#we were told the aesthetics didn’t really matter and to make them cohesive with the theme

[lucielovekj]

When I was in uni we had to do a presentation on an artist chosen from a provided list and I chose Mark Ryden and the lecturer who I presented it to laughed and asked mockingly why I would make the presentation pink because it’s extremely unprofessional and I was like you mean this guy?

Why did I make a presentation on this guy pink???

[jadelotusflower]

Roundup - September 2021

This month: Saving Fish From Drowning, Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, Anne Boleyn, Cruella, The Chair

Reading

Saving Fish from Drowning (Amy Tan) - I've always enjoyed Tan's work (particularly The Joy Luck Club, both the book and film) - Fish is somewhat of a departure, following a group of American tourists in Myanmar, narrated by their recently deceased friend Bibi Chen. The novel begins with a preface in which Tan explains she drew inspiration for the novel based on real events chronicled by a San Franciscan psychic's "automatic writing" channeling Chen's spirit (in truth a complete invention on Tan’s part, both literary device and metaphor).

Bibi is a compelling narrator, full of wry commentary of her friends as they bumble their way through their trip, the tone of the novel quite light despite some of the dark subject matter around the political situation in Myanmar (the novel was written in 2005 and set several years earlier) and the nature of intervention - the title referring to fisherman who "save fish from drowning" by netting them. It was at times difficult to keep track of all twelve (!) of the main characters and who was who outside of the few who get the most attention of the narrative.

An interesting read, about the stories we tell ourselves and others, and the fictions we believe for comfort and hope.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there (Lewis Carroll) - I've been making more of an effort to work on my novel lately, which makes some reference to these works so thought it was due for a re-read. It seems impossible to consider these separate novels given how conflated they have become in pop culture - even the Disney film takes elements from both - they act as either a duology, or alternatively a single story told in two parts.

I personally much prefer Looking Glass, perhaps because I imprinted on the 1985 miniseries as a child (which adapts both novels, but we only had the second part on tape) - best known for it's celebrity cameos in silly costumes - including Sammy Davis Jnr, Donald O'Connor, Ringo Starr, and Carol Channing, among others, and the danger of the Jabberwocky as a manifestation of Alice's fears quite a nice idea that isn't found in the original text.

Perhaps Looking Glass, while remaining absurdist, is more cohesive than Wonderland with the chess motif and central motive for Alice to reach the Eighth Square and become a queen. I do however find the constant poetry tedious, and wonder whether both Wonderland and Looking Glass are better remembered for the concepts rather than the actual text.

Watching

Anne Boleyn (episodes 1-3) - I didn't think we needed another film/show about Anne, but I was always going to watch it. This series relies upon familiarity with history as it begins with Anne's final, doomed pregnancy - opening with the haunting words “Anne is the most powerful woman in England - she has just five months to live.”

There's nothing especially new here; rather a mood and character piece as Anne's isolation and desperation grows. It is of course built around the central, compelling performance of Jodie Turner-Smith, in every single scene and not afraid to shy away from Anne's sharper edges while remaining profoundly sympathetic, surrounded by a court of whispers, her existence on a knife's edge. We know only what Anne knows, and we see the smaller, heartbreaking moments usually passed over in other adaptations - in her grief following the stillbirth, Anne sits up in bed almost catatonic, milk leaking from her breasts, her attempt to walk back the infamous “dead man's shoes” comment, and the long days of her imprisonment.

Then there’s the beautiful costumes - in a court of dark furs, Anne wears bold primary colours and velvets that catch the light, that them become more subdued prints once she is in the Tower.

The other notable feature is the casting - described as "identity conscious" rather than colour-blind, representative of the othering of Anne and her relatives. Another standout is Thalissa Teixeira as Anne's cousin Madge Shelton, fleshed out as her confidant and the only one who remains true to her. It's a fresh perspective and a worthwhile watch, particularly for Turner-Smith's performance.

Cruella (dir. Craig Gillespie) - Spoilers. I wasn’t planning on bothering with this, but my sister wanted to watch it and I’d been told by several people that it was actually quite good. Look, I'm not saying they lied, I just think they were able to look past things that I was not.

Because actually, the core story has potential and the film has enjoyable elements (notably Emma Thompson), but simply falters every time they try and shoehorn references to the source material, and there are some truly egregious attempts - Roger is the Baroness’s lawyer for some reason? And writes the familiar Cruella De Vil song about how awful she is when she's just given him a puppy?

It doesn’t work as a prequel, or villain origin story, or even a reboot, since Cruella’s character journey is over by the end of the film (I have no idea what the purported sequel is going to be about) - in fact "Cruella" is just a persona Stone's Estella adopts (complete with a terrible affected accent), and there is no conceivable way for her to become the wannabe puppy murderer we know from the book or any of the film adaptations. Oh, and Pongo and Perdita are siblings! Well done, Disney. Slow clap for you.

Also, with a runtime of 2 hours 16 minutes it is Interminable and the whole thing is saddled with a terrible, unnecessary voiceover. Seriously, they should show this in film class to demonstrate when v/o hinders not helps.

They were likely going for a Maleficent-style re-imagining, but where that succeeded (somewhat) in a completely new retelling right down to a different ending to the source material, this wants to have it's cake and eat it too - it wants to have the Cruella aesthetic (the car, the hair, Hell Hall, the camp accent) but doesn't ever let her be a villain, or even the beginnings of a villain, but that's that's reason she's so memorable in the first place. It puts all the pieces in place for the story we know, and yet that story simply cannot happen with this version of Cruella.

In the end, it's a story of a fundamentally decent person who maybe goes a bit overboard in retaliating to bullies, and swindles a sociopath to reclaim what's rightfully hers. Cruella De Vil! I just couldn't get over this fundamental misapplication of the source material.

In many ways, it almost feels as if this was pitched as a sequel, with Cruella in the Baroness role. It would have fit a lot better with the aesthetic, the time period, and the concept of punk disruption of classic fashion. Or, it was a completely unrelated story of a plucky orphan who rises in the fashion world, that at some point was grafted onto the Dalmatians property. Either one would have worked better, frankly.

I am probably being overly harsh. If you switch off your brain and enjoy the clothes it’s fine. But honestly, if you want your live action Cruella fix, just watch the Glenn Close version, because it is superior in every way.

The Chair (season 1) - I watched this for Sandra Oh, and I was not disappointed, because I got to watch Sandra Oh. On the other hand...it's not that I didn't like it, I just...wish it had been better?

The story revolves around Ji-Yoon Kim, the first woman (let alone woman of colour) to become Chair of English at a "minor Ivy" university, as she tries to juggle the clash of old style academia and new, raise her daughter as a single mother, and deal with a series of controversies caused by one of her professors (and love interest). It's the latter I feel sucked up way too much time and was ultimately unsatisfying - particularly the end, which was played like a moral victory but really rubbed me the wrong way. If this gets a season 2, I hope they dump Jay Duplass' fuckup sadsack because hoo boy, am I sick of that kind of male character.

But Sandra Oh is wonderful.

Writing

The Lady of the Lake - chapter 5 posted, 4215 words (10,261)

Against the Dying of the Light 1954 words (11,976)

Here I Go Again - 414 words (12,948)

Novel - 1039 words (1484)

Total this month: 7,622

Total this year: 48,435

[strxga]

Thoughts & Review on V7C12

This is my personal review for the latest chapter of RWBY. I tried to keep my points objective and organized, and to not take too much time discussing each, and I would sincerely appreciated if it could be given a read. Thank you if you do read it.

Well. It’s finally happened.

After a hazy but relatively positive start, I can say that Chapter 12 is yet another tipping point in a direction. The last chapters of Volume 6 were certainly… A lot, but compared to this one, Volume 6 pales in comparison. This one is… A doozy for several reasons. Let me preface by saying this: I love this show.

I sincerely adore it and the characters, and the reason I’m writing this think piece is precisely because of that. Because it could be so much better, it could be truly a love letter towards Fantasy, anime, and its fandom… But the writers specifically seem to not know how to balance that… But enough ranting. Off to the meatier sections, which I will progressively go from what I liked the most to what I liked the least.

Penny & Winter Scenes

This was, by far, the best written scenes in the episode, and coming from an unlikely pair of friends. Penny has always been emotional despite being a robot while Winter, despite being human, has always acted mechanical. This episode provides a nice contrast between the two, with Penny emphasizing with Winter and trying to get through to her only for Winter to refute her claims, but doing so with a sadness to her face because deep inside she knows James Ironwood’s plan is flawed. In a way, one acts as the other should, but doesn’t. Their awkward but working friendship makes that its mold and comfortably rests atop it.

It’s flawed, but realistically, it’s the best option to take over having to fight Salem with depleted and exhausted forces. The two play off one another marvelously, and this keeps up until Cinder’s entrance (which is another point I’ll discuss later) and the entire time they keep up this great dynamic. Penny asking if it’s going to hurt Fria to transfer her Aura directly to Winter, only for her to once more act as Penny’s foil and say that it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is following orders and keeping the Relic and Maiden Powers safe.

Team ORNJ Scenes

Thankfully this time, it doesn’t take an entire episode to figure out where Oscar is. Frankly, there isn’t much to talk about here, but what little there is of it is good! A problem is established, and then it’s swiftly solved by Neopolitan’s confidence only for everything to fall apart when the real Oscar appears, confirming he wasn’t taken away but had been actually fighting solo against Neopolitan for the lamp.

It establishes he’s no longer the wimp he once was and is making full use of Ozpin’s cane, but I honestly do feel like it was mostly a cat-and-mouse game with Neopolitan stealing the lamp and him chasing after her, because I don’t think he could’ve beaten her on his own. Team ORNJ then sets up to fight Neopolitan, spicing up the fight between them that’s going to take place in the upcoming chapter.

(Upcoming) Neopolitan vs. Team ORNJ

There honestly isn’t much to talk about this regarding on what happened in the episode, but what it did amazingly is set up the fight. We know Neopolitan is an experienced fighter, and strong enough to go toe-to-toe with Cinder without her using her Fall Maiden powers. We also know that Jaune and Ren aren’t the strongest fighters, but they can still hold their own, and them accompanied by Oscar who is slightly below-average but still powerful enough to hold his own and Nora who is, now that Pyrrha’s gone, the strongest member of what remains of Team JNPR, I think the battle between them and our favorite ice cream girl is going to be a highlight of this season, especially with how it was set-up.

Cinder’s Entrance

This is when we start to get into the ‘meh’ section of this episode. Cinder is usually compelling in small doses, but extremely dull, boring and irritable in extended scenes due to how confident, smug and self-assured she is despite her multiple failures ever since the Fall of Beacon. But from a writing perspective, she was amazing. She showed how fearsome she is yet again and that her cleverness is part of her character and not just a plot device. She sent Ironwood into a paranoia and then tracked Winter knowing he’d send her after Fria.

Now, the only thing I don’t get, but this might be just me having forgotten, is if there was one point in which Cinder actually learned Winter was the next candidate to be the Winter Maiden… After all, prior to this point, Cinder had never met or encountered Winter or even less have known of her affiliation with Ironwood in the sense that she is her second-in-command. I have difficulty following that thread of logic… Unless Neopolitan told her at some point? I don’t know. Not knowing is what makes me ‘meh’ about this scene.

Clover, Qrow & Tyrian’s Fight

Taking away the connotations and context from the fight and looking at it purely from a choreography perspective, the fight was amazing and showed all of the fighter’s individual styles and strengths. As per usual, Tyrian was shown as crazed and psychopathic. There is no rhyme, reason or logic to his moves, and therefore there is no pattern or proper way to attack other than improvise. Qrow was versatile in using both his hand-to-hand skills and Harbinger to get the job done, but who stands up the most to me is Clover.

Clover really shows why he’s the leader of the AceOps. He was strategic in using Kingfisher to constantly tie-up Tyrian a few times (I cannot remember if he caught Qrow though) and managed to actually keep up with both of them for a long time! Had it not been for Tyrian’s interference while Clover and Qrow spoke, well… I’ll mention that later. But the point is, Clover was an absolute king in the battlefield and despite his weapon being a fishing rod, he was able to use it tremendously.

Furthermore, what surprised me the most is the fact Qrow and Tyrian worked so well together. They made-up for each other’s flaws whenever Clover had one of them against the ropes, and this surprises me even more considering the fact Tyrian was responsible for Qrow’s closest brush with death. It was… Surprisingly bittersweet.

(Upcoming) Cinder vs. Penny & Winter

Nothing much to talk about here given that this hasn’t yet happened, but as per usual Cinder is flaunting and showing off her power while severely underestimating her opponents. It has been approximately three years since she last saw Penny and since she was rebuilt stronger than before, not to mention the combat experience she’s accrued defending Mantle from the Creatures of Grimm and the occasional bandit and the like.

Winter has also presumably gotten stronger since then, but the scope of her abilities are still unknown since she only engaged in combat once and it was against Qrow all the way back in Volume 3. There’s so many ideas up in the air regarding this upcoming fight that nothing’s stopping me from theorizing Fria will wake up and use her Winter Maiden abilities to kick the snot out of Cinder.

But I am looking forward to what the fight has to offer. I don’t think any of them will die though. Cinder is still too important to the plot as are Penny and Winter for as long as the setting is Atlas.

Clover, Qrow, Robyn & Tyrian Scenes

Yeah. This whole encounter was… It wasn’t exactly ‘bad’ but I felt like the characters here acted completely out of character. Well, sans for Tyrian of course, given that at his core, he is simply a psychopath.

Clover has always been one who acted as one of the most morally-upstanding member of the AceOps as well as the one who was, arguably, given the most screen time. But for some reason, this episode had him betray everything he stood for and wanted to arrest Qrow even though Qrow… Well, what did Qrow even do for Ironwood to want him arrested? That’s another minor nitpick I have about the situation. But with how closely Clover and Qrow had bonded, you’d think he’d try and make sense of the situation instead of acting as a drone even though before he had never done so.

Robyn went from a pragmatic and understanding leader-like figure to, well… Whatever that was. I sincerely can’t understand her character because she isn’t cohesive at all. The only trait about her that remains is her loyalty to Mantle… But that’s it. One moment she’s against Ironwood, the next moment she’s siding with him… Then she sides against him and then once more sides with him. It’s honestly very boring and for someone who is supposed to be based on Robin Hood, she’s never done anything Robin Hood-esque. Even her aesthetic doesn’t match him. She feels like an incomplete character and the only side of her we see is a temperamental, indecisive leader. She couldn’t even tell it wasn’t Penny who attacked her at the election party even though almost every single part of her, weapons included, are bioluminescent. It’s frustrating, really. She should’ve known something was wrong from the get-go when Ironwood gave the order instead of immediately resorting to blind anger.

Qrow… There has never been an instance in the show when Qrow reacted with direct violence ever since Volume 3 while he was drunk. He saw Robyn attack Clover first and decided that he was going to attack Clover when he was the one being assaulted. Robyn and Qrow, as far as I know, never even had a single interaction together one-on-one, and even if he did, he’s always been one to stand against wrongdoings despite his shady demeanor. It honestly sucked seeing him being so out of character this entire chapter because he is a fan-favorite and for good reason. He has had a good amount of development. But he acted on violence instead of simply sitting down and having a talk with both Clover and Robyn. It simply didn’t make sense to me.

AceOps vs. Team RWBY

Just like before, I will focus entirely on an unbiased analysis of how this fight went and criticizing the things that particularly stood out for me whether bad or good. I’ll also be dividing this into subsections because it’s going to be a more direct and easier way for me to do so, and in case anyone’s reading this, that way they can skip ahead to their favorite fight. I watched this battle several times in an attempt to breakdown as best I could. So, let’s start with the main show and the one we saw the most of:

Ruby Rose vs. Harriet Bree

Arguably the most balanced fight out of the four short ones we saw. While I am apprehensive of aspects such as Ruby’s Semblance being able of breaking through iron barricades so easily despite never having alluded or shown her Semblance doing something like that before… I can give it a pass if anything because it made the environment more malleable. Despite that, however, I did like the fast paced match between the fastest members of their respective teams. It’s a very fast battle, but we can see it fully and what we see… Is a fight in which Ruby is on the defensive the entire time, and a battle she should’ve completely lost.

Ruby landed exactly zero hits on Harriet. Zero. Well… Not entirely. She does push Harriet down once but Ruby… Isn’t good at hand-to-hand combat and it’s been shown time over time that she’s not very physically strong so I’d hardly say that counts as a hit… But it does happen. Yet we’re supposed to believe that she was taken out by running into an ice wall created by Weiss at the last moment and that her Aura broke from that? Harriet landed exactly 5 very powerful attacks on Ruby and yet her Aura never even budged. I find that hard to believe. First Ruby got kicked on the face with enough strength to send her flying towards an elevator and break the doors off the wall.

Then he got double-kicked by Harriet on the gut and sent flying back. Then she got punched right on her back by Harriet’s weapon, Fast Knuckles, which are basically Yang’s gauntlets. An attack like that should’ve, at least, done significant damage to her Aura given it was strong enough to buckle her legs and crash her against the floor, which in and of itself should count as another impact given how hard she hit it. Then after that, Ruby got headbutted on the face by Harriet and then choked on the neck by Harriet with her legs and once again slammed with tremendous force on the floor. But her Aura is unscathed for some reason?

