#theres such a fine line between different hat forms

[freebooter4ever]

Are the lines on your drawings stylistic choices or are they measurement/guiding lines? Either way, they are cool, but just wondered. I dont understand drawing at all, might as well be a magic spell to me. I was looking at the pencil (?) sketch of Malkin with the cheesecutter hat on.

i, uh, definitely did not google 'cheesecutter hat' until after i saved out these images. :/ sorry about that. if you'd like the other one broken down, i can do that too lol. my reading comprehension when im tired is kinda lazy i just saw 'cheese' and imediately thought 'omelette'. SO here's the 1) initial sketch, 2) 'clean' sketch, and 3) final lines for the omelette boy drawing instead:

also i have had a cumulative of about 9 ish hrs of sleep total for the past two days so keep that in mind for if this explanation makes no sense, its not my fault. :( anyway! the way i draw definitely has changed over the years but currently im really trying to focus on the line i "see" rather than the one that is actually "there". i've been applying this to my writing for years (story vs happening truth) and you know it never occurred to me that i could do it in my drawings too till like...a few years ago. in general these lines seem to form the planes of the subject. if you google 'stanford bunny' you can find an easy example of a 3D surface turned into triangles. I do this too - see things in relative triangle proportions, except i've been doing it long before i knew how computers worked. i cant begin to tell you how long d*sney and cartooning's obsession with round building blocks of anatomical structure fucked with my brain until i finally decided i could cast that teaching aside completely.

ANYWAY sorry off subject again. so we have these sketchy under lines, and usually as im trying to find the proportions and form of the subject these lines end up being where the light/shadow hits. here i saved out the 1) 'flat colors', 2) the 'light', and 3) the 'shadow' parts on their own (i lightened the background for the 'shadow' so its easier to see):

the light is like four or five 'overlay' layers of pale yellow/orange. you can see how each of these layers follow one of those sketchy lines i did initially. and the same with the shadow but instead its a dark red color set to 'multiply' for each layer. and when you combine everything together you get:

some bullshit :). anyway you know that anniversary edition of beauty and the beast that featured the version previewed to nyc audiences in 1990 with the glen ke*ne sketchy keyframe animation of the beast's transformation? i watched that - must have been sometime after i graduated college - and i felt robbed that THAT version was never presented as a final piece. the 'unclean' drawings had so much more life and movement and intensity to them. tldr i like the messy lines, i hate 'inking' with a passion (HATE. IT.), and when i finally allowed myself to stop giving a fuck drawing became way more interesting. but my art is shit and i will never be glen k*ane so i dont really feel like the best advocate for this "style". alas. there was this one artist on tumblr who i fucking loved whose sketches were SPECTACULAR but the asshole racists in the m*c*ha*nz*o fandom bullied her off tumblr and ive never been able to find her art anywhere else since. she was also very negative about her 'unclean' sketches and it made me so sad. there was also this other artist whose sketches were awe inspiring but all she drew was p*rn and well...we all know what happened on tumblr in december 2018.

also i 100% stole the lighting scheme from The Bear which is currently one of the most gorgeous shows on television right now in my opinion

im really really sorry if this makes no sense, if im feeling motivated maybe i'll try again when my brain is fully functioning but with the actual 'cheesecutter hat' doodle ^_^

[theelliottsmiths]

Could you please liveblog The Making of Rosenrot and Mein Herz Brennt.

Okay I'm gonna do Rosenrot here and then make a separate one for MHB, scheduled so nobody gets a massive wall of text I uh. Assume you pop around to check if I've answered stuff occasionally and this isn't a two ships passing in the night deal. I might schedule this one for like midday tomorrow to increase specifically your chance of seeing it as it's 00:27 BST here currently.

I have probably already done one but here's the thing, it's my favourite making of and it's been a while.

Right at the beginning chess piece Richard lurking in the sunrise smoking. Very cute, still despise the hat. Nodding roughly in time? Fun, though I'm curious as to what he was actually nodding for. To look cool? It didn't work

Oli suits the lurking in a habit thing

Paul looks so so sleepy and it's kind of adorable.

I lose it a little every time he says 'shave off my sideburns I don't know if monks have sideburns' as if he doesn't have earrings. I think he just likes it, it seems like it was the fashion to shave the sideburns and a little extra in the DDR alt scene?

Hnnnn the little noises he makes when he's getting the hood put on my HEART

On the hill just before they're shooting it sounds like Zoran is backwards somehow

Like usual, only some of the boys are allowed to look good. Schneider and Till? Beautiful. Flake and Richard. Very silly. Oli and Paul are fine.

Flakes little beanie. Tills little grin. Richard looking deeply uncomfortable. Suspicious, even. Oli masterfully blending into the background

Schneider is somehow actually more suspicious even than Richard. He has a very suspicious face in general when he's Present.

