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itsclydebitches · 4 years ago

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Re the BTD recap: "the prose is still incredibly messy in places" "To be frank, it’s not that I think this is all particularly good… just not particularly bad either." If it's not too much trouble, can I get some concrete examples for why? I feel like I often don't notice this sort of thing, so I want to know what I'm missing. Might help me to be a better writer.

Challenging request, anon! :D I feel like I need a few disclaimers here:

The book is serviceable. It’s just not going to be winning any awards. Talking about how the prose and dialogue can be better isn’t meant to translate to, “This is the worst thing ever written.” Because it’s not.

This is very much a pot calling the kettle black situation. Anyone here has the capability of hopping onto AO3, finding a horribly written passage of my own, and shaking it in my virtual face. So this is likewise not intended to be me standing atop a pedestal going, “Anyone - myself included - could do better.” I often can’t do better because writing is hard.

I’m not a creative writing instructor, thus it’s often difficult for me to articulate why I think a piece of literature doesn’t read well. If you’ve ever, say, come out of a movie with a strong sense of it not being “good” but can’t easily explain why it failed? It’s similar to that. By consuming lots of media we get a sense of “quality” over “badly written” that then informs our reactions to new texts, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to boil that response down to, “See here on page 3? They shouldn’t have done this. Fix that and it’s ‘good’ now.”

Nevertheless, let’s try. I’ll take a passage from the prologue where Sun is facing off against these “goons”

Two glowing clones of Sun flared into existence, one facing Pink and the second squaring off against Green. That left Brown—whom he figured was both the leader of the group and the most dangerous. Why? Because he was hiding the most.

Brown slashed a hand toward Sun. “Take him.”

“Which one?” Green asked.

“The real one,” Pink said. “These are just flashy illusions.”

Sun directed one of his clones to punch Pink in the face.

She blinked and looked more annoyed than hurt.

“That’s no illusion!” Green reached for clone Two.

Sun’s clones were physical manifestations of his Aura, every bit as capable of inflicting damage as he was. But it could be difficult to control them, especially while he was fighting. They were better suited to giving him the element of surprise, extra pairs of hands, or emergency backup when he needed it.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t sustain them long, and they couldn’t take much damage, as they drew Aura from Sun himself. If he kept them going too long, or tried to create too many clones, it usually weakened the Aura shield protecting him. But he’d improved a lot with training, and his Semblance was a lot stronger than it used to be.

Sun whipped out his gunchucks, Ruyi Bang and Jingu Bang, spinning them as he and Brown circled each other slowly. At the same time, Sun was fighting Pink and Green through his clones. Pink was some kind of boxer, dancing around and jabbing with her fists, which One was managing to block. Meanwhile, Green was trying to grab Two and wrestle him to the ground.

Brown had some kind of martial arts training similar to Sun’s—but he wasn’t nearly as good. Sun leaned back as Brown did a high roundhouse kick; he felt a breeze as his opponent’s booted foot swept past his nose with a lot of power behind it. Sun flicked his right gunchuck to loop it around Brown’s ankle and pulled him out of his stance, hitting him with the closed gunchuck in his left hand. The man took the full blow, but it didn’t even faze him.

Now let’s break down some of the reasons why this passage doesn’t work for me. I’ll work chronologically.

As mentioned in the recap, it’s rather awkward for a PoV character to ask and answer their own questions. Especially when they’re not presented as literal thoughts. The “Why? Because...” takes me right out of the story. It suddenly sounds like I’m attending a lecture or reading an article. Sun believes X. Why does he believe this? Because of Y evidence.

The dialogue is clunky. This problem is admittedly more obvious at other points, but there are a lot of moments where it doesn’t feel like this is a natural thing someone would think or say. Which again, is really hard to write. How people speak is quite different from how we think they speak and finding a balance between that (eliminating most pauses like “um” or “like” that would be too frustrating to read, giving characters more flowery language to serve the story’s goals even if it’s not realistic, etc.) is hard to nail. Here, Sun is often thinking things that don’t sound l like an actual thought in a panicked teen’s head.

Oh crap, Sun thought. I’m losing. How am I actually losing?

It just sounds like exposition. The reader needs to know that Sun is losing! So Sun will tell them that.

The villains, so far, are a bit too cartoony for me.

“You got lucky, monkeyboy,” Green said as he walked off, his companions following him through the cloud of foul vapor. “This time.”

Which is admittedly a matter of taste and does have some justification given RWBY’s early writing (think Roman). Still, it’s hard to take lines like this seriously, especially when we just had the group making fun of Velvet for cheesy quips. But the villain’s quips are supposed to read as daunting?

Connected to Sun’s thought above, there is a lot of telling rather than showing throughout. For example: “She blinked and looked more annoyed than hurt.” There are ways of showing the reader that Pink is annoyed (indeed, just leaving it at “She blinked” would have gotten the point across) rather than resorting to, “She looked ___”. Another good example would be “ Sun leaned back as Brown did a high roundhouse kick; he felt a breeze as his opponent’s booted foot swept past his nose with a lot of power behind it.” You don’t need to reassure the reader that there was “a lot of power behind it.” The action itself - feeling a breeze, his boot passing close to his nose - conveys that on its own.

To be clear, telling isn’t something you can’t ever do (break those writing rules!!) especially when sometimes you just want to be clear/convey something succinctly, but it is something to keep in mind. It’s another balancing act. Too much telling and the reader feels like they’re just being told a list of things to believe. Too much showing and it feels like the writer is trying too hard to make everything detailed, exciting, etc. Still, a good writer is going to be able to convey everything (Sun losing a fight, annoyance, a powerful kick) without feeling the need to remind the reader of things every few lines, “This is what’s happening. Don’t get confused!”

After the fight starts we immediately get a two paragraph info-dump about Sun’s semblance. How it works, what his limitations are, and what that means for this fight. Again, show that! We’ve just started an action sequence. The fight is underway. The reader doesn’t want to get pulled out of the action for another lecture. Rather than hitting pause on the fun stuff to explain things, create scenarios where these details become relevant and can be shown to the reader. Right now we don’t care what Sun’s limitations are unless those limitations become important.

We get another announcement in the form of “[Brown] wasn’t nearly as good [as Sun]” instead of (again) showing us that. Indeed, as I mention in the recap all the action that comes next contradicts this. So where did this assertion come from? If Sun knows that Brown uses a martial arts style similar to his then theoretically they’ve been fighting for at least a few seconds... but the reader doesn’t get to see that. Meyers was too busy telling us about Sun’s semblance.

Finally, there are pockets of Meyer’s writing that are all roughly the same. Meaning, sentences have little variety to them. This isn’t a consistent problem (and it’s certainly not the worst example I’ve seen of this) but on the whole he could use a more engaging flow to his work, both in terms of sentence length and balance among actions, dialogue, descriptions, and thoughts. Otherwise you get prose that reads, “This happened. Then this happened. This happened next. See the length? It’s all the same. Very little changes. And the reader gets bored.” Again, not a consistent problem, but one he should keep working on.

There are a number of other, smaller issues that are beginning to pop up. Such as the in parentheses pronunciation of the teams’ names, or the overuse of “he sent” whenever Fox communicates telepathically. In contrast, there are things about the writing that I’ve enjoyed. There are moments of dialogue - such as Fox’s joke in Chapter One, or how Sun’s instructions to “find Shade” literally refer to the school but also remind the reader that shade, in such a hot environment, is crucial - that I think are worth pointing to and going, “Yeah. That was a nice touch.” Overall though? It’s that, “I just came out of a bad movie” feeling. There’s too much clunkiness throughout. The writing often lacks variety or feels absurd. I’m taken out of the story more often than I fall into it. Is it the worst thing I’ve ever read? Far from it, but fans aren’t wrong when they say things like, “I’ve read better fic than this professional story.”

#rwby #rwde #mymetas #Anonymous

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luked4nuke · 4 years ago

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If, I were President of the United States. (I just wanna state I’m not a democrat or republican)

First I’d enforce Quarantine and extend it. I’d also attend the poorest families or individuals first and provide them with the financial assistance they need. People are struggling hard enough as it is living paycheck to paycheck.

Second I’d shut down the schools as I believe safty more important especially for the future kids who will rule this place. I also don’t like how schools give so much homework and stress. They just condition kids into beleiving working 40 hours a week is normal and that you should be lucky to have weekends. Staying in classes all day then returning home only to be forced to complete more homework that takes up time and robs them of social interactions. These schools don’t even test knowledge. They test obedience and reward them for being quiet little slaves that will slowly become a “regular worker.” They really don’t care about how smart you are, they test memory over all else, when they study a subject and pass the test they move on quickly to the next one stressing them out. If they failed the test, to bad they’re still moving on with you. (Sorry this got way of topic. I just hate how schools operate and also how low they pay the teachers)

Third I would dismantle the police force and create a new one. A better one that focuses on real problems like sex trafficking and drugs. All the horrible crimes that are allowed to fly under the radar. Any excessive use of force would be heavily punished. Fired, fined and jail time. No shooting at peaceful protesters, seriously dafaq is wrong with them unleashing hell upon unarmed civilians and sneaking in rioters to escalate it to justify the force.

Fourth, gold is a finite resource. Pretty much all the money you’ve ever spent is fake, all digital backed by nothing. Personally I hate it but you’ve all becomes achstomed to it so I would attempt to fix the economy so people can afford essential things, like homes and food. Instead of kicking out homeless people Id build shelters. They make it to easy to fall down into poverty and nearly impossible to climb back up. Once you’ve been arrested, once you’ve been homeless, you understand the struggle of trying to reintergrate with society. The easiest path become the dark one. I would attempt to control the population, America is a gigantic habitat and likewise it has a carrying capacity. If you’re gonna argue people have to pay unreasonable amounts of money for food you’re crazy.

Immigrants are definitely allowed as long as they follow the rules and don’t commit crimes. America was litterally founded on immigrants. American stole land from the natives violently and even managed to capture Hawaii, which was its own nation. They taxed us and recognized us as a small power. Iolani Palace has electricity flush toilets and even phones before the White House did. Queen Lili’uokalani signed in duress. It horrible and sheforfeited her whole kingdom in exchange for the people, as a leader should. The people make a country, the government already should put the people first. Without all the hardworking Americans working, there is no country.

We don’t serve the government. As a government worker we serve the people. It’s our duty to ensure everybody is treated fairly. To make sure everybody that we oversee has the essentials for life, a home and food.

And for LGBT rights. I personally don’t care what the heck they do. Love is love, let it be. They can chose to identify as whoever they want and pursue relationships with whoever. You can’t force things onto people. America is supposed to be freedom personified, we can chose to do as we please as long as we don’t bring harm to others. Those camps are wrong. America is also religion free, you can be whatever you want, Christian Muslim, litterally anything. Being a satanist is totally legal as long as you don’t hurt anything. Believe in what you want and don’t force it on others. Gay people are amazing! We all are, were all human and we can change and create change. We are all human at the core and we always have been. We have a right to love, and to be loved by all around us. Love is love, let it be, theres always been love. I can identify as a man or woman, and I can damn well love either as I please as long it’s reciprocated. I’d always rather say I love you too much then not enough.

Climate change is real. The pollution of those stupidly large companies is also VERY real. As an individual you contribute less than a percent of the actual pollution, it’s literally the big corporations. That needs to stop. I’m not exactly sure how but I AM GOING to start a wave of change that will benefit the worlds health. We all live here. This is not political, I don’t have time for games, scientists that have studied their whole lives are begging for us to change. We can all have solar electricity farms and then it’d be FREE. “But you can’t charge people for that you can’t make money.” I’m NOT TRYING TO MAKE MONEY I DO NOT CARE ANOUT MONEY. IM AIMING FOR SOMETHING BIGGER THAN GREED THE BETTERMENT OF HUMANITY. I don’t care about ruining electric companies and other random fossil fuels bullshits that will run out, I want the future to be bright!

Screw it im going off the rails, schools main courses should focus on stuff like self sustainment, like farming and wilderness survival. Creativity because that’s the most human thing about us! Empathy basic Psychology. Kids can get mad they should learn and understand why. Understand why they feel the feelings they feel and giving them all better emotional control. EMPATHY. They need to learn things like taxes since they’re such a big part. Also why the heck are taxes so complicated. It’s just targeting the illiterate foreigners and immigrants who struggle and try to understand it and I believe that’s horrible. Make it easier to become apart of America the land of freedom and the getaway from the crueler areas of earth. Maybe just limit the population. Also seriously fuck off with taxes! Why the hell are you charging and taxing 14 year olds that aren’t allowed to vote, thats taxation without representation.

Taxes should be like Mario kart and Ancient Greece. Quote from some thing I googled

“The philosopher Aristotle developed the theme. His "magnificent man" gave vast sums to the community. But poor men could never be "magnificent" because they did not have the financial means. True wealth consists in doing good, Aristotle argued in the Art of Rhetoric: in handing out money and gifts, and helping others to maintain an existence.

The idea is simple the higher up you are on the financial ladder the more you have to pay taxes and contribute to society. The large taxes from the rich help fund financial aid for the poor and stuff. The rich did not earn that money they climbed to top on top a mountain of millions of shortcuts and underpaid workers It should be an honor to be taxed and help the poor people survive. Like in Mario kart, the higher you’re placed the harder it is to maintain it and the last place people always get the better power ups giving them a constant fighting chance. At most I believe wealth should be hoarded to sustain like one generation of kids, two at the most. Maybe three but theres no reason anybody should have all that money that your never going to spend or all that money that becomes worthless once a war or breaks out or aliens attack or something. Life is more important than money. Something simple everyone should consider.

I think everybody should be able to pursue a career and each career should be sustainable. Enjoyment in a job of your choosing without worrying about financial burden. Jobs would be divided into smaller simple groups and the pay would based on their contribution to society. Like doctors getting paid more and getting teachers paid more, but small retailers wouldn’t get paid as much but they could survive not living paycheck to paycheck. The motivation is everybody should free to pursue the hobby they love without being punished. Maybe little Timmy doesn’t want to be a firefighter, maybe he desires a simple fun life selling flowers. That’s fine! Maybe they don’t wanna become the hero but it’ll be an honor to society. As long as you have a job that contributes to society you can live for free. If everybody is constantly trying to make the most profit, then we all become a bucket of crabs dragging each other down. I can’t sell my $10 good that costed me $2 to make. Also the whole buy back thing irritates me, I spent $60 on this goddamn game and GameStop can only give me like $10 in store credit or $5 in real life? That’s isn’t fair and that applies to pretty much everything. That’s $1000 phone you bought is barley worth $357 right now. I’m pretty sure it didn’t cost that much to make these things but like DAMN. Capitalism sucks.

In summary, I don’t know much about politics but I would be the human party. I don’t care about left or right. I’m the one that doesn’t care about money. I care more about life and creativity. Peoples right to enjoyment and living a happy life with others regardless of gender. Survival of the human race and advancement into the future where more things are free and we can constantly focus on creating an even BETTER one. We can’t go anywhere without each other especially if we’re all just a bucket of crabs. To greedy and self destructive constantly looking out only for themselves. Seriously get your act together humans before you kickstart your own downfall. If we’re all trying to make a profit, nobody does. The best things in life are free. You can pursue wealth for your future or you can focus and live and enjoy and love the now. Mario kart style, where all in this race for life and we all deserve a winning chance.

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lordgoopy · 5 years ago

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“The Saturday Interview: I Am In Eskew Podcast” —Recovered

The podcast is called I Am In Eskew; it’s a horror / weird fiction show delivered as a series of dispatches from a vaguely Central European city.

Eskew is a place that is, both spatially and psychologically, off-kilter. The streets wind too far in on themselves, the stairs climb too high, and both buildings and inhabitants can act in peculiar, obsessive, or frightening ways. And every episode we follow the narrator, David Ward, a kind of semi-unwilling immigrant to the city, as he finds himself stumbling into new aspects of Eskew. As for me, I’m a writer in London, working in digital media for the charity sector; I’m writing and narrating Eskew sort-of-anonymously. Not for any kind of grand scandalous reason, but because I think it adds to the fun and helps to keep the conceit alive a little bit.

Ah...that explains why I couldn’t find your name when I was researching for this interview. I thought my skills were slipping! I think it’s very interesting that Eskew focuses on horror based around spaces and buildings. Is this something of particular interest to you?

Yes, definitely! I think there’s a rich ream of horror, from The Haunting of Hill House to Ghostwatch, that delves into the idea that certain places can simply go wrong - and once these bad environments have been established and ostracised by society, they can’t be exorcised. They simply keep accruing power through the individual stories that play tragically out in their shadow.

I mention a real-life example of that kind of bad architecture in one episode; the Pope Lick Bridge in Kentucky, a place that looks and feels so sinister that it developed its own local folklore about a goat-man who attacks people who stray too close to the edge - and which has ended up resulting in deaths as visitors peer over the side trying to get a peek at the monster.

I find this kind of stuff fascinating, because it plays into my own paranoia about environments, and my dislike of ghost stories with explicably human antagonists. Like David says in the first episode, people aren’t frightening. Places are frightening.

If I’m sitting alone at home on a dark and stormy night, and I glance nervously up towards the bedroom doorway, my fear is not that my house is being haunted by a spirit called Mabel who died in the 19th century at the age of fourteen and is constantly seeking her favourite teddy bear...because all of these details both humanise her and make her ridiculous.

My fear is that there will be something standing in the doorway, because the doorway is where things come to stand.

Because unoccupied spaces, in our imaginations, must find something to fill them.

Could you describe some of your creative influences?

