#whether all those treatments makes it to a canvas or not is a different story...

[riisume]

I rise from the grave to celebrate pulling Imbibitor Lunae last night on my first 10 pull with a doodle that took me maybe 45 minutes to draw.

I've been a bit hyperfixated on the fact that Dan Heng's ears could be super ticklish... (⁄ ⁄��⁄ω⁄•⁄ ⁄)⁄

He made a huge mistake coming home cuz he's probably gonna see a lot more of this treatment. >:^)

[makeuptips-]

How to Pick the Best Foundation Primer for Your Skintype and Concerns

Primers come in many different tones, formulas, and finishes, and whilst you can certainly choose a “one-size-fits-all” style approach to your primer, that’s not necessarily best for everyone. There are multiple variations of product which can help to target individual skin types and skin concerns.

IMAGE: GLOSSIER

PRIMER 101:

In short, primers are base products that you apply after you’ve cleansed and moisturized your skin, but before you apply any coverage products like foundation or concealer. Primers are designed to help make your makeup last a lot longer and smooth over the surface of the skin so your makeup applies evenly. 

They’re a great makeup prep product, but they’re not the same as your moisturizer. Some primers are skincare-makeup hybrids which allow you to simply apply it to your skin and get benefits of both. Depending on the primer you use, you may find combining a moisturizer and a primer provide too much “slip” to your skin, causing makeup to slide and apply unevenly. Majority of the time, this can be overcome by simply allowing a full 1-2 minutes for each layer of product to absorb and set before moving on to the next. 

PRIMERS FOR EVERYONE:

If your only goal and concern is to prolong the wear of your makeup without targeting any concerns such as redness or excess oil, stick with the basics and opt for a regular primer. These primers are not all universal, but their main goal and purpose is to simply keep your makeup looking fresher for longer, no matter your skin type. 

IMAGE: GLOSSIER

SKINCARE-MAKEUP HYBRID PRIMERS:

Certain brands offer products which provide skin with nutrients, vitamins, and hydration, but combined with ingredients which are also designed to increase the wear time of your makeup. These primers typically are richer in texture than a traditional primer, and they may even be heavier than your regular moisturizer, if you find this too much for your skin, try a serum primer. A serum primer has the consistency of a serum with many of its benefits, but also works to prime your skin for makeup application.

Try: Glossier Priming Moisturizer, Tula Face Filter Blurring & Moisturizing Prime, e.l.f Hydrating Primer Serum PRIMERS FOR DRY/SENSITIVE SKIN:

If you have a drier skin type you may find that makeup has a tendency to appear flaky and cakey on your skin. As foundation and concealer can often grip onto areas of the skin which are flaky, makeup can “cake up” on these areas and look uneven, wrinkly, and blotchy. A hydrating primer can work to smooth over these areas whilst simultaneously hydrating the skin so makeup applies smoothly and has a healthy, hydrated base to apply to. 

Try: Milk Makeup Hydro Grip Primer,  Laura Mercier Hydrating Primer 

  PRIMERS FOR OILY SKIN:

For those with oily skin, a primer is your best bet for keeping makeup on your skin and preventing it from sliding and slipping all over the place, whilst simultaneously keeping your skin matte. If you’re someone with oily skin opt for a specifically designed mattifying or oil control primer designed to help reduce the appearance of shine and keep your makeup on all day.

Try: Hourglass Mineral Veil Primer, Bobbi Brown Primer Plus Mattifier

IMAGE: URBAN OUTFITTERS

PRIMERS FOR LARGE PORES/UNEVEN SKIN:

Large pores can be a burden on makeup, but every persons pore size is different and this can vary based on genetics and skin type. Whilst some brand claim to “shrink” your pores, that’s not really possible. Large pores can cause makeup to look cakey and you may find that foundations and creams “settle” into your pores. Furthermore, if you’ve suffered with bad acne in the past and have been left with “ice pick” acne scars, a velvety, resurfacing primer could be just the trick. 

Try: Benefit Porefessional Primer, Too Faced Primed & Poreless + Advanced Formula Primer PRIMERS FOR FINE LINES/BUMPY SKIN:

From fine lines, to wrinkles, to acne scarring, skin that has an uneven texture can pose a real struggle for makeup. Certain formulas can settle into fine lines and wrinkles (thus exaggerating them) and foundation can often accentuate uneven and bumpy skin texture. A smoothing, primer designed to blur imperfections will help to smooth the texture of the skin and provide a layer between your skin and. 

Try: Kiehl’s Micro-Blur Skin Perfector, Marc Jacobs Under(cover) Blurring Coconut Face Primer

PRIMERS FOR REDNESS:

Redness can occur regardless of skin type, so whether you’re dry and flaky, or oily, blotchy, red, and acne-prone, a primer specifically designed to correct redness in the skin can work magic. Many redness reducing primers contain a dose of yellow or green pigments to “correct” the redness in the skin, whilst it may look daunting to apply these bright shades to your skin, they essentially “knock out” the redness meaning you don’t need to add layers and layers of product to cover up redness.  If you have fair skin, try mixing these highly pigmented primers with a standard facial primer or moisturizer before application.  

Try: MAKE UP FOR EVER Step 1 Primer Color Corrector - Redness, Peter Thomas Roth Skin To Die For Redness-Reducing Treatment Primer

IMAGE: BOBBI BROWN

PRIMERS FOR DULL SKIN:

An illuminating primer is a glowy skin must-have. Dewy, illuminating, hydrating, and totally glow-inducing, but they’re often lighter than your typical hydrating primer (which may have illuminating particles also!) If you have dull skin or just love to rock dewy skin look for a a primer that contains light reflecting particles. These small, shimmering particles work to “bounce” light off the skin to give it a more radiant glow , you can also use it atop of makeup as a highlighter, mixed in with foundation to give your foundation a glow (and lighten the coverage) or on its own for an ultra-subtle, natural glow. 

Try: Laura Mercier Pure Canvas Primer - Illuminating, Charlotte Tilbury Wonderglow Face Primer

PRIMERS FOR A BRONZED GLOW:

Freshly tanned skin has a natural radiance about it, but a natural tan isn’t necessarily the safest thing you can do for your skin. If you’re wanting a little bit of shimmer and glow, try a bronzing primer. Use it underneath makeup for shimmer, glow, and a subtle bronze to your skin, wear on its own as a makeshift style tinted moisturizer, or mix a little in with your foundation to darken an existing shade + add a healthy dose of glow. 

Try: Laura Geller Spackle Tinted Under Make-up Primer (Bronze), Ofra Cosmetics Rays Of Light Bronzing Primer

Shop this post:

Urban Decay All Nighter Face Primer

Smashbox Photo Finish Primer 

Glossier Priming Moisturizer

Tula Face Filter Blurring & Moisturizing Prime

e.l.f Hydrating Primer Serum 

Milk Makeup Hydro Grip Primer

Laura Mercier Hydrating Primer

Laura Mercier Pure Canvas Primer - Illuminating

Charlotte Tilbury Wonderglow Face Primer

Ofra Cosmetics Rays Of Light Bronzing Primer

Laura Geller Spackle Tinted Under Make-up Primer (Bronze)

Story by: Evangeline Sarney

Imagery: [Supplied]

[ryanmeft]

My Top Performances of 2019, Part 2

Here is the second half of the list of my favorite film performances of 2019. I tried to be as objective as possible, but it’s also a result of personal preferences. As before, the order is unimportant. Part 1 is here:  https://ryanmeft.tumblr.com/post/190668845597/my-top-performances-of-2019-part-1?fbclid=IwAR3_d80vj0FbIVXqWaTV1heUlIDJJmL-JB_ZksaadO_oNRztnhBMICxzTd8

Zhao Tao in Ash is Purest White

She’s got everything you could want in a rusting former industrial town: a good boyfriend who has influence in the area’s small underworld, which gives her power, love and money all at once. In a blink it is all gone, and she finds herself adrift in the world, dealing with the resentments of people with no patience for what she has gone through. Tao is the key component of this crime drama, which is more drama than crime. She does not take the world in blazing force as a crime figure in a Scorsese film might do, but quietly and slowly accepts that the days of her power are past---and unlike the men around her, tries to adapt to, rather than battle, the inevitable.

Ana De Armas in Knives Out

Knives Out is in the grand, disappearing tradition of the character actor, albeit with the parts mostly played by superstars. Yet among a roster that includes Captain America as an irresponsible playboy and Michael Shannon as a professorial-looking semi-Nazi, De Armas’s humble heroine Marta stands out. Maybe it’s because Marta is humble but not naive or entirely innocent, and De Armas manages to capture both her cunning and her honesty without turning her into a doe-eyed victim. She’s the kind of character you want to become a Nancy Drew-esque mystery hero for adults, so you can revisit her later adventures.

Joaquin Phoenix in Joker

Some hated the movie, some loved it, but one thing it seems everyone could agree on is Phoenix’s performance. He’s credited as Arthur Fleck, not as Joker, and his handling of the character couldn’t be more different than any previous portrayal. Arthur is sad and lonely, not at all an enigma---his private life is laid out for us in great detail---and Phoenix portrays him as just sort of being blown through the world, bereft of any real agency. You can debate all day whether the character deserves to be portrayed in a sympathetic way, but you can’t say Phoenix doesn’t pull it off, making us root for this maladjusted, societally-forgotten misfit almost up ‘till the end. 

Sienna Miller in American Woman

In a just world, Miller, hardly a household name, would have her face up on the stage Sunday night for playing this role, a drunken, hard-partying too-young mother and grandmother whose life begins to change when her daughter disappears. I say begins to, because this is not one of those magical stories of miraculous redemption. Debra does not become a good parent to her grandchild right away, and never becomes a great one. Instead, the film follows her throughout years of her life, during which, naturally, she must go on living as she mourns. Miller embodies each stage of this perfectly, never once allowing drama tropes to disturb her unflinching portrayal of an ordinary life.

Jeff Goldblum in The Mountain

What does the word “monster” conjure for you? Whatever traits it brings to mind, they are all present in Dr. Wallace Fiennes. He’s an egotistical, self-interested, callous man who performs lobotomies on mental patients in the 1950’s American heartland, the kind of person for whom his gruesome practice is not an outmoded method to be improved on by advancement, but an art form in itself, and his patients merely the canvas. This isn’t handled like a horror movie: Goldblum is not a mad scientist cackling away in a lab, but an urbane, cultured, engaging professional---which makes him all the more frightening.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Fast Color

Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel were, to a large extent, a marketing department’s ideal female superheroes: always flawless, gorgeous even when kicking ass, unable to make any very serious mistakes. Ruth is very much not that. She’s living wherever she can, dealing with the effects of past addictions, running from the government, scared of her own powers. She’s not just unlike any other woman in tights (without the tights), she’s unlike any mainstream superhero ever has, can or will be. Mbatha-Raw is one of our most underrated actresses, and she portrays Ruth in a way that allows us to both sympathize with her plight and support her as she grows stronger. The movie’s not getting a sequel, because the Hollywood franchise machine isn’t ready for imperfect superheroes yet, but it is getting a series, so at least we’re getting more of Ruth in some medium.

Renee Zellweger in Judy

I won’t pretend I knew much about Judy Garland going in, and frankly I’m not sure I understand her after seeing the movie---it was, in most respects, a fairly typical music biopic. Where it broke the mode is in Zellweger’s performance. I think it’s fair to say the once-household name has been largely forgotten by Hollywood in recent years; she never had the perfect starlet looks or the ideal girl-next-door adorableness that is the main standard on which women are judged. But she had the acting chops, and here she finally gets to prove it. Her Garland is twisted and gnarled inside and out by years of sexist treatment and the resulting substance abuse, but still a loving mother to her children and a great singer---and justifiably angry at the industry that used her up and spit her out.

