHH ZOROOO MY LOVE!! thank u for The Food. yum. his one eye is very pretty in ur style 🥺. i havent tried to draw him yet tbh but i understand the struggle!! i tried drawing choso a while ago and his hair is so insanely painful.. art is hard.

hello march!!

is. is it super obvious

i have a guess but i wasn’t feeling super confident about it or anything JSAHBZJVHFD

More below ↓

i actually had like no idea until i received a reply earlier and now im wondering if ur possibly a recent mutual of mine 🔍🧐 maybe starting…with @ a….but i will not make u answer if u dont wanna HAHAHA

i will humor u as long as u want 👍

good to know there’s no pressure!! as soon as i get a message i like to reply as soon as i can but thats bc i get excited lmao. however this does make me feel more at peace

YEAA FELLOW ZORO FAN!! originally my favs were just the top 3 of 1. sanji 2. robin and 3. franky but as we got past water 7 and franky didnt get much more development spotlight he fell a bit just bc i dont get to see him doing much :( still love him though. bc of Shipping Reasons (embarrassing) Zoro got on my radar more and i started to appreciate him as a character more and more. plus he’s just. really badass im ngl. and in addition to that he is. so fucking stupid and uncool and goofy at the same time and that just makes him more likable. so now i just have a quartet of favs cause zoro wormed his way in there somewhere and i hold him dear to my heart. (plus im so bad with directions it is QUITE LITERALLY almost as bad as zoro and so i. genuinely relate to him on that LMAO) but i agree !! i LOVE ALL THE STRAWHATS VERY MUCH. I CANT EVEN CHOOSE A LEAST FAVORITE BC I LOVE ALL OF THEM A LOT. also god yes we fucking love an old guy in this household. and i LOOOVE FUURANKIIIII my silly king!! franky is fairly young but early on in the story when its just a bunch of teenagers and 20 somethings and then 34 year old franky is there its. kinda funny and i love that for him. also speaking of old men i called dofuwani old man yaoi once and someone called me out saying 41 and 46 was not old enough 😔 /ashamed. sorry yall lemme pull out some slash of rayleigh and crocus real quick-

aside from the strawhats my other favs are doffy, crocodile, corazon…god there’s so many characters now that i think about it lmao. secondarily i also like bartolomeo, kizaru, kid, bon clay…i have huge crush on katakuri even tho i havent met him yet…im sure there will be more as i continue and meet more

omg im so flattered u consider sending me sanji tiktoks sjnkjcnd!??! someday. someday u have to do this for me. i will send u more funny edits and op posts

BROOK’S DUB VOICE IS GOD TEIR. ARE U TALKING ABOUT/ HAVE YOU SEEN THIS VIDEO. IAN SINCLAIR IS AMAZING LAMNDKJFN

i got used to luffys dub voice bc i watched it first but ive always been meh/neutral dislike towards it and once i heard mayumi tanaka in sub i was like damn. its the only voice i dont like but hes the Main Character. his sub voice also makes me like luffy more as a character mvkjdnvf dub just makes him sound more like a selfish weird boy instead of a silly selfish little guy. you feel me (and no i feel u even with dub i have captions on bc. yeah </3)

taz inaki and jacob are a trio of mischievousness and silliness that i adore. emily is also fun and goofy but on a more ~ refined ~ scale. and mackenyu is so professional to them all in comparison but it makes it hilarious tbh. i follow all of the main 5 on instagram and love seeing them post about it. the recent april fools video starring jacob (usopp) was. hilarious. like what is

(and yes…pirate it….do it….yohohoho or whatever nami would be proud)

i am so ready for wano and egghead i will stay strong for u march 🫡 must avoid spoilers…and still take my time to enjoy the story..

i understand not being able to do longform content lmao. i did watch their 3 hr stream comp of one piece odyssey but like…i had it on in the bg while doing other things. im glad uve seen their stuff tho!! its one of my fav one piece content channels. im glad u liked my doffy 🥹i embellished a Little bit but his piercings are actually from this colorspread !!