Thomas Ligotti is probably the writer I’m trying to crib from the most. Not so much in terms of his pessimism (or his love of puppets as a horror motif, which I can’t really get behind), but I see him very much as someone who bridges the gap between American horror and European absurdism. Some of my favourite stories of his - The Town Manager, Our Temporary Supervisor, The Red Factory - are hilarious as comedies! They’re very much scathing satires on our inadequate human response to the inexplicable and awful.

Junji Ito is also a big influence, in particular, his masterpiece Uzumaki: a collection of short stories about a town that’s driven mad by the symbol of a spiral. The brilliance is in the inventiveness with which he builds an anthology of horrors, with variety and with mounting awfulness, while playing on that simple motif.

I see Ito’s work as very much in the spirit of some of the most classic horror of all; Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where the threat comes not from an external monster, but from our own bodies and minds, transforming at the whim of cruel, fickle and obsessive gods...which feeds into a lot of what I’m trying to do with Eskew!

I usually try and avoid thinking about Lovecraft as an influence, even though David is clearly an obsessive, neurotic first-person narrator in the Lovecraft/Poe mould. I think there’s a lot of baggage around what constitutes ‘Lovecraftian’ fiction, and I didn’t want to set up false expectations by referencing him (like the idea that there might be some monstrous cosmic intelligence behind it all).

I really enjoy Lovecraft too, especially something like “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” I think the idea of monsters living in the sea near the town and the strange, inexorable link the townspeople have with them makes it a lot creepier than something like “The Call of Cthulhu.”

Yeah! I think the elements in Lovecraft that have made him so franchise-friendly (these brilliant alien races and gods) have eaten away at the edges of Lovecraftian horror, bringing it closer to something that can be quite kitsch, even a kind of steampunk pastiche at times. With Eskew, I’m trying to keep to something I see in Ito, or in Ligotti, where any antagonists, whether human or otherwise, are only symptoms of something worse, something that’s simply a force of nature.

I see the city of Eskew as being a bit like a literal cancer in that sense - a highly complex structure where some of the cells (or in this case streets, art galleries, citizens...) have started to lose their original sense of self and are obsessively spiralling off in other, destructive directions...

What made you decide to do I Am In Eskew as a podcast, rather than as a graphic novel or book?

Honestly, it’s a lack of talent in the first instance, and a lack of discipline in the second!

Writing it as a podcast was my partner’s idea (she’s also the occasional voice of Riyo, an investigator looking into David’s disappearance, and she copy-edits every episode with me) - I knew I wanted to write a series of horror short stories based around the theme of urban isolation and weird architecture, but I was really struggling to get started.

She suggested that recording it as a podcast would force me to keep to a schedule, and hopefullyit might even give me some audience feedback to keep me excited about the project.

So it was a pragmatic choice, but it’s one I’ve really come to be thankful for! I think the medium is perfect for bare-bones, atmospheric horror storytelling (Knifepoint Horror is probably the best example of that ‘lonely voice whispering in your ear’ kind of fiction), and there’s an incredibly welcoming, friendly, mutually-supporting community of listeners and creators online.

Once the podcast is complete, I think I’d definitely like to look at compiling all of the episodes, editing and improving them, and turning it into a full-length written anthology. I’ve definitely made a few continuity slip-ups along the way that I’d like to correct, apart from anything else.

I’ve enjoyed Riyo’s episodes too, especially now that she’s directly looking into ‘hostile environments’. I feel like the contrast in tone and narrative style help to strengthen the series overall. Do you intend for the story of I Am In Eskew to have a specific ending in the future? If so, have you decided on the arc of the story?

I think David’s story (and Riyo’s) needs to be a finite one, definitely. In my experience, most successful protagonists in serial horror tend to be investigators, or monster-hunters. That choice of profession makes them witnesses to the story, rather than victims - effectively, they’re exempt from the psychological cost of whatever happens.

With David, I very much wanted to avoid that sense of safety; I want the horror to keep taking its toll on the character, episode after episode - which means that eventually he does need to find some kind of resolution!

Otherwise that psychological cost starts to seem fraudulent, and the whole thing turns into a predictable game of ‘David sees something horrible, then miraculously escapes at the last second’ week after week.

So I do know how the finale is going to play out; it’s really just a question of how many more stories I can reasonably invent for the show, without things starting to feel stretched, before we get there.

Mind you, it’s been established that there are recordings from Eskew that have gone missing, so it doesn’t need to end, even if it ends…

Do you have a favourite episode of I Am In Eskew so far?

I really like Episode 3: Excavation. A mysterious digging sickness takes hold in Eskew, with citizens tearing their own hands to pieces just to get into the ground - and in retaliation, a religious cult starts to form, extolling the virtues of the sky and constructing a grand tower.

It’s not necessarily the best-written episode structurally, and definitely one of the crudest in terms of recording quality, but it was the first episode where I felt I was pushing the boat out towards the kind of outrageous, absurdist horror that I really wanted to be writing, where normal human behaviour was just being given a couple of extra screw-turns towards something awful and monstrous.

It was also the first episode where I really saw a few people begin to respond on message boards, so that was really reassuring to me - when it first went out, I was petrified that I’d gone too weird to sustain anyone’s interest.

I tried to pick a favourite episode in preparation for this interview, but I honestly couldn’t narrow it down past five or six. If I really had to pick, I’d probably choose Illumination - the episode about the sinister and compulsive call of an old railway bridge. Are ideas like this based on real examples?

That example definitely is - it’s based on a railway bridge about a minute’s walk from my house! I love that kind of very modern ruin; old brick stacks stood out in the open, arches filled with ivy, graffiti in a place that seems impossible to reach...

There are a few other specific London inspirations (I based the Fish Market on Spitalfields Meat Market, for example), but with Eskew as a whole, I was thinking specifically of hillier cities in Western and Central Europe: Budapest, primarily, but also Lisbon (the trams and cobblestones), maybe a bit of Rome...

I’m used to flat English cities without any kind of panorama, so I find it a ceaselessly astonishing thing to be lost in a city’s streets and suddenly find myself up high, staring down over a sea of winding streets and rooftops...

How do you feel having wrecked people’s appreciation of AA Milne’s poem Disobedience by highlighting how deeply sinister it is?

I’ve actually been driving myself wild trying to decide if that poem is just a nonsense rhyme celebrating bossy children, or if there’s a class-snobbery thing going on (James James Morrison’s mother puts on a golden gown, and goes to the end of the town...does she get robbed there? Is the end of the town so unsafe because that’s where the low-income people live?)

You may have a point there about class. After whatever happens to her happens, the King himself gets involved with a reward. Clearly, she’s a lady with connections! Could you describe your writing process?

My writing process is very much informed by necessity - I commute in and out of London every day and don’t have a lot of free time, so I have to do most of my drafting while standing upright in a crammed train carriage!

Which may not be ideal, but on the other hand, if you’re writing a podcast about the horror of urban life, there’s no better place to find inspiration than a crowded, sweaty, angry Underground train filled with blank faces...

How long does it take you to put an episode together, from first word to the finished product?

I’m very quick; I usually sketch out the episode concept well in advance, then take about a fortnight to draft it and edit. Recording and audio-editing happens very speedily, again out of necessity, on the weekends! I try and devote a day apiece to each.

Turning to the technical side, what do you wish you’d known about creating a podcast at the very beginning?

There’s still an enormous amount that I don’t know! When it comes to even simple audio editing, I’m learning all the time. I very much am still just a schmuck in his living room, talking into a handmade sound booth on his days off - which is the beauty of podcasting, I suppose.

But I’d probably give my earlier self some very common-sense advice like...

...be brave. Stick to a schedule. Know the signs of burn-out. Listen to other people’s work in the medium before you dive in. Stay hydrated so your mouth doesn’t make those disgusting wet sounds when you’re trying to talk. Never forget that this should be fun, above anything else.

What motivates you to keep producing episodes?

Honestly? Seeing that it’s connecting with people. Spooking people. Entertaining people. That means everything.

If people would like to engage with you or support you online, what’s the best way to do that?

If you’d like to support the show...please do just shout about it! Tell your friends, leave a review on iTunes. It really makes a huge difference.

If you’d like to chat, we’re also on Twitter: https://twitter.com/eskew_podcast

#i am in eskew #eskew #long post

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matthewebel · 5 years ago

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Confessions of an Attention Addict

Hello again, old friend. It’s been too long. Let’s catch up.

Usually people say that as a means of politely begging forgiveness for their inability to maintain a relationship with no intention of actually following through. Right now, I need to follow through and catch you up on what’s been going on for nearly thirteen years now. It’s not an easy story for me to tell, but I promise there’s a happy ending. Grab a cup and let’s do this.

Depression, Addiction, and Cognitive Dissonance

Ignore the dramatic headline, I already told you there’s a happy ending.

I didn’t realize how addicted I’d become until maybe 2016. I suppose that’s normal; most addicts don’t jump head-first into dependency. It creeps up on you. Back in 2005 I wrote a lengthy song about addiction to caffeine and beer that seemed to resonate with some people, but I was never addicted to either. My drug was more pernicious. I’ve been mainlining the same publicly-accepted drug since I was a kid, in fact: Attention.

So when the podcast wave of 2005-2008 carried me to a magical land with no day job, I was ecstatic. Attention came easier than coke in Miami. The Furries also took me in as their star performer and, finally, I found myself touring the nation. Every time I looked out into a dark ballroom to see hundreds of people singing my songs back to me, I felt the kind of rush that makes addicts forget to eat or sleep. The peak of this attention— which we’ll lovingly refer to as “rock bottom” —was probably Anthrocon 2013.

Fuck, Runtt and I looked good on steadicam.

But that was the beginning of the crash. Podcasting and live streaming went from the hot new technology with a tight-knit community to everyday background noise. The Furry fandom got tired of seeing me and my amazing bald companion at every convention, but I wasn’t ready to let go. I had tasted that high and I wanted more.

From 2012 right up until 2017 I kept grasping for that attention-high only to have it dissolve in my fingertips. I tried everything I could think of– writing songs about trendy geek topics, spicing up the live shows with Sci-Fi themes, but no one outside a small core of followers seemed to know who I was any more. The high just couldn’t reach that 2013 peak, and I couldn’t face a future without all that glorious attention.

Fortunately the path downhill was paved with lyrics. My last foray into the world of piano rock emerged in June 2017. I’m still proud of Cognitive Dissonance, even if it reminds me of just how depressed I’d been for that half of the decade. Like most folks fighting their demons, it holds up a whimsical façade and a veneer of optimism, but everyone can see the darkness within.

Thank God I had a strong, steady man in my life all this time, I’m not sure how I would’ve fared without him.

It got to the point, near the end of 2017, when I just stopped booking shows. I stopped blogging and sending you emails. I would sit at my desk in the morning and stare at the screen with no clue what to do. Wasn’t I creative enough to make people pay attention any more? Wasn’t I good enough to be the center of attention again? Shit needed to change, and fast.

So we moved to Seattle, but that’s another story.

As I packed all of my belongings, I realized there was a lot I needed to throw out… first and foremost, my addiction to attention. But what would that leave me with? I had to redefine my identity in a way that was both healthy and sustainable. I had to ask myself a difficult question: Why did I get into this business in the first place?

An Apology to the Robot Army

People still ask me if I’m ever going to release another piano rock album. I know, if you’re reading this, it’s probably because you saw me on stage at a convention banging on a keyboard, not spinning turntables. The only answer I can give you is gonna sound like a copout: Maybe.

EDM wasn’t that far of a leap for me, to be honest. The event that sparked my love for making music was a single night with a piece of gear that plugged into my digital piano. If you want to hear that story, let me know and I’ll spin up another blog post. Suffice it to say, however, that I probably should’ve gone into electronic music genres right from age 12. No matter what, I never ever should’ve dabbled in Christian pop (sorry, Mom). But I’ve already made a major genre-shift once before, and I needed to now.

I had to decide if I was going to die on the hill of piano-geek-rock or retool the factory to make a product that would actually sell.

(Spoiler: I did not, in fact, die.)

You see, part of the healing process was what I call “retooling the factory.” When a company makes a product (let’s say 8-track tape decks) and the world starts listening to cassettes, they have to decide what their product is going to be. Actually, to be more specific, they have to decide what their identity is going to be… an 8-track deck company, or an audiovisual gear company? I mean, there are always going to be 8-track enthusiasts, but do we cater to that niche or change our product? Why did we get into this business in the first place?

And here’s where we swing back around to that pesky attention addiction of mine. In this business, attention is both a drug and the primary source of income. What a fucking dilemma, huh?

On one hand, the need for attention is an unhealthy way to gauge one’s self-worth. On the other, it’s the primary indicator for how well a performing artist is doing.

It took a lot— a lot –of soul-searching to realize dance music could decouple my addiction from the real business necessity of growing my audience again. Switching my primary instrument from keys to turntables made it easier for me to get out of the way and let the music itself be the center of attention.

And Avian Invasion was born. You should go check him out… more on that at the end of this long-ass update.

So, for those of you asking if I’ll get back into piano rock… I want you to understand that I cherish you greatly. I love you. I want to make the music that made you happy back then, I really do. The hard business truth is that there simply weren’t enough people like you to keep me in business. More important than that, though, I am once again engaged in the creative process. I don’t think I’ve been this focused on making music since the early days of Matthew Ebel dot net

I won’t say that another piano rock album will never happen, but right now Avian Invasion is the only thing on my radar. The Bird, effectively saved my life. I hope you can appreciate that, at least.

Now What?

Here’s where you, a part of my beloved Robot Army, come in.

I need you to go and show your support for Avian Invasion. Remember, Bird One saved my life. Without him, I’d still be staring at that blank screen wondering why I even bother to try any more. Like Leeloo Dallas, he needs your love to survive, just as I always have. And I need him. Please go to avianinvasion.com right now and do… the usual stuff: Add him on Spotify, Like him on Facebook, etc. There are icons on the website and you know what they do.

Matthew Ebel will still be here, updating you on the behind-the-scenes side of things. If you want to peek behind the bird mask and explore this new frontier with me, I’ll try to share as much as I can with you. In fact, I’ll be spending the summer building my own recording studio from scratch, and this is where I’ll be sharing photos and videos and blogs about the experience.

Maybe this decade will be one to celebrate.

Originally posted at http://bit.ly/2TnUU46

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ireddeadredemption2pc-blog · 5 years ago

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Red Dead Redemption 2 PC

Red Dead Redemption2 PC

The old west feels brand new again.

Oh Jesus Christ, what have you done? “Thomaschen 978 wants to know why a dozen carcasses and a couple of horse corpses are placed on rail tracks bordering the early industrial city and are the New Orleans stand-in St. Denis.” You killed half. village.” PC Games For Free

We are on round two of the recurring corpse pile. My poses got the idea to jump in front of the train after a few rounds of Lose Your Friends and Toss Them in the Sea in the Couple Friendly Strangers. Like GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption 2 has its own bowling minima, we explain to Chen in a roundabout way that provokes his fear. Die in the shared open world of Red Dead Redemption 2 and you’ll react fast enough to move your corpse around. Best RPGs games pc

The boy is in line with us. We should make it bigger. As the train comes around again, another pose tries to take us out. The chain defends us but does not bring it back to the tracks. He goes away screaming. Death of a true warrior.

Red Dead Redemption 2 could be the biggest, most humble videogame ball pit for an annoying story about impulsive children, the forced disintegration of the community, or simply a quiet and reflective hiking simulator. It’s just about what you need it to be, and it’s good at it.

Just hours before the corpse-bowling, I was alone through the icy forests, stepping into the long shadow cast across the snow by the rising moon. I heard a gunshot from a distance. The tracks of some wolves marked snow in the same direction. I saw them who won. Anytime I pay attention and look closely, RDR2 is the result of my curiosity. Best Racing games on pc

The mind-numbing expanse that makes up the vast world of RDR2 speaks to the creative force of a development team with an intense, obsessive dedication to realism (and all the money and time needed to do so). Like how my friends’ characters flare up when I fire a gun at them, how animal carcasses disintegrate over time, how NPCs react according to a sloppy or bloody outfit, how to stir through a doorway. Scares everyone everywhere.

It is hard to believe that RDR2 is so deep and wide and is also a harmonious, playable thing. I was already playing it for days worth the console version. This is why I am particularly disappointed that it ended up on the PC to some extent.

For every non-taught multiplayer adventure, disconnect or crash on the desktop, desktop. The rock star’s best storyline and character so far has been filmed through Frame Hutches’ slideshow and addressed over the launch weekend.

RDR2, one of the best Western games and one of the best open-world games I have ever released with enough stability issues, is recommended for the hard way until everything is completely smooth.

Morgan trail

EVERY PRETTY VISTA IS SOMETHING TO LOSE THROUGH ARTHUR’S EYES.

The story genre of Red Dead Redemption 2 follows the dying days of the Wild West. The sprawling industrial world faced the bandits and social downtrodden of Arthur Morgan’s small band, an imperfect but loyal, loving and self-reliant community.

Capitalism is reducing its value as resources to humans. Indigenous USA America is driven from the plains to make way for ‘civilization’ and commerce. The forests are brought down for timber, the hills are cut down for coal, and Morgan’s chosen family is caught in the middle, forced to flee, assimilate, or respond with violent protests is done. They do all three.

This is Rockstar’s most serious drama, and it’s really, really long. If you are running, the story ends after 40 to 50 hours and then continues for 10 to 15. The main story missions of Red Dead 2 feature distinctly rockstar fare: ride to a destination that is talking to everyone, tightly scripting though, entertaining things, riding, and chatting to the final destination.