Paul Walter Hauser in Richard Jewell There was never a single chance of seeing the camera pan to Hauser during Sunday’s roll call of acting nominees---both he and the person he plays are about the polar opposite of Hollywood’s image of itself. And it must be said that while Jewell should not be forgotten, Eastwood’s movie, with its ginned-up anti-press narrative, maybe should be. But none of that is on Hauser, whose performance firmly proves that fat guys can be more than bumbling comedic relief or ineffective sidekicks in the movies. It matters that someone who looks like Jewell is portraying him, and that he does it so well that we can almost overlook the film’s other faults.

  Honor Swinton Byrne in The Souvenir

This one was little-seen, and though it generated awards buzz initially, it’s already been largely forgotten. That’s too bad. Byrne’s Julie is a woman torn between her own ambitions and her love for a man who is---abusive? How to judge him? It’s a toxic relationship fueled by addiction on his part, but the movie is more about how you cope with a partner who is committed but not capable of commitment. Perhaps the most resonant aspect of Julie’s character is the way she holds out hope even when everyone tells her not to, even when she herself knows deep down that it is hopeless. You may find this weak, but I’ve never known a human being who wasn’t in some measure susceptible to it.

Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins in The Two Popes Everyone has strong feelings about the Catholic Church---it’s not a thing you go half-measures on. And every Catholic has strong feelings about the last two Popes---again, they aren’t the kind of personalities that inspire milquetoast reactions. What Pryce and Hopkins do in portraying Francis and Benedict, respectfully, is remind us that no matter how much they claim to be the chosen of God, these are after all two men---two men with flaws and opinions, whose own lives have shaped them every bit as much as the Bible or the church. When they are on screen together, you can imagine them in an odd couple buddy comedy, two aging road trippers tending to the flock. Lots of performances didn’t make my arbitrary 20-point cutoff. To be dead honest with you, it’s entirely possible that if you ask me in a year, I’ll have re-considered who is on the main list and who is in the honorable mentions; the idea that what I say now, when all these movies are fresh in my mind and affected by immediate emotional reaction, has to be my inviolate opinion for all time is silly. That said, here are some excellent and noteworthy performances that didn’t quite make the cut.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Kelvin Harrison, Jr. in Waves

Zack Gottsagen in The Peanut Butter Falcon

Isabela Moner in Dora and the Lost City of Gold

Alessandro Nivola in The Art of Self-Defense

Cate Blanchett in Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

More or less everyone in Little Women (I couldn’t decide, and thought more of the acting than the overall film)

Jodie Turner-Smith in Queen and Slim

Cynthia Erivo in Harriet

Kaitlyn Dever in Booksmart

Edward Norton in Motherless Brooklyn

[rivkyschleider]

Annotated Bibliography

Winnicott, D. (1986) Home is where we start from. England: London

In this collection of essays we learn of Winnicott’s key teachings, presented to a lay audience.  He explains attachment theory, the ‘good enough environment’, the contribution of the Mother to society, adolescence and the relationship between the individual and their facilitating family group.  He explores concepts of health versus illness through his lens as a psychoanalyst in addition to to his medical background.  It is extremely helpful to see how foundation concepts of personality, the very make up of human emotional development can be applied to such a variety of cultural topics such as monarchy, the Pill and mathematics.  He brings clarity to these issues and offers me a model for applying depth of insight about the subconscious and the effect of early childhood environment on later life.  By uncovering gaps or repression in the individual’s psyche the psychotherapist can facilitate milestones of developmental progress, albeit at a later stage of maturation.

Yalom, I. (2002)  The Gift of Therapy.  US: HarperCollins

This is a handbook of 85 tips and instructions built upon 35 years of clinical practice and teaching.  He paints a picture of a therapist in a way that inspires me to rise to the challenge of training and the ongoing character growth that is so crucial to this profession.  He promotes curiosity, humility and transparency, and breaks away the the image of the therapist as an all-knowing provider of interpretations, or a blank canvas to absorb transference.  He gives a practical guide for mining the here-and-now aspects of the therapeutic encounter to further the process of therapy.  He describes tools  for incorporating the therapist’s own feelings into the mix as well as how to explore dream material, how to take a history and how to look at their present; how their daily life is organised and peopled.  He writes with deep pride on the privilege of helping others find meaning, health and joy.

Skynner, Cleese (1983)  Families and how to Survive Them  London: Vermilion

This was a a whistle-stop tour through all the major themes of child development, identity, attraction, relationships and family dynamics written as a conversation between Robin Skynner, a psychotherapist and John Cleese his former patient.  They discuss the continuum that exists with optimally healthy families at one end; dysfunctional families with inter-generational problems at the other; and the “normal” families in the middle in which we see an expected mix of ‘screened off’ feelings alongside coping mechanisms, defenses and social norms to smooth the way.  Skynner draws on Freudian ideas as well as later work by more recent therapists and analysts who looked at how families work as a system.  Each part affects all other parts of the system.  By considering inter-relationships through the eyes of a typical family we can learn about letting go of inherited mistakes and move forward to optimal family life.

Van Der Kolk, B. The Body Keeps the Score, United Stares: Penguin

This book is about how trauma impacts a person causing long term suffering to victims, their families and future generations.  Using scientific methods such as brain scans and clinically sound investigations, Van Der Kolk looks at how the mind and body are transformed by traumatic events; how neural networks are formed as coping mechanisms and may later morph into unwanted behaviours.  This is followed by a paradigm of treatment that seeks to give individual patients ownership of their narrative, their bodies and a route to self awareness and healing.  Yoga, EMDR, neurofeedback and theater are offered as examples of pathways to recovery and I believe that art therapy is another good candidate for an embodied type of therapy, one that does not rely on talking alone.  This book answered questions about my own pattern of mild symptoms and has opened up the whole field of mind/body connection in relation to trauma and healing.

Axline, V.M. (1964) Dibs In Search of Self.  London: Penguin

Virginia M. Axline has written the true story of Dibs, her client; a talented and sensitive child who was trapped in isolation due to the lack of emotional connection in his life.  Through psychotherapy - play therapy to be precise - he regained his sense of self and was eventually able to thrive, utilise his gifted nature and contribute to society.  It is an eloquent case study obliquely laying out the principles of play and art therapy.  The therapist built the safe environment in which the child could open up and slowly verbalise his deeply felt emotions.  reparation with his parents blossoms.  It is notable that the therapist made it safe for Dibs to express negativity.  This teaches us to think about hostility as a sign sometimes of adequate ego strength for the feelings to be articulated.  In that sense, aggression is a sign of health!  This book is a beautiful testimony to the power of psychotherapy to transform lives.  

Malchiodi, C. (2011) Trauma Informed Art Therapy and Sexual Abuse in Children. In: Goodyear-Brown, P. (ed.) Handbook of Child Sexual Abuse: Identification, Assessment and Treatment.  United states: John Wiley & Sons

This chapter deals with how art therapy helps children who have suffered sexual abuse to articulate their sometimes unutterable experiences in a manner that the therapist can understand while within what is tolerable for the child.  Trauma informed art therapy involves using art materials to address hyper-arousal and to teach relaxation, referencing the specific neuro circuit that is activated by hands on activities of a soothing nature.  The sensory and tactile qualities of art materials need to be taken into consideration, how they are central to trauma recovery, but equally how they may trigger memories of distressful events.  The somatic approach, using colour and shape enables children to locate the place in the body where trauma is held so they can learn to diminish distress.  The author comments on the relevance of culturally sensitive materials and projects.  This has been a rich article for me, linking my reading on trauma, with art therapy for a client group I may want to work with in the future.  

Cane, F. (1951) The Artist in Each Of Us. United States: Art Therapy Publications

This book bridges art and therapy.  It aims to give the reader a means to achieving a richer art and a more integrated life.  It looks at how movement, feeling and thought work together.  I was intrigued to read detailed technical instructions for accessing subconscious material which can be used to reach higher levels of artistic expression and also personal healing.  The case studies record the progress of her students and how transcendence was coaxed up through fantasy, play, rhythmic movements, chanting and other indirect means until it could be released for union with the conscious.  I tried out some of these techniques and was surprised to discover not only the catharsis, but also the unexpected outcomes of artwork spontaneously arising from my own psychological material.  It shows me how the perceptive teacher can awaken in her students their own creativity and direct them to find solutions for subtle or complex inner dilemmas.

Dalley, T. (ed.) (1984) Art as Therapy. An Introduction to the use of art as a therapeutic technique. London: Routledge

This book is an introduction to the theories that underpin art therapy and is broad in it’s range of contributing authors.  We get an outline of the role of art within a therapeutic framework, the manifestation of art as play, as a language of symbols and development.  The historical links between art education and art therapy are explored; the differences and what they have in common; and a possibility for merging the two fields. Each chapter on a specific client group offers insights for working with these vulnerable people in a way that will give direct therapeutic benefit. 

I found the chapter on art therapy in prisons to be particularly enlightening.  The author was clear about the actual constraints of working in that environment, what the pitfalls might be and she presented practical guidance on overcoming them.  She promotes a vision for how arts can transform the most ant-social of prisoners into creative, productive people; this raises pertinent questions for the current justice system.

Price, J. (1988) Motherhood, What it Does to Your Mind  London: Pandora Press

A fascinating book delving into the psychology of mothering written by a female psychiatrist and psychotherapist.  It ties up the concepts of attachment theory with the realities of modern relationships and societal expectations.  It is presented through the lens of a Woman, a woman who lived through her own mother-daughter dynamic, pregnancy, giving birth, breast feeding and the like.  She looks at how our culture and family story play out in our own lives whether consciously or unconsciously.  By normalising much of the natural difficulties of mothering, this book can offer solace in trying times.  

I am a mother of four boys and pregnant with my fifth child, so I am justified to claim that his book ought to become mainstream knowledge.  It is through lived experiences that we can most genuinely form opinions and then reach out to help others in a professional capacity.

Case, C. Dalley, T. (1992) The Handbook of Art Therapy  London: Routledge

This handbook is a bird’s eye view of the profession.  It covers the theories of psychoanalysis and how it intersects with art as well as a detailed look at the practical aspects of employment as an art therapist in jargon-free language.  This gives a beginner art therapist a survival guide for those inevitable first forays into work.  I gained a grasp on the complexities surrounding room set-up or lack of appropriate dedicated space.  A how-to guide on various forms of note taking making use of the same example session throughout the different formats was extremely helpful.  There is clear preparation for supervision, referrals, working in an institution, operating as part of a team versus being isolated and potentially being misunderstood.  Reading this was an important step towards becoming a competent practitioner. 

[guylty]

Screenshot bingo continues.

If anything, TI – and that is mainly Richard Armitage as Claude Monet – is a pleasure to look at. Just a cursory glance at my screenshot loot of episode 2 shows that there were smiles and gorgeous galore. But well, it’s not all beauty and joy in the show, and there were things that I felt irked by, too.

Quick summary

Part 2 of the mini series begins after the Franco-Prussian war with Monet and his family returning from London. He reconnects with the scene in Paris and continues to paint – without much success as the salon is still dominated by the Marquis de Chennevières who ridicules the Impressionists’ work. After focusing on Monet and his friendship with Renoir and Bazille, as well as Manet’s groundbreaking work on painting in part 1, this episode still has Monet as the main protagonist but also looks at Edgar Degas. With his eyesight deteriorating and money running scarce after his father’s death, Degas struggles as a painter. Despite producing beautiful work, his treatment of his fragile models is rude and neglectful.