Then in comes Weiss, puts an ice wall in front of Harriet for her to crash into, and somehow that takes her down and breaks her Aura. Objectively, this battle was amazing, but Ruby never even once had the advantage. Ruby should’ve been knocked out by Harriet when her Aura broke, but for some reason… That didn’t happen. Good choreography, however.

Weiss Schnee vs. Marrow Armin

I frankly can say this one was expertly choreographed as well. We finally get to see a fight in which Weiss gets to use her Semblance at its full capacity, and this time she doesn’t abuse ice dust only. While it’s still in the vast majority of her attacks, she also relies on fire dust, which does add a degree of excitement and a fresh take to her battle style. Not to mention she now isn’t as reliant on the Arma Gigas only. It was a good balanced diet of everything Weiss can do! There still was very little of her in actual close-quarters combat, but that’s never been her specialty. She’s more of a mid-ranged fighter than anything else with lots of tricks and gimmicks. As for Marrow– well, Marrow… Could’ve made things so much easier if he had used his Semblance effectively.

When it comes to the battle itself though it was… Very lackluster on Marrow’s end, but then again it is heavily-implied by Harriet that he’s not fighting seriously at all and was purposefully holding back, so perhaps the fact he was defeated so easily really isn’t that hard to believe considering his heart wasn’t on the fight and even then he still put up a good fight. But like with Harriet… I find his Aura breaking so easily to be… Weird? He only got hit one time by Weiss’ homing fire dust… Flames? Bullets? Rays? I don’t know what to call it, but he got hit just once with Weiss’ dust and I don’t really count it as a hit but he got pushed to the wall once, but nowhere with near the same intensity as Ruby getting slammed and thrashed all over the environment by Harriet.

But ultimately while it is a nice fight… Again, I find Marrow going down to a single attack borderline offensive and humiliating for one of the members of the AceOps, but then again this was the only battle that felt like a member of Team RWBY deserved to win, and that’s saying something given Weiss’ battle track record isn’t exactly the cleanest and she’s lost the most fights out of any Team RWBY member when it comes to one-on-one encounters.

Blake Belladonna & Yang Xiao Long vs. Elm Ederne & Vine Zeki

Honestly, this is probably the best fight out of the ones regarding Team RWBY vs. the AceOps. It is nice to see this fight’s choreography because it was quite enjoyable. It was very dynamic and there was a lot of movement which made it flow just like a river of water, but there were also… Lots of inconsistencies regarding the character’s power levels and how they performed in this fight, especially regarding Elm and Vine who, from an objective standpoint if one sits down and analyzes the fight as I did, it’s also easy to tell that… Elm and Vine should’ve won.

While it’s disappointing that we didn’t get to see Vine’s weapon in this final bout, we did see Blake and Yang working together as well as Elm and Vine despite their personality conflicts. There really wasn’t a lot of team coordinating, but both sides performed admirably. Yang & Elm with their brawn and ferocity as well as Blake & Vine with their strategic minds and nimbleness. Now… While I can only praise the dynamics, the battle was, again, stacked against Blake and Yang. Like I did with the battle between Ruby and Harriet, I went through this one thoroughly and counted the amount of hits each character received.

Yang landed a total of three direct blows against Elm. A punch to the face that sent Elm staggering back a few steps, and then she didn’t land a single hit on Elm until she punched the ground with her Semblance, destroying it and sending her flying, but this doesn’t count as a hit because Elm wasn’t harmed when Yang did this. She was only sent flying in mid-air and then Yang and Blake both delivered a single attack on Elm before she fell to the floor, shattering her Aura. Now, we know Elm is basically the Yang of the group, except bigger, stockier and presumably stronger, so with how tough she’s been portrayed up until now, that she was defeated so swiftly surprises me… Especially when she herself beat Yang down to the point her Aura should’ve broken as well.

First she headbutted Yang, knocking her off-balance and later swinging her hammer with enough strength to send Yang, the strongest and bulkiest member of Team RWBY, flying a considerable distance with her massive hammer. This didn’t happen just once, twice or thrice though. Elm hit Yang on the chest with Timber, her hammer, four times, and every single time she was sent flying. We’ve seen the ridiculous feats of strength Nora Valkyrie’s performed with Magnhild. Well, Elm is at least twice stronger than Nora. The fact Yang’s Aura never even budged despite getting hammered on the chest with the heaviest and most powerful hammer we’ve seen in the show is beyond me. It doesn’t help that she got also hit directly by Vine with a rock the size of her entire body and pushed back. If anything, Elm and Yang’s fight is the most balanced one so Elm being defeated is not the issue. The issue is how despite receiving double the punishment, Yang’s Aura never broke while Elm’s broke with just three hits that didn’t pack the same punch and power all of Elm’s attacks which connected did.

Now regarding Blake’s encounter with Vine… Like Ruby with Harriet, Blake landed a total of zero hits against both Elm and Vine. Coincidentally, however, Blake also was also hit the most in this battle to the point her Aura actually did break. Why only her’s though is not something I can answer. I could describe how Blake got hit, but two of those times she got crushed by Vine’s Semblance and slammed against the wall twice, the second time enough to break the wall as well, and the one time she got hammered on the chest by Elm with enough strength to send her several feet on the air, which likely hurt a whole lot since every single one of Elm’s hits pack two massive punches. Now if any of you are curious about how many hits Vine took before his Aura broke…

It was one. He got sent flying to the ground by Yang and his Aura broke. I don’t count the explosives that detonated near him because he was using his Semblance to hold onto them, reducing the explosion’s power and size, but it still destabilized him and sent him careening to the air for Yang to grab. But Yang’s explosives aren’t exactly the strongest anyways so even if they did do some damage, it was still extremely minuscule damage for his Aura to break from a single hit like Marrow’s did. It was honestly disappointing, especially after we got to witness how strong they truly are by perfectly fighting against a Geist in the earliest episodes of the Volume.

My overall rating of the fight is that, objectively, it was amazingly choreographed… But the power level in RWBY is still awful and largely-irrelevant, since there is no instance in which Team RWBY will actually lose a fight even if throughout the encounter they are taking more hits than their opposition. This is an issue they still need to fix…

Team RWBY’s ‘Plan’

This one is… Upsetting. Even more so than the above because, at this point, Team RWBY is devoid of any and all potential consequences of their actions, and frankly I’m tired of it. Ever since Volume 6 their ‘plans’ if they can even be called that, have been compromising even more things for the sake of their so-called righteousness. In Volume 6 they endangered all of Argus and attacked an entire military base, and to this day they’ve suffered exactly zero consequences for their actions. If anything, they got rewarded for their criminal activity by getting a free pass to Atlas. Ironwood didn’t even look in their direction after they did that too. All for their selfish righteousness too, which in most occasions isn’t even right. They just do whatever they can even if it comes at the cost of other’s safety as long as it serves them

Now they even refuse to even see where Ironwood is coming from. They don’t offer him help, all they do is judge him and criticize him both to his back and in front of him and only side with him when it benefits them. They are, physically, mentally and emotionally incapable of sympathizing with others yet they want others to sympathize with them and their hypocrisy only continues to go rewarded. The narrative is very obviously in their favor and attempts to sway the viewers into thinking Ironwood is the villain for… Doing the only few remaining things he can do to try and keep not just Atlas and the Mantle survivors safe, but all of the world. They don’t even bother to see his point. At no moment during that confrontation do they go ‘we see your point and where you’re coming from, but that’s just playing into Salem’s hands and we can’t do that.’ No, all they do is yell at him and tell him he’s wrong, that he’s an awful person.

They don’t see the greater scheme. All they see are their own lofty ideals. They physically cannot save all the people of Mantle. They physically cannot keep the Lamp and the Staff, and they certainly, at this point in time, physically stop Salem if she is coming. They need ships to save the people of Mantle, they need to be on guard duty to protect the Staff and the Lamp. They need to keep Fria safe to keep the Winter Maiden powers from being robbed, but how are they physically going to do that? By ‘standing their ground?’ That is such a nonsensical, idyllic solution. They can’t do all of those things, but somehow, someway, they are ‘right’ because they want to do ‘the right thing.’ Except. There is no right thing thing to do. Not everything is as black and white as they want it to be. And every single time they do this and experience zero consequences while reaping many rewards for their hypocritical and catastrophic reckless decisions, the more faith I lose in the writers and the show.

Team RWBY defeating the AceOps

Like I said above, this was something I really didn’t enjoy… As I’ve mentioned above, it seems Team RWBY’s recklessness and inconsiderate behavior that endangers far more lives than they save will always go rewarded, and here is no different. I’ve gone through the battle several times and the only fight which deserved to be won by a member of Team RWBY was Weiss’ battle against Marrow, and this was largely because Marrow was holding back and implied he could push Weiss more against the ropes if he wanted to. Not to mention that it was due to Marrow’s hesitation Team RWBY even had a fighting chance. Had he used his Semblance at the very beginning he could’ve frozen all of Team RWBY where they were and have them apprehended immediately because they’d be unable to move.

Besides that one, the only other one who could’ve gone in Team RWBY’s favor is Yang’s fight against Elm, but even so it was… 75/25 in Elm’s favor. But the proof is in the animation, and it shows Elm landing far more attacks on Yang than Yang ever did on her, but since Team RWBY’s victory is required for the plot to progress, they were able to defeat the AceOps. Blake’s fight against Vine and Ruby’s fight against Harriet is not something I can even justify if I tried to do so because it was entirely one-sided on the AceOps’ favor. I try to give a lot of leverage to the show and its writing, but I cannot suspense my disbelief for such a one-sided fight, especially when the AceOps dished out punishment after punishment for Team RWBY and none of their Auras broke nor did they look even remotely tired while the AceOps all went down with two-to-three hits that I find hard to believe would take down the most elite Hunters in all of the Atlas continent.

We don’t know the AceOps’ members’ age, but what we do know is that they’ve been serving directly under James Ironwood for years now, and as the most elite, that makes them the strongest military platoon in all of Atlas with several years long specialized training years under their age while Team RWBY received not even a year of formal training at Beacon Academy and fought some Creatures of Grimm on the way to Mistral, had very limited and minor training under Ozma/Ozpin and then had small bouts against Salem and Raven’s forces in the Battle for Haven. Then after that they faced off against more Creatures of Grimm on the way to Atlas except for the one time they teamed-up to fight against Caroline Cordovin’s Colossus. Compared to the AceOps’ rigorous daily training and constantly having to carry out extremely difficult tasks under Ironwood’s leadership, Team RWBY’s training really pales in comparison.

There are many other ways that Team RWBY’s physical, mental or emotional strength without having them win fights they don’t deserve, because at this point it simply feels like no matter what happens, no matter how gray the situation the writing team behind RWBY attempts to portray, the narrative always tries to portray Team RWBY as being in the right even though for the past two Volumes they have been wrong in their methods without suffering any consequences. It’s exhausting and frankly, not good writing. I understand this is said a lot, but in this case, it can really be attributed to bad writing. Team RWBY doesn’t have to win every fight, they don’t have to always come out on top. They don’t always have to be right. And they most certainly don’t have to always be at the center of everything. That’s what side characters are for, side characters that they rarely use at all but keep around and keep increasing the amount of side characters for the plot. It’s overwhelming in all the wrong ways.

By the way, it was Team RWBY who attacked the AceOps, not the other way around. They could’ve stood down, they could’ve calmed down and realized they were in the wrong in this scenario, and Harriet herself said it first. They decide what happens next. Ruby draws out her weapon and escapes the room, forcing Harriet to chase her. They were the ones who forced the AceOps into acting, not the other way around. But the next moment Ruby is begging Harriet to team up with her to fight Salem even though a moment ago she was challenging Harriet to a fight because of her arrogance and unjustified massive ego. At this point, Ironwood might be paranoid and making bad decisions, but Team RWBY certainly poured gasoline all over his paranoia.

Qrow

I think most of the FNDM can agree that what they did with Qrow makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. There are a lot of things wrong with his character this chapter. For starters, at no point since he was introduced did Qrow try to solve the problems he faced with outright violence. He always preferred the diplomatic and peaceful approach because that’s what Ozpin taught him to do and what he genuinely believed was the right step today, because violence leads to panic, and the panic leads to Creatures of Grimm… Except in this case where he… Decided to rely on violence.

But the greatest offender was the fact he teamed up with Tyrian of all people– that’s right. Qrow willingly teams up with Tyrian, the same person who has tried to slaughter both Ruby and himself and has successfully murdered dozens of innocent civilians for his own amusement to attack Clover… What? Then he has the audacity to blame Clover for what happened and feels awful when, to no one’s surprise, Tyrian betrays him and stabs Clover with Harbinger when it was him who knocked out Clover’s Aura in the first place.

It’s awful, and I can understand why so many Qrow fans are enraged by this, because even I was and I don’t relate to Qrow that much. Just as the meme goes, ‘everything happens so much…’

Clover’s Death

Didn’t need to happen. Literally that’s my entire point on this section. It didn’t need to happen, it shouldn’t have happened, and this was RWBY’s writing team attempt at shock for the Volume. Because Qrow is just not allowed to have happy endings or friends. Qrow has no rights mourning Clover’s death when he himself was the direct catalyst for it to occur in the first place. But there is something else that is horrifyingly atrocious in the writing department going on with Clover in the last moments of his death. Seconds before getting stabbed with Harbinger, Clover states that he would trust Ironwood with his life… Then, all that changes right after he is nearing the end of his life.

The moment he realizes his life is fading away, once again, Clover goes against anything and everything he stands for by wishing Qrow good luck when the other claims he’s going to make sure Ironwood takes the fall for what happened, when Ironwood is doing nothing wrong. Ironwood keeps getting painted as the villain even by his most loyal soldier, the one who claimed he would trust the general with his life, but that ultimately doesn’t matter based on the show’s writing. Clover previously also talked about how Ironwood was doing the right thing by making the toughest decisions, the decisions that realistically could and would save thousands of lives unlike Team RWBY’s lofty goals.

Goals which by the end of the episode continue being unanswered. How are they going to accomplish all the naïve promises they want to fulfill? From a non-biased opinion and how they tend to solve the writing’s plot holes in past volumes, what most likely’s going to happen is yet another Deus Ex Machina. In Volume 4 it was the ‘random’ troops that just happened to arrive to Kuroyuri on time to escort the group all the way to Mistral and seek medical first aid for Qrow. In Volume 5 it was Blake showing up with an entire militia of the reformed White Fang as well as Vernal, somehow, still living to get that cheap shot in for Raven to have an opening to knock Cinder off the vault’s cliff. In Volume 6 it was Ruby’s empty speeches somehow convincing Cordovin to give them a free ship so they could travel to Atlas even though Team RWBY and company were responsible for everything bad that happened to Argus because of their selfishness.

[mvdipetsch]

hey luna, i'm a big fan of your blog! when you get a chance, could we trouble you for an opinion please? we're a medieval rp about an ongoing war between kingdoms, and we open at 10 apps. thanks in advance!

hey there! thank you so much for the compliment; of course you can have an opinion! it’ll be under the cut, since it might get a little long and i, in no way, mean to offend or bring negativity to your roleplay. this is merely my opinion and may not represent the whole. 

starting with your icon, it’s a little too dark for my liking. i’d like it to be more prominent. due to the darkness of the crown, and the deep red, they both sort of ‘morph’ together. this can be easily ‘fixed’ simply by playing with the brightness and saturation of your icon! for your url, i don’t immediately think medieval, but i would guess some sort of war element. the war and the crown make me think it’ll be a royalty rp, so i guess combined, you’re sending the right message!

moving on to your theme & aesthetics! i really enjoy how light your colour scheme is, but i do think the red-white-black combo may be a little.. done? i think having a purple (since purple is a royal colour) or even gold could bring an elevation to the theme as well as tying in rather nicely with the royalty idea. i don’t know if this is the theme itself or if you’ve done it, but i don’t like the icon in the middle of the graphic on your sidebar. it holds no purpose and looks somewhat messy. when i use your navigation, there’s a lighter pink and it doesn’t fit the rest of the theme / colour scheme. the navigation page is very light and thus it’s not giving a sense of cohesion. i recognise the sidebar graphic from reign (at least, now i hope it’s reign. i’ve never actually seen the show!) but if i didn’t, then i wouldn’t have guessed that you’re a medieval / royalty rp. that said, if the icon wasn’t there then it’d probably look better and you would be able to see more of their clothing, faces, etc. so it’d be more obvious you were medieval! 

my favourite part (and the only part that truly matters) of any rp, the plot! immediately, i notice your graphic for the plot doesn’t fit the width of the post space. i’d consider having the word “plot” on the graphic and getting rid of that top title. also, something tells me you’ve accidentally put bullet points in the plot? i’m hoping that’s a minor html error, as it doesn’t make sense to have the points in. regarding the writing of the plot itself: first thing is you mention there being four kingdoms, yet only mention food, music and clothing as trades. i’d mention all four, personally, as it seems odd only mentioning three. the whole sentence regarding it doesn’t make sense; “one providing food for every article of clothing another provided, for every beautiful melody rang through the air.” using the noun “provide” twice in one sentence, especially in two different tenses, is a little bleh. use synonyms and try to keep the tense the same. “for every article of clothing produced, food would be traded, music would be shared and (INSERT OTHER KINGDOM PRODUCTION HERE). the four kingdoms had a system, a currency of bartering, each only as strong as its weakest.” something like that may fit a little better. the remainder of your plot, i’m a much bigger fan of. i would advise that you show and don’t tell. the first sentence about the affair feels very heavy and dense. break it up. describe what happened – without being too vulgar, of course! go more into the apology that was rejected, into when it happened, why it happened, etc. of course, you can keep the reader in the dark as the public are, but give a little bit more. dress it up a little, so to speak. 

this next part will be the miscellaneous, so extra pages, your rules, etc. first thing is i would love, love, love some more in the locations. yes, you’ve told me what that kingdom produces, but give a few exact locations so that characters have places to interact. also, double check that the images for these pages are the same dimensions (eden’s image is bigger!) and you don’t need a title for a page if it’s already on the graphic.i will always recommend having an actual banned fcs list. always. there will always be fcs that make people uncomfortable but aren’t always explicitly banned and if an admin already has a list, it can help to make a player / applicant feel more comfortable with coming and saying “hey ____ makes me uncomfortable, could they be a banned fc?” this is going to sound really nit-picky, but alphabetize your jobs list. it sounds small, but it’s a little detail that does go a long way and shows organisation on your behalf! your application needs to have a gender identity portion, giving pronouns isn’t enough. as well, the commoner application says “he/she/they” but the royals one says “pronouns.” just make them both “pronouns” since some don’t like the given options! 

overall, i think there are minor aesthetic issues and a handful of things you could add to your plot to make it more dynamic and intriguing. that said, there aren’t any serious red flags with the rp. it’s not my personal cup of tea, i’m not big on historic rps, so i probably wouldn’t recommend it? then again, i know naff all about history and medieval times (i don’t even watch downton abbey) so i could be totally wrong. one thing i would really like to mention though is that you (the admin with blake lively, i don’t know if there are multiple admins!) seem really sweet and lovely and really excited for the rp, judging by your posts. i truly wish you the best of luck! 

