#this focuses mostly on the first book and some overarching themes

[bookwyrminspiration]

convince me to read a chorus of dragons ?

(falling to me knees) PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

It's about corruption, the things people (and gods) will justify when they start seeing people as numbers. It's about how we carry the past with us always, and that means both the pain and the people we've loved. It's about brothers. It's about disillusionment. It's about breaking cycles.

It's queer high fantasy, genuinely some of the most complex worldbuilding I've encountered, following Kihrin and Co. It follows 3 points in time in the first book, detailing his backstory.

Raised in the lower circles in the capital of Quur, the biggest empire in the world, 15yo Kihrin is working as a thief--but he robs the wrong house at the wrong time, and crosses paths with a pair up to no good. When they send their demon after him, its commotion brings him into the path of the Royal Houses, who his adoptive father has kept him far away from.

Kihrin realizes why when it turns out he's a bastard son of a royal, and he's forced to leave his life behind to survive in the Upper Circle's cruel pomp and circus--but not for long, when he's kidnapped and sold into slavery.

Bought by a mysterious death cult, Kihrin learns being a royal bastard is the least important thing about him, not when a stranger calling him brother wants him dead. Not when the fate of the universe is in his hands and he doesn't even remember choosing to save it. Not when a corrupted god calls to him.

Not when everyone, including himself, is terrified he's going to destroy the world.

The series is dense and complex, with a large cast of uniquely fleshed out characters. I've barely made a dent into everything going on, and the confusion and relationships and morals the story presents have absolutely enchanted me. It's not for everyone, but I adore it, and if it sounds interesting, I'd highly recommend giving it a chance.

[beboped1]

The Last Continent

A Rincewind book I don't dislike? Could it be so?

The Last Continent

First Read: Now!

Verdict: This book explained to me why I keep bouncing off Rincewind - a perfectly servicable travelogue of a book, with some good jokes and fun pastiche.

I was, honestly, worried going into Last Continent. Interesting Times was such a mess and a half of a book, and at this point, my "Rincewind is the worst character" bona fides should be well established. But Last Continent was fun! It's a pure parody pastiche, and there's no big lesson about humanity or deep impactful character arcs. But every book can't be a deep philosphical treatise - sometimes you just need a fun beach read.

The Last Continent parodies Australia and Australian movies (Mad Max, Priscilla, more I'm sure that I don't know), but more or less sidesteps the colonialism parts. There are a couple lampshades (like an exchange with the inevitable Dibbler over whether he's "indigenous") to let the reader know that he's intentionally not touching that topic, and while it won't win any diversity awards for that, I much, much prefer this to whatever he thought he was doing in Interesting Times.

Where normally I like to talk mostly about the overarching themes and characterization, there really isn't any here. Except maybe "Wow, there's some crazy weird shit out there, isn't there, Bruce." But instead, we get Rincewind doing a classic travelogue as the A plot, as he is wont to do, while the wizards get to just have fun being themselves and messing shit up for the B plot. It's fun, it's funny, and it's lighthearted. I'd guess after Hogfather & Jingo, Pratchett needed a palette cleanser, and so he went back to his least philosophical or serious character to do it.

But I did get one thing out of it - I finally understand the core of why I dislike the Rincewind books so much. Rincewind is the character Pratchett uses to write in a very specific style, one focused on travel and location and environment rather than character and emotion. It's a classic "eternal hero" book - Rincewind never changes, just the set dressing. And that's just a style of writing that doesn't work for me - I don't want to see exotic locales, I want to explore the human condition. But Last Continent is certainly the best of the Rincewind books so far - with all his human condition and social commentary landing with other characters, he's able to focus Rincewind on a breezy, beach-read style adventure, and the book is much better for that focus.

[launchmeintoorbitplease]

What I'm currently working on is set on an alternate world where multiple countries will attempt to compete in a space race, mostly because I wanted to design Funky Spacecraft and geopolitical problems in relation to the space race.

1. There's definitely anti-war stuff, but I think the overarching theme will be to appreciate what you already have (for example, exploring space is cool, but have you realized how crazy our world is?). Orrrr that being, just having been, is already worth it even if everything dies. Kind of a "but there was love" thing. I'll probably do a bit of both.

2. A lot, though mainly the tv show For All Mankind, the yt series For All Kerbalkind, the tv show Space Force, and the odd one out on the list, Bridgerton. I liked the interactions between the different competing families and how they were portrayed soooo..

3. Well as this started with the worldbuilding I've only just gotten to characters, but I have a general who's head of the royal family, which consists of his younger brothers and sisters as their parents died in the war. Now, however, a time of peaceful exploration has started (or a race against the clock?), and he is tasked with leading his country's fledgling space agency. Meanwhile his young pilot brother and sister are slated to become some of the first astronauts. I'm not entirely sure on the story I want to tell with him, but this is where the anti-war and appreciation of life comes in. It's still a WIP ofc.

4. How many chapters? Ha! I don't even know if I'm writing a book or a screenplay (or a secret third thing) yet, so chapters aren't gonna be a thing for a while and honestly? I don't think I'll plan a certain amount of chapters. It'll probably be a book tho.

5. Original content! Although I have been thinking of writing some fanfiction lately, I won't allow myself to get distracted from this story (lie) so that'll have to wait. I have no intention of posting it anywhere yet, we'll have to see if it gets made first.

6. Hard to say, I've written a bit here and there but I've only recently started actually focusing on it, I have been complimented on my descriptive ability before tho so who knows? The reason I want to start writing like this is because I'm always imagining stories (of Funky Spaceships) so I thought it's about time I write em down.

7. I'm new to tumblr (and writing) so I don't follow many people, but one quote that has stuck with me is "Sure, it's all been done before. But not by you." or any variation of it. I think it's easy to get caught up in trying to be original to the point where nothing original seems possible anymore, but it's important to remember that it's not only the idea that makes it original, it's also you.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Writers of Tumblr, I have an ask game for you all!

Please reblog and answer these questions, maybe tag others too! My asks are also open for them.

What is the main lesson of your story (e.g. kindness, diversity, anti-war), and why did you choose it?

What did you use as inspiration for your worldbuilding (like real-life cultures, animals, famous media, websites, etc.)?

What is your MC trying to achieve, and what are you, the writer, trying to achieve with them? Do you want to inspire others, teach forgiveness, help readers grow as a person?

How many chapters is your story going to have?

Is it fanfiction or original content? Where do you plan to post it?

When and why did you start writing?

Do you have any words of engagement for fellow writers of Writeblr? What other writers of Tumblr do you follow?

[lunarfly]

Hermione as Harry's Light (by Evaluna)

Hello! This is an essay written many years ago, before the release of HBP&DH. It doesn't belong to me so credits to the original writers(Evaluna, Turambar & Mad-I Moody)! It was written on the CoS forum, I'm not sure if it's still saved there but I have a word document with all of the essays. Anyways, this essay has no ship/character bashing. Again, this essay isn't written by me, but it's one of my favorites. Enjoy!

Quote by Mad-I Moody:

"1."Ron's mum's lit a fire in there [Harry's bedroom] and she's sent up sandwiches." -Hermione couldn't know that if she had immediately dashed up to Harry.

2. "Ron and Ginny say that you've been hiding from everyone since you got back from St. Mungo's." - She's obviously talked to them about this at some point between their arrival back from the hospital and her arrival at 12GP.

3. "The others have told me what you overheard last night on the Extendable Ears."

-Does this indicate that she's had time to talk to the other members of the Weasley clan? Sources point to yes!

Now, isn't it sensible to assume that, in the instances wherein Hermione talked to the Weasley family, she was, at least, thoughtful enough to ask about Mr. Weasley?

Saying Hermione came only to be with Harry cannot be true therefore, because:

1. She doesn't go to see him the MOMENT she comes through the door

2. She gets Harry right out of the sulking room and takes him into a room with Ron and Ginny, with whom she has quite obviously been talking.

3. There is no indication that she wants to be alone with Harry"

Mad-I: Disagree. Not just from a textual analysis standpoint; there we have each our own interpretation. My strongest disagreement comes from what I see as a critical ‘septology’ issue [overarching theme of all 7 books]: Harry overcoming his own internal darkness [despair, hopelessness, isolation] before able to wage and win [or overcome] the external darkness [Voldy, evil, fear, hatred and division]. See below post. IMO the Hermione as Lifeline or Light for Harry scene is representative of what Harry must confront and for what he must stand and fight:

--darkness and the battle of good over evil,

--despair [depression] and the battle of love over [here, self-] hatred,

--isolation and limitation [e.g., Harry imposes on himself a prison for his mind], and the battle of love as emanation over barriers, constraints, and perceptions

It begins with himself. And IMO it doesn’t end. But anyway, it progresses from there to encompass the world. On his own, this scene shows that Harry is vulnerable in that he needs a source of love [for himself] to sustain him; only then can Harry be a source of love [for the world] in his [upcoming and perhaps ongoing] battle with darkness. Harry needs love in this regard perhaps more than anyone else in the world, and yet he’s had very little of it, with Sirius mostly kept apart from Harry. Except for Hermione, who has always been there for Harry? With Hermione’s return, once more for Harry there is connection and hope, and the belief in unlimited horizons and potential - some would call it faith -- when with Hermione. For ship and for series, IMO, I believe that Harry’s ability to acknowledge his need for love [for me, this means for Hermione] is the first step on his path to the light.

What the scene does imply is that Hermione’s conversation with Ron and Ginny and the others’ [may include Fred and George as well] was extremely brief and in the majority focused firmly on Harry. So brief in span that the snow had not yet melted even after climbing the stairs and so focused on Harry and his situation that Hermione had the grasp on all the main details already when she first pounded on the door. This is a young woman on a *mission*. A mission to save Harry. Hermione reaches Harry and saves him from himself, from his dark side, from his own personal hell. I personally think this is one of the most critical scenes in the book for Harry and his battle for good over evil, probably the most important one. The battle is within as well as without, and Hermione is the bringer of light to balance his darkness, to bring balance to his soul AK and Earendil:[thanks for SF ref!] a soul is a universe in and of itself <kabbalah, so one could say Hermione is bringing balance to the universe, in this sense]. Some may say it is not romantic..er…well…to each. But it can certainly be argued that the light and dark imagery, in bringing light from darkness, in the balance they provide one another, in the give and take [in interactions, in providing insight [in this scene=hers/giving love to him through her actions when she comes] or providing courage [in this scene=his/accepting her love through his actions when he follows] between them are the yin and yang that represent in both religious and esoteric texts the love on many levels required for spiritual completion of the marriage of two [bodies and souls] as one, separate but together [again, see the smoky caduceus-like vision that Dumbledore views after Harry’s vision prior to their arrival at number 12, which is followed shortly thereafter by the arrival of Hermione.

With this, one can make a case for striking symbolic romantic and platonic love imagery simultaneously, as well, in terms of a soulmate love that is “complete” on an esoteric level, a bonding of body and soul, the material and spiritual. I see no inherent contradiction, probably because I’m not an ancient Greek philosopher named Aristotle. [‘What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies’. --Aristotle] The difference being that we in our day can allow for this kind of soulmate love

between a man and a woman, as well, and that we can allow love to exist on many different levels between a man and a woman, not just Eros or what the Greeks narrowly defined as romantic love. The esoteric concepts of a true bonding of souls between a man and woman did of course contain all of these forms of love, sealed with emotional, physical, and contractual public commitments intended to represent the bonding of two souls as one before God and heaven. IMO how can this scene not be important for Harry, particularly as we all know that love is critical to overcoming all that Voldy is and represents? And whatever type you feel exists them between them, IMO there is deep love. So in fact I think this can be argued strongly as a H/Hr scene. For those who disagree, nonetheless it’s all-good since a deep soul love exists regardless if it is ‘very’ platonic. This is, after all, just a hair’s breadth from ‘total consciousness’.

One more point I mentioned before that I want to bring up in context of reinforcing Hermione’s critical position as Harry’s Light, Lifeline, or Savior. Arguably, since Hermione is key to bringing Harry back from the edge [regardless of what comes later], IMO the larger symbolism is that Hermione is “the one” who will always save Harry from his greatest enemy - himself, his dark side. After that, and only after that, can Harry save the world. She will help him choose light [represented by…Hermione] over darkness [his own despair and hopelessness, his feelings of being unclean and unworthy]. Even I can see some traditional religious symbolism here, but there’s much esoteric symbolism as well. Nonetheless, Ron’s gift of…what, frankincense and myth? Is that why the perfume smelled unusual?... Ron’s gift only seemed to highlight his deeper, intuitive understanding [at some level] of Hermione’s fundamental importance to Harry. Yin and Yang. Inexorably intertwined - just thought I’d throw that in here as well! And for what purpose would Ron is shown as gifting her with such symbolic honor if not to perhaps choose to give his life for hers, thereby saving Harry’s light and thus saving them all. Particularly, if Ron betrays or obstructs Harry and Hermione [this may happen if Ron is rejected by Hermione or “loses” her to Harry, per 6th step scene, falling away from the path to Hermione's door], then Ron may sacrifice himself [from betrayal guilt] to save Harry and/or Hermione [same scene, where Ron falls at Harry's feet] thus restoring his character and his legacy in addition to doing his critical bit to save Hermione &/or Harry [=the world].

(Turambar) I agree that the Christmas scene is one of the most significant in the book.

Just on what you said about the light/dark: it's interesting that JKR accentuates the extremities in various ways to bring out that contrast.

She uses biblical language - appropriate considering the timing - such as "unclean" and "possession" to describe Harry's self-disgust. His feelings of being unfit to be in the company of others brings another biblical image of the leper.

He completely isolates himself for a period rather than just behaves in a moody/angry fashion in company. He's "starving", cold.

Hermione is not mentioned at all from the time of the dream to her knocking on his door - an obvious device to enhance the surprise and impact of her arrival.

There's the imagery of evil (snake) and love (hippogriff) and as I've said before that suspicious dream occurs just when Harry is at his lowest ebb.

I agree with what FP said: the sequence shows the limitations of his relationship with the Weasleys and Sirius and conversely the growing significance to him of Hermione.

Both times he's considered running away when in a depressed state - here and before the First Task - the option has been to run to the barren, loveless Dursleys. To the house that's not a home and the family that isn't a family (to him). Both times he's got through the bad patch with a bit of help from Hermione.

[fictionadventurer]

Fairy Tale Retellings

I know that @magpie-trove has been recommended enough books to fill several years, but since fairy tale retellings are my niche, I’m going to throw some more titles out there. (I’m limiting myself to 1) books/short stories 2) that I enjoyed 3) that I haven’t seen mentioned in connection to the original post. I’m also trying not to branch out into too many tales, so I’m going to be leaving out some slightly more obscure ones).

Before I go into the specifics, I’m just going to say, that if you only read three books out of this list, read Entwined by Heather Dixon (12 Dancing Princesses),  Brine and Bone by Kate Stradling (Little Mermaid) and Valiant by Sarah Macguire. (And if you only read one series, make it Regina Doman’s Fairy Tale Novels.)

Cinderella

Before Midnight by Cameron Dokey: Short, sweet, autumny retelling that I like for the atmosphere and the loving relationship between Cinderella and her stepfamily.

Silver Woven In My Hair by Shirley Rousseau Murphy: Extremely short, traditional retelling, starring a mistreated girl who collects Cinderella stories while being in one of her own. Has a sweet charm to it.

Soot and Slipper by Kate Stradling: A short retelling set in a traditional fairy tale kingdom, but with an excellent plot twist. I like it very much until the ending entangles it in a far-too-complicated magic system.

The Reluctant Godfather by Allison Tebo: A sassy retelling starring a grumpy fairy baker who tries to get out of his godfather duties by getting his two charges to fall in love with each other. Gets points for a unique, almost Wodehousish parody element that is an extreme breath of fresh air in a genre dominated by YA romances.

The Spinner and the Slipper by Camryn Lockhart: Mashes up the story with Rumpelstiltskin. Clearly the work of a very young author, but I’m putting it on here for the fun use of the fairies from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Beauty and the Beast

Unseen Beauty by Amity Thomsen: Traditional fantasy retelling from the POV of one of the invisible servants. Writing that’s a cut above most self-pubbed books, with extra points for featuring a female friendship that’s just as important as the main romance.

Snow White

Fairest Son by H.S.J. Williams: Gender-flipped version involving the fae. Is the only Snow White retelling that had me uncertain for a while of where the plot was going to go.

Sleeping Beauty

A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan: A sci-fi retelling involving a girl who was regularly kept in stasis for the convenience of her corporate mogul parents, then was left in stasis for more than 70 years while the apocalypse happened. She wakes up to a world that’s recovered to become a very different place and has to deal with the emotional fallout of everything that’s happened to her. And it’s intense. This book has the distinction of being one of only two books with scenes that made me put the book down so I could sob uncontrollably. (The other is Rapunzel Let Down). There’s a little bit of content (a couple of kissing scenes that veer toward steamy, and use of futuristic swear words that have clear connections to modern swear words) but easily skippable.