i was insane and in highschool when i was into jjba. a lot of it was also during the summers and i had a lot of free time so i. read all the way up through part 7 after watching parts 1-3 (or 4? cant remember). im not as into it anymore but jojos (and araki) still hold a place in my heart <3 HATING OLD MAN JOSEPH IS SO FUNNY KDSNFVK NO OFFENSE JUST LIKE. YEAH. U SHOULD HATE HIM. THATS A VALID RESPONSE AND HE DESERVES IT. KICK HIS CHEATING OLD ASS. i loved younger joseph and like a lot of ppl him cheating on suzie q pissed me da fuck off. but in pt 4 he’s frail and old and they make u feel bad but still. i KNow What You Did. appreciative u hate someone more than sanji tho like hell yea my boy aint at the bottom LMAO. its cool others have noticed the similarities between dio and doffy too! i always wonder if long running mangaka take insp from each other sometimes

omg…im converting u…my influence as the fav sanji lover /j. but that makes me happy!! hell yea we’re changing outlooks over here. i validate ur sanji hatred but i also wont be mad if u like him a little teehee. his fanon is. a lot better than his canon tho so. that helps. we are fixing him. taking him away from oda and dressing him up like a doll . and if u go back to hating him thats ok too at least he isnt old man joseph 

i only interact w one piece here on tumblr or in the 2 op discord servers i happen to be in. with it being so mainstream (and i have. never been in a mainstream popular fandom like this before) i know theres a ton of gross dudebros who like it so i try to avoid that. sucks to hear there’s a bunch of transphobia but im not surprised :/ i still do see yamato discourse and its like got damn how much convincing do u need yall. but no i agree it probably is the audience oda cultivated + his earlier portrayals…though i do really like that he. tried again and did better. though even with yamato i sometimes feel like he puts him in situations that go against canon (like why did he draw yamato as a geisha and include him in the womens day colorspread…oda why) but alas. give and take

YES THERE;S SO MANY CHARACTERS WHO HAVE INSTANCES LIKIE THAT!! SO MANY MORALS AND CONVICTIONS THEY STICK TO AND SO MANY STRONG CHARACTER TRAITS. thats why i find so many op characters easy to write, bc they’re outlined so heavily in the show in what their archetypes and ideals and behaviors are…it kinda bothers me that luffy falls asleep during moments like that too bc it would make ME upset but like. YEA THATS IN CHARACTER FOR HIM DFKNFV

AH A LAW LOVER!! he’s very popular !?!? i know he comes in again in wano but during punk hazard and dressrosa i was like is this enough screentime for how popular he is omg. i guess he’s just pathetic and sad and grungy punk emo boy . tbh if i didnt already have so many favs who fill that spot i would probably have him as a fav as well. but i do REALLY LIKE law. his backstory with cora….fucks me UP!! and he’s been through a lot and come out stronger. plus his juxtaposition and interactions with luffy and the strawhats is so fucking funny kcncd. the op server im in has PLENTY of law lovers so i see him often. i think i stole this from a tumblr post recently but i saw this and saved it to my phone bc i loved it so much

i relate to him here. he is so me. this was me dyking it up at university fr

ik this is from one piece party but i think it shows his secret silly here. he got it from cora i think how could he not. but he hides it under that I Am A Serious And Scary Doctor . like sure trafalgar 

YES send me the full list!! in return i will list more favs as well. mayhaps a tierlist of some kind. we will see

glad u liked the zoros :^) idk anything about jjk but i will look up this choso man one moment. [...] okay i actually really like his design (and hair) but that looks like hell to draw i wish u the best </3 i have a degree in art and ummm its still really hard sorry to tell u it does not get better </3 [JOKING THATS A JOKE A JOKE CJNCD]

here’s a question to leave u off with: what do you think each of the strawhats eye colors is? since most of them are just drawn with black dots. and IF DIFFERENT what are your headcanons/what do you Wish they were 👁️ eagerly awaiting ur response bc i have Opinions on this

talk to u next time!

[cinemacentral666]

The House That Jack Built (2018)

Movie #1,082 • Ranking Lars von Trier #10

For the sake of changing shit up, I decided to watch the Lars von Trier filmography out of order. I formulated the order somewhat randomly, keeping the trilogies intact but otherwise jumping from era to era. Having completed his most recent work, 2018's The House That Jack Built, I can definitively say that this was a terrible idea.

[Ed. Note: In fact, it was such a bad idea that I quickly reverted to a mostly chronological viewing schedule.]

For starters, similarly to Peter Greenaway's later work, the director specifically references his own earlier work in this, inserting actual clips of films I've yet to see in the middle of the chaos. This is self-indulgence in its purest form and I am here for it, but damn if I could do it over again.