Nobody can resist fuzzy Till when he says But I wanna make friends too :( Even melted Zorans heart

I want. To rub his soft and fuzzy little head. It's so spherical.

There's something about them seating Till and Paul so they look the same size that I just really enjoy

Richard: shouldnt we have knives??

Zoran: no, you're monks! He does.

Richard: we don't kill him? :/

Paul: we burn him...

Richard, in an intrigued and distinctly positive voice: we burn him?

Flake is smiling at him it's so sweet I love to be reminded that they all love each other

I like the way Richard says 'like the inquisition?'. No real reason, just sounds nice.

Is 'in prinzip'(?) A common phrase in general or is it a Zoran thing? He says it a lot.

I'm only five minutes in this is going to be so long mobile tumblr doesn't let me add an under the cut I'm so sorry

When he talks to other Germans Paul's accent is so detectable. I adore it, it's like the bubble writing teenaged girls use on posters.

The chainsaw. I always forget the chainsaw. Paul being Paul, it's the most fitting choice. Chaos gremlin.

SCHNEIDER AND THE PUPPY

Richard looming over the children in the seesaw like the grim reaper waiting for one to fall off and crack their head on something hard

Olis sleeve wine is genuinely the funniest thing any of them have ever done. He has a penchant for doing robot movements and it's gotten to a point where I wonder if he's an android. A factory runaway because he was slightly faulty and about to be switched off. He ended up staying with Richard and Schneider because Richard understood and schneider didn't notice.

'dont bother asking me any questions, enough questions have already been asked' he says in his little beanie. Owns my heart. If the film thing is remotely true I want to know what Richard thinks, being so into films himself. He's smirking a tiny bit

God, he looks uncomfortable about the kiss.

Hey so anyway what is that guy doing behind him? Cleaning? Because he's using a paintbrush to do it and now I'm questioning whether most of the whipping was real...

I mean, later on you can physically see a welt forming in Paul's shoulder and they're all clearly in a bit of pain but that doesn't mean it's all real... Unless he's, like, painting on some ointment?

I adore this whole chunk of till practicing the murder scene, he's so... Disarming. Like hi yes I'm large and have a knife but you see, I'm actually small and silly look at my fuzzy head I'm v v approachable see my goofy pointy tooth smile? And my high voice and nice accent

Why is Zoran dressed as a monk too

You go here, and i—oop—make like this and then I get the knife and *stab sound*. I hit two, three times

Have you ever really payed attention to the way he makes his T sounds? It makes sense that it's different to the standard because teeth but this

Schneider looks so much like a plague doctor... Kinda into that.

I don't like that Zoran doesn't use Cătălinas name

Richards hair refuses to lie flat. The smoke floating up and then clicking into a straight line always catches my attention

Flake avoiding eye contact is, as the kids say, a major mood. Did he not understand Zoran or was he ignoring him til Oli got his attention? Was he already going deaf in one ear by that point? He looks like, and I mean this in the most loving way, a Muppet when he's looking directly at her. I think it was purposeful

Till giggling when Zoran tickles him with the rose. I do not understand why he says their relationship is ambiguous when they're... in bed together.

Hhhhhh god till looks so good in the flagellation lesson though. Soft sweet chumby boy. I like how visible his scar is.

Paul is always so into the violence and chaos isn't he? I like that he's singing the song but specifically it's the guitars, not the melody. And then theres Flake, the amateur masochist. The sudden camera eye contact always gets me.

A thing I really love about the whole self flagellation thing is that Paul is right there with till the entire time. He hurts himself almost as much as till does, he's there assisting when till is experimenting (sidenote...he does look good though huh), he's across the way where they can see each other in the circle (Richard is directly across which, I don't know, I feel like it's intentional). It seems like he's supporting him. Also that he's just a chaos gremlin and likes to be where the action is.

I've gone into so much detail about their whipping styles in the past

Schneider must be really relieved they didn't really use any of the clips during the whipping where he looks like a sock. He does not look mean he looks like a sock puppet with no hand I'm sorry but it's true

I do like the way Schneider and Paul talk about it though. They got a lot from the experience, it seems. I'd like to hear their thoughts on it now.

'Till, don't defend yourself!' ...the wriggling is cute

Flake and Richard having a little smile :) but Oli and Schneider, deadly serious.

Richard and Till... Should wrestle. Between this and Haifisch it's clear it'd be beneficial. Mein Teil does not count, it should be one on one.

I wish I knew what Till says as he gets up, I'm assuming hes joking about Richard beating him up?

Richard and paul are so careful beating him up. Paul especially is very careful to just softly jostle him. Also, the softest ear pinch

Oli: grinning, happy with their work

Paul: looking serious, not enjoying it at all

Richard: 😬, not remotely a fan, experiencing physical pain just seeing it

Oli heads off Paul's complaints perfectly, it's so practiced. He must have to do it regularly, Paul complains just for the fun of it.

-17° and he has Till topless on his back. Unnecessary. Its so cold the screen doesn't work.