The Little Mermaid

Brine and Bone by Kate Stradling: On first read, I appreciated it as a faithful-to-Andersen retelling, but found it otherwise forgettable. I reread it earlier this year and cannot understand how I possibly came to that conclusion. This has beautiful character work in a unique world that, I cannot stress this enough, is loyal to the Andersen version while appreciating the true joy of that ending.

Silent Mermaid by Brittany Fichter: First half had some excellent world-building and interesting conflicts that fell apart in a more cliche second half, but I remember it being enjoyable overall.

The Princess and the Pea

The Bruised Princess by A.G. Marshall: Part of her Once Upon a Short Story collection. They’re all decent-to-great, but this one is my favorite, a sweet little romance that makes the story make a surprising amount of sense.

I need to give a shout-out to my favorite retelling of this tale. I can’t remember the title. It was on Fanfiction.net back in the day. (I tried looking it up, but it wasn’t part of the collection I assumed it was in). It was from the POV of the servant who had to stuff all twenty mattresses. She has allergies and is miserable by the time she’s done, and gets her revenge by stuffing the top mattress with gravel.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

Entwined by Heather Dixon: One of my very top favorite retellings, a creative and whimsical and touching story focusing on the twelve close-knit sisters and their relationship with their buttoned-up father in the aftermath of their mother’s death.

The Brave Little Tailor

Valiant by Sarah McGuire: The only retelling I’ve ever seen of this tale, starring a girl who has to masquerade as a boy to get work as a tailor, and winds up entangled in a kingdom’s battle against giants. The first act is very boring, but it turns into a very well-done retelling with excellent characters and worldbuilding.

Bonus: Series

These are series that retell several fairy tales in the same universe, and I thought it’d be easier to present them all together than separating them out by fairy tale.

The Fairy Tale Novels by Regina Doman: Catholic retellings set in the modern day. They have their weak points, but they’re my gold standard for how to write a modern retelling and how to write a religious romance.

The Shadow of the Bear: Snow White and Rose Red. Fun and adventurous. Gets points for introducing me to Chesterton.

Black as Night: Snow White, focusing on the Snow White character from the first book. Darker and more intense, but with some deep themes.

Waking Rose: Sleeping Beauty, focusing on the Rose Red character’s adventures in college. By far the most popular book in the series, it’s overlong, but extremely good.

The Midnight Dancers: The Twelve Dancing Princesses, focusing on mostly new characters with a side character from Waking Rose in the soldier role. A slighter story with a pricklier main character, but it’s a strong contender for my favorite in the series, exploring the connections between beauty and truth and goodness.

Alex O’Donnell and the 40 Cyberthieves: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, starring Waking Rose side characters. This is a lighter adventure tale. All the stuff surrounding the hacking subplot is slightly ridiculous, but it’s one of the only YA novels I’ve ever seen that explores the realistic nuances of considering marriage with someone very different from you.

Rapunzel Let Down: Rapunzel. By far the darkest themes (it’s classified as an adult book). All new characters with some cameos. I thought it was decent on first read, but on reread, it blew me away with some of its themes (Except for a very melodramatic fifth act).

The Andari Chronicles by Kenley Davidson: Retellings set in a very mildly magical fantasy world, mostly focused on political intrigue.

Traitor’s Masque: Cinderella. 60% longer than it needs to be because of the extremely wordy writing style, and it makes me tear my hair out every time I try rereading, but the core conflict between the two brothers is compelling.

The Countess and the Frog: The Frog Prince. A short prequel novella focusing on a side character from the first book. I think it’s only available as a freebie on the author’s site but may be one of my favorite romances because the leads are so cute and sensible together.

Goldheart: Rumpelstiltskin. My favorite in the series, focused on a shy painter given an impossible task and the friends who help her get through it. The writing style’s much more concise here.

Pirouette: The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Political-intrigue focused. Also much wordier than it needs to be, though not as much as the first book. Twists the fairy tale in extremely interesting ways and has some great characters. (Prologue and epilogue are some of my favorite bits of writing in the series).

Shadow and Thorn: Beauty and the Beast. The most magical book in the series, and the most confusing because of that. There was one really cool moment with Beauty’s father, but otherwise I didn’t care for it all that much.

Daughter of Lies: Snow White with spies. Short, but fun. Reminds me of a Georgette Heyer farce.

Path of Secrets: Red Riding Hood with spies. I remember nothing about this story, which may tell you all you need to know.

Once: Six Historically Inspired Fairy Tales: What I think of as a kind of spin-off to the Rooglewood collections, this novella collection by six different authors retells six different fairy tales. My favorites are a dark but beautiful “Little Match Girl” retelling set in WWII, a steampunkish Rumpelstiltskin, and With Blossoms Gold, a Rapunzel retelling set in the Renaissance. (The only one I didn’t like at all was the Sleeping Beauty story).

Destined series by Kaylin Lee: Includes retellings of Cinderella, Rapunzel, Beauty and the Beast, Red Riding Hood, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty in one interconnected storyline. I’ve only read the first four; they’re okay-to-decent books whose main strength is the unique world they’re set in (think magical steampunky 1930s, which seems like a work of genius after you’ve been reading through a million retellings set in generically fairy tale kingdoms). My favorite is the fourth, Betrayed, which retells Little Red Riding Hood and mostly stands alone (until the last act veers it into a really complicated overarching plot).

[whymasi]

32

Avalanche by Illnoira666 (Erin330) (AO3)

Mick finds out certain things about his father, which snowballs into another situation.

First of all, I’ve only been liking posts and occasionally reblogging them recently; I’m sorry for the lack of F1 fic recs in this time! It is mostly because I have found a full-time job for me to earn some income and help out with household expenses for the moment up until I enrol for University next year. Thus I have lesser time to read than before, and I have been focused on reading A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams lately.

(Side note: it wasn’t an emotionally easy book for me to read, as I was uncomfortable with some scenes of sexual violence or aggression in there, not to mention the unwilling resignedness at the characters’ fates at the end, but in the bigger picture, they weren’t without purpose. They showed the power imbalance between males and females, and the overarching themes would probably be an ideal world versus the more cruel reality and unfair treatment of women. Also, on hindsight, as I reflected on what I read, I was frightened by how the things depicted in the book still happen in the real world today, albeit in slightly different forms. So, I would highly recommend you to read it for perhaps reflection about the gender imbalance that still exists in the world we live in even though the book was published in the late 1940s, but TW: violence, rape.)

Now, on to this fic: normally, fics involving Mika and Michael are told from their respective perspectives, so it was interesting to see it through Mick’s eyes. Mick, being depicted as a 12 year old in this fic, would have vastly different thoughts and concerns from his father, because he is still a child. This gave rise to the opportunity to explore a son’s concern for and relationship with his father, as well as some level of innocence and simplicity when it comes to discussing more complex issues such as discovering one’s sexuality and what is a family.

I also enjoyed how the author managed to keep up the tension till a very late part of the fic, which I will leave you to read without spoiling its plot. Overall, minus some homophobic comments made by one of the characters, this is actually a pretty soft fic :)

[imaginariumpod]

A Tapestry of Lace and Silk : the visual aesthetic and costume design of Crimson Peak (2015)

 In the dark corners of an ancient mansion, you hear the rustle of a long dress on the floor, there behind a closed door, lies some ghosts and secrets that should never be unearthed. 

A woman walks in the silence. 

Crimson Peak (2015) is a movie directed by Guillermo Del Toro, and is one of the most obvious mainstream examples of the gothic romance in cinema in the recent years. With a story full of ghosts, a secret, a haunted house and of visuals directly inspired by the mid-century gothic romance book covers. This movie is visually highly stylized and immersive in a way I think a lot of filmmakers and studios tend to shy away from. 

While Guillermo Del Toro’s movies tend to always be very stylized and visually cohesive, Crimson Peak is truly the one, in my opinion, where the production design was at its most compelling and beautiful. To me, it’s obvious how much care and attention has been given to even the slightest of details, to create the perfect visual identity for this film. I have read once that the gothic was very decorative, as a genre. From the dark mansions, and the flowing nightgowns to the flickering lights of the candles and the creaking floors. The ~aesthetic~ is something that is very important to a gothic romance story. It’s all in the atmosphere, as well as some important elements of the story in itself, that make a gothic romance. Gothic Romance is a genre that you have to lean into, and Guillermo Del Toro perfectly understood it when it came to Crimson Peak.

Before we go more into it, i just want to warn you all that there’s probably going to be spoilers in this article. I will try my best to avoid being overly blatant about what happens in the story in itself, because that is not my focus. My focus during this article will be on the production design of the movie, the way this movie looks and has been designed, especially when it comes to the costumes and the outfits the characters wear throughout the movie. I mostly want to go deep into the visual aesthetic of this film, from the decors and visual themes to the dresses and outfits that were created for this story. I want to talk about the visual aspect of the movie and how it translates within the genre of gothic and the medium of filmmaking.

Guillermo Del Toro : the cineast 

Guilerrmo del Toro is a mexican director mostly known for having a very distinct style of dark fantastical movies often featuring monsters, myths, the folklore and fairytales. His movies alternate between being made in spanish or english. His stories and movies often explore the dark side of the fantastical, of fairy tales and stories told after the dark.  and yet. they have a hopeful side to them . 

While a lot of his movies were successful, I do think it’s El Laberinto del fauno (2006) (Pan’s Labyrinth) that really established him as a thriving filmmaker, despite how niche a lot of his movies and stories are.   Which, by the way, as a quick aside, Pan’s Labyrinth is a very formative movie to me, I watched the year it came out, when I was 11 years old, my dad brought the DVD home, thinking it was a movie for children. And well. It was not. I ended up being TERRIFIED and yet mesmerized and this was my first contact with Guillermo Del Toro as a filmmaker but it certainly wouldn’t be the last. His movies are crystallized in my memory, and they awakened in me a love of this more gothic and fairy-tale inspired horror. He's definitely a movie director that brings his unique touch to whichever work he’s doing. 

The Gothic is a very prominent part of Del Toro’s work, which he calls Gothick (and is indeed a word that represents the genre that got started by Horace Walpole’s book The Castle of Otranto in 1764) and he describes the relationship he has with this genre as “a way to discover beauty in the monstrous”  The protagonists of Del Toro movies often embrace the darkness that exists around them and within themselves. For Del Toro, the gothic is the “only genre that teaches [us] to understand otherness.” You can see it in the narrative of so many of his movies, which culminates in The Shape of The Water, where the monster ends up being the victim of society, and the real monster is the character of Michael Shannon, who represents the pressure of society,  the norms and accepted and what can happen if you deviate from what is accepted. 

The narratives of Del Toro’s movies reject authorianism in any shape or form, whether the societal authorianism or the narrative ones, and this makes for a way of storytelling that often turns around all expected tropes.His movies are, at their core, anti-fascist and, in my very humble opinion, very relevant during our current political climate on an global level. I really do not feel like I am the right person to dive deep into this subject in a small article on the visual aesthetic of one of Del Toro’s movies, but I want to recommend the thesis The Dark Fantastic of Guillermo Del Toro : Myth, Fascism, and theopolitical Imagination in Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, and Pan’s Labyrinth by Morgaan Sinclair. That thesis is widely informative and interesting to read and will probably dive deeper in those themes that are always somewhat present in every Del Toro movie. 

He loves using “typical” genre stories and making them his own. From folk tales, fairy tales, vampire stories, legends, he uses these narrative motifs as a template for his stories, but he always subverts them in one way or another, exploring the darkness within. And this is what he also did with Crimson Peak, but now with the gothic romance genre as his template. Gothic Romance is one of those genres that is very formulaic in some ways, it has very common tropes and themes that are often used.   For example, the way he explores the gothic house and its entire symbolism in his early movie The Devil’s Backbone (2001).

[These old-Gothic notions insinuate themselves in the Gothick terrain of del Toro’s films. The ­Devil’s Backbone, a ghost story set in a remote orphanage during the Spanish Civil War, seems at first glance to be a classic Gothick romance, which, as del Toro reminds us in his commentary, focuses on the house, the domicile, as an emblem and warped container of the human self.  This symbolically charged structure, he says, always conceals a “dark secret,” linked to a treasure and deep passions, “that is buried in the past and affects the people living in it.” At the center of the darkness stands “a very pure ­hero—a new set of eyes to explore the secret and through the purity of his heart unravel the mystery.”]

When it comes to his films, Del Toro tends to often use archetypes as a way to effectively communicate certain concepts, but more often than not, he will turn these archetypes upside down.  Del Toro tends to also use a lot of symbols in his movies, weaving a tapestry of overarching themes and meaning. He gives depth to his stories by a use of various artistic and literary references, historical references. building a story that contains layers upon layers. This depth also translates to the visual aspect of his movies, as Del Toro movies tend to be carefully and precisely crafted. The aesthetic is, as one might say, on point. From the somber and fantastical creativity of Pan’s Labyrinth to the epic and vibrants colors of Pacific Rim. Crimson Peak is, to me, one of the most visually beautiful and compelling movies of Del Toro, and this is what we’re going to get into a bit later. 

A ghost story: 

This story starts at the end. This is a narrative device Del Toro also used with Pan’s Labyrinth, the movie starts with the final scene, and we know that something terrible is going to happen, and it just keeps the tension and stakes high during the entirety of the movie, as we keep wondering when things will take a turn for the worse. 

We can see Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska ) wearing her white nightgown, in a scene of fog and piercing white. Her blond hair is flowing down on her shoulders, her face is pale, and her hands.

Her hands are drenched in blood. 

The first sentence of the movie is then spoken : “Ghosts are real. This much I know.” This immediately sets the tone for the rest of the movie. 

And then. It goes back to the beginning, when she was just a young child, at the moment her mother died, when the ghost of her mother, veiled in black lace,  came to warn her, to beware of Crimson Peak… 

Edith Cushing is a young woman living with her father and who dreams of becoming a writer. She keeps trying to publish her story, not a ghost story, but moreso a story with a ghost in it. “The ghost is a metaphor” she says. A metaphor for the past and for regrets and violence that still permeates a place. She then meets Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), an english baronet without fortune, and his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain). After the sudden (and suspicious) death of her father, she marries Thomas and follows him and his sister back to England, in their strange mansion that stands isolated in the midst of english hills, atop a source of red clay. The Sharpes are an aristocratic family with no fortune and a decrepit mansion where strange things happen, where ghosts roam. 

There’s also a social commentary here on the changing social norms and social classes. While the Sharpes are an aristocratic family, owning land and a title, they are not rich. Their clothes are good quality, made from good materials and hand crafted, but they are also old and not of the current fashion. They are in a very strange place socially, being higher up on the social class and yet, being broke and trying to figure out how to get money to take care of their crumbling estate.

Ghosts are real, we need to remember, and are a reminder of what has been forgotten and what has died. The past is still  lingering on in the present, and violence of the past will not go unpunished. The ghosts of Crimson Peak are terrifying. I do not want to say much about them, because it would reveal too much about the plot and the story, but I want to talk about them in terms of visual design. The ghosts of Crimson Peak are terrifying, they are skeleton-like, and red. Vibrant red. They are nothing like I have ever seen before in terms of ghosts, and this is yet another way Crimson Peak sets itself apart from other movies. 

Lucille says something at the end of the movie, and I will not say anything about the plot, so fear not for spoilers, she says “but the horror… the horror was for love” and I do think it says so much about the movie and about the genre. Gothic romance is not really a love story, but it’s not strictly a horror story either. It’s a blend of love and horror. And sometimes… the horror, the horror will be for the sake of love. 

The building of a haunted house

Production design, when it comes to movies, relates to everything that has to do with the visual identity of the movie. The look and the stylistic choices that are made to make the movie look the way it does. From the costumes, to the sets, to the decor, and all the small details, production design is one of the most important parts of  constructing a movie. It’s those elements that make out how the movie will  look and what it will communicate to its audience.

The production designer works on all the aspects that pertains to the visuals of the movies, along with the director of photography. They manage everything from the costume, the sets and the decor. And they work closely with the director to craft the visual identity of the movie. Guillermo Del Toro always draws from a very vast range of thematic and visual inspirations when it comes to his movies : from gothic architecture, symbolist art, the surrealists, but also more popular inspirations such as comic books and even video games. So many of these elements are brought and matched to visually create a layered look to the film.  

The visual storytelling, the ambiance, the atmosphere, all of these elements are a huge part of what makes Crimson Peak truly interesting. The visuals of the movies were not an afterthought to the script, but were an integral part of how the movie was constructed. Under the directives of Guilermo Del Toro, Thomas E. Sanders [Dracula (1992) ; Braveheart (1995)] constructed an intricate and vibrant appearance for Crimson Peak, which I think is one of the most memorable components of the film.

This movie takes the canons of gothic horror and gothic romance and embraces them, whether it is narratively speaking or visually speaking. I always love a story that leans heavily into its genre and its tropes and convention, only to make use of them in a different and new way. I can mention The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015) as another movie who embraces its genre, here the corny 1960s inspired spy movie, and just GOES WITH IT. I do so much appreciate when any type of storyteller and artist fully work within the genre and then try to expand the boundaries of that specific genre, all the while trying to create a work that is definitely recognizable as a certain genre. 

