#overall I think bio has a lot of potential for horror but it’s also very common….when’s there gonna be chemistry horror

[paging-possum]

consider horror science ocs (i have been watching too many horror game playthroughs i fear also what kind of science? idk which one's the scariest/hj)

CONSIDERS CONSIDERS. First off im gonna need horror game recs to watch through over break and also to know what the vibes are….horror definitely works well for science depending on the vibes….im very much a biology/anatomy guy which always has good potential for weird body horror lab experiments and evil weird ethics and potential contamination horror etc etc….that said I personally think physics is the scariest because it’s weird and complicated math….

[vinegar-on-main]

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR OC. INFO I NEED RIGHT THIS INSTANT

1. Full name, age, gender, height, etc. Just bio info really.

2. What kind of world do they live in?

3. Are they good or evil? Protag? Side character? Villain? Hero?

4. Magic powers of any kind? Skills they have?

5. Favorite fact about them

6. Character arc?

7. Any other info you desperately want to tell someone

WOOOO YEAH OKAY

Putting this under a cut cause this is Loooooong

THIS ISNT PROOFREAD AT ALL HAVE FUNNNNNNNNNNNNN

Also tagging @meme-boys-blog cause he’s heard me brainrot about her :p

1. Okay so that’s a bit complicated cause she uses three of em, depending on form. If she’s a human person, that’s Kuze, if shes humanoid, that’s Kuma, and if shes Shadow Creature, that’s Kurokami. It’s all the same person, just presenting as different aspects, you know?

Also she frequently uses bynames so watch out :p

Beat answer for age is Yes. She’s older than literally everyone and anything due to being a creature that is made out of the stuff that exists between realities.

Her gender is whatever you want it to be, but she generally prefers she/they. But she can manifest as any gendered human person as Kuze. The only exception is pronouns of it/it’s, mostly because of some Hollow Knight Stuff.

Also!!! Kuze fun facts: there’s some Rules that Kuze has to follow when manifested, it’s not a lot, but it’s just enough to tip off observant persons that they’re not exactly the Most Human. For example: all forms have to follow the basic template of white hair, pale skin, black eyes, black clothes. Of course, the black can be any dark shade of gray, so there’s some variation in the outfits. Eyes do not reflect light, skin doesn’t get cut like flesh and instead cracks like porcelain, bleeds Void, body temp is always room temp, etc.

Here’s a drawing I did of each one, from right to left, it’s Kuze, Kuma, and Kurokami

2. Yes? Yes. She’s kinda my proxy into fandoms. An op SI oc. But she has her own personality sorta??? It’s A Lot.

3. Lawful neutral. She has her own personal values and sticks to them like glue, but overall she enjoys the concepts of freedom. She has the potential to be the scariest thing ever with eldritch horror shenanigans, or the wine aunt with weird eyes. She tends to make the worst kind of friends (See: Michael Distortion from TMA) because of her loose morals.

She’s not really on the side of destroying worlds, instead going for the cosmic horror angle of “not yet”. And even then, the Void doesn’t really need her direction.

She also travels to diff universes cause she likes the connection, and also she fears becoming a true monster. I mean, wouldn’t everyone?

4. She’s basically the God of Shadow in all its forms, but she doesn’t control it directly. All forms can stop time with ease due to a visit to jojo and stealing DIO’s stand for herself, Names have Power and she can stop it for an infinite duration. Also she can invoke someone’s true name to tell them what to do, this can manifest in different forms, but she tries to make it subtle :p. All forms are also skilled in every instrument type because music is kinda a huge deal for her, and also can create constructs that fall under the same restrictions as Kuze’s form. They can be pretty much anything. But she usually abuses it to make musical instruments on the fly. Almost forgot about the child in the room, during certain plot parts of Transformers Prime season 3, she made a trade with Rafael to repaint Bumblebee in exchange for his knowledge of computers. And given that this kid can hack The Pentagon… yeah.

Kurokami has the power to change her size to be as large as she wants, but the low end is 7 feet, plus horns. Power to dwell/hide in things/peoples shadows, only consequence being that the shadow itself is darker than normal.

ALSO!!! Soul shit, it’s a lot, but it’s a called direct interfacing. She dislikes the process cause it’s Very Invasive (think of it like forcibly issuing commands to someone)

Also also dream shit, she has a major influence over it cause when Radiance died, they left a power vacuum.

Kuze and Kuma have the previously stated abilities, as well as being overall weaker than Kurokami. The time it takes to get from either of these back to Kurokami is quite literally nothing, as the form can either melt or straight up explode, but going from Kurokami to Kuze/Kuma takes longer, even longer if it’s Kuze.

5. When as Kurokami, there’s some Special Voice Quirks!!! She can speak as any person that she has met or knows the Name of, and usually speaks with more than one voice. Her default is usually some kind of femme fatale, but they could also be a confident businesswoman type beat. Also, she speaks in plurals, using we/us/our instead of I/me/my. I just think it’s neat!!!

Also whenever she arrives in a new place that she’s gonna Chill in, she makes a card that automatically charges a random bank account that’s on an internal list. She mostly picks billionaires. She also can eat but she doesn’t need to but food is good.

Coffee addiction. Lots of coffee.

6. Okay so it’s a bit hard to pinpoint her timeline, but I’m gonna try my best.

- In the Before times, before Kurokami was Kurokami, she was something else, think of it like a Guardian Angel on crack and also omni-dimensional.

- She basically was that before she started looking after the cast for Persona 5, 4, and 3 in that order. When she was done with Persona 3’s main plot, something… spoilery happened that made her have an epiphany and was basically the catalyst for her to begin her search

- the search being, of course, to become her own functioning person. She eventually found her way to HK universe post Dream No More, and traveled down to The Abyss to dunk herself in Void.

- the most recent adventures were, in this order:

- TMA, where she made friends with Michael distortion and also became a menace to Elias. She rearranged his books and moved his shit semi-weekly

- Octopath 2, where she had huuuuge beef with the final boss for kinda encroaching on her domain cause she’s petty. Also she asked the gods pretty please for her to say hi to their chosen and give ‘em a boost

- A revisit to personas 3, 4, and 5 Royal, where she revisited the place and could do what she actually wanted with Joker and Co. also fucked with Kasumi a little because she wanted to know Her Deal early.

- SMT IV, kinda visited it while passing through, but ended up making friends with Hikaru, so there’s that. So now she’s here to play music and kick ass. Also probably provide moral support for Neutral route via fun music times

-Pokemon X/Y: Yeah this was meant as a bit of a one time thing but here we are. She’s here to hang out with Sycamore (who highkey thinks she’s a Zorarark but doesn’t leave her because science!!!! Breakthroughs in Zorarark behavior!!!) and also spend an entire day working on her new holo caster because SOMEBODY decided to listen in on them. Also she’s there for the main events of the plot and I’m trying to justify Sycamore having fully evolved Kanto starters.

-SMT IV: Apocalypse. She’s gonna go hang out with Hikaru and also hang out with a different traumatized kid. But this one has a knife and is a gremlin. Nanashi gives her wicked flashbacks to TMA and ends up alerting Dagda when she tries to figure out the kids deal. Either way, Nanashi has a new stalker and Dagda has a new nuisance.

7. I have some documents saved on my laptop that are literally just Shit I Wrote for discord friends but I can post em here if you want. They’re kinda mismatched and scattered, but they give the sense of “shit happening in the background.”

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

Pyro and writing (more headcanons that no one asked for, because Pyro the writer is one of my favorite character traits of his that Marvel constantly neglects)

-Overall, his writing is good, but not much more than that.  If he puts in a lot of effort, it can be great, if he’s rushing, it drops down to terrible.  All his books have a few moments of really good writing, showing the potential that he has, and also moments of really dreadful writing.  As long as he gets paid and people are entertained, he’s satisfied, although he does get frustrated when he knows a scene isn’t flowing well, and he doesn’t have the time or skill to fix it.  It’s difficult to make a living as a writer (and frankly, he wants money), so he tends to bang things out quickly and publish as much as possible.  His Marvel bio says that his books were widely read around the English-speaking world, so I’m guessing that he was at least somewhat popular.  Like, he wasn’t at a Stephen King or Danielle Steel level, but people at least knew his name.

-It’s never been clear to me whether his identity as Pyro was publicly known, but I’m thinking it must have been.  If it wasn’t revealed after the Brotherhood went to jail for the first time, surely it would have been revealed after he died saving Kelly, completely out of costume.  I’d imagine it was a mind-fuck for fans who read his books.  Apparently he was still writing and publishing during the Freedom Force era, so either the general public didn’t know, or being a mutant terrorist didn’t lose him any readers.

-He willed the rights for any future royalties to Avalanche when he died.  That didn’t amount to much at the time, but his work became popular again after he died, and publishers re-printed several titles to make a quick buck.  Avalanche wound up with a tidy sum that he used to buy his bar.          

- Pyro has a generally realistic and easy-going attitude about his own writing.  He thinks it’s at least decent writing, but he knows it’s not anything fantastic or ground-breaking.  He’s read the reviews tearing him apart, he knows he’s generally thought of as popcorn, fluff reading (and he’s okay with that), he’ll cheerfully refer to himself as a hack.  But he does get annoyed if someone keeps harping on him as a bad writer, especially if that same person is claiming that writing is easy, like “Any idiot can bang out a romance novel.”  At that point, he turns to, “Oh really?  How many books have you published?  How many books have you even written?  Oh, zero?  You’ve written no books at all?  Then kindly shut the fuck up.”

-He gets similarly annoyed when people disparage the romance genre as being trashy or shallow, especially since there are plenty of popular thriller/mystery/horror/spy novels that Pyro thinks are equally terrible, but those genres don’t have the same bad reputation that romance does.  He argues that romance is just like any other genre - a lot of it is terrible, some of it is complex and beautifully written.  And even if it is terrible, who cares?  Even the terrible stuff serves its purpose.  He usually doesn’t try to defend the genre with his own work (he knows he’s not winning any battles there), but he’s got a few favorite authors that he’ll bring up.  He does read romance on his down time, he genuinely enjoys it.

-There are a few authors he absolutely fan-boys over, but I don’t know enough about romance as a genre to name specific names.  Once, long ago, one of his favorite authors wrote a moderately favorable review of one of his books, and he literally jumped around his living room from sheer joy.  He cut the review out and framed it.