I like to think they tried to drag him not-on his back

I just... I really Like Rosenrot and the making of.

[lu-undy]

Hc! Theres days where Spy's scars itch. Hes uncomfortable on battle because of this. It isnt an itch you can scratch away, not really, the scar tissue is dense and he can get to she skin underneath it. Snipers job is to observe, so he notices how Spy squirms under his suit trying to make that itch dissapear, but its in vain. Sniper approaches his morethanfriend to see whats the matter. Spy is reluctant at first but he opens up to Snipes. Later dat day Snipes rubs some sorta thing on the scars.🐑

Alright, here we go, I hope you’ll like it :D

The Frenchman sighed and mumbled something in French to himself. It was summer and the habit of wearing a suit was less practical now, especially when topped with a mask. He was sweating beneath his attire… 

Him and his teams were in the respawn room and the battle was about to start. As the Administrator delicately sung the countdown, he lit a cigarette to take his mind off of what was truly bothering him. 

"BEGIN!" 

The gates flashed open and he watched his colleagues pour out of the room and into the battlefield. Spy cloaked and exited the room soon after.  He ran unnoticed, passing his colleagues and soon breaching enemy lines. 

He saw the Engineer setting up and upgrading a sentry in the back. He seemed alone and thank God, the nuisance that the enemy Pyro was was nowhere to be seen around the short man. That was his chance. Spy disguised as the fire spreading specialist and put a hand in his inner pocket. 

"Hey Pyro, need some ammo, pardner?" 

Spy hissed and shook his shoulder. 

Ah merde, not now…!

"Pyro…?" 

Merde!

The Engineer realised something was fishy with the way that his friend was holding his flamethrower. He raised his wrench and struck. Spy's disguised vanished. 

Beep-beep! 

The sentry rotated and the Frenchman felt like a rabbit flashed by a car light moments before impact. He knew he was done for. 

Click. 

Respawn was never pleasant. Not only did it leave a bit of a weird feeling, like a bitter aftertaste of death that your body somehow clings onto, but it also rhymes with defeat. Die and retry, as they say. 

The Frenchman lit a new cigarette and puffed on it aggressively. He was frowning and clenching his jaw. His annoyance was written all over his body and face. 

"Y'alright, pal?" 

Scout had respawned and put a hand on his colleague's shoulder. Spy shot him a murderous glance and wiggled his shoulder away from his hand. 

"Jeez, alright…!" 

The young man made sure his scattergun was reloaded and left the spawn room. Spy waited to see the distance between himself and Scout was large enough that he could tolerate it, and then exited himself. 

Part of his job was not to bump anyone and that day, he made it a point to stand away from everyone, friends or foes. The heat tired him and his failure at sapping a lonely sentry, barely defended, made his mood bitter. 

-- Evening, at the base -- 

"Putain de merde…" 

[Bloddy hell…]

The Frenchman was alone in his room. He had just exited the shower, wearing only a white tanktop and his pyjama trousers. He was standing in his bathroom, facing his mirror, an empty small cream box in his hands. 

What had been bothering him the entire day was the itch. 

He was used to it now. Whenever it was too hot or he sweated, one of his scars, the one on his right shoulder, would trouble him. It was a deep burn mark and the skin had healed up but the new skin wasn't as good as the "normal" one. It looked more transparent and felt different to the touch. But the most annoying thing is that that patch of skin was unable to deal with heat properly. Not only did it hurt when exposed to the sun - the same way a fresh burn would, only less strongly - but it could not possibly sweat or rather, humidity would form underneath a very thin layer of skin. It itched but couldn't be scratched away. 

Spy had been used to it. Whenever it bothered him, he would get a bit of cream there, to hydrate it and cool it down. He tossed the empty cream pot to the bin and got a new one. He opened it and took some of it on his fingers. Raising his eyes, he looked at himself on the mirror. 

The burn mark was large. He could see it when facing the mirror and he knew it spread back on his shoulder blade. Spy was about to put the cream on it when a knock on the door cut him. 

"Go to hell." 

He answered loud enough for whoever was standing there to hear him. 

"Well, I'm standing at its door apparently!" 

The Frenchman recognised that voice and the slight accent. 

Fine… 

He thought. Part of him was annoyed at the interruption. But it was only part of him. He put the cream pot back on the sink and slipped his mask and a dressing gown on. The Frenchman went to the door and opened it. 

"Bushman, how may I help?" 

Obviously, Spy was being sarcastic. 

"I was goin' to ask you the same, now, d'you mind…?" 

The Frenchman rolled his eyes and let his colleague in. The Australian entered and removed his hat. 

"Am I interruptin' somethin'? Do you want me to give you a minute?" 

Sniper was hinting at the fact that the masked man was in his pyjamas quite early.

"Non. It is fine. Just tell me what you want, I have very little patience for games tonight." He coldly answered. 