The early worm paints the sunrise. Screenshot

Monet finds himself transfixed by light and colour. The painting that eventually is responsible for the moniker “impressionism”, is a study of the sunrise that he paints in a rush one morning, racing outside to capture the sunlight in all its glory. Similarly, he sets his canvas up in a train station because he wants to paint the whirling steam. What a pioneer! As the salon won’t display the impressionists’ paintings, the group decides to put on their own show, which is to take place in a photographer’s studio. “One passing fad helping another” as the Marquis says… little does he know…

. Renoir, Monet and Degas are on board; Manet declines any participation. Despite great hopes, the exhibition is not a success, neither with critics nor with public.

Consoling Alice Hochedé… well, who wouldn’t want to be consoled by him… Screenshot

At this point, Monet and his wife are living in poverty. Money from Monet’s patron Ernest Hochedé is not forthcoming either. When Monet goes to visit his patron’s home, he meets Hochedé’s wife Alice and the series makes it clear that she will have much influence on Monet later. Meanwhile, Camille’s health deteriorates. She has always been a favourite model for Monet, and even in death he remains transfixed by the play of light on her features. The fortunes of Monet’s patron Hochedé have changes, too, and Alice and her children have moved in with Monet – which leads Degas, jealous of Monet and Renoir finally being represented in the salon with their paintings, puts a hoax article in the newspaper declaring Monet dead, and claiming he has a relationship with Alice Hochedé. Monet confronts Degas – and the impressionist movement seems to splinter…

Some thoughts on part 2

We get another episode opening with Monet on a train. Maybe it has worked out cheaper that way, but whenever I see steam trains and the name Richard Armitage on the credits, I immediately think of NS. And I always wonder whether these things are coincidences or whether some clever scriptwriter has copped on that repeating the earlier crowd pleaser is something that would appeal to the fans? Well, probably not – we are far too small a group to be recognised. But it is funny, nonetheless. And it begs the question what RA thinks about these things? Does he have the same associations? Does he ever suspect he is being used as a babe magnet?

Granted, the more I watch of TI, the more I get used to the straggly hair and the goaty beard. And suddenly Richard looks gorgeous… Especially his blue eyes stood out to me in this episode, where I particularly noticed the intense shade of blue in a number of scenes.

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I have to admit that I am not that interested in the other painters, and that is all down to RA. I want to see Monet’s story, not Degas or Manet. Renoir is acceptable – because he is close friends with Monet and therefore likely to feature in scenes… Mind you, I thought Degas’ story is really interesting because of the connection to the ballet. How the young dancers were taken advantage of by rich men who pretend to be patrons but really only just want to get into the dancers’ knickers… Dirty business…

In contrast, Monet is clean and beautiful art. “The sun was my muse”, he explains, and that whole sequence (around 15:00) of Monet getting up early to paint at sunrise basically is the whole mini-series in one scene. He explains what is so compelling about the impressionists: For the first time, an art movement focuses on light and how it is seen depending on time of day, angle, etc. , hence Monet’s excitement and rush to paint the sunrise. Paintings are not static as such, but they now depict movement – such as the rising sun, or the whirling steam in a train station. And like its distant cousin photography, impressionism for the first time elevates ordinary people, scenes and objects to subject matters, often painting from unusual angles and communicating not just superficial beauty to the spectator, but transporting an atmosphere or emotion. This is a mini lecture on what impressionism is and how it differs from what came before.

Monet worshipping the sun… reminds me of Ricky Deeming calling upon the goddess… Screenshot

That is all very interesting but what is compelling in the series remains the smile, the joy, the happiness, the energy of Monet. Always positive, always hopeful, always a doer. He doesn’t fret when he is poor and unrecognised; when he makes the sale – he spends the money on bread and cheese. And he organises a counter-exhibition to the salon when the art dealer stops buying the impressionists’ art.

As has been remarked on several times in the comments to last week’s re-watch post, the show is very good at putting the famous Monet paintings into context – or visualising them on the screen. And again, this is a wonderful lesson for all art-interested people, seeing what Monet must have seen when he was dabbing the canvas and created his masterpieces.

Talking of dabbing the canvas – another point of discussion last week was a quote by TI‘s art consultant Leo Stevenson who paid Richard the greatest compliment. Thank you to Lilianschild for digging up the quote.

Some actors, like Richard Armitage, actually took to painting extremely well and painted in a really convincing manner. Others were nervous of doing any real painting and so I sometimes stood in for them in their costumes for the close-ups of ‘their’ hands painting or drawing. .”

I had a little look, and while of course it is inconclusive how much he actually painted himself, there is something about the way RA holds the paint brush. Even though he has really large hands and therefore the brush looks very delicate, it appears as if he has the lightest touch. He holds the paint brush properly and dabs lightly at the canvas. Method man is certainly convincing… Clearly some prime porn for fans with a hand fetish, as the extremities are beautifully accentuated by frilly shirt cuffs and  wide puffy sleeves.

Delicate fingers…

What still irks me, is the framing action with old Monet in Giverny. And here is another reason why I don’t like those interludes: I can’t quite reconcile the happy, cheerful, positive young Monet with the old, negative codger from 1920. Old Monet seems to be scolding the journalist for every single question, always correcting him, always defending himself, always the one who knows, always raising his voice, always arguing. Never calm, quiet, benign and wise with age. He’s really not very sympathetic at all. The Four Yorkshiremen by Monty Python come to mind…

While I very much enjoyed all the shiny happy Monet of episode 2, I was also glad to see him expand his scope to some more dramatic emotions. The death of Camille is a truly touching scene – the contrast of the painter, concentrating on shapes, light and composition, seeing beauty in death, presumably, and thus immortalising his dead wife once again on canvas – and then, immediately afterwards the bereaved husband who has just realised the enormity of his loss and helplessly cries. “Jesus, he’s devastating when he cries.” is what I noted down. It reminded me why and how I fell for Armitage the actor, i.e. when he played Lucas North in the final scene of season 9 on the roof and… He needs more roles like that!

Emoting something else than anger

Luckily for us, the episode did not end on a sad note. Instead we see the beginnings of the relationship with Alice Hoschedé, and that is quite beautiful, though. Possibly because it starts out without love, but a bit of a confrontation. The scene in the garden where Monet consoles Alice because she tells him her husband can’t pay him… the soft touch of his hand on her hair. She cries on his shoulder. Yes, that demands three screenshots for illustration #UncompromisingFangirlMode

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Sure, there is the fangirl fluff again. Coupled with puppy eyes and *boom* there go my pants. But when it comes to the man who doesn’t just have a pigeon hole but a whole dovecote for poker-faced, emotionally hardened spy types, this would really be quite a departure.

So, all in all an hour happily spent watching young Monet. At the end of the episode, the tides are finally turning. Monet gets a painting into the salon. He cuts his hair. And he gets quite angry. I leave you with a derp that isn’t meant to make fun of RA – but just to make you laugh. How unrecognisable he is in that screenshot. Thank cod!

The Impressionists  part 3 to follow next week? Hopefully I will get it in – I will be travelling home to Germany on Tuesday, staying one week with my mum.

Feel free to comment below – or to write your own review on your own blog. If you do, don’t forget to link to it in my comments!

Re-Watching The Impressionists [part 2]- Impressed Screenshot bingo continues. If anything, TI - and that is mainly Richard Armitage as Claude Monet - is a pleasure to look at.

[theseventhhex]

The Hunna Interview

The Hunna

Since the success of their second album ‘Dare’, The Hunna have graced their fans with lead singles such as the title track, 'Dare', 'Summer' and the anthemic 'Flickin' Your Hair'. Following the release of their hugely successful debut album The Hunna have established themselves as one of the UK’s most in-demand bands. The four piece continues to excel with further new material, which is undoubtedly equable with The Hunna's beloved sound. Since releasing their debut record which peaked very high on official album charts, The Hunna has gone to accumulate well over 100 million streams. With sold-out shows constantly being the order of the day around the world, the band’s cult following is always gathering momentum, as things are surely looking up for The Hunna. Their reputation as one the best live bands on the scene is testament to their alarming and infectious energy… We talk to drummer Jack Metcalfe about being a band of close friends, loyal fans and football…

TSH: Is the idea of consistently challenging yourselves as a band at the heart of what you do?

Jack: Absolutely. As musicians we constantly want to try and prove our graft. The more we practise and tour as a band, the better we get. The style of music that we want to share is important to us, therefore when we start with a blank canvas and share ideas its key for us to be on the same page. We sort of push the sounds and styles of the type of music of certain artists that have influenced us, which in turn helps us to achieve our intended results. It’s all about coming up with some original ideas whilst staying true to our rock band roots. We’re all about honing in on what we’re good at but still exploring other avenues that we can blend into our own sound.

TSH: How would you assess the subject matter that The Hunna is drawn towards expressing?

Jack: There are lots of ways of observing and looking at our subject matter, but in general we find it super-important to express our stories and what we go through as individuals. Every artist has a different story to tell. For us, we’re just four best friends that have taken this route as a hobby and found the fun factor drives us forward. We always want to get different messages across to our fans. There’s a lot of love mentioned in our songs, and I guess the universal topics of love will always be relatable.

TSH: What’s the level of focus like when you guys enter the studio?

Jack: When we get together to make new music everyone is in there to do their jobs. We never compete with each other, even though it can be intense given the amount of hours you are in the studio at times. Whether we are recording or playing live, you are in competition with yourself - you’re constantly pushing yourself to do better. Also, as a team we all bring to the table what we know is best for the band and are supportive of one another.

TSH: Do your surroundings on your travels also inform your musical perspectives?

Jack: Definitely. Our surroundings during our touring always allow us to feel inspired. You know, some artists allow their success to get to their head when they become more well known, but for us it’s just a case of taking in and soaking up our surroundings and letting them influence us in positive ways. We’re all the same as we were since the band started. We love experiencing different cultures, different sights, eating new foods and meeting different fans from different countries.

TSH: What do you recall about the treatment that you wanted to give to the song entitled ‘Dare’?

Jack: Well, we are essentially heavy rock fans so this song was a nice chance for us to explore an even heavier side. Style-wise we love bands like Biffy Clyro and Foo Fighters and we did our own thing with those types of bands in mind. We aimed for something a bit more daring lyrically. Also, it’s an awesome track to play live too.

TSH: What does ‘Flickin’ Your Hair’ convey to you personally?

Jack: Well, Ryan took care of the lyrics for this one but in general it’s related to girl issues, just like a lot of our other songs. It’s more about embracing a visual of how at times someone just kind of blows you away - we’ve all been there.

TSH: The Hunna has a legion of loyal and dedicated fans, how rewarding is the support for the band?

Jack: Having such great fans is definitely one of the most rewarding things about being in this band. It’s surreal for us to have such amazing support. I mean we’re just four guys from Watford. As time goes on we just find it amazing to connect with our fans. We always see the fans after every show and it goes a long way. It truly is really overwhelming the love and loyalty we get from our supporters, and it drives us to be better whilst also keeping us grounded. Another inspiring factor is when fans sing along to our songs and it’s not even their native language - it’s very humbling.

TSH: Have you guys been keeping up with Watford FC’s great season?

Jack: Oh, we definitely keep an eye on their scores; however, Junate’s an Arsenal fan and the rest of the band are Man Utd supporters. We have a bit of a rivalry when they play each other. So yeah, we follow Watford but support other teams, ha!