-He always writes straight romance, because that’s the largest market and biggest potential seller.  His heroines are always women, and he writes entirely from their perspective.  He’ll claim that it’s because most of his readers are women, but it also leaves an element of separation between him and the character, which makes it a lot easier to project all his issues into the story.  Which he does do, quite frequently.  Sometimes he tries to write gay male romance, just private stories for himself, but it always feels too personal.  He does start sticking same-sex relationships into his books, though, just in the background.  He couldn’t be too overt without losing some of his readers (at the time that he was writing), but he’d slip in little hints.

-He writes a lot about characters having to hide aspects of their identity, which is his way of dealing with both the mutant thing and the gay thing.  One of his heroines is a white-passing WOC, and her experiences listening to white characters say horribly racist things is very much based on Pyro listening to friends and co-workers say terrible things about mutants.  Of course, it’s rather problematic for him to use race in this way, but he’s definitely got some problematic tropes in his writing.  He doesn’t mean to use it as a metaphor, just an.....emotional outlet.        

-Speaking of problematic, given the time period that Pyro was writing, I think some of his travel articles definitely lean a bit Orientalist.  There’s nothing overtly or consciously racist, he has a great deal of respect and appreciation for the countries and the cultures that he’s visiting.  But he plays up the image of “exotic” and “mysterious” Asia, especially in his earliest articles, because he’s desperate to catch readers’ attention and keep them interested.  If someone brought it up to him now, he’d probably angrily deny it....but he’d also wince re-reading some of his early stuff.  “Yeah, okay, that’s a bit over the top there.”  He gets much better about it later.

-He puts a lot of self-deprecating humor into his travel articles.  He tends to naturally be something of a braggart and exaggerate when he tells stories, but if he writes about himself as a sophisticated world traveler having wild adventures, he’d sound like Gilderoy Lockheart a complete prat.  And Australia’s tendency towards Tall Poppy Syndrome would probably make his work unpopular.  So he puts in a lot of his own stupid mistakes, and presents himself as an adventurer who’s also a bit of a silly ass, bumbling his way through a culture that he doesn’t fully understand.  The events he depicts are mostly true, if exaggerated, but he tends to omit any mysterious occurrences involving fire. Can’t have that, can we?

- He loves the idea of fan fiction.  He was writing fan fiction as a child without knowing the term for it.  And fan fiction of his own work?  He is flattered and delighted.  Of course, he does get rather frustrated when fan fiction depicts his horrible Sebastian-insert as a sympathetic character, but he’ll grit his teeth and put up with it.  Because he’s just so happy that someone liked his work enough to want to write their own version.                   

[haich-slash-cee]

Is the print publishing world picking up online/fandom terms? How they are using them? How do we feel about this?

So this is... attention-getting, for folks who like to follow publishing and meta stuff.

https://twitter.com/sapphicxrey/status/1215065948677443584

https://twitter.com/TorDotComPub/status/1233391556750647299

(2nd tweet -- TW, mentions of non-con)

Are we seeing the beginnings of book publishers directly borrowing from online/fandom culture in promoting their books? How do we feel about these examples?

More below cut.

Exhibit #1: screenshots of Bonds of Brass promo from Jan 8 2020. (Which is probably going to have reactions of “haha, cute” at most.)

Transcript of blurb: 

“If you like... 

forbidden romances, “there’s only one bed”, cityships, weaponized umbrellas, powersuits, secret princes, best friends, best friends PINING, fake dating between PINING best friends, tactical streaking, the minivan of starships, cigar-chomping cyborg ladies, scary empress moms, galactic-level bisexual disasters, LEGACY (WHAT IS A LEGACY?), rooftop hopping, golden trios, rumblin’ drums, bootleg fireworks, BIG SPACE BATTLES PEW PEW, a surprisingly functional public transit system, mob trouble, one hell of a pilot, the inherent DRAMA of empire, a nice interlude in a river, smoking a joint that’s been on the floor, sick stunts, slick grifts, hiding in a dumpster, or any combination of the above,

 Then you might like 

BONDS OF BRASS”

The Twitter responses seem to be generally enthusiastic. (And also, “FinnPoe! FinnPoe!”)

Personally, I’m intrigued from a meta-view of “oh so that’s definitely pulling from online world and fanfiction world, interesting. I wonder how much fanfiction culture is starting to influence print book culture and promotion.” Maybe I’ve got some questions like, “Ok so moneymaking companies such as Penguin are now using culture developed by the not-moneymaking-world of fanfiction? How do we feel about this?” Anyway, the book looks cute, I’m interested enough and I might get it from the library.

I suspect many people’s reactions are along the lines of “hm, interesting”, “sounds like a lark”, or “haha they’re using AO3 tags as promo”, etc. 

Exhibit #2, screenshots of DOCILE promo, from Feb 28 2020 (today is March 1 2020), and screenshots of Twitter responses so far:

(*CW, non-con discussion)

Tweet transcript:

“DOCILE by @KMSzpara:  

-Dubcon/Noncon 

-Dramatic Trillionaire Content 

-BDSM and then some more BDSM and then a lot more BDSM

 -Hurt/comfort and hurt/no comfort

 -Cinnamon roll of steel 

-The most scandalous kink: love 

-Courtroom, bedroom, & Preakness drama

[Tor book website link]”

So this is getting mixed reactions on Twitter. All dozen or so reactions, so far. Here’s text transcripts and bio info from repliers, below. I’m being a little obsessive, mostly to show that there’s a mix of queer, book-ish people in the replies (including the author).)

Noncon is nonconsentual sex, rape. Even in fandom it's a content tag, not a promotional term. I can't imagine being a rape survivor and seeing this come across my TL. -- @WriteSomeGood [queer rainbow] [Cis queer homemaker, aspiring author, maker of incredible cinnamon buns. She/her] [has a Tumblr page]

I’m not a survivor but it was an instant “no thank you” from me. And I was sincerely looking forward to this prior to. This is the most immediately off-putting marketing push I’ve seen for a book in a long damn time. -- @AGAWilmot [Author, editor, artist. Co-EIC of @anathemaspec. @SFU alum. The Death Scene Artist/W&W 2018. Ace/enby. They/them. Horror is my comfort food.]

Whichever intern wrote this tweet, deserves a full time job. With benefits. -- @simeontsanev [Aspiring writer, post-aspiring musician, and overall geek  He/Him /[queer rainbow]/ To the world we dream about, and the one we live in now! http://simeontsanev.com]

Idk why everyone thinks it’s always an intern writing copy and not a team comprised of extremely skilled social media experts, editors, publicists and marketers, and their assistants  I worked on those tags with my editor and a good friend!! -- @KMSzpara [Kellan. [queer rainbow]  Speculative fiction writer. Queer agenda.  Hugo & Nebula finalist.  DOCILE 3/3/20 from Tor Dot Com Publishing.  He/him.  Rep @suddenlyjen] *The author, bio page and twitter page.

this is CUTE! -- @MSSciarappa  [queer rainbow] I do books. he/him.

I am Extremely Ready for this content thank u -- @JessicaBCooper [Journo ☽ Writer of faerie, villain fuckery & cruel desires ☽ Lestat & Loki's love child ☽ Aleksander Morozova's side-hoe ☽ Rep'd by Kate Testerman @ktliterary]

I’m listening -- @MerynLobb [Government worker. Weightlifter. Nihilist. Aspiring cult leader. Avid user of words, often bad ones. #AMM R6 Mentee. she/her]

Soon! Soon!! -- @castrophony [Geek. Gamer. Cosplayer. Bibliophile. Scientist. She/Her.]

[happy reaction gif] -- @TorDotComPub [Providing a home for writers to tell SFF stories in exactly the number of words they choose. All our titles are available globally in print and DRM-free ebook.]

[throwing stuff in dumpster, unhappy reaction gif] -- @cursedgravy  [name's xavi, im a transman and i like to daydream about making content] 

For more context, here’s the blurb from the author website. Below is the blurb from the publisher’s site:

“Docile

K.M. Szpara

K. M. Szpara's Docile is a science fiction parable about love and sex, wealth and debt, abuse and power, a challenging tour de force that at turns seduces and startles.

There is no consent under capitalism.

To be a Docile is to be kept, body and soul, for the uses of the owner of your contract. To be a Docile is to forget, to disappear, to hide inside your body from the horrors of your service. To be a Docile is to sell yourself to pay your parents' debts and buy your children's future.

Elisha Wilder’s family has been ruined by debt, handed down to them from previous generations. His mother never recovered from the Dociline she took during her term as a Docile, so when Elisha decides to try and erase the family’s debt himself, he swears he will never take the drug that took his mother from him.

Too bad his contract has been purchased by Alexander Bishop III, whose ultra-rich family is the brains (and money) behind Dociline and the entire Office of Debt Resolution. When Elisha refuses Dociline, Alex refuses to believe that his family’s crowning achievement could have any negative side effects—and is determined to turn Elisha into the perfect Docile without it.

Content warning: Docile contains forthright depictions and discussions of rape and sexual abuse.”

So that’s a lot of info and reactions.

Personally: at first glance, I absently skimmed the tweet and “hurt/comfort” popped out, and I was like “What? Mainstream publishing is cool with this now? I was wondering if ‘hurt/comfort’ would one day become commonly used in publishing [related post]. But this is way sooner than I thought.” And then I read the rest of of the tweet and thought, “Wait, what?” 

And then I started reading through the tweet replies and thought, “OK, at the risk of getting a bunch of Tumblr drama, I want to bring this to the whump community and see how people feel."

As for myself, one of my squicks is non-con, and I’m not really interested in hurt/no comfort. So just from the tweet, I know the book is not for me. The official blurbs confirmed that. In this sense, this is like skimming Ao3 tags on a fic and saying “pass” on a story.

However, I have questions about the specific promotion of the book. So the official blurbs are pretty standard. What about that tweet, which Tor (and the author, who helped put it together) put out? Because I think an official publisher’s Tweet comes with different context than Ao3 tags.

First, the different internet spaces. You can filter tags on Ao3 and Tumblr. I know you can mute words on Twitter, but is that the same thing? Also, would people be expecting these tags on Twitter? Compared to Ao3 or Tumblr or Tumblr Whump spaces?