As I said, the visuals are obviously very much inspired by the canons of gothic romance, whether it's the illustrations that were in the book of the 19th century, as well as all the historical inspirations from the late 19th century in which the movie is set. There’s also the obvious references to the book covers of the gothic paperbacks of the mid 20th century, with their jewel tones, and their heroines escaping a dark and looming manor behind them. Or sometimes, she is exploring the dark winding corridors, with only the help of a few candles lighting her way.

There’s this dichotomy that sometimes occurs when it comes to movies, of style over substance or vice versa. Which to me is a moot and useless point, because style is a form of storytelling as well. The way you construct the visuals of the movies, the decors and the costumes, and the way the film is shot, all of this is a way of telling a story and is as essential to a good movie. Even a movie that doesn’t put the emphasis on “style” also makes a visual choice. Not focusing on the visual elements such as the costumes, or the decor, is also a stylistic choice in itself. Even if the choice is to make the movie devoid of any outlandish visual assets. Taking these decisions are what ultimately make the movie be the way it is visually. A film is a visual form of storytelling, 

When it comes to the sets, the movie is set mostly in two diametrically opposed houses, the airy and light house of the Cushings in Buffalo, homey and comfortable, and the cold gothic estate of the Sharpes : Allerdale Hall. Where the house in Bufallo was full of light and a warm color palette, Allerdale Hall is the opposite. That house is the typical gothic mansion, and one of the most important elements of any good gothic romance. Imposing, dark, with twisting corridors and actually decaying above them. Visually, it’s also distinctive with the colder colors that are used when filming there. It’s the ideal setting for the gothic romance story to happen. Sanders says that the only reference that he was given by Del Toro for the design of this house was the painting House by the Railroad (1925) by Edward Hopper. This painting was the beginning of a very long and arduous process as Sanders tried to create this perfect haunted house.

The house of the Sharpes, is atop a source of red clay, hence its name. It’s decrepit, falling apart, cold. “colder inside than out” says Edith when she first enters it. The house is slowly but surely sinking in the red clay that once used to be the source of the Sharpes’ fortune. Visually, it looks as if the house was bleeding, as if the house was alive. As Sanders says during an interview with Slate : 

“We felt that the clay is the blood of the earth, and it’s also the blood of the house, and that the house was a living thing that embodied the family over all those years.”

Within the genre of gothic horror and gothic romance, the house plays a very peculiar part. Whether it is haunted or not, the house is very much often an important character of the gothic story, on the same level as the heroine or the antagonist or the ghost. The spaces of Allerdale Hale are tight and menacing, the house is full of dangerous sharp angles. This is not a warm house. Del Toro said that he repeated the wooden pattern on the columns three or four times, so that it looks slightly out of focus, like something is wrong, but you cannot pinpoint what it is, exactly. 

Allerdale Hall is thus the perfect setting for this gothic romance to unfold, through the sharp and twisting corridors, with the gaping hole in the ceiling through which the snow falls and covers the red crimson blood of the house. 

A nightgown to explore strange corridors at night:

The main costume designer for this film was Costume Designer Kate Hawley, assisted by Cori Burchell. Even though they hadn’t worked specifically on period movies and historical movies or more fantastical movies prior to their job on Crimson Peak, I cannot help but think that they did a marvelous job when it came to the costume design for this particular movie. Hawley had previously worked on Pacific Rim with Del Toro, so she was familiar with the way he worked and envisioned things. Together, they truly created a wardrobe that was absolutely wonderful for the movie of Crimson Peak. Highly stylized. Imbued with the fashion and artistic trends of the era, without being exactly Literal to the clothing of the time. She used costume design as a vehicle to communicate ideas and moods that were intrinsical to the characters of the story. 

Hawley worked closely with  Del Toro to create the costumes that would be perfect to convey the personality of the characters and would help build the depth of the movie. In her interview with digital magazine JEZEBEL, she says that she definitely considers Crimson Peak to feel like an opera, a piece of music in which there’s two distinct acts, and so the costuming had to also follow those two distinct acts and those two distinct worlds that the characters inhabit. From the color scheme and mood, to the details of the historical period. But most importantly, especially for a Guillermo Del Toro movie, it was vital for Hawley to look at it thematically first. Del Toro movies are always chock full of references to art, folklore and literature, and there is no surprise that the costume design should follow the same direction.

The costumes are an important narrative device as well, the clothing a character wears reflects their personality as well as their narrative journey. It can inform on the status of the character, their place in society, it’s an effective tool of storytelling. A good costume designer will use the wardrobe of each character to say something about the character in themselves but also create a cohesive visual look for the ensemble. From the colors to the chosen fashion style and to the accessories, fashion is a silent mode of communication that we all inherently understand, even if not on a conscious level. The wardrobe of each different character is thought and designed, to fit the character but the movie as a whole. 

As our queen and icon, legendary costume designer and winner of eight separate academy awards for costume design, Edith Head says : “Fashion is not the primary thing, the primary effort in motion pictures is to tell a story”. And clothing do tell a story, whether or not you think they do. This is comes back to what I was saying earlier, that sometimes, people tend to not put any sort of importance on the clothing, considering it shallow and superficial, but I would argue that it’s a very subtle way of storytelling that says more about the character in a single outfit than a whole scene of exposition ever could. 

Edith’s clothes are all very modern and current to the era the movie is set in (ie. 1901) The silhouette of all the clothes she wears are very much within the fashionable silhouette of the era, with the gigantic sleeves, and the cinched waist and slightly flare-y skirt. All of the dresses she wears throughout the movie have the leg-of-mutton sleeves that were so fashionable during the late 1890s and early 1900s.  The color palette of Edith’s clothes is very much within a very soft and warm-toned palette, with a lot of soft yellows, ivories, creams, mustards and golds. this very much visually set her apart from the Sharpes. Hawley says she imagined Edith as a canary in a coal mine, her vibrant yellows and gold outfits in the dark and somber walls of Allerdale Hall. Hawley and Del Toro also used a pre-raphaelite portrait of Helen of Troy by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1863) as a visual basis to work on Edith’s aesthetic. 

She’s a down to earth woman who is ready to make efforts and her dresses reflect this aspect of her personality, they are comfortable and practical, while still having that air of whimsy to them. From the gigantic buttons on her honey colored dress or the beautifully eccentric belt in the shape of hands. Kate Hawley, the movie’s costume designer, says that this belt is just an upscaled version of the small mourning jewelry in which a lock of hair of a loved one who passed away can be found in. “I took these little earrings, these little ivory hands, and we scaled them up so it was almost like a mother's hands clasped around her waist”. (I so desperately want a belt like that btw, it is creepy but i still want it, if any of you happen to find one, please do contact me, thank you so very much.) She matches her hat and gloves with her ensemble, and generally, Edith, is just very visually cohesive and coherent within her own style. 

During a very romantically and sensually charged scene, she wears a beautiful evening gown in ivory satin and ornamented with pearls. She enters the room dressed in this lovely dress and a long satin cape of the same color and a pleated collar, her hair delicately swept up.  This is Edith’s very own dramatic moment, where she gets to dance with her romantic lead and wears an outfit that is a bit fancier than her usual fare. This dress is still within the very soft and pale color palette that represents Edith. This particular dress is visibly inspired by a painting of  the italian artist Giovanni Boldini : The Black Sash (1905), which furthers the fact that this movie’s visual aesthetic is deeper than what first meets the eye. From the delicate color and stark black ribbon down her back. 

Edith, though, is our ingenue heroine of the gothic romance. One of the main archetypes in the gothic romance is the innocent heroine, a young woman thrown into a situation that’s claustrophobic, scary and dangerous. In every gothic romance, there comes a moment where the heroine leaves her bed in her nightgown, it’s a very striking visual that is the mark of the way we visualize gothic romance. She holds a candle, wearing only the lightest of clothing, and goes to explore the darkness within the walls she inhabits. Her nightgown ends up being the most significant outfit of the whole movie, it truly marks her as a gothic romance heroine, while she roams the corridors at night.

 «I’ve never done so many nighties and nightgowns! It’s all about running around in night dresses through long corridors. That also blended to the fabric. When Guillermo said to me, “It’s about a house that breathes,” that’s why we chose the lightest fabric, just a little thing to try and help the storytelling with the idea of the house.»

 Edith’s nightgown is striking, the movement of the heavily pleated garment fills the whole screen whenever she moves, it gives her a certain elegance and follows the cohesive silhouette and color palette that was established for her thus far, with its gigantic sleeves and the soft warm and earthy colors of the dressing gown she wears over her nightgown, as she goes down the dark stairs of Allerdale Hall. 

Where Edith is the innocent ingenue, Lucille is the woman hardened by life and misfortunes. She is all sharp angles and contrasts, where Edith is soft and kind, with a seamless color palette. Lucille’s outfits are stuck twenty years in the past and this is very much a narrative device and tool that’s used through the usage of dress and costume design. By showing her in these lavish but old-fashioned dresses. it serves both the purpose of showing how rich and noble the family of the Sharpes is but also, it effectively communicates how they do not have the means to actually follow the current fashionable trends. It shows that Lucille is not one to want to have something of lower quality or cheaper than she thinks her standing deserves. Lucille is a woman that is stuck in the past and is not truly living in the current times.  I think that even though these details often necessitate a basic knowledge of the dress silhouettes of the late 19th century and early 20th century, this tactic still visually works because it sets Lucille apart from the rest of the world. It expresses visually how she and her brother are distanced from the world outside.

Her dresses and outfits are dramatic and striking, with the sharp silhouette of the 1880s, with the bustles. The colors of her dresses are always in deep tones, like reds, blues or black. The colors are very rich and vivid. The first dress that we see Lucille wearing is the beautiful red dress during the scene where she plays piano. A silhouette typical of the 1880s with the bustles and the very extravagant detailing. That one dress is a striking red, with a skirt that has a long train. The one very important design detailing is the back of the dress, replicating a spine of sorts in the middle of her back. Those sharp angles forebode a sense of danger that is conveyed strictly through the construction of the dress, and the arrangement of the textiles, the various shades of red fabric intertwined to create this gorgeous pattern that goes down the skirt. Her hair is swept upward and decorated with fine red jewels, and the pale complexion of Jessica Chastain only make the whole ensemble more striking. 

Compared to the two other components of the main trio, Thomas Sharpe’s outfits seem much more muted and sober. His clothes, same as his sister’s, are also too old to be fashionable, but made of high quality materials. The color palettes of his clothes are very dark and deep, with touches of deep blues and greens. When you transpose him into Allerdale Hall, he fits seamlessly within the decor, meanwhile he seemed out of space and out of time in the sunny and modern decor of Buffalo. 

A desire for accuracy : 

Historical accuracy is always a point of contention when it comes to movies set in a particular historical setting, in this case in the early years of the 1900s. And before we go any further, is historical accuracy even That important when it comes to an effective costume design ? I honestly think historically accurate costumes are very important when it comes to setting your movie. The visual immersion and world building when your story is set in a specific time and place, like for example, in this movie, set in Buffalo, United-States, and England, during the year of 1901, depends on these important elements, such as the costume design and the decor. Especially when a movie is not tending toward the fantastical. For this reason, I really do think that having period accurate costuming, design and makeup is incredibly important when it comes to immersion and creating a visually cohesive world.

Nonetheless, to me, this part of the costume design is less important than what the costume design says about the story and the characters. As I said earlier, costume design is a very subtle but powerful narrative and visual tool to use in filmmaking. And for this reason, I personally think it’s more important for a costume to be efficient when it comes to storytelling than to try to achieve perfect accuracy. Simply put, a costume designer is not someone whose aim is to recreate historical garments perfectly (if this is your jam, I follow a bunch of creators on youtube who actually do that, using historical sewing techniques as well). Their aim is to use the clothing for a storytelling purpose.

There is this thread by fashion historian and curator Hilary Davidson on the subject of ahistorical costume design and this is what she has to say about Crimson Peak:  

“Kate Hawley's designs for Crimson Peak (2015) are immersed in artistic trends of the fin-de-siecle, making costumes that embody the period's aesthetic spirit without being completely literal” 

When it comes to Crimson Peak, are the costumes historically accurate. For the case of Crimson Peak, the answer is yes and no, at the same time. More than creating historically accurate costumes, Hawley wanted to create an atmosphere, with dreamy costumes that would serve a narrative purpose, and use historical sources as a guideline and inspiration Liberties will often need to be taken to complement the story and to serve the purpose of storytelling  nonetheless, I do think that the more researched and accurate the costuming is, the more complex and interesting it can be . and I do think it ended up being SO SO INTERESTING. 

Costume design is more than simply making historically accurate costumes, a costume designer needs to know fashion history and fashion trends, but ultimately, their job is not to recreate exact replicas of the clothing of a certain historical period. What a good costume designer has to do, is to create a wardrobe that fits the story that is being told, and fits within the general universe it's set in and gives you information on the character. What Hawley did was to respect the silhouette of the period, from the foundation garments to the outer garments, and then, when it came to the actual costumes, she could play around with the details to convey a certain mood and narrative. The underpinnings always do define the general structure and shape of a garment, and it’s one of the most important elements when someone wants to construct a historically accurate costume. Even if, like Hawley, liberties are then taken when it comes to the actual clothing, the “spirit” of the clothes is respected. From the corsets and to the petticoats and all the subsequent layers, it was important for Hawley to have all of these elements in a historical accurate way, because it would change the posture and the demeanors of the actors. It shapes the way they stand and the way they move through the different spaces. 

Visually, Crimson Peak is a masterpiece of a gothic romance. From the sweeping nightgowns to the imposing and sharp gothic mansions, and the scary ghosts behind the door, Del Toro and his team have created a movie that takes everything that is wonderful about gothic romance to the highest theatrical level, and I, for one, always enjoy this visual and cinematic experience. 

[threeletterslife]

Chana! What are some stories that have stayed with you through the years, and writing that has impacted your own?

ooh nice question! i wasn’t sure if you meant some of mY stories or others’ stories, so i’ll answer it both ways! (this post is crazily long i’m so so sorry)

some of my own stories that have stayed with me through the years: you & me both, over the moon and insurrection/the exam

y&mb was the first full-on angst story i’ve ever published. (before publishing that, i was actually known for being a fluff writer 🤡 i know, crazy, right??) but y&mb sits in a very special place in my heart. when i was writing it, i was happy with where my life was going (i’d finally gotten out of the slumps) and the topics showcased in the story actually really hit close to home so i was also seriously invested in the characters too. overall, it was my best work for a while. but looking back, i feel like i could’ve written it so much better. it was only like what? less than a year ago? but idk i love it but hate it at the same time. the kind of thing where i laugh and cry at the memories from it, but also would HATE to read it again. still, the plot of y&mb was something i developed for YEARS before i even attempted to write it, so yes, it did stay with me through the years. and i know for a fact it’ll stay with me for longer in the future

otm is an interesting one. i finished the series this year i think (which sounds so crazy,, it feels so long ago). but the plot i planned for years! i always save my *special* plots until i think i’m capable of writing them. i still think i should’ve waited a lil longer when i wrote otm because i’m not 100% sure that was my best work ever. but otm just makes me reflect back on the crazy times. like the characters in the story, i also felt so confused and unsure and NUMB when i was writing otm—mostly because the pandemic had just gotten serious in my country and things had started to become like a mf SHITSHOW :(( i connect so much with the characters in otm... (i mean, who doesn’t love an intj mc qUEEN??) so yeah. i also LOVE oc and yoongi’s relationship in otm. their romance is actually something i want with my future s.o. LOL (something subtle, something steadfast and most importantly—STEADY). i wish i could rewrite it now fsjfjj but that goes for all of my stories

insurrection/the exam kinda go together. i’ve had the idea for insurrection the longest out of ALL of these stories lol. i think i mentioned it before but i always felt so intrigued by a ‘school revolt’ kind of idea. so i always kinda wanted to write a lowkey satirical(?) story full of morally ambiguous characters and questionable academic organizations. that turned out to be insurrection, which i waited for (i think? three to four years?) before i finally wrote it. AGAIN, it could’ve been better, but at this point, let’s just accept the fact that i’ll never be satisfied LOL. insurrection’s welton high school is based on my own high school,,, so you can tell how shitty my experience with education was in my high school years 🥳anyways, that’s why insurrection is so important to me. i feel like, in a way, it tells my story (and my friends’ stories too). the exam is a less optimistic (more satirical) view on the education system. while insurrection focused more on the students (their passions, their will to rebel and ‘cheat’ the shitty system), the exam focused more on the unfairness that students’ intelligence could be scored with fucking TESTS. one test that determines your whole future. utopia and dystopia respectively represented privileged children (who were more likely to succeed in the exam) and the lesser privileged children (who would inevitably fail the exam because they were never given the resources). yeah, i think the exam could’ve been executed better, but i think the overarching theme was there, which i’m pretty satisfied with. i’m passionate about screaming that the american education system sucks (as you can tell by this painfully long paragraph) lol i’m thinking of writing a fic in the future about an education system that actually works!!

