#this is the most harvey i’ve ever drawn i’m obsessed

[shreddies-scribbles]

nahhhh harvey didn’t have the balls to ask me out himself bruh 🙄🙄🙄 had to take matters into my own hands

[about-faces]

So which Twoface scarred design do you like based on anesthetics the most? And any theories about the variety of colors, like do any play into color theory or any meaning, or are just limited to printed color limitations/artist sole interpretation?

This would have been a much shorter answer if you hadn’t added the second part. But I’m glad you did, because I love talking about this shit! 

While I do have certain… shall we say, opinionated preferences for my ideal design for the scarring, my taste is dependent on SO many different factors. Since you brought up color limitations, let’s start there, because that speaks to a certain aesthetic of Two-Face that I love. 

First, let’s talk about the basic design, the gold standard of the Golden Age. The very first appearance of Two-Face has served as the model for how the scarring's looked ever since. The iconic features include a permanent snarl, a bulging eye, a wilder hairstyle with differently colored hair, and different coloring from his unscarred flesh. Every version of Two-Face since has either followed or subverted this original depiction. 

(Note: I could also go on a whole tangent about how this design MAY have been based on a poster for the 1941 film adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which I’ve recently had reason to suspect may be bogus for reasons related to the complicated history of Batman’s supposed “creator” Bob Kane, but that’s several other essays worth a material. And that’s not even taking into account who actually drew this original comic, whether it was the credited Kane, or Jerry Robinson and/or George Roussos. The history of Golden Age comics is rife with controversy, plagiarism, and bullshit, with Batman being no exception.)

For roughly 50 years, this was, more or less, the standard version of Two-Face. Even as DC evolved through different eras of “House Styles” where all art had to maintain a certain consistency, this design underwent very little variation over five decades. While his scarring would occasionally be depicted as gray or off-purple or even flesh toned, it usually stuck to the original choice of green. 

Why green? Why would a man who suffered an acid attack have green scarring? Putting aside questions of realism (which have little place in the world of comics), the reasoning was tied to those specific issues you raised about printed color limitations. The history of comic book coloring is absolutely fascinating, when companies had to rely on printers to produce the cheapest possible product on a regular deadline. 

These printers (supposedly backed by organized crime) published comics on newsprint with the four-color CYMK color model, and comic artists had to work within these limitations. This led to some interesting color-coding for heroes and villains in superhero books, with the heroes depicted in primary colors like red, yellow, and blue, and the villains being depicted in secondary colors like orange, purple, and green. As you’ll note, Harvey’s design uses all three of those secondary colors, appropriately enough for a man obsessed with twos. 

To this day, these colors are what are used for classic, “retro” depictions of Two-Face, which you can still see on merchandise today. As such, I have great affection for this basic design with these colors, especially when they appear on newsprint with the visible newsprint dots.Over the past couple decades, we’ve seen comics companies reprint these classic stories with cleaned-up, “remastered” artwork. As time has gone by, I’ve come to dislike this treatment of older comics, which were specifically drawn for a period where coloring and printing options were strictly limited. Removing those limitations with computer coloring only seems to make the linework appear more dated, at least to my eye. 

For example, take one of my personal favorites, the third chapter of “A Lonely Place of Dying.” On the left is the current, cleaned-up version, while the other is a scan from a long-defunct tumblr user jthener-comics-vault who emphasized the newsprint dots and yellowed newspaper. 

Some may prefer the version on the left, but I strongly prefer the version on the right. There’s just so much more aesthetic appeal with the second version to my eye. The version on the right looks dated, while the version on the left looks timeless because of how it embraced a certain retro aesthetic. Your mileage may vary, but that’s where I’m at with my taste preferences. 

(See also: the recent revival of interest in CRT TV screens with classic video games, discussed in this popular post about how games were designed for the limitations of older TVs, and how current pixel graphics don’t look right in comparison. Given how there’s now a whole Reddit community dedicated to CRT TV pixel graphics, I’d love to see people embrace classic comics in the same way. But alas, the people who care about such things are literally a dying breed, as most comics fans seemingly don’t have much interest in anything beyond the past decade or so.) 

So if you’re talking purely aesthetics within the classic limitations of comics, I consider the version on the left to be my platonic ideal for a perfect Two-Face. It’s not because the linework of the scarring is anything special (as much as I worship the late, great Jim Aparo, his Two-Face scarring looks like Harvey dipped himself into some creamed spinach), but because the scarring fits the overall aesthetic of the printing techniques of a bygone era. 

So that would be ONE example of my preferred take on the scarring, with a specific version that emphasizes his classic newsprint roots. But it’s not the only one, because those limitations were soon expanded by the 1990’s, with advances in printing quality and coloring techniques. On top of that, DC started hiring artists for stories far outside their usual “House Style,” which led to all manner of weird and varied interpretations of characters like Two-Face, depending on the story. In fact, his appearance–along with his personality, motivations, and even his own backstory–would change drastically from one appearance to the next. His scarring alone could be green, pink, red, blue, purple, or some variation of the above! And that’s not even taking into account the pen-and-ink linework choices! 

This finally brings me to your original question of which version of the scarring I prefer. While I still love the classic retro take on the character as well as stylized “dark deco” versions like his appearance in Batman: The Animated Series, there are certain traits I look for in modern depictions of Two-Face. These preferences were undoubtedly informed by the fact that I saw Sam Raimi’s Darkman as a young teen and fell in love with the prosthetic makeup effects by Chet Zar and Toni Gardner, who created a viscerally horrifying template for what I wanted to see used for Harvey Dent ever since.

So these days, when it comes to what I really want to see in the scarring?  At this risk of being too graphic, I like the flesh to be stretched and warped, the lips and eyelids peeled back and exposed. I also STRONGLY prefer there be no clear line down the middle between the scarred and unscarred sides. There should be some sense of integration between the sides, rather than two separate faces–one realistic and one cartoonish–slapped together. Some of my favorite examples include Alex Ross and Doug Braithwhaite’s Harvey cameo from Justice #2 and Brad Walker and Doug Hennessey’s from “Ugly Heart.”

Basically, I prefer a style that’s evocative of movie-style body horror, adding realism without being realistic.He should appear shocking while simultaneously looking like someone who has suffered, and continues to do so. It should compliment (but NOT play up) the good/evil dichotomy, without veering into cartoonishness. Doing that leads to him being treated as more of a gimmick crook rather than a three-dimensional character. 