Within the Tumblr Whump community, from what I’ve browsed, the community attitude (guidelines?) seem to be “Write and discuss what you want. Be sure to tag it, use content warnings, or otherwise clearly communicate if you have things that may be triggering. Respect people’s squicks/triggers. Walk away from what you don’t like.” Like, tumblr whump has a very specific culture of trying to balance discourse/stories about potentially very dark stuff, but also wanting to make sure the IRL people and Tumblr users are okay. There’s always posts going around about how to do this, are we doing this in the right way, ethics, so on. Also -- and people can correct me -- the whump tumblr space might be where tags are content warnings for people to stay away, and also what people might actively look for. So if any space is going to discuss if this promotional tweet checks out, I feel like it’s this space. 

Also, to note again, Tor Tweets are in the money-official-publisher-world, not unpaid-tumblr-people or unpaid-fanfiction-fandom-world.

Maybe I just want to ask, “Hey those first two tweet responses, does they have a point? Tor using ‘noncon’ as official promotion? On Twitter?” I mean, I’ve previously written, “The CW and TW tags that Ao3 writers use, I really wish those were used with published books as well.” But somehow, the Tor tweet was not quite what I was expecting. Maybe for reasons similar to that first tweet response. (I guess one could debate if a tweet is really promotion or just information... you know what someone can correct me, but I’m gonna say that a Tor.com tweet is promotion, compared to information like Ao3, and that tweet was there for promotion.)

Those tags operate within specific Ao3 and Tumblr cultures and infrastructure. I don’t hang around Twitter for whump stuff, IDK what the culture is. Anyway, does dropping these tags into a promotional tweet from Tor.... translate?

The tweet is evidently gathering the people who are there for it, and the people who aren’t there for it are quickly realizing that they are not there for it. But personally, the Tor website blurb does a better job at that, using writing that I’d expect from a publisher for communicating fictional non-con situations. (Maybe the blurb content warnings are what I wanted more of, when I said I wished for CW and TW in books.)

Anyway, there’s no huge drama about that Docile book promo on Twitter, as far as I can tell. So this is a niche thing, right now. But. The promo for Bonds of Brass and for Docile might be the beginnings of a trend of well-known book publishers borrowing from online writing / fandom culture and terminology in order to promote or categorize their books. These two promos might set a precedent or have other significance.

So if anyone has discourse on the tweets or potential future trends... 

[sharp-teeth-and-archived]

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐄𝐆𝐀 𝐑𝐏 𝐏𝐋𝐎𝐓𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐄𝐓 / 𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐄.

First and foremost, recall that no one is perfect, we all had witnessed some plotting once which did not went too well, be it because of us or our partner. So here have this, which may help for future plotting. It’s a lot! Yes, but perhaps give your partners some insight? Anyway BOLD what fully applies, italicize if only somewhat. Long post!

MUN NAME: Bambi / Eden     AGE: 18       CONTACT: IM, Ask, Discord (search discord up on my blog)

CHARACTER(S): a shit ton

CURRENT FANDOM(S): Dragon Age, rdr2, assassin’s creed, star wars (sorta??)

FANDOM(S) YOU HAVE AN AU FOR:  Modern verse, r.dr2, da, skyrim (haven’t touched my bio for it for a while so I may have to touch it up a bit) and that’s pretty much it for any au verse. They’re just crossover verses.

MY LANGUAGE(S): English.

THEMES I’M INTERESTED IN FOR RP: FANTASY / SCIENCE FICTION / HORROR / WESTERN ( my brand ) / ROMANCE / THRILLER / MYSTERY / DYSTOPIA / ADVENTURE / MODERN / EROTIC / CRIME / MYTHOLOGY / CLASSIC / HISTORY (my 2nd brand) / RENAISSANCE / MEDIEVAL / ANCIENT / WAR / FAMILY / POLITICS / RELIGION / SCHOOL / ADULTHOOD / CHILDHOOD / APOCALYPTIC / GODS / SPORT / MUSIC / SCIENCE / FIGHTS / ANGST / SMUT / DRAMA / ETC.  ( I’m open to most things, it just depends on plot & muse )

PREFERRED THREAD LENGTH: ONE-LINER (it happens but I tend to not favor it) / 1 PARA / 2 PARA / 3+ PARA / NOVELLA. / ALL

ASKS CAN BE SEND BY: MUTUALS / NON-MUTUALS / PERSONALS / ANONS.

CAN ASKS BE CONTINUED?: YES / NO / OCCASIONALLY   - only by Mutuals?:  YES / NO

PREFERRED THREAD TYPE: CRACK / CASUAL / SERIOUS / DEEP AS HECK. / ALL

IS REALISM / RESEARCH IMPORTANT FOR YOU IN CERTAIN THEMES?:   YES / NO.

ARE YOU ATM OPEN FOR NEW PLOTS?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS.

DO YOU HANDLE YOUR DRAFT / ASK - COUNT WELL?:  YES / NO / SOMEWHAT. 

HOW LONG DO YOU USUALLY TAKE TO REPLY?: 24H / 1 WEEK / 2 WEEKS / 3+ WEEKS / MONTHS / YEARS. / DEPENDS ON MOOD AND INSPIRATION, AND IF I’M BUSY

I’M OKAY INTERACTING WITH: ORIGINAL CHARACTERS / A RELATIVE OF MY CHARACTER (AN OC) / DUPLICATES / CROSSOVERS / MULTI-MUSES / SELF-INSERTS / PEOPLE WITH NO AU VERSE FOR MY FANDOM (really depends on if you have oen in mind and we discussed it, it’s just not posted) / CANON-DIVERGENT PORTRAYALS / AU-VERSIONS.

DO YOU POST MORE IC OR OOC?: IC / OOC. ( varies, but overall I tend to post more ooc? )

ARE YOU SELECTIVE WITH FOLLOWING OTHERS?: YES / NO / DEPENDS.  

BEST WAYS TO APPROACH YOU FOR RP/PLOTTING:  im me or talk to me over discord

WHAT EXPECTATIONS DO YOU HOLD TOWARDS YOUR PLOTTING PARTNER: Not too much? I’d like for there to be a plot in mind, but I can understand if that’s not the case. I’ve had instances where I want to interact with a character, but have absolutely no idea in mind. Usually sendign in an ask meme can help in that regard.

WHEN YOU NOTICE THE PLOTTING IS RATHER ONE-SIDED, WHAT DO YOU DO?:  I strive to not be one-sided myself, but I do have instances where I can’t think of anything. I’m not sure? Maybe ask the other person if they’re into it or if something else is at play (dealign with real life problems and it just affects their mood voerall).

HOW DO YOU USUALLY PLOT WITH OTHERS, DO YOU GIVE INPUT OR LEAVE MOST WORK TOWARDS YOUR PARTNER?:  I always try to give ideas of my own if I have any. Coming to a equally agreed, general idea is fine. I’ve had instances where I was on both sides of this, but I always try to add input and be equal with the other person.

WHEN A PARTNER DROPS THE THREAD, DO YOU WISH TO KNOW?:   YES / NO / DEPENDS. - AND WHY?: Sometimes I don’t notice it, but sometimes I do. Generally, I like to know, but I understand if someone doesn’t wan tto reach out. Just at least try to let me know and we’re fine. 

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY LEAD YOU TO DROP A THREAD?:  It depends really. Sometimes I just don’t have muse for a thread, or an instance where I have dropped a muse entirely. Sometimes it can be timing, but that’s rarely the issue. Most of the time it’s just I can’t think of anything and I feel like it hasn’t really gone anywhere? I have stuff in my queue for a while, so soemtimes it appears that way until it’s posted and I’m sorry about that.

WILL YOU TELL YOUR PARTNER?:   YES / NO / DEPENDS. ( I do have instances where I was forgetful and I haven’t told my partner int he apst adn I’m sorry about that. )

IS COMMUNICATION IN THE RPC IMPORTANT TO YOU? YES / NO. - AND WHY?: I don’t need to be tlaked every day, but stronger friendships ( ooc & ic ) are formed when I talk to a person. It doesn’t need to be often, but it helps me understand your chaarcter and your approach. With that, I can come up with ideas and understand you rmuse more. I understand if people aren’t fond of ooc chatting, that’s completely understandable to me.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH ABSOLUTE HONESTY, EVEN IF IT MAY MEANS HEARING SOMETHING NEGATIVE ABOUT YOU AND/OR PORTRAYAL?: Criticsm is a good way to grow. Criticsm is different from completely bashing a perosn’s portrayal and not giving any pointers (ex: “your portrayal sucks.”). Or even for a person. If you feel like I am portraying something wrong, like depression or something similar, let me know. If you feel like Lydia’s adhd isn’t properly portrayed, let me know. 

DO YOU THINK YOU CAN HANDLE SUCH SITUATION IN A MATURE WAY? YES / NO.

WHY DO YOU RP AGAIN, IS THERE A GOAL?: All of my muses are written and taken an interest in for different reasons, sometimes I don’t even know why I decided to write them. I roleplay because I love exploring different characters and dyanamics and it’s easier for me to write like this than forming my own story. But a goal in mind? Be a good rp partner I guess? Or at least try to make things interesting and try my best to portray my characters correctly or in an intruiging manner. 

WISHLIST, BE IT PLOTS OR SCENARIOS:  Varies on muse. I have different plots in my wishlist tag: ( wishlist ). 

THEMES I WON’T EVER RP / EXPLORE:   Potential triggering content ahead. Rape, noncon, abuse, incest, drug use -not alcohol- ( lyrium I can write fine, it’s just the realistic stuff I can’t do. ), inappropiate under age stuff. Themes where I write a stalker. Sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and racism will never be mentioned by any of my characters. I won’t write smut probably ever, so themes with that I tend to not write. Very likely more, I just can’t think of anything. Within dragon age, I do have a characetr ( Sera ) who will refer to elves as elfy-elves and be pretty anti-elf, which can be triggering to others. Also, animal abuse or gore of any kind.

WHAT TYPE OF STARTERS DO YOU PREFER / DISLIKE, CAN’T WORK WITH?: I can’t work with starters that don’t really have any dialogue (handing something over with nothing vocally said is fine, but when someone is just sitting there, that’s harder to work with unless somethign is plotted). Generally, I like outside circumstances to be explained (locaiton, where in a game/setting this might be occuring, etc), I really like when dialogue is added and body landguage is explained/noted.

WHAT TYPE OF CHARACTERS CATCH YOUR INTEREST THE MOST?:  Honestly? it varies. I tend to really be into deep, complex characters or characters that appear can be sterred in that direction with more added. Bubbly, energetic characters, fighters (typically female). Quick witted or flirty characters & mysterious types. 