That being said, just as the enigmatic UK post-punk combo The Fall were famously described by DJ John Peel, I already feel you could ascribe the saying "always different, always the same" to Mr. Sunshine Lars von Trier as well. There are seemingly no parallels to his earlier work–aside from his devotion to utterly bleak and unending human pain — until, that is, you start seeing them everywhere: the handheld camerawork, his stark and repetitive use of non-diegetic pop music, period pieces that somehow feel like they don't belong to any timeframe, and so on and so on...

The House That Jack Built is actually the third major motion picture to have that title, The House That Jack Built. The first, a short silent drama film from England in the year 1900 clocking in at 54 seconds long, and the second, an 8-minute Canadian animated movie, are both direct adaptations of the nursery rhyme "This Is the House That Jack Built." The House That Jack Built (2018), if you can believe it, is not.

This is a 2.5-hour film about a serial killer played by Matt Dylan recounting his crimes to Roman poet Virgil as he descends the layers of hell. It's absurd by design but what's even more audacious are the sheer amount of themes LVT attempts to hit on here. Art, life, gender, death, just to name a few. Every pathway isn't a winner, but damn I kind of loved this for the effort alone. For as barebones as Dogma 95 attempted to be, the bulk of his career has been full-on maximalism. I've yet to feel bored watching any of his films.

From the opening of the New York Times feature piece, "Is Lars von Trier Trolling Us?"...

Near the end of my interview with Lars von Trier, I asked if he was trolling women in his latest, “The House That Jack Built.” He said he didn’t know what trolling meant, so I explained, even as I wondered if he was feigning ignorance and actually trolling me.

As if you couldn't take a man who looks like this at face value?!

This question is certainly related to the thread in The House That Jack Built about how only men are the ones who are born guilty. And it is 100% a troll move. The troll is that he's baiting people into wanting to think that this is also, somehow, an idealization of that sentiment. But I don't know how you could watch this and actually think that men are innocent? Matt Dylan is LITERALLY a serial killer. I never felt a shred of sympathy towards him. That some ideas are offensive does not mean that you need feel offended by their existence.

On some level, I might agree with you that Trier is a master pilot… who can't land the plane. I think he excels in the ultra longform because he needs the room to try. There are so many big ideas at play and so many different styles, risks and tactics that there's nearly no chance of it all coming together. The beauty, in my eyes, is in the attempt. And if his films are filled with hate, it seems like a self-hate, for having the audience soldier on in the face of all these miserable thoughts and compulsions which he's brought to life. I can kinda relate. Life is confusing and weird and full of sadness. That checks out.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I’ll be counting down all of Lars Von Trier’s movies right here at @cinemacentral666 every Thursday through September 2023

[hanoscorner]

Tomie

Synopsis:

Tomie is a succubus who can seduce men and control them. The catch is that some of them feel compelled to kill her and cut her into many pieces. Fortunately for her she always comes back.

Art:

In my opinion this is the weakest of "Junji Ito's big three" (Uzumaki, Tomie, and Gyo) in terms of body horror. It does not have the best body horror and is somewhat restrained in the weirdness department, which are the things that most fans want, and its length and premise makes it somewhat repetitive. Maybe it's my adhd but I feel like Junji Ito's work is strongest in his story collections and weakest in his longform works. In his story collections he is drawing a different scary thing more often so all the scares are fresh whereas in his longform work the scares are the same and become kind of stale. Uzumaki avoids this problem by being formatted more like an anthology than a longform story, Gyo also has this problem but makes up for it by having cool HR Giger sharks.

Story:

There isn't much of one, Tomie just kind of dies over and over again.

Themes:

This one has the clearest themes (to me) of the big three. It is about attraction and not being able to let go of something (or someone) and how this is toxic.

TL;DR:

This is probably the weakest out of Uzumaki, Tomie, and Gyo in terms of art and story but the strongest in terms of underlying message. However, I think that if you wanted a good message then you would be reading a different author. However the weakest among the best is still pretty good.