Again, we’re talking my own personal preference here. As a character, Two-Face represents different things to different people. When creating the story Batman: Faces, artist Matt Wagner wanted Harvey’s scarring to be red because it emphasized the “devil inside” motif. For many people, Two-Face is a character who conveys the evil within normalcy. Fair enough. 

But for me, I like red because it looks like exposed flesh and tissue, emphasizing the raw pain Harvey has and must endure. I prefer when the scarring emphasizes tones of flesh and blood, like reds, pinks, and purples. I loved the blue scarring of Batman: The Animated Series on its own merits, but it only works within that specifically stylized “dark deco” context. 

And when it comes purely to linework design, I think my ideal model would be the work of sculptor Andy Bergholtz, who not only designed a bust I will never afford despite dearly wanting, but who also created an incredible pumpkin carving of Two-Face which, weirdly enough, endures as one of my favorite depictions of the character. 

Notice how Bergholtz doesn’t draw a distinct line between the two sides, but instead shows how the flesh stretches and warps from one side to the next. It looks painful, while also being perfectly integrated with the rest of the head. Hell, even the choice to go with the classic green coloring works, because of how it looks sickly and gangrenous! It still looks fleshy, even with the comic-book-y coloring choice!

These sculptures are my baseline for how Harvey’s scarring should ideally look. But at the end of the day, the scarring is only one factor I look for when it comes to depictions of Two-Face. It’s how the scarring looks with his unscarred side, especially if the artist actually chooses to DO something interesting with Harvey’s face rather than just depict him as a Bland White Dude or Generic Gangster. It’s also how both sides of his face look in whatever he’s wearing, how they’re drawn in the linework, how they’re colored and depicted on paper and/or online scans. So many factors go into making/breaking Two-Face, just as they do with pretty much every other comic character who has existed for decades at this point.

But ultimately, none of that matters to me as much as the writing. Harvey could look absolutely terrible in the artwork, and I wouldn’t care so long as the writing treats him with empathy and compassion. Still, I appreciate you giving me this opportunity to reacquaint myself with his aesthetics, which I’ve too long disregarded because–for many–that’s all they see when they think about Two-Face. Not as a three-dimensional character, but as a walking pile of aesthetics. But it's nice to revisit those aesthetics as a reminder of why he's continued to endure as an iconic character for eight decades.

[rebeccaheyman]

reading + listening 09.14.20

The Smash-Up (Ali Benjamin), eBook ARC (pub date Feb 2021). A rare five-star review from me on GR and NetGalley.

For fans of ASK AGAIN YES and FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE, Ali Benjamin's THE SMASH-UP is a razor-sharp but deeply heartfelt satire of our contemporary social and political systems, framed as a retelling of Wharton's classic novel, Ethan Frome. Like its original counterpart, THE SMASH-UP is a framed narrative; we begin with an introduction that asks the question that plagues the original Ethan Frome from the very start: What happened? While the answer to that question in Wharton's work is purposefully vague ("a smash-up"), Benjamin's work is driven by answers. What happened? The 2016 election. Harvey Weinstein. MeToo. Police overreach and brutality, Resistance. Bret Kavanaugh. The Women's March. On and on, all these things that happened and are happening as the country tries to remake itself in the wake of all our ugliness rising to the surface. "What happened?" THE SMASH-UP asks. "Well, sit down and I'll tell you."

We follow an unnamed narrator as they drive into Starkfield, Massachusetts, and spot Ethan Frome, who is without a limp but still "hobbled" by a flat tire. The narrator gives Ethan a ride home, and thereafter becomes a one-person Greek chorus of a kind, showing up frequently to uphold the mirror that reflects that which is under the surface of the main action. Once the close third-person narration begins, we're drawn into Ethan's life with documentary filmmaker and activist wife Zenobia (Zo); their hyperactive, Wicked-obsessed daughter, Alex; and their live-in, Millennial, would-be nanny (of a sort), Maddy. Everything is in a state of unrest, from the forever-unfinished home renovation to the country to Alex's attendance at the new-age, ultra-conscious Rainbow Seed School, to Ethan and Zo's marriage. An encounter with the local police throws Zo and her women's activist group, All Them Witches, into the spotlight, and not everyone in Starkfield is happy about it. Meanwhile, Ethan's former marketing agency partner asks him to help make a pending MeToo lawsuit disappear. In the literal and figurative background is Maddy, whose ennui is a challenge and counterpoint to the Fromes' intense attention to every detail of their fractured, fracturing lives.

THE SMASH-UP is a novel of colliding -- who these characters are, what they believe, what they do, how they feel, what they show the world and what they hide -- all of it being forced to the surface by impact after merciless impact. Everything that happens in THE SMASH-UP is just as important as what doesn't; our mysterious narrator from the introduction (whose identity I won't spoil here), says it best: "New ideas, new worlds, new truths, always begin in the negative space. Unlike the groaning heft of What Is, possibility has no mass of its own--no force, no shape or structure, not yet. To most eyes, What Could Be looks like nothing at all. It takes faith to discern this invisible thing, to protect it and tend to it, until the day it comes screaming into the open, startling everyone with the plain fact of itself, a truth that's suddenly clear as day."

The Heiress (Molly Greeley), eBook ARC (pub date Jan 2021). My NetGalley review fails to capture the way I sat on my couch and wept for the duration of the last chapter. Just sayin’.

THE HEIRESS climbs inside Pride and Prejudice the way you slip between the sheets of your own bed, made up with entirely new sheets. This brilliant, compact novel takes as its subject the enigmatic Anne de Bourgh, best known as the cousin Darcy was supposed to marry before Elizabeth Bennet stepped onto the scene. Greeley imagines Anne as an accidental -- or rather, incidental -- laudanum addict, whose treatment with that "remedy" since infancy left her frail and mostly catatonic as she aged. THE HEIRESS follows Anne on a tumultuous journey of self-discovery and becoming that begins with the end of her addiction.

Greeley's writing is deft and authentic, nodding to source material without relying on what readers think they know about Anne's life at Rosings Park. There's a touch of the gothic here, too, as Anne's connection to her land -- hers indeed, since Rosings Park is not entailed -- and the house itself, becomes a critical site of identity-production. Though Anne enjoys somewhat unprecedented independence due to her inheritance, Greeley never loses sight of the way Georgian society shaped, stymied, defined, and limited most women -- or how they flourished in private revolutions despite this.

Readers of THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO, THE LADY'S GUIDE TO CELESTIAL MECHANICS, and of course, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, will find THE HEIRESS a triumph.