Missions are often thrilling action sequences or artificially mundane pictures of wrench labor and trade, full of long-winded Bespoke animations, and outstanding performances. They are only hopelessly harsh, to the point where it feels like I am following the stage directions rather than playing the role of a vagabond in the Old West.

Step out of line in these campaigns and this is a failed situation. As opposed to Red Dead Online, there are very few of them that encourage players to think for themselves, each designed to advance the story. The RDR2 show is at least a spectacle of the slow pace of life in the Old West.

This is not the death and theatricality of a lifetime; My favorite missions include shoveling, drinking wine with a friend, proposing an old romance and riding a hot air balloon. Working through a greater rut, stricter tasks are considered meaningful in the end anyway, inspired by extraordinary, ambient world-building and characterization.

Side missions, minigames, small activities, and random world events — whether they hunt great guns, capture a play, or stumble upon a woman trapped under a horse — all set Arthur’s character and setting in subtle, rich ways. Please inform.

Nested in the third act of a fully animated and voice theatrical performance, something like 10 minutes, it is possible that the response button is pressed after an artist has included a telephone. Arthur would shout, “Hell with the telephone!” It is an optional activity, a long one, and an option is to react in that short window. I think most players will remember this, but this is Canad Response 1 through 3 because this is something Arthur would say, a rageless goofy set his way in the right way.

He would write complete, real diary entries about the 50-hour campaign, sketching memorable scenes and depicting the state of affairs of his chosen family, which people once knew changed their fortunes between hope and despair. It is meant to be a completely alternative reading, but a refreshingly intimate take on a masculine figure that unsettles many doubts and hopes as to the next person.

He sings himself on a lonely ride and lowers his old body in the mirror. He will have an exciting conversation with the horseshoe woman as he gives her a ride into town, both commenting on the troubles of working for wealthy, ungrateful men as a growing necessity. I feel it all. Best horror games on pc free

Hillbillies can capture him after making the camp, a couple may try to rob him after inviting him to dinner, a man with snakebite can come out of the forest by stumbling and tell him to suck venom is. These haphazard encounters portray brutal life on the fading frontier, as nature pushes back against inner poppers who want to change it. Arthur is the perfect vessel to see it

This is because Arthur Morgan is one of the darkest human characters I have played during a great turning point in American history, playing a playful, cruel and compassionate role according to differing theories.

The game world, beautiful as it is, is made more beautiful and tragic by how it is ready to play it on every occasion. Every beautiful vista has something to lose through Arthur’s eyes, power lines and train tracks, cut through the skies, and the rest of his life is slowly filling with factory smoke. Just about everyone sees a sad end in RDR2, too. This is a story that I might not sustain every moment, but I will not forget its brutal arc or the man in the middle of it all. God damn is it sad? An apocalypse that led to this.

Ren Der Reflection

Assuming that you are able to run it at high settings, the biggest strength of RDR2 is how it exquisitely renders the Old West setting on PC, drawing more attention to the nuanced details that make it. This is one of the best looking games I’ve seen and a rare experience that justifies a new GPU or CPU.

Better draw distance and a greater range of vegetation detail were added, making some vistas look photographic. Long shadows vary from walking or roaming between places to rides, to cute nature tours. Due to animal attacks, bullet holes, rain, mud, or rapid flow of blood, the markings on the clothes are caused by very high-resolution textures, which tell a very little story about your friends.

A new photo mode makes it easy to share those moments of amazement. The way the player rides on RDR2 for just sightseeing and sounds is an important feature. I am desperately trying to get an artistic portrait of my horse’s silhouette to sit against the moon, yet another self-proclaimed goal was tolerated by this ridiculously large complex game.

With 2080, i9-9900K and 32GB of RAM, I can run RDR2 mostly on ultra settings with some resource-intensive settings completely off or switched off. But some hardware combinations are proving troublesome for RDR2, leading to random crashes in some APIs and, more recently, to a hotfix, leading to hitching problems for some 4-core CPUs.

During the first weekend, I couldn’t spend more than an hour without crashing on the desktop, though Vulcan switched from DX12 (which gives me better framerates) back to static stuff. Sometimes the UI malfunctions and I cannot select a select or purchase option, the map fails to appear, or I get paged unexpectedly from game servers.

The graphics settings are almost too much as well, and probably confusing. In our test, only a handful of settings affected performance by more than 1-2 percent. Large residuals, the mapping between MSAA, volumetric lighting, and parallax occlusion, affect performance by 5 to 25 percent. Most of them don’t make a big visual difference anyway and are best left out.

The way the settings are presented is made to feel underdeveloped: a huge list with unclear presets that require tinkering to make RDR2 run in a satisfactory framerate. It is hard. The PC should be the best place to play, not the best place to play, after all, after a few patches. It’s a shame for a game to look good. upcoming pc games

Cowboy poetry Red Dead Redemption 2 PC

Like in singleplayer mode, in Red Dead Online I can make my goals reasonable and watch them. The problem is, it is basically hamstrung by a frustrating multiplayer leveling system that locks basic equipment and cosmetics behind long XP requirements that can meet hours, perhaps days,

The option is spending gold, premium currency, items and clothing to unlock them immediately. A fishing pole is not available until level 14. A damn fishing pole in an outdoor recreation game. This is not spectacular and is a terrible way to invest players.

out a basic suite of tools (fishing rod, bow, varmint rifle, nice hat, etc.), Red Dead Online opened up widely. I have largely ignored traditional matchmaking modes such as gunfights and horse races, cheap thrills, I will play much better versions in different games, to have fun. It led to the most inventive, serene, real, and sometimes buzzing echo I’ve ever had.

I once walked into the middle of a fire in Blackwater and took the player corpses one by one to the church cemetery. Some were captured and participated in the ‘burial’ of their friends. A corpse thanked me for the gesture. Later, in an extended streak of criminal activity, my pose and I caught another player and instead of killing them on the spot, we rode into the swamp and threw them into the garter infected waters. I got the idea to act like a friend. Best pc games 2017

On a less absurd note, I set myself a constant goal of earning strictly enough money from hunting to buy cool-weather gear and a fine rifle. I am going to hike in the mountains and find the best way to hide there, a wild mountain man adorned with animal skins, which almost touches the floor.

In the meantime, I’m stopping gunmen across the city by running through the streets and calling for a parley. I am participating in an eight-player ballroom. I am living the life of a normal cowboy in the best shepherd game. I hope it clears up soon.

RDR2 PC System Requirements

OS : Windows 7 SP1 64bit

Graphics Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 2GB / AMD Radeon R9 280

Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K / AMD FX-6300

Memory: 8 GB RAM

DirectX: Version 11 Or 12 Support

Storage: 150 GB

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robininthelabyrinth · 6 years ago

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Fic: An Internal Affair - Chapter 5(Ao3 link)

Fandom: The Flash Pairing: Leonard Snart/Barry Allen

Summary: Leonard Snart, the CCPD Captain of Internal Affairs, is known as Captain Cold for a very good reason: He hates corrupt cops with a merciless vengeance, and once you’re on his list, you’re in serious trouble.

His next target?

A CCPD lab tech named Barry Allen who’s developed a suspicious habit of disappearing at random intervals.

—————————————————————————————————

"I can't believe you sometimes, boss," Danvers complains. "You're just unbelievable."

"But Danvers," Len says, widening his eyes, "if you don't say 'I believe in Leonard Snart' and clap three times, my inner light will fade and then I'll die -"

"You are not a fairy!"

"Only technically true," Len says. "I'm pansexual, while that term is generally used -"

"You know what I mean," Danvers says, giving a playful push to his shoulder. Danvers is ridiculously strong and has issues remembering that sometimes, so the push is enough to send a lesser man toppling down to the floor. Luckily, Len figured out the strength thing pretty early and he's learned to compensate for it, relaxing his muscles and going with the flow of it, so he's able to straighten up again pretty easy.

He hasn't told Danvers that he knows, of course, since she's so obviously embarrassed by it.

Just like she's too embarrassed to admit that she's hidden a microwave somewhere in her office that she uses to heat up his coffee or hot chocolate whenever he happens to arrive, since there is no way she's good enough at guessing when he'll arrive to make sure that stuff is always warm.

He keeps trying to hint to her that he really doesn't mind microwaved coffee - especially since Danvers has a knack for making it taste freshly brewed - but she keeps looking vaguely confused whenever he brings it up.

"Yes, I know what you mean," Len allows. "And just why am I being unbelievable this time?"

"You're planning on going out again," she says, throwing her hands in the air. "With the mask and that stupid parka -"

"I’ll have you know that the parka keeps my core warm against the gun," Len points out. "Besides, it's the only winter coat I have out of storage right now."

It might be the only winter coat he owns, but that's a minor detail.

"You know the media is calling you a supervillain, right?" Danvers asks, crossing her arms.

"And by ‘media’, you mean that one specific blog, right?"

"...yes."

"That blog also thinks I derailed that train by icing the tracks," Len says, rolling his eyes. "Despite the fact that the official investigation concluded that it was a combination of a mechanical issue and human error. That one?"

Human error, of course, is a reference to the fact that the transportation department couldn’t be bothered to keep their trains in sufficiently good condition that a miniscule spot of ice – no more than a foot or two – was enough to keep the damn thing on the line.

Ice. Len can scarcely believe it, but there it is, and it at least goes some ways to explaining why the kid could have thought that Len was the one responsible for it.

Though if a train can’t run over a few feet of ice without jumping a track, there’s a problem that speaks of years of sustained incompetence anyway.

Still, whatever the reason, the derailment would have been a total catastrophe if it wasn't for the Streak - no, the blog is calling him the "Flash" now.

It makes for a troublesome dilemma. On one hand, it seems like this Flash kid is actually doing good things, like rescuing the people on that train.

On the other hand, he's still taking the law into his own hands.

Violence is still violence, even against a criminal.

Len's list of corrupt cops to take down includes a good number that seem to have forgotten that their right to be violent extends only as far as it takes to fulfill their duties and no further. When you apply the same principle to a civilian who lacks any authority or right to use violence as a means of enacting law at all -

Hmm. Alternatively, Len could just charge the Flash with multiple counts of assault and battery the next time they meet. That might even work.

"Okay, I'll bite," Len says, finally giving in to Danvers' pointed glare. "Why is it unbelievable that I’d go out again? What’s unbelievable about it?"

"Uh, the part – make that the whole thing – where you're considering getting further involved with this whole Flash thing, obviously!" Danvers says. "Boss, what part of 'the Families want to kill you' is going over your head here?"

"I'm your boss," Len mock-grumbles. "Be respectful."

"Not in a million years."

"I don't see what the problem is, though," Len says. "It’s not like I’m going totally solo on it or anything."

"Boss," Danvers says flatly. "You convinced the Commissioner that the Flash incidents represented a possible threat to the overall impression of city security because someone, somewhere, was probably following along with his exploits on secret police radios -"

"The Commissioner is running for office this year," Len says dryly. "Anyone who offered him a method to haze the Families by sending people in to investigate the illicit police radios we all know they have was going to be able to convince him of just about anything, including an invasion from Jupiter."

"True," Danvers allows. "Though to be entirely correct, that would be an invasion from the moons of Jupiter, not Jupiter, since Jupiter is a gas giant and not – wait, no, not the point I was trying to make. The point is that you also got him to agree that because there is the possibility that the Flash is working with a cop to get on the police band, thereby making it part of your jurisdiction, that meant that you could help sponsor a Flash-related task force."

"Co-sponsor," Len says. "Singh signed on."

"Yeah, to keep an eye on you."

"Noticed that, did you?" Len says, pleased. "We'll make a proper spy out of you yet."

“Aw, thanks, boss,” Danvers says with a smile, complimented, but quickly goes back to being annoyed with him. "I heard him talking about it in his office. He's not really in favor of catching the Flash - he thinks the Flash is doing more good than harm - but he's willing to back you so that he can figure out what scheme you're up to."

"My reputation precedes me, clearly."

"Boss..."

"Relax. I'm one step ahead of him - he offered me Joe West to be on my team, which is pretty obvious sabotage given how much West obviously hates me; I told him I'd take Eddie Thawne instead. Since they're partners, he wasn't really in a position to refuse, and Thawne's a good kid."

"Coming from you, that's high honors," Danvers says, but she's smiling again.

"You're not bad yourself," Len says, smirking when she squeaks and blushes. "Your compilation of weird incidents with multiple uncoordinated eye-witness reports was key to convincing the Commissioner that there was something there worth checking out."

"It's my job, boss," she says, grinning.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not part of a secretary’s job.”

“Admin assistant, boss.”

"Well, while we’re at it, thanks for letting me borrow that mask," Len says. "Turned out there were some Family guys looking for me that night." His contracts had been very specific about that, since D'Angelo let slip he'd be meeting with Len, but it’d been a risk Len was willing to take.

"Made you borrow it, more like it," Danvers sniffs. "I can't believe you were just going to - to go out with your face just, like, right out there in the open - it's like you never even read a comic book -"

"I'm not actually a supervillain," Len reminds her, deeply amused. Danvers could probably take over the world if she found herself in a world that worked on comic book logic instead of real world logic. "I'm not doing anything illegal; I'm just policing in a creative and out-of-the-box way –”

Danvers snorts.

“–and meeting my community’s needs in dealing with a vigilante like that,” Len continues, cheerfully ignoring her. “Anyway, the mask was perfect - total anonymity without any obstruction of function. Why'd you have it lying around, anyway?"

Danvers turns red and starts spluttering something incoherent, which means it's one of those things she's weirdly embarrassed about.

It's like how she claims she takes the train to work, but manages to be there on time even when Len knows there's been a massive train delay.

Honestly, he has no idea what's going on in Danvers' brain sometimes. It's not like there's a stigma against carpooling or anything...

"Never mind, don't care," Len interrupts, waving a hand, and Danvers looks at him gratefully.

They talked about it, once, all these unusual reactions that she has, the way she gets flustered and evasive about the weirdest things. She'd come into his office late at night, jaw clenched with determination and fists shaking with anxiety, and offered to explain it all to him, because she didn't want him to think she was lying to him. He was, she explained, her only friend in Central City, and she was pretty sure she was his in return right at that moment, and she didn't want him to start suspecting her of betraying him by keeping secrets.

He'd taken one look at her, seen all of that anxiety and how she was forcing herself to take a step she clearly didn't want to take but felt she had to, and he'd promptly told her that he didn't care if she was a little green man from Mars as long as she did her job and didn't sell him out.

She'd stared at him blankly, so he'd explained: she very obviously didn't want to tell him whatever it was she was offering to tell him, not yet and maybe not ever; rather, she just felt that she had to. But Len doesn't believe in outing people over anything before they're ready, so whatever it was she felt she had to tell him, she could tell him whenever she really wanted to. If she was more comfortable with him not asking, well, then he wouldn’t ask - as long as whatever it was didn’t involve him getting sold out, which he was pretty sure it didn’t, then he honestly didn’t care.

Of course, then she'd burst into tears and Len had hidden under his desk in an attempt to get away from the rampant display of emotions, yelling all the while that he would add a no tears clause to her contract, which had the side effect of making her start to laugh even as she'd cried.

Ultimately, she'd decided she really wasn't ready yet, but that she thought she might be, eventually, and they'd gone from there.

To be perfect honest, Danvers has always been something of a mystery, right from the first time they'd met. At first Len assumed it was because she wasn't from Central - Danvers is from the area around National City, some small town in the outskirts, and she'd done some work there in various administrative assistant roles before she'd abruptly moved to Central only a few months before Len discovered and hired her away from the court reporter temp pool she'd been working in.

At that point, all he'd cared about was finding someone who wasn't very obviously a spy planted by either the Families or the other police departments. Danvers had been the court reporter at his first corruption trial; she'd been fast (she had to be, being a court reporter), efficient, unafraid of the Family connections of the cop on trial, and had trouble hiding her smirks when Len made a particularly snarky comment.

More importantly, she had a clean background – as far as he’s concerned, anyway; he hadn't quite gotten used to working legit at that time, since he'd been less than two weeks out of the hospital and spitting mad, so he'd just had those of his illegal contacts that hadn't heard the news check her out and confirm that there wasn’t anything criminal about her - and anyway Len got along with her the few times he'd dragged her into various conference rooms to do some freelance transcribing of plea deal negotiations and deposition testimony.

So he'd decided to take a gamble and asked her if she'd like a thankless job saving the city where everyone would take her achievements for granted and turn up their noses in disdain at her failures, plus a small pay increase and shitty health care.

Amazingly, even with a pitch as awful as that, she accepted.

Apparently, Danvers enjoys fighting the good fight for barely any reward.

That, or she really needed the steady paycheck.

Len honestly doesn’t care which.

It’d been a little rocky at the start, but they got used to each other over time. Len's an abrasive asshole and doesn't know how to use the services of a secretary, but Danvers spends half the time acting like she's invulnerable and the other half acting like she’s afraid she’s going to break everything just by breathing on it, and that’s also pretty annoying. Luckily, after some encouragement, it turned out that she had the guts to stand up to him and call him out when he’s on his bullshit, and ever since then they’ve worked well together.

Now Len likes to think that they’ve even become friends.

Danvers even eventually opened up a bit about her history.

Apparently, her abrupt shift from National to Central had followed a pretty terrible blow-up with her sister and mother. Danvers hadn't given all that many details, but from what little she'd said, Len gathers that the sister had accepted a position based on some trait of Danvers' that Danvers would have preferred to keep quiet, a position that involved using Danvers as a case study, and Danvers hadn't taken it well when she'd found out.