[canmom]

awhile ago, you wrote a post about caliban and the witch, how it was formative for you, and a particularly scathing review of it.

would you recommend the book for reading despite its historical errors, along with reviews and commentaries like that one as supplement? and if so, are there any other corrective supplements you'd reccomend?

or do you look at it in hindsight and recommend another text in caliban's place?

xoxo ty

ahh, gosh this is kind of above my pay grade i think.

so, yeah, i read that book, and as dry as it may seem, federici's description of historical persecution of the heretics and witches is certainly very moving. and there's some interesting tidbits, like when she talks about how states suppress sex work at certain points in history. she brought my attention to some really striking images, like (iirc) a shackled woman following an army in the early modern period. back then i was full of fire and anger towards the world, and federici's book gave me that grand, powerful feeling of peeling back the curtain and seeing the horrible underlying mechanism.

nowadays, i guess i burned out of being that angry all the time. if i look at myself with a sad kind of honesty, it's not impressive by my old standards; I've kind of fallen out of the street protest scene and retracted to like, trying to take care of the few people I'm closest to. i look back on posts i made full of fire telling people to join me in the streets, reporting breathlessly on cops doing what they always do, and i kind of cringe a bit. and I tell myself i yet have potential to make some kind of impact with art and writing that i couldn't through other means, but i don't know. I hope it's growing up and getting a better understanding of the world and myself and a real reason to struggle that isn't the zeal of a convert to online cult shit; I'm afraid it's all just excuses for inner emigration.

but that's by the by. the real question is, what do you hope to gain from caliban and the witch? if you wanted to make a detailed study of the witch trials - what they involved, how they spread, how they differed between countries - federici isn't going to help much, since her book is more of a collection of anecdotes martialed to support her theory. and what is that theory? the witch trials, she argues, were crucial to the making of capitalist modernity and its reformulation of gender; they broke the power of women in feudalism and played a part in the imposition of a worldview of manageable, mechanistic order.

to make this case, she makes some historical errors; most infamously it seems she vastly inflates the number of victims of the witch trials. i haven't tried to dig into the historical literature there the way i did with the gulag stats years ago, but the consensus definitely does seem to be much lower.

still, while that may weaken her rhetorically, it doesn't overthrow her argument. my feeling there - and bearing in mind it's been some years since i read this book - is that she probably overstates her case. perhaps that's all right - if something is neglected in a field, a powerful polemical book could be argued as a necessity to open up a new course for inquiry or whatever; the initial strong conclusion will be quibbled down and the 'average consensus view' will shift, hopefully in the right direction.

but that said, do i recommend it? to be honest, i think it was a mistake to read nothing but federici's book as a sole piece of writing on early modern history. but given where i was ideologically at the time, and how hard i found (and still find) it to read longform works that aren't immediately intrinsically engaging through adhd or w/e, it's maybe better than not having read about that period at all. this is where we hit the problem that history is fractal; there is always more to read about any given subject.

the Caliban in the title refers to colonisation, and federici spends a chapter a half developing the links between witch trials in Europe and in primarily Spanish colonies which invoked the notion of witchcraft to justify genocide and enslavement. i certainly learned a bit from this, notably about the encomienda, but as a piece of writing about colonisation, it's not going to teach a lot since federici's primary lens is establishing commonalities with the European witch trials, to demonstrate their function in primitive accumulation.

my feeling today is, well, federici is sitting in between two milieus: the marxist tradition and a feminist tradition that puts a lot of emphasis on the witch trials, and she wants to reconcile them; the way she unifies them is to present primitive accumulation as ongoing and necessarily about imposing a brutal order on women in particular. there's certainly some truth here: it took capital a very very long time to dissolve the global peasantry and create a world where everyone depends on the market, and many episodes in modern history can be usefully understood as furiously violent efforts accomplish this. federici, with her taste for a grisly anecdote, creates a compelling story of the scale of violence and trauma inflicted in this process and foucauldian view of like Power getting obsessed with The Body(tm); she's also right to say that gender changed a lot with the arrival of capitalist modernity. I'm not sure the witch trials, though certainly a very illustrative symptom of how things were going, were quite the cornerstone of the whole thing though.

i think her discussion of the rise of a mechanistic scientific worldview to suppress the unproductive magical worldview is, well, very incomplete; it comes across as a sort of conspiracy to get the workers in line and nothing more, and the whole discussion sits a bit oddly when she's everywhere else a very strict materialist. i think developing the relationship between science and capitalist modernity needs a bit more care, especially if we're faced with the question of what to salvage from this mess.

one book i have never gotten round to reading but really should is Arthur Evans' Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture. you can try in vain to find a discussion of gender variance and the categories used in federici; she talks a lot about how women were subjugated and brutalised as a class, but very little about how the categories of "men" and "women" were created and maintained/inculcated/regulated psychically, which i consider absolutely key to what gender 'is'. i also don't recall her ever really dealing with the fact that in many countries, many of the witches executed were at least considered to be 'men' by the authorities... so certainly doesn't touch the tricky subject of like, well should we take those authorities at their word or look at the long association between magic and effeminacy (c.f. ergi); with that in mind I hope Evans is some remedy even if he doesn't make her gestures towards ~materialism~ and rigour for his polemic. (it's not that surprising in retrospect that federici more recently started showing terfy leanings.)