TSH: Talk us through the mask aesthetic that you guys are fond of...

Jack: Back in the day I used to listen to a lot of underground rap which spanned America and bits and bobs of Japan too; I caught wind of it five years ago - there were these small rappers rocking the kind of masks we wear and I thought it was cool. It’s funny because Ryan got ill on tour a while back and started wearing a cool mask but it wasn’t for aesthetic reasons, instead he was trying to get better and not spread germs but it kind of stuck. Also, we named Dan ‘Bandana Dan’ because he loves rocking bandanas. Overall, there are different ways of rocking masks and bandanas, but for us it’s more of a fashion accessory.

TSH: What’s downtime and chill time like for yourself when you get a moment to yourself?

Jack: I like to go out in nature and do everyday sort of stuff like playing sports, hitting the gym, watching movies or going out for dinner on the weekend. As a band we love playing table football, it loosens us up and keeps us in touch with reality, ha!

TSH: Are there future preferences that you’re bearing in mind for the band as you look ahead?

Jack: Well, without sounding too corny, we just want to stay true to ourselves. We want to write what we want to in terms of stories that we want to tell to the world. Also, I think it’s important for us to simply rock out and offer a great performance when we play live. I feel like we are known for our live shows and that’s something that we want to constantly get better at as we look ahead. All the while we intend to better ourselves as people, as musicians and as writers too. We know where we want to go and what we want to give but it’s easier said than done and things take time. We’ll remain patient as we look ahead and simply always feel grateful for all the support we receive.

The Hunna - “Never Enough”

Dare

[personalisedpaint-blog]

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[morbid-n-macabre]

Dr. Marcel André Henri Félix Petiot- AKA The Butcher of Paris, or Doctor Satan

Tell me if this one reminds you of HH Holmes.

Marcel had been in trouble with the law multiple times as a young man, jailed more than once, and expelled from school on multiple occasions. He was diagnosed with a few different mental illnesses, including kleptomania- the man would steal anything he could get his hands on. He fought with France in WW1, until he was wounded. At this time his mental illness began to make itself known again, and he was sent to a hospital where his sticky fingers got him in trouble; Marcel was jailed for theft. Still, upon release he very briefly went back to fighting for his country, just weeks later Marcel claimed to have injured his foot with a grenade. Whether this was on purpose or not, nobody knows. He was discharged, and did go on to receive benefits, including a pension.

This is when he went back to school, and in 1921 the mentally ill con man with a criminal record became a doctor. Now, Marcel's newly elevated status didn't mean he was suddenly above breaking the law- he was known to perform illegal abortions, he very liberally over-prescribed narcotics, became addicted himself, it's believed he murdered more than one of his patients and a woman he was dating. Regardless of all this, the Doctor became mayor of Villaneuve. While in office, he embezzled money, was busted, and eventually redesigned. Dude was just underhanded, always scheming. Still somehow the doctor was loved and supported by many. When WW2 came around, it shouldn't be a surprise that the Doc saw dollar signs.

The Nazis had occupied France, and the doctor eagerly provided cheap or free medical treatment to the people who needed it. He also worked for the French Resistance, helping innocent Jews escape with their lives- or so the public believed. They saw this as selfless good deeds, he was a saint in their eyes. Truth be told, the doctor was doing very well for himself; he was even able to purchase himself a new home in the nicest of neighborhoods, this townhouse has been referred to as a mansion. No one could ever have dreamed the horrific things going on inside the doctor's new residence.

On March 11, 1944, a neighbor complained of rancid smelling smoke coming from the good doctor's chimney. Police knocked on the door, but the doctor was not there. Fearing a fire, they barged into the home to investigate and found the surprise of their lives. The smoke was coming from a burning furnace in the basement. Upon closer inspection they noticed human limbs sticking out of the fire!

The doctor quickly explained that the remains belonged to traitors- Nazi sympathizers and Germans. He said that he was the leader of a resistance group- that if the Germans found out about his group, they'd kill him. The doctor was an impressive liar, police bought his story and even mistakenly allowed him to leave. But there were more grisly discoveries to be found in the home, including a headless torso, 2 lime pits filled with the decaying corpses of men, women, and children; and canvas bags throughout the property filled with burnt bones, scalps, and hair. The house's sinks were used to drain the corpses of blood, and he even had a soundproof chamber where his victims were chained up and tortured. The room was complete with a peephole where the sadistic doctor could stand and watch his victim's death.

Authorities quickly realized they'd screwed up majorly and issues a warrant for the doctor's arrest; they found his wife, Georgette, but catching the doctor took 7 months. Upon arrest, Marcel claimed his victims were Nazis; then he said he only found the remains- he was merely guilty of storing them. The truth is utterly horrific. He had been charging 25,000 francs for anyone who wanted to leave France, the victims believed they were going to Argentina or some other far away destination. After they paid, the Dr. would bring these people back to his lab where he'd tell them they needed to be immunized before they left, then he would either inject them with cyanide or gas them with the same chemical believed to be used on the Jews in concentration camps. Before they died, the Doctor forced his victims to write letters to their loved ones saying they made it safely to their destination, and that further communication would not be possible. Once dead, everything they were bringing with them to start their new life was his. The doctor was even known to go to his victim's homes and take whatever he wanted, furniture and all. He'd tell those who asked that it was part of the deal- all belongings left behind were his now. When he first started doing this, he would dump his victims around town, in rivers. The people were afraid, they knew there was a killer on the loose. When the doctor bought his beautiful new home, he found it easier to just dispose of the bodies there. All together, at least 10 full scalps, more than 30 pounds of bones, 11 pounds of hair, 3 full trash cans full of small bones, and 49 empty suitcases were found inside the home.

Authorities knew that the doctor had help, but he never would name his partners in crime. He was convicted of 26 murders, and sentenced to death. Before he died the doctor did admit to 60 murders, but always maintained that the victims were Nazis. In 1946, the Doctor was taken to the guillotine. His last words were, “Gentlemen, I ask you not to look. This will not be very pretty.”

It's believed the doctor's true body count was really somewhere between 60- 160.

[merrifredricksen-blog]

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[goldenscript]

trust me

pairing: lee donghyuck | reader genre: peter pan au / fluff, light angst word count: 3,618 description: all you really need is a little faith.

What comes after eyes shut and the stars bespeckle the navy canvas of the sky is, of course, darkness, with fright targeting the hearts of children (and even some adults) and certain thoughts nestling in the back of their minds. It’s unsettling—the mystery that lies after waking hours. It leaves one pondering what may come for them or if anything will come for them at all, leaving disparity in its wake as the glimmers of dawn rise in brilliant shades of frost bleeding through the fading violet. Where nights like these become common and only a few remedies can be used for treatment.

For many, you specifically, pleasant stories help—not just the simple ones where the princess kisses the frog and finds herself a prince—rather they’re intricate, well-woven to a point where story crafting became a game for you and your mother at the time of your greatest battle against insomnia. Although Treasure Island and its swashbuckling pirates piqued your interest, there can a time when you eventually strayed away because those adventurous, ravenous bunch became nothing but codfish to you. And rather, a young boy no older than yourself taking their place.

You remember tales of a boy you had only ever dreamt of, with fiery red hair and an impish grin almost always perched on his sun-kissed skin. But instead of being a figment of your imagination, he is actually very much real.  He isn’t like Jack or Aladdin. No, he is a boy with hope and fun and all the laughter in the world, who could make you laugh despite only existing in a realm so far yet so close, you could practically feel the sand between your toes on the beach and feel the sea breeze brush against your skin when he helps you take flight.

—

Here, the seagulls are cawing and the lull of the mermaids singing down by the cove are echoing all across the land, with a few high-pitched shouts and guttural grunts filling the spaces in between. His hands have always been warm and steady in yours, a flash of a more genuine smile poised on his lips. It’s just like the many times before.

“Ready?” he asks you, his arm already lifting up ever-so-slightly. At the sight of your hesitance, he raises a brow at you, “Remember what I told you?”

“Don’t fall?” He laughs in response, shaking his head at you. “Oh, right. The other thing—faith, trust, an—”

“—d, pixie dust!”

You can remember the sprinkle of golden dust kissing your lashes, your cheeks, your hair, and your arms. It’s less heavier than the glitter you were decorated in for New Year’s, but far from the light sprinkle that comes on the first day of spring. Rather than the risk of a million showers and the risk of a cold, it imbues you with warmth all over from your head going down to your toes, lifting an invisible weight off your shoulders as you find yourself already floating an inch off the ground.

All it takes is the memory to get you ready for take-off.

Haechan grins and gives your hand a squeeze, “See! I knew you could do it again.”

“I—I’m—” you stutter, looking over at him with wide eyes. Since your arrival onto Neo, you haven’t quite gained your footing on the whole flying ordeal. It took a matter of seconds to do it in your half-dazed stupor where nothing but the insatiable need to escape your dark thoughts and the following worries that always recount themselves over and over like some broken record became your motivator, but right then just now was a completely different move.

Every waking moment on the island has been filled with getting acquainted with all the mermaids, the Dreamies, even the wretched pirates that caused more fun than actual havoc, the kiss of the waters between your toes, the taste of delicious fruits hanging from the trees, and the very feeling of the island itself. Adventures left and right, memories seared deep into your memory without a chance of disappearing, and all because Haechan extended his hand to you.

His fingers interlock with your own, giving you a squeeze as you feel a thought weigh you down for the briefest moment. He only draws you nearer and reminds you that thoughts can disappear with him. All the bad that’s crossed your path is nothing more than a passing phase, and what is happening right then and there is okay. Everything will be okay. He knows it, and he wants you to know it too. That’s just how he is. Not quite blind to the daunting reality that nothing lasts forever—something he’s been showing more and more conscious about since you arrived—but the kind of optimism that you need, because that’s how you are.

Fears and worries are what keep you awake, gnawing at you like an unresolved hunger and unrelenting like an incessant pain. You’ve fretted the dark, the future, and all that comes with the unknown. And yet, Haechan has changed that without fail.

There have been nights where you were plagued with anxieties, with unanswered questions that could only answer themselves upon doing them, some dark and some not so much, and still these things toiled with the semblance of peace that comes with rest and entering dreamland. You only found a sense of calm here, where nothing but flight and impromptu adventures welcomed you. Be they hikes across the tall hills or even rides across the tides, where you could kiss the salt water with someone by your side. Here, there is light like the end of the tunnel, illuminating the darkness and the long-winded path and showing you the land you’ve crept so carefully upon.

If it wasn’t for that red-haired boy, you don’t think you would’ve ever realized just how easily you could trample upon that path or the many others that follow. If anything, you don’t think you would’ve ever known you could take detours and see other parts of the caverns. And for that, you are eternally grateful to him, to the Dreamies, to Neo.

The shed of light is exactly what you needed, and so is the comfort of Haechan at your side. His nature is almost always jovial, the sort of happiness that’s contagious to others, so when he breaks into fits of laughter, you can’t help but do the same. When he smiles, you feel your own creep up on you. And when his eyes shine, it’s like looking at the stars from up above, and still, his seem to be so much brighter even in daylight.

And despite all the uncertainty that comes with him, like where you two may go even now, or whether he’ll get bored of you and the stories and the company you bring or not, you’re actually comforted by the idea that whatever comes will come and that is fine by you. You’ve begun to see things in stride instead of all at once, making your mind a lot less muddled with too many what-if’s and what-will-be’s. Plenty of which contains mostly thoughts of Haechan himself, you’re completely okay with it.