"I know exactly what you mean - fucking shrinks," Len told her after that particular confession, nodding vigorously. They'd been having drinks in his office at the time, since the last time they'd gone out to a bar some Family grunt had pulled a gun on Len and Danvers had managed to get in between the guy and Len. Luckily, the gun jammed or maybe the guy missed, but either way nobody seemed like they’d gotten hit with a bullet, and Len hit the guy over the head with his crutch, but he'd decided not to risk Danvers doing something that stupid again. "Just because you ain’t neurotypical makes 'em think that they can push you around. S'like they totally forget that you’ve got feelings, or at least they pretend to themselves that you wouldn't care about that type of shit at all just ‘cause you’re different. Mick had one of those - a foster mom that adopted him because she wanted to write a paper about pyromania. He liked her right up until he figured out that she just wanted his cooperation so she could do more observations. Never even occurred to her to think about how he'd feel when he found out she used him to get ahead in her career."

Danvers, halfway into a bottle of tequila and a pint of Ben and Jerry's, giggled a little hysterically. "Yes," she said. "That, it’s like that exactly. I never thought there'd be a parallel – but yes. That. It's just like that. She's my sister, you know? She should be on my side, not – not using me to get, I don’t know, up an extra step on the ladder!"

"Hell yeah," Len said solemnly, clinking glasses with her. He wondered a little what unique trait Danvers had that her sister had tried to take advantage of – some form of autism, maybe? ADHD? He’d heard that manifested differently for girls, and anyway it made sense given how she clearly had some sensory processing issues, hearing things louder than he did and flinching at relatively mild sounds and sometimes getting overwhelmed by emotions, not to mention the way she sometimes didn’t quite get certain basic social conventions – but he wasn’t going to ask or anything; that’d be seriously rude. After all, he certainly didn’t care what she had as long as she kept doing her job, and he was pretty sure by now that she knew that if she needed any accommodations, she only needed ask for them and he'd do everything in his power to get it done.

He did make a mental note to see if she’d like some more pillows to go next to her desk for her to fidget with, though. She liked those.

"And she even made it out like she was just doing it to protect me!" Danvers exclaimed. "But if she was, she would've asked, right? She wouldn't have lied about what she was doing. She wouldn't have - she wasn't ever planning on telling me. Not ever! I only found out because I was looking for where I'd hidden her birthday present and we've always used the same hiding spots and I found a file. On me. Who even does that?!"

"Bullshit," Len agreed. "Total bullshit."

"And then Mom got involved and she was just pissed off about Alex's job, not about the fact that she was studying me, except it turns out that when Alex gets frustrated, she blames me for taking up all the attention and, like, I don't know, ruining her life by making her not an only child or something stupid like that. And – and – and while we were all blowing up about that, it turned out that mom's also been lying to us – both of us – for literally years about what happened to Dad – about how he died – and then Alex starts blaming me about it because the trouble all started after I got adopted -"

“Ouch. Below the belt.”

“I know! And – and what’s the worst part, you know – they’d always been on my case about being ‘normal’. Both of them. Normal, normal, normal, normal, until I was ready to scream, and the whole time they both know so much more than what they were telling me – and taking advantage of the fact that I’m not normal – and it’s just not fair!”

Her lip was trembling again.

"To shitty families," Len said, raising his glass. He'd already told her about his dad, since he wanted her to be on the look-out in case Lewis reared his ugly head anywhere near Len's new job, and she'd been great about not blatantly pitying him too much about it. One of the reasons he liked her so much. "And the lies they tell."

After a minute, he added, "Lowercase 'f'."

"Uppercase 'f' Families lie too," Danvers pointed out.

"They're not who we're toasting. C'mon, don't leave me hanging."

Danvers giggled and clinked glasses with him. “I still miss them, you know,” she added. “I think I’d have forgiven them, eventually, if I’d stayed. Probably way earlier than I really should have. Like, five minutes later.”

“Socialization and habit,” Len says solemnly. “Heard it’s worse for girls; you’re raised to be all forgiving and shit, yeah?”

“Yeah, basically. That, plus, you know, I did always feel guilty about how I just showed up on their doorstep, so I’ve always kinda tried to play the peace-maker, you know?”

“That’s the habit half of the equation.”

“Yeah…anyway, I probably would’ve found a reason to forgive and forget and everything, but, ugh, I was just so angry. I just – I was in between jobs at the time, too. I mean, I had an interview scheduled the next day with CatCo Worldwide Media as Cat Grant’s personal assistant. No guarantee I’d get it, of course. But there was like this moment where I realized that if I was fighting with my family then, well, I didn’t really have anything keeping me there. In National City, I mean. So I just packed a bunch of my stuff and flew away. Ended up at a hotel in Central.”

“Tell me you didn’t use your credit card.”

“I’m pretty sure that particular hotel didn’t even accept cards,” Danvers said dryly. She was familiar enough with Central City’s extremely shitty hospitality scene now for it to be a joke, though Len suspected it hadn't been when she first arrived. “It wasn’t exactly good quality, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, do I ever.”

“Anyway, I was still steaming angry the next morning, so I pulled a bunch of cash out of my account, canceled all my cards, got myself that temp job as a court reporter, and grabbed the first apartment that came on the market, and, well, by the time I calmed down enough to start feeling guilty about our fight, I was pretty well rooted here and wasn’t really in the mood to go back to National and be the first one to forgive. Again.”

“Totally reasonable.”

“They haven’t even apologized, you know,” Danvers said, draining her glass again. She had the alcohol tolerance of a mule. Len was just drunk enough at this point – thank God he isn’t macho enough to think he needed to match her shot-to-shot or else he’d be dead – to think about how much Mick would enjoy that quality of hers when-if he woke up. “I reached out to them eventually and they just started worrying about me being all on my own in a big city, how will I be able to handle it on my own, is this going to make it hard for me to stay normal without support, yadda, yadda, stupid yadda, and when I pointed out that I was still really angry at them, they just, I don’t know, wanted me to get over it - they even got my cousin to come try to, quote, talk some sense into me, end quote.”

“Rude.”

“They keep comparing me to him,” Danvers added bitterly. “He’s much better at being normal.”

“Ain’t he some sort of weirdo Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist that works almost exclusively in Third World countries where there ain’t no modern internet?” Len asks skeptically. “That ain’t exactly what I’d call normal.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t really come back to America much anymore,” Danvers says with a shrug. “And when he does, he avoids cities whenever possible, even though he used to want to go work in a big paper in Metropolis. He even had a job offer from the Daily Planet! His original set of foster parents would’ve wanted him to take it, but they died and he came to live with – well, with my family – and they all convinced him it’d be too much for him, so in the end he didn’t take it. He’s – he’s like me. Not normal. But apparently it’s okay to not be normal as long as you do it where no one can see you or report you or something like that.”

“Wow,” Len said. “What fucking assholes. I hope he told you to carry on.”

Danvers grinned. “He told me to do what I thought was right, no matter what anyone said. And that’s when I signed a year-long lease – not on the first apartment I snagged, don’t worry, I’m in a much better area of town now –”

Good, Len was about to ask.

“– and also changed my phone number so my mom and my sister would stop harassing me at work.” She drained another glass. “And that’s why we’re still not talking. Not until I decide that I’m ready to talk to them again.”

“I don’t recall them harassing you at work,” Len said.

“I mostly ran out the back to take their calls,” Danvers said. “The one time they tried to call you instead of me, you’d just come back from PT and were super grouchy, so you told them that you would bring the full force of the FBI on their asses for wire fraud if they didn’t fuck right off.”

Len – vaguely remembered that. He’d thought they were telemarketers or possibly evangelists.

“Don’t worry,” Danvers added, grinning. “I appreciated it.”

It was a good night, even if Len distinctly remembers getting increasingly drunk as it went on (Kara didn’t, but again she has that ridiculous metabolism) and telling her about the first time he met Mick and some other unnecessarily soppy stories about him.

Either way, though, that background made Danvers understandably touchy about people who lied to close friends and family – and that, in turn, made Len feel more like he could trust her…

"Mask or no mask, I still don't like the idea of you going out in person, you know," Danvers says, snapping Len out of his reverie. "You're still fragile."

Len makes a face at her. He would love to dispute that, but he used his new braces for less than two hours yesterday, just for the not-really-maybe-kinda-sorta-masked-supervillain-superhero-confrontation-thing, and he's already got cramps very nearly everywhere to show for it.

Fucking bullet wounds. Hollywood is a filthy liar when it comes to recovery time, especially for ones that nick your spine.

Actually, that reminds him that he needs to call Lisa again – she’s still incredibly pissed off at him for getting hurt after having promised time and time again that he’d be fine doing his thing and that getting her the money to go off and live straight was worth the risk.

She refuses to see him again until he’s better, even though she demands regular phone calls. He knows it’s irrational, she knows it’s irrational, but he can’t begrudge her whatever superstitions she relies on as coping mechanisms to deal with a father as awful as Lewis and a brother as reckless as Len, even though he does miss her.

"You could always let the beat cops do their jobs," Danvers continues, sounding almost wistful about it even when she knows there's no chance. As it happens, she and Lisa get along great, albeit only by text message. "It's what they do, you know. Especially if this Eddie guy's good..."

"And miss out on the adrenaline?" Len asks, arching his eyebrows at her. "No, seriously. I can't step back now; I sold the Commissioner on me supervising this personally, and Singh only agreed to back me once I specified that I'd take the fall if anything blew up in our faces - which it won't, even if we do find that this Flash guy is up to no good -"

Danvers makes a face. Subtly - it's barely a wrinkle in her nose - but Len still catches it and interprets it.

"You have news," Len says, interrupting himself. He knows all of Danvers’ tells. "Tell me the news."

"It's not definite yet," Danvers demurs, but Len's already waving off the disclaimer.

"I'd take initial results from you over a definitive say-so from any cop in this division, Eddie Thawne included," Len tells her when she seems resistant to continuing. "I'll keep in mind that it's preliminary. What's up?"

"There’s been a noticeable increase in missing persons reports in Central since the Particle Accelerator explosion, for one thing," Danvers says. "Noticeable. Even if we only track the period since the Flash has been known to be active, there's - well - a lot. More than usual."

"Correlation doesn't mean causation."

"Do I teach you to pick pockets? No? Then don't lecture me on statistics. I'm getting to the point. The point is: I've correlated instances of people seeing blurs of light or lightning with those missing persons' reports, and there's a link."

Len straightens up at that. "How much of a link?"

Damn, and he'd really been starting to think of the Flash as harmless, or at least starting to hope that he'd gotten to the kid before he started letting his worst instincts take over. But if he's already a murderer...

"No deaths," Danvers says, clearly divining his thoughts from his face. "Just weirdo disappearances - sometimes of people who'd already gone partway off the grid already, even. But we're talking eyewitnesses putting the Flash - or someone like him - at ground zero of some of these disappearances. We're talking credit card purchases stopping the day after a Flash sighting in some guy's last known vicinity."

"Damnit."

"Yeah," she says with a sigh. "I was really hopeful, you know?"

"You were hopeful about the Hood guy in Starling before the murders started, too."

"This one seemed nicer," Danvers says firmly. "Less intimidation, less judgment, less 'you failed this city' –” Len will never tell her, but Danvers cannot do a spooky intimidating voice to save her life. “– more actually stopping crimes by dumping perps at the station door."

"Thereby eliminating the link between them and the crime scene and letting them plead out on technicalities," Len says dryly. "Remember that jewel shop case? If we hadn't had camera evidence from the CCTV, we'd be up the creek and the perps in question would be free as songbirds. And remember, like I told you -"

"Just because he's going after criminals doesn't mean he's not just trying to take out the competition," Danvers recites. "I know, I know."

"Good. You got anything else for me?"

Danvers makes another face. "We-ell..."

"Danvers."

She sighs. "Okay, but one question first."

Len arches his eyebrows at her.

"Is there any chance you're going to be so focused on this Flash thing that you'll ditch the Allen investigation? Because in comparison, Allen is really small stuff -"

"None," Len interrupts. He knows his voice has gone a bit icy. "Allen's corrupt; I'm sure of it. It's just a matter of proving it."

"But you actually like him!"

"I like lots of people -"

"Please remember who you're talking to here," Danvers says dryly. "I know for a fact that you don't like people. Any people. Your list of people you do like can probably be counted on the fingers of a man who’s had a few cut off - and I'm including your regular information contacts that you don't actually like on that list."

Len makes a face at her. Sadly, she's not wrong.

Worse, he reaches the same conclusion even after adding Barry Allen to the list of people he likes.

"You're usually better at prioritizing your investigations, that's all," Danvers adds, apologetically. "I just - it's pretty obvious that the only reason you're going after Allen is, well, you know..."

"I've got a few more investigations already up and running," Len points out, feeling a little guilty. She's not wrong about his reasons. She's also not wrong about the fact that in a normal situation, he wouldn't have thought Allen's bizarre brand of hard-to-spot corruption was bad enough to get this obsessed over. Especially not once he found out how unbelievably friendly and bright and funny Allen is...shit, Danvers is right. Len really needs to figure out how to make more friends. Not to mention how to get a real date rather than whatever-it-is he has with Allen on Friday. "The DAs already have enough info to take three corrupt cops out of active duty, which they have, and I've given them enough to get wiretapping warrants out on another three -"

Central's so goddamn corrupt.

It's a good thing Len knows how to play the system and make sure the occasional corrupt DA that gets assigned one of his cases is either scared into working it straight or that the case they get involves corruption by an opposing Family, so they’re incentivized to press on, because otherwise he wouldn't have enough DAs to handle all of the cases he's feeding them – and all the while he’s building a body of law that he’ll one day use to take the corrupt DAs down, too...

"- so all in all, they're actually pretty happy that I'm taking some time to do my own projects, like Allen and the Flash," Len concludes. "Hell, Singh definitely thinks I’m up to something, and even he’s relieved that I’ve taken up some ‘normal’ policing instead of harassing his officers left and right. I've got the time to do both of 'em and I intend to. Now, why do you ask?"

"But you’re so cute about him," Danvers grumbles. "It's not fair."

"What ain't fair, Danvers?" Len’s not touching that.

"The comms system the Flash uses," Danvers says, finally giving in. "The one we couldn’t hack into? I've managed to triangulate where the other end of the signal originates."

"You did? That's great!"

"And I think I've located those people you gave me sketches of," she adds, nodding at her desk. "Though next time you go out, I'm equipping you with cameras - your artistic ability definitely lies in blueprints, not portraits."

"Next time I go out Flash-hunting, I'll have official CCPD backing rather than implied," Len says with a shrug. "You can put all the cameras you like on me then. You've tracked them all down?"

"Yep."

“And they’re associated with the same place the signal comes from?”

“Yep.”

"And that is - where?"

Danvers sighs. "I think - and no absolute guarantee, but I’m moderately sure – that the other end of that signal came from STAR Labs."

Len freezes.

STAR Labs.

Technically defunct after the Accelerator explosion, property of the now disgraced solitary genius Harrison Wells, and private "clinic" of only one patient: Barry Allen.

Of course.

"He's in on it," Len says, starting to get angry. "Allen. He's involved with whatever the hell new Family unit Wells must be trying to put together or whatever’s going on there. Allen's using his CSI skills to help get this Flash guy to would-be crime scenes - figuring out where their rivals are and sending the Flash to set them up - or, worse, covering up the disappearances and murders the Flash has already set up -"

At least the existence of this law-breaking Flash kid means that there's still hope that Allen hasn't moved into full assassin territory yet. If he hasn't crossed the line to targeted murder, then Len can make sure his sentence isn't too bad - some minimal prison time, maybe, definitely a lengthy parole period, and of course he'll never work in the police again, but at least Len won't have to think about smiling, friendly Allen locked behind bars for years and years, having his spirit crushed under the abusive steel boots of the prison guards...

"Certainly seems like it," Danvers agrees, glumly disappointed. She'd really been hoping for Allen to be clean, Len knows. "But it's still just a guess, boss. I don't have anywhere near enough for a warrant, either on the Flash stuff or Allen."

"Looks like Friday's still on, then," Len says. He's going to find out everything he can about what scheme Wells and Allen and this ‘Flash’ are cooking up in STAR Labs, and he's going to put a stop to it. He reaches out to grab his crutch, using it to lever himself up.

"Where are you going?" Danvers asks with a frown. "It's not Friday yet."

"Different lead," Len assures her. "Same endpoint. You want anything from Jitters?"

"Cupcake," Danvers says immediately. "Like, four of them. Oooh, and one of those crullers. You owe me sugar. So much sugar. In the meantime, I'll go back to putting together that list of sightings for you. I know I said the preliminary list was all I was going to do, but I swear I think there's something weird there and I want to follow it up."

"I trust you," Len says again. He likes saying it: he almost never did, for most of his life. He's trying to be better about it now so that he'll be able to say what he needs to say to Mick when (if) he wakes up. "Let me know if anything new comes up."

With that, he heads over to Jitters. It's late, but his contact was busy during the day and late evening was the earliest time that she would agree to meet with him.

Better yet, she's already there when he arrives, typing away on her laptop.

Len makes his way over and settles down in the seat across from her.

"Miss West," he says with his best charm-the-marks smirk fixed firmly on his face. "Thanks for agreeing to meet with me. Big fan of your blog..."

#coldflash #leonard snart #barry allen #kara danvers #iris west #an internal affair #my fic

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topweeklyupdate · 6 years ago

Text

TØP Weekly Update #69: Proud of Our Boys (11/2/18)

Technically, not a lot happened this week. Also, everything happened. Does that make any sense? I don’t know, everything’s been a blur since Tyler Joseph wore a pride flag on a Halloween show in the capital of the United States. Let’s cover that and more in this week’s Update!

