#one one recording studio

[frangipanilove]

Sacré Cœur; Two Hearts, Two Records and "One One Recording Studio"

In TWDDD 1x3 Paris Sera Toujours Paris we saw Daryl admiring the view from Isabelle's appartment. He commented on how it sure was better than the view from his old house. And I agree, the Sacré-Cœur/Sacred Heart Basilica truly is a sight to behold.

Daryl seemed to be particularly taken by the view, in a way we don't often get to see him, and as a very obvious heart reference, it naturally it brought my mind to Beth's double heart/button necklace. I talked about the symbolism around Button the Horse from season 5 in this post, how it's ultimately Sirius symbolism.

However, the Sacré-Cœur Basilica was not the only reason episode 1x3 made me think of her necklace...

...because there was also this:

...which I'll get back to, but first things first.

Daryl loved the view of the Sacred Heart Basilica.

"It sure beats the view from my old house"

A "view" is a "vista". "Vista" means "view". We remember a different kind of "vista" from 4x12 Still:

Pine Vista Country Club from 4x12 Still.

Daryl' spent the majority of episode 1x3 talking about getting home. It was all about getting to a radio (Sirius symbolism) so he could get home (North Star symbolism). And the Sacré-Cœur/Sacred Heart Basilica made him think of the "vista" of his old house, which weren't nearly as nice...

...but at least Beth was there, with her trademark double hearts/button necklace.

My primary method of tracking symbolism in TWDU is through etymology, which means the history of words. Sometimes, when tptb use a symbol that might seem random at first, a search on the etymology of the word often helps clear things up. Etymology can tell you the root word of a particular symbol, and you'll often find that two seemingly unrelated symbols in reality are one and the same.

When Beth, in 5x4 Slabtown, found Dr. Trevvit's ID card and realised he was an onchologist from Saint Ignatius Hospital, it was all symbolism. Sirius symbolism to be precise, because the word Sirius is derived from Greek “Seirios” and means "glowing/scorching".

And you know this was no coincidence because of his speciality onchology, which means he likely dealt with radiation therapy. "Radio" and "radiation" are Sirius references.

So Beth finding his ID card from Saint Ignatius is pure Sirius symbolism. And keep this in mind until later, when I'll explain how this all relates to the symbolism around records.

Because we also saw Beth talk about records in Slabtown. I've talked a lot about Noah's t-shirt. It has the stylized heron on it, an obvious reference to the Blue Heron painting from 4x12 Still. It also has he words "one one recording studio" written on it. Obviously we know Beth was all about music, she even commented on how long it had been since she'd heard a record.

So to have "records" as general music references around Beth makes a whole lot of sense.

But we often see records in other settings as well, and we saw no less than TWO records in TWDDD 1x3. I mentioned one of them in this post from a few days ago, the record by the tombstone of Jim Morrison.

but there was also this one:

...wich we saw in the mysterious and frustrating detour to Angers, where we were treated to a spectacular yet disturbing Orchestra of the Dead, and a slightly mad conductor. Musical references en masse, but it wasn't necessarily clear how tptb wanted us to interpret it.

So, we had two records. Or "one one", as you could also say (in that one plus one equals two).

I've checked the etymology (or the history/origin) of the word "record".

The word "record", as in the "recording studio" on Noah's t-shirt, or like the two records we saw in TWDDD 1x3, ultimately derives from the Latin word for "heart", or "cor/cord". I would call them synonymous symbols in this context.

So when we saw TWO records in the episode, on a symbolical level you could say we saw TWO hearts.

Or, you could say we saw "one one" heart...?

The etymology of the word "record" isn't the only reason this episode made me think of Beth's necklace. Right before the scene with Daryl admiring the Sacred Heart Basilica, we saw Isabelle grab an old photo of Laurent's mother Lily. She said "Laurent has never seen her face", the implication being that she wanted something for Laurent to remember his mother by.

As you can see from the etymology screenshot above, the words "heart" and "remember" are connected through etymology. The Latin word for "heart" is "cor/cord", and it evolved through "recordari", which means "remember", to the word "record" that we use today. Tptb had Beth say "I can't remember the last time I heard a record" in Slabtown. "Record" and "remember" are both linked through etymology, and the Latin word for "heart" is at the core of it. Tptb wanted us to know that.

Now take a look at Lily's hands...

...heart-hands, while standing under the Eiffell Tower on her 16th birthday.

Then, fast forward to present day, 12 years into the apocolypse. Young Laurent finds himself at a sexy underground nightclub with Daryl and a nun, and he notices the necklace around singer (another musical reference) Anna Valery's neck.

He tells her the story about his mother celebrating her birthday at the Eiffel Tower. She gifts him her necklace, saying it's something to remember his mother by.