At the least, you know the feeling is quite mutual anyway.

“—Y/N?”

The way his voice cuts into the air and the roaring waters below has you falter when you see his own body sink a little lower. You’ve only ever seen him waver like this twice before, but it came with the mention of home. Another time at the mention of a boy named Mark. From the way Jeno talked about the previous boy, it sounded like he and Haechan were awfully close, so it makes you wonder if that is what’s passing his mind right now. It was only a week ago when it came to be, and it’s been even longer since he’s being showcasing tumultuous waves behind his glittering eyes.

“Yeah?” you say, meeting his eyes with concerned ones. “Are you alright?”

He’s just about to answer before something dawns on him. The recognitive look passes across his features too quickly for you to say for sure as he offers you a smile and asks, “Can we go somewhere?”

“Of course,” you smile softly. Although his smile doesn’t match his eyes, you let him guide you to wherever this place is. You haven’t a clue where or what may come, but that’s the beauty of letting him guide you. It’s always worth the while.

This while is far from the sand coves, the hilltops, and even the palm trees with all the coconuts you and the rest of the Dreamies drank and ate from the insides. Instead, there is a hideaway even more entrancing than the treehouse you and the rest of them have resided in for the entirety of this summer, with a large expanse of land, filled with different flowers you can barely name, with tall green blades of grass that you would dwarf as soon as you stand beside it, with large oak trees adorning the entrance, and with no one else in sight as you both slowly perch yourself on one of the large, flat stones beside the fluttering foliage.

Haechan hovers just a moment longer, letting go of your hand for a moment and turning toward an area you don’t pay mind to, because of the very proximity you are in. The smell of freesias and daisies waft around you two, hugging your bodies in a soft embrace as you find yourself with a sole rose in hand. Its petals are a flaxen shade that makes you think of him and the warmth he provides you, and it is just as soft as his hands. There aren’t any thorns to prick your fingertips either. Only a small leaflet that flutters as a small breeze and the very warmth of his skin and the sun’s rays kiss your skin.

“Thank you,” you murmur to him, caressing the flower. His palm opens upwards to yours, wrapping around your own like the usual routine. It’s easy with him. Even as your heart thrums, you still feel at ease around your personified sunshine.

“Of course,” he looks at your entwined hands and shifts to the rose in your other hand. There’s a particular look in his eyes that stops you from asking him if he’s alright again. You know he’ll tell you when he’s ready. “The colors mean something. Didja know that?”

You blink, looking at the small gift of nature in your hand, “They do?”

He nods, meeting your eyes along the way. As if to ask you, “Wanna guess?”

You can’t really think, nor does the answer come up even in the recesses of your mind but from the twinkle in his eyes, he seems to bank on this. And that makes you shake your head and smile as you reply, “Tell me.”

“It’s a promise,” he begins softly. The lull of his voice drifting with the wind as you both remain sitting, knees touching and all. A sudden recollection of his odd behavior pops back up—his indifference to Mark and the idea of home beyond the island, his uncertainty around you, and his sudden disappearances at night. Jisung reassured you that there was nothing to really fret over when he is like that, but you can’t seem to shake the inevitability of change. Because, even here, that’s bound to come to surface. “Of new beginnings.”

You tilt your head at him, “New beginnings?”

The heavy lump in your stomach begins to dissolve for some reason. You don’t know why, but the very phrase is just comforting to you.

He nods, musing aloud, “Like you coming here, us, and… well, leaving.”

In other words—growing up. You remember his entire spiel on the topic, agreeing wholeheartedly because it’s true. It’s inevitable.  And it sucks. It sucks so badly that the very mention of it has almost always sent him away before he returns with yet another adventure in mind. Then, the upset fades but the tension seems to only get heavier.

Of course, it’s a process to living. It’s exactly what Mark did too. What comes at the price of leaving is taking the first few steps into adulthood, whether you agree with it or not doesn’t matter, because it’s happening. Even as you, Haechan, Renjun, and Jeno remain there, the island itself knows. The very magic you’ve all imbued yourselves with won’t react the same, flying gets heavier, the luster of adventure is lost, all of it gone—that’s just what happens. But it’s to your surprise that he’s so willing to talk about this, especially with you.

Even more so, he actually lets out a soft laugh before he continues, “It’s weird how suddenly I could change my mind about the whole thing, but it can’t be so bad, right? Mark’s doing it already, after all.”

“Are you feeling alright, Haechan?” you ask, letting go of his hand to place your hand on his forehead. You’re not sure whether you should feel relieved or concerned that there isn’t a sign of a fever on him. But as your hand slips down, his hand catches yours at his cheek and allows it to stay there as he nods. “What… changed?”

He sighs, looking as though all the comfort he could ever need is right there in your touch, “When I realized you’d have to leave one of these days—”

“—don’t worry about me.”

Of course, you’ve considered what would come after you leave. You know it would be hard to continue what you have with him from your little town to the grandeur of Neo, but you refuse to allow him to leave just because you are—!

He pouts a little, pretending to try and bite your hand though you don’t so much as recoil as you continue to watch him. You only move it when his hand soon drops onto the space between both of your knees.

“You didn’t let me finish,” he says in a small huff. His bottom lip stops the slight quiver as soon as you look ready to listen. “But it started with that, alright? I realized you would have to leave, then so would Jeno and Renjun, and it made me remember I would too… I mean I’ve always wanted to stay here forever. Ever since Mark brought me, all I could do is fall in love with everything—the island, the mermaids, the Dreamies, even the pirates... And I fell so hard that—that I forgot what it was like back there. And then, I got scared because when I think of there, it’s dark and blank.”

He seems to pause, gaze flickering to your own in case you have something to say. Of course, you want to, but you don’t say anything. You just continue to nod, already knowing that he’ll continue now as he looks up at the blue skies. It’s his place of comfort, of innocence, and of freedom that you feel blessed to share and love with him.

“Not knowing is scary, Y/N,” his voice is smaller, the light traces of frivolity fading as his brows furrow ever-so-slightly. “I won’t know what to do when I do. You have a home, so does Jeno… even Renjun. And I know Jaemin’s doing alright and—and—and even Mark. And I—am just—I’m okay with it, but I’m not.”

“Hey,” you leave the rose on your lap, grabbing both his cheeks. He’s tense for a moment, but the hardened expression on your visage is accompanied by soft eyes—you mean business now. “I get what you mean.”

He whispers, “You do?”

You nod, “Being there was scary for me too, Haechan. I couldn’t sleep at night because all I could think about was what was going to happen and what’s supposed to happen. It was hard, honestly, but then, I came here. Thanks to you.”

His eyes twinkle with a soft light as he asks, “Really?”

It’s his dream. Helping others, giving them comfort, and telling stories. He may make up the games and adventures for you and the others to experience, but what he loves the most is recounting the events at the end of the night, where everyone is not quite exhausted but they’re far too lazy to move anywhere else but the makeshift beds. He loves giggling over the inside jokes and hearing how everyone else felt afterwards.

And although you don’t mention it often, you are grateful for him and the opportunity he gave you in coming to Neo. You’ve loved every minute there. Every single moment has been nothing less than a memory you’ll keep forever, and you know that a part of him knows you feel that way too.

“Really,” you smile, nodding again. “So, that’s how I know you’re going to be okay. You won’t be alone, Haechan.”

“Donghyuck,” he says, reaching for your hands and holding them atop his lap. “That’s my name.”

“Well,” you muse, feeling your heart swell. “Donghyuck, you’re going to be okay. You’re not alone. Me, Renjun, Jeno, and Mark will be right there with you. I promise.”

“Really?” His brows have long since relaxed, rising a bit as hope begins to seep in. “You mean that?”

“Of course, I do. I wouldn’t have said it,” you respond with playful indignation. When he laughs, you lean in close. Of course, your heart can hardly handle your own ministration, but it isn’t like you’re the only one flustered by this. You can hear a stammer threatening to tumble out of his pinkish lips, but you just smile a little. “Remember what you used to tell me?”

He blinks, a little thrown off but he manages a, “What?”

“Don’t you trust me?” you slightly mimic him, only smiling after his mouth drops slightly ajar. It’s a homage to that night he offered his hand to you, but you don’t think you would’ve ever had all these opportunities without his encouragement.

“Using my own words against me?” He laughs, giving your hands a squeeze. He takes a moment to respond after you nod, allowing the weight of your words to sink in just as his had with you. Sometimes it’s the leap of faith that helps more than anything, and you hope it does for him.

“What do you say?” you ask him, recounting his previous words once more.

The very thundering of your hearts entering the still air.

You feel nervous, because it’s the first time you’ve done this with him. He’s always been the one to convince you, not the other way around. But it feels right. Because you know deep down that he is lonely despite all else, and those fears that seem so irrational and almost miniscule run farther than you can imagine. You know that when your fears were swallowing you whole, he was right there to guide you so it’s your turn. And you’re more than willing to do that, especially for him.

“Okay,” he nods, uncertainty remains riddled all over his features, but a steady resolve is in the works at the helm of it all. “I trust you.”

He takes a chance right then, inching closer to your visage as you did with him. But instead of shying away, the two of you remain there with locked eyes and those thundering hearts. His soft breath kisses your lips, a taste of new beginnings, mint, and coconut all right there, beckoning you. All you two can seem to think about is this moment, letting everything else fall away as the rest of the world falls to a low hum.

Then, he closes the distance and it really feels like the world melts away.

—

You remember those last days on Neo, each one flying by just as quickly as your races around the island. You remember how heavy it felt to float away and see your home, how empty it felt when it was just you, but how warm you felt with Donghyuck’s hand in yours as you both made it inside together. You remember all his ambivalence, all the sleepless nights, and all the homesickness. It’s somber and morose, then. But it’s bearable and he gets through those nights, where he pulls you closer and curls into your side. Each one getting easier as time goes on.

That’s why you two are there in your bed, years later, his mop of faded auburn locks tickling your skin. He’s still nestled against your side and his breathing shifting to a normal pace. He mumbles something, but you can’t quite hear it.

“Hm?”

“I said,” he pauses, letting you shift onto your side to face him. “Remember Neo?”

You hum an affirmation, asking, “Did you dream of it?”

As your fingertips caress his cheek, he says, “I did.”

“Tell me about it.”  

You’ve grown so used to telling stories of his adventures, especially to Mark who can’t seem to get enough of them, or even Jisung and Chenle who wonder what else they missed out on. But to your surprise, his aren’t about him and what he did that reminds you of all the strength he’s given you.

No, instead, this time it’s stories with you, the who gives him strength. You, the who still guides him through the dark tunnels of the real world where doubts and anxiety continue to wait. He tells you about who has given him a home—Mark, then you. All the while, you, who lays beside him in the warmth of your shared bed after all those years ago on Neo.

It’s you who, for once, is the one that sheds light, and it is you who becomes his personified sunshine.

[artmd]

WT:

A satisfying short story is one in which you see the moral momentum or sympathetic momentum swing from one character to another over the course of the story. You think one character is making it right but really it’s something awful. Then you think the other character is the “good guy.” There are these reversals. And I have a real aversion to stories that end with the pendulum right in the middle. I like a radical swing right at the end. Like the ending of The Graduate. I like endings where people think they want something and they get that thing and then it turns out that that’s the wrong thing. That’s often how it is for us.