i think my advice to you would be: if you think that sounds interesting, it's a powerful read, just don't take it to be the final word on well, anything. if you want to learn about early modern history and the witch trials, or the transition to capitalism, federici makes for an interesting framing to have in your toolbox, but her work should be understood as a theoretical polemic, and you should definitely go somewhere else if you want a more complete picture of the state of idk witch trial studies...

i can't really make recommendations there though, because I'm just a girl who has read like... four or five books on history in the last few years (apart from Federici, I can think of Graeber's Debt, Endnotes' A History of Separation, Chuang's Sorghum & Steel, Gelderloos' Worshipping Power) and generally they've been quite ideological ones that push a specific thesis. (of those, Endnotes and Chuang are definitely the most rigorous and careful). the next one I'm meaning to tackle is C Scott's Seeing Like A State or Against the Grain, but it would probably do me some good to read books that aren't by anarchists once in a while lmao

I don't think I've said anything that other Federici reviewers haven't said better, but that's basically my current stance; hope it's interesting/helpful. i definitely don't put much stock in devotion to Federici herself; i am very prone to these kinds of obsessions with seeing something as the key insight to 'how it all works', that feeling of finding the burning secret at the heart of it all is very addictive, but hopefully I've gotten a bit better at keeping critical distance and developing my own opinions by now...

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/27/2020: THE CURSE OF CATTOBER pt 3 - THE CORPSE GRINDERS

Ted V. Mikel's notorious sickie THE CORPSE GRINDERS is one of a few movies that has become symbolic of my whole journey with psychotronic cinema. Today, I would understand exactly what kind of movie this is, even if I had not seen this exact item: An exploitation movie in the truest sense, just as infamous for its grossout premise as it is for its extraordinary cheapness, delivering all of the moral turpitude and almost none of the over the top effects promised by its attention-grabbing key art--or its dumbfounding title. But when I was a kid, I seriously wondered about these films; worried about them, even.

I wasn't allowed to watch anything that smacked of bad taste, but I still managed to build up a vivid awareness that there were movies out there about forms of perversion and evil that I could never imagine, made by freaks of the highest order. I would hunch nervously over the horror rack at our local mom & pop video mart, earning me the nickname Igor from the amused heshers behind the register, while my parents went through the motions of renting me LABYRINTH for a eight zillionth time. I was allowed to buy exactly one copy of Fangoria (the December 1990 issue featuring LEATHERFACE) before my mother reneged on this gesture of tolerance, but I was allowed to read most anything I wanted--my intellectual hippie folks wouldn't dream of censuring the written word--and I spent many hours, nay years, poring over the Re/Search book of Incredibly Strange Films. This helped create a kind of cinema of the mind for me, in which I tried my best to realize what the movies discussed in the book could possibly be like in real life. The book's detailed descriptions of pictures like SPIDER BABY, THE WIZARD OF GORE, SHE-FREAK, THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS, etc  were stimulating in some ways, and only added to my confusion in others. Without seeing them up close, it was hard to make sense of their combination of laughable cheapness, unfunny comedy, and genuinely sickening crimes against human dignity. What these movies are like, is something you can only find out for yourself.

Having said all that, I'm still going to try to tell you what THE CORPSE GRINDERS is like. We open on the rainswept grounds of the Farewell Acres cemetery, where a jerky-addicted ogre called Caleb (Warren Ball) is extracting freshly interred bodies from the earth, as a gaggle of geese honk savagely from being a wire fence. Caleb's dotty wife Cleo (Ann Noble) argues with Caleb for not-the-last time about how his jerky habit is going to ruin his appetite for the dinner she slops out for her filthy baby doll instead, while Caleb bitches about not being paid by a Mr. Landau for his latest job. What's the job, you ask? Selling corpses to the Lotus Cat Food company, where Landau (Sanford Mitchell) has discovered that human flesh is the secret to his success, having kinda-accidentally fed a difficult shareholder into his cat food grinder. It's hard to say exactly how this has led to such a windfall for Landau, especially since he has to produce the illicit pet food one corpse at a time with his neurotic assistant Maltby (J. Byron Foster, my favorite guy in the movie). I guess I've just never dealt with a cat whose specific addiction is so obvious, so oppressive, even, that it forces me to buy the most expensive cat food on the market. This is what is happening to customers whose cats have fallen under the spell of Lotus, and they pay for it with their very lives because Lotus has given their pets a taste for long pig. Landau struggles to find more sources for his secret ingredient, including a mob hitman, giggly morticians who load the bodies up with "pork-flavored fluid (instead of) formaldehyde", and his own employees--"The world is full of ingredients!" he declares, hopefully. Meanwhile, Doctors Howard Glass (Sean Kenney) and Angie Robinson (Monika Kelly) decide to investigate the recent rash of cat attacks; it's hard to imagine how they're going to get to the bottom of anything, amid many makeout breaks and random changes of clothes, but somebody has to stop all these house cats from devouring the rest of Los Angeles, and it might as well be them.