Laurent's mother won't be coming back. She died giving birth to him, reanimated and was subsequently put down. The symbolism we see around her however, it still applies.

As @angelthefirst1 explained last year, the Eiffel Tower was a radio tower, meaning it is Sirius symbolism. Daryl mentioned the word "radio" in every second sentence in the episode (also Sirius symbolism). He was all about getting "home", via the "north" (North Star symbolism).

And the tower had had its tip knocked off by a helicopter. A possible reference to Beth at Grady. Took a hit to the top, but still standing?

There was a "star" reference in the scene at the cemetary... (Sirius and North Star symbolism)

And lastly, remember the reference to Saint Ignatius from Slabtown? How it's a Sirius reference because it means "to ignite", as in "set on fire"? And how it is related to the "record" symbolism?

Here's from TWD 11x24 RIP

Princess hooked a massive bomb up to a RECORD PLAYER. Once the record stopped playing, the fuse ignited and then...

...there was fire...

That's Sirius symbolism.

(thanks for the screenshots @wdway)

(Also, apparently we’ve got an episode called Deux Amours/Two Loves coming up 👀)

[shimmershy]

Undertale Month Day 6: Home

Reading together! :)

[statementlou]

FITF LIVE the DIY bonus tracks (RIP covers and Lucky Again official live versions😪)

~will update with more, but these are the ones I'd already sorted out for me to have; requests for other missing tracks accepted and added on if people want~ 505 live from Cardiff 7 live from Rio de Janeiro Night Changes live from Cincinnati* Back To You live Lucky Again live from Chicago** Beautiful War from Live From London Megamix live from Austin (yes this one WILL be on the record but who wants to wait I love getting to listen to this whenever I want) *beginning is a little bit messy but best audio throughout I found... plus the way he says 'beautiful!' in the middle is 🥵 **I could not find as good a sound quality version of this as I would like at all :( if anyone has a better version please send it!!

[silverfoxstole]

[girlboyburger]

cow 'tubin! lil showcase of my fursona vtuber! 🐮💕 this took forever, BUT i'm really happy with the results!

[almondcroissantsandink]

you all know that scene from Lilo and Stitch

[bhramarii]

should I post some speedpaints 🤔 would yall wanna see that?

[frangipanilove]

“Red” Controls The Gates

I’ll never claim to be an expert on predicting what will happen in the narrative of the show. However, when it comes to predicting future symbolism, I’m starting to acquire a somewhat decent track record. I’ve previously explained how I correctly predicted a second Blue Heron painting years in advance (Noah's T-Shirt Theory), and just recently I’ve explained how I predicted a Blue Bird yellow school bus as well as the reference to a Crowned Victoria Pigeon (a nod to Rick’s Ford Crown Victoria Interceptor police car) to occur as symbolism in TWDU (here and here).

I can now add a new symbol to my list of correct predictions; a Jim Morrison of The Doors cameo, or rather one of his tombstone from Cimetiére du Père Lachaise in Paris.

Last year, after the series finale, I wrote a post about the “red” symbolism on the show (Red Is The Living Color). I’ve been tracking the “red” symbolism for years, and wrote about it as early as in 2018. Those old posts are super cringe and I’d rather die than link to them, but I’m mentioning them to illustrate how the symbolism has been here for years and years.

I always interpreted “red” as a reference to "resurrection", or “coming back” from the dead. And in 11x24 RIP, tptb pretty much confirmed that it was, by utilizing a song by the band Living Colour. If that’s not on-the-nose, I don’t know what is. Is red the color of dying? No, it’s the color of living, it’s the “Living Colour” (British spelling on the word "colour"). And where is the reference to red? It's on the actual record itself, it's red. Red Is The Living Color!

While working on the "Red Is The Living Color" post, I kept thinking about how perfect a reference to The Doors would have been. It’s not unheard of for tptb to incorporate references to music and pop culture, especially in relation to the “resurrection” symbolism around Beth. For instance, we saw that as early as back in season 3, when we heard Beth sing a Tom Waits song. We later saw her sing another Tom Waits song about how she wished she was a dog, which is Sirius symbolism galore. Sirius means “return” or in other words, “resurrection”.

So when writing about how the red symbolism often appears in combination with various representations of doors or gates, it made a lot of sense for a The Doors reference to occur at some point, especially when we learned that the Daryl Dixon spin-off were to take place in France and Paris. I knew Jim Morrison had died in Paris, and that his tombstone at the Cimetiére du Père Lachaise was a famous tourist attraction.