WHAT TYPE OF CHARACTERS CATCH YOUR INTEREST THE LEAST?:  I hate using the term but mary-sue/gary-sue. I hate saying that, but if a character has no flaws, I won’t be interested. Or characters that seem to just be placed there with no development. 

WHAT ARE YOUR STRONG ASPECTS AS RP PARTNER?: I try to add as much effort, or at least a lot of effort, in replies & interaction. I am very open-minded and when I get passionate about soemthing, you can really tell. I am easy-going, so feel free to tell me if you want to drop a thread or have a concern. I tend to work well of other’s people’s ideas, usually able to add my own.

WHAT ARE YOUR WEAK ASPECTS AS RP PARTNER?: I am slow and my queue tends to be slow since I try not to overhwelm myself and stress myself out to the heavens. I try to reach out, but sometimes I just can’t think of anything to say. My muse can be very flickle at times, so replies to stuff can vary. My msue tends to be more for ask memes than replies at times. 

DO YOU RP SMUT?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS. 

DO YOU PREFER TO GO INTO DETAIL?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. 

ARE YOU OKAY WITH BLACK CURTAIN, FADE TO BLACK?: YES / NO.

WHEN DO YOU RP SMUT? MORE OUT OF FUN OR CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT?:

ANYTHING YOU WOULD NOT WANT TO RP THERE?:  all of it

ARE SHIPS IMPORTANT TO YOU?:   YES / NO 

WOULD YOU SAY YOUR BLOG IS SHIP-FOCUSED?: YES / NO. ( I love ships, but I am selective with it and require chemistry -unless I know your muse and you occ super, super well-. It’s nice but it isn’t he full focus of this blog. I want to explore my characters and witness other people’s characters and their development. )

DO YOU USE READ MORE?:  YES / NO / SOMETIMES WHEN I WRITE LONG STUFF.

ARE YOU:  MULTI-SHIP / SINGLE-SHIP ( Jacob ) / DUAL-SHIP  —  MULTIVERSE / SINGLEVERSE.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE TO EXPLORE THE MOST IN YOUR SHIPS?: Varies on muse, but for my rdr2 characters I’ve been really wanting a sorta of “outside” character where they aren’t directly involved in the gang, but they are in a relationship with oen of their members. Where my muse,w hose in the gang, will tell you rmuse about it and the whole aftermath of everything. Where their partner will understand to an extent, but try to undestand? if that makes sense? I also want enemies to work on a job/project together and deal with that. But this all also varies on muse.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH PRE-ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIPS?: YES / NO / DEPENDS.  ( I find it easier to write to assume people knwo each other, but an immediate friendship isn’t required. Like my muse may know yours or hear about yours, but they haven’t directly met you before ). 

► SECTION ABOUT YOUR MUSE.

- WHAT COULD POSSIBLY MAKE YOUR MUSE INTERESTING TOWARDS OTHERS, WHY SHOULD THEY RP WITH THIS PARTICULAR CHARACTER OF YOURS NOW, WHAT POSSIBLE PLOTS DO THEY OFFER?: I have a large amount of different muses, but all of my muses all bring something new to the table. Want a guy who seems nice, but can be an asshole with a flick of a dime, who has a secret betrayal plot hidden behind his back? Pick Robert. Want a guy who’s humurous but seems to be hiding under a fake persona? Pick Charley. Want a female assassin who’s very talented anr professional in her work to a fault with her work-alcoholic ways? Pick Evie. Want a sweet and caring character with a heart of gold and will give you advice and comfort? Pick Cassie It depends on the plot, too, but I try my best to add as much to reply to to another. If you ever want more added, tell me! I could give multiple plots, so it’s really hard to put something down.

WITH WHAT TYPE OF MUSES DO YOU USUALLY STRUGGLE TO RP WITH?:  If someone isn’t interested or outwardly hateful of my muse without a valid reason when starting to interact. Beign enemies is fine, but maybe we could write how it became that way? This really varies, so don’t let this steer you away. Just give me something to work with, brign soemthing to the tbale, and I’m usually fine.

WHAT DO THEY DESIRE, WHAT IS THEIR GOAL?:  Varies on muse. Robert: fame/recognition, a legend made out of him. Charley: just to live life happy? He wants to be okay money-wise. Evie: to take down the Templars & help the people of London, not fail and always be successful and outwit her foes. Cassie: everyone around her happy. Sean: His gang to be successful, btu also be sucessful himself, he wants to be admired as well.

WHAT CATCHES THEIR INTEREST FIRST WHEN MEETING SOMEONE NEW?:  Just using the same muses lmao. Robert: Someone who just listens to him and isn’t quick to make fun of him. Charley: If they have a sense of humor and someone he can stand, he’s pretty much fine tbh. Evie: If they can give her any information or aid with her cause. Cassie: How they are feeling. If they let her just listen and seem more open than closed off. Very personality-based. Sean: soemtimes looks, but mostly if they have a similar personality as him.

WHAT DO THEY VALUE IN A PERSON?:  Evie: devotion, kind spriit, efficiency, loyalty. Robert: willingness and empathy despite having little himself. Charley: Honesty. Cassie: Consistency. Sean: reliability. 

WHAT THEMES DO THEY LIKE TALKING ABOUT?:  generally all of them like books (except Sean), events around them, their interests.

WHICH THEMES BORE THEM?:  For half of them, anything mundane or boring. Anything that isn’t relating to anything that’s spoken around / surrounds them.

DID THEY EVER WENT THROUGH SOMETHING TRAUMATIC?:  Robert & Charley (more Robert) witnessed a murder, Robert actually doing that act. Cassie: hearing about the violent nature of her father’s death. Sean: the things he went through with the bounty hunters.

WHAT COULD LEAD TO AN INSTANT KILL?:  A gunshot or anything that could overpower them.

IS THERE SOMEONE /-THING THEY HATE?:  Sean: rich people, Scots for some reason, English people sometimes. When someone disagrees with him on soemthing he is passionate about. Pronouncing and Irish word wrong. O’Driscolls & anyone that’s an enemy of the gang. Evie: Templars, Starrick & Lucy Thorne. People who lie or misled her or others. Injustice. Robert: Someone makign fun of him tbh. Charley: People who don’t plan out anything or are really reckless.

IS YOUR MUSE EASY TO APPROACH?: YES / NO.    - BEST WAY TO APPROACH THEM?: Talk to them. Initiate a conversation. Pretty much that across the board. 

SOMETHING YOU MAY STILL WANT TO POINT OUT ABOUT YOUR MUSE?: None of my muses are perfect. Some are worse than others, but generally msot of my muses will listen to you and usually be nice to you if you appraoch them well. All my muses are different from one another, so expect different results / reactions

CONGRATS!!! You managed it, now tag your mutuals! ♥

TAGGED: stole it

 TAGGING: steal it and pelase tag me ! I want to see your results

[houseofvans]

Sketchy Behavior | Hellen Jo 

Never afraid to speak and/or draw her mind, Los Angeles based artist and illustrator, Hellen Jo and her characters can be described as rough, vulgar, tough, jaded, powerful, bratty and bad-ass - AKA her own brand of femininity. Known for her comic Jin & Jam, and her work as an illustrator and storyboard artist for shows such as Steven Universe and Regular Show, Hellen’s rebellious, and sometimes grotesque artwork and illustrations are redefining Asian American women and women of color in comics. In fact, that’s why Hellen Jo was a must-interviewee for our latest Sketchy Behavior where we talk to her about her love of comics and zines, her antiheroines, and redefining what Asian American women identity is or can be; and what her ultimate dream project realized would be.  

Tell folks a little about yourself.  So is it Helllen with three “l”’s? Mainly because your IG handle and website has a whole lot of extra “l”’s? 

Haha my actual name is Hellen with two L’s.  All my emails and urls contain a different number of L’s to confuse everyone. My grandfather took my American name from the Catholic saint, but he spelled it wrong, and now I share the same name as the mythological progenitor of the Greek people. But I like it better than my Korean name, which literally means, “graceful water lily” HAHAHA. I am an illustrator-slash-painter-slash-I-don’t-know-what living and working in Los Angeles.

Let’s talk about your early childhood / background. I read you’re from San Jose, CA and both your folks were professors, which is really cool!!   How did you end up making art instead of teaching a room full of students about Hotel Management or Medieval History? Just curious where you got your “creative bug” and what early comics, arts, and/or influences led you down the road to becoming an artist?

I grew up in South San Jose, and yes, both of my parents are professors, of finance and of applied linguistics.  A lot of my extended family are professors too, so I grew up parroting their desire for academia, but really, I started drawing when I was a wee babe, and I’ve always wanted to be a cartoonist. When I was really young, my parents drew for fun, really rarely; my dad could draw the shit out of fish and dogs, and my mom painted these really beautiful watercolor still lifes.  I was fascinated, and I’d spend all my time drawing on stacks and stacks of dot matrix paper by myself.  My parents also had a few art books around the house, and I remember staring so hard at a book of Modigliani nudes that my eyes burned holes through the pages.

What was the first comics you came across?

The first comics I ever got were translated mangas that were given to me by relatives when we’d visit Korea.  I remember getting Candy Candy, a flowery glittery shojo manga for girls, and I was mesmerized by all the sparkly romance and starry huge eyes.  I was also enthralled by Ranma ½, a gender bending teen manga that was equal parts cute art, cuss words, and shit too sexy for a kid my age.  However, I was mostly thrilled that I could understand the stories with really minimal Korean reading skills, thus cementing a forever love of comics.  In junior high and high school, I read a mix of newspaper strips and some limited manga, and I was enthralled with MTV cartoons “Daria” and “Aeon Flux”, but I wasn’t exposed to zines or graphic novels until I moved to Berkeley for college.

Did you have a first comic shop you haunted? What did you fill your comic art hunger with?