ANYWAYS I’M SO SORRY I WROTE SO MUCH FUCK. BUT THERE’S MORE,,, HANG ON

others’ stories and writings that have impacted my own!!

starting with published authors! i’m a huge HUGEJFLKDJFLSDJ fan of louis sachar (i’m convinced this man is a genius lol). i LOVED holes, i LOVED small steps, i LOVED fuzzy mud, i LOVEDDD the whole wayside school series. he’s so witty? and creative??? like i owe all my outrageous ideas to him because he probably single-handedly taught me creativity when i was a kid LOL another author i LOVE is fredrik backman. he writes the best slice of life/coming of age stories. i’m particularly fond of a man called ove and my grandmother asked me to tell you she’s sorry (which inspired nothing a lil green can’t fix!!). honorable mentions go to ishiguro’s never let me go, faulkner’s as i lay dying, juster’s the phantom tollbooth. omfg i also had a HUGE shannon hale phase (the goose girl, enna burning, rapunzel’s revenge)—very fairy tale-esque but so magical and charming and CAPTIVATING!! i owe all of these authors a huge motherfucking THANK YOU. because they built me up this far 😭😭😭i love authors who are able to fully develop their characters or have the most amazing world-building ever. i think that’s why i put so much emphasis on my characters too. i rlly learned from the best 😭😭

as for internet authors!! i actually IDOLIZED this one author from wattpad (she was SERIOUSLY underrated). and i know there’s a stigma around wattpad authors (lowkey rightfully so; there’s some nasty stuff on there) but chloe was so SO talented. she wrote like a poet. it was insane. i never saw anyone who had a way with words like her. we were actually pretty close for a while but lost touch over the years. anyways, she wrote this beautiful, heartbreaking story called chrysanthemum,,, she deleted her account though so it’s not there anymore. (i know. i agonized over this for hours). she also wrote a horror fic (creatures) that STILL chills me to the bones. she inspired me to try writing horror too (in the future, i will!) 

other than that, i love all of @inktae​’s fics! she’s also an AMAZING writer. (her writing style is so eloquent and elegant and ugh! perfection!) her stories will make you feel nostalgic and lowkey heartbroken. she also writes a lot about nature/being around nature—it’s such a nice, beautiful, serene feeling. (she’s also the master of bittersweet endings!) i think i became obsessed with bittersweet endings because of her LOL some of her works that literally breathed LIFE into me: the blue notebooks, below thunder showers, written on the sky, first light (all of them are worth reading. her fics make you want to become a novelist—the inspiration i get from them is amazing!)

another legend is @jimlingss​!! i still keep up with literally all of her works because istg she never disappoints. she has such a simple but fluent writing style, which i LOVE! it’s engaging through and through. and man, she has a talent for storytelling! but the one thing no other internet author can top is kina’s characters. some published authors can’t even develop a single protagonist in the 456 book pages they wrote yikes. (but just saying, kina can do it in like 9k words.) i have no idea how she does it but her characters just feel human—even if they're not, they STILL FEEL REAL??? (sorry i’m just fangirling) but like i’m serious, she really did inspire me to start putting more depth to my characters. after all, why would the reader be invested in a story if they don’t give two shits about the bland-ass characters?? her pivotal works that made ME wanna pIVOT my whole writing career: tears of a villain, flames and floe, game of temptation, head over heels to hell, a voyage to liberation, ghost in the machine, the weekend massacre, love pages, moirai, a piece of the moonlight

i mean look, i’d put down way more fics of kina’s that inspired me to become the writer that i am now,,, but i don’t wanna make this long ass ask even longer so ummm i’ll have to stop 😭😭but i am literally in love with all of these published and internet authors. i just don’t understand how they are so talented. i really DO learn from the best. and i learned different things from each author too!! 

all of these stories (mine and others) have impacted my writing in some way or another. from my own, i learned from my mistakes lol. from others, i learned how to be a better writer. you can only write as much as you read. i stand by that fact to this day

anyways i’m so sorry you had to read this whole fucking essay 😭😭😭😭

[nightmarenoise]

Just comparing two cartoons I love

I understand that nobody asked in any capacity, but here I go anyway:

It feels fair to compare Ducktales 2017 to Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2018), not only because they're only about a year apart and truly, what is a year, but also because they

1. Both use this style that looks like it jumped straight out of a comic book. Okay, it's mostly the solidly inked shadows, but it gives me, personally, comic-y vibes.

2. They have taken what's arguably the main characters (the triplets for DT, the Turtles for TMNT) and shaken the formula up a good bit. Were the triplets formerly indistinguishable and all had the exact same personality, interests and voice actor, they are now three entirely separate entities with different traits and appearances. And while the turtles had about one defining personality trait and looked basically the same, save for the color of their masks, Rise made them different species of turtle to justify giving them radically different designs and three-dimensional personalities. Both shows faced criticism for this decision from people who cannot deal with change. Despite this, in both cases, it just works and does so incredibly well.

3. The oldest bros wear red.

4. We have two middle bros associated with the color blue who are both voiced by Ben Schwartz.

5. Both shows have a focus on family, with Ducktales especially focusing on found family and Rise on brotherhood.

6. Anime references!

Ducktales has a larger cast overall, with a lot of different characters all interacting with each other and they all have the most pleasant voices I've ever heard in my entire life. It's all solidly animated, the style is consistent and the animation is fluid, the characters are diverse and they're all lovely in their own right, except for those who aren't. The writing is top notch. Everyone feels consistent despite the large cast and it's delightful to watch all those interesting people interact with each other in their own way. The show also handles its mystery elements and occasional action scenes incredibly well, building suspense and delivering laughs and gut punches without hesitation. They juggle different tones like a professional clown, except the true clown was us, the audience, all along, for ever having doubted them.

The overarching plot of Ducktales, for its first two seasons, was mostly to uncover the mystery of what had happened to the mother of the triplets and all that would entail. Mystery and mythical elements will likely continue to be afoot for season 3.

Rise works with less focal characters, we have the Turtles, Splinter and April as well as various bad guys, but more than makes up for it with a lot of animation. A lot a lot of animation and it's all high quality. There's usually so much going on on-screen that a watching it once isn't enough to catch it all. Despite that, it doesn't feel crowded or rushed. Lots of dynamic shots and incredibly-choreographed action scenes, but nothing the thoroughly solid writing has to hide behind. Even when the baddies aren't the main concern, they're still well-rounded, interesting characters with unique abilities and motivations. Although, most of the mutants are just really feral. Still a delightfully diverse cast.

The turtles on the other hand spent their first season trying to foil their various foes, from a yokai trying to mutate all of humanity, to his mutants, to dealing with random mythical stuff, to the nefarious Foot Clan trying to reassemble the Dark Armor in the shadows. It's generally a more action-driven show, but they still find the time for some heartfelt moments.

The triplets 2.0

Despite their conventiently color-coded caps, they were really mostly the same character possessing three different bodies at a time. Well, the times of eerie The Shining like-twins, except extended to triplets, are over!

We have Huey, the oldest brother, voiced by Danny Pudi. He's a gentle, intellectual soul who values red hats, science, scout badges and checklists. Huey is arguably the closest in characterization to the original triplets, with some additional neat freak sprinkled in for flavor. He tries to be the responsible older sibling and keep his brothers under control and out of trouble. He also seems to have the most fiery temper of the bunch and should clearly not be pressed to the breaking point. He's my personal favorite and I heard season 3 will bring more focus to him, which makes me elated to hear. 888/10.

Middle child Dewey, the blue one, voiced by Ben Schwartz, who will inevitably come for all the iconic blue characters. He's very clearly the middle one, because he craves attention and validation and occasionally dreams of being an only child. Dewey is the one who started the investigation into their mom's disappearance and kept it from his brothers, partially to save them from hurt, but also because he wanted to feel special. He's the most interested in going on adventures with their uncle, but can get reckless when doing so. He's a bit of a spotlight hog, who has his own talk show that nobody watches and sings his own theme song when he needs to get hyped up, or just to fill this silence. This may sound kind of negative, but rest assured, he's a good, sweet boy. The focal triplet for the first season. 500/10.

Louie, the evil triplet, a schemer and a conman. Voiced by Bobby Moynihan.  The youngest of the bunch. While they call him evil, he's really far too lazy to cause serious harm, except for when it's his laziness that's causing him to take dangerous shortcuts, oops. He dreams of making a fortune, but without having to work for it and preferably without any responsibility either, thank you. He also occasionally dreams of being a spoiled fat cat. Despite his chill demeanor, he can be a bit of a crybaby and those tears are only fake 50% of the time. I feel like he likes getting babied, but mainly because that means there's less work for him to do. Season 2, which focuses more on him, reveals that he's actually quite brilliant, capable of seeing all the angles and giving him some chessmaster-like qualities. He needs to learn to use those abilities for good. 665/10.

Hi, she's Webbie! The honorary triplet, who also got a massive makeover, from annoying token girl tagalong to socially awkward, adorkable action girl. Be careful who you call ugly in middle school, indeed. Like a more ferocious  Mabel Pines, she has a grappling hook and years of martial arts training under her belt. Webbie can absolutely decimate you, but won't, because she's a sweet girl. Voiced by Kate Micucci. She continues to like unicorns and the color pink, but assuredly in the most badass of ways. She helped Dewey with his quest to uncover the mystery of his missing mom, but works well with all of the triplets, with Huey taking her under his wing a bit and Louie trying to get her to chill out more. Webbie is a sweetheart and I would die for her, were it not completely unnecessary, since she's more than capable of taking care of herself. ∞/10.

A lot of the supporting cast also saw updates and changes, for instance Gyro being a genius without social skills and Fenton being an adorkable scientist, but again, they work really well. They're interesting new takes on beloved characters. Even the new additions to the cast are great. In short, I love me some birds and am excited for season 3, Disney, get your scheduling together.

The Turtles 2.14.2 - I upgraded my upgrade in the middle of the upgrade

Also, these guys have seen so many different iterations in their, what, 30+ years of existence. As someone with no prior attachment to the turtle brand, I don't have a lot to say here. Leo's not the leader in this one and Raph has more personality than being angry at Leo for being the leader. Donnie is not just a random nerd spouting technobabble and Mikey has more depth than yelling the catchphrase every now and again. Apparently, this made people upset. I don't know how to help you with that.  The middle brothers exude some high chaotic energy and should not be left unsupervised, but the oldest and youngest seem fairly stable.

Raphael, the red-bandana'd alligator snapping turtle is an imposing figure. He's the oldest and therefore team leader by default. Raph has no reason to be upset at Leo, so he isn't. Despite his ferocious appearance, he's a soft guy, who likes teddies and doting on his brothers, but fears puppets. He's a bit of a knucklehead, most of his plans involve smashing things with his tonfa and he may refer to himself in the third person in the heat of the moment, but he possesses emotional intelligence, is open about his feelings and looks after his brothers. He is big and and strong, but his heart is bigger and stronger. He especially loves small animals animals, who don't usually return his feelings. RIP in F. This responsible guy is voiced by Omar Benson Miller. 300/10, very soft. Somehow both the heart and the big guy of the group.

Donatello has been upgraded from second-to-youngest to second-to-oldest, not that it makes much of a difference. His color of choice is purple and he continues in the character's tradition of being a nerd, although this time, with self-confidence. Donnie is very sure of himself and his abilities. As a spiny soft-shell turtle, he's less sure of his shell, but that's okay, he's made robotic battle shells to make up for it and his bō is the mother of all multitools. This guy can build you a tank out of a buggie and upgrade your animatronic into something to give the FNAF franchise a run for its money. He's the smartest of the four and when not focused on his phone, very focused on the mission. Due to having to deal with his bros, he can be exasperated a lot. Thinks of himself as an emotionally unavailable bad boy, even though he's just really sensitive and wants his dad or someone parent-aged to tell him they're proud of him. Theater kid. 999/10, give the middle child a hug and some coffee, you can't tell me he has a healthy sleep cycle. This sarcastic nerd is brought to you by Josh Brener.

Leonardo, Ben Schwartz's second blue character (Sonic (2020) being the third under his belt) and also his second ninja after Randy Cunningham. He's not the leader. He's still a good character. Leo has approximately 800 charisma and unwavering faith in both, his family and himself. Mostly himself though. Like Louie, season 2 revealed that he is a master of prediction and playing people like the cheap kazoo you can't tell me he doesn't have to play Darude's Sandstorm on. He dabs, he boards, he will pun you to death and back and he has an Odachi that can cut through space. Leo likes hogging the spotlight when given the chance and wants to be showered with attention and praise. Having four kids really only means twice the middle child nonsense. Leo is a red-eared slider, the original species of the TMNT, as I've been told. He's also the best at being a ninja, but usually too lazy to really apply himself. He's younger than Donnie, but tumblr suggested to read the two as twins, since they're approximately the same age, which sheds a whole new light on their dynamic and frankly, makes way too much sense. 420/10, for our memelord Leonardo.

Michelangelo, the eternally youngest of the bunch. An artiste, who puts stickers on himself, tags the lair, has a spiritual connection to his skateboard and the color orange. Mikey loves all things arts and craft, but he also tries his hands at cooking. He idolizes famous TV chefs and can do pretty much anything out of and into pizza. He's funny, without being annoying, like I feel a lot of other iterations of this character are. It's an easy pitfall for comic relief guys, but this one is more than that. If that's an issue, feel free to leave my house. Mikey is genuinely sweet and happy, optimistic and soft, but also the one brother who knows when it's time to take off the gloves and just get straight to the point. He's open about and in touch with his feelings. He's just baby. Don't treat him as one though. A lot of promo stuff says Leo has taken him under his wing, but he's had more episodes together with Donnie. Not that I'm complaining, they work very well together. Mikey and Raph are both the emotional centers of the group. Does not mind being yeeted after retracting into his shell, as box turtles may do. (Disclaimer, do not yeet actual box turtles!) His weapon of choice is a Kusari-Fundo that can turn into a fire-demon and is about as unpredictable as he is. Likes to jump and bounce around. Probably does parkour. Voiced by Brandon Mychal Smith who is audibly having a blast. 500/10, just an all around Kusari-fun guy.

For last, but certainly not least, April O'Neil, my girl, who saw an upgrade from flip-flopping love interest who was vaguely ninja-ing, but mostly damsel in distress-ing, to all-around spunky powerhouse and by God, she is glowing. Rise has her more as a big sister figure to the turtles, and I will not be told otherwise. She is independent and don't need no man, mutant or no. She has her teleporting pet, her faith in herself, her pinpoint baseball hitting skills and the a complete and utter lack of fear. Despite being a weirdness magnet, April is perfectly comfortable. She would like to be able to keep a job, maybe, but she has loving friends who respect and love her. Surprisingly good a ninja, fearless and fun. Occasionally thinks about being popular at school, but it's really not a big concern, she's not gonna throw a tantrum over it or anything. April is very chill. Not likely to be damseled. More likely to run after the turtles and clean up their messes or save them and everyone involved is fine with that.

The late 10's are really coming in to show us how dynamic and well-written female characters that aren't just "strong", but three-dimensional and relatable are done, huh?

An iconic performance by Kat Graham and ∞/10 for being the honorary better ninja non-mutant non-turtle and best big sister.

Here we have it, two older properties, having new life breathed into them to make them fresh and enjoyable. Have a new spin put on them, to better fit in with our current world. You can feel the love oozing out of every frame. At the end of the day, of course, it all boils down to taste and whether or not you like something. I gave Ducktales 2017 a go because a lot of the staff from Gravity Falls went to work on it and if you don't know me, I love me some Gravity Falls. It's a good show and I enjoy it. I recently got into Rise and while I don't know much about the people working on it, it is also a greatly enjoyable show, easily on the same level as Ducktales, if not above, yet with far less people speaking about it. Which is frankly saddening. I can only recommend the two of them wholeheartedly. If you love animation, yourself and occasionally feeling things, these are for you!

[cetaceanhandiwork]

Disneyland Reloaded

So a week ago, give or take, I replied to a post on another website which basically asked “if you were given the job of rebuilding Disneyland, would you change anything?” The question got me thinking a fair bit about the Anaheim Disney resort’s overarching themes, and where they work or don’t work, resulting in a giant three-part comment to fully explain my redesign.

Today, I feel like sharing those ideas with y'all over here, too!

Let's begin with the assumptions that...

we can get permits in Anaheim but no new land...

we have a budget that could theoretically rebuild the whole park if it had to but not too much beyond that, and...

original Walt-era Disneyland stuff may be difficult to move without damaging or destroying, and deliberately destroying and rebuilding it, while allowed, may not be desirable for reasons of preserving park history.

Given that, my high-level approach would be a refocusing of each park's experience on its core concept. I envision three parks:

Disneyland - worlds of "yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy" - embodied by the genres Walt himself grew up with.

A reimagining of California Adventure that synthesizes the original idea of "Califorina, the real place you are visiting right now, presented as a fictional place to explore" with the running Pixar theme of "secret peoples and communities that live alongside humanity, in the here and now, just outside our line of sight".