Luster (Raven Leilani), aBook (narr. Ariel Blake). LUSTER is getting a lot of positive press, and with good reason. Roxane Gay’s brief GR review says it best: “So uncomfortable and stressful and beautiful and haunting and honest and ugly.” Protagonist Edie is anxious and adrift when her anchor drops somewhat of its own accord in the suburban home of her married lover, Eric. The seas there may appear calm but they churn under the surface, where marital, sexual, and racial politics threaten to capsize the appearance of domestic bliss. What ultimately saves Edie -- what keeps her afloat, if I’m really going to beat this metaphor into the ground -- is her identity as an artist, which she interrogates persistently regardless of her mercurial circumstances. 

It’s natural, I think, to draw comparisons to Candice Carty-Williams’ QUEENIE, as these are both novels about young Black women drawing the curtain back on their experience of the world, and delivering the fullness of that experience with honesty of the highest, rawest order. Attempts to place one novel over the other, though, would be remiss; where Queenie’s journey ultimately leads her closer to the refuge of family, Edie’s safe haven is her art -- which is to say, the world is still coming for Edie, and her protection against can be washed away with so much turpentine. 

LUSTER is touted as “darkly comic” and while it most assuredly is that, I also found it deeply heart-wrenching. I felt old reading this, and anxious, and like I wanted to sit Edie down in my kitchen and feed her a nice brisket dinner. There’s some inconsistency around Edie’s age (she’s twenty-three, but often references nostalgia-points that would place her closer to her late 20s or even early 30s), but I just kept thinking about how hard it is to be young and unsure, now more than ever. 

Lady Derring Takes a Lover (Julie Anne Long), aBook (narr. Justine Eyre). This was my first Julie Anne Long novel, and I’m happy to report it was a delight! Delilah and Tristan are fun to watch together -- great chemistry, just enough internal angst to enhance tension without being cloying, and plenty of hot, consensual sex. For me, the difference between an enjoyable historical romance and a snoozer often boils down to the external conflict, and LADY DERRING has it in spades. Delilah and her dead husband’s mistress, Angelique, open a boarding house in a bad part of London, and the goings-on at The Grand Palace on the Thames provide a nice counterpoint to the romance. There’s plenty of fat for Tristan to chew, too, since someone is smuggling cigars into the country, and the king has tasked our hero with finding out precisely who, and how. As always, Justine Eyre’s narration is just this side of too much, but she shines on this recording. I’ve got the second-in-series cued up on my eReader this week, so we’ll see if Long can.... go the distance. I’ll show myself out.

Never Kiss a Duke (Megan Frampton), aBook (narr. Jilly Bond). Another new-to-me author and narrator, and the first in a new series, Hazards of Dukes. I’ll take the second part first: Jilly Bond is a delight! She gets a bit whispery at times -- appropriate times, to be sure, but it was a struggle to hear some of the asides. I also found her transitions to Sebastian’s narration/dialogue rocky at moments -- a sudden, almost comedic drop in register. Once the chapter/POV is up and running, the awkwardness instantly fades, but the transitions were strange for me. Still, she’s excellent, and I hope she narrates the next-in-series. 

To the rest: Fans of Kleypas’ DEVIL IN WINTER gaming hell setting will appreciate the external conflict around Ivy and Sebastian (yes those names are oddly similar to DEVIL’s Evie and Sebastian...a tribute perhaps?!). She is the proprietress of London’s only egalitarian gambling house, and he is her newest employee after having -- oops! -- lost his dukedom. Conflict isn’t as dynamic as I would have hoped, but this was an entertaining listen nonetheless. Hot heat, tumultuous personal histories, quality banter... I’ll be back for the second installment (Tall Duke and Dangerous, Oct 2020).

[rosemcvrs-blog]

2, 32 + question you want to answer 😘

2) Talk about three of the most important ships throughout your life.

Sabrina/Harvey: They literally set the bar for every single ship I’ve ever shipped. They were close friends that turned to lovers but were friends throughout the whole show. It also started my closet obsession with the jock/every day girl trope.

Kurt/Sam: Possibly the only non-canon ship that had such a big impact in my life. While I ended with a bitter taste in my mouth because of the way their fandom reacted towards a close friend of mine among other things, those two characters represented two different parts of my life. Their interactions made the watching experience of a show that was going downhill way more energetic. Sam Evans basically became my favorite character of all time thanks to the line “I gave him my word and that’s that.” Plus I loved the awkwardness on their interactions past s3.

Liv/Major: My current OTP. This ship was a surprise to me tbh. I don’t ship the main couple unless I’m invested in both characters. And that’s exactly what happened. Liv is obviously one of the most badass mains the network has to offer and Major’s good hearted nature (and stupidness bc my son is reckless af) and the way they liv(e) to protect each other made me fall for them hard. It is also the only case in which I don’t mind them not being endgame as long as they stay friends and continue to be close for the rest of the series.

32) Share five must-read fics.

I’m not much of a fanfic reader (I prefer one-shots) but any fic written by CJ is a must read. Especially Travel Each Bend in the Road.

Also a shoutout to my friend Sam that wrote one of my favorite fics of all time 3A and 3B. 

Both fics are Kurt/Sam related but CJ has a lot of different ships on her fic tag so I suggest you check that out.

All my other recs are on this tag. 

Question I want to answer: 26) Have you noticed a pattern in your shipping? Is there a romantic dynamic you’re more drawn to?

More like several tropes (lol):

Childhood friends Friends to lovers Jock/Wallflower or Fashionista/Comic Book fanOpposites Attract That one person that makes you smile more than everyone else First Love.

[writeforsoreeyes]

This Month’s Reads: January

In an effort to remember more of what I read, I’ve decided to track properly this year and record my thoughts in brief. Thus, here are This Month’s Reads.

highlights: I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, The Ghost Bride, They Both Die at the End, and a lot of comics

[image description: the covers for the books listed below]

Heart of Gold vol 1 (Eli Baum & Viv Tanner) Dunant is a faith healer. Ionel is a pianist losing his sight. Every week Ionel attends Mass hoping to be cured, but Dunant turns him away. Meanwhile, a series of strange deaths casts a shadow over this gorgeously illustrated tale.

While not much especially romantic occurs, our two leads are clearly leaning on the edge of something. Ionel is intrigued by the priest, both due to his own needs and Dunant’s lonely aura. Dunant confesses his innermost doubts to Ionel inadvertently, leading to some interesting discussions of faith. Those discussions and the art’s tender beauty were the highlights for me. The pacing was slow for my tastes and some scenes felt like they could’ve been edited or cut to avoid repetition.