Being a super sheltered teen with not-great social skills, I was lonely my first semester, so I would lurk at Cody’s Books and Comic Relief every single day after classes.  I read the entirety of Xaime Hernandez’s Love & Rockets volume, The Death of Speedy one afternoon at Cody’s, and it literally made me high; I was so hooked.  I amassed some massive credit card debt buying and reading as many amazing comics as I could those first (and only) couple years of school: all of Los Bros Hernandez’s Love & Rockets, Dan Clowes’ Eightball, Julie Doucet’s Dirty Plotte comics, Peter Bagge’s Hate series, Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, Charles Burns’ Black Hole, Taiyo Matsumoto’s Black and White, Junji Ito’s Tomie and Uzumaki volumes… I could not believe the scope and breadth of the alternative comics genre, and the stories were so insanely good; they literally mesmerized me. I was so obsessed; I even skulked around the tiny comics section at UC Berkeley’s Moffitt Library in search of books I hadn’t read, and amid the fifty volumes of Doonesbury strips, some sick university librarian had included an early English translation of the Suehiro Maruo collection, Ultra Gash Inferno.  That book blew my tiny mind about a hundred times; it’s totally fucked up erotic-grotesque horror porn, but the art is unbelievably beautiful.  I read that entire thing sitting on the floor in the aisle, feverishly praying to God to forgive my sins after I finished the book, because I was way too ashamed to check it out of the library.

How about zines? I imagine a comic devouring ….

I devoured zines at a nearly equally fervent pace, including those by Aaron Cometbus, Al Burian (Burn Collector), Doris, John Pham, Jason Shiga, Lark Pien, Mimi Thi Nguyen, etc. I had never seen a zine before in my life, and suddenly, I was living in a town full of zinesters.  I was drowning in inspiration.  I tried to copy the art and writing of everything I read, and I spent a lot of my time making band flyers, trying to pass off zines as suitable replacements for term papers (this worked just once), and making monthly auto-bio comics for a few student publications. Eventually, I dropped out of school, then dropped out of school again, and I made my first published comic, Jin & Jam; then it all became real.

What was your early works like? and how did these become fodder for your self-published stuff later?  What about your own experiences did you feel needed to be expressed in your own comics and artwork?

As a kid I was mostly copying sparkly girl manga and Sailor Moon stickers, and I don’t think I’ve really strayed all that far from that. My first few zines were cutesy autobiographical comics about crushes and falling asleep at the library; incredibly dull stuff.  I made a super fun split comic/ep with this band I loved, The Clarendon Hills, but after that point, I was tired of drawing cute, goofy shit.

I had also really been obsessed with Korean ghost horror movies in high school, and I wanted to make comics that reflected more of that kind of coming-of-age violence and rage, so I made a couple standalone horror comics, Paralysis and Blister.  These were longer than anything I’d ever done (forty to fifty pages each), and I felt like I was finally figuring out how to write interesting stories.  I eventually dropped out of school and made Jin & Jam, based a bit on growing up in San Jose and on other kids I had grown up with. 

At the time, there were still relatively few Asian American women in comics, and I was tired of whatever hyper-cute, yellow-fever, Japanified shit we were being pigeon-holed into, so I reacted by writing and drawing vulgar girls who started fights and didn’t give a fuck.  I went to art school for a few semesters, got better at drawing people, and went on to draw nothing but mean bad girl ne'erdowells.  I’d never been a very strong or defiant personality outwardly, but I’ve always been a pretty big fuckin bitch on the inside, and I just wanted to draw how I feel, in the most sincere way possible. And naturally, over the years, as I continued to develop this attitude in my art, I was able to express it better in person as well.  Self-actualization through making comics!

For folks who don’t read comics, can you explain why they are SO AMAZING and moving to you!  What about the format, art and overall genre makes them so great and not just your typical “funnies.”

I truly believe that comics are the greatest narrative format and art medium of all time!  They are completely full of potential; you can draw and write whatever the hell you can think of, there are no real rules, and you as author and artist can create a deep and intimate experience for your reader.  You can bare your vulnerabilities or yell at the world or create a visual masterpiece or inform people, visually and narratively.  I don’t even believe that good art makes good comics; writing is king, and the art should really serve to further the story.  Some of the worst comics I’ve ever seen had the most amazing art, and some of the greatest comics I’ve loved have the plainest, most naive, even ugly visuals, but those authors were able to finesse a symbiotic relationship between the text and the images to tell a compelling story.  People are already so drawn to images, so it makes sense to me that they can enhance a reader’s literary experience so much.

I read that Taiyo Matsumoto is one of your all time inspirations.  Most folks probably don’t know much about this master of comics, heck my knowledge is limited, so what makes his work speak to you so much?  Perhaps it’ll encourage folks to venture into a new world of art exploration through visual comics.

Taiyo Matsumoto is the all time master of coming-of-age comics. I worship at his altar, for real. He is a Japanese artist, so technically his work is manga, but his masterful storytelling and singular visuals are so different from most manga, beyond categorization.  He writes quiet, powerful stories about boys, girls, and teens who live in uncaring worlds surrounded by unfeeling adults, but they rise to these challenges and thrive in spite of themselves.  The characters feel deeply, and the reader can’t help but ache and rage and celebrate just as fully. The drawings are beautiful and sensitive, with rough, loose artwork consisting of scratchy lines and cinematically composed shots.

What were some of your first memories with his work?  

I remember buying the first two Pulp volumes of Black and White (also published as Tekkonkinkreet) at Comic Relief, reading them both at home that day, and then, covered in tears, literally *running* back that evening to buy the last volume before the store closed.  I probably cried a dozen times while reading it; it’s a story about two orphan boys who protect each other in a neo-Vegas-like city of vice, but the characters were so brutal and brilliant and poignant.  I had never read anything like that before, and it literally made me sick that, at the time, none of his other works were available in English.  Eventually, I figured out that he was more widely published in Korea, so on every family trip, I’d run away from my folks for a day and buy as many of his books as I could carry back to the US. I made my way, slowly, through the Korean translations of Hana-otoko, Ping Pong (another incredible favorite!), and Zero. A beautiful collection of short stories, Blue Spring, was published in English, and then VIZ began translating the series No. 5, but they abruptly stopped mid-series due to low book sales.  I was so starved for his work that at that point, I’d ebay his art books and comics only available in Japanese and just stare at them. Eventually, Black and White was made into the anime film, Tekkonkinkreet, and Ping Pong was made into an anime mini-series, and his rise in popularity ensured a wider English availability of his work.  His current series, Sunny, is being translated and published here, and every volume breaks my heart a million times.  

I’m sorry, this just turned into a gushy, gross fan fest, but Matsumoto’s books really changed my entire perspective on how comics can be written and paced, how characters can be developed fully, and how important comics really are to me.  I love them so much!!!!!

You’ve worked in so many cool fields such as a storyboard artist and designer, and on various cartoons, such as Steven Universe.  For folks who are interested in those fields, what can you tell folks about that?  I’m sure like most artists, you’d rather be spending those long hours working on your own personal art, so how do you balance them? How did you move from a comic artist to working as a storyboarding artist?

I stopped working in animation about a year and a half ago, but the transition from indie comics to storyboarding was rough one, for me.  I got into storyboarding at a time when a lot of kids’ animation networks were starting to hire outside the pool of animation school graduates and reach into the scummy ponds of comics.  In my case, the creator of Regular Show, JG Quintel, had bought some of my comics at San Diego Comic-Con from my publisher, and he offered me a storyboard revisionist test.  

Some cartoonists, like my partner Calvin Wong, were able to transition wonderfully; cartoonists and board artists are both visual storytellers, and once they’d learn the ropes, many of them thrived and succeeded.  I can’t say the same for myself; I have major time management issues, I draw and write incredibly slowly, and going from working completely alone to pitching and revising stories with directors and showrunners was just a real shock to my system.  For most of my time at Cartoon Network and FOX ADHD, I wasn’t able to do much personal work, but I crammed it in where I could.  

Storyboarding also requires a lot of late nights and crazy work hours, to meet pitch deadlines and to rewrite and redraw large portions of your board. I just couldn’t deal. I lost a lot of weight, more of my hair fell out, and the extreme stress of the job put my undiagnosed diabetes into overdrive (stress makes your liver pump out sugar like crazy, look it up, people!)  I realized that this industry was not meant for lard lads like me, and when the opportunity came to stop, I did. I could never figure out the balance between my job and my personal work, and I finally chose the latter.  Now I’m trying to figure out the balance between making personal work and surviving, but I’ve yet to crack that nut either!

From your art I get a sense of rebellion and angst, how did this morph into an outlet through comics, cartoons, and illustration?  Some aspects of your work that are so cool is the fact that your characters are female and women of color and in a completely new way.  Asian characters definitely get stereotype in art and comics, so when did you consciously start to create these awesome antiheroines and redefine what Asian/Asian American women/girl identity is or can be?

A lot of the seething rage bubbling behind my eyes has been simmering there since childhood, and a very large portion of that anger comes directly from all the racism and sexism I’ve experienced as a child and adult. I’ve been treated patronizingly by boys and men who expect an Asian girl to be frail, demure, receptive, and soft-spoken. I’ve experienced yellow fever from dudes who are clearly more interested in my slanted eyes and sideways cunt than in whatever it is I have to say.  Even in comics and illustration, people constantly tell me I must be influenced by Japanese woodblock print (pray tell, where in the holy fuck does that come from???), or they’ll look at a painting I’ve done of a girl bleeding from her mouth and dismiss my work as “cute”.  I despise this complete lack of respect, for me and for Asian American women in general, and I’ve made it my life mission to depict my girls as I would prefer to be seen: fucking angry, violent, mean, dirty and gross, unapproachable, tough, jaded, ugly, powerful, and completely apathetic to you and your shit.  Any rebellion and angst in my work comes directly from my own anger, and in my opinion, it makes that shit way better.  Girls and women of color get so little respect in real life, so why not “be the change I want to see” in my drawings?  

I think I was always aware of this lack of respect, and the “othering” of Asian American women, but once I got to college and learned to put a name to the racism and xenophobia and sexism and fetishism that we experience, my heart burst into angry flames, and it exploded into all of my art.  I’ve never been able to hold that back, and I’m not interested in doing so, ever.

Talk about your process and mediums and process.  Are you a night owl or an early bird artist?  Do you have stacks of in-progress works or are you a one and down drawing person?  Do you jot down notes or are you a sketch book person.

I am a paper and pencil artist all the way; I do work digitally sometimes, to make gifs or to storyboard, but I hate drawing and coloring on the computer. I’m terrible at it!  I draw everything in pencil first, erasing a hundred thousand times along the way toward a good drawing. For my paintings, I’ll then ink with brush pen and paint with watercolor, all on coldpress Arches.  For comics, I ink with whatever, brush pen or fountain pen, or leave the pencil, usually on bristol board.  I’ve also been keeping sketchbooks more recently (never really maintained the habit before), where I like to doodle fountain pen and color with Copic markers.  In sketchbooks, I’ll slap post-its on mistakes, a trick I learned from paper storyboarding on Regular Show.