A new third gate that focuses on stories of larger-than-life heroism and villainy - the native park of Star Wars, MCU, Pirates-the-movie-series, and other similar properties.

This effort, as I see it, would have to start with some Tetris-ing, in an attempt to make the most of the limited Anaheim acreage:

Utilidors. This Disney World system - of putting backstage and CM areas underground - was invented precisely because WED wished they’d done it in Anaheim. If we’re starting from scratch, we can backport this design and immediately unlock a lot of space.

Drop Disneyland Drive north of Cerritos underground as well.

Consolidate remaining parking. At worst, this is a third Mickey & Friends that encompasses all other resort parking. At best, we get permits to put underground levels on parking structures and reduce the footprint further. Put this in the southeast corner of the resort; get rid of the Paradise Pier Hotel for now.

Strip Avengers Campus off of DCA, strip Galaxy's Edge and the Fantasyland Theatre off of Disneyland. This will free up enough space to put DCA and the GCH east of Disneyland, with its gate on the other end of a rerouted Downtown Disney.

That done, we can move on to the main event.

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Of these, Disneyland itself would see the fewest changes, both in the interests of preserving the history and because it's already fairly close to what we want. The paradigm is as it always was: each "land" represents a genre in microcosm, matched not against any particular IP, but presented as a... prototypical or archetypical space in which all those stories might occur.

This is a good framing device and a solid core concept, and I'm not gonna mess with it. However, there are still a few things I'd rearrange.

For instance: Critter Country would move to the eastern side of the Rivers of America, placed between the rural American Frontierland, the funny animals of Toontown, and the fable-laden Fantasyland. I imagine it taking up sort of the same space as the old Big Thunder Ranch and Fairgrounds, connected with Frontierland on one side (with Splash Mountain still bordering the Rivers of America) and Toontown (bordering Winnie the Pooh) and Fantasyland (bordering a new indoor/outdoor Robin Hood darkride) on the other.

Toontown would need few changes, other than a careful touching up of the effects to match modern standards. I would like to squeeze in one minor expansion, though, if possible, by moving the Monorail wheelhouse: a small Disney Villains themed area - perhaps a seedy watering hole? - nestled away in Downtown Toontown.

Fantasyland, meanwhile, would reclaim the Theater and some backlot space (thanks Utilidoors!) and use that room for a couple new rides - particularly, a Beauty and the Beast attraction and a Frozen attraction. I resist here the impulse to put Frozen next to the Matterhorn mainly because that Fantasyland real estate has another important purpose: the Fantasia and Tomorrowland lagoons get rejoined, and become the show area for a Little Mermaid ride, boarding near Small World, that actually takes place "unda da sea". (The technology for underwater, low-occupancy-vehicle ride systems does exist in the current state of the art, although it'd need some iteration to theme as properly Fantasyland.) As much as I would personally regret seeing the submarines go, I can't deny that their ride system is claustrophobic, stuffy, and poorly accessible, and that guests deserve something with lower "minimum requirements" to ride.

Compared to those, Tomorrowland would get a more comprehensive refocusing. I've posted before about my take on Tomorrowland's DNA: that isn't just "the future", but "the challenge and promise of the future". People talk a lot about how it's a Land that's perpetually out of date - that our vision of the future changes too fast for the Park to keep up. Aesthetically, that's a fair point. But on an attraction level... we don't have to aim a mere five minutes into the future to talk about its challenge and promise - to talk about the future optimistically, as as better world we can reach towards today and eventually grab onto.

Space is, of course, an easy example; space has been an "unreasonable but longed-for future" since Walt's days. Bring back the mission to Mars. Add a space elevator that you can ride as an observation tower, or take the "express" and make it a droptower that uses its drop to simulate zero gravity. On a more terrestrial side... put in a dinosaur or giant animal dark ride - fantastical experiments in biology, at once excited for the potential there, and cautious about how important it is to get right. Maybe do something with Inside Out as a "fantastic psychology" concept. Give the Land an AI caretaker character, puppeteered by several CMs behind the scenes to create the illusion that it's a single person multiplexing.

You can keep Star Tours - the galaxy of Star Wars may be a gritty and cynical world, but Star Tours is a lighthearted and hopeful take on it. You can keep the monorail, too - it's still futuristic to Americans - and route it through the Land's rides the same way the PeopleMover once did, and the same way the boats and trains do in other Lands. Maybe you can even fit in a Wall-E based attraction - now that's a story that's an emulsion of the future's "challenges" and its "promise" if ever there was one in Disney's catalogue.

As for Adventureland? It's got a different obsolescence problem than Tomorrowland: not that the world has left a particular vision behind, but that the world has left the whole genre it represents behind. Walt grew up with the "Adventure" genre, of pith helmet explorers in the Southeast Asian jungle or the African veldt, but we don't really have that genre anymore. And with Disneyland as a worldwide tourist destination, it becomes... strange to have people coming from the places that genre was based on, only to see this caricature of the places they know reflected back as it was seen by clueless Brits a century ago. I want to believe there's something sensible to do with this Land, something that can preserve its essence and history while still making it meaningful to the stories we tell today and the people who were on the other side of the old stories, but I honestly don't know how to do it, or what it would even look like when we were done. All I know is that if nothing else I need to stick a giant bookmark here, because I'd have to do something.

Main Street, finally, would remain mostly unchanged by the advancing years, except for one upgrade: its illusory second floor would at last become a real one - not as shops, but as Dream Suite-esque prestige accomodations. On any given night, roughly half of these would be booked like on-property hotel suites, at rates befitting the rare magic of spending the night inside the Magic Kingdom's pomerium. The other half would be handed out at random to guests who bought resort/GNH packages, or otherwise booked their trip such that Disney knows they're staying overnight, to put that magic, in theory, within every guest's reach.

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So for Disneyland, the changes have been less structural, and more focused on rearranging an existing structure to update and future-proof it.

California Adventure, on the other hand, needs something deeper, because at the moment, its theming is... confused. When it first opened, it was designed single-mindedly as a pastiche of California as a whole: Hollywood, San Francisco, Yosemite, Sonoma, Monterey, the Central Valley, and Santa Monica Pier. Over time, this theming - which proved less compelling than the Imagineers had hoped it would be - has eroded to make room for Intellectual Properties that could find no space on the other side of the Esplanade.

Today it's a hodgepodge of the old California theming, skin-deep Pixar references, and an increasing amount of Marvel stuff. There's no central idea like there is at Disneyland, or at Epcot and Animal Kingdom down in Florida.

Where I see the potential here is in Pixar's long-running theme: "what if [fill in the blank] were people", often imagined as those people secretly existing in our modern everyday world, which just so happens to be paired with a park that's themed to a real place, in the present day.

In other words, what if we made that pairing of themes explicit? What if we lean into the idea that you're "exploring" California, both to discover what's prosaically there, and what's fantastically there? What if we present that sort of Californian adventure?

I'm imagining a park pomerium based on the concept of the "road trip", inasmuch as it is the classical way to explore California. No miniature rail here; you'll pile into a trailer towed by Goofy and Max in their (now window-tinted) car, or by the Onward boys' van, or so forth. (I'd love to get the Cars cars in on towing duty but I don't know if the animatronics are good enough yet.)

You'll still pass through places like Grizzly Peak (where e.g. Bugs might also Live), a Pacific Wharf that's annexed some of Paradise Pier (where we can Find Nemo now that the submarines are closed), and the Hollywood Backlot (where city-dwelling nonhumans - like Monsters and Muppets - might lurk). Radiator Springs would be easily reconciled to this Park concept - melding it with the old Route 66 and I-5 travellers' towns, building it about half for humans and half for cars.

I would need external advice, at this point, to figure out how far this theme can go. I see... some potential in making explicit room to pay homage to Mexican heritage of California (with its hidden world being Coco's fantastical take on the Land of the Dead). But it'd have to be done respectfully, and would be easy to screw up without guidance on what exactly qualifies as respectful or not respectful.

From another angle, I'm also not sure yet quite where Toy Story fits into the picture, but every element of the park's Pixarish theming points to that headline IP needing to fit in somewhere.

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And with that taken care of, comes the question of the third gate. We position it across from Disneyland proper, in California Adventure's old real estate. Pragmatically, this mystery Park must support stories like MCU or Star Wars - the new additions to Disney's IP stable, set in soft sci-fi universes chock full of larger-than-life heroism and villainy. It would have more strict, single-setting-per-Land theming, to support Galaxy's Edge, the Avengers Campus, the new Artemis Fowl series, and so forth. Perhaps Tortuga as well - the cinema vision of Pirates is popular enough that it should be able to support a home, and building one for it here will ease pressure off of its Disneyland predecessor to be flagbearer for an IP it was never designed to host.

How does one support this with a gateway/hub Land? How does one define a pomerium around it? Strict set construction as a principle of the park implies that we have to invent a new IP for this purpose, something Kingdom-Hearts-like but less... cartoonish, to match the less cartoonish worlds it lets you visit. A futuristic mode of transportation seems called for to ferry guests from Land to Land. Perhaps this is where the iconic Disneyland Monorail design finally finds its place in Disney fiction and not just history: to be - within this new setting - a vehicle for interdimensional travel. The park's hub would then have platforms for two Monorail lines: one bound for "Earth 1313: Tomorrowland, Hollywood, and the Disneyland Hotel" (for we would expand the resort-wide monorail track to support park hopper travel), and the other bound for this new park's immersive Lands.

The third gate's position across from Disneyland proper, combined with the increased use of underground tunnels and infrastructure, adds another potentially useful gimmick: the ability to link it to Disneyland in a manner similar to Universal Orlando's Hogwarts Express. Imagine park-hopper-only lines where your Star Tour will land on Batuu, or your Pirate cruise will end in Tortuga.

There would, of course, be a new hotel attached to this park, just like the Grand Californian was attached to DCA on its opening. I'll leave the specifics of this up in the air; it could be another Galactic Starcruiser, but it could just as easily be based on some other property.

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And what of the rest of the resort?

As mentioned, Downtown Disney shifts north, encroaching slightly into what's currently the backstage area of New Orleans Square, to better link up with the new position of DCA. So as not to "isolate" DCA, the third gate's entrance would be halfway along this new route.

Trams would use underground infrastructure to cross from the southeast unified parking area into the DTD/Esplanade corridor at the appropriate places for different Parks.

The Disneyland Hotel would remain, as a nod to its historical status, but against two park-adjoining hotels, it's clearly the farthest from the action after all this rearranging - hence hooking it up to the Monorail as a way to give it connectivity.

[theyoungkleinwriter]

Writing Blind #22: Romantic Subplots

Yup folk’s, we’ve moved on to the one thing every single young adult novel seems to have these days; the glorious, sometimes messy, thing called the romantic subplot. Before I start I’d just like to say I won’t be going near the topic of the dreaded love triangle since I think that deserves its own time to shine. But still the romantic subplot will not go wanting as there is still a lot to discuss. Beginning with a definition the romantic subplot can be defined as a usually intimate relationship between two characters, one of which being the protagonist, that is secondary to the primary action of the plot/conflict. Now this is a very loose definition and not all characters will fit into it perfectly, however I think it covers enough ground to warrant using.

Now these subplots tend to follow a usual format of two people growing closer together to form some sort of relationship that the readers can find realistic and believable. This typically develops over the course of the story with the climax often coinciding with the story’s end. In all forms of media this is the moment where the relationship is confirmed with some sort of kiss or some signal to the audience that they are in a relationship. And then the story ends and we don’t get to see how the relationship pans out. GENIUS STORYTELLING!

But if I’m being honest this is one of the key thing’s with romantic subplots. A lot of them go into great detail of how the characters meet, how they fall in love over the course of the story and how they finally get together. However in real life that is only the first step into a relationship, yes its the most difficult part and its the part we, as readers, are most invested in but if you’re like me you may want to see what comes after. Of course usually we never do and in a lot of stories the established relationships can feel cliched. It’s why I love stories where the romantic subplot focuses on characters in existing relationships with genuine loving characters who care about one another. And although in those stories the subplot drama revolves around some superficial problem resulting from a lack of communication I still find them enjoyable to read. Of course the young adult genre is full of relationships that are mostly okay however some go too far in the wrong directions. My assumption is that most of you are well read and therefore I don’t need to go into detail as to why in romantic subplots things like assault and consent are not typically treated with the respect and seriousness that such issues should be treated with. In books where these things happen and are treated as part of a romantic subplots “natural” development I end up hitting my head against the wall: hard.

But not to digress too much this topic will never go away because as readers we are fascinated by any example of romantic relationships and oftentimes I feel these fiction relationships are used to act as role models. This is both good and bad for obvious reasons. But don't worry, I've found five key stages that should help any of you who want to include a saucy slice a romantic subplot.

Theme

Before you even consider writing the subplot you have to plan it, and before you plan it you have to decide what the focus of the subplot will be. This is where the overarching theme of your subplot comes into play. This comes first and foremost as exploring what is the initial relationship between the characters. Are they old friends? Are the rivals? Are the even enemies? Whatever it is you need to have a clear picture in your head as to how they begin. Furthermore you should look closely at what sort of relationship is it. Essentially how is the themes of the relationship representative of the overall plot of the story. Is it secretive? Is it based around betrayal or perhaps its about overcoming the odds. Whatever you choose just remember that the novels genre will play a large role in the decision as you should want it to fit the tone of the story.

Dramatic first encounter

This obviously only applies if they haven't met before and also dramatic is a bit of a stretch but there certainly has to be some sort of significance to the first time they meet. This is useful as it provides a chance for some excellent prose and can signal to the audience that the love interest is of some significance to the story. Better yet you can use this moment to also set your tone for the relationship by the ay in which they meet. Do they meet in the heat of battle clashing swords or is more that one of them slips on a banana peel right into the others arms? Again the freedom of choice is up to you.

Realisation of attraction

You know whilst love at first sight is good and has some interesting interpretations this doesn't mean that the realisation of attraction has to be instantaneous. Like life we usually don’t fall in love right away. Hell saying I love you on the first date is a big no no and a red flag if I ever saw it. For me the best subplots are the ones where they fall in love over time after getting to actually know each other; weird right? But I will say not to worry too much as depending on the genre you will only have a limited number of pages that you don’t want the subplot to completely overwhelm.

Conflict

Like I said earlier often with relationship in stories there is conflict. Real world relationships have conflict of course but it usually stems from two core things; a lack of understanding and a lack of proper communication. Often writers will tend to use a miscommunication as a point of conflict in a story as its usually a surface level problem that can be easily fixed. One common example I see is where one character emotionally hurts the other in order to protect them in some way, shape or form. Honestly I’d rather see more stories look at a lack of understanding as the source of conflict as most relationships I know have problems stemming from those issues. The only problem here is it shows the relationship is flawed and thus readers lose faith in it and the characters which isn't what a writer wants. Basically its just another risk that a writer has to use nothing but their charm and wits to navigate.

Climax

Yes, make all the inappropriate jokes you want to but its true in a sense. Most romantic subplots will end in some form of climax for the characters. of course this is always secondary to the primary climax of the story. I’m going to also lump this in with the story’s resolution as I feel in this case the two go hand in hand. Now with examples where the subplot ends with a relationship the resolution is typically some grand gesture or big moment like a kiss or proposal of some kind. In other examples where there were relationship issues the climax resolution can be the couple ending up back together. But again this isn't the rule. I’ve had my heart ripped out by stories as subversions of this are always saddening. Whether its tears of joy or sadness I’ll still be crying by the end.

Ultimately the most important thing to consider is that the romantic subplot is just that, a subplot. Not that it should be treated as lesser to the main story, instead think of it like a support beam on a house, or a narrative crutch, something to hold up the main story and compliment it by working with it. This means keeping it thematically relevant and present throughout. This doesn't mean go and constantly remind the readers every chapter but in chapters where it isn't the focus just drop a line or two the help to construct and build upon the subplot. And one more thing to ask yourself as both a reader and writer is this; what does my story gain from the addition of this subplot?

This has been TheYoungKlein and I’m writing blind.