Fast forward to TWDDD 1x3. Daryl and Isabelle arrive in Angers. We remember from last episode, they had a bit of an argument on whether to go straight to Paris, or take the longer route through Angers. Isabelle insisted on going via Angers, because she had a contact there who supposedly had a radio (Sirius symbolism). Once they arrived however, it appeared their contact had gone mad and used the radio parts for his hobby project, an orchestra consisting exclusively of dead people. Daryl was unimpressed, and they soon left. The detour to Angers didn’t amount to much, which is peculiar given how much screen time it was given. And the crazy conductor insisted the music was still alive, even if those musicians looked pretty dead to me…

While it was a spectacular show with some truly incredible walkers, it didn’t move the story much further along. So why did tptb include this little dead-end (literally and metaphorically speaking) storyline in the episode? I believe it was to set the tone about “music” and whether it is “dead or alive”…

…because pretty much the next thing we saw was this:

In my post "Red Is The Living Color" from last year, I hypothesized that tptb use “gates” and “doors” as a metaphor for the liminal space "between the realms", where the characters can move from the “realm of the living” to the “death realm”, and sometimes back again. And we tend to see something of the color red nearby, because as I described in my post, red is the color of resurrection. When tptb utilize the "Red Controls The Gates" (RCTG) symbolism, it indicates that the veil between the realms is particularly thin. This is not necessarily a bad thing. In a show like TWD, people “come back” from the dead all the time. We’ve seen Rick “come back”, first in 1x1 Days Gone Bye, and more recently in 11x24 RIP. We saw Glenn “die” in 6x3 and “resurrect” a few episodes later. We’ve seen Madison from FTWD “die” and “resurrect”, and we know that Troy, who was left for dead in Mexico years ago, will return to the final half of FTWD season 8. The RCTG symbolism indicates that "resurrection" is not only possible, it is outright likely in some circumstances. This is why I was so excited about the record from 11x24 RIP. It was tptb telling us that red is the color of resurrection, Red Is The Living Colour!

And like I said, I remember thinking that a reference to The Doors would be absolutely perfect for this type of symbolism.

Et voilà!

After the spectacular though frustrating detour to Angers, the next thing we saw was…Jim Morrison’s tombstone, with a record and three red roses (three tree/trunk symbolism). If a tombstone doesn't represent the "gate" between the "realm of the living" and the "realm of the dead", I don't know what does.

And as we know, the "gates” between the realms goes both ways. People can move in and out through the gates, as we've seen with multiple characters.

(ETA: I also now realize there's a vase next to the record, so perhaps this applies...)

The gates between the realms appear to be wide open!

[youreyeson1y]

bang chan singing i hate to admit !!!

[thevioletscout]

Did you know!

Betty Boop was based on an African American jazz singer named Esther Jones, pictured below!

Despite this, Betty Boop has been consistently portrayed as white, and Esther Jones' likeness was used without her permission. 

And if you've actually read this far and not just nodded and scrolled on, congratulations! I was lying to you, that entire thing was bunk.

Esther Jones, better known as Baby Esther or Lil Esther, was only a child when Betty Boop made her debut, her exact age is a mystery due to a lack of records. That image I showed you before? That's of a model named Olya P. for the magazine Retro Atelier in 2008. Also Olya’s not even black, she’s white and either Russian or Ukrainian.

Betty Boop was indeed visually based off a jazz singer and actress, but it was Helen Kane, a white woman. Clara Bow, another white singer, is also sometimes cited as an inspiration, but with less evidence. 

It was Helen Kane who found out her likeness was used without permission and filed a lawsuit against Max Fleischer and Fleischer Studios for it. While he would later wholeheartedly admit it, he denied the likeness as part of his testimonies. In the process, he argued that Kane had taken most of her songs and style from Baby Esther. However, according to Wikipedia it’s possible a lot of the evidence for that was fabricated in an attempt to discredit Kane.

So to be more precise, Betty Boop was based off a white woman who might have based her image off a little black girl.

Also, the topic of Betty Boop's intended race gets a little silly regardless given that she was first conceptualized as an anthropomorphic poodle. While it's not exactly unheard of for the 1930s, I don't think they were really focusing on coding her as a specific race at that moment.

The cartoon Minnie the Moocher (remember this) would even depict Betty Boop as coming from a German immigrant family. Many speculated she was even Jewish due to this as well as the Fleischer brothers and her voice actress Mae Questel both being Jewish, but Benjamin Ivry of Forward pointed out that her family's meals were not Kosher so this was unlikely. 

Now you might be thinking; okay but what's the harm in portraying Betty Boop as black? Can’t black people reclaim this one character for themselves? And honestly, I kinda agree. Personally I think Betty Boop is one of those characters that can be ANY race, not just white or black, given her ambiguous and stylized features. I love seeing black women cosplaying Betty Boop or her being portrayed as black in art.

However, the reason I bring this up is because I personally think false or misleading information does not make for good representation. Especially when it leads to situations where artists have to explain themselves for giving Betty Boop light skin when the reason cited otherwise is blatant misinformation. Though thankfully the one interaction I have had about it before posting this was very polite.