I am a total night owl and a hermit; I have to be really isolated to get anything done, but at the same time, being so alone makes me crave social interaction in quick, fiery bursts.  I’ll go on social rampages for a week at a time, and then jump back into my hidey hole and stay hidden for months, avoiding everyone.  It’s not a very productive or healthy way to be, but it’s how I’ve always been.

I have great difficulty trying to juggle multiple tasks; I tend to devote all my mental energy and focus into whatever I’m working on at the time, so I need to complete each piece before I can do anything else.  It’s an incredibly inefficient, time-wasting way of making art, but it’s also the only way I can produce drawings that I am satisfied with.

If we were to bust into your workspace or studio, what would we find? and what would you not want us to find?

You’d find an unshowered me, drawing in my underwear, which coincidentally is also what I do not want you to find!

You’d also find a room half made into workspace (more below), and half taken over by boxes of t-shirts and sweatshirts (I do all my own mailorder fulfillment, like an idiot!)  I also like to surround myself with junk I find inspiring, so the walls are covered in prints and originals by some of my favorite artists, a bookshelf along the back wall is filled with about a third of my favorite comics and books and zines, and every available non-work surface (including desk, wall shelves, and bulletin boards) are covered in vintage toys, dice, tchotchkes, bottles, lighters and folding knives, weird dolls and figurines, a variety of fake cigarettes (I have a collection…)

Work-space wise, I have two long desks placed along a wall; the left desk has my computer and Cintiq, as well as my ancient laptop. Underneath and to the side of this desk are my large-format Epson scanner, fancy-ass Epson giclee printer, and a Brother double-sided laser printer.  The right desk has a cutting mat, an adjustable drawing surface, and a hundred million pens and half my supplies/crafts hoard.  I have a giant guillotine paper cutter for zines underneath this desk.  I’ve got two closets filled with button making supplies, additional supplies/crafts hoard, and all kinds of watercolor paper, bristol paper, and mailing envelopes are crammed into every shelf, alcove, gap.  This room has five lamps because I need my eyes to burn when I’m working.  Also, everything is covered in stickers because I am obsessed with stickers.

What is something you’d like to see happen more often if at all in the contemporary art world?  How’s the LA art scene holding up? Whaddya think?

As an artist who adores comics, I have a deep affection for low-brow mediums getting high-art and high-literary respect.  Not that a comic needs to be shown in a gallery to be a valid art form, but I am so excited that comics that used to be considered fringe or underground are gaining traction as important works of art and literature.  I wish this upward trajectory would continue forever, until everyone understands the love I feel for comics, but who knows what the future holds: the New York Times just recently stopped publishing their Graphic Novel Best Seller lists, and I think it’s a damn shame.

The LA art scene is really interesting to me, because it embraces both hi and lo brow work so readily; fancy pants galleries that make catalogues and sell to art dealers have openings right alongside pop-art stores that sell zines and comics, and I enjoy having access to both.  I will say that I think LA galleries are a bit oversaturated with art shows devoted to television and pop culture fan art; yeah, I get that you loooooooove that crazy 70s cult classic sci-fi series and you want to draw Mulder and Scully and Boba Fett in sexual repose for the rest of your life, but I’m more excited about seeing new and original work from everyone. I know you have something to say, and I want to see it.

Mostly, I’d obviously love to see more women of color making art and making comics; we’ve come a long way since I started making zines in 2002, and there are some incredible WOC cartoonists making amazing work right now, but we need more more MORE!  

What would be your ultimate dream project?  What is something you haven’t tried and would love to give it a go at?  Dream collaborations?

My ultimate dream project is the Great American Graphic Novel, but I am so shit at finishing anything that I have not been able to even approach this terrifying prospect.  But I figure I have until the day of my death to make something, so … one step at a time?

As far as something I’ve never tried, I’ve been recently interested in site-specific installation; I’ve always been a drawer for print, confined to the desk, and I’m in awe of cartoonists and illustrators who have transitioned to other forms of visual media, whether it be video, sculpture, performance, whatever.  I know my personality tends toward repeating the same motions forever and ever, and I hope I can break out of that and make something really different and challenging for myself.  I also secretly want to make music but I am the shittiest guitarist ever so maybe it’s better for the world that I don’t!

The dreamiest collaboration I can think of is to illustrate a skate deck for any sick-ass teen girl or woman skater.  Seriously, if any board companies wanna make this happen, EMAIL ME

Give us your top 5 of your current favorite comic artists as well as your top 5 artists in general.

Top 5 Current Favorite Comic Artists:

1. Jonny Negron 2. Jillian Tamaki 3. Michael DeForge 4. Ines Estrada 5. Anna Haifisch

Top 5 Artists of All Time

1. Taiyo Matsumoto 2. Xaime Hernandez 3. David Shrigley 4. Julie Doucet 5. Daniel Clowes

What are your favorite style of VANS?  And how would you describe your own personal style?

My favorite VANS are the all-black Authentic Lo Pros, although I have a soft spot for my first pair of Cara Beth Burnsides in high school (they were so ugly and I never skated, but I loved them).  

My personal style can be described as aging colorblind tomboy who dresses herself in the dark; my favorite outfit is a black hoodie with black denim shorts and black socks and black sneakers.

What do you have planned for this 2017? New shows? New published works?

I’ve got two group shows with some of my favorite artists in the works; I’m so excited but I can’t share any details yet. I’ve also been writing a new comic, but don’t believe it til ya see it!

Best bit of advice and worse advice in regards to art?

Best Advice: Never be satisfied; always challenge yourself to make your art better than everything you’ve done previously.

Worst Advice: Make comics as a stepping stone towards getting a job in animation.  When people do this, you can smell the stink of insincerity a mile away.  Fuck you, comics are a beautiful medium, and every shitty asshole who does this, I hate your guts!

Follow Hellen Jo

Website: http://helllllen.org Shop: http://helllllen.bigcartel.com Instagram: @helllllenjjjjjo 

Images courtesy of the artist

[clubofinfo]