It’s interesting what you’re saying about Cheever. That seems remarkable to me. Right after I got out of graduate school I was surviving doing magazine work and had great gig with a few different magazines. I was never forced to write newsy stuff or celebrity profiles. They would just give me a topic, a human subject to go and chase for a while, and I would just spend time with truckers, or people who hung out at a horse track, or people who worked at Wal-Mart. Basically, they were character studies, maybe eight to ten thousand words. Because there was no angle and nothing was off-limits for the story I would have fifty to a hundred thousand words of notes for a ten thousand–word story. The process of assembling a piece was cold carpentry. I would see a scene that was good and another that was okay, and I would hammer those together. For years, I was trying to do the same thing with fiction. I would write a 150-page draft for what was supposed to be a thirty-page short story, but for me fiction has to find its way into a much smaller place. And there has to be a coherence of emotion. Just spinning a bunch of ideas and trying to cook that into something that is meaningful and says something that’s important about how people are, that never worked for me. Those always just disintegrated.

It’s all in the balance. Fiction is born out of rival impulses. When I write a funny story, it can feel cowardly and lame. So then I write a draft where I amp up the emotional stakes. I write a really earnest story. But then it can feel not-so-cool. So in the next draft, I focus on pairing down the sentimentality but ratcheting up the pyrotechnic stuff with the language. But then that will feel like cheating. So I go back and simplify it and make sure there aren’t too many metaphors and that any time I’m pulling a language trick it actually is in service of the story.

I was in an art gallery the other day with a friend of mine who is a painter, and we saw a painting that I thought was pretty cool. She said, “No, that sucks.” She said the artist didn’t build up the canvas. You can see whether somebody has gone at a visual or aesthetic problem a bunch of different ways. Each of those attacks leaves its trace on a piece of work. On a sentence level I’m not as brainy about it. I think about thread count. Anytime I read something that doesn’t have a tight weave, I stop reading.

I’m not that patient. But my disgust with the work was sincere. I had a decent enough publication record fairly early on where I had a couple of agents saying, “Yeah, we can probably sell this book now.” But the process of revision was what interested me. When I first started writing, I could write a short story in ten days or two weeks, so I thought that’s what a short story is: a funny or interesting anecdote on which you hang literary curtains and doilies and stuff. But the process changed so much for me. It became about waiting for the characters’ lungs to develop, for them to become real for me. Revision was humbling. I got to see the primitiveness and simplicity of the early drafts, but I also got to see that there was something useful there that I shouldn’t destroy if I could avoid it.

I think I was weirdly quite young. I had a strange appetite for language. In first grade, I wrote a couple of plays. One was a combined moral lesson on pet care and tooth decay. In college, I wanted to major in literature, but I somehow convinced myself that that would be a bourgeois and decadent thing to study. I majored in sociology and anthropology and thought I was going to get a PhD, but I just despised what the academics were doing with language. It was often an exercise in obscuring rather than actually revealing anything about people. For me, literary writing was a better way to get out of it.

...No, but it’s rare that we actually communicate when we have conversations. If I were to look at the transcripts of my conversations with my parents or ex-girlfriends, it’s not a conversation; it’s just two parallel monologues where people are saying what they want to get across and not really listening. If you have dialogue in which one character is responding to the other it just sounds fake. Part of it stems from the desire to have legible conflict in the stories without having to explain it in the narrative sections. Conflict is difficult to dramatize without it tilting into hysteria. Having tiny swords flashing in quiet conversation is a better way to get at it.

I haven’t read “Gooseberries” in fifteen years. I have yet to really crack the Chekhovian code. I remember reading Chekhov in high school. I would get to the end of the story and think, That’s it? That’s the story? A guy worries about his relationship with his wife and then goes outside and picks up a chicken? It’s a strange Russian thing. The moment gets a different sort of treatment. Chekhov is such an elegant writer and is able to do such beautiful things with minor moments, but for me it was really Carver who took Chekov’s approach and made it make sense to me for the first time. Carver was able to take a tiny, unattended moment and show you how it could cause a life to rock on its axis. For me, he was the first to make the quiet moment smack a big gong.

SF: How do you decide the location for despair or anxiety in your stories?

It has to be a moment that would endure in the long-term memory of the characters, an afternoon or day or month that twenty years down the line they would be able to recall. That may be why humiliation figures so largely in my stories, because there’s no emotional event that you can relive with painful granularity like humiliation. You can recall joy or anger or love, but when you think back on when you came to school with your fly down, you feel that hot burning shame in your chest just as you did when you first experienced it.

[culturejunkies]

Joker Review

By Kenshiro

So let me get something out of the way first, I was not a fan of this movie being made. The primary reason being that an origin film for the arch nemesis of Batman is wholly unnecessary. Part of the allure of a character like the Joker is the enigma that is the Joker. No one knows the origin story of the deranged madman. In The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger’s Academy Award Winning portrayal gave us a Joker who told at least 3 different versions behind how he got his scar. To him, his origin was a complete whimsical story whose sparse detail served as another punchline to tell to his victims. Currently in the comics from which he sprang from, there is said to be at least THREE versions of the Joker, each with their own separate beginning that no one knows! There is no understanding his madness, and that’s what makes him work as a character. He’s not to be understood; He’s not to be reasoned with; He just is who he is, and that’s the joke.

Now with that being said, the movie has been made and Joaquin Phoenix was tapped to play the titular role. Most people were excited to see his take on it, and rightfully so. If any actor would be able to emote the character with the realistic trappings that Todd Phillips wanted to paint his canvas with, Phoenix would be it. Much has been made of the controversy of the creation of this film. Some argued that a film of this nature would be a rallying cry to white-male incels who view the world from a skewed perspective and believe that the world owes them a debt they refuse to pay. Some worried about potential mass-shootings being kicked off based on what happened in Colorado during the opening weekend of The Dark Knight Rises. Personally, people are entitled to feel how they feel. The shooting in Colorado was a horrific situation, and no one should go through a situation like that in life. Ever. However, I don’t believe we should stifle artistic expression simply because certain people lack better judgement. Perspectives should be explored, regardless of how painful they may be. In this regard, I feel Joker was very much needed, just not in the way you may think.

Joaquin Phoenix was mesmerising in the titular role. We deserve the sequel we’re never going to get.

This country has a real problem on its hand in the form of mental illness awareness and treatment. Society has been far too dismissive of the plight of mentally ill individuals, preferring to shun them away, families electing to keep closely guarded secrets instead of dealing with difficult subjects. Mental illness touches us all, whether we like to acknowledge it or not. That’s what made the story of Arthur Fleck pretty compelling in my eyes. Phoenix is absolutely remarkable in the role of Fleck, who is very much a forgotten, discarded man. As we follow him through, we see how everyone loves to pass the buck in dealing with his condition and how the lack of funding to help keep him regulated set him loose upon the world around him. We also are forced to look at how we deal with whose we don’t understand. We subject them to physical and verbal abuse for things that are beyond their control which honestly can only serve to make things worse. As we follow Arthur, it is fascinating to see all of the ways in which he starts to slowly descend into madness when mostly he just wants to be treated kindly, and not be treated as subhuman, as a throwaway…as a freak.

The film falls short for me in the areas where Phillips’ lazily attempts to tie Batman’s own origin to Fleck via his relationship with Thomas Wayne. So much so that the film is much better served without the loose comic book ties it has. Replacing Gotham City and Thomas Wayne with any other city and billionaire would not affect this movie in the slightest. It would be the same film, and I can only hope some YouTube content creator actually does a recut and show how little all of those details mattered to the overall story. Phillips’ own comments betray his feelings about the comic book medium and it shows. He even pokes fun at Batman’s original origin by showing the Wayne’s taking their young son to see Zorro The Gay Blade, when they actually took him to see The Mask of Zorro. Todd Phillips wanted to make a film about mental illness, our lack of awareness of it, and the repercussions of such actions on the people we ignore. Yet, nothing he did was original. He closely channeled the classic film Taxi Driver, down to casting that film’s star Robert De Niro, and pitting him in a role opposite to one he played in The King of Comedy. The story beats were largely the same found in the mixing of both films.

I feel its not right to judge this as a comic book film, because it doesn’t even attempt to embrace what the source represents. It does an even poorer job at trying to be a “comic book” film than Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy of films. When you judge it as a film devoid of comic book origins, it fares a lot better, yet it still has its flaws. The other thing that lessens its potential impact is that Todd Phillips has no plans to make a follow-up, preferring instead to have the film stand alone as a think piece for the viewer to interpret. I can rationalize that thought, but I can’t help shake the feeling that something really special could’ve come out of this with Phoenix’s portrayal, but this will never come to pass. Which leaves me feeling even more upset that the film exists. If this film was not going to embrace the aspects of its comic book history, and now we’re almost certain to be subject to another director’s interpretation of The Joker, then what was the point of this film at all?

[shannrussell-blog1]

Valentine’s Day comes on the same day every day, doesn’t it? Whether it’s something you dread, look forward to or are simply nonplussed about, you can’t escape it. So why not embrace it and take your loved one somewhere special? Watch the sunset over the Flinders Ranges, camp in the Blue Mountains, spend a day hiking through the Grampians, or if “glamping” is your thing, head to the centre of Australia for a stay at the magnificent and luxurious Voyages Longitude 131°. Whatever you do, you’ll need a bevvy of camping and outdoor gear to help get you in the mood. Whilst we can’t provide the candles or rose petals, we’ve got everything else you need for Valentine’s day (or night) full of romance for the outdoor lovers (get it?!). Here is what we consider to be what you need for a perfect Valentine’s Day.

Snuggle up in the Oztrail Mitchell Double Swag

Snuggling up is a must on Valentine’s Day and the perfect piece of equipment for snuggling in the outdoors is a swag – a double swag to be exact. The Oztrail Mitchell Double Swag is one of our most popular swags. Why? Because it’s made of a high-quality rip-stop canvas and is so roomy that it is absolutely perfect for couples. Hey, it’s even been known to fit a dog in there as well!

The Oztrail Mitchell Double Swag is first and foremost a super comfortable swag with a beautifully thick 70mm high-density open cell foam mattress which can be easily removed for cleaning.

Perfect for two people, it’s not only comfortable but spaciousness (Dimensions: 145 x 210cm). The three-hoop design keeps the canvas off your body so you’ve got more room to move around, and accommodates great airflow and more room for gear storage.

Unlike many other swags on the market, the high-quality canvas has been saturated in anti-mildew waterproof treatment to increase the life of the swag.

Stare at the stars without worry of bugs with the no-see-um fine fly mesh from top to toe. Perfect for enjoying those summer evening breezes.

With sturdy roll straps, the Oztrail Mitchell Double Swag packs away to a compact size for easy transportation.

Cook up a storm with the Gasmate classic 2 Burner Stove

For a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs on the beach, dinner at the campsite or a picnic lunch in the park, the Gasmate Classic 2 Burner Stove is a handy little thing! My husband and I take this one almost everywhere we go so that we can enjoy the foods we love wherever we are (at the fraction of the cost of a hit or miss pub meal).

We love it because you can cook two different foods at the one time and the windshields help to protect it from the elements.

It’s really easy to get set up and get cooking, plus the food it produces is just like you’d get at home.

It also doesn’t make much of a mess – the heavy duty chrome-plated cooking trivets are removable for easy cleaning.

The Outdoor Gourmet Company Beef Bourguignon brings a bit of bistro food to the bush

The Outdoor Gourmet Company Beef Bourguignon is a delicious beef stew with aromatic vegetables, herbs and spices, finished with a luscious flavoured sauce.

Using red wine-enriched chicken stew with mushrooms and onions served with herb mashed potato, it’s made from high-quality ingredients without artificial flavours and preservatives.