This Week’s TØPics:

The Bandito Tour Continues

Tyler Visits the Live Lounge- Or, Rather, It Visits Him

The Best Interview of the Trench Era, Conducted by Fans

“My Blood” Moving Slowly but Steady Up the Charts

Major News and Announcements:

No new music, no new tour announcements, but plenty of other things going on this week.

Mark is helping to keep our lanes nicely watered, as he returned to giving us weekly doses of video content for the tour starting almost immediately after the release of last week’s Update. The first episode covers the planning for the tour, Tyler and Josh receiving the first physical copies of Trench, Josh’s unique method of opening CD cases, and Josh getting a nice head injury after falling off his riser during a rehearsal. Plus, there’s a pretty nice piano interpolation of “Morph” to kick the whole thing off. The second goes more into the depths of planning and staging the show, giving a glimpse of just how much of a diva Tyler Joseph is when it comes to getting every aspect of the tour right. It doesn’t exactly put him in the nicest light- he calls the prototype clip that drops his “Stressed Out” beanie “garbage”, clearly expects the crew to be as intimately familiar with his music as he is, and pushes pretty hard to get the transitions faster and faster. But hey, that approach worked to produce a great show, and Tyler makes sure to thank the crew in every Trees Speech.

I was wavering between whether to include the content from the BBC Live Lounge sessions here or in the Shenanigans section, but considering that we got three HD video performances and a high quality recording of a new cover, I’m gonna tie it in here. In-between the stops in Washington and Atlanta, Tyler flew back to Columbus solo to record a session for the world-famous Live Lounge from Newport Music Hall (because of course Tyler was that extra). Sitting at a gorgeous shiny piano and wearing an outfit that looks like a flannel traffic cone (in a good way, honest), Tyler played some stripped-down covers of “My Blood” and “Ride”, using brand-new vocal interpolations for both of those songs that are just incredible. Live Lounge is most renowned for its covers, and Tyler delivered there as well with his version of Damien Rice and Lisa Hannigan’s classic “9 Crimes”. It’s an incredible rendition of a gorgeous song, and the fact that Tyler mentioned the track way back on “Drown” when “9 Crimes” was a brand-new song makes it land as even more heavy. The real kicker came just this morning, when Live Lounge revealed that they recorded one more song: we have our first high quality performance of “Neon Gravestones”. I still haven’t fully recovered, mate.

Performances, Interviews, and Other Shenanigans:

Touring continues to keep us well fed. As I mentioned in the opening, Tyler grabbed an offered pride flag during “Holding On To You”, which deeply affected the entire Clique, especially our LGBTQ+ family. So many kids in that community struggle with depression and lean hard on this band’s music to get through; this clear and pure gesture of support, while small, simply means the world.

Outside of that show, there were plenty of other great moments from the tour this week. You can tell Tyler’s been tinkering with the format as he’s been getting feedback from the audience response. Despite how dedicated Tyler was to getting back to the stage for the end of “Pet Cheetah”, the big drop now starts while Tyler is still on the skybridge above the pit’s head, which makes way more sense. The ending of “My Blood” seems to be reduced to just getting the audience to fight to be louder than the other side rather than try to harmonize different bits. And Josh keeps writing city-personalized messages on his chest that he shows off to the crowd as he walks across the bridge, dramatically removing his jacket like something out of Magic Mike.

Also, Tyler tossed a frisbee in Boston and the boys discovered finger guns in Philly. Those were pretty cute moments, gotta share ‘em if you missed ‘em.

Interviews continue as the tour travels the nation. KISS FM Cleveland kept the tradition of B.S. first meeting stories alive with a deep dive into Josh’s talent as a painter, though that’s really the only thing you need to watch that interview for. Boston station ALT 92.9 does a little better, though he mistakenly attributes the backflip to Tyler and asks when Josh will get out from behind those drums... To his credit, the interviewer asks about how Jim is accommodated on the tour (unsurprisingly, the crew fights over who gets to look after him) and what Tyler learned from co-producing Trench with Paul.

The best interviews, however, have all been in the form of fan meet-and-greet conferences that have been finding their way online. There’s just something to the energy of these interviews that is so much better than the awkward and rushed ones in cramped green rooms hosted by radio station interns who obviously just Googled a few facts before they’re rushed in. These fans truly care about their band, and their questions were thoughtful and about so much more than just trivia.

The best of these, I think, is from St. Louis’s 105.7, a station that’s always had pretty good relations with the band.

Tyler has tried to be more intentional about seeing the places they go on tour outside of the venues, with the mindset that he wants to have better stories to tell his kids (oh my God, please help me...). His favorite place that he’s visited? Hobbiton in New Zealand. I love these nerds.

Tyler and Josh talk about the origins of that gorilla suit that shows up in the “Ode to Sleep” video.

They talk about how one of the more difficult aspects of touring early on before “making it” was eating healthily enough to sustain regular shows when they were broke and the only places that were open to eat late at night after shows were Taco Bells.

Tyler tells a truly heart-wrenching story of being at his parents’ house and seeing his two baby nieces playing with (and vomiting on) the keyboard that taught him to play music and opened up the world for him. The obvious emotion in his voice as he talks about learning the “Pachelbel Canon” from staring at the keys for hours and the clear joy he felt at getting to share this private moment with Jenna... I still haven’t recovered.

When one fan asks how she might learn to overcome creative blocks in her career of graphic design, Tyler gives a really technical explanation of how he got past blocks when writing “Neon Gravestones” and “Pet Cheetah” before taking those lessons and extracting how they might broadly be used to help any artist “shock the system” by breaking habits.

Tyler says that he anticipates that “Legend” will be pretty tough to perform live. He further states that a lot of songs don’t emotionally affect him much because he has to worry about achieving the technical aspects of his performance. That said, “Neon Gravestones” has been really emotional for him, and “Holding On To You” is so driven into him now that he actually can think about what he’s saying.

Tyler views the two-man nature of the band as a challenge rather than a crutch to excuse the use of backing tracks due to how hard they have to work to keep audience attention. Tyler does appreciate the dynamic of having a bunch of people collaborate for music (as shown by the cover medleys), and he is not vehemently against the idea of adding members in the future. He’s just very happy about the way things are with just him and Josh.

Josh once again gets very open about his struggles with anxiety, particularly speaking in front of people, tracing it back to how he would even ask teachers to give him alternatives to giving presentations because it scared him so much. He’s come so far since the Vessel days where he just wouldn’t talk in most interviews at all, and I’m so proud of him.

Tyler is against the “Magellan” method of trying any and all new foods, preferring stuff he knows will satisfy his hunger (he mentions that’s been difficult to stick with now that he’s married to Jenna).

Tyler says that you can tell which of his songs started with lyrics before composing the music based on which have rapped lyrics. The raps are almost always poetry that he’s tried to incorporate into a song- otherwise, he almost always starts with the melody.

Another great conference-style interview comes on behalf of Philly radio station 104.5, whose fans also gave some great questions:

As tactfully as possible, Tyler passes on a question about what event specifically motivated him to write about “Neon Gravestones”, saying that he could not do so without violating the respect that he hopes underlines the message of that song.

Tyler tells a pretty rough story about a time when he was working at a restaurant to support the band and school, only to lose weeks of wages to a traffic ticket. It’s a scene that will definitely be in the band biopic in thirty years, but it’s also just a very thoughtful reflection on Tyler’s part about how unfair a feeling it can be to realize that our labor and time are so commodified.

Tyler used to be real annoyed that Josh didn’t like Russel Crowe as an actor, mainly because he admitted that he didn’t have a good reason for it (Tyler Robert Joseph always has a reason). Josh deciding one day that he’d like Russel Crowe because not doing so aggravated Tyler seems like a pretty neat microcosm of their entire personal and professional relationship.

Tyler and Josh haven’t noticed any bands “copying” them, no matter what music press looking for an easy descriptor might say because all they have to copy is “freedom to write whatever kind of song they want”.

Josh keeps himself grounded by searching “21 pilots” on Twitter. Tyler agrees, but also points out that their relationships to their families also play a big role (“our respective families, to clarify”).

Finally, on social media, Tyler keeps hopping on social media to troll fans and his own band account. I hate him so much.

Chart Performance:

Things continue to be a little quiet for Twenty One Pilots on the US charts. The tracks from Trench are slowly sliding off the Hot Rock Chart, with “My Blood” being the only track to gain traction in any region- radio. With that said, however, “My Blood” also managed to sneak onto the very bottom spot of the Hot Pop chart, suggesting that we are approaching a potential crossover moment. We’ll have to wait and see if that happens. (I can only assume until then that Tyler’s having to ignore a lot of phone calls about a radio edit that cuts that slow first verse to keep the general listener’s attention; watch for that.)

Upcoming Shows:

(Can you believe that all of Tyler’s meticulous planning for the marketing and promotion of this album cycle has been totally supplanted by Josh’s cute dog?)

On topic, there’s another host of important shows this week, so let’s get into it!

Show 13: State Farm Arena, Atlanta, GA (11/2)

Capacity: 21,000

After visiting his hometown with Josh yesterday, Tyler rejoins the touring crew today to play a show for the folks in Atlanta at the newly-renamed State Farm Arena. This is bound to be a special one: though the band has headlined the huge Music Midtown festival in the city, this is their first ever arena show in this major metropolitan market. It’s sure to be a real special show.

Show 14: Amalie Arena, Tampa, FL (11/3)

Capacity: 21,500

The band’s next stop is at a more familiar ground. The band played Amalie during the last arena leg. Twenty One Pilots actually has a pretty extensive history of playing shows in Tampa stretching all the way back to college shows from before they were signed. Tyler has some relatives in the Florida area, so expect some more cute moments from this show.

Show 15: BB&T Center, Sunrise, FL (11/4)

Capacity: 22,300

The touring crew continues their journey south to the outskirts of Miami. Again, they’ve played BB&T before, but if there’s one thing this band has proven time and time again, it’s that they’re not ones to ever get complacent.

Show 16: Toyota Center, Houston, TX (11/6)

Capacity: 19,3000

It might surprise you to learn that the band has never played an arena show in Houston, despite the city being one of the biggest metropolitan centers in the United States. That oversight will be corrected on Tuesday with a show at the NBA Rockets’ home venue.

Show 17: American Airlines Center, Dallas, TX (11/7)

Capacity: 21,000

The last show before our next Update will be held in Dallas. Once again, this marks the second show Twenty One Pilots will have played in the space. Texas will continue to get plenty of love after this show, but we’ll get into that more next week!

Power to the local dreamer!

|-/

#twenty one pilots #tyler joseph #josh dun #trench #bandito tour #bbc live lounge #top weekly update

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doverstar · 6 years ago

Note

I DIDN'T KNOW YOU HAD A TUMBLR. This isn't really the ask thing, but I was wondering if I could have some advice? I love how you fit dialogue, action, and keep the point of view of the character. I can write pages of basically script but when I try to turn it into paragraphs... I stutter, falter, and quit.

I DO HAVE A TUMBLR. I WASTE SO MUCH TIME HERE.SO MUCH TIME.

This is gonna be so much reading, be brave.

I’ll try! I’m not used to giving advice, but for you, Jell-O Square, anything. I’m self-taught when it comes to creative writing, remember, so my advice won’t sound like a seasoned scholar’s would on the subject. And I might be doing it wrong? I’ll just tell you my thoughts, okay?

Dialogue is really really fun and really really easy for most people. All you have to do is imagine the character’s reaction to things and pow, you can hear them. (If you know the character. If it’s an original character of yours, take the Myers-Briggs test AS your character and read your results. If you’re like YUP, THAT’S THEM, then you know you know your character. That’s just one test. Not the be all, end all, but it’s an idea.) The hard thing about dialogue (I think) is weaving it in between exposition and thoughts, so that you don’t have pages and pages of just script. Pages and pages of script are fun to read, but only for like two seconds, and then people get bored. And that’s confusing; most people don’t think they want to read ages and ages of non-dialogue, but you’d be surprised how much it’s needed.

I was thinking about this the other day when I was making a sandwich

it was PB&JSo when you sit down to eat a meal you really love (for me it’s pizza, quesadillas, pad thai, burritos, Lucky Charms), and you’re so ready to be satisfied by this food that’s already one of your favorites, you have a drink with it. Let’s say it’s a beverage you also really love–soda, iced tea, blah blah blah. You eat and eat your food and it’s so darn good, but if you’re like me, you wait a significant amount of time before you wash it down with the drink you like. You’re so enjoying the food that you have to wait until you’re nice and thirsty before you drink that drink, and when you do, it’s the best drink ever, following the best food ever. Because it’s so satisfying and feels great to eat the food you love and drink the drink you love. You make it last by weaving it all in together to get the best experience.Stay with me, maybe this isn’t the best analogy? I’m not hungry right now, I swear–

Pretend the dialogue is your drink. And the paragraphs–exposition, the setting of the scene (like the room they’re in, or the trees outside, or the way it smells/how bright it is) and the characters’ thoughts during the scene–the paragraphs are your food. There’s a lot more of your food overall than there is of your drink when you go to have lunch (yes, you can get refills, but there’s still a whole plate/bowl of food and like 12 ounces of liquid). It’s the same with dialogue [drink] and paragraphs [food] for me.You need enough exposition, setting, and character perspective to help the reader feel the scene. They know what the kitchen smells like while the characters argue in it. And they know why Character A just yelled that at Character B because you’re inside her head right before or right after she yells it–that makes the reader understand the characters in the scene and feel connected to the emotions in the room. (At the same time, you don’t wanna tell them everything the character is thinking. Leave some stuff open to the readers’ imagination–that’s where headcanons and fan theories come from–and if you’re not telling them in a paragraph, show them with the dialogue. I struggle with this a lot.) The paragraphs, describing things, whether it’s thoughts, actions, or the setting, are the big plate of food. That’s what the reader needs to make the drink valid. I’m drinking this soda and it hits the spot, but I now I feel like I could go for a nice bag of chips, or a sandwich. Having one without the other is fine, but it’s so much better with both. And the paragraphs are what’s going to sustain the reader, keep them grounded, make them full in the end. Satisfied. If it’s all just soda, just tea, just water, that’s good but it’s only gonna last so long. It’ll only satisfy the reader for so long. You have to keep them interested, and this 2-liter of Sprite ain’t gonna cut it when their stomachs start growling.Okay, I am getting hungry.Dialogue is the drink. (Beat that dead horse, Doverstar. BEAT IT.) It’s fun and sometimes it’s heavy [and if you’re Steven Moffat, it’s ridiculously poetic and people don’t really talk like that, but oh so pretty to hear–]. There’s not a ton of it in comparison to all the paragraphs, and it has to happen sprinkled throughout, or there’s too much drink and nothing really sustainable, nothing to chew on. Dialogue is usually easier to write. If it’s not, that’s another crumbly lesson for another time.Dialogue can be several lines and then a few paragraphs in between, or one line between actions, like body language. Or a line or two between thoughts (or a line or two between LOTS of thoughts, dramatic thoughts, if you’re me). But it should never fill the whole page. That’s too much drink. Now I have to pee and I’m HUNGRY. Not as satisfying!You’re writing dialogue to keep the reader engaged, but for different reasons than paragraphs do. Dialogue brings the characters to life. They each have voices, and they each have reactions to everything. The key (for me) to weaving (for me) dialogue in between paragraphs (FOR ME, MAYBE NOT FOR YOU) is to make sure you’ve got their voices down, so you know when they’ll react and what they’ll say when they do. What would make them suddenly burst out angry? What about this thing that another character did would make them cry? What do they say to explain an unexpected hug? How to they justify this rash action they just carried out? Dialogue also has a lot to do with drama. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s carrying the plot forward or dishing out information, but most of the time it’s drama. The show Gilmore Girls thrives on dialogue. Everyone talks all the time. Fast, loud, witty, they talk and talk and talk. It’s one of the show’s creators’ trademarks. Each character has their own distinct voice, from Lorelai Gilmore to Taylor Doose to Emily Gilmore to Jess Mariano. They’re all different, and you start to predict their general reaction to things before those things happen. Maybe you don’t know Jess is about to spit out a “Whatever!” exactly, but you know the feeling behind what he’s going to say to Luke is similar to one of his “Whatever!”s. It’s helping you get to know the characters in a relatable, personal way. Because we all communicate. I can’t read paragraphs of your thoughts while we’re having a conversation, but I can get to know you by listening to you and watching what you say to different scenarios in our lives. I can ask you questions. And you’ll answer. And then I’ll know you better, little by little. It’s the same with dialogue in a story. You’re getting to know the characters, and the characters are getting to know each other. A drink of something after eating a lot is always welcome. Reading a conversation between Sam and Frodo during their journey in LOTR is heavenly after so much freaking traveling. I know all about the area they just walked through and the worries they’ve got. I don’t need anymore of that, someone please, SAY SOMETHING! My brain is full!Action and POV are tailor-made for paragraphs. Unless you’re my beloved Spider-Man, you don’t need to talk a lot while you’re fighting someone. And unless you’re Doc Brown (great Scott) or the Doctor, you don’t need to think out loud all the time. Writing is one of those easier ways to convey thoughts, especially. Movies and television and comic books can all do action. That’s a lot of what they’re comprised of; it’s what they were made for–motion, or the illusion of motion–to get a story and emotion and adventure across to its audience. Writing is the perfect medium for thoughts. You can use analogies and the 5 senses and the character’s unique voice in a paragraph, helping the reader understand the character in a different way than dialogue would, in your own writing style. In a way that movies can only do through dialogue or the actor’s incredible facial expressions (here’s lookin’ at you, RDJ). You just have to know when to put action and POV in there. Yes, they need to know what the room looks like, what it smells like outside, what kind of year it is. But they also want to know what that character is thinking at this point, how they’re moving, what their faces look like. Dialogue can only show so much. That’s not to say you should be writing miles of paragraphs. Don’t be like me, kids. I need to work on that. But if there’s more dialogue in your story than paragraph, that’s just not a good balance. You need more chicken and less iced tea. Your body isn’t thirsty anymore, it needs something to sustain it for a while! It’s the same with a reader’s brain.Hopefully that helps. I know it was long, don’t kill me! If you read all of that–wow–I don’t–I’m so impressed. I am applauding you. You can’t hear it, but I applaud.And remember, everyone writes differently. Everyone. What works for me may not work at all for you, and you won’t know until you try new things! Everyone says that “what works for some mightn’t work for others” thing, but they say it a lot because it’s true. It’s vague, sometimes it’s unhelpful, but it’s facts. OKAY, STOP TALKING, DOVERSTAR.Love you, Jell-O Square! Let me know if this helps. Remember, practice makes perfect. You’re gonna develop your own style and your own flow the longer you write. The key to any of this is writing. A LOT. Fail a lot so you can get the big fails out of the way and start improving. The better you are, the less doubts you’ll have, and the more freedom you’ll feel like you have. (Really, the freedom was there all along, but the doubts like to hide that from you.)Thanks, J-Square! Gosh, I need to stop typing–

#doverstar answers #ask doverstar #answered #writing #writing advice #author #author advice #writing help

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tae-kae · 6 years ago

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finally talking about jonghyun

the following post talks about depression, kim jonghyun, and brief mentions of suicide. please do not read if it will harm you.

so I've been wanting to get some stuff off of my chest just because no one in my personal life seems to be comfortable with me talking about these kinds of things, but I can't keep bottling them up like I usually do. I'm at the point where I need to talk about it. I know I've been pretty mute about jobghyuns passing on my blog and it must be strange because SHINee is my ultimate group. my love for them is pretty much unconditional at this point. and I'd like to explain why.

last april (maybe late march) I had reached a pretty low point with my mental health. I wasn't sleeping well, I wasn't really treating my body well in general because I had stopped caring. and that is a scary point to be at.