Expert: I don’t live in the U.S. any longer. I did, for over forty years, but left for good almost twenty years ago. But I return, often, and I even returned and stayed for a year. I returned again this last week as an invitee of the Buffalo/Niagara Falls Film Festival (more on that below). So, I wanted to talk about the America I found this time through. I changed planes in Washington D.C., at Dulles Airport (yes, named after cold war reactionary John Foster Dulles). I could not but think of that fascist loving arch elitist and racist as I sat there for an interminable few hours. I had a delayed connection to Buffalo. The first thing that strikes one, especially after having just left Gardermoen Airport, Oslo, and Copehagen’s Kastrup airport – both of which, along with Amsterdam’s Schipol airport, are maybe among the easiest and least stressful to use in the world – is the noise and sense of agitation. And what one notices right off, while still in Kastrup, is that the gate for the flight to Dulles is separate from the rest of the gates serving the international terminal. Flights to the U.S. have double the number of security personnel and are quite simply isolated. You are asked to submit to additional searches and are required to fill out additional forms — for what reason is anyone’s guess since as far as I can determine none of the forms are actually used for anything. Anyway, that was OK, I had my triple espresso and chocolate. Kastrup must have even better food than Schiphol. Once on the plane I had a nice young Swede in the seat next to me, a student from Ingmar Bergman’s birthplace island of Faro. The food was dreadful, of course. And I was struck, and this was to become a theme for this journey, with the insane and even delusional amount of packaging that is used. EVERYTHING is wrapped in plastic. In fact, plastic spoons and forks are wrapped in plastic. Plastic wraps plastic wraps plastic. And inside is stale preservative and sugar laden food, designed for long shelf life, and which closely resembles and tastes like…plastic. Landing means security. You must scan your own passport at Dulles. Why? I don’t know. You have to go talk to a passport control officer anyway. Then if you have connecting flights you are funneled into another line, in a hot terminal annex, and scanned again. For me it was the third scan in 12 hours — and I had never left the airports.  But then they ran out of plastic tubs and asked we just shove all our iPhones and what not into our carry on bags. And shove them all through the scanner. The young woman at the monitor wasn’t looking at the screen as the bags passed so none of any of this mattered in the least. It was a strange dysfunctional bit of security kabuki. Then more waiting. Only at Dulles you can’t get good food. You can’t get good coffee. You do get a lot of noise, though. Gardermoen is tomb-like in comparison with American airports. But there is another aspect to this. It is true that those rather almost obscenely pleasant Scandinavian airports are servicing a very affluent clientele. U.S. air travel is too, really, only the U.S. today feels increasingly polarized. First class is separate. You actually never see them. They are in lounges provided by the airlines of choice. Business class seems to mean 21st century Wily Lomans. No, it is first class and the rest of us. And the rest are subjected to an increasing battery of security abuses. Take off your shoes? Why? Because one simpleminded patsy tried to ignite his Nikes? ONE GUY? That’s it?? I saw old ladies have to, with some embarrassment, take off their shoes. And then there is the increasingly visible racism of the U.S. I watched when black or Arab workers carried bags or moved carts. I saw so many of those put upon white faces tighten ever so slightly. The animosity is in the air. On the TVs, and there are TVs everywhere in the U.S. Large screens EVERYWHERE. It is the only thing more common than cops. And on TV were endless photos of North Korea and the ‘Rocket Man’, or there were football games. One or the other. Jesus, but football is popular. And there is no other sport in the U.S. as saturated in jingoistic pro war rhetoric and symbol. And I am reminded that this is a game proven to cause irreparable brain damage. That said the, perhaps, hidden dialectic in this most militaristic of sports is the Kaepernick protests, which have spread. Sports always contain within it a kind of potential for such synthesis of contradiction (see Dave Zirin’s recent writing). So mostly the comments one overheard were about football. Or about how fed up people were with that Kim Jung whatshisname…hell, get rid of that fucker. Trump speaking of Nambia. An imaginary country that exists in that private colonial map in his mind. And then, a group of young Christians sat down near me at the gate. They seemed to be focused on ‘the holy spirit’. ‘Oh man’, one girl said, loudly, ‘I felt the holy spirit today’. I could feel it all day, she said, rather too loudly. I looked at her. She was blond, refried, maybe in her late twenties, and wore spandex pants and Rebok trainers and a blue t shirt with some other athletic brand name scrawled across the front of it. She was loud. Oh, and she kept eating M&Ms. A family from maybe India or Bangladesh walked past. They were tired, and had young children. Holy Spirit’s face darkened. She kept speaking on her phone but her voice lowered. The people I saw — those Americans — were all angry, just like the holy spirit girl. Nobody seemed happy. Nobody read. I was reading …Emmanuel Carrere’s bio of Philip K. Dick. A sort of perfect book for 7 hours spent at Dulles. I sat there as Carrere described Dick’s interpretations of Master Eickert’s idios kosmos. Dick battled periods of extreme paranoia. A giant black face in the clouds that watched him. Eventually he simply stopped looking up. I knew the feeling. It was the Dulles domestic terminal. Suddenly everyone felt like an alien, a robotic imposter. A hologram. Deplanning, as they say, in Buffalo, at midnight, is an odd and slightly unsettling experience. Walking down the long corridor to baggage claim I was reading the ads on the walls. One newer one advertised “Aesthetic Vaginal Surgery”, with two Indian doctors in pastel shirts, gold watches, and oddly colored brown suits. Across from them was an ad for “Divorce Lawyer: Legal Assistance, effective and compassionate”. The woman lawyer looked neither, but then looks can be deceiving. Many advertisements for sports, football or hockey. I got to Niagara Falls late. I checked into the franchise hotel reserved for me. In the morning I had awful hotel eggs and toast. The waitress, a sort of late 40s version of the holy spirit girl, spoke in a Marlboro rasp, and asked THREE times did I want bacon or sausage. I said neither, three times. Just eggs. I was already suspect. Around me, without exception, were morbidly obese Americans. Two men wore their cowboy hats on inside while they ate. A younger guy had his hockey stick with him (in its case, mind you) and everyone ate from the all you can eat buffet. It was very popular it seemed. Most of these people came for the Indian Casino (sic) down the block, next to the falls. It is a massive casino. Everything is a franchise. And the food. Again, the food. No wonder America is so miserable. Look at how they eat. It is truly appalling. Niagara Falls, itself, is a wonder, and yet surrounding it is the usual assortment of souvenir shops and fast food vendors. There was a “Daredevil Musuem”, but it had gone out of business. Too bad, I might have enjoyed that bit of American kitsch. The  tourist experience is one of absolute horror. I cannot find the words to describe just how spiritually nullifying the spectacle has become. Walk into those souvenir stores and very little is newly produced. All of it is, of course, made overseas. The faces of those working in these shops are portraits of depression. This is the white under-class, the part-time workers and long-term unemployed. They smoke and they are angry. They are ‘right-on-the-edge’. They have crawled out on that psychic ledge and there is no more space and there is no going back. Nobody even pretends to give a shit. Buy a Niagara Falls t shirt, buy a genuine Native American maple syrup figurine, or fucking don’t. We don’t care. Buffalo and Niagara Falls and Cattaraugus taken together is around a million people. The mean average income is half that of New York state overall. The house value is one fifth of New York overall. In other words if you own a home in Buffalo, you can’t give it away. Ancesteral lineage is mostly German and Polish and Irish. There is a sizable Indian and south Asian community, and quite a few recent emigres from Africa. The average age is slightly younger than NYC. There were forty murders in Buffalo last year, down slightly from the previous two years. Rape was up slightly. There is also the Niagara Falls Culinary Institute, which, judging from the photos out front, turns out steam table chefs for the big hotels. Cheerios are manufactured here. Archer Midlands Daniels runs a huge flour factory and it is home to the National Buffalo Wings festival and competition. Once upon a time, Buffalo was a reasonably rich city. And there remain a few of those great Queen Anne revival buildings that are often found in the major cities of the rust belt. The Richardson Olmstead Complex (architect Harry Hobson Richardson, who worked with famed landscape designer Frederik Olmstead, who created Central Park and Golden Gate Park) to create a still rather wonderful neo-Romaneque brick and sandstone mental hospital built in 1862. Beyond that the city is dotted with old turn of the 20th century gilded age (well, the first gilded age) houses, originally the grand homes of the leading industrialists of the time, or the homes of the managers of the factories of those industrialists. But that was all long ago. Buffalo is a microcosim. A micro-ecology, both psychologically and economically, and culturally for the entirety of the U.S. Tourism is driven by notions no longer believed in; the idea of recreation and family vacations. Nobody can afford that. Leisure was always modeled after work. An extension of work. A kind of faux work time. Adrono wrote of leisure: According to the prevailing work ethic, time free of work should be utilized for the recreation of expended labor power. For Adorno, the repetitive nature of alienated labor created a tendency to reproduce that repetitive boredom during times of leisure. And boredom, as he noted, was a sign of objective dullness. And that in turn linked to “political apathy”. Tourism is for the Japanese and the Germans today. Americans go to the Casino. I stood in line at Starbucks, across from the casino, and a young American pair came in. She was maybe thirty but dressed twenty. Halter and cleavage and long tanned legs. Very aerobasized, and he was buffed with a tight t shirt and baseball cap worn backwards. He was lean and athletic but he had that odd graceless gait of the gymnasium body. His face was handsome, chiseled and yet he looked terrified. Of what I do not know. His future or lack of it I suspect. And she radiated desperation. Both were anxious, nervous, and like the two pack a day souvenir vendors, they found themselves out on that ledge. So many white Americans, working class, have taken on a kind of furtive look. The backdrop of the Falls is pure allegory. The rising mist and the 20 bucks a pop boat rides (barely surviving one suspects) feel bereft of energy. Nobody seems to believe what is going on. The natural beauty of the Falls is now surrounded by massive tourist enterprises and commercialism. In a society of mass surveillance, knowing that you are being watched makes you reasonable AND paranoid. A society in which all movements are infiltrated to an almost impossible to imagine degree, the real becomes a fluid concept. Are my emails monitored? Does it matter? In an age when police can and do manufacture evidence, what need is there for monitoring emails or phone conversations? They can just as easily, more easily, make them up. Pilger wrote recently of his visits to the U.S. : Returning to the US, I am struck by the silence and the absence of an opposition – on the streets, in journalism and the arts, as if dissent once tolerated in the “mainstream” has regressed to a dissidence: a metaphoric underground.  There is plenty of sound and fury at Trump the odious one, the “fascist”, but almost none at Trump the symptom and caricature of an enduring system of conquest and extremism. Pilger also noted…. When Donald Trump addressed the United Nations on 19 September – a body established to spare humanity the “scourge of war” – he declared he was “ready, willing and able” to “totally destroy” North Korea and its 25 million people. His audience gasped, but Trump’s language was not unusual. His rival for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, had boasted she was prepared to “totally obliterate” Iran, a nation of more than 80 million people. This is the American Way; only the euphemisms are missing now. The problem with the fixation on Trump, which seems intentional on the part of corporate media, is that it trivializes the crimes of previous administrations. When walking around Niagara Falls and Buffalo I sense that almost all of my fellow citizens no longer believe what they hear, but they also are so terrified of voicing any dissent that they mostly nod in mute agreement. And this is partly about education. The default position for most Americans is one that has been shaped by Hollywood. And this week Rob Reiner announced the formation of something called The Committee to Investigate Russia, on whose board sit prominent neo cons and various reactionary commentators like Max Boot and Molly McKew (former advisor to Mikheil Saakashvili). McKew is sort of the liberals answer to Nikki Haley. A sprung frothing fringe lunatic, in other words. Also David Frum, longstanding arch conservative and supporter, last election, of Hillary Clinton. The now well known Morgan Freemann video was a piece of pure calculated propaganda. And this is why so many Americans feel it best to just keep silent. They haven’t even the beginnings of basic knowledge on these topics to formulate an opinion. There has been a four decade program of keeping the populace uninformed.But Freeman’s text sounds like a Hollywood movie; hell, he even uses screenplay metaphors, so in many places it will be very effective. Cutting across this, however, are a couple of other currents. One is the deeply entrenched and internalized racism of white America. Racism is like an encrusted psychic carbuncle on the collective soul of white culture. Having Morgan Freeman take the token torch from Colin Powell is perfectly predictable. Obama had already done it anyway. The racism of white America has learned to compartmentalize certain *special* black celebrities, often sports figures, while retaining a thoroughly white supremacist belief system. Then there is the other deeply entrenched adoration of militarism. This month also saw the nakedly revisionist Ken Burns documentary on the Vietnam War. These are grotesque projects of disinformation. But if all you know of the world is what you glean from Hollywood, then most of this will seem quite reasonable and sincere. It is worth noting, too, that Snopes took issue with any criticism of the Committee to Investigate Russia. I digress, but its really well past time to stop referencing Snopes as an impartial observer of anything. Buffalo is like much of the U.S. today. Unemployment is acute, as is poverty. Certain stats jump out at you, like 76% of disabled people live below the Poverty line in western New York state. Numbers mean nothing in unemployment, though, because the long term unemployed are simply not counted. All you have to do is walk around. There is an overriding sense of futility in American society today. And one feels it in a visceral manner when returning here. The looks, the suspicion, the anger. Maybe it is because I live in Norway, but the sense of anger in America feels overwhelming. But so does the sense of smug entitlement. On the long plane ride from Copenhagen to Washington D.C. I read but took some time off to look at a few minutes from various films on offer. A remake of Baywatch, something or other with the insufferable Scarlett Johanson, and, well, it hardly matters because all of it is steeped in self congratulation. And it is all profoundly out of touch with American society. I often wish my remaining friends in the U.S. would just leave. I have certainly never regretted it. It is hard to really understand the ways in which privilege is expressed by mass culture when one lives inside it. The constant onslaught of propaganda, of this unreality, takes a toll. It seeps into your consciousness.  