[davey-in-a-minivan]

west of words

time for some analysisssssssss -this song changed a lot from the bootleg to the cast recording (lyrics under the cut-- italics are cast recording only, parenthesis are bootleg only). -these changes mostly make it more abstract and increase the foreshadowing (ex. “There’s a world I knew as me/before, before/my room, my pictures/a sky, no fires burned” becomes “There’s a world I knew as me/before, before/a story entered, a tiny key we turned”). -so instead of starting with the image of bombs & her abandoned home, we’re focusing already on the fantastical aspect -this is also the scene where the bunker people’s personalities are set up -the nurse calls tabitha “a trial”, suggesting her role as queen of hearts -the way alice shouts “alfred?!?!” makes me think this is the first time she’s seen him in the bunker, so he’s probably just been rescued from the streets -tabitha’s body language after throwing down the paint can (?) to distract the nurse is so cat-that-just-swiped-a-cup-off-the-table and i LOVE her for it -(also thank you wingwoman) -i cannot tell who the “since she couldn’t save her sister” is directed towards... alice? tabitha? the nurse? -alfred: “alice, i’m falling away” echoes ‘some things fall away’, which OUCH -he also says “the stars are so bright, they hurt my eyes”. previously, dodgy and yellow dress girl don’t know whether it’s day or night, so while it’s possible he just came in from outside and is just reporting a recent symptom, it sounds more like he’s delirious and seeing stars in the fluorescent bunker lights -alice’s “I’ll bring you to our world again!” a) suggests super sweet childhood reading sessions and b) seems to reflect the opening line of the song “there’s a world I knew as me/ before, before” -wonderland is linked to Alice & her imagination-- she calls herself a world, and she invites alfred to be healed via her reading/imagination. she thinks that if alfred will go along with her to a world under her control she “can make him well again”-- ie, return him to his previous state. of course, the overarching theme of the story is that she-- and therefore her self/world/wonderland-- are changing whether or not she wants, and she can’t stop time or go back to the way things were-- even if they were healthier, simpler or happier.

@the-story-of-the-tucks i’m tagging you in case you’re interested but you are under no obligation to read this or forthcoming rambles!

ALICE: There’s a world I knew as me Before, before A story entered (My room, my pictures) A tiny key we turned (A sky, no fires burned) West of words (A book of wonder draws us onward To music heard West of words) ALICE & ALFRED: Now we're falling through the ground And falling slow The house is tumbling down Still, we know, we know All that yearns West of words, west of words ALICE: A rose remembered draws us onward ALICE & ALFRED: A world adjourned West of words ALICE: There's a hatter holding tea On madder lawn A waltz of children With tall and talking birds West of words ALICE & ALFRED: There’s a golden silver song Of the afternoon A caterpillar poof He's calling you Pages turn West of words, west of words The lonely tortoise Crawling onward A moon that burns West of words TABITHA: And something whispers of something gone A little Cheshire purr ALICE & ALFRED: West of words ALICE: West of words

[hollywayblog]

How “The Umbrella Academy” Surprised Me

In many ways, good and bad.

This is a spoiler-free review of season one of The Umbrella Academy

I remember when The Umbrella Academy comics came out. It was 2007 and I was a broke thirteen-year-old living in suburban Australia (a cultural wasteland!) so I never actually read them, but as a rabidly obsessed My Chemical Romance/Gerard Way fan, I managed to fold The Umbrella Academy into my identity anyway. I’m not sure exactly how that works, but hey. Adolescents are powerful creatures.

As a distinguished almost-twenty-five-year-old (I’d like to acknowledge that I took a small break here to have an existential crisis) my walls are free of band posters and my eyes are no longer encircled with that thick black eyeliner that always managed to look three days old and slept in, but I still got kind of a thrill when I learned that The Umbrella Academy was being adapted into a Netflix show. It was something I had always assumed I would end up reading, back in the depths of my emo phase (which is probably more accurately defined as a My Chemical Romance phase) but then just kind of forgot about. So, great, I’m simultaneously being reminded that this thing exists, and freed of the nostalgic obligation to go seek out the comic and read it. As much as I love reading, comics have just never been my thing.

Then the trailer came out. Honestly, it kind of killed my enthusiasm. It just looked kind of generic. Apocalypse. Superpowers. Bold characters. Lots of action. My takeaway was a big ol’ “Meh.” Frankly, without my pre-existing attachment to Gerard Way and the very idea of The Umbrella Academy, I highly doubt I would have given it a chance - not because it looked inherently bad, but just because I’m a hard sell on the kind of show it appeared to be.

But it’s Gerard Way, man. I had to watch at least one episode.

The Umbrella Academy centres around the famous-yet-mysterious Hargreeves family. The seven children - six of whom have special powers - were adopted by Reginald Hargreeves, a cold and severe patriarch who didn’t even deign to name them. He made them into “The Umbrella Adademy,” a crime-fighting squad of tiny children who would later dissolve after a tragic incident. Now they’re grown up, and Dad’s dead. His spare and tense memorial is what brings the adult Umbrella Academy back together, and this is where the show kicks off.

We’re treated to a rather clumsy beginning; a gripping opening scene followed by an unimaginative montage. We get a glimpse of each of the Hargreeves’ regular lives, leading up to and including them learning of their father’s death. It’s a heavy-handed introductory roll-call, complete with on-screen name cards. It’s a baffling waste of time, considering we don’t learn anything in this montage that isn’t later reiterated through dialogue or behaviour. We don’t need to see Klaus leaving rehab to know he’s an addict. We don’t need to see Allison on the red carpet to know she’s a movie star. It dragged, even on a first watch not knowing that the whole thing would be ultimately pointless, and I’m surprised no one thought to cut it and let us go in cold with everyone arriving at the mansion for the memorial - an opening that would have both set the tone and let us get to know the characters much more naturally. Maybe it feels like I’m focusing too much on this, and that’s only because it gave me a bad first impression - and I want anyone who reacts the same way I did to stick with it. It really does get better.

The further we got from the montage the less gimmicky it felt, and I started to sense some sort of something that I liked about this show. Stylistically it was interesting, and there seemed to be an underlying depth; room for these characters to be more than brooding ex-vigilantes with daddy issues. I was intrigued enough by the end of episode one to keep watching, and was gratified as the series went on and truly delved into those depths. There was a memorable turning point for me around episode five, where Klaus (the wonderful Robert Sheehan) was given space in the runtime to visibly, viscerally feel the effects of something he had just been through. It sounds so obvious, and so simple, but it’s something that is frustratingly glossed over so often in fiction. You know. Fallout. Feelings.

It wasn’t just that moment, though. Prior episodes laid the groundwork, developing not just Klaus but all the Hargreeves. Each character feels real and grounded, each of them uniquely good, uniquely bad, uniquely damaged by their upbringing. It’s this last point I particularly appreciate, this subtle realism in the show’s execution of abused characters. We see how siblings growing up with the same parents does not necessarily mean they got the same childhood, endured the same abuse, or that their trauma will manifest in the same ways. And certainly, it’s important to see the different coping mechanisms each of them have developed. Furthermore, there is a lot more to each of these characters than just their trauma. There are seven distinct personalities going on, and I have to applaud the writers for this commitment to character. It was largely this that kept me hooked (I’m such a sucker for good characters), and to my own surprise very invested in the way things unfolded.

I love the tone, which found a cool rhythm after the pilot. The pacing was decent and the character development balanced well against the plot. I like the little quirks that remind you of the show’s comic book roots, like Pogo, the talking ape and Five, the grouchy old man in a teenager’s body.

Weirdly, I like the apocalypse stuff, which they managed to put their own spin on despite it being such a played-out trope at this point. I like that the show found small ways to go in unexpected directions, even if the overarching plot and big twists weren’t all that surprising. And most of all I love that in a world saturated with forgettable media, I woke up today still thinking about this show.

Even if not all of my thoughts were so generous.

See, for everything I love about this show, there are also quite a few things that rubbed me up the wrong way. I can’t list them all without going into spoilers, but I think it needs to be said that there are like, a fair few problematic elements in this show. I couldn’t help but notice that while women and people of colour are the minority in this cast, they also seem to cop the worst abuse. Only two of the Hargreeves siblings are female. One of them has no powers and the other’s power is influence (a non-physical power). Their “Mom” is literally a robot created for the sole purpose of caregiving; she dresses and acts like the epitome of a submissive 50s housewife. The Hargreeves sisters are also the ones most likely to be left out or ignored when it comes to making decisions, with one of them even literally losing her voice at one point (yikes!). Beyond that we have some truly disturbing imagery of violence being inflicted on women of colour almost exclusively by white men, and the fact that the only asian character is um… well, he’s literally dead. Before the show even starts.

Overall the problem is not just insufficient diversity, with white men taking up most of the screen time, dialogue and leadership actions, but the way that the few female and non-white characters are depicted.

These are all depictions that, in a vacuum, would be innocuous. I mean, just looking at the root of many of the show’s problems exemplifies that - the root being that all of these characters were white in the source material (uh, a problem in itself, obviously). It wasn’t a problem, for example, when Dead Ben was not the only Asian character but just another white Hargreeves sibling. And wouldn’t it be nice if we lived in a world where you could race or gender-swap any character and have everything mean - or not mean - the same thing. But life is more complicated than that. Art is more complicated than that.

Honestly, I’m not sure if we should give props to the developers of The Umbrella Academy for diversifying their cast when the fact is they did so - and I say this gently - ignorantly and lazily. Race-swapping willy-nilly and leaving it at that ignores a lot of complex issues surrounding the nuances of portraying minorities in fiction, and leaves room for these kinds of harmful and hurtful tropes to carelessly manifest. So many storytellers don’t want to hear it, but let me tell you writer to writer that it does matter if the person being choked is white or black, male or female, trans or cis. It does matter who’s doing the choking. Camera angles matter. Dialogue matters. It’s all a language that conveys a message - about power and dominance and vulnerability in the real world. Because art doesn’t exist inside a vacuum, as inconvenient as that might be. Having the empathy to recognise that will actually make us better storytellers.

In shedding light on these issues, I am not dragging this show. I am not condemning it. And although it is problematic in itself, I’m not even saying it’s problematic to enjoy it. I’m pulling apart the lasagne, looking at the layers, poking and prodding at the individual ingredients and saying, “Hey, the chef probably should have known better than to put pineapple in here. Maybe let’s not do that next time.” I’m also saying, “When I get a mouthful with pineapple in it, I don’t enjoy that. It’s jarring and unpleasant. But it doesn’t ruin the whole meal for me.”

I’m getting better at allowing myself to dislike something on the basis of its shitty themes. To not have to justify myself when something is problematic in a way that just makes it too uncomfortable for me to watch. That wasn’t the case here. I won’t lie; the bad stuff was no afterthought for me. That kind of thing really gets to me. It does ruin a lot for me. But in this case, the show redeemed itself in other ways; mostly by just being a compelling story with characters I liked. I’m trying not to justify that too hard either.

So I liked The Umbrella Academy, and I hope it gets a second season. I also hope that the creators will listen to people like me who want to be able to enjoy their show even more and create more consciously in the future.

And please let Vanya be a lesbian.

The Umbrella Academy is out now on Netflix

Watch this show if you like: witty characters, iconic characters, complex characters, mysteries,  dark themes, superpowers, vigilantes, comics, dark humour, epic stories, shows about families, stylistic TV shows, ensemble casts, character dynamics, dramedies

Possible triggers (don’t read if you care about spoilers): suicide, child abuse, claustrophobia, addiction, violence, violence against women, violence against women of colour, death, torture, incest, self-harm, pregnancy/childbirth, kidnapping/abduction, blood, mental illness, medication/themes of medication necessity, blood, manipulation/gaslighting, homicide, forced captivity, guns, hospitalisation, medical procedures, needles, PTSD, prison rape reference (1).

Please feel free to message me if I failed to include a relevant trigger warning and I’ll include it.

[schoolofmaaa]

Yining Shi on Approaching Technology Creatively, Accessible Tech and Educational Tools

This week we spoke to Yining Shi, one of our main instructors for the Bots & Machine Learning program taking place this July in Berlin. In this interview, Yining reflects on her trajectory, the importance of educational tools, <a hotpot interlude> and what we can expect this summer. 

Tell us a bit about yourself Yining, what brought you to where you are now?

Well, I did my undergrad in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and my Masters at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, where I mostly focus on creative coding and machine learning. I like building tools to craft a better learning experience for people. I like solving complicated engineering problems to enable creative outputs. I also like the idea of making complex concepts and technology more approachable for beginners. Currently, I’m an adjunct professor at NYU where I teach a class called Machine Learning for the Web. I also work at Sourcemap as a senior software engineer.

“I also like the idea of making complex concepts and technology more approachable for beginners”.

Where are you currently based?

In Brooklyn, New York City.

I see some of your works are based on data, physical computing, and fabrication. What are some of the overarching themes in your work? What intrigues you?

Even though these projects use different technology, they are mostly based on the idea of visualizing data to express ourselves in a creative way. What intrigues me is exploring millions of different media to express our ideas. I’m always curious about new technologies and new experiences.

For example, Friendship.am is an expression of my digital persona that visualizes 10,000 of my messages. Every circle represents one message, and they are arranged around a clock. The size of each circle depends on the length of the message. I also color-coded keywords in every message. For example, ‘What are you doing?’ is blue, and ‘haha’ is green. This was an abstract visual portrait of my digital communication habits and by looking at what messages I sent, when I sent them, and how they change over time, I got a lot of insights about my digital persona that I was previously unaware of. And so I also became very interested in personal data and how can I make them more meaningful in people’s everyday lives.

In Friendship.am, each circle represents one messages arranged around the clock by the time it was sent.

Color-coded personal messages.

Puppy lamp is another example. It’s a playful experience that allows friends to express themselves in a new way. It is a digital interaction designed to work with a physical object. People can use the app to send color and text message to their friends and light up their friends’ Puppy Lamp. It is a way to express feelings to your friends with colors, lights and environmental ambience.

Puppy Lamp

Can you tell us a bit more about p5.playground, and your interest in building educational tools?

p5.playground is my thesis at ITP, NYU. It’s an interactive programming tool for designers and beginners to understand drawing functions in p5.js.

It has two modes, live coding mode (when you change the code, the sketch will be updated in real time) and the playground code, when you manipulate the shapes on the canvas like you do in photoshop or illustrator, the code will be automatically updated.

If you move and resize the shapes on the canvas, the code that generates the shapes will be automatically updated.

I remember at the first class of Intro to Computational Media(ICM) at ITP, we learned how to use Processing to draw shapes. I noticed that some people who were new to programming found it hard to draw complex shapes with code. After talking to them, I realized that it was because people might have difficulty understanding the coordinate systems: where is the origin, x,y axis.

p5 playground tries to use this WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) interface to reinforce a cognitive link between the code and the shapes on the canvas. Now, p5.playground is used as a learning tool in the ICM class at ITP to help students understand how to draw shapes with code.

I love building educational tools because I really like the idea of making complicated concepts and technology more approachable to everyone who is interested in learning it. Not everyone needs to become an engineer when they grow up, but if anyone who wants to learn about a kind of technology should be able to learn it easily without any struggle.

Technology is everywhere in our life, and problem-solving skills are important to us. I want to make the learning experience a little easier for people, especially students who don’t have access to a lot of educational resource. I also enjoy the moments when people have told me that the tool is helpful to them or they made some projects using this tool. That’s the biggest reward moment for me.

“Not everyone needs to become a engineer when they grow up, but if anyone who wants to learn about a kind of technology, they should be able to learn it easily without any struggle”.

You are currently teaching Machine Learning for the Web at NYU, what are the topics which you most enjoy teaching?

Machine Learning for the Web is a class about using ml5.js and tensorflow.js to create interactive web applications. It starts with running pre-trained models and re-training models in the browser using high-level APIs from ml5.js, as well as explore the Layer APIs from TensorFlow.js to create models from scratch using custom data.

I really like teaching week 3: Build your own CNN model with tf.js. We start with using a pre-trained DoodleNet model to classify 345 doodle classes, and use transfer learning to customize our own classes, then we use tensorflow.js’s layer API to build our own model and train it in the browser. I also like teaching Style transfer and Pix2pix.

Train a doodle classifier in the browser with tf.js

Now, a more human-oriented question! What is your all time favourite meal?

It has to be Sichuan chinese food. My favorite is a kind of dish called hotpot. This is the hotpot my mom made.

How do you express yourself creatively through code?

Most of my recent projects have been all about using Machine Learning models to make some creative and interactive applications in the browsers.

Style transfer with ml5 is an interactive demo of style transfer, where it can recast the content of one image in the style of another image. people can either use the webcam, or upload an image, and choose a style from the artwork, and it will generate a new image with the style they chose. See live demo here.

Pix2pix Edges2Pikachu is an interactive drawing tool that automatically colors your Pikachu drawings in real time. It’s built with tensorflow.js. You can play with the live demo here.

KNN Image Classifier with ml5 is a an interactive demo that can recognize customized classes through webcam. For example, it can recognize rock, paper and scissors from your webcam.

DoodleNet is one of my most recent project. It can recognize your drawings. It’s trained on all 345 categories from Quickdraw dataset, 50000 images per class. You can play with live demo here.

You published Jumpstarting the Arduino 101, what do you like about this tool?

My journey with machine learning started with this book. It’s a book that helps you create projects with Arduino 101 using pattern matching & neural networks via the Web Bluetooth API.

It includes 4 projects, each project builds upon the concepts of the previous one. The last project is a gesture recognition media controller.

For example, people can train a complex gesture to start the music, and then train another gesture to stop the music. This is designed to be a starter example, which people can extend and make their own versions of it.

Gesture recognition media controller, define any gestures to play/pause music.

Use Arduino 101 to control a heart in a webpage through bluetooth.