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I Hear the Sunspot vol 1-3 (Yuki Fumino, translator: Stephen Kohler)/ A brash college student named Taichi meets fellow student Kouhei by chance. Kouhei’s good looks attract attention, but he feels isolated due to his hearing loss. Taichi begins taking notes for Kouhei in exchange for lunch and a slow burn romance ensues.

This is one of my favorite manga from recent years, so I always reread the previous volumes when a new one comes out. Truly, the series improves with each volume. With the expanding cast, the mangaka explores different perspectives on and experiences with deafness. Volume 3 introduces Ryu, who is Deaf and lives life quite happily without hearing-- in contrast to Kouhei, who fears losing his remaining hearing.

[image description: the covers for the books listed below]

Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) I read Little Women for the first time during a young adult literature class in college. I must confess that I remembered very little of the plot, so reading it again was like starting entirely new. I forgot how funny it can be! The moral lessons for the most part still apply today, though I disagreed somewhat with a few of them.

The most intriguing and frustrating thing for me is Jo March, who reads to me as very much queer, though what flavor is debatable. My personal interpretation (and I’ll admit that I’m projecting) is that Jo is transmasculine and somewhere on the ace spectrum. And, personally, I believe the author was some flavor of queer as well.

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Only the Ring Finger Knows (Satoru Kannagi & Hotaru Odagiri, translator: Sachiko Sato) This month’s BL LookBack!

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Versailles of the Dead vol 1 (Kumiko Suekane, translator: Jocelyne Allen) I know very little about French history, so I have no idea how faithful this tale is to actual events. However, I don’t think the actual Marie Antoinette was her twin brother, possibly possessed by a demon. Likewise, I’m quite certain there were no zombies rampaging France.

Usually zombie stories and historical dramas don’t interest me. But I have a weakness for crossdressing plots, despite them usually being problematic. Surprisingly, this registered fairly low on the problematic scale-- so far. And while I wasn’t exactly riveted, it was compelling enough to persuade me to preorder the second volume. I hope this receives an anime adaptation because it could be quite spooky under the right director.

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Coyote vol 1 (Ranmaru Zariya, translator: Christine Dashiell) It took me several attempts to finish this BL because the first chapter put me off. As expected of “werewolf in heat” erotica, there’s some dubious consent issues. However, once I finally got past that first chapter, the dramatic plot lured me in.

Werewolves are half-forgotten by the general populace, but certain groups still hold a grudge against them-- including the Galland mafia family, which our human lead “Marleen” is set to take over soon despite personally having no issue with werewolves. Meanwhile, our werewolf lead Coyote accepts a job to kill the Galland heir, not realizing it’s the very man he’s fallen in love with. Overall, the story has its fair share of objectionable issues, but I’m compelled enough to keep reading for now.

[image description: the covers for the books listed below]

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer (Michelle McNamara) I think that if a person were going to only read one true crime book ever, this one would be a good pick. The actual true crime element of the book is great. The writer excels at bringing the people to life-- the victims, the cops, the witnesses, even the unknown killer. She has a real knack for adding just enough evocative detail to paint a picture without sensationalizing.

However, what I find most compelling is how thoughtfully she examines her own motivations and actions-- and thus those of the reader as well. What is it about true crime that attracts people? And how can we pick apart these real life tragedies while respecting human life?

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The Prince and the Dressmaker (Jen Wang) Frances is a seamstress working hard for a pittance and dreaming of grander things. Her designs catch the attention of Prince Sebastian, who is in need of both a dressmaker and a secretkeeper. The two become friends, often making a splash around town with Sebastian dressed up as the glamorous Lady Crystallia. However, some secrets can’t be kept forever.

This comic has been on my to-read list for a while based solely on the cute cover and title. It was indeed cute (I especially loved the comedic off-model panels) but the story went deeper and was more rewarding than I anticipated. However, content warning for a character being outed in a humiliating manner; it’s more intense than you might expect for comic like this.

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Life Outside the Circle (H-P Lehkonen) Artist Sami leaves big city Helsinki for remote, rural Finland. There he meets his new neighbor Juha and Juha’s young daughter Maiju. Culture shock and romance ensues.

I had the good fortune to meet the cartoonist at TCAF 2018. I enjoyed the book I picked up from him there, as well as the queer Finnish comics panel he moderated. So I figured I’d check out more of his work and he didn’t disappoint-- this comic had plenty of genuine humor, heart-warming moments, and realistic angst. I especially appreciate the blasé approach to Sami being transgender; it’s just one of his traits and while it does influence some things in the story, overall it’s not that important.

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The Ghost Bride (Yangsze Choo) An early contender for favorite book of 2019 appears! This book has it all: romance, spooky thrills, adventures in other realms, wit, plenty of food, and an upcoming Netflix miniseries!

Our hero is Li Lan, who has attracted the unwanted romantic attention of local rich boy Lim Tian Ching. Not only is he rude and selfish, he’s also dead! As Li Lan struggles to ward off Lim Tian Ching’s invasive spirit, she becomes more and more drawn into the world of the ghosts-- as well as the secrets of the Lim family and her own. I loved all the rich detail, both for the real life historical setting and the fantasy settings. Highly recommended and I’m very excited for the TV series as well.

[image description: the covers for the books listed below]

Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun vol 10 (Izumi Tsubaki, translator: Leighann Harvey) Another volume of Nozaki-kun, another plea from me for another season of the anime, please! Not to say that the manga isn’t good-- it’s great-- but this is a case of the anime being better, in my opinion.

Anyway, the rom-com misadventures of Nozaki, Chiyo, and the crew continues. Relationship development continues to be slow, which is no issue for me since that’s hardly what I’m reading for. (That said, Kashima and Hori seem like they might be on the verge of becoming a couple? Maybe?) Since I read Nozaki as aroace, I’m pleased to report that he remains as aroace-seeming as ever. Poor Chiyo, however, is crushing on him harder than before, to the extent that it’s starting to become kind of creepy.

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The Other Dress (Emmy Engberts) This month’s transreading!

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They Both Die at the End (Adam Silvera) I’m well aware that I’m in the minority here, but I actually enjoy reading major character death when it’s done well. “Enjoy” might be the wrong word; what I mean to say is that I appreciate the experience of being moved so powerfully by a work of fiction.