Not to mention, this kind of thing maybe not necessarily buries but distracts from the very real contributions and accomplishments of black people in Betty Boop's history.

Let's talk Cab Calloway, for example.

Cab Calloway was a singer and bandleader acclaimed for mixing jazz with vaudeville. He was the first African American to sell one million copies of a single record, and collaborated with Fleicher Studios for three animations, Minnie the Moocher, Snow White, and The Old Man of the Mountain. In these, he would perform a song, the first and last even being directly named after his music, and he was even directly rotoscoped while dancing. 

I can't find any sources for who approached who for these collaborations, but I feel its needless to say there's an inherent respect for Calloway and his work in these cartoons. For a black man in the 1930s. And they didn’t even hide it, Minnie the Moocher and The Old Man of the Mountain features live footage of Cab Calloway and his very visibly black band.

These cartoons bleed passion from both the singer and the animators. And if you’ll excuse the sidenote, I watched those cartoons as part of my research and even today his music is still absolutely enchanting. 

And Calloway was not immune to racism just because of his success either. He and a friend, Felix H. Payne Jr. were even victims of police brutality by officer William E. Todd in 1945 when they were attempting to visit Lionel Hamptom at the whites-only Pla-Mor Ballroom.

His work matters. Betty Boop was only one small part of his career, the man did a lot in his time, but he brought something truly amazing to the table.

There are real people whose accomplishments deserve to be recognized, but I feel they often get pushed aside in the efforts to make up representation that was never actually there under the false belief that there was none in the first place.

Hell, this entire thing is a discredit to the real life of Esther Jones herself!

She was a literal child who’s date of birth and especially death are unknown. She gained fame in her hometown Chicago which led to her becoming an international celebrity, touring Europe as an honored representation of African Americans alongside Josephine Hall. Then she basically retired as a teenager and disappeared from the public eye.

And what is her memory nowadays? As a sexy flapper that supposedly inspired Betty Boop’s creation.

Even knowing this was false, I had to fight back so much misinformation while making this. This photo right here? I was led to believe this was a photo of an adult Esther Jones, but it’s not! We don’t have photos of her as an adult! This is a completely different, unidentified, woman photographed by James Van Der Zee!

And quite frankly, as a white woman I feel like a jerk having to be the one to tell black people that actually no Betty Boop was based on Helen Kane, not Esther Jones.

So in conclusion, STOP MAKING SHIT UP.

[Sources:

Betty Boop - Wikipedia

Cab Calloway - Wikipedia

Baby Esther - Wikipedia

Модель Оля | BETTY BOOP Wiki | Fandom

Dizzy Dishes (1930)

Minnie the Moocher (1932)

Snow White (1933)

The Old Man of the Mountain (1933)]

[lifemod17]

AAAAAAAaaaaaaaAAAAAHHHHHHhhhhh

AAAAHHHHH

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[snailspell]

those who will tangle all your cables when you're not around if not paid homage to

[okenki]

[the_ish]

a comic i made to encourage a friend some time ago (after i got vaporized…😔), i decided to share it, i did it in one night and drew as i went with no planning or sketching so it's a bit wonky and confused, but it got the spirit…! (???) sorry also if it is hard to read…

the idea was to show (?) that being consistent is very important if you want to achieve a goal, and that even just a little everyday can go a long way? It is also a call out to ME…😞

i am a little embarrassed aha, because i feel like it is clumsy and that it comes out as "there is one truth and it is mine" but that's not it… i got a little to passionate while sleep deprived but re-reading it now, i think it might give a little courage to someone else too???

or at least make you laugh? aaaaaa

[084392]

bw2 gijinka team of amateur film makers..................

[quetzalpapalotl]

I fucking love (love love love) Shi Wudu. Oh my god. He is the worst. He is a bastard. I love that he truly loves and cares for Shi Qingxuan and that doesn't make him a good person. Thry were the only person the Water Tyrant truly gave a shit about, he didn't have to jeopardize his own place in heaven by switching their fate, even at the end he'd still die than have them suffer (and that's why I think he deliberately gambled on goading He Xuan into killin him). Except all the suffering and trauma he puts Shi Qingxuan through doesn't count because that's for their own good. I love it, I love that love is not inherently noble, I love when love doesn't redeem.

I love how he refuses to give He Xuan the satisfaction. Shi Wudu gets the last laugh, he still cashed on those 700 years, he regrets nothing. The contrast between him and He Xuan who is only making himself miserable. Shi Wudu successfully getting under He Xuan's skin and having his way. I gotta hand it to him, that was really hot.

I love how he's a flip of everything the hualians represent. He is the master of his own fate. He is doing this out of love. He is choosing a third path.