[goprandall]

DC MASTERPOST >3

It’s no secret the DC universe is something of a DCpointment. There’s no cohesion in sotrylines, films are released at odd and illogical times and I decided to rewatch and give proper reviews.

MAN OF STEEL 2013 7/10

This film is something of an outlier on the DCEU, because it is not terrible.

The strengths of this film are defiantly the first act, I feel it was a clear and concise way to create backstory without the stereotypes of following him through childhood into adulthood, they did a great job of creating krypton and establishing an antagonist with a clear motive. I liked the jump straight into adult with flashbacks when confronted with items from his past, it allowed us to understand his past without saturating his journey all at once. Arguably the first arc of this film is completed here with Clark/kal discovering who he is and why he is here. The second arc of General Zod trying to bring back his people is still very well done, providing us more relevant backstory and shows logical actions from both sides of the fight nearing the end of the film. The biggest weakness of the film in my opinion is that it is 20 minutes too long. When superman destroys Zods ship killing the artificial children of krypton, I feel this arc was complete, although the after fight solely fought between SM and Zod does show us the struggle superman goes through becoming the last kryptonite in exaistance, this does not outweigh the pointless mass destruction this causes, on top of a already destroyed city. In my cut this would be disregarded.

Final thoughts of the film; my favourite part was the shot of ‘ALERT’ that slowly turns to ‘Toner empty’, a good transition and piece of direction. I’m giving this film 7/10, in my classification would make it a good Netflix film, one I’d be happy to watch but not pay money to solely see. It was a hard choice to not make it a 6 however, I rank wonder women as a 7, and this is more than equally as good, the only things preventing me from giving it a higher rank is it’s rewatchability. Personally I rarely would due to its lack of joy and humour, and overall darkness, not just in plot but also in cinematography and colour grading.

BATMAN V SUPERMAN 2016 6/10

Batman v superman had all the the ingredients to be the summer blockbuster, but as predicted it followed every DC film and tanked.

Their are some aspects of this film that are genuinely good, giving it a 6, one of those things is the first act of the film where we are introduced to Batman, although I didn’t personally feel the need for another origin story, the way this scene is directed especially with the earl sequence is fantastic, adding depth and differing from older versions of the same story. The other good thing about this film is the Batman fight scene, it is so well articulated and choreographed, i struggle to see how it fits within the wider film which is strangely badly directed, edited and in-cohesive.

Continuing from this idea, I feel the dream sequences are one of the leading problems for the in-cohesion of the film, the issue with these sequences is, if they are not well done it stops the audience trusting more daring scenes, ultimately taking you out of the story. Next, I feel another reason this doesn’t live up to its hype is, again, DCs continuous frenzy of oversaturating it’s film with characters. Here I argue Wonder women is not needed in the end fight, the fight could just have easily gone on sitbout her, or, if they had released wonder women before this film so we felt more engrossed in the character it wouldn’t been fine. However her and all the other justice league promo clips, should not have been in the film in the context they were as they’re a corporate shoehorn, promoting further projects. The other character I feel is unneeded is ‘Doomsday’, he’s quickly thrown in at the end of the film, and honesty an antigunist shown to us at the end of the film will never give the depth and fear of a hero fight, as a villain shown throughout the movie.

To me, Batman V Superman is a movie. Not a film, crafted and worked on to create a narrative for the audience, but a summer movie to get the kids out the house. The idea of having two meta humans as important as Batman and superman battling each other should boggle the mind, as the first avengers did for me or civil war for a closer comparison. But the difference with the MCU spectaculars is, they earned their right to blow people’s minds, DC is playing catch up and trying to get praise and awe without the hard work.

SUICIDE SQUAD 2016 3/10

Wow. This review has been hard to create and will most likely feature ideas from other reviews via podcasts and YouTube due to the fact this movie boggled my head in the sheer awfullness that ensued.

As always, I begin with the strengths of the film. In this instance it’s slight. I loved the aesthetics of the branding for the film, the colours, the neon animations, I loved it all. The mini descriptions in the film were funny and added to the VeRy little personalities of the characters. It is important to point out this clearly wasn’t present in the first edits of the film, but due to good feedback of later trailers that were released they were added, which is why this element of humour is the only of its kind that lands in the film.

Next I normally look into the storyline and the character arcs of the film, arguably my second favourite aspect to look for in a film. In suicide squad there is none, and there aren’t any. That sounds harsh, but the reality is there is no cohesive storyline, it follows no one character individually and the film darts back and fourth between every character, no matter the timeframe. Dean Dobbs (from adventures with dean and Bertie’s podcast) best describes this as ‘like playing a video game where someone is skipping every cutscene’ and this is absolutly true, especially when looking at the relationship of the joker and Harley Quinn. This film is so badly edited, As jack Howard describes, this film contains no scenes, it is obvious the whole film was rehashed and re-edited after the release of BVS (which crashed at the box office) and the final trailer was released, which was very different from the first few as it showed humour and action, and it is evident they cut out almost everything apart from these things. I would best describe it as many GoPrandall videos I have scrapped as I tend to forget to film opening sequencers and filler clips to show the progression of the story told apart from the action, and this is exactly how I felt about the editing of this film, they did the best with what they got but it wasn’t enough.

Although there was a lack of character arcs, this film had an ABUNDANT amount of characters to fill its shoes. This film crams as many famous faces in as many characters

As it can, because for some reason DC refuses to create stand alone films due to the catch up to the MCU that’s going on. We’ll start with the joker, or more exactly the 10 minuets of joker we got. Many scenes with the joker were so heavily edited, and deleted, it is hard to judge Jared Letos performance, because he didn’t have chance to give one. But, as a side note the hand on the mouth laugh is one of the WORST cinema moments I’ve experienced only closely beaten by ‘were bad guys it’s what we do’. Yuck. But we’ll finally look at the ‘suicide squad’, although looking at them it’s hard to identify why they are in this squad. We’ll start with reason no one on the team seems to have a reason to be there, aprt from deadshot, who had his daughters arc to think about. All the others just seem to around and don’t want to die and get out of prison. VERY good motives DC, you’ve outdone yourself this time. Next we can look at the abilities of this so called ‘meta human’ squad and how under utilised they really are, which could show why this film failed so badly. Firstly deadshot- ‘never misses a bullet- amazing at trick shots.’ Who in the film performs close quarter headshots, the same as the Seal team next to him, and in the film performs 1 trick shot. 1. That was in establishing scene right at the beginning, but he isn’t the only victim, we can look at Boomerang, my favourite character by far, with one the coolest abilities, who throws a total of:5 boomerangs and catches: 2. Let’s be honest Harely is there as the jokers Love Interest and to keep him in the film. We can also look at el deablo, the man that can shoot fire but refuses until he’s bullied for a whole minute. The worlds worst archaeologist who starts the entire battle, after BREAKING AN ANTIQUE immediatly after finding it (bravo) who if wasn’t attempted to be weaponised, would’ve skipped this whole mess. Slipknot, a man who could climb any wall or anything, who immediatly dies after climbing a wall, but don’t worry because they don’t even want you to worry about this due to the fact they don’t even intro him before he magically appears on the squad, hoping the audience will react ‘oh he’s going to be important!!! What a mystery man!!’. This is almost as bad as Katana, who adds nothing the story apart from a short intro and when she cries to her dead husband, at which point I began to cut my toenails, something I gave more of a shit about.

But, it is obvious I’m a teenage marvel fanboy just shitting on DC,and I hate when people complain without offering another viewpoint, therefore, to fix this, I would dedicate this film to the viewpoint of deadshot, giving him the character arc of changing with the goal of seeing his daughter- eliminate the extra characters- slipknot/katana and either dedicate more time to the joker and harley sub plot or eliminate entirely, NOT BOTH. With this, better editing around these eliminated plot points could make a more coherent story with more empathetic story arcs. I have a full idea for a plot but this is too long as it is.

WONDER WOMEN 2017 7/10

Wonder women is a refreshing instalment into the DCEU, showing they seem to e learning, but are still falling behind on some of the most basic hurdles.

Firstly, as always we’ll start off with the strengths of his film, firstly it is vividly important to recognise that this is the first major Superhero film to be directed, and sustain a heavy female cast. It does so fantastically and leaves me more excited for the next instalment now knowing female directors and stars now have evidence for an accomplished superhero movie, which arguably has outdone the past 2 major films. With this we see a brilliantly refreshing opening act with a subtle and bright, vibrant origin story.

However, this film slowly returns to madness throughout the film when major plot holes appear, and the film making quality slowly deteriorates. Firstly, the iggest plot hole that has been so easily overlooked is the WW1 aspect. Given a World War Two film, having the Germans be the sole enemy is obvious and logical, however WW1 is not as simple as this and the use of Germans as the enemies is vaguely lazy. Also, as DC loves to do, it adds in extra characters and neglects to give them logical and coherent backstory and arcs. We only need to look at the ‘best marksman in the war’ who doesn’t fire a single shot, and continues not too all the way to the end of the film, showing no growth. The final plot hole is what draws it into the wider EU. The entirety of this film is showing Diana that the human race is bad and should be left alone, although when she defeats arias, this is meant to break this curse and peace seems to be restored. But, in BVS she claims to have stopped helping mankind because of their evils, neglecting Stalin, WW2 and the Vietnam war to name a few, but making a reappearance for- lex Luther. Wow.

Although in almost most of its entirety this was a pleasant watch, my personal issue stopped this at the third act when the final fight begins. To me the film returns to DCs favourite colour scheme of dark and clouded, and uses quite frankly some of the worst CGI I’ve seen recently, making me wonder why they didn’t at least try to incorporate real elements, such as Marvel, but this is still the best DC film after man of steel and I’m excited to see more female led and directed films come to screen.

JUSTICE LEAUGE 2016 5/10

This will be the shortest of the DC reviews, this is the film I’ve seen least of the lot and I feel I’ll need at least another viewing to get a full understanding. To premise this I fully understand Zack Snyder had personal issues leading him to leave and Joss take over, and this is in no way mocking him.

But I’ll dive in, maybe the fact I’m struggling to write this review tells me a lot about the movie. Wonder women was one of the only saving graces of this move, she was well understood and I feel her likeness as a character was well transferred from WW to JL. Contrary to this, I’m struggling to write about cyborg and flash, we were given next to no backstorys, although the flash’s was hinted at at least twice that I recall and what we were given were quite chaotic. Batman was a major letdown for me, coming down from BVS where he was a certified badass taking on superman, he turns into a wimp and hides for a majority of the film, quite evidently showing Ben affleck Clearly does not want to be there. I feel the overall plot of the film was almost underatsnvle, but had the taken the time to set up this storyline in previous films it would’ve been much better, this movie lacked the right to have all these characters on screen together. The characters had adequate screen time each, but contrary to its biggest rival ‘the avengers’ this really wasn’t that special, most of the characters had the same abilities, barring the flash, and the way the avengers films have shown all the characters working together simultaneously in cinematic mastery, you can see hints of Joss attempting this, but with a bad set up it’s an impossible task.

I conclude, not going into the issue with the CGi because I don’t have that much time.

[stormecloudyy-blog]

Amor Proibido

The inspiration for this story comes from two of Shawn’s songs I am currently very obsessed with. Based upon Roses and Treat You Better, this is the story of a 24 year old journalist encountering 19 year old pop sensation Shawn Mendes. Super awesome shoutout to @nothingholdinmeback for helping me better focus my thoughts. This is going to be a series so I am excited to see where this goes. Please enjoy and I gladly welcome all feedback, good and bad!

“We always long for the forbidden things, and desire what is denied us.”- Francois Rabelais

“…and this kid is going to be fucking huge and you are the one who gets the honor of writing the story for the cover!” My boss exclaims, throwing his hands up in some semblance of jazz hands to convey the excitement I am supposed to be feeling at being told such “amazing” news.

Instead, eyes narrowing and twisting a strand of magenta tipped hair around my finger, I ask him flat out, “What the fuck is wrong with the kid?” I bite my lip, searching for the give away about why I was given the story and not a more senior writing. As far as writers go at the music magazine I work for, I am at the fucking bottom. Most of the time I am writing blurbs about albums no one else wants to listen to or fetching coffee. There is no way I am getting such an honor without there being a big catch.

My boss clears his throat, hands lowering to his side as he lets out a long sigh. “He’s just… well, we have heard he likes to have some fun with the ladies so we thought it–”

I hold up a finger. “Stop the fuck right there, Brice. Shut your mouth before I do it for you. You cannot actually be telling me you are giving me the story because this kid wants to look at a pair of tits while I am supposed to be asking him interview questions. Because that would be sexist as fuck, and I know no one here is about that. I would rather pass on doing a cover story if it means I am getting it based on what’s between my legs. Fuck that.”

Brice laughs. “And that is why we want you to write the story. The sass and wit you possess. There is no one else who can go toe to toe with this Mendes kid the way you would be able to. When we landed the chance to score him for the cover, yours was the only name I would utter because I knew you were going to be the best one for the job. Because you are a goddamn amazing writer, and you won’t deal with this kid’s shit.”

I chuckle. “So you want me to write a story about some popular pop musician but do it with sass?” I raise my eyebrows, not sure I am hearing him correctly. I am still twisting my hair around my finger, heart pounding in my chest. Holy shit. I am going to be finally writing a real piece of writing… it’s exactly what I have been waiting for.

Brice leans on the edge of my desk, crossing his arms against his chest. “Play your cards right with this one, and you could be looking at assistant editor before you are even twenty five.” He holds up a hand before I can respond, adding, “Do not fuck this up though, or you’ll lose your entire writing career.”

No pressure, right?

Being escorted into a hotel room by a security guard shouldn’t feel weird. I have been around famous people before. This kid should be no different. Albeit I had to jump on a plane to do this interview because he is travelling, but I don’t mind. It is all part of my exciting job as a writer. I went to school for this. I have worked my ass off. I have earned this completely. But I still can’t explain why I have the nervous flutters in my stomach. Could be because this is such a big deal…but the more experienced writers I work with say it should be akin to breathing. But right now I can’t breathe, and I wonder if I made a mistake to just throw on a simple black dress with a grey cardigan. Maybe I should have dressed sexier… but that isn’t me.

“Hey.”

I look over at he’s just sitting there, watching me with these deep hazel eyes. A smirk plays at the edge of his round lips. And he has this mess of curls. Like he just runs his hands through them constantly and doesn’t care about how haphazard they exist upon his head. His phone is in his hand and he taps it against his knee, clearly waiting for me to speak.

I glance to my side, realizing the security personnel now stands by the door and not next to me. I got so lost in my thoughts for a moment and… no. This is work. He is just some fucking musician. He is younger than for me, for fucks sake. I need to stop being so damn nervous.

“Please sit down,” he says gesturing at the leather couch across from the one he is perched on. He is still smirking at me, watching my every move and I can feel the fluttering still running rampant in my stomach. Probably should have skipped the wine on the plane…

I walk over and extend my hand, introducing myself to him. My face remains neutral, the epitome of professionalism. Then I sit down, taking my bag off my shoulder and placing it next to me.