"Roight, let's sit and have one of your cigs." 

Both men took a seat on the sofa and Spy lit two cigarettes. 

"So, are you going to finally tell me what is it you seek with me?" The Frenchman sounded impatient and mildly annoyed. 

"It's how you behaved today." 

Silence fell for an instant. One of those awkward ones. 

"What about it?" Spy feigned innocence though he very well knew what Sniper was getting at. 

"I've watched you and you didn't seem normal. Also, you didn't sap the sentries as nicely as you usually do. And you got caught a lot more."

"And?" The impatience and boiling rage were very clearly visible on the Frenchman's face.

"And I want to help." 

Spy's eyebrows jumped. He had expected Sniper to tell him that he had been very bad at his job and asking him why. But non. 

"You want… to help?" He repeated. 

"Yeah. What's wrong with you? I've seen you actin' awfully weird, shaking your shoulder every other second as if you had something on it. I'm guessing something's on yer mind." 

The Frenchman's lips pursed up to a faint smile. 

"And you are wrong. Nothing is on my mind. And yes, I have been spectacularly mediocre today. Thank you for noticing."

"Spy, you don't have to take it that way-"

"Oh but I am."

"Spy, look-"

"Are you done?" The Frenchman dryly cut him.

Sniper didn't want to leave. He knew how stubborn and hard-hearted his colleague could be. But he said he would help and he would. He didn't go away from the comfort of his van for nothing. If confronting the masked man didn't work, maybe something else would. 

Sniper raised his hand and about to put it on Spy's right shoulder but the Frenchman slithered away even before the Australian could touch him. 

"Hey… It's only me." 

Spy raised his eyes and saw his friend's earnest face. He sighed.

"Fine. Here is what has been bothering me. But Sniper, one word of this to anyone else and I will make sure it is your last." Spy raised a threatening index finger. 

Sniper smiled softly. 

"Y'know me. I don't talk." 

Spy nodded. It was the force of habit… He put a hand on his dressing gown and pulled it down from his shoulder, revealing the burn mark. 

"Oh, Christ…" 

"I stopped invoking his help a long time ago…" Spy sarcastically answered. 

"Did you see the Doc' for it? Does it hurt a lot?" 

"Medic knows about it but there isn't much him or anyone else can do. I just live with it."

"When did you get it?" 

"A long time ago. I'm used to it. It's just when the temperature gets a bit too high, it itches in an unbearable way. I can't scratch it away." 

"Is there anything you can do to make it itch less?"

"There is a cream that I put. It's not a miracle solution but it lessens the itch and the burning sensation. I was about to put some before you came in." 

"Oh sorry mate, go and do it, I don't want to bother you." 

"Give me an instant." 

The Frenchman disappeared to the bathroom and re-appeared soon after with the small cream jar in his hand. He put the cigarette between his lips and removed the dressing gown before sitting down. Sniper couldn't help but stare. Spy was lean, maybe even a bit slim. His fair skin was beautiful.

"I can help you if you want." 

Spy raised an eyebrow. 

"I mean, surely you can't reach the rest behind your back…?" 

"Why, thank you. I think I will manage." 

"Okay." 

Sniper watched as his friend spread the cream on his shoulder. He massaged slowly, avoiding the tanktop. He hissed now and then, while the Australian tried to imagine how it could feel, the pain, the itch. He also wanted to feel that odd-looking skin below his fingers. But it hurt him. As if Spy wasn't cold-hearted enough, his own body worked to make him more bitter… 

"Spy, you're clearly strugglin'..." 

"Non, I'm not!" The Frenchman was irritated. 

"Hey…?" 

Their eyes met. 

"Let me try." 

Sniper extended his hand and offered his palm. 

"Fine…" 

Spy put the cream pot on it. 

"Makes you very angry this itch, eh?" 

"You cannot imagine how annoying it is." 

"Turn yer back." 

Spy's eyebrow twitched. 

"Nothin' to fear, I'm not the backstabber here…!" 

The Frenchman rolled his eyes and turned. 

"Now, remove yer top." 

"Bushman?!"

"It's only her back! And it'll make it actually easier! Can't put the cream where your top is, now can I?" 

Spy grumbled but obliged and Sniper was now facing the Frenchman's back. It looked like a abstract canvas of scars. Bullet marks, burn marks, cuts… He couldn't see it but the masked man was ashamed. He knew his body was bruised, awfully so. But Sniper's body was too, albeit differently. The man had fought more animals than men so he had more bites and claw marks than bullets or knife cuts.

"Don't hold your shoulders up like that, breathe and relax." 

"Had I been behind your back, you would react the same way, Bushman."

"Fair, but I'm not you. I don't kill from people's back." He spread the cream on the Frenchman's shoulder blade, trying to not push his hand too hard. 

"Non, you shoot them for far away." 

"A kill as clean as yours." 

"Correct. But my job is high risk for a high reward. Yours is more… safe."