My main concern going into They Both Die at the End was that the deaths would feel cheap. After we get to know the main characters (who are young and healthy) so well and they’ve been through so much together, what kind of death could possibly feel authentic and “worth it” to the reader? I won’t spoil the end for anyone, but I thought the author came through strongly. Thoughtful and emotional with intriguing world building.

[gretagerwigarchive]

Greta Gerwig: 'I'm at peak shock and happiness'

by  Tim Lewis, Sun 4 Feb 2018.

source: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/feb/04/greta-gerwig-lady-bird-interview-metoo-oscars

This year’s Oscar nominations were announced a couple of Tuesdays ago in Los Angeles at the frankly antisocial hour of 5.22am. Greta Gerwig, whose very personal, coming-of-age debut film Lady Bird was hotly tipped, lives in New York but happened to be in LA for work. She woke up first at 3.30am: “And I said, ‘No, it’s not time’ and I forced myself to go back to sleep.” When she eventually surfaced just before seven, the nominations were headlines around the world. Gerwig made herself a coffee, had a shower and ever-so-casually checked her phone. There it was: she’d made the cut for best original screenplay. And “achievement in directing”. Oh, and Lady Bird was in the running for best picture, too.              

“I started crying and laughing and screaming,” says the 34-year-old Gerwig, who, until now, has been mainly known as an actor, often in comic roles. “And it sunk in… It’s still sinking in. It doesn’t quite feel real. You’re still getting me at peak shock and happiness.”

The Oscar selections were a personal triumph for Gerwig and for Lady Bird – its stars, Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf, who play a squabbling daughter and mother, are also nominated – but it was an important moment for female film-makers everywhere. Gerwig, scarcely credibly, is only the fifth woman ever to be shortlisted in the best director category at the Academy Awards in its 90 years. If she wins on 4 March, she will only be the second, after Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker in 2010, to take the honour.

“I remember very well when Sofia Coppola was nominated for best director and won best screenplay [for Lost in Translation in 2004] and what that meant to me,” says Gerwig on the phone from New York last week. “And I remember when Kathryn Bigelow won for best director and how it seemed as if possibilities were expanded because of it. I genuinely hope that what this means to women of all ages – young women, women who are well into their careers – is that they look at this and they think, ‘I want to go make my movie.’ Because a diversity of storytellers is incredibly important and also I want to see their movies. I want to know what they have to say! So I hope that’s what it does.”

These have been a seismic few months for women in the film industry. The allegations against the producer Harvey Weinstein and others, while monstrous in their scope and detail, have led to the most positive kind of backlash: through the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, and the 50/50 by 2020 initiative, which aims to have male-female parity in the business world in two years. There’s an optimism that Hollywood has changed for ever.

“I think it’s going to shift much more quickly now,” says Gerwig. “When studios are looking to hire now, they’ll ask themselves – as they rightly should – ‘Is there a woman who is qualified for this job?’ That’s tremendously important. And again, if I were running a studio, I would think that it’s just good business. Because I look at the audience response to films made by women about women that have done incredibly well and I’d say, ‘Well, that’s a reason right off the bat.’”

As for whether there are any plans for a co-ordinated style protest at this year’s Oscars, in line with the black gowns at the Golden Globes or white roses at the Grammys, both orchestrated by the Time’s Up organisers, Gerwig is unsure. “I am not aware of a dress code,” she says. But if there is, she’s in: “I’m in awe of the people who are collectively working on this.”

Gerwig insists she hasn’t dared yet think about how it would feel to win an Oscar. But if the Golden Globes, where Lady Bird took the prize for best film (comedy/musical), is anything to go by, she might well struggle to hold it together. “I had an entire speech prepared but once I got up there, none of it came out,” she says with a laugh. “I was looking down and I saw Oprah and Steven Spielberg and I just went into a state of sublime happiness. I think I just said ‘thank you’ a lot. So my guess would be, I’ll prepare and probably I’ll not say any of it – if it should happen. Because that’s just how those moments seem to go for me.”

When I first talk to Gerwig, on an otherwise regulation Friday during the London film festival, there is a surreal, even comic, imbalance in London’s Soho hotel. Movie stars, it appears, outnumber the rest of us. Bill Nighy stands at a urinal in the men’s room, director Alexander Payne sweeps through the lobby. In the lift up to the suite where Gerwig is doing interviews, who else? The great Christoph Waltz.

“Christoph Waltz is here?” she shrieks. The pair became friends when they were on the jury for the Berlin film festival and catch up every so often for dinner in New York. “He’s one of my favourite people; he makes fun of me the entire time,” says Gerwig. “On the jury, there was this one time where we had a meeting with Angela Merkel. So I wore something that felt appropriate for a daytime lunch with a head of state. And I showed up and Christoph looked at me and said – she slips into a strident Mitteleuropean accent – ‘Greta, are you applying for an internship with Angela?’” Gerwig cracks up. “‘Did you bring your resumé?’ I looked such a nerd.”

Payne she knows less well, but is an ardent fan. At the Telluride festival last September, there was a photocall for the film-makers in attendance and Gerwig collected a giant bruise on her leg trying to hurdle a bench to tell Payne how much she liked his latest movie, Downsizing. “I thought, ‘I must tell him it’s a masterpiece,’” she explains. “So as I’m jumping over the bench, it clipped my shin and I went sprawling. Everyone turned to look and I looked up at him and I said, ‘It was a masterpiece!’ And he said, ‘You could have just walked over.’”

Right now, there are plenty of people – rightly and properly, albeit metaphorically – tripping over furniture to tell Gerwig that she’s made her own masterpiece. Lady Bird is a beautiful, affectionate rumination on the mother-daughter dynamic that could well be this year’s Moonlight: an underdog that charms and surprises, and overshadows everything else.

It is not immediately clear how to square these achievements with Gerwig’s tendency towards self-deprecation. Physically, she mixes elegance with eccentricity. At 5ft 9in, with credulous sea-green eyes, and today wearing a pink, pleated cocktail dress with buckled black-and-white heels, she presents an image of impossible glamour. But she undercuts the effect by slouching a little, laughing unguardedly and demonstrating odd and endearing mannerisms, such as the stiff handshake of a Victorian industrialist packing his son off to boarding school.

“I arrived on a flight this morning at 6am, so this is all pretend,” she explains, smoothing an invisible wrinkle on her frock. “I don’t actually feel like this inside. People came to my room and made me look nice. I know, everyone needs it.”