I don't want to say that k-pop in general saved my life because that isn't the case, but it helped. it made me feel creative again. it made me want to pursue writing again. it made me feel connected in a community. it helped me with my identity when I was talking to people who live such different lives, but we all shared such a simple common interest. I made friends, good friends who cared about me and supported and encouraged me when I was looking for advice and help. and for months I was feeling better, I felt rejuvenated. I cared.

during this I found the group that I felt most connected too. SHINee. they helped tremendously, and it was more than just the music. it was the members. individually they were such good, wholesome people, and together they were magnetic and unstoppable. their chemistry is beyond anything I've ever seen, and that's what drew me in. I was introduced to them a few weeks after they were on weekly idol. this cute, small man wearing the softest pink sweater and beautiful round eyes captured my attention. jonghyun is beautiful. and I soon came to learn that the beauty on the outside didn't even compare to how beautiful his heart, soul, and mind were. it was soon after though that I realized my love and affection for their maknae. I adore taemin. everything about him. his artistry. his creativity. his shy and awkward nature. his jokes. when he's teasing his members, and sometimes exposing them. his loyalty. his creative edge in the industry is rivalled by only a few handful of people. jonghyun of course being one of them.

december came. it started off fruitful. taemin was excelling. kibums drama was doing well. minho was finishing his drama. jinki, unfortunately, was still ostracized, but he had finally written a letter to us and things were looking so good. we were promised jonghyuns album and music video, he had just finished up concerts. jinki and minhos birthdays passed. christmas was a week away.

my friends had to tell me what happened. the news broke when I was awake and talking to them and both of them immediately told me to check it out. I was devastated. my heart ached and broke. I prayed. for the first time in a long time, I prayed that he would be saved because the world needed him. we needed his voice and his gentle and kind soul in this world. I woke up to the news that he had passed. I felt like I was in limbo. I couldn't believe it, and a part of me still doesn't. it's difficult thinking about it and accepting it. the world lost a good man far too soon.

I stopped writing. I stopped talking to my friends, and my friends drifted away as well. I was depressed. I wanted to shout into the void how angry and sad I was, but I felt like I wasn't entitled to those emotions because I didn't personally know jonghyun, but my heart ached as if I lost an old friend, and the ache was there for months. I struggled talking about him. I didn't feel like I had the right to feel the way I did. I was a new shawol, a baby fan, and my heart hurt for those fans who had been with him for as long as they've been debuted. what right did I have to mourn and grieve? it felt like I didn't. so I stopped talking about him. I stopped talking about SHINee, and only occasionally brought up taemin. because it hurt talking about them. february/early march I was extremely depressed. I was having anxiety AND panic attacks practically daily. I had reached the end of my rope. at least it felt like I did.

they promised a comeback. as four.

and I needed to know how they would do. I needed to see how they were going to honor jonghyun and his memory. nobody could do it better than them. they were his brothers. so it sustained me. and in between this period I fell in love with another group, pentagon. and on a whim I reached out and asked if anybody would join a group chat and people wanted it. the reception was amazing. I've made friends and feel that close community I felt like I’d lost. I'm so grateful.

when good evening was released, it was hard for me to watch it. there was a sense of wrongness not seeing five, but the boys still kept jonghyun in their music. they made sure we couldn't ignore his spirit and memory. they were keeping him alive so no one could forget him.

and I saw my boys tear up talking about their loss and struggles, and how much they didn't want to separate. it restored my faith. and if they could come out of this, so could I.

I don't want to not talk about jonghyun. I'm at a point where I want to start talking about him. and feeling okay about posting stuff about him or of him on my blog. I miss him, and now instead of hurting talking about him, I'm hurting not talking about him. I need to talk about it. I need too.

so for those of you who aren't ready for that and not in the same position as I am, I totally understand if you need to unfollow me and block me. I know not everyone is in the same place I am, and I want you to take care of yourself. but I'm ready to start talking about him and healing. I am entitled to that, just like the rest of us are.

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kerbaldevteam · 7 years ago

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KSP Weekly: A Brief History about Stephen

Welcome to KSP Weekly everyone. One of the greatest minds of our time has passed away this week. A man that inspired us through his hardships, endurance and brilliance. We are talking about Stephen Hawking of course. Born on January 8th 1942 in Oxford, England, curiously enough, on the 300th anniversary of Galileo's death. He was a scientist, professor and author who performed groundbreaking work in physics and cosmology, and whose books helped to make science accessible to everyone. At age 21, while studying cosmology at the University of Cambridge, he was diagnosed with a rare early-onset slow-progressing form of motor neurone disease (also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or "ALS" and Lou Gehrig's disease), that gradually paralyzed him over the decades. Even after the loss of his speech, he was still able to communicate through a speech-generating device, initially through use of a hand-held switch, and eventually by using a single cheek muscle. His will to live surpassed all medical expectations, he did not only reach old age, but he managed to have a rich life filled with accomplishments.

His scientific works included a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. Hawking was the first to set out a theory of cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. He was a vigorous supporter of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Hawking also became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. In 2002, Hawking was ranked number 25 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009 and achieved commercial success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general. His book, A Brief History of Time, appeared on the British Sunday Times best-seller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.

He was never bound to his physical limitations either and in late 2006, Hawking revealed in a BBC interview that one of his greatest unfulfilled desires was to travel to space; on hearing this, Richard Branson offered a free flight into space with Virgin Galactic, which Hawking immediately accepted. Besides personal ambition, he was motivated by the desire to increase public interest in spaceflight and to show the potential of people with disabilities. On 26 April 2007, Hawking flew aboard a specially-modified Boeing 727-200 jet operated by Zero-G Corp. off the coast of Florida to experience weightlessness. Fears the maneuvers would cause him undue discomfort proved groundless, and the flight was extended to eight parabolic arcs. It was described as a successful test to see if he could withstand the g-forces involved in space flight. "It was amazing" Hawking told the press afterward, adding that he considered it a first step. "Space, here I come." At the time, the date of Hawking's trip to space was projected to be as early as 2009, but unfortunately commercial flights to space did not commence before his death.

In 2006 Hawking posed an open question on the Internet: "In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?", later clarifying: "I don't know the answer. That is why I asked the question, to get people to think about it, and to be aware of the dangers we now face." We can’t make him justice, this man was amazing, with an impeccable moral compass, as well as a passion for life and science like no other. Even in death you inspire all human and Kerbalkind, Stephen. Godspeed Professor.

[Development news start here]

Despite the sad news about the passing of Prof. Hawking, here at the KSP HQ, we are incredibly happy and proud of what we have accomplished with Kerbal Space Program: Making History Expansion, which was successfully launched this past Tuesday. After so much work, it is just amazing to see such a project come into fruition, especially seeing the fantastic response of our fans. We’ve been through hard times these past two years, but we never stopped believing in KSP and in our capabilities as a team.

We want to thank everyone who has supported us and who have been providing us with feedback, suggestions and inspiration on this journey. We are committed to continue doing our best alongside our partners at Private Division to make Kerbal Space Program the best game it can be.

Now that the expansion and 1.4 update are out, we are focusing on compiling all the feedback we can get, as well as working hard on finding solutions to fix the pesky bugs that have popped up. And we continue to work on fixes for the Enhanced Edition on consoles as well.

Our entire team is very proud of the expansion, and wanted to share some words with the community:

Nestor Gomez, Producer

I am very proud of the team. Since conception to release they’ve all made a great job putting our first expansion in the (virtual) shelves. We are not done with Making History as we still continue working on the support but it’s a great milestone for us. Expansions are a key part of the plan to continue growing KSP for more time and we are very glad a lot of users are enjoying it so far. I am also very excited to see what kind of creative missions the players put together with the Mission Builder and how the modders will extend it for the years to come.

Robert Shaer aka. Robbonaut, Game Designer

Well there we are - the dust has more or less settled on a brilliant and successful launch. I think I can speak for the others when I say we as a team are extremely grateful at how the expansion has been received by you, our community. But rest assured the work continues - we will try our best to squash as many bugs as we can and we are constantly looking and listening to your comments and feedback. I personally have loved working on such a globally popular title and seeing the love you guys have for it adds extra fuel to my fire to make sure we can produce the best game possible for us all to enjoy.

We set out to create something that meant you, our players, could create your own missions, share them with each other, and delight in what other creators have managed to build. I think we've managed that - but it in no way means we can (or will) sit back and crack open a beer. The work doesn't and won't stop... we carry on and improve what we've put in your hands, and we keep going until the Universe can't handle how much awesomeness we are putting into the game.

Thanks all for purchasing, playing, or just taking an interest. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what amazing missions you guys manage to build.

Cheers!

Rob

Bruce Ewing aka. Bewing, QA Staff

The Democratization of Forum Challenges. Now you don’t need to take screenshots of each step to prove what you did … or leave a trail of flags. The creation of these challenges also gets standardized, and there will probably be a large number of them posted online for the taking. But keep in mind that they are supposed to be challenges, so they are supposed to be hard and tricky and to make you think.

Fernanda Díaz, Assistant Producer

Being part of the KSP team has been an amazing experience, full of challenges, fun and great ideas. I still remember when this expansion was just in our minds in a really long, LONG meeting, so to be able to see it completed fills me with pride and happiness. Can´t wait for what the KSP community will craft and I´m really excited for the mods to come.

David Tregoning aka TriggerAu, Game Developer

Just wanted to say how much of an honor and pleasure it is to be involved in bringing you some new (and I hope exciting) content and features in KSP. It’s been good to see people getting in to the new stuff in 1.4 and in the Making History Expansion. But, it's been great to read all the feedback - both good and bad - that helps me understand how you all play KSP and what you like (or would like to see). Thank you, sooooo much, for being an involved and communicative community. I feel really blessed to be part of this family and I hope you enjoy KSP and Making History as much as I know we all do.

Steve Diver aka Squelch, QA Manager

We have always loved the way the community sets challenges for each other, and Making History is now the perfect vehicle to not only re-enact real and sci-fi situations for personal use, but also to share and challenge your friends. We know just how creative the community is with building vessels and using - or abusing - parts in ways they were never intended, so the Mission Builder has been created in the same vein. The same open ended sandbox has now been given limits, and those limits are bounded only by your imagination. This time with the ability to play through the same scenario again, and with the option to share. I hope you enjoy what for us has been an incredibly arduous, but fun, journey during development and testing, and I look forward to seeing - and playing - those missions and craft that I know will amaze.

Rodrigo Fernandez aka. Roy, Game Developer

Very excited to open up so many creation possibilities for the KSP community with the Mission Builder.

We are eager to hearing your feedback and see your missions to keep improving this new chapter in the game.

Julio Zabre, Game Developer

(intense typing..)

Being part in the development of KSP first DLC has been an awesome experience, seen how all our efforts and ideas slowly became reality I cannot wait to see what the community will do with the new tools they have to play.

Marco Salcedo aka Samssonart, Game Developer / Tech Support

When I thought about what the first DLC for KSP would be…...I don’t think a Mission Builder would have even been on my list. But it just makes sense when you see it finished. KSP has always been a lot about sharing creativity. Maybe you are very knowledgeable about space and can come up with really cool missions, and it would be wasteful not share them. Maybe you’re not much of a creator, but appreciate content generated by your fellow players (hey, if you like it better than what we do, it’s okay, no hard feelings :p). Making History is a celebration of that, KSP players sharing their passion and creativity in ways that weren’t possible before.

I’m really excited to see all the cool missions that will come from you guys, there are endless possibilities, and when you throw mods into the mix, it broadens even more. Now, stop reading my prattle and have fun!

Andrea Cataño aka Badie, Community Manager

I’m very proud of the team, the effort and love everyone put into this project. Now, we are excited to see what the community will create with Making History! Thanks for your support and for being such an amazing community.

Jamie Leighton aka JPLrepo, Game Developer

I am proud to be part of the team to bring you the first expansion for KSP - Making History. I hope the community gets as much enjoyment out of playing it as it’s been bringing it to you. Now that it’s in your hands and we can see how much people are enjoying it as well as all your great constructive feedback. We can improve and take on board all of it. I look forward to bringing you more updates and content into the future so we can all continue to build and play this great game.

Pablo Ollervides, Artist

I’m very proud and thankful for being part of this amazing team, learned a lot during this milestone and hope everybody enjoys this expansion as much as I did working on it.

Leticia Mercado, Art Director

This has been such an interesting ride. From its conception trough development, Making History was about opening the hood so that everyone interested could build all the wild things I know we'll start seeing. This community's creativity never ceases to amaze us, the attention to detail, the joy you bring to each other through your shared love for space exploration (and explosions). And hey, I'm sure extra parts are always welcome as well!

Marc Gale aka Technicalfool, QA Staff

It’s great to see the hard work of everyone involved finally coming together in the first expansion pack released for KSP. I’m proud to have been a small part of it, and I hope the KSP community can grab what we’ve done and take it to the next level of awesome.

John DelValle, Game Developer

When I first started working on the mission nodes I didn’t realize the HUGE impact it might really have for KSP as it enables players not only to create their own space missions, but also get to experience missions from new people or amazing experts in the game and space as Scott Manley.

Learning and experiencing stuff done by someone else is very enriching in so many ways.

I love working with this team so much, and I am reading many comments specially from KSP youtube videos in order to bring more to the table by knowing their emotions and thoughts.

Bjorn Askew aka. BJ, Game Developer

It’s been pretty crazy getting the expansion out. We spent a lot of time bickering about how to make the mission system something that we’d enjoy playing and something that KSP fans would enjoy as well. We spent a lot more time making (and breaking) and remaking (and breaking) and remaking the mission builder. We kept on putting in game features until we ran out of time, then we stuffed in a few more. Now our craft has to roll out of the hangar doors and, although we’re watching anxiously like overprotective engineers, we can’t wait to see what the players and modders do with it. High fives to all the brilliant people on the team who put in so much work to get this out and a tip of the hat to the community for making all the hard graft worth it all!

In case you missed out, we prepared these tutorial videos for Making History. We invite you to check them out if you haven’t already:

How to Create with the Mission Builder

How to Share and Play with the Mission Builder

We also invite you to check out Cinematic Trailer for Making History Expansion, one of favorite shorts about the Kerbal adventures.

Finally we want to let you know that you can share your creations on Curse, KerbalX, and/or the KSP Forum.

Start sharing, playing and making history!

That’s it for this week. Be sure to join us on our official forums, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Stay tuned for more exciting and upcoming news and development updates!

Happy launchings!

*Information Source:

Stephen Hawking. (2018, March 14). Retrieved from https://www.biography.com/people/stephen-hawking-9331710

Ott, T. (2018, March 14). 7 Fascinating Facts About Stephen Hawking. Retrieved from https://www.biography.com/news/stephen-hawking-biography-facts

McGrath, J. (2018, March 14). 10 Cool Things You Didn't Know About Stephen Hawking. Retrieved from https://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/famous-scientists/physicists/10-cool-things-stephen-hawking2.htm

Tom Leonard in New York and Alistair Osborne. (2007, April 27). Branson to help Hawking live space dream. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1549898/Branson-to-help-Hawking-live-space-dream.html

Science/Nature | Hawking takes zero-gravity flight. (2007, April 27). Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6594821.stm

#ksp weekly #Kerbal Space Program #Making History Expansion #devnotes #stephen hawking

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onestowatch · 6 years ago

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Q&A: Topaz Jones Is Cooler Than Your Favorite Rapper

The dictionary has two definitions of the word Topaz. The first one is “a precious stone.” The second is “a large tropical American hummingbird.” Hip-hop artist Topaz Jones seems to be an amalgamation of both. The New York-based artist has been injecting live instrumentation into traditional hip-hop song structures to create his own brand of modern funk. Inspired by Outkast and driven by Parliament-Funkadelic bass lines, Topaz has displayed his progressive musical prowess recently on singles like “Toothache” and “Cotton Fields.”