“I’m Shawn…” he says, waiting until I take my digital recorder and iPad out of my bag. He is staring at me with curiosity, I can just sense it. He reminds of the boys from high school who would stare at me just because I was “pretty” suddenly. They used to make fun of me, and then when I grew into my looks, I was suddenly worth their time. It is sad to see the male species never changes.

I hate how he affects me. It is like he knows how good he looks. I can appreciate someone’s aesthetics, and Shawn is just dripping with them from every being of his existence. He has this sharp jaw line, these taut muscles, and he is probably really good. In short, he looks fucking good for only being nineteen. But he is a kid, and he is fucking cocky about his looks. I can just tell by the way he smirks, like he expects me to fall at his feet. But that is going to happen when hell freezes over.

I just need to get the start of this interview done because I am going to be doing a whole story on him so I get to interview him multiple times before putting together the final piece. Not to mention, I am sure there is going to follow ups since he is going to be the next big thing or whatever Brice said about him. None of that matters, I am here for a job. The end.

His phone buzzes and he responds to a text, fingers flying across the screen before he puts the phone face down and looks at me. “So you are the one who is going to be writing the story about me. I thought they were going to send someone more…”he rolls his wrist, trying to search for the right words. “More male, I guess. I thought they wouldn’t want to send a woman after what happened during the last interview I had.”

I almost drop my iPad, not wanting to know what he is talking about. I was warned vaguely about Shawn, but I didn’t think he was going to talk about it to me. I am going to be recording and writing about him. You would think he would want to make a good impression. “Excuse me?” I demanded, daring him to elaborate as I turn on the digital recorder.

Those hazel eyes twinkle, watching my hands turn on the recorder and place it on the table between us. He raises an eyebrow and leans in closer, “You heard me just fine.”

“I am here to do my job, not listen to you tell me about unimportant moments in your life,” I say, opening up my iPad to the app I use for all of my note taking so I can create a cohesive piece after I listen to the audio as well. I notice there is a little bit of edge in my voice, more than I was anticipating so quickly.

“Isn’t your job to hear all about my life though?”

“Yes, but I have a purpose when I am going to be asking. I don’t need like some random commentary about things no one else gives a fuck about related to you. I am interviewing you for a music magazine so I am going to ask you about music. I don’t think it is that hard to understand,” I snap, my eyes meeting his with a challenging look.

“I can talk about music just fine,” he states, chuckling. “I was just telling you I was surprised about their choice. Of course, I am not going to complain at all. I am grateful they sent-”

“Stop,” I cut him off, not wanting to hear a bunch of bullshit lines. “Let’s just do this preliminary interview so I go back to my own hotel room and eat some fucking food because I am hungry and tired, and I am wasting my time right now listening to you change the subject over and over.”

He bites his lip, looking at me with those eyes and he smiles. It isn’t a sardonic smile either. It is a genuine smile, like he finally understands I am doing my job. It as though he sees me finally, and it causes all of the air to escape from my lungs. Those fucking eyes.

“Sorry,” he says, holding up his hands in surrender.

“Thank you,” I acquiesce, feeling calmer and wishing the air would return to my lungs. I hate the way a kid can make it so I am not able to breathe. He is younger than me, and this is my job. No more, no less.

“Usually everyone they send to interview me is old enough to almost be my parent… how old are you anyway?” Shawn questions me, leaning back against the couch and letting his mouth let go of the smirk I thought was going to be etched into his marble like face the whole time.

I blush, knowing he is going to think I am old once I tell him my age. “Um. I am twenty four. So…uh…not old enough to be your parent haha,” I force out a fake laugh, feeling my palms start to go sweaty. What the fuck is going on right now.

He raises an eyebrow. “You’re young.”

I sigh. “Not compared to you, Shawn.”

He shakes his head at me, looking at me as though I am crazy. “No, you are young. And I know you must be talented to be doing a story on me. Not to sound conceited, but I know your magazine is very well known and the cover story isn’t just handed to someone without good reason.”

Is Shawn Mendes complimenting me? Is this happening?. Fuck. There goes the air in my lungs again and my palms aren’t faring much better.

“I am okay, I guess,” I say, not wanting to talk about myself.

“You must have some type of talent to be working for such a good magazine and doing this interview. You should try and give yourself more credit sometimes. It can be good for the soul to admit you have talent.”

“Can we just do this interview so I can go eat? This is about you, not me,” I say, scanning my notes for the questions I have ready to ask him. “So… what makes this album different than the others?” I keep my eyes on my words, refusing to look at him so this can end sooner.

He is silent for a moment, eyes flickering as he wonders why I won’t elaborate anymore. Then he shrugs, not saying a word.

Goddammit.

Shawn looks at me with the most intense gaze, knowing he is getting on my last nerve. There is something about him which gets under my skin.

I don’t need this in my life. I just wanted to do my job and be done. I had to get on a flight right after work, and I am so tired because I did not sleep last night. I don’t need Shawn Mendes to test my patience anymore. I just want this over.

“Can you answer the question?” I prompt, tapping my fingers on the edge of my iPad. Waiting.

Shawn shrugs again, the smirk returning in all of its glory.

“What about inspirations for this album… are there any particular ones you want to talk about?” I ask, sighing for a moment and wishing I was eating a pizza and soaking in a hot bath alone.

“I am always inspired by those around me..” he trails off, leaning closer with his elbows resting against his knees. The couches are close enough he could reach out and…

“Inspired by those around you..” I echo, taking quick notes and noticing how dry my mouth is. I lick my lips nervously and keep my eyes away from him. He can’t know what he does to me or this is never going to end.

Shawn nods, taking the time to let me write down some more thoughts before he decides to elaborate more on his answers. “In the past year, I have learned a lot more about who I am as a person. As in, how I am no longer a kid. I am growing up, and I think my music reflects who I am becoming and shows where I have been. It is a journey, as I am sure you know. You’re a writer too…we grow and develop. We learn who we are…what we like…what we want..” he looks at me as he speaks, hazel eyes intensely gazing at me.

“I want to be happy,” he says with a shrug, his words heavier than he will detail. “Just like everyone else.”

[elanorjane]

Picture of Beauty: Rumbelle Funny Face (Ch1/?)

Summary: Fashion house Jefferson-Mills needs inspiration. Photographer Gold believes a librarian he photographed by accident has what it takes. Now it's up to Gold to turn Belle into a model worthy of Paris Fashion Week. Based on the movie Funny Face. Rating: This chapter PG-13 A/N: Unbeta'd. I have no idea whether someone had already written a Rumbelle Funny Face, I was too afraid to look. 

AO3

“I’m so bored I could kill all of you.” Regina Mills stood behind on her desk, perfectly framed by black and white demask curtains.  

Her seven garment men stood in a row in front of her, work boots scuffing the marble floor. Each one held at least two bolts of fabric in various colors and patterns.

Leroy looked down the line of exquisite cloth, “Whatsa matter with ‘em?”

Regina had put in the order herself. She’d okay’d every design detail down to the perfect shade of ultra violet for a lily to be printed on silk charmeuse. Leroy and his men hand dyed and cut patterns to her exact specifications. It was this kind of attention to detail that made Jefferson-Mills one of the emerging premier fashion houses. Now the latest swatches were staring her in the face...and they were hideous. A complete snoozefest.  

"It looks like my grandma’s knitting circle threw up in here. Where's the freshness? Where's the youth? Youth is beauty. I should know, I've been selling that lie for years."

Walter, standing at the end of the line and usually very docile, piped up, "Aren't they what you wanted?"

Regina circled around the desk. Walter swayed on his feet but stayed where he was. She spoke through clenched teeth, "They're exactly what I wanted. But not what I need." She threw her hands up in the direction of the fabrics, “It’s tired. It’s been done.” She stood in front of the blue and tan floral print Walter held, “That’s Chloe Spring 2017,” she dismissed. She took a few steps to her right and stopped at a sheer lilac, “And that’s Valentino Couture 2006.”

Leroy shrugged, "How many more types of fabric can there be?"

Regina gave him a withering glare that Walter and the others slunk away from. She paced back and forth, the men parting to make way. "What's missing? What do I need?" she muttered to herself.

Doc leaned forward, giving the collection an academic eye, “Pink?”

She grimaced, “God no.”

The double doors to her office burst open and Jefferson strode in. "Who's ready for Paris?" he sang in an exaggerated French accent. Everyone spun to look at him and Jefferson came to a standstill, eyes sweeping over the prints that stretched from one end of Regina’s office to the other. "Ugh, hideous!"  

She rolled her eyes, "They're your designs!"

"Really?" he squinted and bent at the waist to better study a linen Doc clutched to his chest. He straightened, shaking his head. "They're hideous."

"I know," she sighed. She tilted her head at them. If she stared at them long enough they might become what they needed.

Regina had discovered Jefferson when he was a single father schlepping away at design school. He was obviously brilliant, but in desperate need of some editing. Underneath the sketches of a madman, his clothes were brilliant and she saw his designs for what they were: dreamy fairytale looks that transported the wearer to anther realm. They could be a turns romantic and street. But he was a classic creative with no business sense. He needed an investor, a partner, to make them luxe. And that's where she came in. She brought order to his madness. Made a cohesive collection editorial enough to put in magazines and made them cost effective enough to put into production. Without her it was all top hats and ascots.  

Speaking of…Jefferson revolved around the men and the bolts of fabric. He wore a long black coat of his own design with steel buttons and gray collar. Everything else he wore was black except for a merlot ascot, his signature accessory. When he shows he pairs it with a top hat, an eccentricity she couldn’t cure him of.  

He pulled the end of his necktie from his shirt, snatching off Leroy’s hat and miming shining his head with it. The workman grumbled and swatted at Jefferson, snatching his hat back and jamming it onto his head. No one was taking this seriously.  

"Jefferson, we need forty two looks for Fashion Week and right now we barely have one!"

He scoffed wandering aimlessly around her office, picking things up at random, "That can't be true, what about the stuff I sent you last week?"

She followed him around her office, “Gold started working on the photos this morning.” She crossed her arms, “But it’s not going to be enough.”  

Jefferson threw himself onto the divan,  "What can I tell you, Regina. I have no inspiration right now! I'm done, I'm kaput!" he threw his arm over his eyes dramatically.  

"Well get inspired now or we're all kaput!"

He deflated, "Regina, you know nothing about the life of an artist or the artistic process."  

She leaned over his head sweetly, “If you want to keep Grace in private school, you will get up off your ass, right now, and design me some winning looks.”

The door to her office opened again and Gold strode in, a folder of photographs in his hand.  

Jefferson craned his neck, "Gold, darling, when are you going to let me dress you?" he called.  

Gold didn’t break his pace to assess his own pristine three piece suit. "And what, Jefferson, is wrong with the way I dress?"

Jefferson vaulted up from the couch, "Nothing, love, absolutely nothing. And that's the problem. Every time I look at you I just want to put you slightly out of skew." He pulled back, assessing him like an auteur. He reached forward as if to adjust Gold’s tie.  

Gold swatted his hand away, "That is one thing I can guarantee you, Jefferson. You will never, ever, see me askew." He turned to Regina, immediately reading her face, “What’s wrong?”  

“We don’t love the looks we sent you. We are lost.”

He tossed the pile of photographs onto her desk, “And I’ve had my time wasted.”  

Regina perched on the edge of her desk and flipped through the prints he’d made from that morning’s photoshoot. The model pouted, thrust, and arched her back in every photo. Not the aesthetic they were going for. “What happened?”

He sighed, “I told her to imagine herself in the Museum of Modern Art. I got Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Get me someone I can work with, Regina, or I quit.”

“No, you don’t. Who else would let you work in a darkroom and develop prints like it’s 1957?” She’d had enough grievances. She stood up and faced all of them. “Now here this. In mere weeks we are supposed to be boarding a plane to France with forty plus looks. Paris Fashion Week happens with or without us and I would prefer not to be a laughing stock!”  She leaned a hand on the photos and turned to Gold. “What do you need to fix this?”

Gold scoffed, “Someone who could keep their overt sexuality in check long enough for me to take a picture of the dress they’re wearing.”

“Sex sells,” she countered.  

“Sex is everywhere,” he replied, disinterested.  

For the first time, Regina’s fiery determination petered out to self-doubt, “Can I have possibly scraped the bottom of the barrel of asking women to feel terrible about their looks?”

“You could make them feel stupid,” Gold suggested.

She was intrigued. After all, she was in the business of making people feel inferior, “How so?”

“Move your focus upstairs.”

She glanced at the ceiling, “The marketing department?”

Gold shook his head, “No, the brain. Find someone with some intelligence. A woman can be beautiful as well as intellectual.”

She thought on that for a minute before shaking her head, “Maybe a different background. We could go on location. Somewhere intellectual. Somewhere with books.”

“A bookstore.” Jefferson offered.

She made a face, “Bookstores don’t exist anymore. A library.” She warmed up to the idea. “Yes, one of those little ones everyone’s always trying to save.”  Regina pointed at Leroy, “What’s the closest podunk town?”  

Leroy already had his phone out and Google Maps up, “Storybrooke.”

[moriganstrongheart]

The Warden's Call – Review

by Nico & Giancarlo Vecia 2018, self-published Hardcover, 116 pages, $40 CAD

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Good: Great aesthetics, interesting premise Bad: Full of tropes, lack of consistency and presentation

​[ ! ] Spoiler Warning

​I was fortunate enough to meet with Nino at ComiCon in 2018. I was drawn in by Nino’s illustrations, and the overall aesthetics of his work. It was apparent from the beginning that his work is focused on worldbuilding, so—wanting to support creators and being interested in worldbuilding myself—I decided to purchase one of his larger prints and The Warden’s Call. The Warden’s Call has an interesting cast of characters, but it’s obvious that the Vecias were more concerned in creating an aesthetic experience rather than in exploring new territory. The protagonist and his story are bland, having been told many times before. The background lore consistently reminded me of Blizzard’s Diablo series, making it difficult for me to see it as anything but derivative. The Vecias also ask for too much suspension of disbelief from the reader, as many plot points require the reader to accept simple answers to complex problems. It’s possible this was intentional—as though the story is being shared by a lorekeeper—but I have my doubts.

Of what I have no doubt is that Nino has an eye for aesthetics. Everything from the book’s cover to the accompanying bookmark is superbly designed—beautiful to look at and satisfying to hold. The pages of the book are stylized as parchment paper, adding to the opulent feel of the book’s linen hardcover binding and gold trim. The book also has 6x9 prints scattered throughout of all of the relevant artwork that Nino had completed up to its release. And his artwork is just beautiful. It’s ornate, but not so much that I feel turned off by it. His work is closest to religious artwork in its style, which is fitting considering the subject matter of The Warden’s Call. His paintings are a bit lifeless, but I see that as a problem emblematic of the fantasy/science fiction art industry as a whole; as such, I don’t really hold it against him. If nothing else, I can safely say my purchase was worth it for just for the chance to share in Nino’s keen eye for ornate simplicity.

Even with my appreciation for Nino’s artistic skills, it’s clear to me that he needs more experience in writing. While The Warden’s Call wasn’t a slog to get through, I never really felt engrossed in the world. There’s a definite structure there, and he did a good enough job in building the world and its rules. But the presentation is where the book suffers. Most of the book is written in the style of a history book, which by its nature isn’t a very exciting format, especially considering that there isn’t a body of narrative work that something like this would normally supplement. The book does occasionally go from being a history textbook to being focused on narrative. However, these narrative sections suffer from a lack of stakes and an abundance of forced plot turns, where characters act as if there is no precedent to their current situation, and there’s no such thing as consequences. I can only describe it as juvenile, though I have a feeling that the Vecias were less concerned with writing a compelling narrative, and more interested in tying all the strings of his world together. Still, I’m not a fan of this kind of back and forth writing style. I would have rather the book be purely expository, or fully focused on narrative.

In fact, I find myself wishing The Warden’s Call had been only expository, as its narrative sections were not an enjoyable experience to read, with too many characters to keep track of—almost all of them one-dimensional—and filled with overdone tropes I’ve seen countless times before. I never found myself caring for any of the characters or their struggles, possibly with the exception of Mavus and Sigen. All of the humans in the book feel inconsequential and child-like, while the divine beings are too monolithic and single-minded. The protagonist—Nereous—is your standard, reluctant yet powerful, male fantasy hero. This alone made me apathetic to his story, though the lack of meaningful conflict in his life didn’t help either. I never felt like Nereous couldn’t get out of the predicament he was in, no matter how bad it got. Likewise, I never felt like he was ever conflicted about what he was doing. I don’t think I could ever discern what he felt about his situation, if anything. There’s only one narrative scene towards the end of the book where he speaks with Mavus that I actually felt like he might be able to express emotion. Arguably, there’s also the scene in which he kills Nasir, but both of these scenes are so out of place with the stoic and necessarily kind Nereous, that they make little sense to me. Without a cohesive throughline for his characterization, all we have to go on is what the omnipresent lorekeeper has to say about him, and the occasional glimpse into his life through narrative sequences. Ultimately, his role in the story doesn’t feel like it matters, and I could easily have seen him cut out entirely.