In Lady Bird and before, Gerwig is drawn to dreamers: young women who believe they are destined for greatness, even when the audience finds plenty of cause to doubt that. The film follows Ronan as 17-year-old Christine McPherson, who’d rather you call her Lady Bird: when asked if it’s her given name, she clarifies: “It’s given to me, by me.” The year is 2002, the place is Sacramento, a mid-size city in California, and both these facts are a cruel disappointment to her: “The only exciting thing about 2002 is that it’s a palindrome,” Lady Bird sighs. She’s in her final year at an all-girls Catholic high school and, after graduating, she wants to move to the east coast to study, “where writers live in the woods”. This is one of many, though perhaps the most irreconcilable, point of contention with her mother, Marion (a heart-wrenching Metcalf).

It has been a common assumption that Lady Bird is Gerwig’s teenage diaries transcribed. She, too, grew up in Sacramento and attended a Catholic school there, before escaping to the other side of the country, to Barnard College in New York, where she studied English and wanted to become a playwright. But, Gerwig notes, not sniffily, that there are plenty of differences, as well. She didn’t dye her hair pink or assume a strange name or even argue that viciously with her mother.

“Even though it isn’t literally autobiographical there’s a core of emotional truth that’s very resonant,” says Gerwig. “Again, it’s not what literally happened, but it does rhyme with the truth. It’s close in a way. And it doesn’t bother me, because it’s the assumption people make and in a way maybe they make that assumption because it feels very real. So it’s not dissimilar to when people think a character is you. Which you could be offended by or you could also think, ‘Well, then I’ve done my job. You’ve believed it. You think that’s me.’

“But I don’t know,” she continues. “I think one thing about doing this for a period of time is that you learn how to live through either misconceptions or correct conceptions and just continue doing the work. Because then you figure, ‘Well, in the end, I’ll just be an old lady one day and then they’ll think, Oh, she’s an old lady.’ And they’ll be right!”

What, then, are some solid, hard facts about Gerwig? She is the eldest child of Gordon and Christine, a loans officer for a credit union and a retired nurse respectively. As a child, she was a diligent student with an obsessive streak: her first passion was dancing; later, she would become skilled in the sport of fencing.

“I loved ballet,” says Gerwig. “I always knew I wasn’t the most naturally gifted of anyone who was doing ballet. I didn’t have quite enough turn out, my feet weren’t quite right, but I did work harder than anyone else. And I think that’s something I have maintained. There’s no substitute for hard work.”

Gerwig acted a little at school but became more serious at college. She saw herself as a theatre person, but when she was rejected from graduate programmes in playwriting, she started working on films with her friends. These no-budget projects became notorious in arty, hipster circles and then beyond, where they were, somewhat derisively, called mumblecore; they were sketched out, but not scripted, and the makers were involved in every aspect of production.

“Those became kind of a makeshift film school for me,” says Gerwig, referring to LOL (2006), Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007) and Nights and Weekends (2008), which she made with Joe Swanberg. “When I went into pre-production for Lady Bird, I’d been working in films in different capacities for 10 years. Especially on the early little ones because it was an all-hands-on-deck situation. If you weren’t doing something on camera, you held the camera.”

These early films, too, led in a roundabout way to Gerwig’s acting breakthrough. Swanberg knew the director Noah Baumbach and he then cast her in his 2010 film Greenberg, opposite Ben Stiller. The film received mixed notices, but Gerwig’s performance caught many eyes. In the New York Times, critic AO Scott described her style as a method without method. “Ms Gerwig,” he wrote, “most likely without intending to be anything of the kind, may well be the definitive screen actress of her generation, a judgment I offer with all sincerity and a measure of ambivalence.”

Greenberg was a life-changing experience personally as well: after it wrapped, Gerwig and Baumbach began dating, for a while on the down-low, these days more openly, though Gerwig tends to refer to him as “Noah Baumbach” or “Baumbach” in our interview, suggesting they keep their work and private lives quite distinct. They soon began collaborating and their first film as a writing team was 2012’s Frances Ha, a warm-hearted, black-and-white comedy about a dancer, Frances (Gerwig), who doesn’t seem wholly cut out for the real world. They followed that with Mistress America in 2015, which has a similar vibe: Gerwig plays Brooke, who has a million creative ideas and a very low strike rate.

Gerwig’s writing, first with Baumbach and now on her own, has a naturalistic tone that is funny without having jokes, heartbreaking without being schmaltzy, highly specific and yet clearly universal. She is so particular about how the dialogue sounds – the “music” of speech – that there is a not a single line of improvisation in Lady Bird, not even an added “like” or “you know”.

“I like language that sounds quotidian but poetic,” says Gerwig – the perfect description. “Something that maybe the character doesn’t even know is as beautiful as it is. That’s something I was working through when I was writing with Noah Baumbach and I just kept moving in that direction. That was always what I liked. That quality of stumbling into beauty and then it’s gone.”

It is a timely moment for Gerwig to emerge as a director and for her debut to have such an assured, idiosyncratic voice. Despite the success of Lady Bird at the Golden Globes in January, Gerwig was a glaring absentee on the best director shortlist. Natalie Portman, presenting the award, made the point succinctly, announcing: “And here are the all-male nominees.” Likewise, the Baftas have a five-man shortlist.

Of course, this is just one facet of the soul searching that the film industry is now going through. In the week that I meet Gerwig, the first allegations of sexual abuse have been made against Harvey Weinstein, and it was clear that Gerwig found the revelations upsetting and deeply shocking.

“I felt so badly for all those women,” she says, “and I felt so understanding of where they were, especially the young women, the women who were in college, the women who were just excited about movies and film-making and found themselves in a position that they didn’t know how to say no, but they didn’t know how to leave and that they felt overpowered and then they felt scared to say anything.”

There are tears in her eyes; her voice cracks. “I’ve felt for so long that there just need to be more women in positions of power,” Gerwig goes on. “Not that women are magic or perfect beings, but that they need to have a seat at the table because then I would think that things like this would have far less chance of happening.”

When Gerwig realised she was writing about mothers and daughters, she started thinking about movies that covered a similar theme. There were hundreds of films on the father-son relationship, including some excellent ones by Baumbach, but she struggled to think of stories told from the female perspective: James Brooks’s Terms of Endearment (1983) and Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies (1996) were among the rare inspirations. “There are surprisingly few movies about it,” says Gerwig, “and I think that speaks to the fact that there are surprisingly few female film-makers.”