So that's the plot, but THE CORPSE GRINDERS is still a lot weirder than what I've described. You could be forgiven for wondering whether the movie is supposed to take place in Andy Milligan's version of 19th century London, with Cleo's bizarre insistence on a cockney accent, and Caleb's grumbling about finances involving "pounds" (actually pounds of flesh) in their ramshackle dwelling on the edge of a cardboard-and-styrofoam cemetery. A further Dickensian touch is provided by Landau's one-legged deaf-mute assistant Tessie (Drucilla Hoy), who limps around glumly in a sailor dress and Little Orphan Annie fright wig. If she could talk, she would probably sound like the widow Babcock (Zena Foster), whose husband was the first to go into the grinder, and who speaks in a twittering falsetto that would sound more natural coming out of a sock puppet. All of these community theater touches contrast jarringly with the movie's exploitation nature, which revels in scenes of hardboiled scumbags shaking each other down, of women taking their clothes off for literally no reason at all, and in the suggestion that the gloopy pink paste extruding out of the cat food grinder was once a beautiful girl or a rotting cadaver. The grinder itself is a sight to behold, reminding me at once of something from SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS, and the Wish Squisher invention from the MST3K episode of SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS. The metallic gizmos whirring along its façade glint in the fabulous gelled lights over the production line, optimistically evoking the rich purples and greens of a Mario Bava picture; in a movie that's explicitly about money woes, in a subgenre that's specifically known for its cheapness, it's nice that director Mikels shelled out to add a little extra style to the grinding scenes.

And on that note, I would like to propose, without having much to say about it yet, that some exploitation films are allegories for exploitation filmmaking itself. I don't include all genre movies about money in this category: it's easy to identify many thrillers as being about more general economic conditions that affect us all, including a lot of noir entries. But then there are movies like THE CORPSE GRINDERS, or LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, or COLOR ME BLOOD RED (or its predecessor A BUCKET OF BLOOD), in which the main character tries to solve his financial woes by committing an utterly dehumanizing crime. In these three examples, there is the revelation that honest work doesn't pay, and that money is only gained through the individual's willingness to exploit sensational imagery and/or decadent sensations to tease, titillate, and even addict the customer. It's hard not to see Landau, Seymour, and Adam Sorg as avatars for Ted Mikels, Roger Corman, and Herschell Gordon Lewis, in their similar quests to prey on the craven appetites of the public, at a minimum cost for a maximum payout. If you have other movies you'd like to add to my list, please feel free to reach out.

 All told, it's hard not to like THE CORPSE GRINDERS for its sheer audacity--first, in selling something so meager as a "real movie", and second, for making the movie be about THIS. Also, all of this is significantly enriched when you know a little something about Mikels, a polyamorous eccentric who lived in a castle, whose grounds--and guard geese!--were used for the scenes in Farewell Acres. I'm not even going to try to discuss his prolific exploitation career and personal exploits, because that would be better handled by a longform piece on him specifically. It seems like a few documentaries have attempted the subject, but I don't know whether they're any good. It would be nice if Frank Hennenlotter would give it a try, or someone similarly capable, if there even is such a person. In the meantime, I will contribute the sole piece of information that my own scant research has turned up in preparing for this Blogtober entry: That THE CORPSE GRINDERS was co-written by Arch Hall Sr, and Joe Cranston--father of the now-iconic Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston. I don't know if I'd call that a reason to see the movie, but luckily there are plenty of other reasons to check out THE CORPSE GRINDERS this Halloween. If you don't, then you can never really know what the hell I'm talking about.