I have some issues with The Warden’s Call, but I can’t say that I regret my purchase. I realized pretty early on what the Vecias were trying to accomplish with The Warden’s Call. Its purpose is simply to weave a tapestry for the world of the Shadows of Aydralem. I still wish the narrative and overall plot was better written, but I understand what he was going for. I think it also helps that I didn’t really have any expectations for the book; rather, I was drawn by Nino’s art style and the aesthetic surrounding the book. In that regard, I am not disappointed, and I think sometimes it’s okay to enjoy a reading experience for what it represents and for the experience of it, rather than for the contents. Still, I look forward to seeing what else Nino creates, and I hope to be able to meet him again.

Official Book Website

[vieuxnoyesrp]

Chris. We went so long without our Most-Wanted character over the last few months that we were beginning to wonder whether we had to conduct a mini Harvest Ritual ourselves in order to draw her into our group. Luckily, you beat us to the chase and answered our appeals to the ancestors in the form of an app that nailed all of our (fairly strenuous) expectations for Sophie’s role. You had a really good grasp of her single-minded state of obsession with respect to completing the Harvest Ritual, and did a great job portraying how it affects her day-to-day existence; right down to the smallest details. You chose a unique moment for your sample para, and we loved seeing how some of Sophie’s characteristics remained the same (although on a much lighter note) before the bleak turn her life took over the last year. We can’t wait to have this firebrand on the dash!

Chris, thank you very much for applying. As for Sophie…

                  ⚜ ~ WELCOME TO VIEUX NOYÉS!!! ~ ⚜

Wondering what to do next? Click here and let the good times roll!

⚜ Roleplayer:

⤜ Name/alias: Chris ⤜ Pronouns: She/Her ⤜ Age: 20 ⤜ Timezone: EST ⤜ Activity: 6-7 because adulting and real world stuff. If I let replies build up too much I get overwhelmed and sort of ignore them, so I try to do replies fairly often so that doesn’t happen! ⤜ Best form of contact: Tumblr is fine for now. ⤜ Any Triggers? Nope. ⤜ How did you find Vieux Noyés? It was recommended to me some time ago. I’ve also seen it in the tags a few times. ⤜ What drew you to the RP? The amount of detail and the overall aesthetic. I think it’s very clever the way you managed to tie the shows and book series together so it all comes together cohesively. I like the little changes you’ve made to bios to make them fit into this new world of yours, and I can tell a lot of thought went into making the rp a reality. ⤜ What is one subplot/element from the Plot page that you are particularly looking forward to seeing in this roleplay? I am surprisingly intrigued by the Hunters and the lost Relic they apparently have. In the plot it sounds as if the Hunters have grown idle and complacent but that they’re trying to build the Guild back up to it’s original splendor. I personally, am very excited to see that in motion. Plus who doesn’t want to see some Hunters fuck shit up with ‘magically-imbued objects’.

And because I am the most rebel to ever rebel, i’m also putting that I am super psyched to see how the Harvest goes. Does it get completed? If so, how? Or do the Salem witches actually end up converting the New Orleans witches? I have a million and one questions about what’s going to happen and cannot wait to see that come to fruition.

⚜ Desired Character: Sophie Deveraux

⤜ Why do you want this character? 

I paid this character very little mind the first time I watched the Originals and what a mistake that was. There’s big talk concerning her but very little action to support it. Sophie deserves to be built up, she deserves to be developed and the t.v. show (unsurprisingly) did her a great injustice. It’s mentioned that she’ll fight to the death for her niece Monique, but we get to see very little of that fierce determination to do whatever it takes for her family. Simply put, I see a lot of potential in Sophie and want to bring her to life the way she deserves. 

⤜ What are your future plans for this character? 

Honestly I have none at this moment - but here me out! Sophie herself has no plans for the future. She’s set herself a task, one task, and in her mind nothing else really matters after that. She saves Monique and then? She’s not thinking about what comes after the Harvest and the Reaping, she’s got a one track mind and I honestly doubt she even expects to come out of this whole thing alive. I have to say though, I would love to put her in scenarios where she’s forced to think about the future because it’s going to be something we’ll both have to think quite a lot about. 

⤜ Put yourself in your character’s shoes. Give us a few lines to describe a day in the life of your character… Where do they live? Where and how do they spend their time?

She wakes up every morning in her family home, the purple and brown accented walls of her bedroom a stark contrast to the painfully boring and sterile white ones that coated the rest of the house. Her parents had left the place to Jane-Anne but her sister had never been one to turn Sophie away when she needed somewhere to stay, and had even left the room untouched as Sophie traveled the world. ( Now that Jane-Anne was dead, the place was technically hers but she couldn’t get used to referring to it anything but Jane’s place. )

She begins the day with a cup of sugary sweet coffee to wake herself up - late to bed and early to rise makes for a very disgruntled Sophie in the morning - before moving onto something harsh and bitter as reality hits her. The rest of the day continues on as normal lest she rouse any suspicion. She hangs around the Witches for awhile, the ones that don’t openly scoff at her, plotting away and reminding them of the deadline. When they tire of her rants, depending on her mood she either heads to Cafe Du Monde for another coffee and to brainstorm alone in peace or to Rousseau’s to have a drink and drown her sorrows for a time. Her daily routine switches up every so often, whenever she has a lead she latches on like a bloodhound and refuses to let up no matter where it takes her. Until recently she’s come up with nada, but with all sorts of trouble brewing in the quarter, she’s sure more than one opportunity to get intel will arise - who’d have thought that more vampires coming to the quarter would be convenient?

⤜ Give us three headcanons regarding your character of choice.

She switches often between being impotently drunk and bone-dry sober. Gone are the party girl ways of past and instead she’s taken to more mature, fitting ways of drinking; when you find a drunk Sophie, you’ll find her lost in thought with a mostly-polished off bottle of whisky.

Finished one semester at Delgado Community College.

When it comes to bloodshed or anything gruesome, her tolerance of it is much more similar to that of a human’s. It’s not that she can’t stand the sight of blood, but before the failed harvest and Marcel’s subsequent reign of terror she hadn’t seen much carnage or gore. She isn’t used to seeing someone’s innards being pulled from their stomach - and she isn’t sure she ever wants to be.

She has only let herself cry over Monique one time and has yet to to even visit her body. Since her promise to Jane-Anne to bring back her niece, Sophie is in almost complete denial that she won’t be able to keep that promise. She is angry, bitter, determined - she has nothing to lose and everything to gain so how could she possibly lose?

She had a pet bird when she was a girl. It was hers, but of course Jane-Anne did most of the work taking care of it while she taught it things like how to whistle a tune. They’d had it for only half a year but both sisters grew extremely attached to it as any child does a pet, but one day they came home from school to an empty cage. “Forget the bird”, their parents had told them. Her sister always the obedient one, agreed, but Sophie never had been good with taking orders. After only a few minutes of snooping she found it dead in her parent’s room surrounded by salt and plants she didn’t yet know the name of. She was young, but even she recognized sacrificial magic when she saw it. Jane refused to reply when Sophie told her but her silence spoke a thousand words - she already knew. Sophie promised then and there never to practice magic again, a promise she’d break only weeks later, and would forget the whole ordeal as time went on. 

⤜ What are some plots you’d like to explore with your character? 

Well obviously i’d love to explore any and all connections of hers; and even connections not listed in her bio, particularly Sophie and Davina. Her niece is best friends with Davina and now Sophie is trying to kill her. They had to have known each other before the Harvest, so not only is Sophie hunting down an innocent girl, but her niece’s best friend. It’s kind of ironic that both of these girl loved Monique and now they and their disbelief in the Harvest play a part in her death.

The cult of Bracken: The coven is supposedly in NOLA to integrate witches to their coven but Sophie isn’t interested. She needs her Coven to hold it together long enough to finish what they started; in other words she ain’t buying what they’re selling and she doesn’t appreciate the Salem witches picking at what remains of her Coven either. She can appreciate the fact that they would be able to actually fight back against Marcel and his vampires but should they stop practicing ancestral magic they’d have no need to finish the Harvest and Sophie would lose the few allies she has. 

⤜ Para sample:

(Retained for privacy). 

⤜ Would you like to be considered for another character if not accepted as your primary choice? Kali or Rogan please!

⤜ Have you read the rules?: Yes I have. 

⤜ Anything else? Nope!

[recentanimenews]

The Endless Generosity of Kyoto Animation

  This article is part of Crunchyroll News' KyoAni Month celebration. Check out the rest of our KyoAni features HERE.

  When we discuss the anime that most appeal to us, we often default to discussing them in pure narrative terms — the exciting events that transpired, the character turns that most shocked us, or whatever else felt momentous and novel over the course of the narrative. This is understandable; it’s much easier to retell a story than to convey a production’s atmosphere or aesthetic appeal. And for most people, a narrative elevator pitch is generally a useful way to determine whether something will appeal to them. As human beings, we love stories  — and distilled into their most elemental format, stories are a progression of plot events, a journey from one point to another.

  Unfortunately, this method of describing anime is not particularly useful for capturing the appeal of Kyoto Animation’s productions. As a studio lauded for their collaborative atmosphere and progressive labor practices, Kyoto Animation’s productions are always, like all great, cohesive art, more than the sum of their parts. Their power resides in how their directors, storyboarders, and animators capture the experience of truly living inside a moment. The skew of the dying sunlight, the distant hum of traffic, the particular glimmer in a person’s eye  — it is these tiny, indescribable details that turn narrative beats into lived experience, and it is these things that set Kyoto Animation apart within the anime industry.

As someone who’s always been more inspired by tone, themes, and individual characters than strict narrative beats, Kyoto Animation is more than an inspiration to me. Through their works, the studio has taught me to better understand what moves me within art, and the incredible power of capturing a single convincing, emotionally rich moment. Kyoto Animation’s works have expanded my understanding of what art should strive for, and the myriad ways a talented, passionate team of artists can elevate narrative into astonishing beauty and emotional catharsis. As we celebrate this very special studio, today I’d like to share how just a few of their productions embody that power for me.

K-On!: The Beauty of a Warm, Sunlit Room

Before watching K-On!, I didn’t really understand the appeal of slice-of-life anime. I could get into them if their joke density was high enough, but it rarely was — generally, they were more “pleasant” than actively funny, leaving me mostly bored. But watching K-On! made their appeal seem completely obvious — through its beautiful, inviting backgrounds, charming characters, and playful, restless animation, it felt easy to join in the warm, relaxing atmosphere of an after-school band club.

Naoko Yamada has since gone on to become one of the premiere anime directors of the 21st century, but even her very first show demonstrated the mastery of atmosphere and reverence for quirky, incidental character moments that give her stories such life. For me, K-On! embodies the holistic approach to writing, directing, animating, and scoring that can make anime so uniquely powerful. It contains a warmth and kindness that is reflected in its every aspect, a gentleness that makes it easy to wrap around yourself like a snug blanket.

Nichijou: The Magnificence of a Joke Fully Told

There are no shortage of anime that tell lots of jokes, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show that commits to its jokes as fully, creatively, and energetically as Nichijou. Just as Kyoto Animation’s overall portfolio demonstrates the importance of cohesive, inspired execution in elevating base narrative substance, so does Nichijou specifically demonstrate that when it comes to comedy, execution is everything. Nichijou’s diversity of visual styles and fluidity of movement is incredible, and the show is incredibly generous in terms of where it flexes its powers — it will dedicate gorgeous, energetic animation to the silliest of ideas, resulting in transcendent moments like a school principal suplexing an angry deer.

Hyouka: The Complexity of Our Ever-Changing Youth

Among all Kyoto Animation productions, I’d name Hyouka as the one with the strongest, most ambitious script. Its characters evolve in countless subtle ways across their adventures, and the show catalogs all these changes with empathy and grace. Hyouka’s subtle, everyday mysteries act as a mirror for these changes. After all, it is the things we do every day, rather than the things we do under exceptional circumstances, that reveal who we really are. The show sees its cast as a set of uncut jewels, jagged and complex, but with a vibrancy and intensity that makes our every action reveal fascinating new sides of the whole.

Hyouka embraces this marvelous human complexity, putting one of the studio’s most elegant pieces of source material in the hands of one of anime’s greatest directors: Yasuhiro Takemoto. As demonstrated in works like the exceptional Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, Takemoto has a masterful ability to convey the desperation, intimacy, warmth, and coldness of youth with equal grace. I’ve never seen a character drama quite like Hyouka, and it’s likely I never will again — like so many other brilliant creative voices, Takemoto was sadly lost in the Kyoto Animation fire.

Violet Evergarden: The Power of Animation for Feelings of Every Size

Though I’ve talked a great deal about how Kyoto Animation is able to convey intimate, subtle moments through animation, their productions are equally comfortable with grand, climactic displays of vivid emotional drama. Violet Evergarden is an unabashed melodrama, proud of its massive feelings, and glorious in its realization of them. Animation, with its exaggerated movements and fantastical art design, is a perfect fit for sentimental romance and larger-than-life-heroics. Constructed as a series of rambling vignettes, Evergarden explores the winding roads of human connection with a traveler’s eye and a painter’s insight, showering its stories in the visual glory they deserve.

Liz and the Blue Bird: What Animation Can Truly Do, and Why It Matters to Me

So much of what we feel remains forever unsaid, constrained in half-finished sentences and nervous gestures, or swallowed behind our anxieties and pride. Much of Kyoto Animation’s work feels like a tribute to these feelings, and to the moments we couldn’t describe even if we wanted to. How do you describe the color of the sky at the moment you realize your crush loves someone else? How can you articulate the pain of feeling jealousy and pride at a friend’s success all at once, or the unique tension of the day you realized you were no longer happy with your current self, but not yet ready to change?

Liz and the Blue Bird feels like Kyoto Animation’s most perfectly realized tribute to the beauty of such feelings, and the many other feelings that are beyond our capacity to articulate but not beyond their ability to capture in music and movement. From its first moments, Liz illustrates the full sensory experience of moving past your youthful self and the anxiety of deciding who you truly want to be. The film’s illustrations of unrequited love, anxiety, social disconnection, and pride all ring true to my own experiences. And its compassionate focus on the intricacies of these feelings, and of human connections on the whole, is what makes anime mean so much to me.

Liz and the Blue Bird is an incredible artistic achievement, and perhaps the greatest example yet of Kyoto Animation’s unique approach to art and storytelling. And for me personally, more than the specifics of its narrative, its fundamental artistic priorities feels like a firm validation of all the things I care about in anime — the ephemeral, indescribable strands of human connection, the quiet of loneliness, the power of a single kind gesture to light up your life. Kyoto Animation’s brilliant works have consistently assured me that it is okay to be a person like me and to love the things that I love in art.

I cannot begin to pay back the kindness and sense of belonging they have offered me, or the countless times their works have kept my spirits up and rekindled my love of art and animation. I can only offer my heartfelt condolences for the artists we’ve lost, and pray for a swift recovery for their whole team. Kyoto Animation’s gifts are too generous to remain with me. My only hope is that they continue creating such moving works, and to share these gifts with many generations to come.

What Kyoto Animation productions have meant the most to you? Please feel free to share your own experiences with this one-of-a-kind studio's work!

    Nick Creamer has been writing about cartoons for too many years now and is always ready to cry about Madoka. You can find more of his work at his blog Wrong Every Time, or follow him on Twitter.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[placetobenation]

As I embark to see my favorite band perform with mid 90’s alternate powerhouse bands Our Lady Peace and Live, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the band that has unequivocally changed my life for the better for the past 25 years, and celebrate the monumental 25th anniversary of their first album, Sixteen Stone.