In preparation for shooting Lady Bird, Gerwig created dossiers for her lead characters. Timothée Chalamet, for example – who plays Lady Bird’s crush Kyle and is also Oscar-nominated this year for his role in another coming-of- age drama, Call Me By Your Name – was directed towards the films of Éric Rohmer and a collection of theoretical essays, The Internet Does Not Exist. Kyle is a pretentious mansplainer: he lectures Lady Bird on how mobile phones are tracking devices for the government and that clove cigarettes have fibreglass in them. At one point, he puts down Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States to announce, “I’m trying to live by bartering alone”.

Kyle’s a pseud, but Gerwig clearly has a soft spot for him. “I am not a fan of phones,” she explains. “I talked for a long time with Timothée about his character’s beliefs, and he said, ‘The funny thing is that everybody is going to think you’re Lady Bird, but you’re Kyle’.” Gerwig laughs, “And I was like, ‘I know! I am secretly Kyle.’ I have all of the same paranoias as Kyle does.”

Gerwig is technically a millennial, but not spiritually so. She grew up pre-internet and has no social media presence: “Sure, I’ll lurk. But I don’t participate. I’m just a Peeping Tom.” Part of the reason for setting Lady Bird in 2002 is that it’s not “cinematic” to shoot screens. She longs for the pre-phone era when you couldn’t get hold of someone instantly, and the only way to find them would be to drive around to all the locations they might be. We rarely allow ourselves to become properly bored, Gerwig believes, and the internet and smartphones are in part responsible.

On the wall of her bedroom, Lady Bird has the Leo Tolstoy quote, “Boredom: the desire for desires.” “Boredom is, I think, pretty useful,” says Gerwig. “You need to reach a level of boredom to make anything. Because I don’t know if you remember, being bored as a kid, just so bored. You were at a grocery store with your mom and you were like, ‘It’s just excruciating!’ But then you get to a point where you start making up a game for yourself or you’ll start imagining things or whatever it is. But I worry that we’ve lost that capacity, which I think maybe erodes some creativity as well.

“I’m just as bad as anyone,” she admits. “Because it’s like your flitting brain can be completely satisfied by this machine that can give you feedback for all of your passing thoughts. Like, ‘Where can you grow avocados?’ I don’t know, let’s find out. And then, ‘Oh, how much water does an avocado tree take every year?’ Let’s look at that. And then, ‘Different crops and the water usage for each of them.’ You are creating this weird feedback loop for yourself.”

This is a very Gerwigian conundrum: hem-hawing about restricting access to the internet because she’s worried she’ll waste time Googling avocados. But she’s not saying it to be cute. It clearly concerns her. One of the strict directives on the set of the Lady Bird was that it was entirely phone-free. “And not just for the actors, for the crew,” she says, “because it’s quite depressing for an actor to be doing an emotional scene and look over and see someone checking Instagram. It’s a real bummer. But it was quite impressive, because I had a lot of young people in this movie and none of them ever brought their phones to set. Saoirse set the tone: I never saw her on her phone, never once.”

Gerwig is effusive about her two stars, Ronan and Metcalf. Everything in the film, she says, comes back to “the central love story” between Marion and Christine, mother and daughter. “For all of time it’s probably been the most rich, fraught relationship. Something with Laurie and Saoirse that I loved was that they were the same height and I gave them the same haircuts so that when they were in profile, you say: ‘Oh, you’re so at odds with each other but actually you’re the same. And that’s why the fighting is so intense because you guys can both bring it.’

“So I knew I needed actresses who could punch the same weight class,” Gerwig adds. “They give extraordinary performances and they should get all the statues and prizes. Work like that should be rewarded.”

For her part, whatever happens, Gerwig insists that little will change. She will keep acting – when the project and specifically the director is right – and she wants to collaborate with Baumbach again: “I hope Noah and I will write another movie together because it’s really, really fun.” She also wants to start her own production company one day. “It’s important that if you have any kind of a platform and it matters to you that you should figure out how to bring other people along,” she says.

As for the Oscars, she is not about to pretend that she’s not freaking out a little. “I grew up watching all the award shows and I’d put on a fancy dress and watch it with my friends,” Gerwig recalls. “It’s thrilling and it’s also part of what the dream of making films is.”

Then Gerwig’s eyes narrow; these are defining moments both for her personally as a director and also as an inspirational member of the too-small band of female film-makers. “But awards are not important in terms of whether or not I’ll make another film,” she says. “I’ll keep making films, no matter what.”

[joyamidstdarkwaters]

vintage interview with giant peach

originally conducted and published by the now defunct depressionchamber.tumblr.com in april 2013

So, who all is in this band?

M: Frances Chang and Mike Naideau both sing and play guitar.  Dave Shotwell is on drums and Luke Holstein on bass.

When did the group form and what was everyone reasoning to play in the band? Or I suppose how did everything fall into place?

M: The group as it presently is formed relatively recently. Dave, Fran and I got together about 2 years ago and and played as a trio until about 6 months ago when Luke joined. We've let it evolve naturally and I am just happy to be playing music with some of my best friends.

D: I think we all have this soft spot in our hearts for music that's unabashedly loud and gritty and fuzzy and huge, even if that doesn't always come out in the recordings we make. We like making lots of noise.

There's no doubt that there is a noisy loud element, the guitars are very jangly and intense. They are magnificent in the portions of songs where you guys are just rocking out really hard. Next question will have to be, what inspired the initial sound of the band? If you guys can be more specific then that's great. I've been listening to you guys a lot and I hear a lot of Velocity Girl, but more as a post hardcore influenced band than an indie pop one. It's coming from the drums, which are very commanding. So I can just assume already that there's a whole array of different places you guys are coming from.

F: I think we definitely all bring our own influences to it. In terms of the initial blooming of musical interest we had separate experiences since we didn't really get together until the last couple of years. I'm prefacing because I think the band started as a pretty straightforward personal project, not with any concept of specifically and stylistically what we were going to be. For me, early on I'd say Elliott Smith, Built to Spill, The Cure. On the noisier more guitar - soundscape - side, Olivia Tremor Control, Broken Social Scene, My Bloody Valentine. I definitely started out with an appreciation for the overall sound, mix and mood of a song before I began obsessing over songs that were holistically and articulately thought out in terms of structure and lyrics. That became my new standard for "inspired." And now it's kind of drifting back again, splitting the difference. Some of the more recent songs could be considered narrowly channeled inspiration from: Liz Phair, Delay, The Replacements, PJ Harvey.

M: Major inspiration for me to start playing in a band came from seeing Long Island bands at house shows in the early 2000's. Maybe that's where some of the post-hardcore influence comes from, not sure. There were a lot of cool hardcore bands playing locally around the time, The Solidarity Pact being a good example. My brother introduced me to great bands and people doing really interesting stuff over the years. Aside from that I would say that Neil Young has been a great influence in terms of writing.