Gluten-free, light, tasty and super- fast to prepare, all you need is hot water.

Just pour in the pouch, leave for 10 minutes and eat directly from the bag or serve on a plate.

All The Outdoor Gourmet Company dishes are freeze-dried for lighter weight, longer shelf life and to lock in the nutrition, flavour and texture.

Using the best ingredients there are no artificial flavours or preservatives.

Not keen on the French food, or wanting some vegetarian options? Then check out the full range of meals here.

Enjoy a glass of wine with the Platypus Bottle PlatyPreserve

Well I guess that if you’re going to be out snuggling in your swag and cooking a delicious meal on your cooker, you’ll probably want a little bit of wine to go with it. Don’t want to bring a whole glass bottle with you? Then look to this little baby: the Platypus Bottle PlatyPreserve Single.

Whether it’s wine, soft drink or any other beverage, all you do is pour your favourite drop into the PlatyPreserve.

Your drink is preserved in a lightweight, leak-free, airtight and oxygen-free environment – it can keep for days!

Just squeeze out all the air before sealing it with the air-tight cap.

It doesn’t make your drink taste plastic-like as it is BPA and taste free.

Unlike glass, it won’t shatter and it’s rugged enough to handle temperatures from freezing or boiling – not that you’d want either for your wine – but nice to know that it can handle any emergencies!

Oh, and once you’ve finished using it, it has almost no weight and doesn’t take up any space in your bag.

Comes in 800ml for the single or we have the PlatyPreserve 4-pack of bottles if you’re planning a few days away or entertaining with friends.

If you enjoy cans of drink (eg. beer or soft drink), check out the Oztrail Stowaway 12 Can Cooler. Keeps drinks cool and food fresh!

Thermos Natural Style 2 Person Picnic Backpack

If you’re planning a picnic on Valentine’s Day, whether it be after a morning of hiking or fishing or even a long drive, the Thermos Natural Style 2 Person Picnic Backpack is ideal for setting up for any meal of the day.

Set up for two people (lovebirds), it comes with two sets of spoons, knives, forks, plates, wine glass, and napkins.

Don’t worry about bringing the salt and pepper shakers from home – it comes with them attached!

In case you do bring a wine bottle, pop it in the side wine bottle holder and cooler and then use the handy bottle opener and accompanying acrylic wine glasses to get the party started.

Prepare your nibblies, salad and sandwich fillers with the included chopping board and sharp serrated cutting knife.

Holding up to 25 litres in the large insulated cooler compartment, food and drink can be kept cool and fresh.

Only weighing 1.5 kgs, the Thermos 2 Person Backpack Picnic Set has a massive warranty of five years!

Top it off by resting your bottoms on the Companion Deluxe Picnic Blanket. With measurements of 2.2m x 2.2m, there is plenty of room for food, drinks and romance…

Whatever you’re up to this Valentine’s Day, I hope you’re spending it with the one you love doing the things you love.

Do you agree with what we’ve listed as the 5 things that are what you need for a perfect Valentine’s Day? Also, if you’ve got any special stories you’d like to share on your Valentine’s Day experience, whether you were camping, fishing, hiking, picnicking or glamping let us know in the comments section below!

The post What You Need For a Perfect Valentine’s Day! appeared first on Snowys Blog.

[misselaineousme-blog]

Thinking of You Week 2017

“Have you written a thank you card yet?”

This was a familiar refrain of my childhood following every Christmas and birthday. At the time, I always grumbled. I mean, I had thanked my aunt/uncle/grandparent on the phone already. Writing something out took time. I had to think of what to say. Who could be bothered?

And of course, that’s the entire point of it. Sending a card, whether a thank you, a birthday greeting, or just a note to say hello, is automatically imbued with thoughtfulness—someone took the time to go to a shop, purchase a card, handwrite a sentiment, and post it. If you believe it’s the thought that counts, then the humble greeting or note card is priceless.

All of this was brought into focus last week when I attended my first Ladder Club event in Southend-on-Sea. The Ladder Club was founded by Lynn Tait and Jakki Brown to help budding greeting card publishers get on the industry ladder. It was informative, inspiring, and insightful.

For example, did you know that the greeting card industry is worth over £1.7 billion annually to the UK? Yet it’s not an industry that you go into to strike it rich; rather, the people I met at the Ladder Club were there for the sheer love of art, design, and cards. Indeed, it is a very human industry, working hard to help people connect through the medium of pen and paper. And learning what I know now about the backs of cards would have saved me hours, if not days, of my life.

Because, needless to say, my relationship with writing out cards has undergone a metamorphosis since my childhood. Indeed, with the benefit of hindsight, it's not a surprise that I started to design my own. I grew to love looking at greeting cards, finding the perfect one to go to a friend of family member for their birthday or special occasion. I even bought cards for myself and framed them – forget posters, these miniature works of art are probably the cheapest way to decorate a student bedroom! 

However, using my own photography for cards took some time. I was running a website for my parents and dabbling in digital design when I learned how apply photos to shapes. I used my father's photos of the Florida coastline to make soaring pelicans, swimming sea turtles, and even text to show local pride. It's not often that you can point to a seabird or turtle and say they turned into a stag or hedgehog, but that's exactly what happened. I eventually realised that I could use my own photography, which was, I admit, gathering dust on my hard drive, and do something interesting with it. 

The stag was my first experiment at combining silhouettes and landscape photography. It was also one of the hardest to get how I wanted. I turned into Goldilocks, going through several silhouettes before finding one that was "just right". However, that time was well spent, as this is one of my best-selling cards. I'm not sure if it's the bright autumn colours or the dynamic stag that attracts people, but it's always one that gets commented on when I sell at craft fairs. The photo I used for the stag is also one of my favourites, showing vibrant Japanese maples (acers) at their finest, and I've actually turned the complete photo into a large canvas that hangs above my bed. 

In many ways, the stag led the charge into my interest in producing my own cards. It was quickly followed by a wildlife menagerie: badgers, foxes, squirrels, and hedgehogs all got the silhouette treatment. This became my first set of cards, which I sell packaged with a wildlife magnet or badge (this sparked a whole 'nother sideline, but that's a story for a different day!). 

I call this budding range The Shape of Nature, and it was later joined by Nature's Rainbow and Nature's Blueprints. Looking back, it's funny how this one design led to so many more. At the moment I'm trying to find a bit of time to play matchmaker, finding the perfect animal silhouette to go with just the right photo. I'd love to add many more animals: hares and bats, birds and bugs ... basically the full spectrum of British wildlife!

But, in the meantime, I am trying to learn as much as I can, and that is one of the enormous benefits of attending the Ladder Club—it provides the opportunity to learn from those who have been there, done that, and who are willing to share their experience and enthusiasm with those of us just starting out on our journeys.

This is why, as a confirmed introvert, I was grateful to have the chance for a one-to-one chat with the lovely Sharon Little, the CEO of the Greeting Card Association, who took the time to answer my questions and offer encouragement. She also reminded me that 25th September – 1st October is Thinking of You Week in the UK. This nationwide event is now in its fourth year and intends to inspire “people to create a wave of love, caring and happiness by sending greeting cards to different people during the week.”

The cynical will say this is simply a ploy by the industry to sell more greeting cards. But don’t underestimate the potential of reaching out to a friend or family member for no apparent reason—as I discovered all those years ago, cards have power. Perhaps even more so now: in a world of emails, texts, and instant messages, cards are something to be kept and treasured, a tangible reminder that someone cared.

[samanthasroberts]

Giant condoms and buckets of fake blood: the true story of Aids activists Act Up

The French film 120 Beats Per Minute depicts the urgency of the HIV/Aids crisis through the eyes of the Paris branch of the radical campaigners. Members of the international group recall what it was really like

If activism is all about getting attention, then Act Up, you could say, screamed the loudest. As the Aids crisis deepened, this global network of campaigners used whatever tools they deemed necessary to wake the world up to their plight: “die-ins”, sprawling across the floors of corporations and churches; litres of fake blood chucked over the steps of town halls; a great many public snogs. And they had a thing for big condoms: a pièce de résistance was a huge pink sheath covering the obelisk on Paris’s Place de la Concorde.

This is the story of 120 Beats Per Minute. Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes last year, the French film gives a fictionalised account of the country’s branch of Act Up (Aids Coalition to Unleash Power) in the early 90s, as young campaigners protested against government apathy at their plight.

The film’s director, 55-year-old Robin Campillo, was once part of the organisation and faithfully portrays the urgency of the group: they debate and argue, they protest and party, they cry, they have sex, they smoke and, inevitably, sometimes they die. For viewers whose knowledge of Aids movies are limited to Tom Hanks tastefully fading away in Philadelphia, it will come as quite a shock.

120 Beats Per Minute is all the more remarkable for the fact that many say the film portrays exactly what it was like. Will Nutland, who attended Act Up Paris meetings, says: “This feels like someone has just grabbed me and pulled me back.”

But the film is also, it has to be said, gloriously French, with everyone huffing and puffing away. Which leads to a question: while 120 BPM tells the story of the French movement – and the 2012 documentary How to Survive a Plague charts the actions of the original New York branch (founded by Larry Kramer in 1987) – what did Britons do as the Aids crisis deepened?

How to Survive a Plague … the US take on Act Up. Photograph: Publicity image from film company

Lisa Power was at the very first meeting of Act Up London in late 1988. Her memories of the session, held in the basement of the now-defunct Gay and Lesbian Centre, are that it was “dimly lit” and had “cheap beer”. She remembers 15 or 20 people being present. “I’m pretty sure Peter Tatchell was there because one thing you can guarantee at the end of the 80s is that if somebody was founding something, Peter Tatchell and I would turn up to it.” In the 30 years since, Power has become a powerful LGBT advocate (she helped set up Stonewall). Tatchell is well known for his uncompromising activism, for instance with the protest group OutRage! Sure enough, Tatchell confirms he was there, but remembers things differently: “My recollection is that about 50 or 60 people were present. It was pretty crowded.”

A lot of Act Up’s history is only patchily recorded, not least for the awful reason that many activists have since died. Emotions about that time still run high. Most were animated by what Power calls “a blinding sense of urgency – because there were lots of people dying and they wanted to make a mark”.

Today, when in the affluent, white, western world at least, the Aids crisis has largely abated, it’s hard to recall the horror and confusion of the time – and the levels of prejudice. 120 BPM encapsulates this moment. Within the LGBT community, the ructions were as diverse as the people themselves. Tatchell, though, now manages to sum up Act Up London’s ethos: “It targeted anyone and everyone who was failing to address the HIV crisis.”

The group, as with all other chapters, specialised in direct, nonviolent action, aided by striking visuals. The aim, Tatchell says, was to “raise public awareness and put powerful people on the spot. It was also a psychological morale boost for people with the virus.”

In 120 BPM, activists chuck fake blood at medical researchers; the documentary How to Survive a Plague revisits a memorable moment when protesters placed a huge canvas condom over Senator Jesse Helms’s house. Act Up London’s actions seem a little less outrageous. “Paris were frankly a bunch of complete maniacs,” says Power with affection, while “there was a British sense of humour about the actions here”. She recalls one of the very first, outside Pentonville prison, where they blew up condoms and bounced them over the prison walls, to protest against the fact that prisoners weren’t allowed them. Tatchell was there, too, but again remembers things differently. “They weren’t blown up – they were catapulted over the wall.”

Nutland, meanwhile, helped set up Act Up Norwich (the group had branches across the country). They catapulted condoms over the wall of Norwich prison, only for their catapults to be confiscated by the police. “The policewoman who took them was called PC Dyke.”