It inhabits your grammar and speech and vision. The sound of U.S. society today is blatantly exceptionalist. WE are the best, the most special, unique, and the world follows our lead. People believe this. White America in particular seems to have collectively regressed. There are pockets, obviously, that are outside of this. But too few. And the cocoon of exceptionalism extends to travel, too. A vacation to some tourist resort means you haven’t really left the U.S. There is a sense, really, of a schizophrenic state existing at large. A collective shrinking of basic emotions and feeling. I met some very nice folks in Buffalo, of course. That is really not the point. Even nice (sic) people will feel they have to kill you if its for your own good. Or their own good. Philip K. Dick spent his life fixated on the details of daily life being or seeming to be slightly out of order, slightly askew. He sensed unreality where everyone said reality. He knew the man behind the curtain only hid more curtains and more men. Dick was not a political thinker. His vision of western society was instinctual, anarchic, and personal. For to him the personal was inextricably bound to the collective. He understood that fascism’s first goal is to change the past. He knew the future was not the real goal, only the past. For the past would foretell the future. This is the insight of the paranoid schizophrenic. To understand the New Cold War emerging today, it is necessary to reexamine the original conflict between the United States and the USSR. The present Russia panic follows an entire century of fearmongering and “threat inflation,” dating to the Russian Revolution, that has long served the interests of the U.S. military-industrial complex and security state. It has had little to do with either Russian or American realities, which have been consistently distorted. — Jeremy Kurzmarmov and John Marciano, “The Russians are Coming Again”, Monthly Review, 2017. It is ironic that the only actual cyber attack against a sovereign nation was one launched by the U.S. against Iran in 2008. Which fact is simply *not remembered* by media today. Instead the new security state is amping up rhetoric about Russia which they know is untrue. But what must be remembered here is firstly, the defense industry and U.S. military win even when they lose. Winning is not a hard fact. It is a loose concept. Sustaining budgets, or increasing them, is the first and only goal. And two, psychologically the ruling class is no less desperate and irrational and repressed than the underclass. It is only that Hollywood and corporate telecoms and places such as Clear Channel…that entire apparatus…they control message and they work very hard to reform the past. Jim Mattis and RC McMaster, and Stanley McChrystal…the entire cabal of white male generals were likely moved in to surround Trump once his fundamental incompetence was made clear. They are militarists, and Mattis was the architect of Falujah, and *earned* his nickname. Kelly and McMaster serve as guard dogs, and protectors of the Pentagon agenda. They seem cool, articulate, and the media adore them. Liberals fawn over them. Literally salivate and grovel in adoration. For the most pernicious and most indelible trope in contemporary America is that of military virtue and goodness. The square jawed buzz cut man of action. And in truth, compared to Trump and his family, they ARE efficient. It’s just that efficiency almost certainly serves the metasticizing of western capital to all corners of the globe, and to the protection of US global interests. If you want to know exactly how distracted from material reality most people are, ask a stranger directions somewhere. I can almost guarantee you will get wrong directions, or more likely still, get non directions. People have in general lost the capacity to organize their thoughts into sentences that convey specific material items or instructions. I had to find the theatre for this film festival. I chose to walk. A ten mile walk. Long but not crazy long. I like walking. But asking the man behind the counter at the hotel proved an exercise in futility. The walk was fine, hot, and as it turned out it took me directly through the shuttered refineries of Love Canal. I started this journey to New York by having an airport hotel not make a wake up call. I missed the flight. The young man who *didn’t* make the call had that deer in the headlights glazed look. He made little eye contact. In New York the slightly older young man simply had no words. He tried and finally printed out a google map…which turned out to be wrong…but whatever. The point is that a majority of American citizens cannot tell you how to get from here to there. Literally, I mean, literally they do not have a large enough vocabulary to explain directions nor to describe landmarks. The screen addictions of contemporary western society is related to this degrading of vocabulary and speech. On this trip, besides plastic wrap, the most significant repeated image is that of people staring down at their smart phones. Walking, not walking, wherever, whatever time, most people are addictively punching out simplistic abbreviated messages. The amount of face time today is drastically reduced. I have read no study or any figures, but again, just go outside and walk around. And people have begun to speak as they text. In short non grammatical half sentences. Texting is not really more than simple coded expressions for generic subject positions. Complex science cannot be texted, and there is no poetics associated with it. The rise, over very recent years, of emojis is another sign of how alienated the culture has become. This has been my experience in the U.S. And while its true in Europe too, it is not nearly true to the same degree. Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone wrote of Trump: Trump has not only completely lost his sense of humor, particularly about himself, but he’s a lingual mess. In his current dread of polysyllables – his favorite words include “I,” “Trump,” “very,” “money” and “China” – he makes George W. Bush sound like Vladimir Nabokov. On the page, transcripts of his speaking appearances often look like complete gibberish. “When I did this now I said, I probably, maybe will confuse people, maybe I’ll expand that,” he said to Lester Holt in May, “you know, I’ll lengthen the time because it should be over with, in my opinion.”  He also can barely speak anymore, but without a close-up examination it’s impossible to say if this is a neurological problem or just being typically American. As the psychologist Michaelis puts it, one major cause for loss of cognitive function is giving up reading in favor of TV or the Internet, which is basically most people in this country these days. The multiplicity theme applied to internet users (from mainstream popular theorists like Sherry Turkle) sees social media and texting and screen usage as mostly benign if not actually positive, an enhancement of human potential. This is sort of the TED level thinking that glossy magazines promote. But I would argue that the constant fractured and incomplete language of digital communication is both a reflection of and creator of a fractured and increasingly incoherent personality. People check their phones at funerals, at marriages, at almost any public event. But what occurs to me is that people’s compulsive smart phone usage might well continue even if they were only communicating with themselves. If you eliminated a destination for texting, the text-er would continue. That is the pathological aspect of screen usage. It feels like amphetamine driven rats hitting that lever for more drug. The idea, as some have put forward, that texting has invented a new language that is actually very creative, etc., etc., etc., seems nonsense when you wander the streets or malls of America. There are no more depressing places on earth, I don’t think, than suburban America. Synonymous with White America. This is the revenge of white flight on itself. Turkle is correct, however, when she raises the fear that haunts the societies of the West today; the fear that ‘nobody is listening’. There is another aspect here, and that is that screen life, social media, in all of its formats, allows people to create an image by way of deletion and editing. It is, in a sense, a way to edit the past as well as the present. It is hard not to see the drop in literacy in the U.S. and certainly there are ample examples of misspeaking in the political class. Maxine Waters confusing Crimea with Korea (and then having the facts wrong anyway) or Bush thinking Africa was a country, or the dozen or so Trump errors. Geography is not taught in schools today. As I say, ask for directions. In the hotel in which I stayed, in the breakfast area, which serves also as a bar in the evening, there are SEVEN wide screen TVs on the walls. On one wall they are only a foot or so apart. During non sporting hours they are tuned to news channels. The sound is off, but that is no problem as there is close captioned subtitles at the bottom, as well as a constant scroll of news items. The hotel guests are then bombarded during all meals with a constant sound bite onslaught. A recent Zogby poll had 52% of Americans in favor of a preemptive strike against North Korea. Propaganda works best when it is delivered in sound bites. And when all you can understand is sound bites, you will eventually internalize purely authoritarian and fascist values. I wrote a while back on Italian cinema after WW2 and its relation to fascism. The anti fascist strategies, aesthetically and politically, of directors such as Pasolini, Bertolucci, and Antonioni. And I wrote this… In Italian cinema, after WW2, there were debates around the question of post synching the sound track. Elias Chaluja suggested that post-synchronization was an expression of the dominant class, of its ideology and a way to distance identification, but more, to ‘conquer the screen’. Remember that Pasolini, Bertolucci, Antonioni and a dozen others had signed the Amalfi Manifesto in 1968, protesting government censorship, and monopoly control of distribution, but also the laws concerning post synchronization. Antonioni perhaps above all other film directors, radically reversed trends in how to score films. His films create sound-scapes, for lack of a better word. He, like Pasolini, under duress, fashioned new ways to dub and post synch their films. Which suited both their sensibilities. The anti fascism of both instinctively rejected music cues for narratives. They were out to liberate the screen, not to conquer it. Screen life is now fully conquered, as it were. And it need not be so. If digital screen technology contains any inherent addictive qualities, they could certainly be minimized if they did not exist and develop within an utterly coercive and manipulative exploitive framework. Screen addiction is Capitalist screen addiction. Aesthetic liberation is just as crucial to today’s somnambulant population as is economic liberation. Cultural liberation in other words. The soundtrack to daily life is a very specific tone of voice that is heard across all news outlets and entertainment channels. The voice of the generic talking head as he or she mouth platitudes and empty repetitive cliches in cadences that never vary. It is an endless loop and long ago the content of what is being said became irrelevant. It is ‘that’ sound. And to awaken from it means to first turn it off. The festival itself was poorly attended. They had moved it to a new venue. There was an Afghan vet injured in the war, now legless, who came in a wheelchair. A nice fellow. He joined us at dinner. The discussion turned to Vietnam and I sensed growing tension around the table — especially with the guy who orchestrates the festival. We were all at a bizarre neo-Chinese buffet restaurant (the walls painted a curious flamingo pink, but never mind). I changed the subject. Everyone involved were vets. There is that knee jerk patriotic trope that white Americans can’t escape it seems. In most of the U.S., the Military remains sacrosanct. No matter what. I met three students, all black. And each of them sensed the need for dramatic change in the way the U.S. is run. If anything like socialism is to happen, these young men (all were male and all attended local colleges) will drive that movement. They also desperately wanted to know more, about everything. They hung around after my lecture and we talked for quite a while. They also are eager to leave Buffalo — shock, I know. But their curiosity, and desire for social justice, and for a sense of culture, was genuine and substantial. It is how revolutions slowly begin to form. They asked for reading lists, too. It made the entire five days worth the effort. http://clubof.info/

[thedndgoblinwholivesinyourwalls]

OOO ok ok so I’ve been watching a lot of jacksepticeye’s playthroughs lmao-mainly just because his humour makes it less likely to stick in my brain forever (guy who hates getting scared loves horror). I don’t rlly remeber any of the videogames names though so uh. there are a couple of science based horrors he’s played through

We do love body horror lab experiments in this household (IN FICTION/lh)!! For some reason marine biology is stuck in my head mainly because I find the sea both interesting and then just terrifying

consider horror science ocs (i have been watching too many horror game playthroughs i fear also what kind of science? idk which one's the scariest/hj)

CONSIDERS CONSIDERS. First off im gonna need horror game recs to watch through over break and also to know what the vibes are….horror definitely works well for science depending on the vibes….im very much a biology/anatomy guy which always has good potential for weird body horror lab experiments and evil weird ethics and potential contamination horror etc etc….that said I personally think physics is the scariest because it’s weird and complicated math….