"What?! No it's not! Do you know how much I'm bullied by the other bastard of a Spook?!" 

Spy chuckled. 

"Does that mean I am a bastard too?" 

Sniper's eyes raised to Spy's back of his head. The Frenchman turned his head slightly, waiting for his friend to answer. Each second of silence weighed more than the previous one. 

"Nah, no, you're not." 

"What am I then? I, too, am a Spook." 

"Oh yeah you are, no doubt about that… Nah, you're a Spook, but uh… You're fine." 

"Fine?"

Sniper chuckled nervously. 

"Y-you know what I mean…" 

The Australian had covered all the scar with the cream now. He put the lid back on the pot and closed it. 

"Do I?" Spy insisted with a smirk. 

The Australian smiled. 

"Yeah you do. You aren't stupid." 

Sniper was facing Spy's naked back. The Frenchman's shoulders were relaxed and he appreciated the breath of his friend on it. It helped cooling it down. The Australian handed the cream back to the Frenchman, from behind. 

Spy took the cream and Sniper's eyebrows jumped when he realised that he had also grabbed his hand and pulled on it. 

"I wouldn't have opened my door to anyone else." Spy said.

"I… Thanks." 

The Frenchman pulled on his friend's hand more and he felt Sniper's weight shift on the sofa, closer. 

"Non, thank you. I know I can be in a particularly foul mood sometimes. And I make myself hard to approach. Yet you remain." 

Sniper smiled and laced his arm around his friend's torso and pulled him in closer. Spy closed his eyes went Sniper's hug hit inside him. The Australian was hugging him from behind, resting his chin on his left shoulder. 

"Y-yeah. I don't know, I just think that… I mean sometimes you're a bit angry or sad. But you just need someone to be there for ya." 

Spy melted in his friend's arms. He felt the Australian's fingers lace between his. 

"I might sometimes." 

"Nah, you do, really." 

"What makes you say that?" Spy asked. 

"I can't see your face but I'm sure you're…"

"I'm enjoying this more than I can say, oui."

Spy turned his head to look his friend in his eyes. Sniper's pupils were wide and his smile, dreamy. The Frenchman's smiled widened as he pushed his cheek against the Australian's. 

"You should shave those sideburns off."

"In yer dreams. Also, why should I do that?"

"They sting me even through my mask." 

"Remove it and it will sting not through it then!" 

Spy turned his head again to look at his friend. 

"Well, I had to try…!" Sniper said.

"What makes you think that it is just a try?" 

Sniper got confused but saw his friend's hand rise from his lap and his fingers settle around his neck, at the base of his balaclava. 

The Australian never forgot that night.

[johnnymundano]

Girlhouse (2014)

Directed by Trevor Matthews

Written by Nick Gordon

Music by Tomandandy

Country: Canada

Language: English

Running Time: 100 minutes

CAST

Ali Cobrin as Kylie Atkins

Adam DiMarco as Ben Stanley

Slaine as LoverBoy

James Thomas as Gary Preston

Chasty Ballesteros as Janet

Alice Hunter as Kat

Alyson Bath as Devon

Elysia Rotaru as Heather

Nicole Fox as Mia

Zuleyka Silver as Anna

Erin Agostino as Liz

Wesley MacInnes as Alex

Camren Bicondova as Girl #1

Isaac Faulkner as Young LoverBoy

Girlhouse’s misleading ad image on my streaming content provider (NB: not the poster above) shows some shabby backwoods cathouse about to be laid waste by a maniac who probably smells of unwashed socks, but Girlhouse the movie is in fact a far more polished and modern product. I was hoping for some kind of Tobe Hooper-esque grim lunacy instead I was treated to the most entertaining sociology essay I’ve ever encountered, mostly because sociology essays generally don’t take the form of a movie in which a boiler suited maniac kills his way through a house full of women.

Unlike most slasher flicks what Girlhouse wants to explore is not just the malleability of the human body when exposed to repeated blunt force trauma or the rapid and persistent insertion of sharp objects (although it gleefully explores all that too) but also the possible links between pornography and violence; which was a sticky subject before the Internet sashayed nonchalantly into existence and is now an intellectual tar baby only the hardiest of souls can extricate themselves from with any dignity. So it’s a bold, bold move indeed to make a slasher movie not just about slasher movies (that’s old hat; Scream, Hatchet etc.) but about what slasher movies are about: sex and violence; or more precisely in this particular case the punishing (violence) of moral transgression (pornography).

Does the punishment fit the crime or is the punishment actually the crime, or, wait, is the crime punishment enough, no, maybe the crime creates the punishment? Difficult questions all and if Girlhouse doesn’t answer any of them (unless Girlhouse is itself the answer; maaaybe so) it does at least raise them, which is more than Stab Mask XIII ever will. Crucially for an audience far more likely to be interested in wet work than the soft sciences, Girlhouse is an entertainingly nasty slasher movie in and of itself. Fret not, gorehounds, Girlhouse successfully secretes its brain throbbing questions organically within the slasher movie framework; the framework of a very good, very grisly slasher movie actually. Essentially Girlhouse somehow finds a way to be intelligent while also including an eye watering death by dildo and Clingfilm.