D: Cool, thanks! I'll have to admit ignorance as far as Velocity Girl goes, though. Before we had a bass player, I felt like I had a bunch of space to fill, so I was moving around a lot on "Callous and Strange" and the earlier stuff, borrowing a lot from older emo and punk shredder guys like Mike Kinsella from Cap'n Jazz/Owls and Tré Cool from Green Day. It was fun and chaotic, but Luke is a maniacal genius with a bass guitar and he holds the new stuff together so much better than I did when I was banging all over the place. I'm trying to do a lot less with the new stuff, more grooves and less chaos. I love the way the drummer in that band Hum plays. I've been learning (and stealing) a lot from him recently.

Okay so from what I can gather via your answers, you guys are all write your own parts to the songs and there is no primary song writer? Is this correct? How often do you guys feel it is necessary to practice in order to solidify songs, or is there some consensus to a song ever being finished? Is it done when it's played live or is it done when it's recorded?

M: It's definitely a collaborative process but yeah, usually either Fran or I will put a basic version of a song out on the table which becomes a foundation off of which the rest of us can write. We don't really have a consistent practicing schedule right now which has lead to a unique kind of final sound and approach. With a lot of the new material it's as if we're all writing the exact same song but separately, approaching it from our respective perspectives and instruments, and then getting together, practicing and filling in all the blanks at the same time. I think when a song is finished there is a consensus, but we're all intrigued by the idea that it can be revisited and become something else pretty easily if we want it to.

D: Mike and Fran are the real songwriters for the whole thing. They're like the industrial wet-dream dynamo; crazy frequent quantity without ever sacrificing quality. They come up with the progressions and lyrics that eventually become the songs, and as a band we try to develop the aesthetics and transitions within those structures until we get a final result that we're all stoked and giddy and happy with. Ultimately though, I think song's are never really finished. They change and jumble around for as long as they're relevant, or as long as everyone in the band wants to play them. We pretty much treat all of our songs that way, in a sense. We try to nail down a "final" version for the purposes of recording, but after that we always tweak and revisit stuff and change parts around.

F: I think we are all sorta loners, and that's reflected in our need for solitude to focus on writing at least in terms of the first skeleton of a song and everyone's initial conception of their individual parts. There are a lot of home recorded demos from me and mike flying around that are pretty complete structurally. Once we give it a whirl as a group, though, it undergoes a seriously rapid growth period where we just bounce ideas back and forth and it transforms dramatically in a hyper-accelerated way. We just work together really energetically. Figuring it out collectively is the most fun and stimulating part of being in this band.

It's kind of hard to pick who to respond to, but honestly it seems like the way you guys answer questions is the way you guys practice. There are kind of separate versions of the answer but each one seems to fill in the others. Do any of you have any past bands or solo projects? Also, if so, do you feel as though some of those past bands/solo projects seep into Giant Peach? Does Giant Peach seep into any of the projects any one of you is working on congruently?

L: Hi. Luke here. Used to be in a band called Bearface. I currently play bass for Giant Peach, Hot Shot, and FM Circuit, and play guitar in a band called The Shower Scene. Giant Peach has definitely influenced the way I play in other projects. The music that I write for my other bands has always tended to be rather straight forward. By this I mean that the songs are relatively simple in their structure and I rarely venture outside of what I consider to be "normal". Writing bass lines for Giant Peach songs can be challenging as they push me to play outside of my normal comfort zone. I find Peach songs to be more structurally complex than what I'm generally used to. Mike, Fran, and Dave each have a distinct style of playing and it's really exciting to see what comes out when the four of us are playing together. Quite frankly, I would love to be able to play like either Mike or Fran but they both play in what I think is a drop D so I have no idea what they are doing. Their fingers look like spiders. Being in Giant Peach has inspired me to experiment more with dissonant sounds in my other bands. Haven't quite gotten myself to learn play in drop D yet though.

Mike: We've all played in past other bands and work on solo projects on the side. It's nice to have that kind of supplementary outlet. I'm working on a tape of my own recordings right now as well as playing in a band called Outta Gas. It all seeps together. It's never clear exactly how or in what aspect, but it's inevitable, and I think a lot of it happens internally. The more you experiment, the more natural it all feels.

Hi Luke. Honestly it does sound like Mike and Fran have "spider" fingers when playing the guitar. It's legitimately complex.

I suppose this question(s) is more for Mike and Fran... what do you guys usually tend to write about lyrically? Some of the stuff seems to come from very direct slice of life experiences, but there's also this huge dark shadow of mystic and eeriness to the songs. One of the more eerie lyrics that I can remember off the top of my head is the part in "Big Trouble" about having a dream of being murdered by a neighbor.

F: I've actually been struggling lyrically a bit lately because the subject matter has become more and more about anxiety and other weird internal mental traps that don't really manifest outwardly that much, and so are hard to put into words. Nothing is too constructed, though - it's always been fairly stream of consciousness for me. If the music sounds dark or surreal it's because my strongest feelings are sometimes intertwined with fear or constriction. Or cause I can understand things in a series of subjective emotional and aesthetic impressions better than I can verbally. Or maybe the creepy dark shadow you are sensing might be reflective of... I think of life as pretty mystical I guess.

M: I tend to write lyrics to help myself remember an experience. Sometimes trying to capture a specific feeling or moment, but tend to do it by trying to take a step back and see what's going on from a larger, more removed perspective. I guess existential in a way, but still very personal. Hard to say where the line is drawn, but I am intrigued by the kind of duality and contrast you can unearth by bringing those two ideas together.

To be fair, there are a lot of things going on in the band both lyrically and musically. This might stem from the band letting itself go through many angles and letting members have input that most other bands usually tend to avoid/ignore. I think this has created a really solid dynamic within Giant Peach and truly gives you guys a very unique sound, although still etched in familiarity.

Where do you guys see the band heading? Any musical direction, fame, money, fortune? Touring more - Europe, South America, Asia? I personally think that even within a DIY frame all of those places are solid options of this band. But I am a fan.

M: We're planning on recording a lot of our new material for a full-length in the next month or so. I'd love to do a tour once that is out, visit some friends and bands we've met on the road and check out some new cities in the US. Any other country would be great too tough, but no plans yet. I think I'd be partial to South America. I don't think of the band in terms of expectations, so as long as we continue to make things we're proud of and excited about then I couldn't be happier.