Sixteen Stone, released December 6th, 1994, was somewhat of a cheat album, considering most of the singles were not formally released for public consumption until the following year. However, from the moment this album’s music graced my ears in 1995, I was hooked, and Bush became a steadfast friend, ushering me through my life’s journey.  Bush’s Sixteen Stone, much like Oasis’s Definitely Maybe, which was wonderfully covered by Calum McDougall, is a debut album by a band from the UK. However, their sound and aesthetic put a spin on American grunge rock, and gained a quick following in the US, while remaining virtually unknown in their homeland.  Within a year of Sixteen Stone’s release, Bush was headlining American arenas and bringing much lesser known bands to the forefront. These bands included: The Toadies, The Goo Goo Dolls and a very little known female fronted ska band out of California at the time…No Doubt.

https://youtu.be/Ps317u9Rhl0

The lead single and opening track to the album is a song called “Everything Zen”. Bush first got their big break in America thanks to the influential KROQ radio station in California playing that single for the first time. That’s right, kids! Back in the day, being played on the radio was actually a big deal!. “Everything Zen” is a strong grunge sounding song that hits you in the mouth immediately. It hits people in that ‘Seattle sound’ sweet spot while sounding much more polished and cohesive than what some of those Seattle bands put together. Paying tribute to artists such as David Bowie and Tom Waits, you get a feel instantly of what kind of lyrics you’re going to get from one Gavin Rossdale.

https://youtu.be/02K82uw4lio

“Little Things” is the next single off this album and, like Everything Zen, is another punch you in the mouth hard and fast grunge sounding song. If you are to ever see Bush play live…this is the song that Gavin Rossdale seems to have the most fun playing live as he ends up all over the venue.  The song itself, the lyrics, is a reminder to not to be let down by all the details. To not let the “little things kill”, so to speak. Gavin said in an interview about this song: “That’s just a song about paranoia for the future and paranoia of life. I think it has something to do with trying to be strong in the face of adversity.” Perfectly sums it up.

https://youtu.be/xS3GiUAvjJ8

The next single off the album and the song that made me immediately fall in love with this band is “Comedown”. One of the most popular tracks from the band, I credit this song as REALLY breaking them out and giving them their main notoriety. It is easily one of the most popular alternative rock songs of the 90’s and it is such a catchy tune. Featured in the Mark Wahlberg movie “Fear”, was ripped off for a WCW theme in the dying days for Chris Kanyon and was even covered by our very own Steve and Kelly for an episode of Songs with Friends! The lyrics for the song I’ve always viewed as being on such an emotional high and not wanting to come down from it, so to speak. In an interview with Gavin about this song, he states that “I liked the idea of euphoria. But having that euphoria has a comedown. It’s inside your brain and just says, ‘I’m having the greatest time, and I don’t want to stop.’ But most of the time, people lose that zone and it changes and you’re like, ‘No, I didn’t want this.’ And that’s such a common feeling. I watched it being sung every night – it’s one of the songs where I can step back and let the people sing. It’s the best feeling in the world as a songwriter.” It’s the very first song he wrote when Bush formed, so it’s obviously very important to him. It’s also the song that they close out every concert with.

https://youtu.be/hOllF3TgAsM

Glycerine…oooooooh, my Glycerine. Arguably their most successful and popular song to this day. This is such a beautiful, beautiful song. This would be considered the power ballad of the album and is only Gavin with a guitar without the rest of the band playing with him. This song was, I believe, #2 for the entire year of 1996 on MTV, won the MTV VMA for Viewers Choice, it was even parodied in the 90’s episode of the Simpsons with “Margarine”.

https://youtu.be/2z_gi6AniEo

This song is kind of iconic for my generation. Its also a wonderful live experience. Many of the times the rest of the band comes out and they have a “rock” closing for the song which is interesting and a lot of fun. Many may remember the performance of this song in the pouring rain as part of MTV’s Sprong Break Rocks in 1996.

https://youtu.be/-ehO-hoPDUg

The lyrics to this song are very beautifully written and very melancholy. My favorite lyric is “I’m never alone, I’m alone all the time.” This song was written about Gavin’s then girlfriend. “Something about it was bigger than anything we were doing” Rossdale stated in an interview. If he only knew how right he was.

https://youtu.be/5WPbqYoz9HA

Machinehead is the fifth and final single off of this album. No matter what age you are…you’ve probably heard this song at one point in your life. It’s practically played at every single sporting event known to man, is featured in many video games and was also featured in the movie Fear, for which it won ‘Best Song From a Movie’ at the MTV Movie Awards. It also has a cheap ripoff version used for WWE for dvd menus.

https://youtu.be/76iV2_PxNCQ

As far as the rest of the album goes…I don’t think there is a stoppable track of the bunch. They all hit pretty heavily in the Alternative Rock feels and if you love that 90’s post grunge sound…Sixteen Stone will satisfy that need. From “Body” to “Testosterone” to the beautifully written “Alien”, Sixteen Stone May possibly be the perfect album.

Sixteen Stone went on to sell 6 million copies in the US and 10 million copies worldwide. Not bad for a band that was once told by the record label, “not only are their no singles on here, there are no album tracks either.” While some people say it can be attributed to Gavin’s good looks and charisma, I and many others think the music is the key. Like the cover of Spin Magazine said, “Don’t hate them because he’s beautiful.” After all, there is a reason they are still making music and touring 25 years later.  Now granted, it may not be my personal favorite from the band(in all honesty, that could be from me overplaying it the past 25 years…), there is a reason that it is their most popular. So if you like 90’s rock and you HAVENT listened to Sixteen Stone…what are you waiting for?

[davidcarterr]

Austyn Gillette Interview

Austyn Gillette. Photo: Andrew Peters

We are one of the first European shops to take on FORMER, a clothing company with Austyn Gillette as one of the creative forces at it's core. Austyn recently visited Slam on a HUF tour but this was a flying visit and we didn't have a chance to get an interview put together. We waited to take in the first few pieces from FORMER and caught up with Austyn in this exclusive interview which talks about this new company and much more...

Hello Austyn where does this interview find you?

It finds me in Los Angeles hungry for breakfast.

You just returned from visiting us on a HUF tour. How was that?

It was very busy, we were able to get to Belgium and Switzerland which was new for all of us and then London was a re-visit. We didn't get to spend much time there which is kind of a shame. It was fun, it was fruitful and I had a good time.

Do you like spending time in London?

I honestly haven't spent enough time there. On this last trip we were staying somewhere central by a lot of the museums. It didn't have much of a feeling where we were staying. That's what everyone was saying, it wasn't where we would need to be. I have a bunch of friends there and I guess I would trust them as far as where I would need to be. I would like to spend more time there and I would like to skate more because I have always loved the way that it looks. What European city have you enjoyed the most on your travels?

I really liked Switzerland this time around after this last trip. I liked Zurich, it was pretty nice. Paris, Copenhagen is really nice. those are all pretty different cities too so that's a weird review to get. I usually go off to cities where I could imagine spending a bit more time, not living but staying for a while.

Austyn Backside Lipslides hallowed ground. Photo: Mark Jackson

We were stoked on your Radiant Cure part. Where does that sit in your body of work for you? is it your favourite part to date?

I hate using this word but it was the most… you know what I'm not going to use the word. Every single trick was planned to be that way. I've never done that before. I've usually had a photographer or a team manager kind of breathing down my back "you know you should probably get this or you need this". This was the first time where I had complete control over music, over spots and locations. I pretty much funded the whole entire thing just to produce something like that. I was pretty satisfied with the way it turned out. The response has been good. There was the pressure of wanting to direct people towards Former in a way where they could see it's a skateboard brand. I guess hopefully it kicked that off. As a part, it's hard to talk about that stuff when it's you. It was pretty stressful

But on your own terms...

Yeah of course which was nice. I mean the deadline wasn't an issue. I was able to talk to the guys over at Thrasher directly and they were able to push stuff. They were pretty flexible so they kind of helped with that as well, relieving the pressure, some of it, which doesn't make sense because that's not their angle.

How vital do you feel properly crafted video parts are in this age of dwindling attention spans?

I don't know. We have another thing coming out with HUF in November. I wanted to try and film another part by November but I know that's not possible. Then they told me that I don't have to film video parts anymore. It was weird to think about it that way. Everything I like that's coming out right now isn't a full video. I don't know if it's necessary any more. I think putting stuff out straight away has definitely over saturated everything and a lot of people have snuck through the cracks. They get overnight fame. I feel bad for the people who have to maintain that presence because that's their product. Like "oh I deliver daily videos and I have a head-cam on and I'm a loser and I should probably just do something else". It's kind of soulless I could definitely say that. Some of it has feeling but a lot of it doesn't. I still appreciate full video parts but I understand the new formula and the numbers game, I get it but I personally try and veer from that.

Does your relationship with skateboarding change when you have to take care of business or is it filled with a childlike sense of joy?

Of course it changes, hopefully it changes because of the end product and what they are seeing. I would hope they know that it's hard and with that comes a lot of frustration and things that people would experience in a more traditional job. There are moments where I can separate the two and that's kind of what it is, moderating that to where you can have each side. I don't like the everything's fun every single day bullshit. I don't think that's authentic, that's not the case with anybody. If you learn to skateboard and get to the point where you're sponsored you had to get frustrated and you had to overcome a certain level to get there. I know that's not easy for anybody in any line of work. I think it's about managing it. You don't tell yourself to go out and have fun but it naturally occurs.

Ideal skate crew on a mission. Friends, filmer, photographer?

That's where things change. You start to realise that when you go out there's a filmer or two and a photographer every time you skate. Yesterday i was just skating these curbs and then this guy comes up and he has one of those kind of pogo stick iPhone things. He comes up and asks me to film something. You kind of feel a little bit obligated because they want it but it's still a piece of you. The ideal crew depends. If I'm trying to get footage I like to do it alone but if it's a regular day just some close friends. I think that's with everything. We had a dinner here last night and had some friends over, I don't want to have dinner by myself, it's tried and true.

Radiant Cure is a part for your clothing company FORMER. We are stoked to be one of just a few shops stocking your brand. How has the reception been to the latest seasons drop?

It's been good. We're all kind of adjusting our whole platform now we've finally got to the point where we can do retail and open up Europe and get shops like you guys to carry it. We are pretty excited about that response. We have been direct to consumer up till now so yet to see the response, I'll have a better answer for you in just a couple of months. I'm really excited that people are showing interest in skate shops, that's what I've wanted this whole time, for people to feel involved and it's not part of some hierarchy.

Am I right in thinking this was yours and Dylan's brain child and then you teamed up with Craig Anderson and Dane Reynolds?

We all did it together, our friend Campbell Milligan who started Monster Children kind of initiated that idea and we all did it at the same time. Dylan and I were doing something separate at that time, we wanted to start a company and Dane and Craig were going through some turmoil on their end with the company they were riding for. I wouldn't say it was mine and Dylan's brain child at all, it was a very cohesive project

What is your role within the company and who are the extended team and family?

My role is probably just to be the filter because we do have employees with jobs dedicated to things we need that some of the skaters and surfers don't need to be doing. I'm the filter, not the designer but finding inspiration and then kind of taking control of the skate side of things. I'd be the skate team manager in a sense and being the voice of that side of things

Was it a relief when this started from a personal point of view, that you didn't have to align yourself with an existing aesthetic?

That's what took so long, it took about two years to find that and develop that. As far as identity it's nice to have a fresh start with everything that's out currently. Anything new is refreshing and I've always gravitated towards that. Being successful within skating, I've seen all of the different sides to it and this is preferable, being able to create. Everything I do now I want to make the music for it and see everything through. i think that's for everybody even outside of skating.

What would you say will continue to set FORMER apart as a company?

It's the only legit surf/skate brand and I don't think that's ever really happened before. It's pretty unique. I think that's maybe been a difficult part for some people that surfing is attached to it. But I think the team we are developing, the aesthetic and the videos and the clothes alone separate it. Everything is technically designer because we're making our own patterns and I think that will shine through in time. We are patient with that it's just a matter of developing that image people can relate to and identify with.

Austyn wearing the Radiant Crux T-Shirt

Your style is an influential one, have you ever come face to face with any memorable carbon copies on the road?

(Laughs) A couple, it's weird. It's definitely not as popular as everything else that's going on but it's funny, you can definitely see it. If you're talking about skating you develop that style over years. I haven't seen any people trying to actually skate like me but they wear the clothes which is kind of what everybody is doing. They want to look or be like the people they are looking up to and I remember being like that with people I looked up to. There's things I wear outside of skateboarding that I've seen and liked, liked that look and identified with it. I don't wear anything that crazy, it's pretty standard issue for comfort. I know it and it's always worked.

Can you tell us any more about the new board company we have heard rumours about?

I actually can't! Not because I've signed an NDA or whatever but I don't have any answers. There's no name, there's no home for it, there's kind of a home for it. I'm sure the rumours are probably true and people would expect that. I'm really excited about it though, it's three or four of us. I'm not the nucleus of the brand or anything which is kind of nice because with Former I'm pretty busy and I don't know if I could take that on. I'm not really good from a brand standpoint creating something. Maybe it's just skateboards, because I've been a part of it for so long. With clothing there's a lot of flexibility but with skateboards i wouldn't even know where to start other than I know the shape I like and the people I like. In order for it to work I don't know what that takes nowadays.

It must be exciting, it's always good to see something new…

It will…I don't know anything! I'm where you're at as well. The good thing is I'm still friends with everybody I was with over at WKND. That's the most important thing

We listened to your new album Sensorisk and it's really good. How has the reception been to that? How long was the process of making it?

It took about six months and I was writing it for about a year and a half. It did surprisingly well this time around. We had a name for a band before and we decided to change it. This was a more mature project with actual musicians on the whole entire album. The material was very sensitive and close to home so it was time to change the name. I figured that if anybody was listening to anything previously or now it was maybe because my name was attached to it. I guess I'm singing so it just made sense and so I switched it to just my name, self titled artist kind of thing. It's developed, I'm not making any money off it but was able to sell enough records to fund most of the project. If it's enough to float and create, I see no reason why I would ever not do it. It exists

Is it just you and Danny Garcia playing on there?

Yeah. I basically wrote the whole album, all the parts and then I had him playing most of the stuff on the record since he's a studio musician. That relieved a lot of pressure, I was excited that he was open to doing everything. There were a few other musicians, my buddy Graham was playing drums and a few other instruments. it's weird going into a studio and working with something like a producer, this guy Chris. It was a very new experience and I definitely want to continue doing it but it's a fine line to walk on where you're trying to push or spam people with your hobby. But at least it's something where there is a somewhat tangible product at the end of it and it's music, it's not a bunch of garbage. It makes life more interesting and if it makes somebody else happy, then continue.

Have you been supporting the release with any live appearances?

No we did one release show and that's it, I've been travelling so much

How do you find playing live?

I love it actually. I prefer playing live over doing the monotonous stuff in the studio and trying to sound a certain way. Playing live it's only going to sound that way at that point. It's fun, it's cool to see something immediate from something that you have made. Even if it's one or two people nodding their heads, they get what you are feeling. We've only played one show. I wanted to do some more stuff in Europe but I haven't talked to anybody or had time to do anything there.

What inspires your song writing?

It's song by song for the most part. usually I start singing to some chords I'm writing and there isn't really any direct message I'm sending in the beginning and then it just develops. As far as music goes I don't know I just like to put on whatever it would be easiest for people to listen to that isn't chasing whatever else is going on. That's where the inspiration comes from.

Do you find it therapeutic?

On the right day yeah. On most of the days since I've been back from that trip to Europe I haven't even had time to really play or record but on those days where you can spend a full day and pass the time yes. That's been a long time, almost like a year which is weird to say that. But yeah, it is very meditative. I don't know where anything's going as soon as I start and it's pretty amazing to even have the time to do that and I have that flexibility in my schedule.

What musical influences would you reference who changed your world?

There's plenty of those but I don't want to say names because if I say names then I'm giving it up. But I will say that with those people I'm a pretty die hard fan of all of it and there's probably only ten artists but everything is on heavy rotation on playlists and i'm listening to the stuff constantly. For the last record that was definitely the case but after the new record I've opened up to a lot of music so we'll see how the next thing goes.

While we are talking about music what video part do you think is complimented perfectly by the track choice?

Fuck there's a lot. I feel like Jerry Hsu's Bag Of Suck part hit home for a lot of people, everyone understood that and it really translated well. That must have done something for Cass. Not that Sonic Youth needed any juice. Dill's always had really good music. Who else? That's a great question. I want to hit you with a curve ball. I was more of a nerd growing up then than I am now. I need to throw a hip hop part in there too...

Rob Welsh' Aesthetics part?

Yeah I'd go with Welsh on that one! Kalis' part in the DC video was great with the GangStarr track, that went really well. It seems like that would be hard to do. I think being more of apart of the editing process now and seeing how the first song you want most of the time will not fit. Even though you see it in your head you don't see how it works on the timeline with how fast or slow you're skating and what's complimenting the footage itself. We're doing that new video for HUF and we're asking some of the younger guys what they want and it's pretty interesting. They just have like one song and you have to tell them that that is not going to happen. Not only will it not work, you can't get the rights for it or anything like that. It's a difficult task. I really liked the music in the Quasi video because it wasn't predictable in any way and I think that was probably their intention. It was nice to see that.

You are a busy creative. Video parts, Clothing company responsibilities, making music, woodwork. How do all of these outlets slot together? Are you constantly busy? Do you immerse yourself totally in one project at a time or juggle the whole load?

I think I kind of juggle but when it comes to skating and knowing I need to be gone travelling that's obviously a priority. I do juggle, I'm kind of restless but when you're gone you get accustomed to it. You can make music when you're gone but I can't do any woodwork or too much with Former, the clothing thing. It's hard to micro manage all that stuff but they are the only things I know that make me happy.

Would you describe yourself as a perfectionist?

Yes, to my own standards and how I hold things. I'm usually not satisfied most of the time which is what probably gives me the most anxieties in life, that things need to be a certain way. I think it's part of getting older to realise it can't be that way and people don't think like you and your brain is not the world

You have mentioned an interest in wood work and framing, is this something you are currently busy with?

Not really. Every other month someone will ask me for something but it's weird. the more i do it, the more I see it. The more custom framing shops I see on the side of the street. You become interested in something and then you see it everywhere. I'm not too busy with it. I'd almost need funding to get the tools I need to do it like a business and have a space. You really need to spread out with any kind of woodwork. If you're doing glue and sanding those things need to be separate and it needs to be clean. I'm pretending to be an old soul with these crafts but I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Experimenting and talking about it and doing it.

What is the best and worst thing about skateboarding right now?