Like all good sociology essays Girlhouse starts with a quote it will address in the main body of what follows. Unlike most sociology essays it’s a quote from Ted Bundy; Ted thinks there’s a link between pornography and violence and Ted, the inference is, should know. Of course, Ted wasn’t the full shilling, so it’s up to the rest of the movie to back up its case. Ali Cobrin plays Kylie Atkins, a wholesomely attractive, intelligent student whose father has recently died leaving the university tuition fees out of her mother’s reach. She hesitantly accepts the lucrative offer from super suave porntropeneur Gary Preston (a well-groomed James Thomas) to become a resident of “Girlhouse”, an on-line real-time upmarket porn site. It’s a high-tech, classy cathouse with web cams in every room, on-line chat rooms and private shows, all basically utilising more technology than took us to the moon so that someone can whack one off. The subscribers to “Girlhouse” run the basic onanistic male range from white collar office man to Chinese laundry owner to furtive teen. Thus far the set-up conforms to the “no one is getting hurt” argument, even Kylie accepts of her own free will, and it’s all in a good cause; paying to educate the head on her commodified bod. Kylie and the girls are being exploited of course, but it’s such a civilised sort of exploitation, why, it seems almost churlish to object.

It is of course still exploitation, the grotty reality overlaid with a load of glibly seductive shuck and jive. Seductive enough to attract a paying audience which, alas, includes “Loverboy” (musician Slaine; very good); this being his login name rather than evidence of a cruelly ironic parental exercise in naming. While Loverboy remains content to watch his worst impulses are kept in check, but unfortunately Loverboy has some pretty bad worst impulses. The worst in fact, as we see at the start of the movie and also in a powerful interlude at Loverboy’s work which addresses the “asking for it” bullshit head on. Even if a woman is flashing her knick-knacks, your reaction is your responsibility; sorry, guys, but no one said being civilised was easy. Tough titty. The only time a woman is “asking for it” is when she is asking for it. Like the ladies in “Girlhouse”? No. Because “Girlhouse” (the site) is a fantasy. The women are being paid to “ask for it”. Which is fine, fantasy has its place; well, it’s fine as long as no one mistakes fantasy for reality. Unfortunately Loverboy makes this mistake. Ironically it’s Kylie’s sincerity which tips him over the edge. Unused to actual, genuine interaction Loverboy stops watching and starts interacting. With wholly regrettable results for many of the women.

Of course, once Loverboy enters the fantasy of “Girlhouse” the subscribers are no longer watching “Girlhouse” but they are now watching Girlhouse, along with the viewer. Because, obviously, Girlhouse is another fantasy but a very different one to “Girlhouse”, because killing the girls is Loverboy’s real fantasy. The movie has a lot of dark fun in this latter part as Loverboy stalks the girls using the interactive “Girlhouse” app on his phone, and the users (how apt) watch first in puzzled disbelief and then horrified alarm. Some of them even stop fapping. Reality isn’t what they paid for, after all. Girlhouse the movie adroitly and innovatively uses the surveillance devices of “Girlhouse” to fine effect, ramping up the suspense and punching home the horror as it tears away the veil and reveals harmless voyeurism as just another form of stalking.

Girlhouse, both the site and the movie, is slicker than snot on a doorhandle but not slick enough to hide the horror beneath. The movie starts off with a child murder, not a quick off-screen one either and then works hard to wipe it from your mind with a smooth, extended middle part field with clean, beautiful people expressing only the mildest of concerns about the apparently harmless men’s magazine lifestyle section they inhabit. It’s all good, clean, sexy fun. But all the time, at the back of your mind, scratching away like a inbred relative at an attic door should be that early child murder where someone learned a lot of wrong lessons about sex and violence. And in Girlhouse those lessons get put into practice. How was your schoolin’, bubba?

[basard]