I really like Arduino 101 because for a board that cost $30, it offered a lot of features out of the box like Bluetooth LE and motion sensing, but my personal favorite feature was that the board had a dedicated machine learning chip and came with an open-source pattern matching library. Machine learning can be a classic example of a topic that sounds intimidating, but the ease with which beginners could do complex pattern matching and gesture recognition projects with this board demonstrated the effect accessibility has over learning.

Can we talk a bit about Bots & Machine Learning? What will you be teaching us here in Berlin and what do you hope students will get out of the program?

Yes! I’m very excited about teaching this course with Matthew Plummer Fernandez!

We will talk about common and popular machine learning models, how they work, how to train these models, and their use cases in creative projects. The output of the class will be interactive ML applications.

The topics that will be covered are Image/Sound/Doodle Classification, Face/Pose Recognition, Image Style Transfer, pix2pix Image Transformation, and Image Synthesis. The techniques and neural networks we will use and build are Transfer Learning, Convolutional Neural Network, Generative Adversarial Network and more. We will use tools and frameworks like Runway, tensorflow.js, ml5.js and tensorflow.

I really look forward to meeting you in Berlin, explore all the ML models and technique, and build creative projects together!

What is the change you want to see in the world?

One thing that I really want to see is more people getting having easier access to education. There are a lot of facets to make this change but what I like focusing on is to make the process of learning new things more enjoyable and fascinating. I’d love to create more educational content and help beginners to learn. I am hoping to make more video tutorials about programming that people from any part of the world could watch and build their own projects based on the examples from the video.

Yining teaches in Bots and ML program, 1. - 26. July. Apply here: http://schoolofma.org/bots/

[skepticaloccultist]

The St Cyprian Scholar

An interview with José Leitão.

José Leitão is an author and scholar as well as a Portuguese Saint Cyprian devotee. Besides a PhD in experimental physics from the University of Delft, the Netherlands, his current research focuses on using ethnographic and folkloric methodologies to map the concepts of folk magic, sorcery, and witchcraft as described in the records of the Portuguese Inquisition.

The translator of "The Book of St Cyprian: The Sorcerer's Treasure", and the Bibliotheca Valenciana", both on Hadean Press as well as his collection of Portuguese folk tales related to the Cyprian Book "The Immaterial Book of St Cyprian" on Revelore Press and numerous articles he is developing a considerable body of Portuguese language works translated for the first time into English.

In my travels to Portugal for field research I cross paths with José in the university town of Coimbra, where he is currently conducting research. Over a handful of coffees I managed to get him to give me an interview about his work and research. He is almost as much of a recluse as I am!

  +++

For a man with a background in physics you are making a considerable mark on the history of occult literature in the early 21st century. Is there some long term plan or are you more of the wandering academic/perpetual scholar type?

Let’s not start making history before it happens… you’re not the only skeptic around here. From what I’ve observed occult literature shifts its focus often and in unpredictable ways. I may yet be a one hit wonder.

That being said, I suppose it might be a bit of both, or perhaps neither… at least in regards to my written material. To be honest I had no plan behind my first book, it was something that just kind of happened due to a number of circumstances in my life and at the time I really didn’t think I would be writing anything else besides that.

It’s hard for me to describe this in detail at this point, because it’s difficult to tell what where my genuine feelings then or what are later rationalizations. The fact that I have a physics PhD is largely circumstantial, it barely has anything to do with anything I’m doing right now and I’ve turned my back on that world probably permanently. There’s likely no real point in going into details here, but after a very long time in that world I simply came to the realization that that life was not conducive to my happiness; a reflection which was very much aided by my work and translation of The Book of St. Cyprian. Once I figured that out I started doing everything I could to walk away from where I was, and that’s what I’m still doing. So, it’s not so much about being a wandering or perpetual academic, it’s really about the path of least emotional resistance and unpleasantness at this point.

But, of course, I could have chosen to go down the purely ‘practitioner’ way, but I chose academia instead. I’ve also come to realize that I can’t function properly outside of a university or a university-like environment, so I fully identify as an academic at this point, and indeed there is a lot of wandering involved in that.

When we talk about the myths and folklore of the people of the Iberian peninsula very little of the primary sources have made their way into English translation. Why now, what do you think is driving the growing interest in Iberian folk magic?

I think there are a number of issues at play simultaneously, and I don’t ascribe a necessarily ‘supernatural’ origin to any of them. It reads a lot like regular human geography and white people taking their heads out of their asses (btw, Iberians aren’t white; we simply think we are because we’ve always had somebody darker to compare ourselves to).

I read this as the reality that the major trendsetting countries (USA mostly) have had an increasing immigrant population from Portuguese and Spanish speaking countries for years now, but what makes this moment different is that the white people living there, due to contemporary political reasons, have started to pay them attention (and not always in the good way). This means that, right now, a lot of new concepts are being brought into cultural visibility which were exclusive to Iberian and South and Central America until very recent, not because they were hidden, but rather because no one gave a fuck.

You need to also remember that besides the long standing white disdain for anybody south of the American border, in Europe we still suffer the stigma of the Black Legend. The narratives of accepted modernity have always been historically presented, firstly, by Protestantism and, secondly, by the Enlightenment, both of which were (and are) ultimately profoundly hostile to Catholic Iberia, so the situation wasn’t (or isn’t) much better here. We have a European stigma associated with emigration and typical association with menial labor in central and north Europe. Iberians are still exotic and given to stereotyping as under educated simpletons (think Manuel from Fawlty Towers); a nice place to visit during the summer and be entertained by our quaint non-Europeaness.

So, a reappreciation of both these cultural spaces is happening right now, but I see this as happening mostly for mundane reasons. But also… regarding the Iberian aspect in itself in America… I’m going out on a limb here, so feel free to call bullshit on what follows, but I also think that there might still be some extra racism involved in this. ‘Iberian’ sounds old and ennobled; you get images ancientness, castles, knights errant, good food and wine and beautiful dancing gitana girls. For a white American, it removes the source of the practice from your immediate (brown) neighbors and places it in an old (assumed white) Iberian no one really knows anything about.

Lusitanian culture specifically is of particular interest to me personally. Remnants of pre Roman cultural ideas seem to be scattered within the larger dynamic of Portuguese culture. Do you think that forms of folk magic practice found in say the 2nd or 3rd century have continued down through the ages?

Interesting you mention the Lusitanian. One of the major (unintentional) overarching themes of my next book is actually Portuguese cultural identity, and I offer some criticism on the Lusitanian problem from a contemporary practitioner perspective.

This is really the sum of it: the identification of the Lusitanian as the par excellence pre-historical Portuguese (the Portuguese before there was Portugal) is a politically motivated construction of the Estado Novo for identity and cultural control. The Lusitanian continuity thesis was one of Vasconcelo’s babies, but this was far from being universally accepted and during its time it received very heavy criticisms, mainly from Alexandre Herculano, one of the greatest and most cursed Portuguese historians. However, due to this and other difficult issues regarding the, at times, overly romantic Portuguese historiographic tradition, Herculano was for a long time largely ignored, and Vasconcelos pretty much became the regime’s scholar of choice.

I’m not disparaging Vasconcelos, he was good at what he did, but scholars need to be given the right to be wrong. His work has, in the past, been used for sinister purposes and that shouldn’t be ignored anymore. You see, if you are a heavy paternalistic right wing clerical regime and you do a hard streamline to the Lusitanian, a people we still don’t really know that much about, as the ‘archaic’ Portuguese, you are able downplay every other major population influx into Portugal and fashion our ‘archaic’ identity in whatever way you see fit. This means that you get to downplay Neolithic dolmens and standing stones, Phoenician, Carthaginian, Greek, Roman, Jewish and Muslim/North African influences, and construct an idealized and racially pure Christian Portugal. The Lusitanian, as an identity, are essentially nothing.

But obviously I can’t say that there aren’t Lusitanian influences in what Portugal is or that this doesn’t exist in Portuguese folk magic. That would be another form of insanity, mainly because we simply don’t know what the Lusitanian did. But to isolate the Lusitanian like that is historically problematic. So… no, I don’t think 2nd or 3rd century practices are particularly visible, at least not more than Roman, Jewish or Muslim ones.

The idea of "Lusitanian" culture being used as a kind of nationalist symbol in which to rally people in support of a regime is fascinating. Years ago I studied kaballah with Lionel Ziprin in NYC and he had a whole theory about the "publicly accepted kaballah" that was presented by Gershom Scholem. How the texts that get translated and the things that are accepted as truths were part of a broader narrative meant to occlude certain aspects of historic kaballah. How involved do you think the church was in the utilization of this "Lusitanian" national identity?

That’s hard to say… one thing that also needs to be understood is that, even if the regime guided itself by Catholic morals and ideals, and the Church did draw immense social advantage from this, the Catholic hierarchy actually had very little power to influence the political decision making. Ultimately, by the accurate manipulation of words and an irreducible concordat, Salazar could instrumentalize the Church for political gain and identity and behavior control, and it ended up becoming as much a prisoner of the state as anybody else, leading to Catholic dissension in the 50s. So, probably the Church didn’t really have an active role in the utilization of the Lusitanian, it was simply another tool the regime could manipulate and fit together to selectively construct a useful identity and narrative of itself. Although I’m sure many within the religion didn’t really mind this.

In reading your "The Book of St. Cyprian: The Sorcerer's Treasure" on Hadean one concept that really interested me was this idea of the "mar Coalhado" or Curdled Sea. It struck me as both an afterlife in the model of the Norse Hel, but also some kind of purgatory or abyss. Though I have been unable to find much in English! Is this concept still common in Portuguese culture?

That’s also one of my favorite concepts, interestingly. This is something which is pretty much still in the air for me.

Ultimately, on a general or ‘global’ scale, I don’t think I can give you any actual answer to what this concept might be… or any such concept to be frank. If we’re going back in time to look for such ideas we must remember that we’re going into circumstances when the circulation of information had its limits. Most researchers tend to bypass this problem by implicitly assuming that such folk concepts are ‘ancient’ or ‘archaic’, which meant that they should have had time to spread homogeneously across large geographical areas. I tend to avoid this approach because it removes active agency and imagination from the non-contemporary, non-educated, or non-white individual practitioner. That being said, a few other scholars have noted the occurrence of mentions to the ‘Mar Coalhado’ or something of apparent equivalence in a few procedures. Most often nobody ever offers anything on it except its occurrence, but I recently ran across a particular book by a fellow Coimbra researcher called António Vitor Ribeiro, O Auto do Místicos, which seemed to shed some light on the matter. It’s a cool text, exploring ideas, descriptions and practices of mysticism in Portugal from the clerical and literary circles down to the folk and rural levels. It’s a very ambitious work, but he tend to do really clumsy simplifications and linearization via some sneaky moves using Ginzburg or Eliade, and he uses words of complex meaning and implicit significance very frivolously… I like my methodologies to be more hygienic. Anyway, in one of the many interesting Inquisition documents he finds there is a mentioning of something referred to as the ‘Aguas Salgadas’, or ‘Salty/Salted Waters’. It’s not a perfect fit, but it does seem like somewhat similar to what we’re discussing. But what’s more interesting is that this isn’t in an actual Inquisition processes and this wasn’t mentioned as part of a particular folk magic procedure.

You see, there is a secondary collection of Inquisition documentation in Portugal called the ‘Cadernos do Promotor’, or the Prosecutor’s Notebooks, collections of denunciations, confessions or observations taken by Inquisition prosecutors that never made it into actual processes. There are several reasons for this, most often no crime was actually identified for a prosecution to be mounted, and other times it was because the reports and accusations are so outlandishly bizarre that the Inquisitors couldn’t make any theological sense of them in order to determine if what was being described actually constitutes heresy.

In this case, what was being reported were apparent visions, visitations and possessions by Mouras. Thus, a woman called Maria Leamara would fall into possession ‘rolling on the ground making it quake and making great arches with her feet’, saying while in this state ‘Let us go, let us go, let us go, let us go to the burrow of the moura, let us go, let us go, let us go, let us go across the salty waters, let us go, let us go, let us go, let us go to the Boulder of the See’. Then, when questioned about what any of this meant, she would only say that ‘they’ wanted her to deny Christ, and that the ‘salty waters’ meant outside of Christianity.

This whole thing then seems very akin to an anti-world, or ante-world, particularly evident by this apparent connection with Mouras, who apparently live across the Salty Waters and potentially the Curdled Sea. If Mouras are described and interpreted as these strange being of extremely remote existence, echoes and inhabitants of a bygone time, the banishing of something to this space would be akin to banishing it to somewhere outside of creation; this cosmic-now, or Christianity as that which created and defines the cosmic order we currently inhabit.

But in truth you have a number of varieties of this type of concept all across Europe. Very common formulas for the banishing of illnesses, bad weather or evil spirits into this type of space usually go along the lines of ‘go to where no baby cries, no roster sings or no dog barks’, for example, and I do see these as being somewhat equivalent concepts, as they both seem to describe a place removed from a humanly conceived cosmos, but these punctual examples of Moura crossovers do give it a particular local flavor.

If you think about it this is actually an extremely violent form of banishing. You’re basically casting something out of creation itself (as an anthropocentric concept). I think Jonathan Roper (one of my favorite folk magic scholars) has some material on this if you’d like to look him up.

But if you want to talk about actual application… even if some people might still use this concept (and it is quite common), I don’t think that what it actually signifies really is of much concern, even if it might be understood as significant. When you’re talking about magical formulas you always need to admit that there might be an aspect of simple habit or ‘tradition’ in the use of certain words and expressions. The impulse to break down an idea like that into tangible and rational concepts is pretty much a ‘learned’ and contemporary preoccupation. In all truth, a much more common occurrence in inquisition processes and documentation is that when an accused is questioned about a particular procedure he was witnessed as using, and which apparently calls upon a variety of spirits and characters, if asked who these characters are he will most likely answer that he simply don’t know. My reading of this is that it’s not their job or preoccupation to know; the words don’t have to have a rational meaning, which is something also supported by the observation that these types of traditional magical formulas frequently use nonsensical expressions, onomatopoeias or forced alliterations. The complete understanding of every single words and expression used beyond the cultural meaning of the procedure itself as a whole is a preoccupation which is mostly non-existent in the environment where these procedures occur. Both contemporary scholars and contemporary occultists are descendants from this overly analytical mentality, and it seems to me that the first step in actually understanding these is to admit that we are ultimately alien to this form of thinking.

You brought up the ‘Cadernos do Promotor’, or the Prosecutor’s Notebooks, which seem like a massive untapped resource in the folkloric study of witchcraft belief. Do you know if these types of records are only found in Portugal? How extensive are these documents?

To be honest, I’m still pretty new to that particular database and I’m not that familiar with the bureaucratic functioning of other Inquisitions in order to answer that question. However, in terms of how extensive… I’ve counted 352 volumes, some of which are 14 centimeters thick.

These are it. The thousands of processes everybody likes to talk and fetishisize about are just the tip of the iceberg; this is the real deal. Pure, uncut, unadulterated, untortured, uninterrogated words. No leading the witness, no feeding the answers to the accused, no theological projection, no nothing; just people voluntarily and spontaneously saying the crazy shit they saw, crazy shit they did and the crazy shit that was done to them.

The amount of work needed to work this source is soul crushing, but the potential is just breathtaking. Even beyond just the information in them… I’ve only scratched the surface on these, I’ve so far mostly been reading what other people have written about the reports in the Notebooks, but the things in there are dangerous on a cognitive level.

This goes back to the whole issue of the contemporary analytic mind, you need to remember that this is a window into a whole cosmology, worldview, understanding and interaction with the universe we simply don’t understand and are irreducibly alien to. Reading a few snippets has been enough for me to start to question reality… the ease and apparent normality which some things are described is just disturbing. And it gets Lovecraftian at the drop of a nickel… like ‘I was making a sandwich when all the sudden a door opened on the dark corner of my room. A Mouro with a red hat and shiny shoes walked out and lead me into a palace where the other Mouros were dancing and I met the Virgin Mary, who had the face of a monkey, her sister Saint Quiteria and King Sebastian and his five children. This has been happening every night and my husband complains that he wakes up when the Mouro takes me away during the night’… it’s stuff at this level and worst (or better).

With your recent complete translation of Jerónimo Cortez's "Bibliotheca Valenciana" you break into a realm of seeing and understanding the cosmological context in which much of the Cyprian magical traditions are rooted. A point before hard science, where the role of magician/scholar/alchemist merge and formed a kind of proto-scientist. What in Cortez's opus do you see as the most valuable content for those trying to understand the context of Cyprianic magic and early modern Iberian cultural beliefs in general?

Well… there’s a point in your question I can’t let slide. There is no such thing as a ‘proto-scientist’. The only way you can say that is if you root yourself in the contemporary time, take the definition of ‘scientist’ as it exists currently and project back in time to where it didn’t exist nor did it make sense (that’s the way most scientists think and why you can’t trust them to write their own history). So, the Cortez books don’t describe proto-science, they describe the science of their time, which is just as valid in its time as ours is in our time.