The best thing would be that there's endless creativity and recognition that you can get pretty much immediately so that gives a lot of people hope. There are a lot more eyes on skateboarding and I think that's good but that's also the worst part too. I don't know what it's doing the fact that kids see everything that's going on. Kids see what their contemporaries are doing and then they start skating and getting better and then you lose your job and get pay cuts and these people would never have even existed. I hope skateboarding becomes a little bit more popular so that these companies can grow and the smaller companies we really like can develop but with that, the internet's bad.

What knock on effect do you think skateboardings involvement in the olympics will be?

I feel like you hear this a lot and it's almost the same answer. I hope it does something positive for skateboarding. Nobody has ever really nailed it with that, with any movies or something that might take skateboarding to the next level. It's always been cheesy. it's not like the Olympics is going to be cool in any way. Somebody from some country will get kicked out for being high on something, I don't know how that will go over. I don't really care though, it doesn't affect anything. I don't know how it isn't a sport already, there's fencing which is based on style. Who cares, the world is going to move and that's how it's going to go and who gives a shit. Let's hope it will be good and not be so negative about it.

Looking in your crystal ball what trend predictions do you have that will echo through scenes worldwide?

You're already seeing it, the nineties thing coming back from the kids who didn't experience it the first time round. I was born in the nineties so I guess since I was born I kind of got to see it. It's interesting seeing a generation who weren't there bringing it back. I'm not old but seeing that happen is pretty interesting, things are moving quickly. Being in London, I'm not sure about the UK as a whole but it's very specific there and Japan is very specific. the nineties thing is back, baggy pants, bigger shoes. Maybe Daisy Dukes will come around. I wonder if it will ever make it as far back as the short shorts when skateboarding first started. High shorts on the beach, a Christian Hosoi kind of look. I wonder if that will ever land again. I don't predict it will happen but I'm curious. Some of the shit you see people wearing is fucking insane and you know there's an identity crisis there. But it's just clothes, who cares.

If you could borrow a trick and it's perfect execution from somebody for the day who and what would it be?

Who has got it? I'd borrow one of Danny Way's tricks on the mega ramp just to know what that feels like. Anything like that

Recommend our readers a book and a movie that will improve their lives…

I don't know if I have books that would improve your life. I just finished reading Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. I think I was at a pretty good time in my life to read that book being in my later twenties and battling with self identity and am I this? Am I that? I would go with that read and as a film what have I been watching? This is kind of cheesy but I've really enjoyed watching Vincent Gallo's films. I respect him for taking his career and having full control. I watched the Brown Bunny recently which is very difficult to find. Buffalo 66 is great, you can't beat it. If someone hasn't seen that it's a shame, you need to see that.

Any advice to a kid out there newly discovering a love for skateboarding and wanting to follow in your footsteps….

Don't read comments. Don't listen to people. Don't pay attention to anything else that would steer you from your path. Be passionate about it and be true to it and that's the only way you're going to be successful.

Thanks to Austyn for spending time with us on this. Interview by Jacob Sawyer. You can shop for FORMER HERE

Austyn Gillette Interview published first on https://medium.com/@LaderaSkateboar

[theantisocialcritic]

The AntiSocial Critic Reviews… Dunkirk

There is something to be said regarding Christopher Nolan and this particular moment in film history. Here is a director who stands athwart the flow of Hollywood’s worst impulses trying desperately to tie it down and bring a semblance of old school moviemaking back to the world. While the industry has switched entirely over to digital filmmaking he shoots all his films on actual film stock and alongside several of his compatriots managed to make Kodak profitable enough to save film stock as a technology. He has directed three or four of the most successful and important films of all time. He is by all accounts a genuine auteur with clout and influence the likes of which most wannabe filmmakers can only dream of. 

He is also one of the most overrated/underrated/misunderstood/appropriated directors of this century. 

There are few trends in hollywood that ever made the industry a truly better place and didn’t immediately make the industry turn it’s head in the wrong direction. Due to his success with the Dark Knight Trilogy Hollywood immediately jumped into it’s upcoming movies like Man of Steel, The Amazing Spiderman, Godzilla and Fa4stick with the confidence that the best way to make blockbusters was to “Nolanize” them. To put it more plainly they grafted superficially dark and edgy visual aesthetics and plot details into otherwise kid-friendly material. 

Then there is how the public and film lovers grapple with his body of work. His earliest films (Following, Insomnia, Memento, Prestige) are largely ignored in favor of his post-Dark Knight films by the public. As such his reputation is often held up as a director who specializes in enormous epic movies with big, loud Hans Zimmer scores. Film buffs alternatively largely disregard his post-Dark Knight work like Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar for their story problems. Nolan’s public and critical image have gained him a simultaneous duel reputation as a great auteur and a hack. Understanding Nolan as a filmmaker is tough but here I offer my theory on the matter. 

Christopher Nolan is a Raymond Chandler who desperately wants to be a Stanley Kubrick. 

If that doesn’t make sense let me explain. Chandler was a famed detective thriller writer from the 1950s who’s body of work was often picked up by hollywood and adapted into famed noir thrillers like The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. He is by most standards a well respected writer but one who’s wheelhouse is centered around a largely central point of literature. He just so happened to be the guy who made the hard boiled detective as huge a concept as it became. 

Stanley Kubrick on the other hand was one of the greatest directors in the history of the filmmaking medium. His incredible body of work stretches across most every genre of film and has gone on to influence the very medium itself, providing it with some of it’s greatest stories ever. Considering by body includes Dr Strange-Love, The Killing, Paths of Glory, Spartacus, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut it’s not surprising any director wouldn't want to make films on his level. 

Christopher Nolan properly understood is a director who works at his best when his stories are self contained crime thrillers. His strengths visually and aesthetically draw strongest from the noir thrillers that clearly inspired much of his earliest work. The larger his canvas gets the more in-cohesive his storytelling seems to become. 

Thus we arrive at his newest film Dunkirk. 

The title references the true story of the evacuation of the Allied forces from Nazi occupied France in 1940 following the utter collapse of the British/French task force under the weight of the blitzkrieg. Logically this is a tough story to portray meaningfully on film. The evacuation at Dunkirk wasn’t one of those big romantic war stories where people died in the name of grand ideals. As a late in the film Churchill states very clearly the evacuation was a tremendous military defeat. While it’s not explicitly stated in the film the evacuation left Britain utterly devastated as a military force. The loss of hundreds of thousands of vehicles, tanks, weapons as well as food, other supplies and men was enough to radically break the British Empire and unintentionally led to the United State’s eventual introduction into the war for which they would end up playing a vital support role in instead of leading as it had before. Unlike many of the best World War II stories (Sands of Iwo Jima, They Were Expendable, Saving Private Ryan, Fury, Band of Brothers) Dunkirk isn’t a story of freedom triumphing against tyranny. It’s a story about futility and the desperate need to fight against it. 

On paper this isn’t a bad idea. Doing an anti-war film with World War II may be slightly odd but as was once explained to me “every good war story is an anti-war story”. War is not something to be meaningfully romanticized but the meaning and reason behind such war is something that must be understood when considering them. Unfortunately that isn’t quite what Dunkirk is trying to do. Truth be told i’m not exactly sure what Dunkirk is actually trying to do. 

Again, on paper Dunkirk is seemingly supposed to be an anti-war film. The tone and execution of the story suggest something completely different. At that the execution is a sloppy and confusing. 

Bizarre as it may sound there really are not main characters in Dunkirk. This may sound absurd as the film’s line up of respectable character actors like Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance and Cillian Murphy. The function issue lies in the film’s shallow approach to character building which more or less doesn’t do anything to establish the film’s lineup with motivations or personalities. The plot hints at small bits of personality with each of these actor’s characters but never fills any of the details out. As such none of the film’s big scenes really hit with any sort of emotional hit. Most of what works on screen is due to the sheer human drama of the historical event itself and the film’s gorgeous visuals and top of the line production values (this was shot on 70mm for good measure). The actual character plotting is none-existant. Actors show up, they’re put in danger and we ultimately get to learn nothing about them. This might be more forgivable if this were more of an idea driven story but i’m not even sure what idea Nolan was hoping to express with this film. Even while controversial most of Nolan’s films at least have a solid idea to work with. 

The Dark Knight is about the limits of morality to trump chaos and the desperate cost a society may be forced to take to preserve it. 

Inception is about the fallibility of our perception of reality and how legitimate what is and what could be ultimately are. 

The Prestige is about the personal cost of our artwork and our life’s pursuits. 

Interstellar is about the metaphysical implications of love and sacrifice in the face of a materialistic and uncaring universe. 

Is Dunkirk intended to be a romantic story of everyday people helping the struggling British military miraculously save hundreds of thousands of men or a fatalistic story about triumph in the face of unceasing and random horror. More to the point of that what do the side stories of Tom Hardy’s pilot and Mark Rylance’s boat captain have to do thematic with the evacuation. Why does the film edit the three stories together at seemingly arbitrary points that stretch out the plot in bizarre places. 

Dunkirk isn’t a poor film per see. It is however a deeply clinical and cold film. It suffers many of the problems of successful films like Black Hawk Down or even Deadpool in a functionality sense. What it’s missing is the clarity and focus of great war movies like Saving Private Ryan that let it’s well defined characters drive the story and subsequently express the film’s message about the horrors of war. Much like The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar it is a film that is cracking under the weight of it’s director’s limitations. Christopher Nolan may actually be a great director but he is great at very specific things. He will not make another masterpiece of drama and existential angst until he comes to terms with what he is instead of what people want him to be. Until then Dunkirk is good enough to warrant an evening at the theater. 

Thank you all for reading! if you would like to see more reviews, articles and podcasts lemme know by tweeting me at @AntiSocialCriti or commenting below. Also be sure to check out my review show The Fox Valley Film Critics!

Live long and prosper! 

[flashinglights-rp]

Thank you for your audition, DEE. We are thrilled to welcome you into the group as the Third Rose who you have chosen to name MINERVA ELAINE, with the faceclaim of Melissa Benoist, and we truly cannot wait to meet them. Please send in your account in the next 24 hours, and read over the new members checklist before sending in your link.

ABOUT YOU ➝

NAME/PRONOUNS: Dee AGE (18+): 24 TIMEZONE: EST ACTIVITY LEVEL: 8/10, I have no life. Sometimes other people pretend I do, but I’m really always creeping things. TRIGGERS: Removed. ANYTHING ELSE?: Removed.

CHARACTER BASICS ➝

CHARACTER NAME: Minerva Elaine Rose, but she’s called Minnie. FACE CLAIM: Melissa Benoist GENDER/PRONOUNS: Female, She/Her AGE/BIRTHDAY: 23/December 25th BIRTH ORDER: Minnie is a triplet, and she’s the fourth Rose. SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Panromantic ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Pansexual JOB ROLE: Minnie would most easily identify as a pop star. She’d rather be known as a singer-songwriter than anything else, but her music has launched her into global stardom.

FAMILY STATS ➝

HOMETOWN: San Diego, California PARENT NAMES/STATUS: Robert Rose and Millie Rose. Technically divorced. They married young, but a little too young. Millie works as a restaurant owner, and Robert worked odd jobs after his one-hit wonder band disbanded in the 1980’s. Robert left the family without a word when the triplets were thirteen, and they haven’t seen him since. NUMBER OF PLAYABLE CHILDREN: 3 playable children! NUMBER OF NON-PLAYABLE CHILDREN: None ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Their parents officially divorced when the triplets were sixteen. REQUIREMENTS: None ADOPTED SIBLINGS ALLOWED?: Yes HALF-SIBLINGS ALLOWED?: Yes

BIOGRAPHY ➝

[tw for past sexual assault]

The Rose’s piano had no life in it. Robert hadn’t touched it in years, not since his own musical career had failed. With her sister so loud, boisterous and full of life, Minnie was shy and hid behind her mother’s legs. She enjoyed being around people, but it took her a while to get comfortable with them. The one thing that did make her comfortable was the piano, looming and great in the distance, something that Minnie had always been fascinated by. She and her siblings were left alone with a babysitter when Minnie finally got the courage to sit on the bench and tinker with the keys. From then on, Minnie always was the first person to get up and play it. If Minnie wasn’t spending her time at Millie’s restaurant, she was absolutely seated at her piano and playing whatever songs came to her. When asked where she’d learned it, Minnie simply replied that she had made it up. Immediately, Minnie was enrolled in piano and guitar lessons, but what she really always wanted to do was sing. Now, when she made up a song, she made up her own words to them, too. As a child, they were complete nonsense, but as she got older, Minnie’s voice and songs became much more prophetic. She entered and won several songwriting contests in the San Diego area, and began playing at as many open mic nights as possible. Minnie was thirteen when her father walked out on the family, and even though she never speaks about it in interviews, everything you’d ever want or need to know is in her songs.

Minnie became completely devoted to her musical studies, as she got older, so much so to the point that her mother enrolled her in a performing arts high school in San Diego. Not only did she spend her time songwriting, but she auditioned for every type of musical or performance opportunity that she could. This, Minnie had reasoned, was the big time– instead of getting a traditional education, she was taking voice lessons, instrumental lessons, and had an after-school job as a secretary at a record company. Her summers were spent in LA, working at performance camps, songwriting camps, and doing every single bit of exposure she could to get herself on the map. At sixteen years old, Minnie was hired as a songwriter part-time in Sunshine Records’s stable, one of the youngest that the studio had ever seen. Even though Minnie wanted to write her own music and sing it too, she had great fun writing music for other artists. Several of her songs made it onto the charts, even if she wasn’t the recording artist who created them. Despite her young age, she was heralded as the next Carole King and her songs showed a level of emotional depth that had never been seen before from someone so young

When she was eighteen years old, Minnie was finally signed to her own record deal and moved out to LA to do so. Considering she’d had a lifetime of songs to write, Minnie had nearly three album’s worth of rep, plus an entire Broadway musical in her songbook. She was in talks with producers to put her showtunes into a cohesive book and story when her first single shot to number one. With that, her love of musical theatre fell to the back burner as she decided to pursue another side of her career. With her fame star rising, Minnie wasn’t sure how to handle all of the pressure. She loved the fact that she had so many fans, and all she wanted was to do right by them. Minnie’s own insecurities would sometimes come out and rear their ugly heads, but she loved her work. Her first album came out to commercial success and critical acclaim. She won a Grammy for Best New Artist at the age of nineteen, and Minnie didn’t think her life could get much better than that.

The trouble started happening when the Sunshine Studio changed hands. A new CEO and executive director meant that obviously, the studio was going to be changing hands. Originally, when Minnie met Declan Clifford, he promised her that he was going to make her a household name, a one track onto the A list with as many movie offers and Grammy’s as she wanted. She could win an EGOT, he reasoned, with enough training, and honestly, that was all Minnie wanted. She fell easily for his charm, his good looks, his empty promises, and his lies. He sent her on a world tour following the release of her second album at the age of twenty one, and Minnie’s star only burned brighter. With that album came five more Grammy’s, including Song of the Year and Album of the Year. Minnie was already a household name, and suddenly everyone wanted to know what she was up to– what she was doing, who she was dating, what was she wearing, what toppings she liked on her frozen yogurt. It was all quite overwhelming, but Minnie loved it. The most important thing was the fact that people related to her music, and that was all Minnie wanted.

From then on, her life became a window that only a few people could truly see into. Many things were set out to tempt her, she was often steered onto the wrong path, but Minnie persisted to stay true to herself, until she simply cracked under the pressure and fell victim to the studio’s manipulation. She dyed her hair, she lost the weight, she answered questions the way she was supposed to, and for a few years, she was a puppet. There were the parties, the vices, the perfume deal, the biography, the interviews. Minnie handled most of everything with a cool head, her upbeat and optimistic personality. People reveled in the fact that after certain legends of pop past, that there could be a nice pop star for once. That was what Minnie always held on to in discussions of her image– the label wanted her to throw shade, they wanted her to publicly feud, and Minnie refused. Something that Millie Rose had always told Minnie was to stick to her guns, and to never let someone else make her feel badly about herself or her music. Things began to get worse and worse. Declan Clifford was the negative, toxic energy that she had in her life. After working under his wing for five years, Minnie was through being silent of his horrendous acts towards her and other clients. Her final straw came one night when she was at a party. Minnie doesn’t remember anything other than how her clothes were destroyed, but once she was hospitalized they found DNA on her that belonged to her boss. The case of Minnie Rose v. Declan Clifford rose its way through the courts on account of sexual assault, battery, gender violence, negligence, and several other crimes. The court case has gained quite a bit of fame, and as a result, Minnie’s musical prowess has flown under the radar in favor of the scandal.

Minnie is wary at all of the publicity, and even though she’s proud of herself for finally standing up for her career, she’s beyond upset over what’s happened, and how far she let the abuse go before she said something. Minnie is still performing, despite being dropped by the label for “artistic differences.” She’s finally just won the battle to get her masters (the original recordings of all of her songs) back into her possession. It’s all very much an intense legal battle, and Minnie’s anxiety over the situation is great. Public sympathy for her has been high, and Minnie doesn’t really want to be seen or known as someone to pity. She wants to be known as someone strong. Now, Minnie is shopping around for a new label. She’s had plenty of offers come her way, but Minnie is relying on her lawyers and agent to help her make the right decision. She’s also tirelessly working to support other victims of sexual assault, and refuses to keep silent on the matter. When she isn’t furiously scribbling in her notebook, Minnie is an avid baker and cook, a talent learned from her mother. She enjoys being outdoors and has a great love for the ocean. Her favorite thing to do (aside from sing) is read by the beach. Despite her current troubles, Minnie is determined to do what she loves: make music.