first i think its really funny how none of the main line depictions of the characters have a standard base outfit like the cartoon differs from the box art from the dolls etc and they each have aspects that i like that could fit together better than their individual looks. the skulltimate secrets leaks have the best outfits out of anything and even then i HATE the lipstick choices. like if they just went darker for the lipstick for any of the releases it would look infinitely better especially considering they keep trying to use that weird coral color that never matches ANY of the pinks and they would do that in g1 but not as often as g2 or 3. ive seen a good amount of people get g3 dolls and darken the lips some (imo offblacks and dark reds work best) but skulltimate secrets lagoona and clawdeen look bad. also the shoes suck in general like cleo has one pair of shoes with the little pyramids on the heels and theyre the only thing nearly on par with when the dolls were at the height of their quality. also they did ghoulia dirty like i wish they would just give her pants and lean more towards green and red for her color palette instead of trying to hang onto blue when they made frankie the blue one. similar complaint with clawdeen i hate how the rose gold hair looks on her it doesnt go well with how warm toned the rest of her color palette is and it looks really washed out bc everything else is so saturated and bright. anyways the movie outfits were all very cute i dont have anything to complain about there like they really did a great job creating a wardrobe that fits the main 3 characters (and abby idk why they didnt give her screen time if they went out of their way to give her a cute fit but thats just how it is i guess) and the movie was overall very cute. frankie was my favorite due to the aforementioned being nonbinary and autistic but i like that they made draculaura bitchier. clawdeen is fun as a main character and its nice that she finally has time to shine since g1 was very frankie focused and g2 very draculaura focused. its a good movie to be a formative experience for weird 8 year olds which is what monster high was for me. i will be making my little cousin watch this since she will love it. the cartoon is very cute too and i wish they kept draculauras hat for the doll bc it looks cooler than the headband they gave her in the final doll design. i like lagoonas personality in the cartoon and i wish she was given more of a role in the movie since i like her design there. my biggest problem with her (other than how her doll looks bad (they couldnt decide between pastels and neons making the pastels look dull and the neons look eye-searing combined with the desire to keep teal accents while having the new salmon skin color and also the scales look fucked up and uneven)) is that she feels too detached from g1 lagoona, which i think is most fans problem with her new design. g1 lagoona and g3 lagoona are completely different characters while still trying to fill the sporty girl role, which is fine on its own, i just wish they designed her outfit better. theres also the issue of quality in regards to the g3 lagoona doll and the rate at which her leg paint peels off. i love the gradient leg concept and it was one of my favorite features of spectras design, the bright blue of it just feels out of place with the rest of lagoonas colors. it would look better if her hair was brighter or if she had more blue in her outfit, but as of now theres just a lot of concepts being thrown at the wall for her, all sadly slowly sliding down into a pile of tie-dyed mush.

g3 has grown on me since its initial release (mostly due to draculauras face print and frankies overall fashion) and i hope it continues to improve but i feel like the impact wont be nearly as strong as g1 since other doll lines (notably mgas lol omg and rainbow high) are higher quality and cooler for the same price range, but mattel has been known for cutting corners and making their dolls look cheap without actually being cheap for the better part of the past decade so i cant really be surprised with how they look either way

my thoughts on the monster high reboot part 56 (8 hours 7 minutes 21 seconds)

[avanneman]

Uh, Professor Krugman, I have a question.

I am (generally) a big fan of Paul Krugman. I probably don’t qualify as an out and out Krugmaniac, but most of the time I’m pretty Krugmany, if you know what I mean. I even subscribe to his newsletter, and why not? Because it’s free! (In your face, Milton Friedman!)

But—and clearly there’s a “but” here—I have a bone to pick with Paul over one of his most recent missives—the one headed, most snappily—"Hypocrisy, meet stupidity”, Paul, after slapping around both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders (a little), goes on about this and that and then offers up a link, to wit:

Canada has much higher social mobility than the U.S. — children born to low-income families have a much better chance of moving up the ladder. As my Stone Center colleague Miles Corak writes, a lot of the difference is explained by Canada’s willingness to spend money helping the poor.

Well, if you follow this link, you’ll get to Dr. Corak’s paper, posted on his site, “Economics for Public Policy”, The “middle class” is within easier reach for low income Canadian children, than it is for low income Americans, and you’ll get this chart:

Dr. Corak explains the chart as follows: “Canadian children raised by parents with incomes at the bottom 10 percent can expect to be earning enough as a young adult to place them much higher, above the 40th rung of a 100 rung income ladder, and significantly higher than their American counterparts. To reach a similar point on the income ladder an American child would have to have parents who ranked as high as the 39th percentile.”

Well, true enough, according to Dr. Corak’s data, whose validity I am not competent to dispute, but I will dispute the integrity of his graphic. You will note that the horizontal legend runs from 0 to 100. The vertical, however, runs from 30 to 70, making the 10 percentile gap between outcomes for American versus Canadian children look more than twice as large, as judged by the eye rather than the brain. In fact, a hurried glance suggests that American children born into the bottom 10th percentile just stay there, while their Canadian brethren sprint 40 rungs ahead.

I believe I was in high school that I stumbled across a little book called How to Lie With Statistics,1 which contains about 75% of the information you can find in Edward Tuft’s pretentious cash cow, The Visual Presentation of Quantitative Information, and which describes Dr. Corak’s little hustle to a tee, although it (possibly) was not intentional. People have a natural tendency to make their findings look as dramatic as possible—“This proves my point!”—but Dr. Corak is a Ph.D., after all, and Ph.D.s are supposed to know about these things. When I worked under contract with the National Center for Education Statistics (with a BA in English, not a Ph.D. in anything) within the U.S. Department of Education (for 19 years), we had a rule that all charts had to show the “bottom” (typically 0 but not necessarily) and the top (often 100 but often not), with broken lines to indicate omitted ranges. These are often overlooked anyway, but at least some measure of care and integrity is maintained.