But regarding your question, there are a few points I wanted to make with the Bibliotheca Valenciana. The first of these is pretty straightforward: the Cortez books are not only one of the major sources for some of the later forms of the Cyprian Books, but they are themselves one of the major resources for your average Portuguese (and Brazilian) folk practitioner. While the reference to Cortez is actually fleeting in The Book of St. Cyprian I translated, as you move along the literary tradition of Cyprian Books, the repacking of material from the Physiognomy and the Lunario becomes ever increasing, particularly in Brazil. This by itself, in my own conception of what the work I’m supposed to be doing is meant to be, not only justifies the writing of that book but actually demands it.

The second point is probably more on the line of what you are alluding to. Besides the immediate relevance these books would have for someone interested in St. Cyprian related practices, they very efficiently describe what would be the early modern Catholic cosmology in purely functional terms and straight across social classes, even if this might at times not be completely explicit in the text. Note that there isn’t a distinction here between science and religion. Those are western academic categories and a person placing herself in the environment from where those books come from would not make this distinction in any way.

So, the point was not to simply offer context for St. Cyprian practices, but really to try to open up early-modern Catholicism as a still functional magical worldview and to offer the chance to approach the spiritual structures of the Church with an eye for (a rogue) practicality. If, as you say, Iberian folk magic is in fashion, if you try to reframe many of these practices into a Protestant cultural background (which is where Anglo-American occultism is based at), and if you’re serious about what you’re doing, you’ll run into more than a few bumps on the road. So the point was to offer a cosmology for when (or if) a cosmology is necessary.

And my final point with that book was part of a personal issue I’ve been working around regarding the nature of grimoires. I’m sure there are some purists out there who will vehemently disagree with me, and they might have a point; but I’ve come to think that that title cannot be solely given to a book by its author. If you analyze the way, historically, certain books are reacted to by the environments they enter you start to realize how arrogant it is to claim that one book is a grimoire in exclusion of another. ‘Grimoire’ should at times be a behavior description. It shouldn’t be about ‘this book is a grimoire’, but rather ‘I act towards this book as if a grimoire’. Once again, I believe that the denial of this is a ‘learned’ issue, a thing of high society and a claim of authoritarian elitism. So, to me, the Cortez books looked like Catholic grimoires in form and function, and they were certainly treated as such by people over here for hundreds of years, and logically they overlap with The Book of St. Cyprian. This is a line of work I intend to keep on exploring, and I’m actually right now planning on putting together something else further articulating this; some 18th century Catholic books I’ve recently fallen in love with.

When you talk about the Cortez books being used like grimoires, were his books perceived in Iberian society as "dangerous" or otherwise taboo in the way that Cyprian's Book was? Or do you mean more from a practical standpoint that the material in the book was used in much the same way one uses material in a grimoire?

I mean it from a practical standpoint mostly. This is something I’m still trying to figure out completely, but the construction of fear around the Book of St. Cyprian seems to be quite more recent than the Cortez books.

Overall I haven’t found that many references to Cyprian in the 17th-century, so it’s hard to say for certain what the image of The Book was for people familiar with it back then. But anyway, the emotional reactions to the two were probably very different. Although Cortez was a pioneer in the general prognostication literary genre, books of that sort weren’t particularly new or persecuted. They could at times be frowned upon (which lead to many being given false publication cities), and used as circumstantial evidence to prosecute someone accused of illicit practices, but they were never a particularly fearful thing in anyone’s eyes.

Witchcraft in Portugal is very under researched. It's my understanding that the history of witchcraft and its persecution is very different in Portugal than in neighboring Spain due to lack of an Inquisition in Portugal. What facets have shaped what we would call witchcraft practices that separate Portuguese and Spanish traditions?

First of all, a correction: Portugal did have an Inquisition. It started off slightly later than in many other countries, in 1536, but it lasted into 1821, so we had plenty of it over here. Now, what usually distinguishes it from many other such similar institutions was the absence of witch-hunting. While the practices perceived as witchcraft were still very much against the law, and if found these would be persecuted, there was no major active effort by any institution to actively search and persecute ‘witches’.

The only period where we do have anything close to a witch-hunt is actually in the 18th century, when you have a marked rise in related accusations. This instance had, for a long time, been somewhat of a mystery, but Timothy Walker in his Doctors, Folk Medicine and the Inquisition has very efficiently related this to an active effort by Coimbra trained doctors to eliminate folk healers and New Christian competitors from the market by becoming Inquisitional snitches. But overall, the number of witchcraft cases (and we can throw ‘superstition’, ‘magic’ and ‘sorcery’ in there) on the Portuguese side of things are actually quite reduced, seeing as the Inquisition was much more preoccupied with the persecution of hidden Jews (real or imaginary).

One other side of this is that the narratives of diabolical witchcraft popularized in other European countries didn’t find a very strong foothold here, leaving many of the descriptions of practices and ‘folk magical’ procedures free from learned projections, interpretations and prosecution. And finally, one other important particularity here was that witchcraft accusations didn’t seem to have a very pronounced female persecution aspect to them, with the divide being 40% male and 60% female… which really throws a wrenched into essentialist feminist witchcraft narratives.

What must be remembered is that witchcraft image construction is always culturally located, and to weave a Pan-European narrative is to fall into historical fallacies and anachronisms. Over here the typical targets of persecution were individuals who had no clear connection to any ‘public’ or ecclesiastic institution and had an uncertain source of income. In this category you then have widows, beggars, vagrants, Jews or day to day swindlers and small fry businessmen… and there are no significant Sabbat descriptions.

Comparing the case with Spain (of which I’m not an expert in by the way), it should also be noted that the usual portrait of the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, in regards to witchcraft persecution, are inaccurate… that is another echo of the Black Legend. In Spain there were actually three parallel tribunals with authority to persecute witchcraft and related practices: the Secular, the Episcopalian and the Inquisitorial (mostly active in urban centers), and out of all of these the Inquisitorial was actually the most lenient. This has to do with the very Inquisitorial process, which tended to be extremely bureaucratic (leaving an immense paper trail which can be followed today, contrarily to the other tribunals which didn’t keep much of a record and consequently become less historically visible) and it was actually quite complex in terms of finding anyone guilty of such ‘immaterial’ crimes… again, against popular opinion and whatever savage nonsense was happening in Protestant Inquisitions. In order to condemn anybody to death for witchcraft, there needed to be proof of an explicit satanic pact, which was nearly impossible to achieve. Consequently, what we see with the Spanish Inquisition is that people accused of witchcraft or magical practices in rural areas would frequently flee to a city in order to be judged by an Inquisitional court because, even if they could end up condemned of something, the chance that they would be sentenced to death was much smaller. Maria Tausiet has a nice book on this actually, Urban Magic in Early Modern Spain, although she makes some horrible mistakes in her dealing with magic and folklore in general, going as far as quoting the Libro Magno de San Cipriano (from the 19th century) to explain spirit summoning in the early modern period…

The same thing is true of Portugal. Magic and witchcraft cases very rarely ended in death. It was much more common to give the accused a tap on the hand, give him or her a fine, have them make a public abjuration and them ship them off to one of the colonies or some forsaken place in the country. But you do start to find more common death sentences in relapse trials, but this once again wasn’t related to witchcraft itself, but rather because this implied that your original confession and abjuration had been a lie, which constituted sacrilege and was a considerably worst offense.

Ultimately, what in my opinion would distinguish both countries in terms of witchcraft narratives is something that goes beyond this straight duality of Portugal and Spain. True, we have had our borders nicely established for many hundreds of years and there are indeed certain distinctions that can be made between one side of the line and the other, but the error that this carries is that it is often assumed that whatever exists on either side of the border is itself homogeneous. There are some clear overarching motives and witchcraft narratives both in Portugal and Spain, but given the particular persecution circumstances, there are probably much stronger regional distinctions than national distinctions. There’s a very interesting book by Gunnar Knutsen, Servants of Satan and Masters of Demons, which very clearly demonstrate how ethnical and cultural differences between Northern and Southern Spain actually give rise to different forms of witchcraft narratives. I believe this should also be detectable in Portugal, and you could expect clear narrative distinctions between the North and the more Muslim influenced South.

Witchcraft image construction and narrative distinction is a very subtle field of work, and why I usually avoid talking about these issues with self described witchcraft practitioners. Contemporary witchcraft narratives tend to be monolithic and essentialist, and these are all pseudo-historical construction. I don’t mean this as an offense in any way; contemporary witchcraft has its own real history, and this is not in any way less ‘noble’ or worthy, but it’s most often not the history it tells of itself.

Contemporary feminist witchcraft, for example, while having a concrete and positive purpose in today’s society needs to be understood as being constructed over a particular narrative which is entirely local and politically motivated. The general tendency to want to apply this particular narrative, constructed by characters such as Margaret Murray and Gerald Gardener based on flawed and biased reading of historical documents, is a violent form of colonialism (curiously, a Patriarchic mode of behavior), frequently using anti-intellectualism claims in order to deny concrete historically observed practices and traditions that don’t fit a particular worldview.

Established religious traditions, be them Christian or Pagan, tend to have the same responses to what they perceive as attacks on their theological legitimacy and power monopoly. It’s the same mentality with a different opinion.

That was a bit of a tangent to your question I suppose… but as far as a distinction goes, that’s my position. I think a clear blind spot in Iberian Inquisition and witchcraft studies (and not just Iberian) is the common disregard for folklore and local culture to help frame and contextualize the several different practices being placed under the same category of ‘witchcraft’. This is once again a reflection of the ‘learned’ position of academic culture which is still a direct descendent of the actual Inquisitors who created this category in the first place (Wouter Hanegraaff has some nice material on this… although he doesn’t explicitly deal with the Inquisition and certainly not Southern Europe).

What projects do you have coming up?

I have a few things in the air right now. First and foremost, I spent most of last year traveling and researching for a new Cyprian book, and I’m hoping to have that published before the end of this year. This is one I’m very proud of and I think it’s safe to say that I found documentation that probably nobody had ever looked at (people have surely seen it, but not really looked).

It’s going to be something quite big I think, in the literal sense… it’s about 400k words long.

Other than this I have a few things on the drawing board. Like I already mentioned I’m playing around with a few 18th-century Catholic books from which I can make a very cool compilation of very pragmatically practical procedures involving Saints, exorcism and blessings. I think a thing like that would work very well with the Bibliotheca Valenciana, since the Bibliotheca is all about describing a Cosmology and this other one is all about practicality.

I have also a good list of papers and essays I’m working on, both as part of my current academic studies and my general writing. Most of these are based on particular selections of Inquisition processes of interest. There isn’t much of a study of magic and esotericism in Portugal, so this is the type of work that needs to be done in order to bring attention to understudied intellectual and religious currents over here. And, logically, in about four year I hope to have a thesis on folk magic and religion written.

  José has organized a spectacular one day conference, "Colóquio Peculiar: Transdisciplinaridades improváveis", on occult and esoteric subjects to take place 8 June, 2018 at the University of Coimbra.

[cherry-valentine]

Winter 2019 Anime Season, What I’m Watching:

My Roommate is a Cat is easily the cutest series this season, possibly the cutest in the past several seasons. Your mileage may vary, depending on how much you like cats, but for me the show is a delight. Following a reclusive young author who recently lost his parents (the only people he interacted with on a regular basis) as he bonds with a stray cat he decided to take in on a whim, the show cleverly splits its time between the viewpoints of the human protagonist and the cat. The smartest thing the series does is show both viewpoints of the same events, first from the human, Subaru, and then from the cat, Haru. And somehow, even though we’re viewing the events for the second time, Haru’s view is more compelling. The show is by turns genuinely funny and genuinely touching. Subaru reminds me of a less extreme version of Handa (from Handa-kun and Barakamon) in that he’s socially inept and usually assumes the worst intentions from those around him. Haru is a somewhat feisty young cat who thinks she’s protecting her strange, hopeless human. Haru is a bit rough around the edges after spending much of her life as a stray, and her tough attitude keeps the show from getting too saccharine. As it stands, the show is just the right amount of cute, sweet, awkward, sad, and funny. Very high on my watch list.

Meiji Tokyo Renka is yet another historical otome series (seriously why do so many otome anime have historical settings?) featuring a high school girl being sent back in time to the Meiji period. This is, of course, one of my favorite time periods just for the clothing alone. The character designs are varied enough to make all the guys stand out from each other and the colors and backgrounds are lovely. The heroine, Mei, is much more comical than the standard otome heroine and is refreshingly proactive in her own story. She’s surprisingly independent in a time period when that was probably frowned upon. There’s a strong supernatural element to the story, not even counting the time travel aspect. There are spirits in this series that only certain people can see, Mei being one of them (and it’s nice that there are several others in the main cast who can as well, preventing her from seeming too conveniently special). It seems like these spirits can come in many forms, from cute animal spirits to literal ghosts to characters in novels springing to life and escaping the books to run amok. The show is certainly not dull. The romance is almost shoved to the background to make room for spirit shenanigans, but I’m not complaining. One of the more fun otome series in recent memory.

The Promised Neverland is easily my pick for best show of the season. It has a fantastic setup, with a first episode twist that I did not see coming (I knew something was going on, but my guess was way off the mark). It has a unique art style that makes it stand out, fluid animation, awesome opening and ending themes, a kickass heroine, and some heart-stopping cliff hangers. It’s the show I look forward to most each week. There’s only one minor quibble I have with this series, and that’s the weird way faces are drawn. The mouths seem too high on the faces, to the point that I kept thinking their mouths were their noses. I’ve gotten used to it as the episodes rolled by, but every now and then I still notice it. It’s just... irritating. Still, that’s a super nitpicky  complaint for a show that’s otherwise excellent on every level with consistently high quality art and writing. At the very tippy top of my watch list.

Boogiepop and Others is a sequel (I guess?) to a much older series called Boogiepop Phantom that I watched many years ago. To be honest, it’s been so long that I don’t remember most of the details about the original anime. I just remember that it was a somewhat gloomy show that focused on supernatural mysteries and was episodic in nature. This newer series has an updated art style with more modern character designs. It’s also easier to follow, and has a stronger focus on action, whereas the original focused more on atmosphere. Special mention should go to Aoi Yuki’s phenomenal voice acting. She really brings Boogiepop to life and carries the show, much like she did as Kino in the recent Kino’s Journey anime. The show has great music, with my favorite ending theme of the season. Has a secure spot on my watch list.

B Project Season 2, an otome series about cute male idol groups, has seemingly decided to dial back the focus on the whole otome thing and instead showcase the borderline BL relationships between the boys. Seriously, there are several episodes in which the heroine, Tsubasa, is barely there at all, and even when she is, the series gives no real indication that any of the boys like her as more than a friend. Instead, the boys seem to be in love with each other (which is fine by me). This season adds a new boy band to the three we already had, which I felt was a little unnecessary. The new group really doesn’t add anything to the story. The music is nice, especially the ending theme, and the character designs are attractive. The series seems to have taken a page out of Tsukiuta’s book and now uses CG for the more elaborate dance numbers. The problem is that they don’t look nearly as good as Tsukiuta’s and definitely don’t blend well with the 2D animation around them. Overall, the series is cute but I still think of it as “less fun UtaPri”.

Fukigen no Mononokean Season 2 was a bit of a surprise for me, since I didn’t realize it was being made. I enjoyed season one very much with its pastel, candy-colored art and sweet, mostly light-hearted stories. And of course, the main draw of the series was the budding friendship between our two leads, Abeno and Ashiya. Season two keeps all of those elements and adds a very interesting mystery concerning Ashiya’s father, as well as an overarching plot and an actual recurring “villain” type character. The stakes are raised considerably, but the overall tone of the show is still fairly light and gentle. Seeing the cute mascot character Fuzzy (a white, furry youkai) makes me a little sad though, since it reminded me so very much of my cat (also a white furry creature named Fuzzy) while watching season one, and Fuzzy has since disappeared. Which reminds me, the youkai in this series are so adorable, varied, and charming. Very high on my watch list.

Kaguya-sama: Love is War is a comedy about two overachieving high school students who are secretly in love with each other but are too prideful to admit it, so they set traps for each other to try to force the other to confess first. It sounds like a dumb setup, to be honest, but it actually works surprisingly well. The two leads are likable despite being petty and stubborn. Even though they’re extremely talented, they have tons of quirks and they’re both completely clueless when it comes to love. There are a few fun side characters as well. The show is hilarious, with three skits per episode. There’s also a touch of sweetness as their affection for each other comes across as genuine. Anyone who’s ever been in love can relate to some of these moments, of going to great lengths just to increase your chances of being near the person you like, or making little changes to your appearance just to see if you get a reaction from them. Or, of course, the disappointment you feel when your carefully laid plans get ruined. The series uses humor and extreme reactions and hilarious facial expressions to convey these feelings, resulting in a highly entertaining show.

Carry Over Shows From Previous Seasons: Black Clover Run With the Wind Hinomaru Sumo Best of Season: Best New Show: The Promised Neverland Best Opening Theme: The Promised Neverland Best Ending Theme: Boogiepop and Others Best Male Character: Subaru (My Roommate is a Cat) Best Female Character: Emma (The Promised Neverland)