AESTHETIC ➝

Because Minnie is always so visible, her outfits are always impeccable and she prefers them that way. Her makeup is soft and natural, and meant to accentuate her beauty. Minnie always smells like plumeria and pears, because that’s the signature perfume she’s launched. At one point in her life, the label suggested she dye her hair blonde, so she did for a period of time. Now, she wears her hair brunette, long, and usually straight. Minnie is absolutely more of a skirt and dress person than a pants person, but you’ll occasionally find her in a pair of skinny jeans. Most of her dresses for awards shows are designed for her specifically. Onstage, her outfits are very sparkly, on-trend, and somewhat modest. Her style is very feminine, floral, and soft.

[davidcarterr]

Austyn Gillette Interview

Austyn Gillette. Photo: Andrew Peters

We are one of the first European shops to take on FORMER, a clothing company with Austyn Gillette as one of the creative forces at it's core. Austyn recently visited Slam on a HUF tour but this was a flying visit and we didn't have a chance to get an interview put together. We waited to take in the first few pieces from FORMER and caught up with Austyn in this exclusive interview which talks about this new company and much more...

Hello Austyn where does this interview find you?

It finds me in Los Angeles hungry for breakfast.

You just returned from visiting us on a HUF tour. How was that?

It was very busy, we were able to get to Belgium and Switzerland which was new for all of us and then London was a re-visit. We didn't get to spend much time there which is kind of a shame. It was fun, it was fruitful and I had a good time.

Do you like spending time in London?

I honestly haven't spent enough time there. On this last trip we were staying somewhere central by a lot of the museums. It didn't have much of a feeling where we were staying. That's what everyone was saying, it wasn't where we would need to be. I have a bunch of friends there and I guess I would trust them as far as where I would need to be. I would like to spend more time there and I would like to skate more because I have always loved the way that it looks. What European city have you enjoyed the most on your travels?

I really liked Switzerland this time around after this last trip. I liked Zurich, it was pretty nice. Paris, Copenhagen is really nice. those are all pretty different cities too so that's a weird review to get. I usually go off to cities where I could imagine spending a bit more time, not living but staying for a while.

Austyn Backside Lipslides hallowed ground. Photo: Mark Jackson

We were stoked on your Radiant Cure part. Where does that sit in your body of work for you? is it your favourite part to date?

I hate using this word but it was the most… you know what I'm not going to use the word. Every single trick was planned to be that way. I've never done that before. I've usually had a photographer or a team manager kind of breathing down my back "you know you should probably get this or you need this". This was the first time where I had complete control over music, over spots and locations. I pretty much funded the whole entire thing just to produce something like that. I was pretty satisfied with the way it turned out. The response has been good. There was the pressure of wanting to direct people towards Former in a way where they could see it's a skateboard brand. I guess hopefully it kicked that off. As a part, it's hard to talk about that stuff when it's you. It was pretty stressful

But on your own terms...

Yeah of course which was nice. I mean the deadline wasn't an issue. I was able to talk to the guys over at Thrasher directly and they were able to push stuff. They were pretty flexible so they kind of helped with that as well, relieving the pressure, some of it, which doesn't make sense because that's not their angle.

How vital do you feel properly crafted video parts are in this age of dwindling attention spans?

I don't know. We have another thing coming out with HUF in November. I wanted to try and film another part by November but I know that's not possible. Then they told me that I don't have to film video parts anymore. It was weird to think about it that way. Everything I like that's coming out right now isn't a full video. I don't know if it's necessary any more. I think putting stuff out straight away has definitely over saturated everything and a lot of people shave snuck through the cracks. They get overnight fame. I feel bad for the people who have to maintain that presence because that's their product. Like "oh I deliver daily videos and I have a head-cam on and I'm a loser and I should probably just do something else". It's kind of soulless I could definitely say that. Some of it has feeling but a lot of it doesn't. I still appreciate full video parts but I understand the new formula and the numbers game, I get it but I personally try and veer from that.

Does your relationship with skateboarding change when you have to take care of business or is it filled with a childlike sense of joy?

Of course it changes, hopefully it changes because of the end product and what they are seeing. I would hope they know that it's hard and with that comes a lot of frustration and things that people would experience in a more traditional job. There are moments where I can separate the two and that's kind of what it is, moderating that to where you can have each side. I don't like the everything's fun every single day bullshit. I don't think that's authentic, that's not the case with anybody. If you learn to skateboard and get to the point where you're sponsored you had to get frustrated and you had to overcome a certain level to get there. I know that's not easy for anybody in any line of work. I think it's about managing it. You don't tell yourself to go out and have fun but it naturally occurs.

Ideal skate crew on a mission. Friends, filmer, photographer?

That's where things change. You start to realise that when you go out there's a filmer or two and a photographer every time you skate. Yesterday i was just skating these curbs and then this guy comes up and he has one of those kind of pogo stick iPhone things. He comes up and asks me to film something. You kind of feel a little bit obligated because they want it but it's still a piece of you. The ideal crew depends. If I'm trying to get footage I like to do it alone but if it's a regular day just some close friends. I think that's with everything. We had a dinner here last night and had some friends over, I don't want to have dinner by myself, it's tried and true.

Radiant Cure is a part for your clothing company FORMER. We are stoked to be one of just a few shops stocking your brand. How has the reception been to the latest seasons drop?

It's been good. We're all kind of adjusting our whole platform now we've finally got to the point where we can do retail and open up Europe and get shops like you guys to carry it. We are pretty excited about that response. We have been direct to consumer up till now so yet to see the response, I'll have a better answer for you in just a couple of months. I'm really excited that people are showing interest in skate shops, that's what I've wanted this whole time, for people to feel involved and it's not part of some hierarchy.

Am I right in thinking this was yours and Dylan's brain child and then you teamed up with Craig Anderson and Dane Reynolds?

We all did it together, our friend Campbell Milligan who started Monster Children kind of initiated that idea and we all did it at the same time. Dylan and I were doing something separate at that time, we wanted to start a company and Dane and Craig were going through some turmoil on their end with the company they were riding for. I wouldn't say it was mine and Dylan's brain child at all, it was a very cohesive project

What is your role within the company and who are the extended team and family?

My role is probably just to be the filter because we do have employees with jobs dedicated to things we need that some of the skaters and surfers don't need to be doing. I'm the filter, not the designer but finding inspiration and then kind of taking control of the skate side of things. I'd be the skate team manager in a sense and being the voice of that side of things

Was it a relief when this started from a personal point of view, that you didn't have to align yourself with an existing aesthetic?

That's what took so long, it took about two years to find that and develop that. As far as identity it's nice to have a fresh start with everything that's out currently. Anything new is refreshing and I've always gravitated towards that. Being successful within skating, I've seen all of the different sides to it and this is preferable, being able to create. Everything I do now I want to make the music for it and see everything through. i think that's for everybody even outside of skating.

What would you say will continue to set FORMER apart as a company?

It's the only legit surf/skate brand and I don't think that's ever really happened before. It's pretty unique. I think that's maybe been a difficult part for some people that surfing is attached to it. But I think the team we are developing, the aesthetic and the videos and the clothes alone separate it. Everything is technically designer because we're making our own patterns and I think that will shine through in time. We are patient with that it's just a matter of developing that image people can relate to and identify with.

Austyn wearing the Radiant Crux T-Shirt

Your style is an influential one, have you ever come face to face with any memorable carbon copies on the road?

(Laughs) A couple, it's weird. It's definitely not as popular as everything else that's going on but it's funny, you can definitely see it. If you're talking about skating you develop that style over years. I haven't seen any people trying to actually skate like me but they wear the clothes which is kind of what everybody is doing. They want to look or be like the people they are looking up to and I remember being like that with people I looked up to. There's things I wear outside of skateboarding that I've seen and liked, liked that look and identified with it. I don't wear anything that crazy, it's pretty standard issue for comfort. I know it and it's always worked.

Can you tell us any more about the new board company we have heard rumours about?

I actually can't! Not because I've signed an NDA or whatever but I don't have any answers. There's no name, there's no home for it, there's kind of a home for it. I'm sure the rumours are probably true and people would expect that. I'm really excited about it though, it's three or four of us. I'm not the nucleus of the brand or anything which is kind of nice because with Former I'm pretty busy and I don't know if I could take that on. I'm not really good from a brand standpoint creating something. Maybe it's just skateboards, because I've been a part of it for so long. With clothing there's a lot of flexibility but with skateboards i wouldn't even know where to start other than I know the shape I like and the people I like. In order for it to work I don't know what that takes nowadays.

It must be exciting, it's always good to see something new…

It will…I don't know anything! I'm where you're at as well. The good thing is I'm still friends with everybody I was with over at WKND. That's the most important thing

We listened to your new album Sensorisk and it's really good. How has the reception been to that? How long was the process of making it?

It took about six months and I was writing it for about a year and a half. It did surprisingly well this time around. We had a name for a band before and we decided to change it. This was a more mature project with actual musicians on the whole entire album. The material was very sensitive and close to home so it was time to change the name. I figured that if anybody was listening to anything previously or now it was maybe because my name was attached to it. I guess I'm singing so it just made sense and so I switched it to just my name, self titled artist kind of thing. It's developed, I'm not making any money off it but was able to sell enough records to fund most of the project. If it's enough to float and create, I see no reason why I would ever not do it. It exists

Is it just you and Danny Garcia playing on there?

Yeah. I basically wrote the whole album, all the parts and then I had him playing most of the stuff on the record since he's a studio musician. That relieved a lot of pressure, I was excited that he was open to doing everything. There were a few other musicians, my buddy Graham was playing drums and a few other instruments. it's weird going into a studio and working with something like a producer, this guy Chris. It was a very new experience and I definitely want to continue doing it but it's a fine line to walk on where you're trying to push or spam people with your hobby. But at least it's something where there is a somewhat tangible product at the end of it and it's music, it's not a bunch of garbage. It makes life more interesting and if it makes somebody else happy, then continue.

Have you been supporting the release with any live appearances?

No we did one release show and that's it, I've been travelling so much

How do you find playing live?

I love it actually. I prefer playing live over doing the monotonous stuff in the studio and trying to sound a certain way. Playing live it's only going to sound that way at that point. It's fun, it's cool to see something immediate from something that you have made. Even if it's one or two people nodding their heads, they get what you are feeling. We've only played one show. I wanted to do some more stuff in Europe but I haven't talked to anybody or had time to do anything there.

What inspires your song writing?

It's song by song for the most part. usually I start singing to some chords I'm writing and there isn't really any direct message I'm sending in the beginning and then it just develops. As far as music goes I don't know I just like to put on whatever it would be easiest for people to listen to that isn't chasing whatever else is going on. That's where the inspiration comes from.

Do you find it therapeutic?

On the right day yeah. On most of the days since I've been back from that trip to Europe I haven't even had time to really play or record but on those days where you can spend a full day and pass the time yes. That's been a long time, almost like a year which is weird to say that. But yeah, it is very meditative. I don't know where anything's going as soon as I start and it's pretty amazing to even have the time to do that and I have that flexibility in my schedule.

What musical influences would you reference who changed your world?

There's plenty of those but I don't want to say names because if I say names then I'm giving it up. But I will say that with those people I'm a pretty die hard fan of all of it and there's probably only ten artists but everything is on heavy rotation on playlists and i'm listening to the stuff constantly. For the last record that was definitely the case but after the new record I've opened up to a lot of music so we'll see how the next thing goes.

While we are talking about music what video part do you think is complimented perfectly by the track choice?

Fuck there's a lot. I feel like Jerry Hsu's Bag Of Suck part hit home for a lot of people, everyone understood that and it really translated well. That must have done something for Cass. Not that Sonic Youth needed any juice. Dill's always had really good music. Who else? That's a great question. I want to hit you with a curve ball. I was more of a nerd growing up then than I am now. I need to throw a hip hop part in there too...

Rob Welsh' Aesthetics part?

Yeah I'd go with Welsh on that one! Kalis' part in the DC video was great with the GangStarr track, that went really well. It seems like that would be hard to do. I think being more of apart of the editing process now and seeing how the first song you want most of the time will not fit. Even though you see it in your head you don't see how it works on the timeline with how fast or slow you're skating and what's complimenting the footage itself. We're doing that new video for HUF and we're asking some of the younger guys what they want and it's pretty interesting. They just have like one song and you have to tell them that that is not going to happen. Not only will it not work, you can't get the rights for it or anything like that. It's a difficult task. I really liked the music in the Quasi video because it wasn't predictable in any way and I think that was probably their intention. It was nice to see that.

You are a busy creative. Video parts, Clothing company responsibilities, making music, woodwork. How do all of these outlets slot together? Are you constantly busy? Do you immerse yourself totally in one project at a time or juggle the whole load?

I think I kind of juggle but when it comes to skating and knowing I need to be gone travelling that's obviously a priority. I do juggle, I'm kind of restless but when you're gone you get accustomed to it. You can make music when you're gone but I can't do any woodwork or too much with Former, the clothing thing. It's hard to micro manage all that stuff but they are the only things I know that make me happy.

Would you describe yourself as a perfectionist?

Yes, to my own standards and how I hold things. I'm usually not satisfied most of the time which is what probably gives me the most anxieties in life, that things need to be a certain way. I think it's part of getting older to realise it can't be that way and people don't think like you and your brain is not the world

You have mentioned an interest in wood work and framing, is this something you are currently busy with?

Not really. Every other month someone will ask me for something but it's weird. the more i do it, the more I see it. The more custom framing shops I see on the side of the street. You become interested in something and then you see it everywhere. I'm not too busy with it. I'd almost need funding to get the tools I need to do it like a business and have a space. You really need to spread out with any kind of woodwork. If you're doing glue and sanding those things need to be separate and it needs to be clean. I'm pretending to be an old soul with these crafts but I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Experimenting and talking about it and doing it.

What is the best and worst thing about skateboarding right now?

The best thing would be that there's endless creativity and recognition that you can get pretty much immediately so that gives a lot of people hope. There are a lot more eyes on skateboarding and I think that's good but that's also the worst part too. I don't know what it's doing the fact that kids see everything that's going on. Kids see what their contemporaries are doing and then they start skating and getting better and then you lose your job and get pay cuts and these people would never have even existed. I hope skateboarding becomes a little bit more popular so that these companies can grow and the smaller companies we really like can develop but with that, the internet's bad.

What knock on effect do you think skateboardings involvement in the olympics will be?

I feel like you hear this a lot and it's almost the same answer. I hope it does something positive for skateboarding. Nobody has ever really nailed it with that, with any movies or something that might take skateboarding to the next level. It's always been cheesy. it's not like the Olympics is going to be cool in any way. Somebody from some country will get kicked out for being high on something, I don't know how that will go over. I don't really care though, it doesn't affect anything. I don't know how it isn't a sport already, there's fencing which is based on style. Who cares, the world is going to move and that's how it's going to go and who gives a shit. Let's hope it will be good and not be so negative about it.

Looking in your crystal ball what trend predictions do you have that will echo through scenes worldwide?

You're already seeing it, the nineties thing coming back from the kids who didn't experience it the first time round. I was born in the nineties so I guess since I was born I kind of got to see it. It's interesting seeing a generation who weren't there bringing it back. I'm not old but seeing that happen is pretty interesting, things are moving quickly. Being in London, I'm not sure about the UK as a whole but it's very specific there and Japan is very specific. the nineties thing is back, baggy pants, bigger shoes. Maybe Daisy Dukes will come around. I wonder if it will ever make it as far back as the short shorts when skateboarding first started. High shorts on the beach, a Christian Hosoi kind of look. I wonder if that will ever land again. I don't predict it will happen but I'm curious. Some of the shit you see people wearing is fucking insane and you know there's an identity crisis there. But it's just clothes, who cares.

If you could borrow a trick and it's perfect execution from somebody for the day who and what would it be?

Who has got it? I'd borrow one of Danny Way's tricks on the mega ramp just to know what that feels like. Anything like that

Recommend our readers a book and a movie that will improve their lives…

I don't know if I have books that would improve your life. I just finished reading Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. I think I was at a pretty good time in my life to read that book being in my later twenties and battling with self identity and am I this? Am I that? I would go with that read and as a film what have I been watching? This is kind of cheesy but I've really enjoyed watching Vincent Gallo's films. I respect him for taking his career and having full control. I watched the Brown Bunny recently which is very difficult to find. Buffalo 66 is great, you can't beat it. If someone hasn't seen that it's a shame, you need to see that.

Any advice to a kid out there newly discovering a love for skateboarding and wanting to follow in your footsteps….

Don't read comments. Don't listen to people. Don't pay attention to anything else that would steer you from your path. Be passionate about it and be true to it and that's the only way you're going to be successful.

Thanks to Austyn for spending time with us on this. Interview by Jacob Sawyer. You can shop for FORMER HERE

Austyn Gillette Interview published first on https://medium.com/@LaderaSkateboar