Well, that’s a lot of shouting about one little graphic, but I’m just getting started (to shout). I was particularly intrigued by Dr. Krugman’s second sentence, “As my Stone Center colleague Miles Corak writes, a lot of the difference is explained by Canada’s willingness to spend money helping the poor.” Maybe Dr. Corak wrote that somewhere, but I couldn’t find it in the post that Dr. Krugman linked to, nor in any of the links that Dr. Coark included in his post. However, if you do some searching, you’ll come across the full paper, “Intergenerational Mobility between and within Canada and the United States”, by Marie Connolly, Miles Corak, and Catherine Haeck, which includes the following remark about why the two countries differ:

The distinct difference between the countries is the significant pockets of very low bottom to top quintile mobility in parts of the southern states [of the U.S., of course]. This is a concentrated area of low upward mobility covering a significant proportion of the population that does not have a parallel in Canada, or at least to the extent it does covers a rather small proportion of the Canadian population.

In other words, the distinct difference between the two countries is slavery. Despite all the talk about “colonialism” these days, the treatment of nonwhite peoples by the European conquerors shapes the history of the entire western hemisphere to a degree that is still rarely recognized. Much of the “turbulence” of Latin American history is due to the fact that until the years following World War II, almost all the economic, social, and political power was in the hands of a tiny European or quasi-European elite, differentiated from the mass of the population largely along racial lines. The actual makeup of populations varies significantly from one Latin American country to the next, but racial distinctions are always significant.

Canada, as the Connolly, Corak, and Haeck paper suggests, has the smallest “traditional” nonwhite population (I’m excluding, of course, the recent large immigrations from Asia)—4.3%, according to the most recent Canadian census.2 The U.S. has a Native American population of about 1 percent and a black population of about 15 percent, with a still growing Hispanic population of about 18 percent. Neither of these latter two populations has any parallel in Canada.

People like Dr. Krugman often wonder, wistfully, why there never was a socialist movement in the United States It might be more profitable to wonder why there is no socialist movement anywhere these days, but I can answer the former question: for two reasons, one good and one bad, but both unpalatable to traditional liberals.

The good reason is that life was better in America than in Europe for the poor—the poor European, at least. Uniforms from the American Revolution show that enlisted men (“common men”) were as tall as officers, a phenomenon that did not start appearing in Europe until the 1960s. It’s true that life for the working class in the U.S. was harsh, surely until the 1950s, but in Europe it was much harsher.

The second reason is that life was not better in America than Europe for blacks—it was worse. Slavery was the worst of all, of course, but even after slavery ended racism was endemic throughout American society. The American labor movement was, prior to World War II, almost entirely and explicitly for white workers only. The “No Irish Need Apply”3 signs came down slowly, but the “No Blacks Need Apply” never did. Organized labor could barely take root in the South at all, because the very thought of poor blacks and whites combining drove the ruling class whites into a frenzy, causing a largely informal form of social segregation to be institutionalized during the Populist Era into an explicit one, a process entirely endorsed by poor whites, their racial prejudice proving stronger than their supposed economic interests, to the intense frustration of liberal theorists. In fact, segregation in the workplace was maintained informally in the North almost as efficiently as it was formally in the South, though in the North at least white workers could enjoy the benefits of unionization.4

Much has been done in the area of race relations, but, judging from the 150-odd studies Radley Balko has collected demonstrating the racial bias in America’s criminal justice system, it seems we have a ways to go. As Radley’s many studies suggest, one way we could make it easier for blacks to advance economically is to stop throwing them in jail at the drop of a hat—often done not for racist reasons, but via a general policy of cash-hungry local and state governments to look for ways to squeeze money out of anyone violating a wide host of trivial offenses, both by multiplying offenses and by increasing fines. .

By Darrell Huff, published in 1954 and still available. ↩︎

Francophone Canadians, of course, have their own story to tell, and I will leave it to them to tell it. ↩︎

There was an interesting historical debate over whether “NINA” signs ever existed, with the answer, supplied by high school preppies, being emphatically “yes”! At the time, I wondered why no one ever thought to consult Mark Twain’s Roughing It, where it is said of Buck Fanshaw, an outstanding ruffian, “His word was, ‘No Irish need apply’.” ↩︎

It’s been abundantly proved that liberals in Congress acquiesced in social legislation that was racist in effect (and, in the case of federal housing assistance, explicitly racist) prior to the sixties. They could do so in relative good conscience, particularly in the early fifties, before the real migration of blacks out of the South began, because, except in a few areas in some big cities, their constituents were very largely white. I’ve discussed the phenomenon of “white socialism” several times. ↩︎