Jimmy Somerville … a vital figurehead. Photograph: Clare Muller/Redferns

Another activist, Ash Kotak, recalls an action involving the singer Jimmy Somerville, who was a vital figurehead, championing and funding the cause. He chained himself to railings at the House of Commons. “I asked him: ‘What was that like, Jimmy?’ He said: ‘I rather liked it.’”

Their collective humour, though, can’t mask the intensity of feeling of the time, and the fraught, divergent reactions it prompted. In 120 BPM, there is a scene in which a man, having helped his lover die, almost immediately has sex with another activist in the deathbed. “There was a sense of things you did that, looking back now, may have seemed quite weird,” says Nutland, “but when I watched that scene, I was like, yep! You fucked the grief out.”

Also ringing true in the film are ecstatic scenes where the characters go out clubbing; dancing to the era’s classic house music. Many activists said that it was just a bit of fun, but also a means of survival – intense fun for an intense time. It is one of the few facts that everyone agrees on.

Because there were downsides. Many activists recall Act Up being mired in arguments and discord. While the groups were ostensibly democratic, this could mean it was, at times, hard to agree on what to do. Tatchell says that the group benefited from its “accessibility and spontaneity”, but some are more ambivalent. “They would have said it was an open democracy, but it was pretty much a meritocracy, plus who shouted the loudest,” says Power. Others say it was shambolic.

In short, a British 120 BPM would look the same, but different. Despite this, there were subtle and important differences between Act Up in different countries. Britain was, everyone agrees, relatively lucky to have the NHS, which reacted well to the crisis – for this, and many other reasons, people never mobilised around the movement in quite the same way as in the US or France. It could even be just a matter of national temperament, the Brits opting to be less politicised and more focused on things such as providing care. However, most do believe that Act Up in Britain paved the way for more “respectable”, or at least organised, advocacy groups to make their case in the corridors of power. Tatchell calls them “the shock troops in the battle against HIV”.

The London branch fizzled out in the 90s, thanks to disagreements over their methods, on whether to take corporate money and where the fight should go next after treatment started to become available. A nadir for them, says Nutland, was when members trashed a stall set up by the Terrence Higgins Trust at an international Act Up meeting in Amsterdam in 1992 – they disagreed over whether lesbians should use dental dams during sex. “I also think one of the problems was that we never spent any time doing any medium- to long-term thinking,” he says. Everyone was just young and angry, he says. And many thought they would soon be dead.

Yet the Act Up London group was revived in 2012, facing new challenges: the rise of infection among certain minorities; the ongoing stigma for those infected; and the urgent need to save the NHS, as services face continued cuts.

The new Act Up still carries out actions – they dumped half a tonne of manure on the doorstep of Ukip’s headquarters after Nigel Farage said that people with HIV should be barred from entering the UK. “The gravity of the situation demands a grassroots, mischievous, creative, disobedient, fantastical group,” says Dan Glass, who pushed for the revival. “We have other groups, but we need to be on the streets.”

Others feel the fight is best fought elsewhere. Nutland has instead cofounded Prepster, which advocates the use of PrEP, a drug that has had startling success in cutting down rates of HIV infection. In a landscape transformed by the internet and social media, he argues, street actions still have a place, but it needs to be a lot more strategic, and fit alongside what else is happening.

Lisa Power tends to agree. But what even makes a good activist, anyway? She pauses. “You need to be a bit of a drama queen – but not too much.” Whether “too much” of a drama queen is a paradox, she doesn’t explain. But the activists in 120 BPM, scrapping and screaming for their lives, would definitely have something to say.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/giant-condoms-and-buckets-of-fake-blood-the-true-story-of-aids-activists-act-up/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2019/01/22/giant-condoms-and-buckets-of-fake-blood-the-true-story-of-aids-activists-act-up/

[allofbeercom]

Giant condoms and buckets of fake blood: the true story of Aids activists Act Up

The French film 120 Beats Per Minute depicts the urgency of the HIV/Aids crisis through the eyes of the Paris branch of the radical campaigners. Members of the international group recall what it was really like

If activism is all about getting attention, then Act Up, you could say, screamed the loudest. As the Aids crisis deepened, this global network of campaigners used whatever tools they deemed necessary to wake the world up to their plight: “die-ins”, sprawling across the floors of corporations and churches; litres of fake blood chucked over the steps of town halls; a great many public snogs. And they had a thing for big condoms: a pièce de résistance was a huge pink sheath covering the obelisk on Paris’s Place de la Concorde.

This is the story of 120 Beats Per Minute. Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes last year, the French film gives a fictionalised account of the country’s branch of Act Up (Aids Coalition to Unleash Power) in the early 90s, as young campaigners protested against government apathy at their plight.

The film’s director, 55-year-old Robin Campillo, was once part of the organisation and faithfully portrays the urgency of the group: they debate and argue, they protest and party, they cry, they have sex, they smoke and, inevitably, sometimes they die. For viewers whose knowledge of Aids movies are limited to Tom Hanks tastefully fading away in Philadelphia, it will come as quite a shock.

120 Beats Per Minute is all the more remarkable for the fact that many say the film portrays exactly what it was like. Will Nutland, who attended Act Up Paris meetings, says: “This feels like someone has just grabbed me and pulled me back.”

But the film is also, it has to be said, gloriously French, with everyone huffing and puffing away. Which leads to a question: while 120 BPM tells the story of the French movement – and the 2012 documentary How to Survive a Plague charts the actions of the original New York branch (founded by Larry Kramer in 1987) – what did Britons do as the Aids crisis deepened?

How to Survive a Plague … the US take on Act Up. Photograph: Publicity image from film company

Lisa Power was at the very first meeting of Act Up London in late 1988. Her memories of the session, held in the basement of the now-defunct Gay and Lesbian Centre, are that it was “dimly lit” and had “cheap beer”. She remembers 15 or 20 people being present. “I’m pretty sure Peter Tatchell was there because one thing you can guarantee at the end of the 80s is that if somebody was founding something, Peter Tatchell and I would turn up to it.” In the 30 years since, Power has become a powerful LGBT advocate (she helped set up Stonewall). Tatchell is well known for his uncompromising activism, for instance with the protest group OutRage! Sure enough, Tatchell confirms he was there, but remembers things differently: “My recollection is that about 50 or 60 people were present. It was pretty crowded.”

A lot of Act Up’s history is only patchily recorded, not least for the awful reason that many activists have since died. Emotions about that time still run high. Most were animated by what Power calls “a blinding sense of urgency – because there were lots of people dying and they wanted to make a mark”.

Today, when in the affluent, white, western world at least, the Aids crisis has largely abated, it’s hard to recall the horror and confusion of the time – and the levels of prejudice. 120 BPM encapsulates this moment. Within the LGBT community, the ructions were as diverse as the people themselves. Tatchell, though, now manages to sum up Act Up London’s ethos: “It targeted anyone and everyone who was failing to address the HIV crisis.”

The group, as with all other chapters, specialised in direct, nonviolent action, aided by striking visuals. The aim, Tatchell says, was to “raise public awareness and put powerful people on the spot. It was also a psychological morale boost for people with the virus.”

In 120 BPM, activists chuck fake blood at medical researchers; the documentary How to Survive a Plague revisits a memorable moment when protesters placed a huge canvas condom over Senator Jesse Helms’s house. Act Up London’s actions seem a little less outrageous. “Paris were frankly a bunch of complete maniacs,” says Power with affection, while “there was a British sense of humour about the actions here”. She recalls one of the very first, outside Pentonville prison, where they blew up condoms and bounced them over the prison walls, to protest against the fact that prisoners weren’t allowed them. Tatchell was there, too, but again remembers things differently. “They weren’t blown up – they were catapulted over the wall.”

Nutland, meanwhile, helped set up Act Up Norwich (the group had branches across the country). They catapulted condoms over the wall of Norwich prison, only for their catapults to be confiscated by the police. “The policewoman who took them was called PC Dyke.”

Jimmy Somerville … a vital figurehead. Photograph: Clare Muller/Redferns

Another activist, Ash Kotak, recalls an action involving the singer Jimmy Somerville, who was a vital figurehead, championing and funding the cause. He chained himself to railings at the House of Commons. “I asked him: ‘What was that like, Jimmy?’ He said: ‘I rather liked it.’”

Their collective humour, though, can’t mask the intensity of feeling of the time, and the fraught, divergent reactions it prompted. In 120 BPM, there is a scene in which a man, having helped his lover die, almost immediately has sex with another activist in the deathbed. “There was a sense of things you did that, looking back now, may have seemed quite weird,” says Nutland, “but when I watched that scene, I was like, yep! You fucked the grief out.”

Also ringing true in the film are ecstatic scenes where the characters go out clubbing; dancing to the era’s classic house music. Many activists said that it was just a bit of fun, but also a means of survival – intense fun for an intense time. It is one of the few facts that everyone agrees on.

Because there were downsides. Many activists recall Act Up being mired in arguments and discord. While the groups were ostensibly democratic, this could mean it was, at times, hard to agree on what to do. Tatchell says that the group benefited from its “accessibility and spontaneity”, but some are more ambivalent. “They would have said it was an open democracy, but it was pretty much a meritocracy, plus who shouted the loudest,” says Power. Others say it was shambolic.

In short, a British 120 BPM would look the same, but different. Despite this, there were subtle and important differences between Act Up in different countries. Britain was, everyone agrees, relatively lucky to have the NHS, which reacted well to the crisis – for this, and many other reasons, people never mobilised around the movement in quite the same way as in the US or France. It could even be just a matter of national temperament, the Brits opting to be less politicised and more focused on things such as providing care. However, most do believe that Act Up in Britain paved the way for more “respectable”, or at least organised, advocacy groups to make their case in the corridors of power. Tatchell calls them “the shock troops in the battle against HIV”.

The London branch fizzled out in the 90s, thanks to disagreements over their methods, on whether to take corporate money and where the fight should go next after treatment started to become available. A nadir for them, says Nutland, was when members trashed a stall set up by the Terrence Higgins Trust at an international Act Up meeting in Amsterdam in 1992 – they disagreed over whether lesbians should use dental dams during sex. “I also think one of the problems was that we never spent any time doing any medium- to long-term thinking,” he says. Everyone was just young and angry, he says. And many thought they would soon be dead.

Yet the Act Up London group was revived in 2012, facing new challenges: the rise of infection among certain minorities; the ongoing stigma for those infected; and the urgent need to save the NHS, as services face continued cuts.

The new Act Up still carries out actions – they dumped half a tonne of manure on the doorstep of Ukip’s headquarters after Nigel Farage said that people with HIV should be barred from entering the UK. “The gravity of the situation demands a grassroots, mischievous, creative, disobedient, fantastical group,” says Dan Glass, who pushed for the revival. “We have other groups, but we need to be on the streets.”

Others feel the fight is best fought elsewhere. Nutland has instead cofounded Prepster, which advocates the use of PrEP, a drug that has had startling success in cutting down rates of HIV infection. In a landscape transformed by the internet and social media, he argues, street actions still have a place, but it needs to be a lot more strategic, and fit alongside what else is happening.

Lisa Power tends to agree. But what even makes a good activist, anyway? She pauses. “You need to be a bit of a drama queen – but not too much.” Whether “too much” of a drama queen is a paradox, she doesn’t explain. But the activists in 120 BPM, scrapping and screaming for their lives, would definitely have something to say.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/giant-condoms-and-buckets-of-fake-blood-the-true-story-of-aids-activists-act-up/