His debut LP, Arcade, was released in 2016 and now we’re in 2018 and ready for new music. I caught up with Topaz Jones to discuss his exposure to the music industry as a child, his plans to achieve his musical goals, standing out in Hip-Hop, and how the current state of the music industry allows for experimentation in all forms. Read the full interview below.

OTW: How did you get into music?

Topaz Jones: I grew up with a dad who was a musician and a lot of other family members who were musicians as well. I had a very practical view of the music industry. A lot of the kids who I grew up around saw working in music as a lofty goal. I was fortunate enough to know what it looked like to work in the music industry and not necessarily have to be Michael Jackson to sustain a living off of it. I decided pretty early that a career in music was something that I wanted for myself. I started writing songs when I was around seven or eight years old but I really didn’t feel a part of the music industry until 2014 when I put my first real mixtape out.

Did having prior knowledge of how the music industry worked gave you an advantage – or did it affect how you made music and connections?

It was a privilege because I already knew that there was a lot of hard work involved. I was very aware because my dad was a musician and I watched how dedicated he was to playing his guitar every day. His love and passion for the craft was always there. I try to apply that to everything I do in production and writing.

Did your 2016 debut project, Arcade, have the impact that you wanted?

The things you want never come to you dressed the way you expected. I put a lot of weight on that project because I graduated from school and I was trying to get out of having a day job. I definitely wanted it to do really well. I’ve always wanted to tour. Even to this day, I haven’t been on a major tour yet. The only thing that I was disappointed about was that I didn’t get to hit the road and play that music in front of a lot of people but as far as the response I got from it, I feel like people began to understand who I was as an artist. At that time, I was really happy with the way the project resonated. Personally, I felt as if I reached a new level of authenticity in my work.

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What’s the biggest priority for you at this stage of your career?

Trying to keep it pure. I’m trying to continue having fun and trying not to put so much pressure on myself. A lot of times, I’ll start criticizing myself before I even finish expressing a thought and I’ve been trying to get better at allowing myself to create more freely and refine later. I’ve noticed a lot of the greats are expert refiners. I want to join that class of artists.

You have a unique sound within Hip-Hop. Did your sound come to you naturally or did you have to experiment a lot?

I always had a very strong musical compass. I would hear songs on the radio as a kid and know what I liked and didn’t like about them. Similarly, I have to know what I like. It’s not that I don’t try all those other sounds; I’ve experimented with all of the sounds under the sun. But naturally, the things that call to me on an intrinsic level are the things that end up getting finished.

Hip-hop is in an interesting place right now. Where do you fit into it?

That’s like the hardest thing in the world because there’s so much happening right now. People are really pessimistic about music in general right now. I’ve been guilty of having that kind of elitism and having that “Oh it’s not as good as it used to be” attitude but I think that excuse is wearing thin now. There are so many good things happening. There’s so much experimentation. So many lanes are being created. There are so many lanes that it’s hard to pigeonhole myself into any one of them. My ultimate goal would be to have my own lane and have other people fall into that lane. That would be the ideal scenario but there’s a lot of stuff coming out right now. There’s a revival of funk, soul, and things that were always a part of hip-hop but didn’t have as much shine 5-10 years ago. Things are cyclical so I knew it would come back around.

What artists from the 90’s or early 2000’s do you think paved the way for your sound?

The Internet has really flattened time and space in a really cool way. My little cousin listens to Ray Charles and the “Rolex” song back to back (laughs). Back in the day, I would have had to buy a bunch of different CD’s and spend a handful of money to get that experience. I think for me, the biggest precursor is Andre 3000 and Outkast. They were really my introduction to hip-hop. They were hugely successful commercially and responsible for the experimentation that led to new creative directions being accepted. Outkast, to me, were The Beatles of hip-hop.

In today’s climate, being a musician isn’t just about the music but it’s also about your interaction with fans and building a community on social media. How do you balance those things?

The honest answer is that I really don’t. I’m pretty terrible at social media (laughs). As of recently, I’m starting to get more followers on Instagram but my Twitter’s pretty dead. I’ve tried so many times to be the life of the party on the internet and I think all that I’m doing is taking time away from the music. Without fail, the people who do all the talking on social media are great for what they’re great for. A lot of people that I look up to are people that shy away from that and focus on creating great bodies of work. I aspire to be like those people and allow my work to speak for itself. If I have something cool to document, I’ll give it a shot but I’m trying to put less weight on social media.

What made you drop your series of double EPs this year?

I was looking at the landscape and I realized that there’s really no limitations anymore. We’re tied to these ideas of what a release should be based on. We create physical metrics for products that aren’t physical anymore. It’s like why would I worry about the difference between an EP and an LP? The Pusha T album being 7 songs is the future. I’m ready to try things. We’re currently in a singles market. I often do a lot of switch-ups to show my versatility when I make music so this is my newest way of showcasing that but with a rollout.

Can you tell us about your latest single, Cotton Fields?

Cotton Fields is probably one of the most personal songs I’ve made. It was one of the only songs that I produced 100% by myself so it was cool to prove to myself that I can make that kind of song. It was also one of the last things that I recorded at my childhood home in New Jersey so there’s a lot of sentimental value attached to it. It’s something that makes me feel really good and it’s connected to a point and time in my life.

What’s the rest of the year looking like for you?

We’re about to shoot the Toothache video and do a lot more shows. Also working on the new record man. I feel like I’m in a vortex but it’s a positive vortex. Hopefully, I dig myself out with something really nice and shiny to show the world.

How do you approach festival stages? How do you capture audiences in an overexposed environment?

I find that festival audiences are easier to please a lot of the time. Obviously, the best thing is when people come to see you and pay for a ticket. I’d like to believe that people go to music festivals to experience a lot of different music. I feel that when people who haven’t heard of me before are exposed to my performance, I do a decent job of getting them to latch on. I look out in the audience and try to make as many personal connections with people as I can. I try to stare people in the eyes in a non-creepy way (laughs). I’m just trying to build my following and invite people into the world that I’m creating.

If people only had time to listen to one song of yours to understand who you are as an artist, what song would it be?

Damn, that’s hard man (laughs). It’s hard because there’s the artist that I want to be, the artist that other people want me to be, and the artist that I actually am is somewhere in between. I would probably lean towards “Cotton Fields” or “Toothache.” I think my fans would probably lean towards “Tropicana.” Where I’m going musically is always changing. I’m never going to make an album that sounds like the last one so it’s hard to pin me down and that’s intentional.

#Topaz Jones #Cotton Fields #Toothache #Arcade #Interview #Feature

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kentonramsey · 5 years ago

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How Dannijo's Danielle Snyder Is Finding Joy and Building Community During Crisis

If you follow Danielle Snyder on Instagram, then you know that passion and positivity are practically synonymous with her brand. Danielle, who cofounded Dannijo with her sister Jodie in 2008 - yes, just as the recession hit - is part boss and part do-gooder, a winning combination for any business leader, but particularly important given the uncertainty that COVID-19 has cast on the world and on the fashion industry in particular.

As news of the coronavirus shook brands and retailers, I found myself drawn to Danielle's thoughtful approach to social media. I avidly follow her stories and posts, which range from sharing her at-home styling tips and Boxerina workouts, to throwing a virtual birthday party for an elderly man turning 101 during the time of social distancing. The subjects vary, but the uplifting sentiment is a constant.

A few days into California's shelter-in-place mandate, Danielle took her positive approach a step further. She launched a new beaded necklace, called the Florella, which she crafted herself while isolating at home and watching movies at night (she also does all the packaging and shipping and provides a handwritten note with each order), she told me when we chatted on the phone last week. The necklaces are part of Dannijo's new set of initiatives to bring joy to its following and give back. Each necklace purchased helps to provide 50 meals to those in need via the New York City Food Bank. Since introducing the Florella, Danielle is expanding with additional products for homebound customers (including a DIY beaded necklace kit and hoodie and patches set) and focusing on a new venture called The Collective, which uses Dannijo's platform to shine a spotlight on small businesses struggling through the pandemic.

If you're tempted to dismiss this evolving business strategy as naive optimism or write off her peppy Instagram presence as disingenuous, then you've sincerely underestimated Danielle and her influence. Before founding Dannijo, she helped to build the first hospital in a small village in Kenya and used jewelry as a fundraising vehicle for her work there. She's someone who realized early on in her career that there is power in storytelling and that, as she told me, "you can do good with creativity."

She's someone who realized early on in her career that there is power in storytelling and that, as she told me, "you can do good with creativity."

She and Jodie have sustained and accelerated Dannijo for the past 12 years, during other times of crisis, and with seemingly just-for-fun fashion, like the Florella necklace, they are also keeping staff employed and busy, creating at home in the midst of this crisis. That isn't just optimism at work, it's ingenuity and heart - and Danielle's got a lot of it, enough to build some serious momentum.

Read on for our conversation, as she talks about her strategic business pivot, how she's building and using community to help others, and what's keeping her happy and motivated right now.

POPSUGAR: How are you using this moment to pivot? What's been important to you now, and how are you engaging with this turning point?

Danielle Snyder: To start off with, we, my sister and I, started the company out of our fifth-floor walk up on St. Mark's Place in 2008. It was the heart of the recession. It's obviously a very different time right now for a number of reasons with coronavirus, but in terms of there being uncertainty and volatility, that's an environment that we're comfortable and thrive in.

We really lean on our community, our content creation, and being nimble. We sort of take the pulse of what it is that our community needs and wants and make sure that Dannijo is filling that. So for us right now, we're trying to find joy in little things and then also give back in ways that we are able to, as a small business. One of those initiatives is the Florella necklace. I went to the bead store when all the [shelter-in-place] stuff started happening in San Francisco and just [started] making jewelry because that's my comfort zone. It's sort of meditative for me. So I started making these necklaces and had seen the great work that Food Bank New York was doing and spoke to my team and I said, "Why don't we start to see what we can do, even if it's small acts, to contribute and give back?"

Our number-one priority right now is making sure that we can do our best possible [to keep] everyone [on our team] on payroll right now. Two of our other team members that helped me out with some of our handmade goods are at their own apartments, [social distancing], and we're ordering materials to be shipped to them. One of them is making a custom handwoven bracelet with mother-of-pearl letters, and our other team member is working on a bracelet and a necklace. So the idea is we'll eventually have a stay-at-home capsule collection, and a percentage of each of those pieces will go to supporting Food Bank NYC's efforts.

Beyond that, on a more macro scale, we are starting something called The Collective, where we're going to be partnering with four brands a week. A lot of these small businesses are really reliant on their department store channels and don't have the manpower to fulfill the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of product that's now getting rejected from their department store partners, and they're trying to figure out how to sell that to their direct consumer channel, which maybe historically hasn't been their focus. So as a strongly positioned direct-to-consumer brand, we're sort of championing other like-minded brands and provide, at gratis, our creative and graphic design services. We're working with [them] to make sure that they have inventory and that their logistics team and shipping team will be able to accommodate the influx of orders. For people that are able to and do want to support small businesses, this is a fun way to do it where it's edited and curated, and you're going to look forward to that one drop a week.

PS: So smart. I think it's the kind of thing we're all thinking about - how and why fashion is still important or relevant, and I think that's exactly what you're doing. You're giving people a purpose to be excited about fashion still.

DS: Sometimes [fashion] seems frivolous and silly, and why save small businesses when there are so many bigger struggles out there? But when you think about it on a human level, it's that at the end of the day, these small businesses are putting food on the table for actual individuals, to be able to afford their rent. When I talked to my employees and I look at what's happening with our business, knowing that we're not getting those hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of orders that we were supposed to be getting this month, we have to be creative and we have to band together, and it does matter.

I also think that in times like this, people want to find reasons to laugh and feel pretty at home, and that's where fashion can really add value. But I do think the fashion industry is going to have to shift after this, and not just for the obvious reasons but in terms of what is community, and what are we all doing it for, and what does really add value to people's lives? I really think that the people [and] the small businesses and the minds that can get through this really difficult time are going to rewrite the rules of fashion for the next generation.

I just hope that people see us as passionate, thoughtful founders that want to make lemonade out of lemons and share the lemonade.

PS: Yeah, I think you're right. And I hope so, too.

DS: Right? We don't have that luxury of relying on an editor here or a department store there anymore. It's sort of on us [brands] to be our own storytellers and problem-solvers. And so for us, I'm always like, "OK, let's reach out to this person, let's reach out to this person. Let's see if they're interested in The Collective." I'm a doer. A lot of fashion historically has been built upon the premise that it's sort of every man for himself, unfortunately. And it's a very competitive industry, which can be a beautiful thing and an unfortunate thing. Now, it's forcing brands to really rethink and engage with other small businesses because we can be each other's biggest champions.

PS: On that note, who are the female founders or other designers that you're connecting with now to navigate this shift?

DS: I really like Danielle [Duboise] and Whitney [Tingle] [of Sakara Life] as people and what they stand for and the content that they put out. I love Melissa Wood. She's just such a bright light, and she's fun to watch, and she also has a very abundant spirit. She's not one of those people that comes off as "more for you means less for me" kind of thing. So I'm really wanting to just be around other bright lights that share a similar worldview in terms of collaboration and synergy.

PS: Totally. I guess in terms of your customers and the messaging, what do you hope that people who follow you or love your brand take away from this challenging time?

DS: I think in some ways, the silver lining is [watching] what people do to turn lemons into lemonade and how they find joy in little things, or how they're fearless to put out content [when] they're not sure how it will be received. It's a new frontier for everyone, and I hope that on the other side of it, specifically for us, that people feel like they get to know [me] and Jodie and the team behind Dannijo and our values more than before. I just hope that people see us as passionate, thoughtful founders that want to make lemonade out of lemons and share the lemonade.

PS: What are you doing personally to lighten the mood right now? Is there something you're watching? Doing? Eating? Or wearing that you're loving?

DS: Great question. I am not a chef, but I have made a few amazing meals during quarantine. One is this broccoli soup; it's nothing fancy from the Food Network, but it is unbelievable. I've made it three times. The other one is banana bread. My husband and I have been switching off cooking, and it's fun to set the table and pretend you're on a date.

And then as far as [fitness], my other venture that I've been working on is called Boxerina. I'm a former pole-vaulter, I love sports and moving. [While living] in New York City, I've tried every workout class and taken notes on them - I love this, I don't love this, the sound of the music's too loud, or I don't like the music that they play, or the energy in this class is very negative or competitive. I wouldn't call it just a workout, because Boxerina is a movement. It's [about] moving with other like-minded women and feeling good about it and feeling beautiful and not comparing ourselves to other people. I'm just sort of teasing [it] out and building the community right now. The idea originally was to launch in June 2020, but now I'm kind of like, people need this. People want to move at home. So I think it's a fun way to introduce it and offer our community things outside of just fashion.

PS: Lastly, is there a work-from-home outfit or look that's bringing you joy?

DS: Oh my God, so many. Definitely a red lip. That's a no-brainer. If I'm just not feeling cute when it's five or six and it's almost dinner time, I put on the red lips, and I feel like I sort of got dressed up. I [also] love wearing a slip and slippers. I love these Patricia Green crisscross slippers. They're just comfy, and they look chic. It's kind of like indoor chic, I guess. And if I have a Zoom call, I put on a great pair of statement earrings, so it at least looks like I cared.

How Dannijo's Danielle Snyder Is Finding Joy and Building Community During Crisis published first on https://mariakistler.tumblr.com/

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projectsblogg · 7 years ago

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Justis Pitt-Goodson: The BrownMill Man

I walked into a cafe, after missing two busses and therefore resorting to a bellowing haul down Halsey Street in Newark, to meet a calm soul sitting on the edge of a chair with his head positioned so that his eyes could catch a glimpse of the sun that sat on the concrete just outside the building we’d met in for the first time. This was Justis Pitt-Goodson. The creator of the brand we know today as BrownMill. I’d only known him from instagram because somehow, even though we’d went to the same school — Rutgers University Newark — we’d always seemed to have missed each other. A reality that is in no way unfamiliar to those attending larger universities. But what was strange to me, was though he’d accomplished so much in the creation of his brand at only 20 years of age and as successful as BrownMill has become, the eyes that sat just behind his eyelids possessed a humility. And so we spoke.

Let’s just start off with your name and what you do.

My name is Justis Pitt-Goodson and I’m a Tailor, Fashion Designer, Entrepreneur, and Leader and I make clothes. I Engineer garments.

Why did you choose Design?

I’ve always been a hustler— you know always trying to sell stuff to make money.Throughout middle school and highschool, I would sell sneakers, cut hair, sold candy all the above. But you know, one thing I really like to do is get dressed and look nice and present myself in a nice fashion. So I figured, “Why not teach myself how to do it?” That’s what I did and I just ran with it. I am a big advocate for Salam— a black owned business — and I’d always ask myself, “All these clothes I buy, where is this money going?” And of course, I soon realized, “Not my people.” And in that, I wanted to build a platform, to put my people on— to put my friends on. And so that’s something I’ve been doing since then.

You post often your community service escapades, why is it important to give back to your community?

Well I feel like, personally, nobody ever really did it for me. So like, going through my trials and tribulations. Seeing like, “Damn I wish I had this, I wish I had that,” or “I wish someone would’ve told me this earlier, and also being an older brother, that kind of helps — seeing my lil’ brother not go through shit that I went through, is because I was there to say “This is what you don’t do and this is what you do.” So It’s like, “What if we can do this on a mass scale, what if we can scale that to our whole community? What is we were leaders and could tell the youngins’ “this is what you don’t do and this is what you do.” and just be an example for them and lead by example. I guess my passion for Community Service comes from not having that in my life.

So that’s why you identify so much with being a leader. Hmmm. Would you say creating BrownMill was a form of leadership?

Yeah. That’s one hundred present. If we don’t make clothes, even if we never sell another jacket, as long as we’re presenting ourselves in a manner that we should, we’re doing the best that we can do.

In terms of the stigma surrounding African Americans, how do you feel about us representing ourselves in the best way possible?

You know, that’s a tricky question because I don’t wanna be like, “Everyone should pull their pants up and be that guy.” I mean, when I create clothes, I think of the “BrownMill Man”, so that’s all I can do. I can’t think about everyone in the world— I think about the “BrownMill Man” and who I’d like that to be and what I think he should stand for.

What should the “BrownMill Man” stand for?

Yah know, I think he should be a righteous individual, I think he should be someone who’s conversation should always be one of improvement. Someone the little guy on the street can look up to. The “BrownMill Man” should be someone that’s attractive — Mentally and Physically, a Full and Healthy being. And that’s who I design for. That's… The “BrownMill Man”. I can’t say the “BrownMill Man” doesn’t hang on the block, because yeah he could hand out oon the block. But if he’s hanging out on the block, he’s always doing good shit for the community. Talking about good shit. So what would the “BrownMill Man” wear? That’s my process.

So would you say you create clothing for the sake of Occasion? Would you say you create uniforms for what is considered to be the “BrownMilll Man?”

Yeah, you know, my mentor — Luigi Theodore of the Brooklyn Circus — once said to me that “It’s very important that we have uniforms when we come to the office.” I always understood that because, we all went to the March on Washington in December as a collective, and when you saw all the Muslim sisters there, you knew you couldn’t just approach them the same way you’d approach shorty on the street. You couldn’t go up to them and be like “Ayo Ma! …” Because she’s wearing her hijab, and why is that? Why did I feel I couldn’t approach her any way I wanted to, that’s because by the way she was dressed it represents something, it spoke to what she stood for and the way she presented herself mattered. And I thought of ways of how can we put that into the context of what we do as far as BrownMill and the Brooklyn Circus? Making sure we constantly use that same philosophy? Because it really does matter; presentation of self.

I feel like we sort of know and understand that better than anyone, because as a black man, there’s always this stigma surrounding us. A large part of the world sees us as delinquents as soon as they see our brown skin, they see us as a physical threat. Nonetheless, to piggyback off of what you said, presentation does matter, but in what sense do you think presentation doesn’t matter? In what sense do you think substance matters most?

See that’s the thing, I noticed you stated that people think black people are delinquent and all the above, But at the same time, I always end up asking myself, “Why does it matter what they think?” It really only matters what my community thinks, right? So in a sense, presentation does matter, but it doesn’t. Creating a balance is important. But overall, I think it’s important that we create something that stands for something and that is greater.

How would you explain the Utility Collection?

So the Utility collection is something we did last year, around August. And I thought of the notion behind “functionality.” Making sure that pieces aren’t just fashionable, but ensuring that they’re also functional. I started studying janitorial positions and people in the work industry and at the time I was working at a mechanic shop under a guy named Joe and seeing him go day to day with the things that he wore — clothing that possessed pockets, elastic embedded material for flexibility and comfort — I thought, “Let’s devote a collection to just that essence, those patterns, those color schemes,” so in one word — Functionality.

What are BrownMill’s origins?

My grandfather’s last name is “Brown” and my grandmother’s first name was “Mildred,” so I went off of what they stand for. My grandfather moved from North Carolina with three kids to the hood. He worked two full time jobs just to get them out of there. So with that and my grandmother’s creative abilities, I thought it was important to embody what the stood for in their lives, and family is something I really hold number one.

Your latest collection you have coming out — The Virago Collection — you mentioned in a post on the BrownMill instagram page, that especially in Western Culture women aren’t really valued and in that it’s hard to find words in the english language that represent or embody the powerful women. With your grandmother having such a strong influence on you, what is your definition of a “Powerful Woman?”

Well, giving context, I was raised by women. My grandfather had a stroke and was bed ridden when I was in the fourth grade, so most of my life I was raised by my mom, my grandmother, my aunt. So that female image, that model has always been there — it will always be there. And I won’t stray away from. The only thing I know about leadership comes from a woman. So it’s hard to describe.

Considering that those words are so hard to find, and language and communication is everything in society, you wanted to create a collection that stood for what it meant to be a heroine rather than creating a word. The collection is the word. Did you want to create a collection that honored everything you know about leadership and how that stemmed from the posture of a woman?

Haha! — See i’m trying not to give you too much on the collection before it actually comes out! But the collection is so dope man. All the models will be female. Being a menswear brand I wanted to express our ability to be flexible, so although it won’t be women’s clothing, It’s be woman displaying the clothing in a unique way. One of the quotes that inspired this collection is the words of Kanye when he said “I could stand there in a speedo and be looked at like a fucking hero.” We want to have the barest and minimal approach to this collection and at the same time no matter what, the looks that these women give are very heroic. I want people to see right off the back “Damn, thats a leader.” You know? So i’m really excited for this. Hopefully it changes some lives, some perspectives.

I’ve noticed that most of your clothing has this recycled element to it, can you explain that a bit?

So yeah, that’s another thing we explored. Its an ongoing project called “Thread by Thread.” So around the world, tons and tons of clothes are wasted every year. So knowing that, and knowing the garment industry. So that project is dedicated to making clothing sustainable. We use one hundred percent recycled fabrics. Hopefully going forward, that’s something we do with every piece of clothing. We hope to be a clean sustainable brand.

Socially, what would you say you’re attempting to do with BrownMill?

Overall I want it to have a very communal feel — a very grass roots feel. In terms of stores, I want to only have about three stores around the world. I want that tailored element to always be there. I feel there are many brands that produce too much, which depletes the value of an item. So being able to walk into a store and say “only ten people have this and I’m one of them…” thats awesome. And on top of that, if the quality is A1. That’s something I want to maintain throughout. I’d like to give people an opportunity to display and exercise their creative abilities through my platform. A lot of people I’ve worked with in highschool and college who are on my team and are doing the same things. I wanna give people the opportunity to be the best that they can be at all times. I wanna urge people who have talent to exercise it. I want to do the best that I can do in order to help urge people on my team to do what they were born to do. People who aren’t in the brand. I want to inspire them to go after their dreams. That traditional “Follow Your Dreams” speech.

I sense there’s a connection between your urge to create and recreate, and your desire to change society’s perception of certain groups of people. Is that accurate?

Yeah I think so. I don’t think my motive is to change the world. But I do what I think is right. I consider myself a God seeking man, and I compare myself and what we do, to the prophets in the holy books. In these books, thee talk about Jesus, Moses and Mohammed. These were excellent men and we’ll never attain what they attained. But it tells us to seek that, and try and then try again. As long as we try to be the best that we can be and to be like them, we’ll always be doing better than who we were yesterday. Its the same concept at BrownMill. If i’m doing the best that I can do as a leader— as if I was called as Mohammed, Jesus or whoever. So yeah.

What is the connection between BrownMill and sports? Does sports play a role in your brand?

I guess not directly, but indirectly. My background is in sports — basketball, football — but other than that I just love black heritage. I love melanated peoples heritage. That’s something I’d really like to promote. Anything I find interesting. Anything I find unique. Just sort of using that as a reference for what I do.

Who would you say were some of your inspirations? Who would you say inspired you the most?

Well, the Brooklyn Circus, who I interned for a while back. Ralph Lauren definitely. Oswald Burton. Supreme. Bape. A lot of different brands.

Lastly, what would you say to someone who wants to pursue a career in design?

I would say DO IT! I mean, be as timeless as possible. Because with Brown Mill, I think that’s what people like most about us. We make sure everything we make has that element. Because I think the worst thing you can do is create a trendy piece. That’s something I sort of what to move away from. I think with the sustainability factor, I think that’s something that can be kind of cool because these are pieces we can pass down from generation to generation. Make sure that whatever you do is done with great execution. And make sure that whatever you do isn’t done for the now. But taking in what you’ve done in the past, and present to create something that can be worn forever. There’s so much garbage out here in the industry. Don’t create garbage. If you’re going to create something, take your time. So it well. Do it hard. Use reference. Do it from your heart because uniqueness is something no one can ever take from you. The worst thing you can do is try and be like someone else. Each and everyone one of us is uniquely created and different. So drawing in and tapping in on that uniqueness, no one can mimic that. That’s something i’m working on every day — finding out who I am. What’s unique about me. The self analysis the self reflection i’m using to put into what I do.

#icono

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mynewsblog21 · 5 years ago

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Gender Perceptions in Romantic Relationships - Know Thyself!

To have an away from of both genders' needs, we should pick up understanding into one zone that barely ever stands out enough to be noticed: Gender Perceptions chat with sugar daddy online Sexual orientation Perceptions seeing someone can be gathered into two general classifications: ladies' relationship view of men and men's relationship impression of ladies, with each gathering additionally subdivided into three classifications.

Ladies' relationship view of men-

Each lady who is or has been in any sort of sentimental relationship sees three classifications of men: the Stereotypical Man, the Utopian Man, and the Woman's Man.

The Stereotypical Man

Comments, for example, 'Men are liars and cheats who can never be believed'; 'All men are the equivalent'; or 'Men are simply after a certain something: sex' exude from the brains of ladies who hold very pessimistic perspectives on men. Ladies blameworthy of depicting men right now do as such in detachment. The dominant part have encountered a progression of bombed connections, either by and by or vicariously through other ladies' accounts. Their existence has been a string of monstrous encounters: tragedy, treachery, passionate injury, and misuse. In spite of the fact that miserable and heartbreaking, the cruel truth remains that with regards to connections, this class of ladies sees just the most noticeably terrible in men. For them, beginning over again or opening another section in discernment is practically incomprehensible.

The lady will always stay careful about the man saw as the Stereotypical Man, regardless of his certified honest goals towards her, since she has a lot of stuff from past frustrations to discard preceding having the correct edge of receptiveness which is required to give the following man a reasonable possibility. So if a man communicates his enthusiasm for a lady, utilizing the correct sentimental convention, and still isn't making progress, he needs to comprehend the lady's relationship impression of him. Something else, his endeavors will be the same as endeavoring to top off gap perplexed compartments with water. The confused idea of all men being the equivalent, or intrigued distinctly with regards to sex, that is sustained by ladies who see men absolutely on a cliché premise, will be tended to later.

The Utopian Man

Where a few ladies see the most noticeably terrible in men, others head the other way, accepting they can get all the best characteristics folded into one. Most needs in sentimental connections are typified in three classes: physical, passionate, and material. A man who faultlessly has or offers each of the three of these characteristics in equivalent measure to a lady could be viewed as excessively optimistic; consequently the term 'idealistic'.

The Utopian Man can be envisioned as a man with the profound pockets of Mr Bills, the physical traits and sexual ability of Mr Skills and the affectability of Mr Romeo (see Statement 2). These three characteristics, but in differing degrees, are fundamental for current connections to flourish - that is, for the material, physical, and passionate should be satisfied. Nowadays, be that as it may, looking for the Utopian Man-one man with each of the three characteristics in equivalent measure - is the same as the recorded quest for the Holy Grail (4); however it might exist, not one soul today could straightforwardly make a case for having it concealed some place - be it in a storeroom or a vault. In a similar vein is a lady's mission for the Utopian Man.

So generally, ladies with this relationship impression of men usually experience an instance of exclusive standards and ran trusts. The shrewd ones cut their misfortunes, getting progressively sensible and deciding to concentrate on the man's most grounded focuses while supporting, tolerating, and living with his shortcomings. The lady, then again, who can't grasp the way that one man can't in any way, shape or form satisfy every one of the three needs in equivalent measure may then hotel to the most established stunt in the book: concurrent associations with three men, every one of whom has one of the ideal characteristics, bringing about what I call a definitive 'love quadrangle', don't bother triangle (see my remarks about Sharon in Statement 2).

(4) Described in Christian Mythology as the cup utilized by Jesus Christ at the last dinner with his followers.

A few ladies may disavow the contention that one man can't grasp every one of the three characteristics with the case, 'My man ought to satisfy every one of my needs'. In answer to that, there can be nevertheless one reaction: Sorry, not by far.

Ladies who are practical have a size of inclination for their necessities. They know which zone needs satisfaction the most and which the least on their rundown of needs. It could be fundamental monetary needs, since she wouldn't like to lie wakeful throughout the late evening pondering, 'Will the children's school charges, home loan (or lease), and the electric bill be paid for the current month?' It could be her passionate needs, which are satisfied by the man with the listening ear, or the sincerely mindful accomplice.

What's more, some of the time straightforward inquiries from the man, for example, 'Nectar how has your day been?' or 'What occurred at work today?' could demonstrate a definitive distinction between her offering a bed to him that night or confining him to the lounge room love seat. Ladies who harbor practical desires in their relationship impression of men long for, or see, what I call The Woman's Man quality in men.

The Woman's Man

The Woman's Man is that man a lady sees as being imperfect, knows his shortcomings, and doesn't attempt to conceal the way that he is no superman. He recognizes his lady's most squeezing need and makes the satisfaction of that need his primary region of accentuation. He values her value, raises her spirits when she is down, and assumes responsibility in unbalanced circumstances. He is the quintessential 'Mr Solutions', who might not have all the solutions to his lady's inquiries, however has a 'let me attempt to make sense of this' mindset. So at whatever point we hear a lady singing her man's commendations, telling the world that he is so extremely valuable to her - on the grounds that he gives her 'beginning and end' - it is the relationship impression of a lady who perceives the Woman's Man in her life. The term 'everything', be that as it may, as opposed to taken actually, ought to be seen emotionally as the principle quality she considers the most significant in her reality. Obviously, for that lady, what is important to her the most, her man can convey - and that man being referred to is none other than the Woman's Man.

Men's relationship impression of ladies

In the event that you thought for one second that we would forget about men's impression of ladies, reconsider. (I can simply envision some male perusers pulling their seats nearer now; as though to state, 'Indeed, this is my preferred part!')

In sentimental circles, similarly as ladies decipher men as per their discernments, men by and large see three sorts of ladies over the span of their affection lives: Ms Right-Now, Ms Right, and The Godmother.

Ms Right-Now

The most unimportant, yet in no way, shape or form immaterial, class is the Ms Right-Now lady. She is the sort of lady the man sees as explicitly and genuinely engaging before he gives her character and knowledge the scarcest thought. His discernment is loaned belief by the principal line of Elvis Presley's hit melody, 'somewhat less discussion, somewhat more activity please...'.Without beating around the bush, in this present reality where each man sees a Ms Right-Now sort of lady, desire more than all else is the name of the game. Furthermore, if the concerned mother of such a man, living in an 'At the present time' just sort of world, gathers the fortitude to ask her child when or on the off chance that he plans to settle down, she may provoke a reaction along the lines of, 'Sure, Mom, I settle down with a decent young lady consistently, and I'm free again in the morning'.(5)

(5) A reaction made famous by Joe Pesci's character, Tommy DeVito, during a trade with his mom in the Hollywood hoodlum great, Goodfellas (Warner Brothers Studios, 1990).

In a world portrayed by feelings free, no-strings, no-stuff connections, the men who depend on this kind of way of life see the Ms Right-Now wonder as essentially top notch.

Ms Right

Each man looking for genuine romance and fondness needs a genuine lady to take into account those requirements, a mainstay of help, and a genuine companion and partner, who truly has his veritable enthusiasm on a fundamental level. That lady is none other than Ms Right.

Ms Right is the men's variant of the Woman's Man. We have heard the ageless truism, 'Each effective man has a lady behind him'. Also, similarly as certain ladies look for that unique man who can satisfy that exceptional need, a few men have experienced (or are as yet experiencing) life searching for Ms Right-mind you, in any event, kissing a few appalling frogs en route. While some have been effective, others - the not really fortunate ones-despite everything see Ms Right as only an invention of the creative mind.

Sorting the records out, being Ms Right isn't a sign of flawlessness, on the grounds that simply like all of us, she is imperfect. In any case, what makes her stand apart from the pack is that she speaks to the first and last pieces in a man's jigsaw puzzle of looking for genuine romance, and real joy with regards to sentimental connections.

The Godmother

The Godmother, for any man who has encountered the advantage of her warmth or the wretchedness of her fierceness, is genuinely stand-out: an 'Unapproachable'. On the off chance that behind each fruitful man is Ms Right, one next to the other with a man's prosperity or disappointment is the Godmother. One thing is sure; she is unquestionably a remarkable type of lady. Also, whatever sort of relationship or course of action she has with the man who sees her in that capacity typically ends up being commonly helpful. She is simply the Godmother since like Karma she employs a type of intensity that can represent the deciding moment any man's vocation corresponding to his activities or practices. Like a grown-up at a youngsters' gathering, she is genuinely present, observing occasions, yet rendering herself imperceptible, deciding not to take the spotlight. Obviously, she regularly works in an off camera style in the fortunes or incidents of that specific man. She should be adored, loved, and regarded for him to savor her sure in

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